ENFP (Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving) type consists of 8% of the world population. When God created humanity, he sent ENFP’s as angels of happiness. To this day, the ENFPs are relentlessly striving to make people around them happy.
The top 5 adjectives to describe an ENFP are Enthusiastic, Spontaneous, Understanding, Ingenuous, and People-pleaser.
ENFP’s have the ability to change anyone’s mood in seconds. They are naturally empathetic. An ENFP can sense if someone is upset, happy, angry, or afraid. They have so much energy and enthusiasm in their persona that they can easily make a sad person happy. The river is the best personification of an ENFP. Like a river, an ENFP would want to flow freely without any restrictions. They would like to spread joy as they encounter new people and life experiences. To that end, ENFPs craves a partner like Earth whose gravity can keep them grounded and channelize their energy and ideas in the right direction.
ENFP type dynamics-
Dominant (Ne): Extraverted Intuition– Keeping an open mind for new possibilities, imaginations, alternatives, and ideas.
Auxiliary (Fi): Introverted Feeling– Forming decisions based on personal core beliefs and moral values
Tertiary (Te): Extraverted Thinking– Expressing opinions and thoughts to solve problems.
Inferior (Si): Introverted Sensing– Memorizing present and past experiences and insights for future reference.
Top 10 struggles of an ENFP-
1- ENFP’s Tug of war between Social time and Me time
ENFPs love to interact with people. Like the Sun vitalizes Superman, the social interactions nourish an ENFP. Getting to know people and sharing ideas excites an ENFP. The superficial conversations or the fake people who lack any intellectual credibility but indulge in self-promotion are anathemas to ENFP. After the heavy dose of social interactions, ENFPs crave alone to process their accumulated information and align it with their core values. ENFPs are fiercely individualistic. They don’t attend social gatherings to extract benefits from people but love talking to interesting people. They would rather stay home and play video games than meet unwanted people. Again, their inability to say no and being a people pleaser, they get sucked into the social events they don’t want to attend.
2- ENFP’s conflict between core values and worldly pleasures
ENFPs never want to compromise their core values and belief system for selfish or materialistic gains. They would like to be part of different social groups and make tons of friends, but they would never exploit these contacts for personal gains if it is against their ethics. They would be reluctant to compromise their personalities just to fit in the group. In personal and professional life, they don’t like to be controlled. They will immediately become very hostile and abandon the relationship or job if it comes to that. For an ENFP, emotional fulfillment always ranks higher than monetary gains. Their ethics and moral values make them very trustworthy and loyal partners. They would rather forsake the bag of gold coins than betray their loved ones.
3- ENFP are reluctant to apologize
ENFP is one of the most understanding personalities. They hardly get angry. ENFPs are very much capable of empathizing and realizing different perspectives. They try hard to maintain harmony. ENFPs get angry when they are cornered and pushed to their limits. When they are livid, every pore of their body feels agony. In these moments, they lash out the most, cutting insults and vicious remarks. They flee the negative environment and seek some alone time to make sense of the situation.
When they calm down and realize they have over-reacted or hurt the other person. The ENFP is filled with guilt if they somehow see that it was their fault. They are quick to make amends and explain to the other person the reason for their behavior. An ENFP will apologize to restore the harmony in the relationship if the other person matters to them. In their mind, the other person is still the one who made them angry. ENFPs hate themselves when they are angry. They would say sorry and would prefer if they are not poked over it again and again. They don’t want to be reminded of that incident.
4- ENFP’s people-pleasing attitude
The ENFPs are passionate people pleasers. They strongly desire that people be on the same page as them. ENFPs are so pre-occupied with making other people happy they often forget their own needs. ENFPs are left bewildered when their attempts to make people happy don’t work out as they imagined. They genuinely want people around them to be happy but overlook the fact that happiness is self-generated. Their attempts to make people happy work momentarily. Happiness is generated from within. ENFPs may not want to accept this. They blame themselves and see it as a personal failure. ENFPs’ attempts to make people around them happy are widely underappreciated. Being a people pleaser also means that they don’t want to take sides if there is a conflict in their social group. They would rather act as peacemakers.
5- An ENFP or a Casanova?
ENFP’s genuine desire to interact with people and make everyone comfortable is vastly underrated and misunderstood. An ENFP loves it when they are the reason for someone’s smile. They like to compliment people on cheering them up. They can really appreciate the unique personality traits of people around them. ENFPs are very observant of their surroundings. They would be the first to notice and compliment people on their new haircut or gorgeous dress. People mistake their legitimate complements for flirting. They think an ENFP is hitting on them all of the time. Some people really get confused if the behavior of ENFP is friendly or flirtatious. ENFPs naturally give an unusual amount of attention and affection to people who misconstrue the complements as flirting. It takes time for people to understand this quirky aspect of the ENFP personality type.
6- The dreaded ENFP Boredom
ENFPs hate boredom. They loathe tasks that are not fun. ENFPs forever seek novelty. This makes them Jack of all trades, master of none. They have diverse knowledge from horse riding to rocket science, but they rarely know a lot about anything.
7- The ENFP’s Childlike behavior
There is a child hidden in every ENFP. Their childlike spirit is such that they can instantly connect with children and animals. ENFPs are proud animal lovers and love to play with their pet animals. They have to begrudgingly switch from a sweet best buddy persona to a total disciplinarian to avoid taken for granted. ENFPs sometimes have freakish interests and hobbies.
8- ENFP priorities
ENFPs are not good when it comes to setting priorities. They are open-minded, but need lack the structure required to set priorities. Inquest to try new things sometimes, an ENFP makes reckless and insane decisions. They want a partner with whom they can experiment and go on adventures, and at the same time, the partner should be steady and grounded enough to tell the ENFP when something is a bad idea. ENFPs find it hard to focus and concentrate on one thing. They get adrift and lost in a trail of thoughts. They can procrastinate the important tasks till the last minute.
9- ENFP’s quest for a life Partner
The ENFPs display a high level of moral integrity and loyalty. They hate breakups and cheaters. The trauma of heartbreak is too big for an ENFP. They wear their heart on their sleeve. ENFPs are sometimes so gullible that they get taken advantage of in relationships. When it comes to the initial stages, ENFPs move too quickly. They want to impress the person and expect commitment too soon. ENFPs want to know all about the person. They come off too intense, but the ENFP doesn’t like to waste time if it doesn’t work out. They move on with lightning speed. An INFJ or INTJ can be the ideal partner for an ENFP.
10- ENFPs Career Choices
ENFPs are usually people with / “slash” careers. They can be teachers, “Slash” musicians, “Slash” human resource specialists “Slash” entrepreneurs. Typically, ENFPs gravitate towards people-oriented jobs to interact with lots of people and learn new things. ENFPs are hardly found at 9 to 5 boring corporate jobs where they are micromanaged, controlled, or criticized. Creative freedom and appreciation of their art are the basic requirements of an ENFP. They work well in a team and as group leaders. An ENFP won’t sacrifice their morals and ethics for money. Due to their fun and upbeat personality, people underestimate ENFPs’ intelligence and dedication to work. At work, they have to tone down their friendly, happy, sometimes go-lucky demeanor and strongly put their points forward to be taken seriously.
Read More-
ENFP functions are completely reversed of ISTJ (Si-Te-Fi-Ne). Lear more about ISTJ.
Ayush Henry is a prolific copywriter. He is a professional soft skills trainer known for his boundless energy and enthusiasm. Ayush holds MBA in hospitality and a Master of Arts in English. He indulged himself in creative writing and has been crafting online and print educational materials since 2010.