I love ice skating. The graceful sweep of a skater’s arms and legs as they glide along the ice. The crunching swish as ice flies up when they come to a stop. The romance of sweeping over a frozen lake with glittering stars overhead.

But I only liked skating from a distance. Figure skating is the only winter sport I ever follow or watch, even during the Olympics. I’ve even been to see the Smucker’s Stars On Ice Tour (just once — my grandmother had tickets. I loved it). I’ll watch YouTube videos of figure skating much the same way I watch Dancing With The Stars routines. And I didn’t try it myself.

This past Saturday evening, though, I actually strapped on skates went out on the ice. I spent the weekend visiting my boyfriend and when he learned I’d never actually been ice skating he pulled out his phone and found out when the rinks were open. Which is something I never really thought about trying. I haven’t even looked for local ice skating rinks or thought about signing up for lessons or tried to find out if friends with frozen ponds had skates I could borrow.

Many INFJs struggle with translating what’s in our heads into the outer world. We have a hard time turning our dreams into reality. And that’s only if we get to the point where we think about making them real at all. Often, we don’t get past the daydreaming phase before getting distracted by yet another idea that’s probably going to stay in our heads as well.

Another thing many (though not all) INFJs deal with is a lack of affinity for sports. Many of us don’t watch them and we certainly don’t play them. It requires far too much coordination and balance and teamwork.

But even though I don’t think of myself as balanced or coordinated, I’m on a dance team at church and I’ve even started teaching dance. I love it. And I’m pretty good at it. So there’s no reason those skills shouldn’t translate into similar activities like ice skating.

I wonder if perhaps we INFJs might be missing out on things we’d actually enjoy because we assume we won’t be good at it. Just because Extroverted Sensing is our weak spot doesn’t mean we can’t work on befriending that function and give ourselves a chance to enjoy physical activities.

Even though many INFJs struggle with outer-world activities, it’s good for us to actually try the things we’ve been daydreaming about. When I tried ice skating, I was sure I’d fall over before I even made it to the ice. But I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t fall at all. It turns out I like skating even though I was nervous and cautious and wobbly. It was so much fun. There were even moments (brief ones) where I felt like I was starting to figure out what I was doing and could just skate instead of thinking about how to stay upright. And I’m planing to try it again, hopefully fairly soon.