Author: Calise Sellers (Page 4 of 8)

The Scientific Method: What It Is and Why It’s Awesome!

June 3, 2014 / Calise Sellers

Good morning boys and girls! {Good morning Ms. Calise} Today we have a very special lesson on the Scientific Method from our favorite guest teacher, my INFJ! Aren’t you all excited to know about how the scientific method really works in practice and how to apply it to anything in your life so that any topic can be scientific? {class cheers, roses are thrown}

But little Bobby is unimpressed. Bobby reads science magazines and writes on internet forums; he’s got this crap. He knows how to wield black holes and Occam’s Razor like a boss, so that the other kids look stupid. Yeah, that’s right!

But what Bobby doesn’t understand is, just because something sounds like “Science!” doesn’t mean it follows the scientific method. Bobby may be good at Troll Tactics that make it look like his argument holds up, but if the other kids were to follow the scientific method, they would be able to see that what Bobby calls “Facts” are really hypotheses that don’t hold up under experimentation.

Don’t be like little Bobby; understand the scientific method so that you can apply it to every area of your life, not just “sciencey” stuff! Check out the playlist of all three videos below 😀 or go here to watch them on YouTube. For Science!

Happy Reorganization Day! (And More Personalized Typing!!!)

May 31, 2014 / Calise Sellers

Hey everybody! Just hopping on for a few little news updates 🙂 These little news bulletins are probably going to be more commonplace, but then so is content, so yay!

Firstly, as I pointed out yesterday (or really early this morning I guess), aLBoP has had a lovely little makeover! I’m really quite pleased with it and hopefully it’ll fix the navigational issues that lots of people have expressed! That being said, if there is anything you miss about the old format, let me know and I’ll see what I can do 😉

Also, I had a big scare this morning (or afternoon maybe :P) when I got up. I’d gone to bed really late, satisfied that the blog was all happy and reorganized… until *dun da DUN!* I checked the url on my phone! Eeek! Infinite redirect! My phone was stuck in a loop of unhappiness and couldn’t reach the blog no matter what! Gah 😛 I may have panicked… a little ;D But my INFJ came to the rescue and used the programing skills he’s learned modding WWII Civilization to fix the blog! Though we weren’t able to make mobile devices redirect automatically to the Start Here page (Bloggers fault. Apparently they said they’d fix it soon… last November…), they can at least access the blog without spazzing out now. And desktops will go to Start Here automatically when you type in aLittleBitofPersonality.com, or click on my stick-head. If you want your phone, tablet, etc. to go right to the same “homepage” as the desktop edition, just set your bookmarks to www.alittlebitofpersonality.com/p/start-here.html instead… that is, if you still use bookmarks… do other people still use bookmarks? Sometimes it feels like Pinterest and my social media stuff replaces my bookmarks these days. Anyway, back on topic 😉

Secondly, {drumroll} we’re finally releasing more aLBoP Personalized Personality Typings!!!! Yay!! I’m going to put them up in the aLBoP Shop the moment I’m done posting this and we’re only going to be releasing a few at a time, so get ’em quick! They’ll be available at three different price points this time, to suit the needs of different readers. More on that here. And there’s a specific Personalized Typing FAQ now, so check that out! If you don’t get one this time, or if the price point you’re interested in sells out too quickly, no worries! When we’re done with these we will release more, we just don’t want to get backed up like a… all the analogies I can think of for getting backed up are nasty… like a chocolate fountain 🙂 The point is, we’ll release more soon. And I’ll update here, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ whenever we replenish the store. We’re very excited to connect with more of you personally and help you apply the principles of aLBoP to your own personal cognition and life 😀

Oh, and if you haven’t yet, check out the new Browse by Person tab, Answers to Questions page (which is still in progress), and updated T-shirt page, with information on my plan to move the T-shirt operation away from Spreadshirt and into my home! Which, in the end = less expensive T-shirts! Definitely a good thing! Oh and don’t miss the watery new pictures on the Support aLBoP! page or the fun ways to hang out with us on Let’s Be Friends! Plus, you know, exciting content and videos on the way! Yay for a happy little organized aLBoP!!!

<3 Calise

Why There Weren’t Any Posts in April

May 30, 2014 / Calise Sellers

So there weren’t any posts in April. Not one. Not a Type Angst or a blog update, and certainly not Type Heroes: INTP – The Alchemist, or Group Dynamics: The Avengers, which I said in the Live Q&A I wanted to post in April. Nope.

Now, until last week, the hundreds of drafts I wrote of this post in my head were all apologies. “I am sooo sorry I didn’t post the things I said I would! I am sooo sorry you had to wait! I am sooo sorry I haven’t responded to everyone!! I am sooo sorry I suck at life!!!!” All those drafts were full of excuses too. “I was organizing my house” (which I was), “I was reorganizing the blog” (which, doesn’t it look lovely?), “There were personal and family issues” (true also, and those happen), “I was having multiple nervous breakdowns” (eh, also true). But all of those were excuses; not because they weren’t valid and real claims on my time, because they were, but because all of those things were just excuses in my life for me to ignore the real reason I didn’t want to write.

And oh, how pissed I was at myself that I didn’t want to write! Here I was, at the end of March, coming down from this insane blog high; we had just finished our first Live Q&A, that was amazing! Everyone was so supportive and loving and awesome about it! We were finishing up our first wave of Personalized Typings and there were so many of you begging for us to release more (and we haven’t forgotten you! I just hope you still want them…). I was getting daily emails from amazing readers gushing about how they’d never read anything quite like aLBoP. It was humbling and often brought me… well, I was going to say to tears, but I’m more of a can’t-stop-smiling-till-my-face-hurts when I’m touched, type person. So when everything seemed to be going perfectly, just what I’d always wanted, then why couldn’t I write? Why would I seek out other activities and “responsibilities” to *avoid* writing?

I could write about all the myriad of possibilities I considered these past two months for what *could* have been the problem, but that would take a long time lol. It’s amazing how many possibilities with merit an ENTP can come up with in two months. But, while some of them were useful in their own ways, and I learned a lot about myself this past while, none of them were the root cause behind why I was dreading pulling up Blogger.

The real reason? I was sick of MBTI culture.
Continue reading

INFP The Great Pumpkin Distraction – definition

April 1, 2014 / Calise Sellers

“If the Great Pumpkin comes, I’ll still put in a good word for you!
Good grief! I said ‘if’! I meant, ‘when’ he comes! I’m doomed.
One little slip like that could cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by.”
Linus van Pelt, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

“The Great Pumpkin Distraction” is INFP’s way of coping with the fear that their deep delvings into the realms of meaning and philosophical ponderings make them too out of touch with reality to be of value. INFP’s specialty is exploring conceptual meaning, loving to ask hard questions and explore the nuances of philosophy and understanding, and they excel at that. But their IP deep subject diving can make them feel like the world is passing them by, and with principles being their last and weakest cognition step, an INFP might try and prove that they can apply the specific details they’ve gleaned in their exploration, to the entire world. But since INFPs are good at asking questions, but aren’t naturally good at answering them universally, when an INFP forces an understanding of a principle it’s likely to be an oversimplified truism that doesn’t actually apply in practice and is comprised of lots of little details and exceptions, rather than an elegant function that works with any variable. This can make them look even more out of touch than they were afraid of in the first place.

But the INFP needs to give themselves a break and recognize that they don’t have to do it all. The world needs more healthy INFPs to explore meaning and find possibilities that no one else would have found, understanding the fine details of meaning going on in a situation. INFPs need permission to specialize more, not less. As an INFP doesn’t feel pressure to be in charge of discovering universal principles, they can instead feel excellent in their specialty of exploration and question asking, and let other types be good at their specialties of principles, each needing and learning from the other. 🙂

Examples:
Luna Lovegood, Harry Potter
Screech Powers, Saved by the Bell
and so many more…

Click here for an in-depth look at INFP The Ranger!

aLBoP Shorts: Tactics by Trolls

March 29, 2014 / Calise Sellers

Hey everyone! Just popping in to do two things. The first is to remind everyone that the first aLBoP Live Video Chat Q&A is tomorrow night!! :O And we’d love for you all to tune in and chat with us if you’re free! It’s at 8pm, EDT (GMT-4), March 29th which is tomorrow! And we’re super stoked. Remember, you can email in questions ahead of time to aLittleBitofPersonality (at) gmail (dot) com, or just chat with us right on YouTube while we’re chatting up a storm. You can ask us about anything!

Go here to watch and chat… and hopefully there won’t be any technical difficulties…

The second thing I’m here to do is to introduce a new series on the aLBoP YouTube Channel, “Tactics by Trolls,” talking about some of the most common and predictable tactics internet trolls use to make it seem like they have an argument, when really they got nothin’. Here are 5 new videos and this time they star my INFJ so you get to see him on video too! (I think he’s pretty cute, but you can’t have him ;D) It’s the internet and trolls are everywhere, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel beholden to their foundationless arguments. Watch to see how.

Intro

Trolls, Insecurity and Confusion

Tactics by Trolls: The Lawyer

Tactics by Trolls: The Bolder

Tactics by Trolls: The Twilight Zone

ENFP The McFly Conviction – definition

March 24, 2014 / Calise Sellers

“Nobody… calls me …chicken!”
Marty McFly, Back to the Future II

“The McFly Conviction” (aka “The McFury”) is ENFP’s passionate fervor about their own self-meaning, which can become dangerous when they need external validation in order to prove that they matter. When they feel like their value as a person is in question, a sweet ENFP who struggles with an unchecked McFly Conviction will feel down on themselves and like it doesn’t matter how good their intentions are (their First Cognition Step), because others find them insufficient in their actions and decisions (their Fourth and weakest step), and so they feel like they’ll never be worthwhile. But if the ENFP tries to counter this by attempting to *prove* their self-worth to others, they often, intentionally or not, end up trying to assert their self-worth *over* the worth of others, and make others feel unvalued the same way the ENFP has been. If the ENFP stops caring about others’ self-worth entirely, their McFly Conviction taking over all their choices, ENFPs can become uncharacteristically mean and end up negating their entire Type Specialization by constantly undermining the people around them, even seeking others out specifically to undermine their worth.

ENFPs need to remember, there is *no* sidekick type. But part of being a hero is not needing external validation to know that you are worthwhile. Being a hero means standing up for things, not only when you stand alone, but when you look like an idiot to the people who don’t understand. While sidekicks are busy looking over their shoulders, constantly checking for the approval of others, real heroes are busy making something of themselves. While ENFPs are just as capable of that as any other type, they first must let go of *looking* worthwhile, in favor of *becoming* worthwhile.

Examples:
Michael Scott, The Office
Bowler Hat Guy, Meet the Robinsons
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
and so many more…

Click here for an in-depth look at ENFP The Standard Bearer!

It’s Movie Time on aLBoP!

March 20, 2014 / Calise Sellers

Here’s the A Little Bit of Personality Intro video!! (Go ahead and watch it… you know you want to!) Both for the brand new Start Page, which will help those new lost souls find their way around aLBoP, and so that, if you’re trying to introduce aLBoP to your friends, you can help them easily understand what the crap you’re talking about! 😀 *Also* it’s going to serve as an intro to the aLBoP YouTube Channel, which is going to play a big part in the content this year on aLBoP. Starting with…

ESTP Jayne Justification – definition

March 3, 2014 / Calise Sellers

[To Dr. Simon Tam] “Tell me, Lil’ Miss Big Words,
you see a pyramid sittin’ out there? Neither do I.
So here, let me pour you a big frosty mug of ‘shut-the-h*ll-up’.”
Jayne Cobb, Firefly

“Jayne Justification” is the familiar ESTP tactic of trying to imply both that it’s stupid to be smart, and that they’re smarter than everyone else anyway. With ESTPs’ last and weakest cognitive step being action and decisions made through their iNtuition, they’re naturally insecure (as all types are about their weakest area) about their ability to understand and apply concepts and abstract principles to the choices and plans they make, making them feel inadequate and out-of-step with others conceptually and often academically. With their specialty centering around their own self-usefulness and protecting what they are, the ESTP is likely to imply that an understanding of the conceptual is worthless and totally irrelevant to everyday life, implying that those who are good at the conceptual are just as useless as the ESTP *feels*. Because this doesn’t improve their self-image the way they hoped it would, the ESTP is also likely to try implying that they really *are* good at the conceptual, in fact *better* than those whose conceptual abilities make them feel uncomfortable.

But what the ESTP needs to realize, is that they have a unique intelligence all their own, with keen observational abilities and the talent to see the things right in front of them that others simply miss. As they learn to appreciate the conceptual strengths of their friends, while realizing that it doesn’t compromise their own self-worth or their own usefulness, the ESTP can learn to use their awesome powers of Observational Sensing to see new and unexplored sides of the conceptual that are desperately needed.

Examples:
Gaston, Beauty and the Beast
Rainbow Dash, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Strongbad, HomestarRunner.com
and so many more…

Click here for an in-depth look at ESTP, “The Spartan”!

Personalized Typing: Mr. Darcy and the New Email System

March 1, 2014 / Calise Sellers

{Insert fanfare here!} You asked and we’re delivering! The new and improved, customized *just for you*, aLBoP Personalized Typing System!!! Now *you* can get personally typed according to the typing principles found throughout A Little Bit of Personality, and get personalized advice on how to apply things like Paradoxitype, Cognition Steps, Type Specializations, and how to be a Hero in your own unique way to *you* in your own life, with your own unique talents and struggles. Pretty cool, no?

{Update: Due to lots of wonderful demand, the aLBoP Personalized Typing system has been updated! Find all the details here! Now, instead of Personalized Personality PDFs, we have made the universally applicable Cognitive Orientation Guidebooks (COGs), and then if you want to chat about how your cognition applies to you personally, you can chat on the forums So feel free to read ahead and especially to read our personalized help for Mr. Darcy, but just be aware of the new system. :)}

Type Specializations: What Makes My Type Special?

February 12, 2014 / Calise Sellers

There’s an age-old outlook, put blatantly by Syndrome of The Incredibles in his Moriarty Fear, that if everyone is special, then *no one* will be. To this longstanding catch-22, I offer the following rebuttal: What if everyone is special in a way that is both utterly unique and utterly essential?

What if, like colors, genders or flavors, Personality Types create a beautiful cornucopia of complexity and balance, where each member contributes to the whole, an equal and necessary component, without which there would be a gaping hole? And what if becoming special is simply a matter of owning who you are and choosing to pursue the very thing *you* love most?

These are Type Specializations.

This topic is one of my very favorite things about personality typing because it’s so wrapped up in what every type *is* and not only what every type specializes in, but what *drives* every type. It’s easy to focus on cursory traits that may or may not come with a certain type – yes, ISTJs are usually fond of rules and yes, ENTPs often like taking risks; yes, INFPs spend a lot of time exploring inside their own heads and yes, ESFJs can often be found being great hosts and hostesses – but why? What is that common thread that laces itself through a personality type? What means the world to *your* personality?

Type Specializations are made up of two components, Scope and Objective. Continue reading