- The hosts share a personal story about making a decision and feeling regret later
- They discuss the challenges ENFPs face in making decisions and trusting their feelings
- They explore the tension between embracing emotions and being seen as flighty or unintelligent
- The hosts mention the insecurity ENFPs may have about their articulation and intelligence.

- The video discusses the challenges faced by ENFPs, such as being perceived as flighty and not being taken seriously.
- ENFPs often struggle to find their true alignment and may commit to things that don't make them happy.
- They fear hurting others and being pinned down in situations they don't want to be in.
- The video then introduces the car model used by Personality Hacker to understand personality types.
- The ENFP's dominant mental process is extroverted intuition, which is all about exploring the external environment and recognizing patterns.
- ENFPs excel at pattern recognition and can often see things that others don't.
- This mental process is optimistic and always seeking possibilities.

- ENFPs have extroverted intuition, which makes them optimistic and always seeking new possibilities
- However, having many possibilities can be overwhelming and make decision-making difficult
- ENFPs supplement their intuition with introverted feeling, which helps them check in with their emotions and make decisions in alignment with their values
- ENFPs also have extroverted thinking, which focuses on effectiveness and getting things done
- ENFPs may struggle with decision-making, often skipping their authenticity process and relying on effectiveness instead
- This can lead to bad decisions and commitments that they don't feel good about
- Society's pressure to make quick decisions and the fear of missing out can contribute to this struggle
- ENFPs may fear commitment and end up not committing to anything, causing anxiety and indecision
- This can lead to feelings of depression and not knowing what to do with their lives.

- The video discusses the struggles and blind spots of ENFP personality types.
- The fourth position, called introverted sensing or memory, is described as an unsophisticated mental process for ENFPs.
- The memory process can cause feelings of being stuck, depressed, and anxious.
- ENFPs may feel stuck in their job, marriage, or lack of resources, and may feel like they have no options.
- The video suggests that feeling stuck is a sign of being in the memory process, and that getting back into the strengths of exploration and authenticity can help.
- Developing authenticity requires slowing down, focusing inward, and making decisions based on what feels right for the individual.
- ENFPs tend to ignore their feelings and jump into action, leading to decisions that are not in alignment with themselves.
- Slowing down and embodying decisions can help ENFPs say no to things that aren't in alignment and say yes to the highest leverage opportunities.
- Working on authenticity may cause ENFPs to fear missing out on opportunities, but it is important to prioritize alignment and not be overwhelmed with commitments.

- ENFPs often struggle with FOMO (fear of missing out) and chasing opportunities that aren't aligned with their authenticity.
- By slowing down and checking in with their feelings and authenticity, ENFPs can make more satisfying decisions and pursue deeper relationships and opportunities.
- ENFPs have the ability to perform through things and inspire others with their optimism and enthusiasm.
- They often attract emotional or social leeches who want their attention, which can make them feel flighty or unable to go deep with people.
- ENFPs have a compulsion to follow through on commitments, which can make them hesitant to say yes to anything.
- This indecisiveness stems from a desire to honor their word.

- ENFPs should honor their word and be committed to something instead of backing down when things get tough.
- The inability to say no early on leads to saying no at the last minute when overwhelmed.
- It is important to assess why one is keeping a commitment - is it a personal value or social obligation?
- ENFPs have the ability to empathize with others' emotions and can easily sympathize with "crazy makers."
- ENFPs may resist authenticity due to the fear of discovering negative motivations within themselves.
- Emotions are the seat of motivation for ENFPs, but negative emotions are often avoided.
- Facing the dark places within oneself can lead to personal growth and understanding of others.

- The speaker discusses their "assassin fantasy" where they imagine themselves as a killer picking people off from a distance.
- They emphasize the importance of sympathizing with and holding space for individuals in dark spaces.
- ENFPs may struggle with authenticity and feel insecure around intelligent people.
- The speaker encourages ENFPs to trust their gut instincts and develop their authenticity.
- Emotions are the driving force behind behavior, and the speaker suggests identifying the emotions one wants to create in order to determine their actions.
- They provide an exercise for determining and pursuing desired emotions.

- The video discusses the challenges faced by ENFPs, such as being perceived as flighty and not taken seriously.
- ENFPs struggle with decision-making and fear commitment, leading to anxiety and indecision.
- The video suggests that developing authenticity and checking in with feelings can help ENFPs make satisfying decisions.
- ENFPs have the ability to perform and inspire others, but may attract emotional leeches.
- ENFPs should honor their commitments and assess why they are keeping them.
- ENFPs may resist authenticity due to fear of discovering negative motivations within themselves.
- Emotions are the driving force behind behavior, and ENFPs should trust their gut instincts and develop their authenticity.

- ENFPs have the ability to access and create emotions on demand
- This ability makes them great actors and allows them to fully show up in the world
- It is important for ENFPs to focus on emotions first and build strategies to access them directly
- ENFPs can develop this authenticity through exercises and practices
- Listeners are encouraged to share the podcast with ENFPs in their lives and leave a rating and review on iTunes to help the podcast reach more people.

- ENFPs have the unique ability to access and generate emotions at will
- This skill enables them to excel in acting and fully engage with the world
- ENFPs should prioritize emotions and develop strategies to access them directly
- Authenticity can be cultivated through exercises and practices
- Listeners are urged to share the podcast with ENFPs and leave a rating and review on iTunes for wider reach.

Hey, welcome back to the Personality Hacker Podcast.

About 2 years ago, Antonia and I were out in Oregon visiting her parents who live near the Portland, Oregon area.

She lives in a, her parents live in a town called Cascade Locks outside of Oregon.

It's near the other town called Hood River.

And we decided we're going to go do a day trip.

So we got in the car and we started to drive down the road to get on the freeway and we had a decision to make.

And Antonia obviously grew up in Oregon so she turned to me and said, Joel, would you like to go up into the mountains over by Mount Hood and we can hike around and look around up the ski resort and go up in the fresh air and see nature or would you like to go east or west, excuse me, toward Portland and spend a day, you know, walking around Portland, go to Pal's Books, do whatever down in Portland.

Now we'd already been to Portland that week a few times and I had a decision to make.

So I was sitting in the car and I'm thinking, okay what decision do I want to make?

And what I ended up doing was I defaulted to a decision that I thought everybody in the car would want to do.

So Antonia was there driving, I was in the passenger seat, and our little baby Piper was in the back, and I thought, well, going to Portland, you know, there's amenities for the baby.

Antonia probably wants to go back to the city that she is so familiar with and wants to go around and walk around.

So I'm gonna go ahead and make this decision to go to Portland.

So we turn west on the interstate, going toward Portland, and about 2 minutes in, I all of a sudden feel a deep sense that I didn't make the choice I really wanted to make.

I had made a choice that I thought was the right choice, but it felt very clear to me as we were driving toward Portland, Oregon, that I really wanted to go up into the mountains.

And what was interesting about that decision was I didn't know that's the decision I wanted to make until I made a decision.

It could have been any decision and once I made that decision it started going down the road, literally down the road toward that decision.

Inside of me something triggered and I felt what the right decision was.

Now in the Myers- Briggs system I'm an ENFP and in our genius system I lead with a process called exploration, follow that with a process called authenticity.

And that's what we're gonna be talking about today.

We're gonna be talking about the ENFP personality type.

And I thought I would share a personal story to illustrate how how I've gone through the mechanisms of Understanding myself and how I make decisions and I think as an ENFP listening some of the things we're gonna talk about today I believe will resonate with you We have some challenges and things we want to bring up and address and I think this is gonna be a powerful podcast for you as an ENFP.

We're doing a series of deep dive podcasts on each of the Myers-Briggs types.

And before we do those, we've been sending out surveys to people on our list of each specific personality type.

So we recently sent out a survey to ENFPs to talk about, or to ask them questions like, what are your top 3 challenges?

What are things that you wish other people knew about you as an ENFP?

What have been some of your biggest inspirations in media or life experiences or programs and what would you tell your 15 year old self if you could?

And what's great about these surveys is you really see how even though each individual person is obviously their own person, You can really see themes coming up for each of these types.

And there was no exception with the ENFPs.

There was a couple running themes that just stood out to us very clearly.

And 1 of them was this concept around making decisions.

How do I know what the right decision to make is?

How do I know you know, what is my passion?

The story you just told Joel of whether or not we were gonna drive to Portland or whether or not we were gonna drive to Mount Hood, I mean they were literally the exact same distance away from my hometown that I grew up in, they're about an hour away, just in different directions.

And I totally didn't care which place we went because like you said, I grew up there and I've been to both places a million times.

And so I was totally looking at you to go, what do you wanna do?

And you didn't know until you were already in action?

And that is a major struggle for a lot of ENFPs.

You can see this with their feedback 1 person said in a very I thought this was well articulated Which is I don't know what I want to do until I'm already doing it, basically what you just said.

Yeah, there's so much time and energy that is wasted on dead ends, you know, like all these different projects that you're doing or these directions you're going, some of them just hit dead ends.

And if you're already dealing with a million different things you want to do, and every single thing you have to vet by actually getting far enough down the road to determine whether or not that was the right road for you.

And then you have to backtrack and go back and then head back down another road.

There's a lot of very interesting Janus-like qualities within ENFPs, meaning that they're almost walking contradictions in a lot of different ways.

And I think they know that about themselves.

I think you guys know that you're walking contradictions.

And so how do you show up in a world where maybe you're not presenting the way that you think you're presenting.

Maybe you wanna do things, you know, like You wanna do a million different things, but you can only choose 1 and then get so far down the road and go, nope, that's not the right 1 for me, and then backtrack and go down and try a different road.

You've got all these different interests and things that catch your attention, and you know your highest leverage is when you Center in and focus on a single thing.

So how do you possibly focus when the world is filled with so many interesting?

So we really want to get into the heart of ENFPs What they're bringing to the world what they do for us.

But we our philosophy is At first a personality hacker that every Myers-Briggs type brings something special and unique and imperative to the social ecosystem.

So we're gonna talk about what ENFPs bring, according to our philosophy, and some of the challenges that they face, and what are the things that they can do to meet those challenges head on.

So what's great about this particular podcast, but at the same time, might be a little bit to our detriment, is that Joel, you're an ENFP.

So in some ways we're going to sort of overvalue our experience as you being an ENFP.

But what was great about that survey is that I saw so many different running themes in that survey that I think you experience.

So it's it's actually good to get it from the horse's mouth.

And for those of you listening that are ENFPs, you know, if you're an ENFP let us know whether or not Joel's experience and our experience about ENFPs are really resonating with you.

If you grew up in a family or a or a you know a local culture or a religious paradigm, most likely you know as an as a as a person in the world you're often encouraged not to trust your feelings in what you do to make decisions.

And I think for an ENFP this is a welcomed message as a young person because you understand that your feelings are impactful to you And I think in a general sense, 1 of the things that you look to do is to get those under control So you don't feel controlled by your emotions or your feelings and I think that As an ENFP 1 of the things that we can do we can oscillate as ENFPs we can end up going down the road of allowing emotions to run, run the show in a way where I see a lot of the language from ENFPs or people that know ENFPs, like, well, they're flighty, they're not centered, they're all over the place, I can't pin them down.

And I think that's that's someone who has just allowed emotions to run rampant.

But there's that other part of the ENFPs, I think, that get the message that it's not cool to trust your feelings, and you can't look at them.

And I think those ENFPs are unhappy because they they lock themselves down and they don't trust their gut and I think both extremes of that can be difficult and I think being an ENFP if you're listening you're an ENFP I think sometimes it can feel schizophrenic being your type because you understand this push-pull relationship with your feelings and how impactful they are and the messages you might get about don't trust those and so where do you fall in this?

How do you how do you deal with a world you know where you want to indulge the feelings you have, you want to chase the feelings you've got, and people call you flighty for it.

And so you're like, okay, well, I guess that's not right.

And then you try to lock them down and do the pragmatic thing.

But you don't feel good about it, you feel like you're making bad decisions, you feel like maybe you're not living life to its fullest.

You want to embrace the emotions you bring to the table, but you don't want to do it in a way that makes you come across unintelligent or inarticulate or flighty or uncentered.

I think that's really what we're going to unpack today is this tension between those 2 worlds and the emotions and the feelings that are coming up for you.

Yeah, I think the word that is the opposite of over emotional is overthinking.

And I've noticed that ENFPs feel like they're trapped between either overthinking something and just spending way too much time thinking and analyzing and almost maybe even fretting about something versus being completely controlled by their emotions.

And I think it does have the same root source.

I think it has, that polarity has the same, it has the same root source and it has the same solution, which is nice, which we're going to talk about.

We're gonna put a pin in that and really talk about that.

I think the other thing that we need to really address with ENFPs is like you said there's this idea that people Don't see them as articulate or intelligence or intelligent or even there's an insecurity around it regardless of whether or not it's true There is definitely an insecurity.

I remember seeing a graphic recently online of a picture of 2 people, like stick figures, and 1 was above 1 of them, it said ENFP, and above the other 1 it said INTJ.

And the ENFP was like literally vomiting rainbows on the INTJ's head.

Like the mouth is wide open and a rainbow is coming out of the mouth as a projectile vomit.

And it's like landing on top of the head of an INTJ.

And it was funny because in some ways it's very true.

And I think ENFPs own that they're cheerful and they're excited about life and everything is rainbows.

And at the same time, because that's how they show up to the world, they believe that that's how everybody's taking them, especially maybe intuitive thinkers, which they're very attracted to.

They really love the thoughtfulness of it, but then there's this idea that there's nothing serious about them, or there's nothing thoughtful, or they're not as intelligent, even though I know as an ENTP, I'm very attracted to ENFP personality types.

So there's an insecurity that the people that they attract and are attracted to are never gonna take them seriously.

And there's a lot to take seriously about an ENFP.

The idea that nobody sees that though, and that they're never able to get anything done.

And nobody hands them the resources to get things accomplished.

I think that's a massive frustration for an ENFP, especially if you believe, as an ENFP, that if you just had the resource to get something done, you could move mountains.

And so there's a lot of Janus-like qualities.

Are they overthinking or are they too emotional?

Are they flighty and vomiting rainbows or are they serious and really have a lot of depth to give?

Are they showing up in a way where people won't take them seriously because they feel like they're doing too much flirting, but ultimately they're just actually being nice.

Like, I think there's a lot of paradox that they feel that they have.

I mean, I don't even know whether or not all of that is true.

I think that a lot of it is a story, obviously, because everything is a story and a narrative.

But I think a lot of it, the fear of coming across inarticulate, the fear of coming across as flighty, I think that is a story that ends up fueling itself.

And I'll notice ENFPs allowing themselves to be manipulated by that story like they show up that way because they think people think they're supposed to show up that way and there's a sense of wanting to fulfill other people's expectations and then getting there and then feeling very out of alignment.

I think it's the same thing with what we were talking about before, which is this idea of you wanted to do something that made the whole car happy.

And then we get on the road and you're like, wait, this doesn't make me happy.

There's commitments, I think, that ENFPs make in order to not overthink and in order to not be ruled by their emotions.

They'll make a commitment just wanting to commit to something and then get a bit down the road and go, oh my gosh, this is not what I wanted at all.

And now they have to break the systems that they've built or they have to hurt people's feelings getting out of a relationship That wasn't right for them So there's a lot of committing to things like including roles or how they show up or Relationships or jobs or projects or whatever it is that they get into it and go, this is not right for me at all.

So there also generates, there's not only a fear of fulfilling other people's commitments and feeling bad about it, there's also a fear of hurting other people.

Like, and I think that that's 1 of the reasons why they get called flighty, because they don't want to be pinned down.

They don't want anybody to pin them into a situation where they're just going to have to hurt everybody's feelings anyway, or they're just going to have to try to extract themselves.

Now they're just like butterflies that can't land anywhere.

And there's a sense of like, well, now what do I do?

Because I'm not feeling particularly good about that either.

So again, I think most of this comes down to the same solution, which we'll be talking about in just a moment, but I really wanted to take some time to articulate what I think are a lot of the challenges that they're facing.

A lot of the things that they're feeling, that they just, you know, there's a difficulty in showing up to the world the way that they know they could show up, if they could just find that.

If that makes sense, You know, like just kind of like find that place inside themselves and show up in the to the world in the way that they feel internally.

Yeah, I think if you're if you're an ENFP listening, you know the times in your life when you've been in flow, you've shown up, and you have embodied something that you're totally in alignment with, you really love, and you lose sense of time, you lose sense of space, you lose sense of yourself even because you're pouring everything you have into embodying doing this, whether it's art or a talk you have to give or a leadership role or a project or an adventure you're on, whatever it is, when you feel in complete alignment, you totally embody something that feels really good to you.

It's it juices you up, and you feel so present and alive and excited to be alive.

It's hard to get there, I think, for a lot of us ENFPs, but I think when you do get there, that feeling is good.

So I think what we could do now, so we talked a lot about anecdotally the challenges that we've seen, some of the things that we believe you are struggling with as an ENFP or could be struggling with as an ENFP.

And I think we've been talking a lot about behavior and the challenges and things, but let's talk about what we do best here at Personality Hacker, which is help you understand the wiring of your mind.

Because, you know, oftentimes when you're looking at resources online around ENFPs, it'll say, well, you're this behavior and you should do this thing and that, but doesn't really give you the underpinnings of why that works or what's causing the behavior.

And really what we're fundamentally interested in is how your mind learns information and how your mind makes decisions.

Because when you know the wiring of your mind and how your mind does those things, behavior is secondary to that.

It's not an, it gives us clues to those wirings, but the behavior is a secondary thing.

And so when we understand the wiring, that gives us much more control.

It's like seeing the knobs on the control panel for the engine of your mind.

You can tweak things and turn them and realize, oh, I see, I've got this knob dialed up too high.

So let's dig into the car model here at Personality Hacker that we use to look at all personality types, but particularly today the ENFP personality type.

And imagine yourself, your mind, the wiring of your mind like a 4 passenger car.

Each of, there's 4 seats, 2 front and 2 in the back, and there's 4 mental processes taking up each of these 4 seats as an ENFP.

In the driver's seat is a mental process.

The technical name of this is a cognitive function, but we're just going to call it a mental process for right now.

In the front seat, in the driver's seat, is a process technically called extroverted intuition.

This is what you have been driving with your whole life as an ENFP.

And exploration is all about messing with the external environment to see the patterns that emerge.

It's about messing with people, messing with things, messing with the environment, messing with systems, you know, playfully seeing what happens and what comes back to you.

And What you're looking for when you're using this mental process, you're learning through this, you're looking for patterns that seem to emerge over and over again, and you're making speculative conclusions based on the patterns that you see.

So we often talk about it's behind the curtain thinking, and by definition you can't see what's behind the curtain.

So you might, you know, interact with someone in life, let's say walking down the street, you talk to somebody on the street, and you notice that they appear homeless, and you're trying to pattern recognize, and you ask a few questions.

And indeed, in fact, based on just a few questions and seeing how they're dressed you've come to the conclusion that this person on the street you just talked to is probably homeless.

You don't know that for sure, you didn't ask them that directly, you're making a bunch of conclusions and speculative leaps based on some pieces of information that you're putting together.

Now everybody does this, everybody pattern recognizes to some degree, but because you lead with a process of exploration and you've used it all your life, you're really good at it and it gives you so much energy that you love using this.

So every time you're in life, this is a lot of times why ENFPs can be life of the party because you're fun, you're bombastic, you're breaking systems, you're trying new things, you wanna go on adventure, you wanna push this over here to see what happens over there.

And this can be exciting to be around for other people.

Yeah, if you want to do a more in-depth, or hear a more in-depth analysis about the extroverted intuition or exploration process, I recommend you listen to the podcast on extroverted intuition versus introverted intuition.

It does a lot more of a deep dive into this process.

But as Joel mentioned, we all are pattern recognizing.

Most of us can pattern recognize when somebody is a homeless person.

But when you use this mental process all the time, you get so good and sophisticated at it that you could tell when somebody is not homeless but is showing up as homeless, right?

Like if a person appeared to everybody else as being homeless, you would spot the patterns that would say, yeah I don't think that person's actually homeless.

You could even notice if somebody was like say doing research for a role in a movie and they were showing up as homeless to everybody else and you're going like yeah I don't think that person's homeless.

I don't think that they have all the little subtle nuances and little details of being a homeless person.

So you get to a point where you've seen so many patterns emerge that you can see things where other people don't see them.

You tell all the little details that go, yeah, I don't think that's actually as it appears.

And what's great about this is extroverted intuition, because it's always looking for novelty and new, It's a very optimistic, very, like, it's always looking for possibilities.

It's a very optimistic process, which is 1 of the reasons why ENFPs show up so optimistic in general.

Like, Life really is filled with every possibility.

But this is also your downfall, because life is, you have so many possibilities in front of you, it's filled with possibility.

Which 1 can you possibly choose as the thing that you want to be doing?

So it's your greatest talent, and it's also what crosses you.

So in order to actually be a complete person, not just like a person that jumps like a wildfire from place to place, you supplement this process with in the car model, what we call the co-pilot.

In technical terms, it's called the auxiliary cognitive function, but we call it the co-pilot mental process.

The technical name of it is introverted feeling, though we've given it the nickname of authenticity.

Authenticity is very much about doing what is in alignment for you.

It's about checking in with how you feel about things or how things are striking you or hitting you and going, what feels right to me?

What feels right in a situation that might be feeling wrong to everybody else but feels right to me and why is that?

It really gets in touch with things like what is right for my conscience and what feels good and what feels bad or wrong and why am I feeling the way that I'm feeling?

And what are all the little nuances of how I'm feeling?

And fundamentally, because you could literally feel any way in any situation, because you're so in touch with all of those feelings, it allows you to figure out what is ethical for you.

Because different things make people feel different ways.

And the subjective human experience is important.

That your subjective human experience is important.

Because you're so, and you know that because you're so in touch with how things are making you feel subjectively.

So it makes sure to keep the individual in mind, the subjective human experience of an individual and make sure that you act in a way that is in alignment with honoring the individual so if something would allow you to make a metric dump truck full of money but exploits workers on a mass scale that's not acceptable right like it gets the job done but it totally ignores the impact of the individual with that decision.

That does not make you feel good because you're not honoring their subjective human experience.

On the other hand, if making great works of art or influencing other people on a mass scale and being highly inspirational makes you feel amazing but would never allow you to make a dollar your entire life, that's a viable option because it's making you feel good even if it's not getting the quote unquote success rewards that you would want.

So that's fundamentally what authenticity is about.

And that's a very important process for an ENFP.

It's where a lot of this emotional insight comes in, but it's not alone.

Authenticity is not working all by itself.

Yeah, in fact, you're gonna make your best decisions by using that authenticity process, by checking in with how things resonate with you and inner alignment.

However, right behind authenticity is a mental process that we believe has developed about a 10 year old's, a 10 year old child's development.

The technical name is extroverted thinking.

It's also a decision-making function just like authenticity, but it's asking the question not what feels right.

It's asking the question What works what gets the job done?

How do I accomplish this task in the most effective way possible?

That's why we call it effectiveness and as an ENFP this can be a big challenge for you because you have a tendency, remember that emotional stuff we talked about, that seat of great decision making, which is your authenticity.

You have to embody things to really know what you think about them.

So you have to turn down the road to go to Portland before you know whether you made the right choice or not, metaphorically speaking.

And it takes a lot of time to map your internal emotions and how you feel and the alignment inside of yourself.

It is so much easier as an ENFP to skip over all of that and go directly to that 10-year-old process, technically called the tertiary in your cognitive function stack.

We call it the 10-year-old process of effectiveness.

And instead of checking in, just say, what works?

So I'm sitting at the end of that road, ready to turn down the freeway to go to Portland or to go to Mount Hood, and I relied upon my effectiveness process by saying, well, what's going to get everything efficiently done here?

Antonio would like to go to Portland, our baby will have amenities in Portland, there's a lot of stuff to do, restaurants to eat at, there's stuff happening.

I may not know what's going to happen, but that seems like the efficient and effective decision.

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