Do You Let People Change?

21 April, 202020 April, 2020Marissa

Most of us know that we can change. In fact, since you’re reading a blog where I talk about personal growth and development from a Christian perspective, I dare say most of you are actively trying to change for the better. We believe we can grow. We believe we can become better versions of ourselves. We believe in change and new beginnings.

But do we believe the same thing of other people? Do you think everyone you meet is capable of the same level of change that you are? Maybe you can say “yes” to these questions as an abstract idea. But if other people are changing and growing, do you suppose that you would notice?

I’m sure most of us would like to think that we hold space for others to grow. We probably also like to think we’d recognize change when we see it, but research indicates that most of us aren’t very good at this. To quote Psychology Today, “People tend to get attached to their initial impressions of others and find it very difficult to change their opinion, even when presented with lots of evidence to the contrary.” We tend to size people up quickly and then stick with our initial impressions even if we see proof that we were wrong. Read more →

10 Things That INTPs Find Extremely Annoying

11 February, 202010 February, 2020Marissa

Have you ever noticed that something you thought wasn’t a big deal annoyed your INTP friend? Or maybe you, as an INTP, have realized that you find certain things that don’t seem to bother other people incredibly irritating?

The Myers-Briggs® personality types are a tool for talking about how peoples’ minds work. They describe the mental processes that we use most comfortably, and these “functions” come together in unique ways for each personality type. Because of the special way our brains operate, each type has different things that they typically find annoying.

Of course, even if a group of people share a personality type there will still be plenty of individual differences between them. Some INTPs might, for example, see social norms as a necessary evil rather than something that really annoys them. In general, though, most INTPs are going to find the 10 things on this list extremely irritating.

10 Things That INTPs Find Extremely Annoying | LikeAnAnchor.com — Photo credit: Autri Taheri via Unsplash

1) Beliefs That Don’t Make Sense

INTPs have a deeply rooted desire for things to make sense to them. If they have to spend much time around people who hold beliefs that the INTP thinks are nonsensical it’s going to quickly become annoying. An INTP’s favorite mental function is called Introverted Thinking, and they spend most of their lives honing it to sort new information by what does and doesn’t make sense within their framework for how the world works. While they may delight in pointing out an idea’s logical errors, they’ll still be annoyed by people stubbornly clinging to beliefs that make no logical sense.

2) Rules That Don’t Make Sense

I imagine INTPs are the sort of people who, as children, asked “Why?” often enough to exasperate every adult they knew. Even as adults, INTPs want to know the reason behind rules, traditions, and social expectations. And if there is no reason (or if the reason is something like, “we’ve just always done it this way”) then don’t expect INTPs to be happy about being told they need to follow those rules. Read more →

10 Things That INFJs Find Extremely Annoying

4 February, 20203 February, 2020Marissa

Have you wondered why something you thought was perfectly innocent annoyed your INFJ friend? Or why you, as an INFJ, find certain things that other people either like or don’t care about the most vexing part of your day?

Myers-Briggs® personality types are a tool for talking about how our minds work. It’s a description of the mental processes that we use most comfortably, which come together in unique ways for each personality type. Because of the special way our brains are “hardwired” to function, each type has different things that they typically find annoying.

Of course, even if a group of people share a personality type there are going to be plenty of individual differences between them. Some INFJs might, for example, might have an easy time adapting to change or won’t care that much if someone interrupts them. In general, though, most INFJs are going to find the 10 things on this list extremely irritating.

10 Things That INFJs Find Extremely Annoying | LikeAnAnchor.com — Photo credit: Tim Gouw via Pexels

1) Deceit and Hypocrisy

One of the top reasons INFJs leave relationships or organizations (like churches) is because they get fed up with lying and hypocrisy. I put these two things together because they effect INFJs in very similar ways. Whether someone is directly lying to them or putting on a show of being something they’re not, an INFJ is likely to pick up on on the deceitful attitude quickly. It’s irritating, it breaks trust, and it drives INFJs away from the people who do it. Read more →

Feelings Don’t Care About Your Facts: Here’s Why Its so Hard to Change Someone’s Mind

16 September, 201917 September, 2019Marissa

A few weeks ago, I was in a conversation with someone who quoted Ben Shapiro saying, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” The tension between facts and feelings is a topic that’s been coming up quite a bit in discussions recently for me, as I’ve talked with people who are frustrated by how many people today ignore scientific research related to several issues that I don’t want to get into right now. My reason for bringing this up is that listening to these comments prompted a related thought.

Feelings don’t care about your facts.

You can have all the research in the world to back you up but when feelings are involved people (as a whole) just don’t care. You can’t root out deeply help opinions by inundating people with logical reasoning. It’s like if you’ve ever spilled cooking oil on your clothes and then tried to scrub it out with water. The facts just run right off because they doesn’t mesh with what we already hold true.

“As a result of the well-documented confirmation bias, we tend to undervalue evidence that contradicts our beliefs and overvalue evidence that confirms them. We filter out inconvenient truths and arguments on the opposing side. As a result, our opinions solidify, and it becomes increasingly harder to disrupt established patterns of thinking.” — “Facts Don’t Change People’s Minds. Here’s What Does” by Ozan Varol

At its most simple, “Confirmation bias occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea or concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true.” Once we get an idea in our heads, we tend to hold on tight to information that supports it and ignore or reject anything that would threaten this idea. These tightly-held ideas can be anything from a political view, to an understanding of how the world works, to a belief about yourself (“What Is Confirmation Bias?” by Shahram Heshmat Ph.D.).

It’s Not Just “Them”

We tend to think that we’re right and other people who disagree with us are wrong. We can easily see confirmation bias at work in others, and many of us are more than happy to point that problem out and offer correction.

This isn’t just a problem with other people, though. It’s a problem with you and me too. We all have confirmation bias about the things we believe. We all filter-out opposing information and gravitate toward the things that agree with us. No matter how rational and fact based we think we are, we’re also influenced by confirmation bias. If we want to understand why it’s so hard to change people’s minds we need to recognize what’s happening in ourselves as well as in them. Read more →

Taking Responsibility for Our Own Feelings and Learning to Talk about Complicated Issues in Today’s Society

26 August, 201926 August, 2019Marissa

I love getting into deep, complicated discussions with people. For example, what are the political and social implications of the fact that people who score high in the personality trait Conscientiousness tend to identify as conservative and those who score high in Openness tending to identify as liberal? Or what does it mean to “live your truth” and can one do that as a Christian while still accepting God’s truth as the absolute moral authority?

Talking about those sorts of things (or even just listening) makes me come alive. This is one reason I love podcasts that deep-dive into complicated topics. Two of the most recent were “The Heart of the Abortion Debate” from Crossway Podcast and “Radical Self-Discovery with Jator Pierre” from the Awaken With JP Sears Show. On this latter one, they opened with talking about “this interesting, tight-knitted, hyper-constricted PC culture” and the question, “Why the hell do you think we’re so PC here in 2019?”

This latter question went in a curious direction that I’ve been pondering for more than a week now. Because PC topics are so emotionally charged, “many of us become emotionally blinded and we don’t bring in a lot of logic,” to quote Jator Pierre. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most of us don’t know how to take responsibility for how we feel or how to effectively communicate and share in a back-and-forth dialogue.

Taking Away Voices

Wikipedia says the term political correctness “is used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society.” It sounds good in theory, but in practice it has turned into a culture where certain people try to silence any ideas or words that offed them without caring how that might affect others outside the PC-protected groups. Instead of seeing words as vehicles to communicate different viewpoints and facilitate dialogue, they see words as violent and react defensively.

“Not many of us are taught how to communicate, how to share, how to dialogue, how to hear, how to reflect, and how to notice when we’re emotionally charged to be able to take maybe a step back for a second or two to feel what’s coming up, to notice what’s coming up, and then to continue on with a dialogue. Most of us go into a defended posture, in my experience, and then go on the attack.” — Jator Pierre

It also has the side-effect of encouraging the offended person blame others for how they feel. We’re heading toward a culture where people think they have a right to avoid being offended by someone else. What they don’t realize or care about is that their refusal to hear offensive things leads to them hurting and/or shutting down others who don’t agree with them. Instead of bringing people together the PC movement creates further polarization and enmity. Read more →

What If We Stopped Trying To Impress People?

27 March, 201926 March, 2019Marissa

I like to keep the people around me happy. I want harmony in all my relationships, and I hate conflict. Take all those (along with a few other personality traits and some insecurities) together, and you end up with someone who’s been a “people pleaser” for most of her life.

It’s normal for FJ personality types to act based on what will meet everyone’s needs and work to maintain harmonious relationships. That’s because they use Extroverted Feeling, or “Harmony,” as their decision-making process. But at some point in their personal growth journey, FJs need to realize that 1) you’re part of the “everyone” whose needs should be met, and 2) it’s impossible to please everyone.

Since writing my post “Are You Ready To Find Your Weirdness?” I’ve been thinking about what effect embracing authenticity will have on interpersonal relationships. One of the things I’ve realized is that instead of trying to adjust my presentation of myself to impress specific people, I need to focus more on bringing my best self to every conversation and interaction. If they’re impressed by that, cool, but if not it’s okay. Failing to please everyone isn’t really failure at all. It’s just something that happens.

We Can’t Please Everyone

It’s impossible to connect with everyone unless you’re adjusting yourself to please them. There’s far too much variety in human beings’ beliefs and preferences for your authentic self to resonate equally well with every person. In fact, if we’re being honest, I’m sure there are some types of people you don’t really want to resonate with. For example, you’d probably worry about yourself if a Klu Klux Klan member felt that you understood and agreed with them 100%. Read more →