ENFP! Don't you wish you were me!

Recently, my department holed up in ye olde local convention center for some old-fashioned corporate team-building. We got to eat candy, watch PowerPoint, and use big words like 'positioning' and 'leverage.' It was just paradise. After a few humiliating ice-breakers (in which it was revealed that I was the only one in a room of 54 people who had never attended a Red Sox game) we settled in to a number of exercises surrounding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

In preparation for the retreat, we had all taken a multiple choice exam that sought to find our innate preferences in certain areas. The test determines how you are energized, how you perceive information, how you make decisions, and how you interact with the world through a series of repetitive questions (Do you prefer to plan or to be spontaneous?) and word pairings (spontaneous vs. planned). Many businesses use it. I wondered how accurate it is. Really, if your employer asked you, "Do you prefer to work on a task systematically or do it all last minute under pressure," how would you answer?

But then, I found myself. I'm an ENFP type, and there are others out there just like me. It means that I am extroverted, intuitive, feeling, and perceiving. Here's a brief description:

Warmly enthusiastic and imaginative. See life as full of possibilities.
Make connections between events and information very quickly, and
confidently proceed based on the patterns they see.Want a lot of
affirmation from others, and readily give appreciation and support.
Spontaneous and flexible, often rely on their ability to improvise
and their verbal fluency.

I think it sounds nice! Other notes are in adaptability "blooming where they are planted," "a zest for life that draws others to you," and enthusiasm and energy to start new things. These traits have their flaws too. I can start new projects, but have trouble finishing them. I tend to overextend myself, and can lose perspective by focusing on one unimportant detail that can "become the central fact in their universe."

It was nice to get this perspective around now. Now, at this very witching time of year, I routinely feel depleted. Every summer I forget that cold weather even exists, and every fall I am rudely reminded. In New England, cold weather returns like an unexpected and brazen house guest. You a have a few lingering warm days, then one morning you wake up and you can barely coax yourself out of your covers. I usually get a little sick, and my energy slows down as my blood thickens from the cold. I'm sure my gloomy feelings have nothing to do with my upcoming birthday.

It's a shifting of gears until I can find some fresh energy and refocus, remembering how I like the winter light, especially when enjoyed from a comfortable chair indoors with a cup of tea. But for now, I'm just thinking that I won't be able to open the windows for eight months, and that I should go destroy my little vegetable garden before it turns into a frozen mess of wilted greens.

Time to draw on that ENFPower!!!