"Balanced" INTP

[NastyNaz]

I'm posting this thread in this forum for two reasons:
1) I assume higher IQ INTPs to have greater self awareness of what constitutes a personal weakness and how it may be beneficial to overcome it.
2) Discussion of this particular topic would be more fruitful if discursion was minimised.

Do you try to be a balanced INTP? By this I mean an INTP who works to build on or overcome their inherent weaknesses.

I've strived for such development since I found out about MBTI and INTPs. It isn't due to a lack of contentedness with being an INTP, rather the realisation that building upon my weaknesses can bring greater success/happiness/utility etc.

Predictably, the most difficult endeavour so far has been improving social skills. I've gotten to the point where I can feign an extrovert for hours on end as well as put myself in a state of mind where I actually enjoy going to parties and meeting new people. However, my interaction-fuelling skills are still far from those of the ESXXs and fluidness in small talk is non-existent.

Increased social interaction has brought with it better conflict management and gambling day trading has helped hasten my grip on my emotions in the rare occasions they let loose. Yet I still have problems dealing conflict and managing the best time to take up a confrontation.

There are many things I do to get out of my comfort zone, though admittedly I don't do as much as would be warranted by the successes the results this far have brought me.

My overall aim is to be able to control my body and emotions as fully as possible in order to best exploit my surroundings.

How have you developed as an INTP? Do you actively try and overcome 'weaknesses?' If so, what sort of things have you done and how have they affected you? Is it possible for a non-senser to become 'good' at small talk?

I'm looking for suggestions/discussion on improvements that make an INTP more prosperous.

[Dr. Haight]

I've developed by trying not to be an INTP.

I think I've told this story here before, but I'll tell it again. A professor - and now friend - of mine had a personal sit down with me when I was 24 and he said the following (I'm paraphrasing): "You know more than anyone around you. You know more than any other student I've ever met . . . but no one knows it. You never talk. And even on the brief occasions that you do, you'll say that you 'read' it, or 'heard' it, but it actually came from you. People will take advantage of you your whole life if you continue like this. You need to speak up, take ownership of your ideas, and stop letting people step on you." And he was right.

Friends, family, and everyone in between took advantage of me all the time. I woke up that day.


So in short, I started to work toward being a non-INTP from that point forward. And I've come a long way from there. Very successfully, I might add.

[Ferrus]

What subject did this professor teach? Certain fields seem to deliberately encourage the expression of, and ownership of ideas more than others. Priority debates aside, experimental sciences seem to accent collective funds of knowledge from which small parts explored as a group. Subjects such as mathematics and philosophy incline towards solitary or intimately collaborative traversal of the terrain.

I should, by most people's judgements seek a greater degree of balance in my personality. Although this is not strictly entirely about being too extreme an 'INTP' - it also relates to pathological structures of self-identity and the dynamic motivations which are defined therefrom. But I seem to enjoy being stuck in a lower stage of potentiality - if indeed those potentialities are even feasible in light of other considerations - as if I prefer to cleave to the warmth of the amniotic fluid of the developing personality.