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Just thought of sharing

3K views 32 replies 11 participants last post by  ENFPathetic 
#1 ·
#3 ·
Its much better to not follow someone else's purpose. Because you never know that when someone else would become selfish/needy/unadjusting and then its you and your life that will suffer. Then you won't be even able to blame the other person.
Its a better rule to not follow someone else's purpose.
 
#6 ·
Yeah but why are people assuming this pic is showing someone "living someone else's purpose" or "following someone else's purpose"?

It's just a venn diagram with Time--it could just as easily be "spending time helping someone with their purpose" which really isn't that big of a waste of time.

I mean are career counselors wasting their lives? What if you want to help someone with their purpose? Is helping someone with their purpose that bad?

But I do agree with the negative view of the diagram--just that the conclusion is "wasting your life." That's a bit extreme for just spending time on helping someone with their purpose...so I can see why people would assume it's the other things--because I think you know it's really not that bad to simply spend time on someone else's purpose if you agree with it and if you feel like it.

If I see a little stray cat on street and its purpose is to eat something at that moment, and I take five minutes of my time to go find something for it and help it fulfill its "purpose" of having some food--am I really "wasting my life"? I don't think it's that simple. Because its purpose also aligns with mine...perhaps, at that time. It happens.

But yeah--if I am just letting some wealthy asshole who exploits people use me for whatever he wants, and I'm wasting all my life for that, then that's def. a bad thing and a waste of life.
 
#8 ·
People around here tend to turn around to disagree, instead of trying to see what they can agree with, they seek to see what they can't agree with.

It is very simple for me to figure out what that diagram refers to.
"Someone else's purpose" refers to just someone else's purpose, with which you have nothing to do, but which ends up invading your time. Most likely without your will, through manipulation, cunning or even good intentions.

The central idea of the chart is probably this: "When you take care of someone else's purpose, you don't take care of your own. You waste your time because you ignore your own purposes."

The diagram doesn't say anywhere that "Well, wait, maybe someone else's purpose is mine too."
Well, it's not, if it was, it wasn't "someone else's purpose." It would have been "someone else's purpose and YOURS".

Some people here like to overcomplicate things when it is not necessary, after that they are surprised that they have 1000 problems and most often they blame others for them.
 
#11 · (Edited)
It depends on the other person’s purpose, of course, and if the person donating their time and energy to the other person’s cause believes it is a worthy cause themselves.

For instance, let’s say I believed that helping Martin Luther King’s causes were important. If I believe in it, then it is my cause as well. Let’s say Martin Luther King had decided violence was the only way and I disagreed with that, then pull out and work towards peace. Ugh, I guess I hardly ever work for someone else’s purpose unless I believe in it or it benefits me or maybe if if if I love that person enough to help them out even if I think their idea is crap. But if I choose to do that then I would feel good about helping them.

Or let’s say that I believe an inventor can make a big difference and then find out the inventor was wrong and the project impossible, I think this still wouldn’t bother me so much because I value my own intensions. But it depends on how much I had invested into it, I guess, but in general it had become my own purpose, so it wouldn’t feel like a waste. Also we had learned from the situation. Objectively if someone a hundred years from now learned from our mistakes but succeeded in the invention and the invention did benefit the world then objectively the time was not a waste... so the nature of the cause is the important thing, in my opinion and the judgement to determine if that cause is valuable or not.

Anyway for my own peace of mind, to know yourself and discern why you are doing what you are doing, what you believe will make a difference, etc.apart from the relationship and as part of the relationship to the other person is helpful. I don’t really think a person should go against their own purpose or beliefs ans id they do willingly then they must have a bigger belief that trumps the other ones— like love. But this had better be clear to them, though hat they are doing and why.

I can imagine maybe for someone who just supports someone without examining their own purpose and beliefs about the project that if the relationship crumbles it might be a much harder blow than to someone who knows their own purpose when they decide with clarity that they are going to back something and why.

A trick for someone like this might be to ask if they would back this cause if their loved ones were not involved (this is what Fi does, anyway), and if you go into it then at least you’re clear about your own purpose.

I actually don’t think I involve myself in anything without being aware of my own purpose... I will have to try to think if this is not true in every case...but I can’t think of any. But this is just true with Fi, that I’m going to do what I think is right no matter what so it hardly would ever feel like I’m choosing to do anything I don’t believe in myself.

I think it’s also important to not ask other people to support causes they don’t agree with/believe in or even adopt ways to do things that are not their own ways to do things. Otherwise you case moral dilemmas for them that might be very difficult.
 
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#13 ·
@IamAlexa. Another person can have a cause/purpose that is similar to your own cause/purpose and can even further your cause/purpose. It takes analysis/ discernment and most of all knowing your own self— your own cause/purpose and beliefs. If you have your beliefs and purpose front and center in your mind at all times and can analyze another person’s purpose and cause, you can see similarities and differences and possibilities for collaboration or development. This might not be possible for people who either don’t analyze deeply or who don’t know themselves well. Also you keep assessing so that you are basically always following your own beliefs. You don’t just blindly trust, instead you keep assessing and keep making agreements then allow you to follow your own beliefs. If you don’t have this freedom, then you ditch the whole thing. This is what we NFPs do and are able to see, I’d say. Of course sometimes our heads do roll if it’s our principals or death—like Sir Thomas More or the distributors of anti-Nazi pamphlets in 1930’s Germany, but NFPs are constantly navigating this type of thing because we wont do anything against our own beliefs usually. It’s pretty important who we choose as friends— they have to allow us to follow our conscience and we can’t do that by just bulldozing our way around or butting heads with people either— instead it’s about analyzing and negotiating for shared values. What are your thoughts on what I’ve said? Does it make sense why an NFP would answer that illustration like I have?
By the way, it’s kind of penile... not a good one for me on the inkblot test, I guess. Lol.
 
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#15 ·
@IamAlexa. Another person can have a cause/purpose that is similar to your own cause/purpose and can even further your cause/purpose. It takes analysis/ discernment and most of all knowing your own self— your own cause/purpose and beliefs. If you have your beliefs and purpose front and center in your mind at all times and can analyze another person’s purpose and cause, you can see similarities and differences and possibilities for collaboration or development. This might not be possible for people who either don’t analyze deeply or who don’t know themselves well. Also you keep assessing so that you are basically always following your own beliefs. You don’t just blindly trust, instead you keep assessing and keep making agreements then allow you to follow your own beliefs. If you don’t have this freedom, then you ditch the whole thing. This is what we NFPs do and are able to see, I’d say. Of course sometimes our heads do roll if it’s our principals or death—like Sir Thomas More or the distributors of anti-Nazi pamphlets in 1930’s Germany, but NFPs are constantly navigating this type of thing because we wont do anything against our own beliefs usually. It’s pretty important who we choose as friends— they have to allow us to follow our conscience and we can’t do that by just bulldozing our way around or butting heads with people either— instead it’s about analyzing and negotiating for shared values. What are your thoughts on what I’ve said? Does it make sense why an NFP would answer that illustration like I have?
By the way, it’s kind of penile... not a good one for me on the inkblot test, I guess. Lol.
Hmm so the NFP will see first that whether the other person allows him follow his own values/life purpose or not. So NFP will only be with someone who will support the NFP. Which means this is same as choosing yourself (sort of).

I think that 1.) First you should live your life, purpose, decide your values, etc.. first you should do this work.
2.) After that we can think of collaborating with some other person.

Even if we don't do the 2nd one, things will work. But in case if we did the 2nd but didn't do the 1st part then what we get is "wastage of our life".
Which is more important? Living your life purpose? Or walking on someone else's purpose?
 
#14 ·
@Llyralen Jung on the extraverted intuitive:
This attitude has immense dangers -- all too easily the intuitive may squander his life. He spends himself animating men and things, spreading around him an abundance of life -- a life, however, which others live, not he. Were he able to rest with the actual thing, he would gather the fruit of his labours; yet all too soon must he be running after some fresh possibility, quitting his newly planted field, while others reap the harvest. In the end he goes empty away. But when the intuitive lets things reach such a pitch, he also has the unconscious against him. The unconscious of the intuitive has a certain similarity with that of the sensation-type. Thinking and feeling, being relatively repressed, produce infantile and archaic thoughts and feelings in the unconscious, which may be compared [p. 467] with those of the countertype. They likewise come to the surface in the form of intensive projections, and are just as absurd as those of the sensation-type, only to my mind they lack the other's mystical character; they are chiefly concerned with quasi-actual things, in the nature of sexual, financial, and other hazards, as, for instance, suspicions of approaching illness. This difference appears to be due to a repression of the sensations of actual things. These latter usually command attention in the shape of a sudden entanglement with a most unsuitable woman, or, in the case of a woman, with a thoroughly unsuitable man; and this is simply the result of their unwitting contact with the sphere of archaic sensations. But its consequence is an unconsciously compelling tie to an object of incontestable futility. Such an event is already a compulsive symptom, which is also thoroughly characteristic of this type. In common with the sensation-type, he claims a similar freedom and exemption from all restraint, since he suffers no submission of his decisions to rational judgment, relying entirely upon the perception of chance, possibilities. He rids himself of the restrictions of reason, only to fall a victim to unconscious neurotic compulsions in the form of oversubtle, negative reasoning, hair-splitting dialectics, and a compulsive tie to the sensation of the object. His conscious attitude, both to the sensation and the sensed object, is one of sovereign superiority and disregard. Not that he means to be inconsiderate or superior -- he simply does not see the object that everyone else sees; his oblivion is similar to that of the sensation-type -- only, with the latter, the soul of the object is missed. For this oblivion the object sooner or later takes revenge in the form of hypochondriacal, compulsive ideas, phobias, and every imaginable kind of absurd bodily sensation. [p. 468]
 
#17 ·
I love Jung, we’ve read it before. Every coin has 2 sides. I still see you as Ne dom, this message to me included. By the way I still care about you very much, my friend.
 
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#22 ·
@IamAlexa So according to your logic I was wasting my time by trying to help you out through your troubles?
Then everyone since the beginning of time is just wasting their time by helping a stranger, or a wounded animal, or collecting garbage from the streets and beaches.
What I'm getting at is that I don't consider my time wasted if I objectively make things better. But I also get that you're trying to assess as to where to draw the line, and that is I think circumstantial.
 
#23 ·
What you did by helping me was -- you just spent a few moments of your life in helping me.
The word "purpose" here does not necessarily mean that "we have to help someone". Charity is different.

I myself have a purpose to heal as many people as possible. It does not mean that I am wasting my life or I am fulfilling someone else's purpose.

Let me give a simple basic explanation through an example:- If my dad wants me to be in a certain way, to live in a certain way, according to some criterias ------> If I do this, then I am fulfilling someone else's purpose and I am really not taking any time to even evaluate my purpose/what I want.
My life is wasted. For sure. And I regret it. Because I spent my life fulfilling someone else's purpose.
It was my choice to fulfill someone else's purpose. I did this happily. Only to regret later. Wasted 24 hours of life. Not a small loss. I considered their purpose as mine.
 
#24 · (Edited)
Aside from what have already been written, in both positive or negative aspect of “following someone else’s purpose”, my honest yet impolite take on this topic is:

“Oh, another IamAlexa’s venting thread. Written in an indirect form.”

Overall I can’t agree with the chart as it doesn’t take in account the notion of interdependency. Also, each notion isn’t properly defined.
 
#27 ·
I will probably not reply anywhere on this forum from now onwards, but still-

Atleast Mostoner was criticising me on my vents and even analysed my venting threads in order to push me in the right direction but this--
“Oh, another IamAlexa’s venting thread. Written in an indirect form.”
Thank you. I will keep a note to not share any info over PerC and only to people in real life.



But, anyways, I wasn't venting. I was just sharing some piece of information that I thought was very valuable for my life. I have done this a lot of times. I have shared the learnings and information which have affected my life so that someone can also benifit. So that NF people who are prone to take on other people's life purposes don't do this.

I do not need to vent because the guy which you all call as troller or insensitive, helps me happily at each point of time and my improvement is like 100X. So I do not need to vent anywhere.
Thank you.
 
#28 · (Edited)
My implicit point is that I believe “your shared thoughts” are emotionally charged and heavily influenced by your current venting subjects.

Venting is fine, I’d even say, healthy. But trying to assess general truths or advices while being in a venting mood is, from my point of view, a terrible idea.

I also believe that some people on the thread that don’t agree with your initial take are worried about you, and are trying to help you by trying to tell you that following someone else’s purpose isn’t necessarily a waste of life. I hope you’ll be able to see it one day.

Anyway, sorry if I hurt your feelings in some ways. Good luck, and take care.
 
#31 ·
@IamAlexa , are you all right? Feel free to message me if you wanna vent.

I've seen this thread for a while now but I didn't respond to it because my knee-jerk reaction to the opening was decidedly negative. And I decided I had neither the time nor the emotional / mental capacity to make a fair comment. I have some free time and a little brain now, so...

First thing is that I am defensive with the way I use my time. Yes, I waste time, but whether that is from working on "my" purposes or "other people's" purposes, I'd rather not say. One, that's too personal, and Two, just thinking about it from that angle gives me a bad feeling in the stomach. Why?

Time wasted on my own purposes = "selfish" , "greedy" , "insensitive"
Time wasted on other people's purposes = "doormat" , "pushover" , "no self-determination"

- None of which are accurate!

Digging a tiny bit deeper, I notice that I might be harsh enough to say that I've "wasted my life" but I'd never tell another person that they've wasted theirs. "Wasted life" is nonsense jargon for me, and when I tell myself I have done such, that's just me being melodramatic. The truth is waste happens in every day life; we wait, we sweat, we shit, we create garbage. That is part of life, and anyone trying to live a waste-free life is in danger of overanalyzing to the point of losing the point of the experience.

I mean I get it, some people want to be effective and efficient as if Total Quality Management applies to individuals. You want to imrove yourself and get the most out of life. But there are many other ways to live. As many and as messy as you want.
 
#32 ·
@Fennel That was a really good post, and I guess it somehow communicated my reaction as well, better than I could do myself. Especially the notion of waste, which most people would see as just that, a waste. But good system design makes the waste reuseable or beneficial to the system you've created, to the point of the waste not being waste but something of a necessity for the thrivin of that said system. It all depends how the different aspects are aligned. This is applicable to anything, really.
 
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