Ideal Spiritual Practices For MBTI Personality Types

With seemingly endless options of spiritual, new age and meditation practices and styles out there, it may be confusing to navigate through the options to find what you personally resonate with. You might have found yourself being drawn to one particular spiritual style while being turned off from a few others. I believe that this is largely due to our unique personalities and temperaments. This talk will dive further into the MBTI Personality test and how you can use it to find your niche.

Transcript

Hey,

How's it going?

This is Ish,

And today I wanted to talk to you about how you can use a Myers-Briggs scale to find the perfect spiritual practice for yourself.

So if you aren't too familiar,

The Myers-Briggs type indicator is a personality assessment that was created by Isabelle Myers-Briggs,

Briggs-Myers and Catherine Cook-Briggs,

And this was based off of Carl Jung's work,

And they've come up with 16 unique personality types which are based off a combination of four different categories.

And these categories are number one introversion and extroversion.

Number two is sensing and intuition.

Number three is feeling and thinking.

And the last is perceiving and judging.

So these categories are a bit broad,

And I know you can't really pinpoint everyone into these four specific categories,

But what I really like about the system is the in-depth explanation that you can find due to each character type's cognitive stack.

So within every person's character type,

They have basically a couple of different cognitive functions,

And I find this is where the magic of the MBTI really comes in.

So the cognitive stack is how you basically would operate in your default modes of operating of the world and how you think of yourself and how you interact with others.

So I'm going to use myself as an example.

So for myself,

I am an INFP,

Which stands for introverted,

Intuition,

Feeling,

And perception.

And my stack,

Basically my cognitive stack,

Would be my most dominant feeling would be introverted feeling.

That's my most dominant cognitive stack.

So this kind of runs as a default.

So introverted feeling means that I tend to look inwards and notice my feelings and how that compares to my how things would compare to my own personal morals and values and what I hold important.

And then my auxiliary function,

So this is something that is a little bit less obvious,

Would be extroverted intuition.

And extroverted intuition likes to look for new possibilities and fun possibilities out there.

So it's engaging the world and finding different patterns and things I can look forward to.

And then my tertiary function,

So this is a little bit less pronounced,

Something I kind of have to work a little harder at,

Would be introverted sensing.

And introverted sensing is responsible for just being aware and looking back to the past for experiences and seeing how that relates to the present.

And then my my least developed function,

And this is for INFPs,

Is my extroverted thinking.

And this is where you actually take all those ideas that you have and actually put it to action and set concrete goals and accomplish them.

So it's an energy of action.

This is a pretty undervalve for me.

So you might be thinking,

Okay,

What does this have to do with meditation or spirituality?

Well,

If you take a look at my personal functions,

So my most dominant function is introverted feeling,

You can kind of see that there's certain spiritual practices and concepts that would work really well for me.

An example of that would be the law of attraction.

So if you think about it,

The law of attraction really focuses on feeling,

Going inwards and noticing how you feel.

A lot of the core tenets are based around emotion and your introverted feeling.

Some concepts,

Some phrases would involve like energy attracts like energy.

You might have heard that when you feel in a better mood,

You tend to attract better things in your life.

This is very energy based and something that people who are very dominant in this specific mode would really benefit from,

From the teachings.

And then also I had also done my yoga teaching training on chakras and I learned a lot about chakras and energy work as well.

And chakras are a concept of different energy centers in the body,

So they aren't very physical.

It's more of something you can kind of visualize in your mind and it's kind of a framework of energy,

Which is a little bit metaphysical if you will,

But something that really works well with my cognitive functions because it's looking inwards,

Looking at energy,

Flow,

Movement and all that and it tends to work for me.

I really also find that I like inner body meditation scans and this is where you look inwards and feel the warmth and this in your body and your limbs and you can really feel it.

It's more of a sensory kind of thing and that's something that I personally resonate with.

Now what happens if you're at the opposite of me?

So you're someone who is an ESTJ,

Which is extroverted,

Sensing,

Thinking and judging.

It's also nicknamed as the executive or you might be an ENTJ,

Which is extroverted,

Intuition,

Thinking and judging,

Which is nicknamed the commander.

So these are obviously very different words than the INFP,

Which is known as the healer or the mediator.

These are very different terms,

Right?

Opposite personality types.

So you'll find that with people who are ESTJs or ENTJs,

Their most dominant cognitive stack is extroverted thinking.

So if you recall,

When I give you a breakdown of my cognitive functions,

My most inferior function was extroverted thinking,

The ability to make decisions and actually go and set forth and actually accomplish them.

So that's my least dominant function.

But for people who are ENTJs or ESTJs,

That's their most dominant function.

So it's similar to my introverted feeling,

Where it just comes natural.

Something I just naturally do is look inwards.

For them taking action and setting goals is very natural to them and something they really like doing,

Just part of who they are.

So when you give them a concept like the law of attraction or looking inwards and knowing what chakras,

They'll kind of look at that and be like,

That's some woo stuff,

Give me something really practical and concrete.

So you'll find that different spiritual practices and methods actually appeal to them.

A great example of this is Dan Harris,

Who is a news anchor.

And basically his story was that he was in a very high profile news anchor position and he got really stressed out and had a panic attack.

And then he started looking into meditation and he actually wrote a book called 10% Happier,

Where he distilled all the pieces of information that he learned through meditation and provided in a very concise and no-nonsense kind of way.

And you'll also notice if you have watched any of his YouTube videos of just him talking,

He's very much like an ENTJ,

Which is what I presume.

And that's very straightforward,

Very direct.

He's going to tell you what he thinks.

There's no mystical element to his speech.

It's very straightforward.

And that's actually reflected in his book 10% Happier 2.

If you actually go ahead and read that book,

It provides you very succinct,

Very simple meditation advice,

And there's no inclination of energy work or anything that's out there.

It's very pragmatic and straight to the point.

So someone like Dan Harris,

Would benefit from more of a straightforward meditation practice.

And you can actually,

If you're interested in the Miasse-Briggs scale,

You can actually take many of the tests that are just a bunch of hundreds of tests out there where you can find out what your personality type is.

I personally recommend 16,

I think it was 16 personalities and that you can find that online and that's free and that takes less than five minutes.

But there are other better ones out there,

But I just recommend that.

You can start with that and see which others work for you.

And the main thing here is you want to find out what your dominant function is and then you can see which meditation styles work best for you.

So I'm just going to give you a quick rundown here.

So if your dominant function,

So once you find out what your type is,

Whether it's an INFP or ENFP or ESTJ,

Whatever it is,

Once you find that out,

Find out what your most dominant cognitive stack is and if your most dominant stack is introverted feeling,

You will really benefit from law of attraction type practices,

Things that have to do with energy work.

And if your most dominant stack is extroverted feeling on the other hand,

So not introverted feeling,

But extroverted feeling,

You would then benefit from practice such as loving kindness or bhakti or chanting,

Early devotional practices.

And this is because unlike introverted feeling,

Extroverted feeling looks to the outside to understand themselves and their ethics and their values.

So not inside,

But outside.

So their catchphrase would be how does this impact other people?

So more practice is where it's more community oriented and where you're looking at the greater good for other people.

That would be a great practice for someone who is extroverted feeling dominant.

Now,

If you're introverted thinking dominant,

And this would mean that your way of organizing the world is through internally through using logic.

So you like to be efficient and you like to,

You can sometimes even be rebellious in your thinking,

A little bit private as well.

You would benefit for more of a straightforward vipassana type practice or a Zen practice where it's pretty structured.

You have a certain amount where you sit,

Clear objectives and goals.

And this would also apply for extroverted thinking as well.

And a great way,

If you are a introverted thinker or extroverted thinker dominant,

You can start to track your statistics of how long you meditate,

What you can improve on.

And using apps like Insight Timer,

Where they have that statistic function where you can actually see your progress and have that measured out from days to months to years.

And it's very systematic.

That's something that people who have a thinking dominant function would really benefit from because they're very structured based and also like setting goals.

That's just something that's natural to them.

That's who they are.

So that's something you really benefit from if you are a thinking dominant person.

Now,

If your dominant function is introverted sensing,

What this means is that you look to the past to see how that relates to your present moment.

So you have a fondness of past experiences.

You tend to bring that up.

And you try to see how things in your past could have an effect and how that can help you form decisions in the present moment or even the future.

So if you have that kind of intuitive sensing dominant function,

You would benefit from a loving kindness type practice where you recall people who are in your life that you care about and you love and also gratitude lists.

Gratitude lists are great because you can look at the things in your life,

The past or even the present moment that really bring you joy and you can bring that back into the present moment.

It'll be something you're actually very good at compared to the other types because your natural function is introverted sensing.

So you can bring all the past experience to the present moment and feel joyous in the present moment.

And if you are an extroverted sensor dominant,

And this would be someone who likes to take details from the world around him or her.

So it's looking to the outside to gain clues rather than looking at the past like the introverted sensor.

So extroverted sensors can take a lot of sensory information.

They don't get overwhelmed like someone like me,

Like an INFE would.

They can be in very stimulus driven environments and that wouldn't really bother them too much because their main default is actually being a sponge and taking things in from the outside.

So if that's your case and you are more of a external extroverted sensor,

You would benefit from a practice like Kundalini or any kind of yoga where it's a lot of energy work,

A lot of sensory things,

You know pranayama and bringing that energy inwards.

It's a lot to handle but something you would probably need if you're an extroverted sensor.

And this is actually the opposite of Zen because Zen is trying to bring all the stimulus actually down and reduce all the stimulus.

So it's kind of the opposite approach here.

And also open-eyed meditation.

This can be great because you're keeping your sense organs open and you're being receptive to the outside world.

I even recommend for the extroverted sensors to meditate outside because you're not getting too distracted because you're not on a busy street and nature has a very calming effect.

But you're also fulfilling your need to be in an environment where it's stimulating.

So you kind of kill two birds in one stone in a sense.

So I hope this talk really helps you and I think it's really fascinating to learn more about yourself and how you can kind of tailor your experience and find your own path rather than kind of following other people's paths and kind of doing whatever is just popular out there and really find out what you specifically resonate with.

And there'll be certain things in your life that you like more and you do better at than other people.

And some things that give you joy personally then more than you know what other people do.

So it's really a path of self-discovery and finding out what you like.

And I think that's really what I like about self-discovery and finding out what you like.

Thank you.

Reviews

Very helpful and I will look into those recommended practices for my type.

[That was unnecessary 👇wow]

Interesting talk. I have been practicing yoga and the loving kindness mediation already so maybe I was already intuitively drawn to those 🙏🏻