3 mistakes most INF types make, which cause them unhappiness in relationships

My precious fellow INF,

You deserve to have deep and meaningful relationships.

Imagine having people come to you and respectfully ask for your insight. Not because you're always there for them, but because they deeply honor your level of intuition. What would it feel like?

Imagine gazing into the eyes of a person who really sees you and the vast inner world that you hold close to your heart. Now imagine them wanting to be a part of it. Not because it amuses them or entertains them, but because you have a depth of understanding and wisdom that brings most people to their knees: They just want to experience your depth and celebrate it with you.

Imagine no longer feeling lonely, but actually being reciprocated your kind of commitment and loyalty from people around you. The kind of loyalty that you can rely on. Yes indeed. It's doable.

Most of us INF types don't have herds of friends who truly understand the complexity of who we are. Because we have the tendency to understand others more than they understand us, a lot of our relationships end up becoming one-sided to one degree or another. And if you are like me, it was just a question of time before I felt somewhat taken advantage of and resentful. 

It was a rude awakening when I realized was that even though I felt like I was at the receiving end a bad deal, I was actually contributing to this issue quite passively, but very specifically. 

If you are feeling like you have these one-sided relationships, it is likely that you are directly contributing to your special kind of loneliness. The great news is that when you stop doing any one of those things, you begin to "magically" manifest amazingly deep two-way relationships, where you are not only understood, but where your uniqueness is also celebrated. Of course, this is no magic at all. 

Here's the 3 mistakes most INF types make, which cause them unhappiness in relationships:

• Not setting appropriate boundaries 
• Having expectations of others' commitment to your relationship
• Withholding information about your deepest fears and desires until you get angry about them not having a voice.

Having realized my passive, but very significant input, I became committed to shed the bad habits. As a result, I begun to relax and even learnt new ways to socialize and connect with people. I begun to invite people into my vast inner world without losing my privacy and sense of safety.

If you have suffered from a string of one-sided relationships or are still struggling to let people into your inner world, please don't worry. There are plenty of exercises you can do, and courses you can take to teach you these important, life expanding skills.

Boundary exercises: Setting appropriate boundaries means being available to others, once and only once you have looked after your own basic needs first. Most of us INF types are self sacrificing, and most always put others' needs ahead of our own. And don't forget that everyone has different basic needs: don't judge your basic needs or compare them to others'.

1. Begin to observe yourself and what your needs are, so that you can fulfill them before overflowing your attention and efforts towards others. Write these basic needs down and keep the list with you to remind you when, inevitably, you forget. Cognitive dissonance can make you forget your new path, and using things like notes to remind us regularly will be a great tool to begin your transformation.
2. Commit not to extend yourself to others until your basic needs have been met in any given situation. In the beginning this exercise will feel selfish, but soon it gets easier. Just keep going!

Expectation exercises: You need to learn not to expect others to behave like you do. Most other types are not self sacrificing, and do not even realize how much attention and effort you are putting on the relationship. We are intense people, unlike other types when it comes to relating to others and building relationships.

1. Acquire several good friends, so that your intensity is not directed on only one or two people. This intensity can be overbearing to most people: not because they don't care about you, but because they have no ability to access the depth of understanding that you do.
2. Keep reminding yourself regularly that we are special kind of people, and that our depth of understanding and feeling will never be realized by most people.

Sending out invitations to your inner world exercises:

1. Learn to share personal information about yourself IN A SAFE ENVIRONMENT and with people that you trust. It is imperative that people understand how hard it is for you to share with others. That's why INF support groups can be so very valuable.
2. Put your mask or reflections aside for the moment and begin to  honestly and tenderly share your inner child with the world. This will open your inner world for people to explore and admire you even more. Please make sure to do this gently and very slowly. 
3. People cannot appreciate something they don't understand. So if you are not ready to invite people into your inner world through verbal sharing of thoughts, fears and desires, you may give them a glimpse of your inner world by through another kind of medium. Drawing, photography, painting, poetry and writing are just some of the more popular mediums among our types, and can certainly give your inner world a voice that perhaps you have been yearning to share for quite some time.

There are myriads of ways to learn these new skills, but one thing is a fact: you cannot learn these skills on your own. So make sure that you have a support network with whom you get to do this in a safe and honoring manner. If you don't have anyone in your immediate geographic vicinity, join a group or an organisation to make sure you learn these life-enriching skills. As I said before, you deserve to be loved and revered. 

For those of you who want to accelerate these learnings, I invite you to join us on our next INFx Unveiled online course. This course is guaranteed to give you insights and specific exercises that will open you up to your purpose, relationship happiness and good health. We have a 30-day money back guarantee on all our products just to make sure that the course is right for you. For more information, go here: INFx Unveiled Course. 

However you are going about your transition into happier, more honoring relationships, I wish you all the very best. You are so precious and you deserve all the happiness. Don't you dare to forget that! 

With love,

Merja

Ps. If you are not a 100% sure on your personality type, do a free test here:Personality Hacker Genius Style Assessment

Stop the inner voices of Failure to Find Your Stride

Most of us have some form of fear of failure, which is stifling our success in life. Instead of thriving, we are just barely surviving. And some of us have the core knowing that we are a failure, and for those of us, this belief was injected into our cellular memory at the point of conception, if not before that.

Dear, Precious INFx,
If you are like me, you have struggled with your identity for most of your life. One of the biggest contributing factors is the internal voices of failure and shame. Be it a fear of failure or a knowing that you are one, surprisingly, you can harness this pain to serve you. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

As you probably already intuited, the latter person is me. I knew on a cellular level that I was a failure, even before I was born. I was conceived through rape. My father’s rageful act of self hatred and hatred of my mother all coming together to conceive me - a product of force and brutality. A byproduct of both of their feelings of failure in life.  

I was never meant to be anything other than assertion of dominance and a relieving of emotional pain. And I paid for it throughout my whole childhood by being repeatedly abandoned and despised by my narcissistic father and by subconsciously being treated like a burden by my mother, who just couldn't cope with anything anymore.

As a result, I didn’t have a childhood. I never learnt to make mistakes and still be loved. What I did learn is that if I made a mistake, I would be loathed and resented.

And even though I have forgiven them and moved past the pain of these people causing me this pain, the cellular memory of the learning of that truth -” I will never amount to anything, because I am a failure” - continues to come up in different situations, especially when I am tired and run down.

How would it feel, if you too could harness and utilise the suffocating pain of the Failure Factor, and transform it into a strength that can quickly begin to pay you dividends in form of deeper relationships, vocation or even wealth? I did it, and so can you!

These are some of things I learnt about myself, the people's’ psyche and how to harness pain instead of having it trip you unexpectedly:

1. You are a real person, and you are in charge of your own life regardless of who your parents were. They were only the starting point, your continuing self actualisation is the end game. And when you realise and subsequently actualise this, you will become more authentic and on purpose.
   
2. The human body and psyche is always yearning for recovery, if it’s allowed to do so. This is one of the truths of life, which is reflected back to us by nature, seasons and cycles all the time. If you are not convinced about this, I suggest you do some further study on healing process of plants, animals and humans. As a result of accepting this as a starting point, your health will improve dramatically.
   
3. What you have always believed about yourself is not necessarily true. What if your parents were actually wrong? Have you considered that? Look for evidence in the lives of other parents who see their kids as precious, and understand that your childhood experiences, especially to do with the Failure Factor, are not the only truth that is out there. By accepting this new truth you will become free from emotional pain that has been holding you back.
   
4. You can choose to have new beliefs about yourself according to how you wish your parents had brought you up. Continue observing the parenting styles of other families, and pick the ones that you like or the ones you feel envious of, and then, with the help of these role models, begin to parent your inner child to heal the Failure Factor. When you adopt these new ways of treating yourself, you open up to giving and receiving very deep form of love.
   
5. Every small failure is not actually a reflection of YOU as a person, but a reflection of your past beliefs. Learn to take on small failures as constructive criticism about what could be improved on, if you choose to improve the results you currently have. You may choose not to, and when it’s a conscious choice, rather than a reaction from your inner child, then you have a more stable foundation to build your direction from. Be you and own it. When you see failures as messages about how you have done something, instead of who you are, you begin to thrive in your life. These messages are simply an indicator of areas of your life that you have not fully harnessed to your advantage.
   
6. You need to be open to noticing new evidence of your worthiness when it is presented to you. Inevitably, life will show you evidence of your new beliefs, as well as sudden flashes of worthiness. You need to decide to be open to seeing these. And when they come, let your inner child bask in the brilliance that s/he knows is them. When you learn to allow yourself to see this evidence, you expose yourself to new opportunities you will have missed in the past.
   
7. Regular, continuing adjustment of attitude in regards to setbacks will continue to change your life on a cellular level. And every time you have a setback, you have an opportunity to prove your own worthiness by not being hooked back into the old belief, but instead, re-enforcing points 5 and 6. This adjustment of attitude, while hard sometimes, will continue to propel you to higher level of success in whatever area of your life you apply it.
   

As you can see, this work is very powerful, and goes to depths that cannot be imagined. You only feel it when you get “there”. What I have learnt, having coached hundreds of this types, is that in order to ensure effective and fast tracked results, the INF people need to share their journey with others of the same type. This is based purely on the fact that we, as this special type, need to have people who “get” us to reflect back to us what we are experiencing.

I encourage you to have a support network of INF types, and if you already don’t have one, you are welcome to join ours.  
For those of you who want to accelerate these learnings, I invite you to join us on our next INFx Unveiled online course. This course is guaranteed to give you insights and specific exercises that will open you up to your purpose, relationship happiness and good health.

We have a 30-day money back guarantee on all our products just to make sure that the course is right for you. For more information, go here: INFx Unveiled Course. 

Mind yourself. Your gifts are needed!
Love,
Merja

Ps. You can complete the Myers Briggs indicator test here:

http://www.personalityhacker.com/genius-personality-test/

Too Emotional

Dear, precious INFx, You CAN harness your emotional power!

Only a fellow INF would understand what it feels like to be taken over by the emotional content of any given interpersonal dynamic, and not being able to speak up in a reasonable, matter-of-fact way. The problem is, we can understand where others are coming from. Sometimes to our own detriment. But it doesn't have to be this way!

INFx types are often dubbed to be "too emotional" for the "real world". People are afraid of our emotions, as if they somehow make us weaker than the rest. But of course, we know the truth. Our emotions, when properly harnessed, actually make us stronger.

I remember from a very young age that I was told to "toughen up" and to not be so emotional, and instead try harder and be better at whatever it was I was "failing" at. Soon, I learnt to be detached from how I was feeling, and I just kept pushing myself harder and harder. I was becoming a little perfectionist and nothing I ever did was quite good enough.

In a nutshell, I learnt to push myself to the limit. And the limit was an emotional meltdown disguised as a game of dominance either directly or in a passive aggressive way.

When I realised what I was doing, I felt so broken and ashamed. I had gotten a wake-up call from a colleague, whom I pushed too hard and she lashed out at me viciously. I wanted to make sure I wasn't just being defensive, so I asked other colleagues for some authentic feedback about my conduct.  And there it was: Under pressure I was an emotional bully.

From then on I realised I had to give my emotions a platform, and I begun interacting with my Inner Child who was the one within me feeling insecure. She was the one playing these power games because she was feeling unloved and voiceless; exactly how I had been feeling most of my childhood.

I write about this openly, because I feel hope within me for all of us who are trapped in the cycle of power struggle within ourselves as well as with people around us. And especially, for us INFx types: people cannot handle the sudden change from the flexible helper into the Antichrist. They had no way of knowing that the last straw had just been thrown on the camel's back.

We need to set boundaries, ones that respect our values and honour ourselves and others. We need to learn to voice what is important to us and what we need, and not just attend to others' needs in a self-sacrificing manner. And most of all, we need to learn to invite people into our inner worlds from time to time, and a little bit at a time, so that they can get to know the real us.

You are important, and what you have to offer to the world is so desperately needed! Don't hold it back. Do your own work, empower yourself and harness the power of your emotions!

Love,

Merja

For those of you who want to accelerate these learnings, I invite you to join us on our next INFx Unveiled online course. This course is guaranteed to give you insights and specific exercises that will open you up to your purpose, relationship happiness and good health. We have a 30-day money back guarantee on all our products just to make sure that the course is right for you. For more information, go here: INFx Unveiled Course.