24 Signs That You’re an ENFJ Personality Type
Did you get an ENFJ personality type result in a questionnaire? That makes you one of the rarest types in the Myers-Briggsยฎ system! Because ENFJs make up only 2.2% of the U.S. population, itโs pretty unusual to come across them in day-to-day life. You might be wondering if this is really what fits you best! Thatโs where this article can help! Weโre going to explore 24 experiences or thoughts that ENFJs will relate to on a strong, gut level. Letโs get started!
Not sure what your personality type is? Take our new personality questionnaire here. Or you can take the official MBTIยฎ here.
Signs That Youโre an ENFJ Personality Type
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You โReadโ People Without Even Trying
When youโre talking to someone you quickly pick up on the โWhyโ behind what they are saying. You read their nonverbal cues easily and pick up patterns in their behavior so that you can understand their motivations and core feelings. Youโre often the first to notice when someone in a group feels uncomfortable, nervous, angry, sad, etc,.
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You Want to Inspire People to Be Their Best Selves
Personal growth is nearly always on your mind. Youโre constantly trying to evolve and learn and improve. A life without meaning and purpose is a tragic thing to you, so youโre always trying to hone in on what someoneโs purpose or potential is and what your own potential is. You want to ignite something in other people that drives them to live up to their potential. Youโre skilled at seeing peopleโs gifts and capabilities and how those can be used in a positive way.
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Youโre Always Thinking of What You โShouldโ Do
More than anything, you are guided by your values. When you experience a quiet moment in your life, you often find yourself analyzing your choices and trying to determine whether youโre living in alignment with your ethics and life goals. You have so many โshouldโsโ and โshould notsโ guiding you in every decision that you make.
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Itโs Hard for You to Say No
When someone asks you for help, itโs very difficult for you to stay dispassionate and logical about whether or not you should really lend a hand. You often say yes, even when your schedule is bursting at the seams.
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You See Talent Where Others Donโt
You have a gift for seeing the unique gifts and special โquirksโ of other people. You believe that nobody is hopeless or without potential, and you want to inspire people to see that potential within themselves.
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People Tell You Their Life Stories
Your authentic and empathic personality inspires people to confide their deepest and most troubling stories to you. Itโs not uncommon for you to be approached by strangers who feel like sharing a secret with you. It often surprises you when people trust you with their lives so readily.
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You Want to Articulate Your Vision
You want to give people a picture of what they can attain in life if they just work to live up to their potential. As an idealist, you also want to show people a world where there is more equality, compassion, justice, and empathy.
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You Feel Like People Squabble About Meaningless Things too Often
You easily see the perspectives of many diverse people, and as a result, you rarely find yourself angered without having a degree of empathy as well. Your ability to see multiple perspectives allows you to be a skilled peacemaker. While you strive to stand up for what you believe in, you also would rather have a reasonable discussion where each person has an opportunity to express themselves, than a real fight.
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If Youโre a Parent, Youโre Not Domineering
You are deeply devoted to your children and care more about listening to them than directing them. Your empathic form of parenting means that you feel that change starts in the heart, not on the outside with strict lists of rules and regimens. Some other parents might give you a hard time, calling you too โlenient.โ But keep doing what youโre doing; your insight and compassion will be a powerful and positive influence in your childโs life.
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You Like Having Things Settled and Organized
You like having a clear structure for both your home and work life. You plan ahead and work hard to achieve your goals. When important decisions need to be made you feel restless until the outcome has been decided. Leaving things open-ended and undecided causes you a great deal of stress.
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You Easily Pick Up on Social Expectations/Rules
When you enter a new environment, you quickly realize what the expectations and social rules are. You can easily sense the general โvibeโ of the room and act accordingly. You value tactfulness and good manners and usually present yourself well. You’re also quick to read up on cultural expectations and rules when you visit a new country/society.
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You Enjoy Discussing โTabooโ Subjects
While you tend to have a good sense of propriety, you can also have a surprising interest in the bizarre or controversial. While some types shy away from discussing religion, politics, or potentially offensive things, these things deeply fascinate you. Youโre more interested in big-picture concepts than small talk, and because of that, youโre drawn to subjects that people feel very strongly about. Youโd rather discuss psychology than celebrity gossip, and youโd rather be confided in about serious relationship problems than make small talk about fashion or face cream.
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Youโre Fascinated by Human Relationships
Human dynamics are extremely interesting to you. While some people enjoy figuring out everything there is to know about cars, you enjoy figuring out the inner workings of human relationships. Getting to understand how different people connect, what they see in each other, what makes them tick โ this is all information that gets you excited and curious.
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You Often Anticipate Peopleโs Needs Before They are Verbalized
Because you think so much about other people, you can often sense what they want or need before they even ask for it. This is especially true when it comes to emotional needs. You can quickly intuit other peopleโs emotions and inner struggles.
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Youโre Quick to Forgive
When youโve been wronged, you can usually step into the other personโs shoes and understand what patterns led to their poor behavior. When someone tries to make amends with you youโre usually eager to hear their side of the story. As long as the apology is sincere, itโs easy for you to empathize with others and give them a second chance.
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You Crave Creativity in Your Life
Whether you enjoy playing a musical instrument, writing poetry, or coloring in coloring books, you have to infuse some creativity into your day to feel content. In fact, according to the MBTIยฎ Manual, females of your type are among the three highest on one out of two measures of creativity (MBTIยฎ Manual โ Third Edition, pg. 101).
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You Process Your Emotions Through Music
Having an external way to process your emotions is vitally important to you. Just mulling over them on the inside can make you feel confused and unfulfilled. Finding a song that echoes the feelings in your heart helps you to feel a sense of relief when youโre emotionally overwhelmed.
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Youโre More Interested in Whatโs Going On Behind the Scenes Than Whatโs On the Surface
You look at the background processes at work in life more than the surface-level presentations. You spend time analyzing situations and people deeply, trying to understand their psychological motivations. You believe that life is filled with layers of meaning, and your goal is to find the deeper meaning behind every situation. For this reason, you tend to see a deeper motive behind the actions and words of others.
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You Often โJust Knowโ Things Without Knowing Why
You get hunches and premonitions about things and you donโt really know where they come from. Thanks to your introverted intuition (your 2nd mental function) you might suddenly get a feeling that you need to call a friend or check on a family member only to realize they were in a desperate situation. Youโve learned to trust these hunches because they often lead you in an important direction. These hunches also give you incredible people skills and allow you to sense what other people need without being able to pinpoint why.
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Youโve Been On a Lifelong Quest for Meaning
You want to understand the cosmic significance of everything that happens in life. You want to know what your purpose is, why youโre here, and what meaningful impact you can make on the world around you. You donโt want to get distracted by trivial daily details. Instead, you want to focus on the things that will matter when you reach the end of your life. For this reason, you are often interested in subjects like philosophy, psychology, religion, and personal growth.
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When Youโre Stressed, You Treat Yourself Harshly
In normal day-to-day life, you tend to be focused on the needs of the people around you. But when youโre stressed, you become abnormally detached and unemotional. You lose your typical insight into people and instead focus on your own shortcomings (and sometimes the shortcomings of others). You suddenly see errors in logic everywhere, and you feel fixated on correcting minor details. You beat yourself up over past mistakes, flaws in reasoning, and more. You can find out more about this here: What ENFJs Do When Theyโre Really Stressed Out.
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You Get Detailed Visions in Your Mind of How Things Will Evolve
You have a very visual way of thinking, and you often get pictures in your mind of how things will develop over time. These images guide you and you often surprise people with your uncanny insight and awareness of future events or implications.
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You Often Ask, โWhat Else is Going On Here?โ
You quickly grasp the meaning behind words and are curious and somewhat suspicious when youโre only hearing one side of a story. You know that there is a layer of complexity behind how things appear on the surface. Your goal is to grasp the meaning behind words and you instinctively read between the lines.
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You Can Forget Someoneโs Name, But Remember Their Life Story
You struggle to remember facts like names, birth dates, or phone numbers. But you can quickly remember what someone told you about their life, the impression they had on you, and numerous other details about their lives that hold significant meaning. For example, you might remember that someone is a widow, a school teacher, and seems shy and stand-offish around people they donโt know. You might remember that they tend to stand on the outer corners of the room rather than circulating through the other groups. You might remember the way they lovingly speak to their children, and how strong their bond seems to be. You might have wondered what led them to be a teacher, and how theyโve coped with being a widow and raising children on their own. You might remember all this, but completely blank out on what their first name actually is.
What Are Your Thoughts?
Are you an ENFJ personality type? Do you find these traits relatable? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Other Articles You Might Enjoy:
7 Ways That ENFJ Personality Types Make an Impact
10 Things You Should Never Say to an ENFJ Personality Type
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It’s a good article. Every number is accurate for me.
However, you included some pics with quick data near the beginning. I agree with the first three famous people being ENFJ, I’m a bit reluctant to accept the next two that I don’t feel have shown enough signs to fit, especially Trudeau who is very anti-religion (which contradicts one of your points about being fascinated by peoples motivations and religion). Lawrence, however, I hands down reject. There is NO way she is ENFJ. She carries a boisterous energy, she is brash, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it. An ENFJ would survey the reactions in the room and adjust accordingly, but Lawrence could care less, and thrives regardless of how those around her feel. It seems more important to her to just always remain “true to her”. She lacks temperance. I may guess her to be an ESFP, as she still has causes she is passionate and outspoken about, but remains unwavered by any opinions of how she “should” act.
Thank you! I’ve actually been wondering about Lawrence lately, so I’m glad to get your input on this – I may have to edit the article ๐
This resonated strongly for me. So much so, it brought tears to my eyes. But, there was one thing not mentioned here that is critical for me… I have to have time alone, uninterrupted. It kind of allows me to get rid of all the other energies I have absorbed at that time and get back in touch with my own.
I can’t tell how identified I felt with this article!
I simply can’t explain myself how, but each number was accurate on me. How did you do it!
You truly are well-known about these amazing topics on human nature. I’m fascinated.
Right now, I’m starting off some really huge projects involving personal grown, and expanding the knowledge about self-awareness on people. As a musician, writer and artist, I believe in human potential to improve.
I’ve always thought we should know how to discover and develop our own potentials — And this article really helps me out on that. Thank you so much!
It is so fascinating to me how well you describeโฆ ME! I do have to agree with Eveโs commentโฆ. We do need our alone time too! That is as equally important to us as is time spent with people. One of the hardest things for us ENFJโs is that people misunderstand our natural outgoing personality, we do not seek to be the center of attention. We are just naturally bright, cheerful and outgoing. We just enjoy people and doing life. Secondly, just because we smile a lot or at you doesnโt mean we are being flirtatious or fake, thatโs literally just us being us. Amazing how much of what you say is ME in a nutshell ๐๐
Hello,
I read the article and I made so many persobality tests throught out my life but never had an explanation that was so accurate and real.
Thank you this helped alot.
You nailed it. Every single one of these traits is accurate.
That might be the most relatable and concise description of observable ENFJ-ness I have read. Thank you very much for synthesizing what I can only imagine as mountains of data into this list…can see so much hard work here; it really shines as this list is dead-on.
Totally me ,every aspect of it…I’m quit baffled. T for the knowledge ,1 step closer to understand myself ,my actions ans thoughts…the person I am and was or I can still become
Every Single Bullet point resonates strongly with me. To be honest, it makes me feel very confused. I can’t seem to find a living community for ENFJs (like on Discord.) There’s no way I’m the only one!
I feel the same, I don’t know anyone like me, i would love to find a Enfp sanctuary. To really feel understood. We’re to rare to find each other.
It’s true, friend. But here I am,just like you. I don’t know much about you. But I find it very hard to make ” best friend” . Still haven’t got that. Though I have many friends, but not that kind of friend that I have always wanted, to connect profoundly with. I’m not stressed over this matter though. It’s kinda peaceful too.
Let me know about your opinion.hope you are having good days.
I feel you. I have known so many people in my life and made friends with them, but in the end i’m alone. I only got 1 bestfriend, and he’s the only person that can relate with me soul-deep.
Every single trait was spot on. Especially the last one.
We should make our own community.
Best friends are often just the best fit for a particular person
Oh my! You did a fantastic job of outlining this personality type. It took me a long time to learn about, personalities, and except the fact that I am an ENFJ. But, I took a class on learning and theories of motivation during my undergraduate degree, even though it wasnโt part of my major, because I was obsessed with learning about what motivates people. And, my entire life, I have called most of my friends โ my favorite personโ instead of their name, because it just doesnโt come to mind when I need it. And yet, I could tell you every thing about this person. I appreciate the insight you share in your articles every week about personality. They help us all feel seen, understood, and not alone in the world โ even though you did mention that this is one of the most rare personality types at only 2.2%. ๐คฃ