Saturday, February 03, 2007

The Day After...

It happened again yesterday.
I was in the middle of a full-day MBTI® workshop when someone asked: "Do you change, because I reckon if I filled out this form ten years ago I would answer very differently?"
I replied: "Well, I know very clearly my profile but if I answered the questionnaire yesterday, true to my style of yesterday, I would look very different."
And I would.
I am a natural Etraverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiver (ENFP).
The day before I would have looked more like an Introverted, Sensing, Thinking Judger (ISTJ).
Why?
Well, the day before I was in preparation mode, very different to my presenting mode.
Presenting is easy, because that's who I am, naturally, the innate me, one who likes to be in front of a group, having fun, telling stories, revealing intimacies, inspiring insights.
In preparation I am alone, intense, working step by step, analysing structures, organising handouts, working against myself.
And the day after?
Difficult question, but it seems to me I become introverted, very practical, sensitive, controlling and inflexible.
A bit like an Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, Judger (ISFJ).
I seem comfortably, uncomfortable in the profile, almost locked in, and I experience some tension, especially if I feel let down in any way, if someone does not do as I wish, as if if they seem unaware of all I have done for them and are unable to complete simple tasks that are important to me.
I take matters very personal.
It seems best if I spend most of the day on my own, away from people, especially those used to my exuberance, flexibility, happy nature and desire to please.
It is as though I have given so much to so many, in such an intense setting, that I have to replenish the Self in a way that shuts me off from the outer world and closes me up in an inner world.
It doesn't always happen.
Sometimes the day after a workshop, I am quickly back to my innate ENFP self, but when the ISFJ mood takes me it does seem to have a weird, natural-unnatural, feel to it.
It never lasts long. I couldn't live like that. The sooner I'm back to me, the better off we all are.