In MBTI terminology Feeling is one of the two preferences for making decisions. It is not about making decisions based on emotion but rather based on values and how the decision will impact the people involved.

The English language being as complex as it is, has many meanings for the same word. When we ask “How are you feeling?” to mean “What emotional state are you experiencing?” many people with either Thinking or Feeling preference cannot give a specific answer.

Self-awareness is one of the Emotional Intelligence competencies and it is a valuable exercise to ask and answer “What am I feeling?” with some specificity. Sometimes the awareness of our current state is sufficient to shift it – if necessary. “Fine” as an answer is less than enlightening.

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People with a preference for INTP seem to have finely tuned radar that let’s them look at any situation and literally “see” the underlying principles involved. Understanding the requisite guiding principles for the best result and then operating accordingly is second nature. Therefore they may also measure the success of an endeavour by how closely the result matches these guiding principles.

What may not be second nature is fully understanding that others do not necessarily process the same way. People with different preferences may need help to make the connection between a particular principle and the behaviours that go along with it.

I can imagine that it is disappointing to the INTP when the people act in a way that goes counter to agreed principles. It is worth taking the time up front to help make some links.

“If we say we agree on these principles what does that look like in action?”

It may also seem too obvious but keeping a running check in will keep “drift” from being inevitable.

“Does this current direction align with our principles?”

Do you have a set of operating principles for how you conduct your business (or career)?

Seven women from book club gathered for a three day cottage get-away… a little kayaking, swimming, walks to town, shopping, reading and talking books, dinner on the verandah, sunset watching on the dock. Nothing that we did was spectacular, after all we have known each other for years, however we all remarked at how special this time was, totally awesome actually, and how good we all felt. One of the women passed on an email that summed it up quite nicely – I don’t know the source, but I am sharing it anyway with the invitation to add “nurturing relationships” to your exercise routine.

I just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last lecture was on the mind-body connection–the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality “girlfriend time” helps us to create more seratonin–a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings?–rarely. Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged–not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking! So every time you hang out to shmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health! We are indeed very very lucky.

Imagining possibility, considering possibility, implementing what is best from that possibility is critical for both creativity and on a purely practical level, for getting unstuck and finding viable practical solutions. People with a preference for Intuition expand the field and see possibility beyond what is immediately apparent. Laura McGrath is a coach and facilitator who combines a preference for Intuition with her gifts of critical thinking and organizational genius to help individuals and organizations imagine and take action on more creative, more effective and fulfilling answers.

In a recent blog post Laura paints a vivid picture of what happens when possibility itself gets stuck in the endless looping of internal overwhelm – when the cycle of action / reflection gets reduced to to imagining alone.

I have copied Laura’s post here below to show how she invites us to use Sensing as a way to evaporate the overwhelm of possibility run amok.

In my room the world is beyond my understanding;

But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud.

~Wallace Stevens

The most daunting part of the journey is, I think, the part I make up in my head when I am alone, when I withdraw, when I cut off from support, when I look at the immensity of the task. I sit in my room, and it is all beyond my understanding.

But if I venture out, if I take one step and then the next, if I do the first thing, and then do the second thing, and let the obvious third thing arise when it’s ready, then I see that it is all very simple really: three or four hills and a cloud