INTJ Thoughts: How to 'Think Positive'?

Here are some suggestions and context on how create a healthier mental landscape for yourself to allow for those positive thoughts to grow.

Here's the blog:

#personality #self #growth

[hannahmathilda]

Having Ne makes me so unaware to the pessimistic possibilities or even how to survive these. It causes me to be numb as everything quickly collapses on top of me. Be proud you can predict and accept. Rather than accept blindly with foolish optimism

[Archoney]

Hi, every time I go "too far" with thinking about what bad could happen, I see a big red cross over the image in my head and tell myself: "It won't happen". I don't know how to call it properly, "brake mechanism"? or something like that. I developed this probably in college and it helped me many times. All those bad scenarios never happened and this encouraged me to use this mechanism, and it really helped me to think about really important things.

[wubman]

I am new to the MBTI scene, once I found out what type I was I have been fiercely interested in almost nothing else but learning more about it.

For the last few years I have been trying to force myself into being social and using my weak feeling functions because society tells me that I need this quality in order to succeed. While this in and of itself may not be a bad thing, it's been the cause of a lot of issues due to me opening up feeling functions I am simply not equipped to handle.

Always felt alien for having the ability to rationalise to the point where I can take all feeling out of the situation. This only served to make the situation worse in feeding my own insecurities about being so vastly different than those around me.

Since finding your channel, and researching more into my type, I've come to realise that it's normal and perfectly fine to have this skillset. Now I'm focusing more on my dominant functions and have been a lot happier for it.

Keep doing what you're doing. Simply seeing another of our type do their thing is helpful. We do exist. We are out there, somewhere.

[creacion]

Hello LiJo; great vid! As a personal experience, i'm closing a life cycle of almost 3 yrs of BS and a negative toxic ambience that I allowed to grow around me. I learned a lot about me and the people around as well of the danger of not being aware of the negative patterns that influenced my choices and almost end my life, literally. I don't know how I managed to get out of there, i'm still figuring out, so far I believe it was my instict of self preservation and what remained of my control and order nature (intj mutant power) I Lost a Lot but I gained a Lot of experience on countless personal subjects, I cant say how positive my mental landscape is right now, but it more clean, structured, smooth and more promising with major projects (without being over obssesed) and small daily and sutile goals. We tend to be perfectionist (I am and quite a Lot) but also I learned that some randomness and a healthy dose of flaws are essential to achieve greater goals, but never get depressed about failing once or Twice, the goal its to keep yourself up, it's not Big deal, find out what was wrong, learn the lesson, do it again (if apply) or move on to the next topic on the list "things to do before I die".
Btw. Thanks for your amazing videos! Can't wait for the next.
May the force be with you, always.

[gmostechnologicalvlo]

Thank you for making a video on the subject I asked to cover some time ago! And just in time.

[maira]

You just articulated what I've been doing for years and not knowing why. I can't believe I can relate to this. Thank you for that video, excellent timing too and happy holidays.

[carletouk]

Feeding the simulation . Perfect phrase for INTJ/INFJ

[forKyrene]

OMG! Same!
The simulation of future events (most often negative events), going through all thinkable iterations to find out the worst case scenario, and then when found, simulating again for the best possible solution. When I was in college, I studied in a university that's requires me to do a full travel by boat. I don't like huge body of water with its unknown depth (inferior Se, fear of unknown sensory stuff) so I am always apprehensive during travel. I would lay awake the whole night trying to simulate in my mind what could possibly go wrong with the ship, and then simulate how best for me to get out to the nearest lifeboat. I would arrange my things, bag, shoes, etc. in a way that would give me the easiest access just in case.


The hardest thing for me was to catch myself doing it, obsessively doing the overthinking of stuff. As I get older, I have learned to catch myself doing that. Sometimes, it takes a while though, especially if the reason for my apprehension has a huge possibility of occurring.

[igabcruz]

Fi pair with Ne is perfect combination also to feed your own stimulation, To have an inner voice of yourself. The thing with Ne, there's no limitations of it, you can be blinded totally of the illusions, thats why maybe as a kid, I always choose to sleep because in my dreams, i don't have limitations.


I did find a way to change my terrifying dreams into good ones. I'm not sure if that is the Ne but It gives me the power to choose my own dreams and its very satisfying. You can be very positive or very cynical and that just how it is for me if Fi will be in the picture. Its really hard to find the balance of this two when your a kid and also in your teens. Because if I'm not on a healthy state. I will come up to create horrible stories on my mind and it just felt so real.


There are times that I can't really identify the things that I imagine and the things I dream about because its kind a mix on my brain.Sometimes I think I already did something but in reality its not, its just my Ne and Si. Sometimes I'm thinking that this is a gift yet curse at the same time.

[pattognozzi]

Such a good point, I can definitely relate. I remember in early high school simulating conversations with a girl I liked and how I would respond to each given topic. Then in real life when we talked my “simulation” got me a few sentences back and forth in before it all collapsed. Great video!

[yukisnoww]

the "hey, whaddup" got me HAHA

[Solaceandsawdust]

👌 Thought I was the only one making those scenarios up. Still doing so to this day, gonna work on it as of now. Thanks! ❤

[mindabobis]

Wishing you a happy blessed Christmas LiJo!

[Rek-Lore]

2019 has been the toughest year for me, but also the one I learnt from the most, and am glad to say that I am currently feeling more positive and hopeful than ever. (Apologies in advanced for the wall of text)

I've always had the habit to expect the worst out of every possible situation, entering mental loops that would simulate the worse possible scenarios. Unfortunately, this became the default in my brain and it led to depression.

Whatever situation I was presented with I would instantly react to it with a negative thought about it. For example, a band mate of mine showed me his arm one day and it was full of cuts (suicide attempts). I didn't say the following but my first thought when seeing his arm was "You didn't do it right pussy.".

Needless to say I wasn't enjoying life and I was genuinely convinced I would never feel happy again. I started having panic attacks caused by having never-ending negative thoughts on loop and not being able to escape until I cried myself to complete exhaustion.

I started talking to a therapist in March 2019 but went into it thinking that my depression was different to everyone else's and therefor nothing that worked for other people would work for me. Eventually my therapist said "I don't think there's any point of you going to these sessions because nothing is working.". I look back and think that she was using reverse psychology, because it makes sense: you will not improve mentally unless you believe that there are techniques that will improve your mentality.

Firstly, I knew it was possible to feel happy because I was familiar with the emotion. I would sometimes smoke weed with my friends and I wasn't having negative thoughts. My friends pointed this out to me. I separated the ideas of a normal me which was sad and had negative thoughts, and high me which was happy and didn't have negative thoughts.

I had an important realisation, similar to Rene Descartes' "I think, therefor I am". In my case, I could only interpret a situation negatively if a situation happened in the first place. If nothing happened then I couldn't think about it negatively.

I then familiarised myself with the concept of neuro-plasticity which made me realise that when there was THC in my brain, it would 'close' the normal paths in my brain and find alternate ones - in other words, I wasn't experiencing everything in my default negative manner and I was interpreting life in ways I hadn't before. I also started feeling emotions that I hadn't felt since I was 7 years old.

So, I started applying this in my everyday normal life, seeking the positive aspects in every situation, reinforcing the positive pathways of neurons in my brain and lessening the effect of the negative paths. This made me feel happier everyday.

There are so many topics and aspects about life which keep my brain positive, I sense a lot of whimsy and wonder about the universe, which in new ways everyday brings me joy and hope about life.

I can now say that I no longer think negatively by default.

TL;DR - Started this year depressed and am no longer depressed due to positive thinking :)

[kevinarmstrong]

All I know how to do is plan for futures that won't happen. I am constantly striving for the ideal and avoiding elements that forego control. I do manage to achieve much success with less resources on my Island of one, but thus my parttern continues.

[johnwick]

This is something i did the previous years of my existance and i still do it at some degree. I tend to be a realist and at the same time a little bit "pessimist". The advantage of doing this is that i am prepared for the worst thing that might happen, and most of the times the situation turns out to be better than i intentionally "thought". With this way i end up with more positivity than others who are always positive even if they cannot be.



Btw that was an informative and good video as always LJ. Is there any possibility of you make a video about the life of a teenage intj? There is another person intj in the comment section saying that too.

[cookiecaramel]

'Whattup?' lol! We INTJ s use pessimism as a security valve against of just jumping into beliefs, ideologies and situations because life rarely rewards failures /errors with a second chance. INTJ s take risks also but only after much considerations and self reflections as variable scenarios.

[Velspire]

What about become anxious or jumping into conclusions in people's intentions?

[khloecarver]

I’m just curious, are you familiar with Maladaptive Daydreaming? As an INTJ and a Maladaptive Daydreamer, my mind is always way out of this world. Maladaptive daydreaming is often described as a blessing within and curse, which I agree with. It can help me set goals and reflect on my dreams constantly, but also it can be destructive in some ways. I don’t know if my Maladaptive Daydreaming relates to being an INTJ, or I’m just a super strange person, but it’s whatever lol.

[tlhomimolusi]

Hey Linds
I tried to stop this negative mental landscape, so what's happening is - I visualise myself having a conversation with people, being social but I'm not a social person. What can do to focus on important things like developing emotional intelligence or increasing logical capacity, instead of making up things that are not there?