Are you sure you're an INTJ? Our personality type has the greatest self-confidence of all the types, are one of the rarest and we will RULE THE WORLD ***WITH SCIENCE***!!!!!

Heh hem...Cough. Cough.

Andrea,

You are not an INTJ.. I really don't care what your personality test results told you, so don't try and confuse me with the facts. The bottom line is your are definitely something other than an INTJ.
I really don't know what you are; however, it probably is guided by some inner need to be accepted by others.

Yes, well, if I may break up this informative discussion and get back to the original question...

I am a strong INTJ; I scored above ninety percent on all the letters on all the MBTI tests that I have taken. With that said, I have to partially agree with the the creator of this post.. but of course, my reasons are not founded in the want for acceptance from others, but instead are founded in my ambition and desire for accomplishment. I find that I envy Extraverts mainly because they are able to smoothly coax, coerce, and find friends that will allow them to accomplish their goals ( in this case I talk specifically about ENTJs). In many cases their goals are similar to mine, but they are able to more easily accomplish them because of their relationships with others and because they seem to be generally more liked by others. Of course, my inability to be social to their degree is not a particular downfall or handicapp in my opinion because often times they counter their own social behavior with jackass actions and remarks which can leave them with more enemies (or people that incapable of understanding them, in my opinion) than myself. The end.

Oh yes, by the by, you seem more like a INFJ or INFP in my soley unprofessional opinion.

I'm exceedingly comfortable as an INTJ: my preferences in life reflect my personality preferences (which is what the Myers-Briggs type is supposed to reflect).

I have no need or desire to mix well at parties nor to have a wide circle of friends. At the few parties I agree to attend, I spend almost all my time listening. This is something anybody can try, in fact. :)

I have no trouble finding things to talk about off the cuff, because I know more than most about almost everything. Non-INTJ's might take this to mean that I'm claiming that I know more than almost everybody about almost everything, but that's not what I said. INTJ's will understand that I'm saying that given a random person, I know more than that person about almost everything, because this is a common feature of INTJ's who've had the freedom to realize themselves.

I am sometimes accused of being aloof, and I am sometimes misunderstood as a snob when in fact I'm just trying to recharge. But people say all kinds of things, almost all of which I merely note as data points and do not take at face value, much less as truth. That said, I should remark that I can *be* aloof and snobbish if I want to be -- it's a very efficient way to keep weak minds under control when other means are either too expensive for me or too unpleasant for the other.

I'm not sure why you think that INTJ's tend not to have interest and/or talent in the arts. In my experience, INTJ's can be talented in anything they put their minds to. My wife is a wonderful artist (painting in several media, mostly). I've played musical instruments since I was three, and have worked as a church organist and symphony tympanist. Also, I associate creative originality (artistic or otherwise) with the N preference, not with the S preference. Not venturing outside the pre-established box is precisely a preference of S types.

I don't think you can trust over-generalizations along the lines of "NT's suck at sports". I bet Hannibal of Carthage didn't suck at sports. Certainly, I've seldom heard of an INTJ not excelling at anything she put her mind to, including sports.

So, I think the greatest advantage of the Myers-Briggs indicator is what it tells us about ourselves. But you can't exploit this advantage unless you really understand what your preferences are and unless you really understand what they mean.

-- Mark

No, i can't say that I do envy others. I feel I am blessed to be an INTJ and really have no desire to be other than who I am meant to be. I do wish sometimes others could undertand my perspective and slant on things a little better as I am pretty much right all the time. :-)

I don't trust Niednagel's assessments. Such as, his website claims that George Bush, Sr., has ENFJ preferences. Um, ENFJ -- for the man who said he doesn't "do the vision thing"?? Hm, can't say that sits right with me. And he claims George's son, Dubya, has ENTJ preferences. Wow. Most of the leading type experts I know attribute him with preferences for ISFP.. So there's a pretty big disparity between Niednagel and the rest of the Type community.

Furthermore, my INTJ husband studied karate for several years, enjoyed volleyball, and was a competition swimmer in high school. Nowadays we go out swing dancing and enjoy snorkeling together.

Given that extraverted Sensing is the "aspirational" process for INTJs, I think it stands to reason there will be a number of them involved with sports in *some* capacity.

PS: We all of us use *both* introverted and extraverted processes -- we merely have a preference for one over the other. It's not a prison sentence! But we always pay some price for indulging in one at the expense of the other.

Hmm, you know I think it is possible that you may be an ISTJ, not an INTJ. As INTJ people are well known for not caring what other people think of them, point blank. They generally have very little need for social approval, and do not care at all whether or not they fit in with the crowd. It seems to me that you have a very strong need for acceptance, and you want to blend in. Seems like you also can't stand to be judged as something negative by others, and you feel hurt and misunderstood. As an INTJ, I can definately share your feelings of being misunderstood in general, but I don't care what people think of me in the slightest, and I am proud of who I am. I wouldn't change or compromise myself for the world. I think intraverts are generally misunderstood by most people, because they only represnt about 25% of the population. It seems to be that many extraverts can't understand why we don't want to be loud and gregarious like them; they think it's because we are shy. I have also found that most people who think like that have little tolerance for people who are not exactly like them, and want everything up front and on the surface (most probably so they don't have to think about it too deeply). Try thinking of it this way: at least you can tell pretty quickly who you DON'T want to know when they give an ignorant reaction to you.

Andrea, your statement in itself shows that you are certainly not an INTJ. It is intuition that INTJ's boast in above all. I have not heard of an INTJ that does not get frustrated with the dreamy arty people amongst us, envy would be blasphemy to be sure.

Aside from that I have heard many negative aspects and traits INTJ's struggle with; lack of originality is certainly not amongst them.

I sometimes envy ENTJ's simply due to the fact that N T and J are (to me) superior to their counterparts, ruling out all other types. Extroversion would make one more acceptable and perhaps 'able' in an extroverted world.

I must say that I do at times stare in awe at my INTP friend when he manages to outwit me, speech wise; rivalry then is strong, to say the least.

...and I just figured out that this tread is almost exactly 2 years old, what a bummer.

I realize this thread is a couple years old, but it came up towards the top in a Google search, and no one in this thread has really address the amount that natural talent and ability come into play here. I am a female INTJ and am a natural musician. I have perfect pitch, compose music, sing, play piano and several other instruments, program music on the computer, produce, arrange, etc. My music composition style is not particularly scientific or mathematical - it often comes out of passages that simply come to mind, and then I work on expanding them according to what appeals to me. While people can learn the skills of composition and instrument playing even if they don't have a natural musical inclination, I am someone who believes in natural ability and talent being much of what strongly guides people in their lives. Even if INTJ's all have similar personality types and ways of thinking about things and dealing with problems, our genetic makeup, individual personalities, and the environment in which we live play huge parts on our life choices and abilities.

That said, I also know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. I enjoy watching figure skating and gymnastics and have wished I could do those things, but I have no flexibility, even though I've tried. (I did, however, enjoy playing baseball as a child and was reasonably athletic overall.) With stuff like this in mind, in life I tend to pursue only the things I am interested in and can truly excel at in a noteworthy and unique manner. I am extremely focused and driven to accomplish those things, which I have to say is tough as an INTJ musician because I get the impression there aren't too many dedicated INTJ musicians out there. I'm not just talking about playing an instrument as a hobby, but really being involved in music as a lifestyle. I have a hard time finding other musicians that I can identify with and enjoy working with, and whose musical tastes I am interested in. I've found a few, but not many.

Aside from that, any artistic path, while personally satisfying for artists, is extremely difficult to "succeed" at professionally without a certain amount of luck and meeting the right people, and really putting yourself out there. As a hardcore introvert with an inclination towards depression, that aspect of being an INTJ musician/performer is difficult to overcome. I can spend my time learning whatever instruments I want to learn and can afford, writing whatever music I want to write, but then taking forever on actually getting to the point of presenting it to the world, even though that is my ultimate goal. I have a definite idea of how I want the final product to sound, which I can't achieve on my own for various reasons, but I've had a hard time meeting anyone who shares my vision and have been very disappointed with most of the results of attempting to work on it with others. This means I always need to have a day job just to be able to pay the rent. Finding a job that doesn't drive me nuts with mindlessness and/or general corporate blandness is difficult, and if I work too many hours I can't focus on the music as much as I need to.

In other words, be careful what you wish for. I love being a musician, but I do somewhat wish I could be content doing something else for which I could form a more solid and reliable career path. I can't delete the musician out of me, though, nor do I really want to.