The INFP Songbook

By Sandra Nichols

More Inspirational messages for INFP's from the author of INFP: A Flower in the Shade

 

Sandra Nichols' book, "The INFP Songbook" is an insightful and humorous collection of the author's personal anecdotes and perspectives that will help INFP Healers value their strengths and their unique contributions to the world.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra Nichols
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393548607

Sandra Nichols

Sandra Nichols is a Canadian author from Peterborough, Ontario. In diverse genres, she writes inspirational books about self-awareness and conscious optimism. Nichols has an extensive background in nursing and healthcare management as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Multidisciplinary Studies. She is the mother of two adult children and lives with her husband, Alan, and their tabby cat, Zoey, in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Follow Sandra at www.sandranichols.com.

Book preview

Introduction

People have a hard time understanding INFP’s. I know. I’m one of them. We feel more at ease in the world of ideas than the world of people. Even though we are fascinated by humans and we care about them, we’d rather not be around them most of the time.  We prefer our idealistic vision of people to their company, so we study them from afar. We engage with the ones who are non-threatening and when we find them, we love them dearly. But even they never seem to fully understand us.

The INFP Songbook takes a look at the misunderstood and multifaceted INFP personality from the perspective of an aging one, reflecting on her own life, yet always looking ahead. I finalized the work during COVID-19 isolation in my South Florida home where I live with my husband, Alan. No doubt, there are many years between me and you, and you might not be familiar with the song titles I have selected, but that’s okay. The titles speak for themselves.

Before the pandemic, I decided to use songs as metaphors to explain the INFP personality. I returned to that endeavor with a sense of urgency due to the unbelievably poor response to the viral outbreak, here in the U.S. What was initially a list of lyrics that may resonate with INFP’s became a bit of a rant for which I apologize but also know you will appreciate as the unleashing of INFP rage against inhumanity. I shall remain hopeful, however, like the optimistic INFP I am and share some of the lessons I have learned both in my life and in COVID isolation.  

Each chapter of The Songbook contains the title of an iconic song that depicts our strengths, desires, what motivates us, and what disturbs us. Some of the songs symbolize our struggles and how to deal with them. I was unable to publish the lyrics without spending a fortune for copyrights and a lot of time waiting for responses from music publishers. Each of the songs is widely recorded, however, so if you are too young to know them and you want to hear the songs, you can easily find them on YouTube.

INFP’s are known as the Healers or Dreamers. We are idealists who want to continuously self-improve. To us, the unexamined life is not worth living. We are romantic and passionate. We form intense relationships. We are great parents and bosses. We are intrigued by people and we care about their welfare. INFP’s feel lonely and misunderstood because we are considered enigmas. That’s the list. You’ve heard it before. But, what is spoken of less is our intolerance for division and its capacity to motivate us to bring situations and people together. That is our special gift. INFP’s cannot ignore the need to heal separations.

According to the late American psychologist, David Keirsey, author of the Please Understand Me books and the Keirsey Temperament Theory, we are one of the following four idealist personality types:

INFP Healers

ENFJ Champions

INFJ Counselors

ENFJ Teachers

Idealists are the only NF personalities among the sixteen types identified by Isabel Briggs-Myers. Together, they represent 17% of the population. We INFP’s represent about five percent. The NF combination of intuition and feeling predisposes idealists to help people in different ways to grow and develop. The special gift of the INFP’s is the capacity to heal divisions that prevent people from being their best. Our approach to decision-making and problem-solving is based on a sense of how we feel a situation will affect humans. We honor the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

People think we’re in the clouds because we appear to be dreaming a lot. We’re actually thinking of potentials. Unlike the more pragmatic personality types, INFP’s think about why something is a certain way and what it could be. In particular, we strive to understand the situations that cause humans to suffer or lead them to behave badly. Our perspective is based on the ideal of benevolence as the instinctive nature of mankind. The separation from that state of benevolence is what intrigues us. We maintain a belief that the human species cannot be eternally broken. An individual can be rescued from pain and suffering. The human species can be restored to wellness. That is how we approach healing. We’re doing a lot of that in these troubling times.

In my first book about our type called INFP: A Flower in the Shade, I referred to Healers as the Perfect Paradox. We are a paradox because we struggle with making choices between the values we observe. One example is choosing between our imperatives of avoiding conflict and telling the truth. We don’t want to upset anyone, but we can’t hold back from asserting a strong opinion.  Our contradictions may be confusing, but I think they actually protect us. They may even be the reason our type has survived. For example, we are fascinated by the progress of the human race, but we’re introverts who prefer to study humans from a safe distance. Our introversion assures that we avoid censure or retaliation which would be particularly discouraging and hurtful for us. Being the perfect paradox has its rewards.

This book is for those of you who are already familiar with your INFP profile. I share my insights and my personal experiences about INFP contradictions and struggles to help you gain a greater appreciation for your complex nature, celebrate your enigmatic personality, and remain optimistic about your future. I believe that INFP’s have boundless opportunity and a great deal to offer, but, we struggle in life because we don’t feel valued enough for all our effort. People tend to listen more to the loudest noise than to idealists who dream of how the world could be a better place. The global response to the 2019 pandemic is testament to that theory as millions are increasingly paying attention to conspiracy theories instead of facts. We INFP’s are paying attention to our hearts. We are saddened. However, we are not surprised.

Maybe you’ll actually listen to the songs if you don’t already know them and remember them when you need to more fully understand what tends to upset you. Or, if you don’t feel like it, that’s good too. Far be it from me to advise an INFP how to behave. Please forgive me if some of the songs get stuck in your head like earworms and drive you crazy. They are intended to tell your story and my hope is that they lift you up, help you to value your strengths, and offer some healing messages because you deserve all the love and attention you can get.

The Pandemic

As I finalize this book, the COVID-19 pandemic is well into its second wave and Joseph Biden is the new U.S. President. Stark political and social divisions have emerged in America in response to the pandemic and to Donald Trump’s notorious first term as president. An angry mob has stormed the White House and increasing numbers of victims of the virus are dying in overwrought hospitals. Unemployed Americans are lining up for food donations and waiting for financial relief.

The world’s greatest global power has had the highest COVID-19 death rate per capita in the world. Donald Trump’s failure to manage the pandemic or even care about its victims not only worsened the infection’s carnage, it threatened the democracy the country so proudly espoused. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have taken office and they could use an INFP or two to help them mend the divisions within the country.

The pandemic has resulted in widespread human suffering and blatant demonstrations of human ignorance, greed, and animosity. The social and political divisions resulting from the pandemic emphasize the need to heal the weak and broken aspects of the human condition that continue to halt our progress and productivity.  Why have we done so badly? The pandemic gives Healers a great deal to work on.

My husband Alan and I have been together for over twenty years. This past year, our quiet little house has become a war zone, at times. We are at extreme ends of the Myers-Briggs spectrum and that of political parties as well. To say that our political views during the presidential election campaign were at odds is an understatement. Our little house is in the battleground state of Florida, in both the political and marital sense. I am a green card-carrying Canadian citizen who cannot even vote in the U.S., yet I’ve joined in on some pretty heated debates with Alan about American politics. In fact, my outrage has reached unprecedented levels during our arguments about Donald Trump, party politics, conspiracy theories and biased news.

The details of politics have never interested me. They still don’t. But, I’m paying more attention now. Never before would I post a political opinion on social media or donate to a political party during an election campaign. Until now. It was the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic that piqued my political passion. I am a retired nurse with a healthcare career that has spanned four decades. Once politics began to infringe upon the one territory I knew something about, I started to pay closer attention to the mayhem.

Being a former nurse who managed employee health during the H1N1 pandemic in a Florida health system, I couldn’t believe that a federal government was dismissing the guidelines of its own CDC (Centers for Disease Control). The CDC is the gold standard that we consistently follow in healthcare for infection control guidance. In fact, that’s what it’s there for. Knowing that a vast number of the preventable deaths of Americans resulted from the politicization of a pandemic response infuriated me. That political party sycophants joined in with this charade in order to keep their jobs made me livid.

At a time when we needed more than ever to pull it together, we were separating further apart with a shameful disregard for the welfare of human beings and that is contrary to INFP principles. The escalating political division among Americans gave birth to an activist part of me that has emerged because inhumanity has dominated the landscape of my world. I have been struggling to find the rationale for the disparate response to the pandemic. I have had a lot of ideas about why fear has made humans regress into uncivilized, angry mobs. And I still wonder why everyone bought so much toilet paper.

I have even