Are you feeling through life?
If you’re an INFP like me, emotions, values, and morals play a huge role in our lives. It’s no wonder because INFPs lead with introverted Feeling (Fi), a judging function.
As an Fi-dominant, we judge every situation, person, object, or interests that comes our way based on how we feel about it.
- Pineapple on pizza? I like it!
- My friend’s radiant skin? So pretty, I can’t stop looking!
- Writing my manuscript? No, the weather’s too hot. I can’t think.
- My customer support job? I’m not doing that ever again.
There’s either a childlike passion for things we love or an unexplainable protest seething from within for situations we don’t enjoy. We’re either at 100% or a zero. No in-between.
True enough, these incomprehensible yet strong convictions make INFPs misunderstood by others. Oftentimes, even by themselves.
These empaths would then wonder why they’re so different and feel left behind. “Why can’t I be like the others?” Why can’t I be a project finisher or commit to a job for years?”
They get trapped by these heart-sore existential questions, not realizing how their emotions took the lead in multiple parts of their lives.
INFPs Soon Realize That Feeling Through Life Won’t Be Enough To Survive In This World
Sooner or later, INFPs realize they can’t survive in a sensing and extroverted world with this lifestyle. I experienced that punch to the gut when my all-or-nothing way of life no longer served me.
When I entered the workforce, it felt like my whole being rejected every job I worked on right after three months. I often plotted my escape, finding an excuse to leave and cutting people off.
Then, I’ll find another job and quit again. Find another. Then quit again.
I did this a few times within seven years, and you probably know how it ended. The pattern left me miserable, lost, and purposeless.
But thank goodness, I found out INFPs won’t be stuck as stiff emotional beings forever. As they mature, experience, and train, INFPs can be more logical!
In this post, I’ll share how you can transform from a heavy Feeler to a somewhat logical thinker who gets the jobs done.
I also wrote an e-book, “Not Lazy, Just INFP” where I discussed about INFP’s Te function. To beat procrastination, you must see how an INFP truly functions in terms of productivity. Check it out!
Developed vs. Undeveloped Te: What’s the Difference?
If Fi describes INFP’s inclination toward personal values, empathy, and emotions, Te (Extraverted Thinking), on the other hand, is the rationale and structure. It’s an inferior function, placed in the 4th cognitive spot in INFP’s cognitive makeup.
Having Te as an inferior function doesn’t mean we’re the least rational of all personalities. Rather, we can be pretty objective, too. Only that, Te is not our default choice when making judgments.
Now, how do we change hats? How do we use more of our Te?
We’ll discuss that. But first, let’s distinguish the behaviors of an INFP with undeveloped Te from those of someone with a developed one.
Signs of a Developed Te:
✔️You reach out to external sources.
With a developed Te, you learned not to spend hours figuring everything out independently. Instead, you look for existing frameworks, guides, experts, or proven methods that you can use.
You even willingly ask people for advice, finally dropping the “forever independent” façade. You no longer fear people getting a peek at your problems. Instead, you actively seek answers from them!
✔️You express your true convictions freely.
Te allows you to communicate your beliefs without second-guessing. No overanalyzing, no unnecessary filters. No more “do I sound bossy? Will he get mad?” Just straightforward black and white decisions and statements.
✔️You have patience for the process rather than craving instant results.
Fi craves immediate emotional satisfaction, while Te understands that structure and discipline bring long-term rewards.
A developed Te helps you endure step-by-step processes, even when they feel tedious. You don’t only see the beginning and the end. Instead, you look into every step. You begin to understand what “trust the process” truly means.
✔️You evaluate people and situations based on objective standards.
Instead of making judgments based purely on personal values (which can be deeply biased), developed Te helps you with a more factual approach.
You judge based on their results, techniques — an objective standard per se. Not by the way they talk, their background, their style, or how much they respect you, etc.
Signs of an Undeveloped Te:
❌You tie your self-worth to your reputation.
If your Te is undeveloped, you might feel a constant need to prove yourself. You want to look reputable and perfect, only to feel anxious once failure or rejection looms over you. This fear of looking incompetent keeps you from trying new things, learning, and growing.
❌You struggle with structure, progress, and rules.
With undeveloped Te, you don’t find step-by-step effort enticing. You might avoid tasks that require planning or discipline, quitting as soon as things get frustrating.
❌You’re extremely self-conscious about how others see you.
Instead of focusing on getting things done, you spend too much energy managing how people perceive you. When Te is strong, you simply don’t care and are genuinely focused on taking action based on a direct, proven, and technical approach, even if it means starting as a beginner.
But when it’s immature, you are more focused on pretending you know what you’re doing. But deep within, you hesitate, overthink, or try to control how you’re viewed. Again, you’re a sucker for reputation — in an unhealthy way.
How to Develop Your Te Inferior Function?
Finally, we’ll talk about how to improve our Te function. These tips are from my own experiences.
Now, let’s go to these 3 practices.
1. Cultivate Patience By Following Procedures
Some say playing brain games like Sudoku or logic puzzles helps develop Te. I undoubtedly enjoyed games like that—I love Einstein’s Riddle!
However, my issue is, the problem-solving challenges soon become a muscle memory game once you get the hang of it. As I reach 200+ levels of Einstein Riddle, I don’t even have to think much to solve the puzzle. My hands move on its own. It’s not the best bet to improve our Te.
So, how do we truly improve Te?
See, Te is a judging function. Like how we use Fi daily, we must also utilize Te similarly.
That said, the best way to improve our Te is to expose ourselves to tasks where we constantly make decisions based on facts, rules, or structure.
We must undergo the painful toil of steeping ourselves in the world of technicalities. Do tasks, projects, repairs, or basically anything with step-by-step procedures.
Reading technical books isn’t enough. We must put them into action.
For example, one painful experience I had was learning how to make this blog from scratch. I thought starting a blog would be as simple as pouring my heart out onto a page, hitting “publish,” and—boom—done!
But for goodness’s sake, despite my zero interest in web development, I had to spend sleepless nights glued to YouTube tutorials, pausing every five seconds to figure out basic settings.
I’d scramble through my site, searching for toggles, settings, and codes. I spent almost a month setting this up, so you can imagine it was a lot! Oh, my poor brain.
And knowing myself, I’m a terribly slow learner. I need things to sink in first before I can effectively apply them, so I’d spend hours on a tutorial video only to find out that it won’t work! Phew!
Other examples are following a step-by-step process for setting up a printer, repairing cars, and learning to draw—basically anything with a procedure.
It can get boring, alright! But we have to remember, this is Te playground.
Just look at INTJs. Most INTJs I know, with their Te-Parent, have extreme patience to troubleshoot technical problems.
They’re best positioned in jobs that test their patience with trial and error.
I remember working with an INTJ chief mechanic. He troubleshoots car problems for weeks or months — car problems even the car company themselves can’t identify, so customers go to him in hopes he’ll find a fix.
He’d go beyond his work hours, check his books, assemble and disassemble parts repeatedly, and endure seemingly endless trials and errors to figure out what was wrong.
My INFP self wouldn’t dare such a tedious task. My first thought would be, “It’s not worth the pay!” But INTJs find satisfaction in that intellectual and physical labor. Te is definitely at work.
Te is the same with INFPs. Following similar tasks ground us in more objective and structured decisions, pulling us away from Fi’s emotional whims. It builds our patience muscle.
If you like the idea of a task but hate the process, that’s when you absolutely need to pause, take a deep breath, and dive into the boring stages. It must be done.
Do more technical things and properly follow a procedure repeatedly. I’m sure this will heavily improve the habit of relying on your Te.
2. No memories = No emotions
Did you know that for INFPs, our emotions are deeply intertwined with our memories?
When you recollect that memory of a glittering and heartwarming Christmas – nostalgia soon starts rushing in. You miss that time. “Christmas isn’t how it used to be,” you thought.
Suddenly, melancholy was hugging you tight. You either withdraw and continue to feel this way, or make a change for the upcoming Christmas time.
You also recalled that ex who hurt you in high school—poof, you feel again. You wondered what he was doing and searched his social media. Did he change? He’s progressing in life, huh? Unlike me…
You picked a memory from 10 years ago, and now, you’re self-loathing.
Memories drive us to feel emotions, and INFPs take action based on those sentiments.
As an INFP, our collection of vivid memories makes us walking diaries. However, dwelling too much in the past sometimes causes us to stumble. Chances are, we get stuck in a downward spiral we call the Fi-Si loop.
Now, how does this connect to improving our Te as an INFP?
I’ll share an outrageous secret with you: See, if INFPs don’t rest on their memories that much (Si), it starts to dull our Fi, and the Te can finally take over.
Basically, no memories = no emotions. This can easily turn ugly quickly if we go overboard with blocking our memories, so take this with a grain of salt. Manage it well. Carefully sort out which enters your mind, and which ones doesn’t.
When people say, “I don’t take things personally,” it’s not because they’re battle-hardened, dense, or thick-skinned.
Rather, their actual thought process is that they don’t actively remember certain moments. They don’t sit on it much, so no emotions get attached.
This is mostly true for Se-users. I just noticed how forgetful my INFJ and ENFJ friends are about details; it makes my eyebrows furrow. Unless they write it down, or it truly impacted their life, they couldn’t care less to remember.
Unlike INFPs with Si-child, we cradle our memoirs, even the tiny moments, deep into our hearts. Thus, it pulls the strings of our emotions too often.
As a result, our emotions continue to reign over our decisions.
That said, we must be extra wary of looking back to the past. Ultimately, I’m not saying you should be forgetful, but at least do not actively remember the sad, embarrassing, and cringe experiences so you don’t trigger unwanted emotions.
Once the Fi has been toned down, our Te takes over.
Again, take this advice with a grain of salt. I’ve already experienced how powerful it is so don’t go overboard. I personally experienced this and I shared my journey here.
3. Reveal Your Vulnerabilities
The worst insecurity of someone with Te inferior function is being seen as incompetent and stupid. Dang, we can die of extreme self-consciousness once people realize we don’t really know what we’re doing. Embarrassment is our kryptonite.
So what do immature INFPs do to save face? They try to cover up mistakes, lie about their skills, or even quit their job, drop out of college, or disappear from the scene, just so they can’t embarrass themselves any further.
However, to improve Te, this is the very thing we must conquer — we must make our inferior function immune to embarrassment.
How? Simple.
You reveal your weaknesses one by one instead of hiding them.
What harm can admitting our vulnerabilities cause? Well, from the INFP perspective, it costs A LOT, especially because they value perfection and reputation.
However, from a third-person perspective, I must say that what we’re embarrassed about is not as grave as you imagined it. I realized this as I started dropping my mask and showing people the real, vulnerable me.
When I told people I couldn’t meet their expectations, they didn’t judge me for lacking skills. Their reactions were not as hardcore as I feared. Rather, they either found another one who could do the job or stuck with me and encouraged me to do it.
If only I knew admitting my weaknesses would be this easy. I wouldn’t have struggled with impostor syndrome.
Now, it’s your turn to reveal your weaknesses and see how it goes.
So what if your guitar skills aren’t at par with those of the gifted ones? Just admit your skill level. The worst thing that would happen is they won’t let you play. The best result, on the other hand, is they’re gonna teach you. So be teachable.
So what if your drawings aren’t as good as the other top students? Admit it, then show them you’re learning.
This way, you transform Te from being a source of insecurity to training it to undergo a process.
Don’t hide your progress—show it! It will free you from pretending.
I’ve healed a lot of my own anxiety and impostor syndrome by simply admitting what I can and can’t do. Now, I don’t overpromise, and I don’t pretend to know things I obviously don’t.
I Give People A Heads-Up About My Skills
My churchmate once asked me to be an emcee at an event.
I asked her, “Do you really think I can do that? I’ve never hosted before.”
She replied with an encouraging “yes!”
“My energy’s not as high as you expect,” explaining my reserved demeanor. I was honest about what I could offer.
“Don’t worry, Linda (a big extrovert) will be with you on stage!”
Well, okie dokie. I accepted the task. Whatever happens, I already gave them a heads-up.
Curious how it went?
Well, it was terrible. Lol.
My novice hosting skills were oozing, especially when I dropped a joke, and the audience’s response was crickets.
My mom even laughed on our way home because she was shocked I was on stage. But she thought it was funny. At least, I looked confident on stage.
I didn’t look back on that cringe memory anymore, so I didn’t get too attached to my mistakes (as I said on tip #2). I didn’t watch the video my mom took. Nah, I won’t torture myself.
I gained knowledge and experience, and that’s what matters.
Surprisingly, they got me to host for the second time, and tomorrow (as of writing), I’ll be an emcee with another one. I’m still a beginner, but I clearly see the process I’m undergoing.
Overall, once you’re honest, have let go of the fake perfection you built, and don’t fear making mistakes, you’ll find yourself unbothered, more honest, and more direct in your convictions.
Improve Te by revealing your weaknesses. It’s a starter leading INFPs to greater training grounds.
Stop hiding your weaknesses. Let other people see it, and let them teach you.
That’s it! These are the 3 practices I did to improve my Te. I hope you gained some insights!
If you found this post helpful, you can buy me a coffee, too!
Thanks for reading. 🙂
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