Amanda Linehan's Blog

For anyone who is local to Frederick, MD, I’m giving a talk this Friday, Sept. 20th, 2024 from noon to 1pm on self-publishing at Cowork Frederick, the coworking space I am a member of.

The talk is free of charge and will consist of 30-40 minutes of presentation with the rest of the time being Q&A and discussion. The only thing you need to do if you want to attend is sign up here.

If you are near Frederick, MD, this Friday, it would be great to see you at Cowork Frederick!

Amanda Linehan is an independent author, coach, and solopreneur. She’s published five novels, one novella, one non-fiction book, and numerous short stories. She also publishes a paid newsletter, creates online video courses and workshops, and maintains a YouTube channel. Much of her work focuses on the Myers-Briggs INFP personality type.

Ping! is all about making your intuition work for you. It leans more toward the practical side of intuition than the mystical. 

As with all my workshops, there will be a live session, which you can join me for, but if you can’t or don’t want to attend live, the workshop recording and a summary PDF guide will be delivered a few days later.

The live session will be happening on Tuesday, August 27, at 4 pm Eastern Time.

Here’s what you can expect to get out of Ping!:

A greater ability to “hear” your intuition and distinguish what’s not your intuitionThe opportunity to develop a trusting relationship with your intuition (so you can use it to make important decisions)Feeling more comfortable as an openly intuitive person

The price of the workshop is $49. There is also an “early bird” price of $39 for anyone who signs up by the end of the day on Saturday, August 24 (so for the first four days of registration).

Also, as is usually the case, subscribers to the For INFPs Premium newsletter will receive a coupon code for 50% off the price of the workshop (it can be used with either the regular or early bird price).

As part of the workshop registration, I’m offering a download of my intuition guide, Everyday Intuition, which features various written pieces I’ve done on the topic of intuition. Everyday Intuition is available immediately after registering and is inside the workshop portal.

Click here to learn more about Ping! and to sign up. 

On the surface, it may seem like the right move for INFPs to approach decision-making with analysis and logic (like many other types do), but these things can actually take INFPs off track and leave us second-guessing ourselves.

A much better approach for INFPs is to use their intuition for decision-making, as this is one of our strengths and has a couple of distinct advantages.

Intuition is a great decision-making tool. Often when you hear intuition discussed, it tends to be not in terms of its practical applications, but a little bit more in terms of the mystical. For instance, receiving intuitive information about people or events.

We like to talk about it a little bit more magically, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

I like to think about intuition and discuss it in terms of its practical day-to-day uses and one of the big ones is for decision-making.

The reasons why INFPs should use intuition to make decisions is twofold. Number one, it’s fast, and number two, it’s accurate. Granted, both of those things do require that you practice with your intuition. It also requires that your intuition is calibrated to the particular area that you’re making decisions in.

Practicing with your intuition is simply getting used to the idea of making decisions with intuition through experience.

This could be as simple as, “what am I going to eat for lunch?” Instead of trying to make a logical decision, you allow your intuition to tell you what you’re going to eat for lunch.

It’s getting comfortable with letting the information come to you intuitively rather than trying to think it through with your mind first.

Intuition also needs to be calibrated. Calibration is essentially that you’ve practiced with it in the area in which you’re trying to make decisions.

For instance, if you are a writer or a content creator, you can use your intuition to decide what you will create next and what you think will be the most needed or engaging for your audience. If you’re just starting out, your intuition will not be calibrated and your predictions won’t be as accurate. You need more experience. You’ve got to feed your intuition more experiences so that it can become very accurate.

Using your intuition for decision making is in contrast to trying to use your thinking to make decisions, which makes a lot of sense on the surface. It’s also what you will hear people talk about more often than not.

INFPs get tripped up with that because we’re not fantastic with our thinking function. But the other thing there is that our intuition will actually give us more information.

Because thinking relies on what we can see, what is known, what is certain. If we’re trying to use our thinking to make decisions, we may not actually be getting all the information that we need.

Our intuition can give it to us, though it remains somewhat subconscious.

Join the For INFPs newsletter–Resources, news, and tips for INFPs. Sign up here: http://amandalinehan.com/courses/mini-course

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Amanda Linehan is the author of Productivity For INFPs. She is an independent author, coach, and INFP, who has published six full-length books and has been read in 113 countries. Amanda was a speaker at the INF Summit in February 2020. Learn more about her Productivity For INFPs Online Course on the course page.

INFPs have many great qualities, but we are often a little unsure of what we are good at and how it’s valuable to others. I discuss three things in this blog post that INFPs are good at and how they can be directly and indirectly useful at a job or on a career path.

Recently, I came across the question of what INFPs are good at, and I thought it would be a great topic to explore.

There are a couple of questions behind the question here, however. So, if you’re asking the question “what am I good at?” the question behind that is, “what do I do that’s valuable?” “What skills do I have that are valuable to others?” And of course, the question behind that is, “how can I make money from it?”I think this is a career/money question that’s being asked in terms of personality type.

INFPs have lots of positive qualities, and you’ll see those written about and discussed in a lot of different spaces, and some of them are easy to name. For instance, INFPs are kind, and we’re creative, and we’re very empathic, have a lot of compassion, and are easy going (at least on the surface).

We know we have these positive qualities, but it’s time to take a little closer look at a few things that INFPs do that are really valuable.

Listening

The very first of these things is listening. This is, far and away, probably our very top skill. And what’s nice about this is we really enjoy it because listening really appeals to our curiosity. So when we’re out in the world and we’re in front of other people, we go into our intuition because we direct our intuition in an extraverted way.

When INFPs are in front of another person, it’s very easy for us to sit there and listen to them because we’re enjoying it. Of course, you’ve probably also gotten stuck with someone you’re listening to, but that’s more of a case of needing to practice your boundaries. But, listening in general is a fairly enjoyable activity for us.

Of course, people love to be listened to. I probably don’t have to tell you that. Most people in the world love to be listened to, and probably a majority of those people feel that they’re not listened to enough. This is absolutely something that INFPs are very good at that is very valuable to others.

In terms of careers, you could be in a career, or want to be in a career, where listening is a very direct skill that you’re going to use, such as being a counselor or therapist.

But it can also be an indirect skill that you use. You could be in any type of a field. You could be in any type of an office or environment, and your listening skills are going to make you a valuable asset to whatever team you are on. People may not even realize how much value they assign to you, but they do know that you’re a great person to talk to when they need someone to listen or that they just feel good around you.

Reading People

The second skill that INFPs are great it is being able to read people. This goes back to our extraverted intuition. We are able to pick up really well on what’s going on with other people. It’s a skill that lends itself to being more of an observer, which we certainly are as introverts. We tend to sit back a little bit and watch other people, watch the action, see what’s going on. When you’re good at reading people, what you have is information about what it is that they want and need.

So, let’s go back to the example of working in an office, and you pick up on something your supervisor really likes for you to do. They may never have directly said it, and it might be very personal to them. It might not even be a job requirement, but you have an idea of what it is they like. Doing this thing will make your supervisor really happy, which, of course, then makes your life a lot easier.

Being able to read people gives you a lot of information that’s not directly on the surface that you can use to direct your actions. And of course, this could get manipulative, right? Now, INFPs, being quite ethical and having a strong sense of what’s right, we’re going to have a tendency to use our power for good rather than evil.

But I’m talking about it in a very neutral sense. You’re just able to perceive things about people, and then you can really use that to direct your own actions.

Another example of this could be if you are a creator of some sort, you may be able to pick up on ideas for your creations by observing a group of people, maybe online. Being able to read people means you can pick out things that the group needs or wants, and then you can create something for them.

Creative Problem Solving

The last thing that INFPs are good it is problem solving, and particularly unconventional problem solving. We are good at coming up with stuff on the fly and with generating possibilities.

We can approach a problem and really see it in a way that others don’t that gives us insight into how to tackle it. We can come up with some things that will work, but no one would have thought they would have worked. We can do this fairly quickly. We have a nimbleness when it comes to being creative and coming up with ideas.

I think a lot of times, we certainly think of INFPs as being creative, but we tend to think of that more in an artistic sense, more in terms of expressing ourselves. And that’s certainly true. But it can really be put to good use in creative problem solving.

INFPs don’t need to be real planned out necessarily either. Let’s go back to the imaginary office. Maybe some issue arose suddenly and no one’s quite sure what to do. Well, you might be able to tackle it in a way that would have been very difficult for someone else who needs to plan first in order to come up with something.

So, there you have it. Three things that INFPs are good at. Any of them could be used in any job or career. So if you’re at a job that doesn’t suit you personally, in terms of the content of what you’re doing, you can still add an authentic contribution to your team or to your workplace based on your unique skills. That’s something to keep in mind.

The bottom line is that INFPs are definitely good at stuff that is valuable, and we can apply those things to help other people.

Join the For INFPs newsletter–Resources, news, and tips for INFPs. Sign up here: http://amandalinehan.com/courses/mini-course

Liked this post? Donate on my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/amandalinehan

Amanda Linehan is the author of Productivity For INFPs. She is an independent author, coach, and INFP, who has published six full-length books and has been read in 113 countries. Amanda was a speaker at the INF Summit in February 2020. Learn more about her Productivity For INFPs Online Course on the course page.

INFPs often believe that they can think their way to clarity before they begin, but the keys to certainty lie elsewhere.

The first step to attracting certainty is simple: get messy.

I’ve previously discussed that doubt makes you pause, and then taking any action where you question your doubt will help you to move along and move out of it.

So, getting messy means getting into a process, having experiences, making mistakes, and making errors in judgment.

What we try to do with self-doubt is to think our way out of it. We have these questions, and we’re spinning them around in our mind. We think that what we’re going to do is to think our way through these things, and then we’re going to reach certainty. Once we’re there we won’t be doubting ourselves anymore, and then we can start. But actually, we’ve got to jump in and roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty.

In a previous post, I mentioned that Introverted Feeling (the dominant cognitive function for INFPs) has a downside which is that it can make our doubt (or any emotion) seem really, really large.

But one of the upsides of Introverted Feeling is actually the conviction that you can have in your feelings. It is a certainty of feeling. It can be very, very strong for INFPs.

However, this does require a process. It really does take a lot of trial and error for us to get there. And that’s why I say the very first step towards attracting certainty is being willing to get messy.

Join the For INFPs newsletter–Resources, news, and tips for INFPs. Sign up here: http://amandalinehan.com/courses/mini-course

Liked this post? Donate on my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/amandalinehan

Amanda Linehan is the author of Productivity For INFPs. She is an independent author, coach, and INFP, who has published six full-length books and has been read in 113 countries. Amanda was a speaker at the INF Summit in February 2020. Learn more about her Productivity For INFPs Online Course on the course page.

INFPs experience a lot of self-doubt, and that isn’t necessarily a problem. But what do you do when you want to start moving through that doubt? How do you get that process rolling?

You can look at it this way: doubting yourself causes you to pause, and then you start to ask questions like, “Am I good enough to do this?”; “Can I do this?”; “Do I have the skill to do this?”; “Is this the right thing for me to do right now?” And on and on and on.

I don’t have to give you all the questions. You come up with those very well on your own. But, the way that you start to get your energy moving and get yourself going through the doubt is to answer these questions.

And the way that you answer them is to take an action towards them. And the really good news here is that you do not have to be picky and you do not have to be anywhere near perfect.

INFPs have a tendency to overthink. It’s very easy for us to start worrying about what is exactly the right action we should be taking. But when you’re testing out your self-doubt questions, you’re doing anything that answers that question.

If the question is, “Can I really write this book?” you might simply have a writing session with no other goal but to sit down and write something and to keep doing that on a consistent basis. Because eventually, you come up with a draft and you can say to yourself, “Oh, yeah, I actually can. I can write this book because I just did it. I now have a completed draft and it’s done.” And it was just a matter of getting yourself moving.

Or it could be something like, “Am I really good enough or am I really skilled enough to start this business?”

And the way that you start answering those questions is maybe to register the domain name for your website, and then maybe you start organizing what your services are going to be and what your pricing is going to be. Maybe you put out some content into the world, and you start getting feedback that indicates it’s really helpful.

Now you have concrete, specific feedback that is evidence that you are good enough, or that your business will be helpful to people. And you also have some structure for your business.

What INFPs have a tendency to do is to spin these questions around and around in their minds. So you pause in the doubt, and then you get stuck when you make it too mental.

When you take action, it gets your energy moving, and you can actually rely upon your experiences to inform your doubt questions. You’re using your actual experience to inform what you think about yourself and what it is that you’re doing.

New workshop! Get To Clear: Overcoming Self-Doubt for INFPs. Let go of overwhelm and use self-doubt to your advantage. Learn more and sign up here: https://payhip.com/b/5Yrji

Join the For INFPs newsletter–Resources, news, and tips for INFPs. Sign up here: http://amandalinehan.com/courses/mini-course

Liked this post? Donate on my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/amandalinehan

Amanda Linehan is the author of Productivity For INFPs. She is an independent author, coach, and INFP, who has published six full-length books and has been read in 113 countries. Amanda was a speaker at the INF Summit in February 2020. Learn more about her Productivity For INFPs Online Course on the course page.

I’m very happy to announce that I’ve opened registration for my newest workshop, Get To Clear: Overcoming Self-Doubt for INFPs.

It’s no secret that INFPs often grapple with self-doubt. But the true challenge with self-doubt is not its mere existence, but when it becomes overwhelming, hindering your progress and causing you to miss out on valuable opportunities. I understand this struggle, and that’s why I’ve designed a workshop specifically for INFPs like you.

Get To Clear is designed to address self-doubt specifically for INFPs. Here’s what you can expect to get out of it:

Gain awareness of why self-doubt can seem SO LARGE to INFPs and how to shrink itPut your self-doubt in the proper perspective so you can use it to your advantageUnderstand how to move through your doubt and reach clarity

Get To Clear will be 75 minutes long and held live on Sunday, June 23rd, at 10 a.m. EDT. A few days after the workshop, I will deliver a recording and a PDF Summary Guide.

Whether you prefer to attend live or catch up later, the choice is yours. The most important thing is that you’re taking a step toward overcoming your self-doubt, and that’s something to celebrate!

Registration will remain open until June 26th (the day I deliver the recording and PDF). It is $39 to register, and subscribers to the For INFPs Premium newsletter will receive a coupon code to attend for half off.

Get more details and sign up here!

With so much doubt, it’s no wonder that INFPs would love to push a magic button and suddenly have the clarity they desire. Clarity is possible, but first, you’ll need to stop making this common mistake when it comes to self-doubt.

This is a really easy one. The biggest mistake that INFPs make with self-doubt is thinking that they have to get rid of it.

It’s easy to think that because self-doubt can be really uncomfortable and debilitating if you’re not careful. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.

I do want to make the distinction that there is a line between a normal or optimal level of self-doubt and the type of self-doubt that just brings you to a halt.

On one of my recent self-doubt videos that I uploaded to YouTube, someone left a comment about self-doubt making you miss opportunities, maybe over and over again. I thought that was a good point to bring up because that can be the type and intensity level of self-doubt that can be harmful.

But what I’m talking about here are the normal levels that you experience on a day-to-day basis. Your self-doubt can really be positive for you because doubt makes you question, and it can actually lead you to greater clarity on how you feel and think about something.

It can lead you to what you find important, what you value. When you’re always questioning things, when you’re on your path moving forward, and you have these moments where you doubt yourself, it allows you to dig into that thing and really get more clarity.

The last thing I want to mention here is that self-doubt can even be a source of joy for us because it’s that exploration and experimentation that we like to do. Really, there can be a playfulness to questioning yourself and then running into something where you have a temporary period of doubt.

Of course, the ideal there is then to get over it and move forward. But again, some level of doubt will always be there. You don’t need to make the mistake of thinking that you have to get rid of it. You just want to be careful with it when it crosses a line and it really does become debilitating.

Join the For INFPs newsletter–Resources, news, and tips for INFPs. Sign up here: http://amandalinehan.com/courses/mini-course

Liked this post? Donate on my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/amandalinehan

Amanda Linehan is the author of Productivity For INFPs. She is an independent author, coach, and INFP, who has published six full-length books and has been read in 113 countries. Amanda was a speaker at the INF Summit in February 2020. Learn more about her Productivity For INFPs Online Course on the course page.

It’s no secret that INFP personality types struggle with self-doubt. But there is one thing that INFPs can do to overcome their self-doubt once and for all.

In order to do that, you’ll want to reframe your experience into what I’ll call “your normal.” And your normal actually consists of a constant presence of self-doubt.

So the good news about that is having self-doubt and having it frequently is not necessarily a bad thing. INFPs are explorer types. We’re seekers, and that means that we’re always questioning and experimenting.

We’re creative. We’re playing and exploring while engaging our creativity. And all of these activities, because we’re always trying to expand into new territory, all of these things require self-doubt for us to keep moving forward.

So, instead of seeing this as some huge problem you’re experiencing, if you can come to see it as a part of what you do and how you actually reach clarity, you can be a lot more comfortable with it.

I think the big problem that INFPs have with self-doubt is when it feels really, really large and overwhelming to the point of being debilitating. That has to do with how we’re oriented towards the world.

Our dominant cognitive function is introverted feeling. Because it’s an inward focus, it can make our emotional states get very, very large, very, very quickly. This is really why doubt becomes a problem for INFPs: It seems huge to you, and it seems insurmountable.

Doubt is actually not that big of a problem. It’s just a part of our process. It’s a part of the way that we actually explore our world and reach conclusions and clarity.

The best way to overcome your self-doubt is to just let it be there. You don’t have to push it away. You don’t have to shove it in the closet or sweep it under the rug or anything like that. You can just let it be there with you and see it as a crucial part of your process.

Join the For INFPs newsletter–Resources, news, and tips for INFPs. Sign up here: http://amandalinehan.com/courses/mini-course

Liked this post? Donate on my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/amandalinehan

Amanda Linehan is the author of Productivity For INFPs. She is an independent author, coach, and INFP, who has published six full-length books and has been read in 113 countries. Amanda was a speaker at the INF Summit in February 2020. Learn more about her Productivity For INFPs Online Course on the course page.

This post originally appeared in my For INFPs Premium newsletter.

Out on the internet, INFPs are often described using the same language over and over again. Off the top of my head (and I’m specifically not looking at any sources because I don’t want to “spoil” myself for this essay), empathic, imaginative, kind, creative, whimsical, and emotional would be pretty typical to see in an article describing the INFP type. And I don’t think that any of these adjectives are wrong.

But I do think it’s not the whole story.

From my own experience, observation of other INFPs, and intuition, we have a few surprises up our sleeves. Most of which aren’t very visible to the naked eye. So, I thought I’d take a stab at discussing a few qualities that INFPs have that don’t usually get talked about when discussing INFPs. Here we go.

Unconventional

The more I think about this one, the more I’m surprised that it doesn’t get mentioned more, but INFPs are often unconventional. Now, it’s important to note here that this may not be associated with us because we go about it quietly. An INFP is not always obviously unconventional, and, in fact, from a distance (quite a distance?), we may look perfectly normal.

But that’s often not true. Due in significant part to our dominant function, Introverted Feeling (Fi), we can be highly individualistic. Fi makes us focus on how we feel about things, our emotional states, and what we value, not on how the group feels or how to attain group harmony. To put it bluntly, we are focused on our emotional selves first and filter all of life through that.

This allows us to perceive things quite differently from the average person, and those unusual perceptions (of which we can feel “rock solid” about) can lead to some strong convictions. How we like to do things and what we think is best for us in our lifestyles rests not on what the group says is the best thing to do but on what we feel is the best thing to do. And this can lead us off into some very unconventional directions.

Maybe it’s because of our empathy and kindness that the unconventionality isn’t always spotted (I mean, it’s probably the introversion, too). Still, I wouldn’t underestimate just how individualistic an INFP can be.

(Note: I did take some time to peruse INFP articles after writing this, and while I didn’t often see the word “unconventional,” both “unique” and “individualistic” are used fairly often. Although, I still think to a lesser degree than empathic, kind, imaginative, etc.

I’m keeping this one, though, because I still think it’s under-emphasized when it comes to INFPs, especially in terms of making life choices.)

Ambitious

This one is even a little difficult for me to explain because it seems so contradictory to an INFP’s nature, but it’s one that my intuition definitely says should be on this list.

An INFP’s ambition links back to being unconventional because you won’t typically find an INFP trying to climb a career ladder conventionally or trying to fill their bank accounts up just for the sake of stashing away profits. We want what we do to have meaning, and there is also meaning behind our ambition.

So, how do INFPs exercise ambition?

Usually, it’s something we feel strongly about, which aligns very well with our values (again, see Fi above). This could be a creative project we want to see realized in the world. Or, it could be something about life or our culture that we’d love to see changed. Maybe we have some vision for the future, for ourselves, our family, or our community. It could be a lifestyle we would enjoy living and feel would allow us to authentically express ourselves. But whatever it is, the stronger we feel about it, the more we can “latch” onto it.

And it’s this connection that will drive us forward, especially if it’s particularly challenging or tricky to realize. INFPs have a great capacity to affect change both inside of us and outside.

And this is where our ambition comes in.

It may take a tremendous effort (in various ways) to realize our visions, but we will stick to them until the very end if we feel strongly enough. Our ambition is the ambition to see things in reality in the way we see them inside our mind’s eye. And that is often no small task.

Courageous

Do you think of yourself as being brave? Have you ever been called that?

Being a unique soul requires a quiet kind of courage, and I wouldn’t underestimate this quality in yourself. Societally, when we have an image of bravery, it may be something like a knight or a warrior on horseback with a sword, slaying a dragon, or fighting an enemy. INFPs don’t typically carry swords (though, who knows?!), but we can possess the courage to be and show our unique selves.

When you are the one who is often going against the grain, it can feel lonely and, maybe even a little unsafe. Differences are not always appreciated in our world (understatement ). So, to walk through life staying true to who you are and what you value, even if that’s pretty weird, is brave. Having a conviction about how you think things should be and expressing that, even quietly, is brave. Walking toward a vision of a “new life” for you and/or others is brave.

No swords or horses are required. Or suits of armor, for that matter.

As an INFP, I love digging underneath the surface. And I love exploring underneath the surface of the INFP personality type as part of that. Everyone has qualities they show the world and those they don’t. The mystery of the individual lies in those things that are not easily seen in combination with surface-level traits.

I’m sure there is more to this list, but these three qualities came to me first. What do you think? Do these things sound about right? Are there any more surprising qualities of INFPs that you can think of?

Learn more about the For INFPs Premium newsletter: In-depth content to empower INFPs.

Amanda Linehan is the author of Productivity For INFPs. She is an independent author, coach, and INFP, who has published six full-length books and has been read in 113 countries. Amanda was a speaker at the INF Summit in February 2020. Learn more about her Productivity For INFPs Online Course on the course page.