Still can’t decide what to do

by: Cherry 

Sounds to me as if you probably need to free up your thinking and consciously using the opposites of your MBTI preferences can help with this.

Sensing and iNtuition
With your preference for Sensing, you will prefer to approach your exploration in a grounded way, trusting tangible facts and what you know based on your experience. Your challenge is to tap into your iNtuition, which for ISFJ types is the least preferred function.

To get you thinking creatively and laterally you need to ask questions like these:

If I were your fairy godmother and I granted you an income for life so you were free to spend your time doing what you wanted, what would it be? OK, you might enjoy lounging around doing nothing much for a while, but then when you began to get bored, what would you do?

And taking another perspective, if you were getting towards the end of your life, what would you look back on with pride? What would make you think ‘that was a life well lived’?

How many possible career ideas can you come up with? Go for quantity not quality and include weird and wacky ideas too.

Take the time to explore your ideal lifestyle, not just your ideal job. Sometimes career ideas can emerge from defining how you want your life as a whole to look.

Judging and Perceiving
J’s like to make decisions quickly so they can start planning, but you need to hang in there with the uncertainty. For the time being, you are not allowed to say ‘yes, but…’ to any ideas that crop up and you should not worry how achievable the ideas are, what matters is that you just get ideas flowing. The J in your type will be frustrated at not knowing but just go with the flow for now and stay open to reviewing possibilities anew as additional information emerges.

Introversion and Extraversion
With an introversion preference you are quite likely mulling this all over in your head and going round in circles. If you draw on the extraverted approach and start talking to other people about their jobs you will gather new information, ideas and perspectives. Ask yourself what would an extravert do to explore career ideas – then go and do it!

Thinking and Feeling
You are not sure which way your preferences lie here, so be sure to use both to assess ideas. What are the logical pros and cons of careers you may be considering and also how well do they fit with your personal values?

I do remember reading that ISFJs can have the hardest time changing careers because all their preferences draw them to stick with what is familiar and not rock the boat. So you will need to pull against your preferences to break out into a new career.

Finally, do as much as you can using the exercises on HTCC to build up a detailed picture of who you are and what makes you tick. Then you can use that as a template to hold against job ideas and see how well they will fit.