As an iNtuitive, you are not necessarily smarter, more bookish, more rational, or more enlightened than Sensors. Likewise, you don’t have to be any less practical, less athletic, or whatever else that oversimplified stereotypes may assert, both in books and online. Being an iNtuitive simply means that you see the world primarily in terms of concepts and ideas, while Sensors tend to view life in terms of their own experiences. iNtuitives view all their experiences in terms of what they show conceptually, rather than the other way around. Both are needed, and as with all the letters, everyone does both. Yet iNtuitives view everything conceptually first and foremost, before applying those concepts to their own experiences.
This focus on concepts and ideas naturally results in seeing all the world as an interconnected web, as every idea flows into every other. No part of the web can be considered in isolation, since a single change to one part of the great web of reality will result in far-reaching changes to everything else. iNtuitives tend to focus on the whole of life, people, situations, and experiences, rather than on the individual pieces that make them up. Everything is connected in a fantastically complex network or implications, contrasts, and effects. This leads to an excited awareness of all the connections, parallels, metaphors, and relationships between everything in life, noticing how concepts fit together and seeing what those relationships say.
iNtuitives thus try to understand things from as many sides as possible, forming complex opinions that try to reflect all the interconnected grandeur of their conceptual webs. However, just because their opinions tend to be complex, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily accurate! One little misconception in one unattended corner of their beliefs can pull the whole web off balance. Because they focus so much on concepts rather than experiences, iNtuitives can often be the last ones to see just how far off the mark their opinions have been pulled.
A concerted and deliberate effort to work on focusing on raw experience, rather than conceptual ideas alone, can help to gradually bring an iNtuitive’s web of opinions more and more in line with reality. It can be tempting for iNtuitives to try to shoehorn all experiences to fit with their conceptual beliefs, but as they instead humble their ideas to adapt to the harsh dictates of experience, they’ll be able to enjoy all the conceptual beauty and complexity of reality without trying to force it to fit any predetermined opinion.
Viewing everything in terms of ideas and concepts leads to an awareness of potential combinations of events, ideas, or actions, and all the possibilities that they can lead to. This causes iNtuitives to frequently focus on trying to imagine things that could be, rather than trying to protect things that already are. Of course this is powerful, but they must be careful not to neglect the good in things as they already are. All too often, iNtuitives are tempted to not appreciate what they have, throwing out the good with the bad in their drive to reach for new things.
On the flip side, iNtuitives can sometimes resist and fear change, pessimistically clinging to things as they are when they cannot see a better way that could be. In both cases, the harsh realities of experience can dispel the arrogance of pessimism about things that might be, and demonstrate the preciousness of things that already are. Protecting and appreciating good things that already exist is a necessary fuel in any effective pursuit of things that have never yet been, and constantly adapting one’s ideas to fit with experience is a necessary anchor to the pursuit of thoughts that have never yet been imagined.
As always, both iNtuition and Sensing are needed, and both can be equally healthy or unhealthy. Healthy iNtuitives should cultivate a careful protection of the good in the world and an awareness of raw experience instead of only interconnected concept, yet they should also enjoy allowing their main focus to be on the conceptual whole, and all the exciting and awesome things that could yet be! While numerous stereotypes portray iNtuition as over-idealistic or impractical, all types can be practical or impractical, pessimistic or idealistic, in their own unique ways.
Indeed, any attempt to imagine conceptual possibilities without practicality is simply unhealthy. Such impracticality tends to come from overlooking the interconnected complexity of practical ingredients necessary to make an idea into reality. Healthier iNtuition keeps track of more complexity, not less, and therefore grows ever more practical and ever more daring in its dreams for the future. The more an iNtuitive lets themselves be an iNtuitive, seeing all the interconnected conceptual nature of everyone and everything, the more practical, appreciative, and effective they’ll become in all their hopes and ideals.
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