Healthy Reminders for the Soft-Spoken, Visionary INFJ ☁️
In this article, I break down my Myers-Briggs personality type I, N, F, J and discuss some healthy reminders that I find help me be a better me, touching upon things such as nutrition, productivity, giving back, self care, and relationships.
Writing this as a reflection has helped me better understand myself and embrace me and my personality, but the reminders are something that others of different personality types can relate to and take away from as well!
Apparently INFJ is the rarest personality type, making up about 2.3% of the world’s population. Backed by psychology, the Myers-Briggs Questionaire indicates your personality type in 4 dimensions: Where you focus your attention — Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I); The way you take in information — Sensing (S) or INtuition (N); How you make decisions — Thinking (T) or Feeling (F); & How you deal with the world — Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).
What Are INFJ’s Like?
INFJs in a Nutshell
- Value living with purpose and mission for their lives.
- “Live to solve problems and bring about positive change” (Truity).
- “Take concrete steps to realize their goals and make a lasting impact.”
- “Are compassionate and quietly inspiring; they enjoy helping others grow” (Myers-Briggs).
They lean more towards these personality dimensions:
Introverted: Energized by quiet time alone; Focus more internally
Intuition: Pay more attention to ideas, concepts, and interpretations over facts and details
Feeling: Prioritize relationships and others’ needs; Make decisions more based on gut feelings
Judging: Prefer organization and plans (Truity)
Strengths
Mission-Oriented; Peace Makers; Inspiring others; Work with Integrity; Value deep & authentic relationships; Love to learn and solve challenges to help others
Altruistic, Visionary, Charismatic, Curious, Creative, Passionate, Grounded; Cooperative, Compassionate, Caring, Loyal, Organized, Dependable, Determined, Intelligent, Insightful, Independent
Can Be Both a Strength & Weakness
Intense; Quiet at first; Future-focus; Wish they could know everything; Have a complex mind; Need time to think privately; Wear hearts on their sleeve; Prefer order
Areas of Development
Perfectionistic; Procrastinate at times; Sensitive to Criticism; Overthinkers; Conflict-averse; Likely stressed when feeling under-appreciated; Prone to burnout; Critical of self and others; Get too caught up in the big picture and may overlook details; Learn to be okay with small talk lol
Reflecting On Some Healthy Reminders for INFJs
Reflecting on important areas of life through the lens of my personality type and recording reminders has been a meaningful experience! I try to take these to heart everyday to be on my A game.
1. On Nutrition & Body Image: Eat intuitively, enjoy every bite, & don’t take it for granted.
Actively practicing Intuitive Eating, an evidenced-based, non-diet, & self-care eating framework, has improved my life alot— improving my energy levels throughout the day, confidence, fitness, & my relationship with food and calories and my body.
As an INFJ, one of my core strengths is my consistency but a couple weaknesses are perfectionism and intensity. Knowing that our health is the most important thing, the diet mentality and dealing with an eating disorder for years mitigated strengths I’m proud of as an INFJ as I sought unattainable perfection through unhealthy habits and extremes. I am so much happier and healthier eating intuitively and focusing on proper nutrition for my body.
Additionally, I along with so many others are so fortunate to have easy and daily access to healthy foods and clean water. I don’t ever want to take it for granted. In the Philadelphia area, 1 in 5 people face hunger. Something that I will better implement in my life as I save and invest wisely for my future is to truly champion healthy grocery shopping on a budget and to donate some of the money I save to help people in need monthly. Some organizations whose mission is to end the hunger crisis in the Philadelphia area include Philabundance, Manna on Main Street, and Rise Against Hunger.
2. On Productivity: Have a strategy to stop procrastination in its tracks.
INFJs are visionary individuals who strive to make a lasting impact and solve big challenges. However, being perfectionistic and knowing that doing good work takes time, INFJs may procrastinate since huge endeavors are daunting. Yup, I fall into this trap at times. Here are some tips that help me stop procrastinating.
- Slow down and do one thing at a time and beware of multi-tasking. Read more here about the dangers of multi-tasking.
- Check your phone less and stay off social media during work. I try to only pick up my phone to answer messages or change the song or podcast.
- Set aside time blocks to work on different projects and tasks. Here are some timeblocking tips.
- Truly enjoy the journey and learning process to reach your goals, and break them down into manageable objectives and tasks. Also, record your goals and tasks using whatever means works for you to hold yourself accountable. See more on this below.
3. On Success: Enjoy learning & the journey to reach your goals. Don’t be overwhelmed you’re doing awesome.
As individuals working towards self-improvement, we strive to capitalize on our strengths and diminish our weaknesses. Being an INFJ, some of my areas of development include overthinking, perfectionism, being critical of myself, and being prone to burnout as a result, which definitely impacts my overall happiness and productivity.
On the other hand, I embrace my strengths of my personality such as being organized, mission-oriented, having a love of learning, and seeing problems through. By focusing on my strengths and that my true happiness stems from teamwork and having a fulfilling vision for myself (that I am still figuring out of course), I’m confident in my ability to better handle stress, be kinder to myself, and embrace the journey as I work towards my goals.
To do this, I simplify my life. I break down my S.M.A.R.T. goals that align with my purpose into manageable objectives and specific tasks to complete each day. I write these down to hold myself accountable each day and feel accomplished checking them off. Knowing that reaching milestones, no matter how small, are wins towards my goals, I am able to have more fun and enjoy the journey to get to where I want to be.
4. On Relationships: You know your heart, so don’t worry be happy :).
In friendships and romantic relationships, INFJs are bold and value genuine and deep connections above all. INFJs care about a balance between fun and seriousness in a relationship and seek compatibility, attraction, sincerity, good communication, and depth, which takes time to find and develop. They truly value integrity in the relationship and strengthening a connection while balancing individual growth. “Relationships with Advocates are not for the uncommitted or the shallow” (16 Personalities). INFJs also strongly desire to maintain harmony and are highly motivated to resolve conflicts (Truity).
Yup I will not be opening up much about this haha, but this definitely describes me and the aspects that I care about most in a relationship. My key reminder for myself and others who value similar things is to not worry because you know your heart, give all this to others, and deserve nothing less.
One area of development for INFJs is that they may feel especially stressed in times of conflict or uncertainty, causing them to overthink and get in their heads. In the past, I felt that these feelings were amplified while in a relationship or one that was ending because I cared so much. Worry less and try not to overthink because you have so much worth and are passionate about so much.
5. On Passions: Keep doing what lights you up & using your talents to help others.
“Nothing lights up Advocates like creating a solution that changes people’s lives.” (16 Personalities).
Solving problems to help others, volunteering, & pursuing passions are key outlets for INFJs and are essential to their purpose. If you resonate, never lose this love because it lights you up. In the career side of my life for example, I’m passionate about tech innovation, designing and developing tools that help people, and telling meaningful stories through data.
Since INFJs more introverted and prefer to think privately first, they come across as quiet and soft-spoken. However, INFJs are passionate and bold about their passions, ideas, helping others, and problem solving to make a lasting impact. They rarely settle for “good enough,” and are willing to work extremely hard on complex challenges and see problems through until the end. Because of this, INFJs need to remember to take care of themselves too sometimes.
6. On Self Care: Remember to prioritize taking care of yourself properly.
As I just mentioned, in order to prevent burnout and be their best, INFJs need to remember take proper care of themselves. In my life, I know that I need to prioritize nutrition, working out, and getting enough sleep every single day in to be happy and perform my best.
Additionally, it’s important to put effort and time into our health and wellbeing and give yourself bandwidth to. In my life, doing research, having discussions with others, and learning more in-depth about nutrition, fitness, and healthy sleep techniques went a long way to enable me to actually take proper care of my mind and body. However, it’s okay to not be the best or perfect with all this. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Final Thoughts: Be More Kind To Yourself
To wrap up, here are some additional kind reminders for each of the areas I touched on. As an INFJ, I need to be less critical of myself and worry less, and I think these extra ones help with that.
- On Nutrition & Body Image: Appreciate what you have, and you don’t have to be perfect!
- On Productivity: Try to not procrastinate but don’t worry if it happens once in a while.
- On Success: It is not linear. Fail forward, fail fast, & fail often.
- On Relationships: Same thing. You know your heart, so don’t worry be happy :).
- On Passions: Just keep going it lights you up. Schedule time to volunteer and give back to others.
- On Self Care (I just touched upon it, there is so much more!): Remember to also just be, enjoy the ordinary things in life, and be thankful everyday for every blessing and friends and family. INFJs can struggle with that sometimes since they are very forward-thinking. Balance both self care and hard work for better performance (Work/Life Balance). Also be in community with others! Don’t live life alone and embrace community more wherever you can find it even in challenging COVID times.
I am thankful to have had the opportunity to take the full Myers-Briggs Questionaire in college, and it was fun to reflect on my characteristics as an INFJ again in 2021 to lay out healthy reminders for life. I hope that they are something that others of different personality types may relate to and take away from as well.
Thank you for reading! Feel free to reach out to me to talk or discuss anytime, and I appreciate feedback as I try to write about more projects and topics I’m passionate about.
