by Prime Samiento
 
 Are some women predisposed to travel on their own?
 
  This is one question that I posed to myself after I answered some questions in the Myers- Briggs personality test  (thanks Penelope Trunk for the tip).  It was a slowww news day and I figured, this was the only time that I’ll get the chance to know about my personality type.
 
  I ‘ve always been curious about it  having read about Myers-Briggs personality types – in several career blogs. In fact, part of the reason why I mastered in anthropology is my interest on people’s motivations and what affects motivations. I believe Myers-Briggs might explain the reason behind such motivation.
 
  So I answered some questions and after a few minutes, my results came out. I was surprised to learn that I was an INFJ ( Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judging) – a rare personality type which only less than three percent of the global population possess. Some renown INFJs include Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Oprah, Jane Goodall and the legendary Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung himself – whose exhaustive studies on personality types laid the basis for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
 
Fictional characters who are classified as INFJs include Luke Skywalker, The Tin Man (in the Wizard of Oz) and Amelie Poulain (yup that Amelie in the lovely French film).
 
  INFJs are counselors. “Counselors can be hard to get to know, since they tend not to share their innermost thoughts or their powerful emotional reactions except with their loved ones.
 
They are highly private people, with an unusually rich, complicated inner life.” (source. www.keirsey.com)
 
“INFJs are …sometimes mistaken for extroverts because they appear so outgoing and are so genuinely interested in people — a product of the Feeling function they most readily show to the world. On the contrary, INFJs are true introverts, who can only be emotionally intimate and fulfilled with a chosen few. At intervals INFJs will suddenly withdraw into themselves, sometimes shutting out even their intimates. This apparent paradox is a necessary escape valve for them, providing both time to rebuild their depleted resources and a filter to prevent the emotional overload to which they are so susceptible."
(source: http://typelogic.com/infj.html)
 
  After learning more about INFJs, I started to understand why I’m bound to be a solo female traveler (and perhaps why I was still single, despite being in my mid-30s). I need my time and my space – more time to work on my inner life, my journeys within myself, to shut some people out of my life because they are driving me crazy.
 
  INFJs are also stubborn and refused to listen to other people. INFJs have the gift of intuition and we know things intuitively, without being able to pinpoint why, and without detailed knowledge of the subject at hand. We are usually right, and we know it.
 
  But such uncompromising attitude won’t do well when traveling with groups where everyone has to defer to the needs of the group. So I think, like most INFJs, I’m better off as a solo female traveler.
 
  Conversely, learning more about other personality types, convinced me that there are women who will never travel alone (no matter what) or will like die if they can’t get married. It’s not because they’re weak, bad or anything. It is their personality type. They can’t help it.
 
  Learning about INFJ also gave me answers to several questions about myself – like why I have this  "strange” desire to become a career coach (INFJs get a sense of fulfillment from helping others reach their potential), or why I’m drawn to social causes (INFJs are highly principled) or why I was depressed in a well-paid but useless job as commodities reporter (INFJs need a values-based career path).
 
  It is also not surprising that I succeeded in my career as a journalist – INFJs are strong writers who intuitively understand people and situations. We are articulate, confident and goal oriented.
 
  That said, I also find being an INFJ a bit scary. INFJs are the ultimate perfectionists, very hard on ourselves, set impossibly high goals and refused to rest on our accomplishments – whether big or small.  We also have a mania for navel gazing – thinking that by perfecting self analysis, then everything in this world will be perfect.
 
  Since we are all-knowing and stubborn, INFJs also like to lead. And really who wants that kind of responsibility? I’m a gypsygal. And gypsygals need their freedom. The problem is, INFJs like me will never be happy if we can’t have a leadership position.
 
  But then perhaps, it's a good thing that there are very few INFJs in this world.  Because INFJs will never attain lasting happiness – the kind of happiness that will only come from the realization that we are enough in and by ourselves and that there’s more to life than a quest for perfection.
 
And this is something that I have to work through again and again in my never ending journeys within and without.
 
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Did you take the Myers-Briggs personality test? What’s your personality type? Does it shape your traveling style? Please share your ideas in the comments section.