When Reality Knocks

What do you trust your head or your heart? As I said in a previous post Dr. Carl G. Jung, who developed this theory of personality type, said that there were two ways for people to observe the world, either with their five senses or with intuition, which focuses on the inspiration which arises to interpret the sensing facts. I like to compare these two methods like the difference between regular TV which takes its signal in from the cable and a satellite TV which takes its signal from satellites which may broadcast something from the other side of the world.

Once we have taken in the facts either with ours senses or our intuition we have to decide what to do with them. This decision we make either with our heads or our hearts. If you are a feeling type person, you trust your heart. If, in contrast, you are a thinking type person you trust your head.

Thinking is a rational function. Thinkers:

• seek to understand the things they perceive through their senses or intuition
• tend to be somewhat detached from the thing or person being analyzed
• tend to be objective, logical, and seen as critical and questioning
• tend to want to figure things out
• enjoy developing systems and principles
• may love a good argument
• And be better at trouble shooting than accommodating
• Thinkers exert a lot of influence in our world.

Feeling is also a rational function. This rationality is not based on logic but on whether something does or does not fit in with one’s values. Feelers:

• tend to embrace the world, preferring to touch the things they care about
• tend to warm people with their presence
• tend to desire harmony and express a concern for others
• tend to give great weight in making decisions to personal values
• tend to be sympathetic and appreciative
• tend to be best at jobs dealing with people
• And tend to be sensitive to praise and criticism.

Early in life we start to lean one way or the other. Both types are needed and both types have meaningful contributions they can make to community and to family life. Think about where you are in this pattern and where your loved ones are. Knowing our personality type can be one of the most helpful tools to living harmoniously with others and in making the contribution that we are capable of.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 30th, 2005 at 10:58 am and is filed under Personal Growth, Personality Type. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.