Carl-Richard

Intrinsic Health is the desire to pursue health primarily for its own sake or its immediate benefits, rather than for some alternative outcome (like increased lifespan, disease prevention etc.). This desire is something that has to be developed, and some of it can be worked on, and some of it is more up to chance (biology, happenstance). This development is something I've discovered within myself and which is a culmination of all my deepest values and intuitions about life. If all of this seems too unrealistic or utopian for you to accept, I'm telling you that it's possible. I will present two main factors that I think contribute to Intrinsic Health (IH) and how implementing both (to the degree that is possible) will lead to highly synergistic effects: 1. Being (foundational factors; the mystical experience). 2. Meaning (practical factors; cognitive, emotional and behavioral patterns). First, what is the alternative to Intrinsic Health? I like to think of Intrinsic Health as in many ways the opposite of hedonism. Your sense of pleasure is derived from your most natural baseline state of existence, not some fluctuating level of extreme activation or excitation. The benefit to Intrinsic Health is therefore that it's extremely stable and self-sustaining. It works with its natural bodily functions (homeostasis) rather than against them, and I'll also claim that it is not only beneficial for optimizing functioning, but that it's the very basis for a high-functioning existence. Being Being is something that is arguably the most crucial aspect to this (at least in my experience), as it lays the foundation for how the immediate benefits of health is experienced on a purely phenomenological level. The ability to investigate your direct experience through feeling, both on an intuitive level and a more bodily level, prior to thought, will allow you to tap into the organic feelings that is produced by healthy food and physical exercise, and it allows you to more readily identify the mechanism of craving unhealthy foods and other behaviors, namely thought itself. In other words, Being both establishes the connection to Intrinsic Health and actively maintains it. However, when it comes to the more practical aspect of maintaining this connection, there are certain so-called vital patterns of cognition, emotion and behavior that are highly beneficial, if not required (some of which can also induce the mystical experience, e.g. a meditation habit), and this is directly tied to the concept of meaning. Meaning Meaning is at the most fundamental level an expression of goal-oriented behavior. Whether you're an amoeba looking for food, or a monkey displaying aggression, or a human reading a book, it's all fundamentally about the same thing: engaging in behavior that benefits survival. The amoeba's movement through the environment, the monkey's direction of emotional energy towards a target, and the human orienting him or herself through a narrative, are all expressions of meaning, and the definition of a healthy organism is one that is able to engage in this type of meaningful behavior in a successful manner. An amoeba that isn't able to move in just the right way to accurately locate food will have its health compromised and eventually die. A monkey that is not able to express its emotions in an appropriate manner will likewise have its health and survival compromised, and a human that is not able to ground their life in a higher-order framework of meaning (based on symbolic thought, language and narrative) will also have their health and survival compromised. Cognitive emotion regulation Like monkeys, humans need adequate cognitive emotion regulation patterns, and you can roughly divide this into two main styles: externalizing and internalizing style. The externalizing style most accurately represents the evolutionary function of emotions, and generally speaking it's therefore the most vital/healthy style (the exception is when it happens at the level of pathology, for example some personality disorders, e.g. parts of Cluster B). Emotions exist to serve a purpose, and it's to direct attention and energy towards some task in the environment (in a meaningful way). Therefore, if you experience an emotion like say anger, what you're supposed to do from a natural standpoint is to act on that emotion, which could be telling somebody that what they did is not OK, or expressing some disagreement, or establishing boundaries. When this is done correctly, the emotion subsides rather quickly and the physiological activation and associated stress and thoughts about the situation will disappear. On the other hand, if you don't do this and instead repress the emotion and pull the energy inwards (internalizing style), you will create endless cycles of mental anguish and physical unwellness, which is generally not healthy. I say "generally" because there are times where internalizing an emotion is socially appropriate. It's rather when it's done compulsively and not in a skillful way, or in a way that is not meaningful, that you will severely compromise your health. Therefore, learning to externalize emotions when that is the appropriate thing to do (and internalizing when that is appropriate) is crucial for establishing a connection to Intrinsic Health. I severely underestimated the importance of this in my life even many years after discovering meditation, and it held me back in so many ways that I can't even begin to tell you about. I therefore cannot stress enough how important this is. Higher-order meaning The emotional aspect is also tied to navigating higher-order frameworks of meaning, namely daily habits, work ethic, and life purpose. Just like the most basic aspects of life, this aspect needs to have a certain streamlined and less cyclical nature to it for it to have any true effect on your health. When it comes to daily habits, the most foundational, simplest and maybe obvious one is to take notes or make a schedule. Whenever your mind starts bothering you about something you have to do, that is meaning knocking on your door: it has an emotional component that tries to direct attention and energy towards a task, and it even has informational content with instructions on how to do it (the content of the thought itself). This is an amazing technology that you were given by evolution, and the only mistake is to ignore it. The only reason you ignore it is because you don't have a good strategy to deal with it in the moment. Now, I'm saying that the best thing you can do is to write it down. You don't even have to specify "when" or "how" you'll do it (although that is also good): simply by writing it down with the intention that you will do the thing, the job is essentially done. Your mind stops worrying about it. You've eliminated the cyclical patterns of meaningless mental noise, and this is again crucial to maintaining Intrinsic Health. Make notes about whatever your mind thinks is worth spending time reminding you about. It can be anything from shopping ideas, plans for the week, work assignments, creative ideas, life purpose etc. This streamlined thinking should also be applied to your work ethic. If you've decided that you're going to follow a work schedule, your only job is to stick to that schedule. If you don't, your mind will start telling you that you should, and this leads to cyclical mental anguish, which again severs ties to optimal health. If you value your mental clarity, if your value your goals, and if you value your physical well-being, you will avoid cheating on your work ethic at all costs. Same with life purpose. If you don't find a life purpose and your mind keeps bothering you about the fact that your life has no meaning and that you're not moving towards any higher-order goal, then you better start listening to what your mind is telling you. Your mind is really smart and you should listen to it more often. I'm not saying finding a life purpose is easy, but never ever pretend like it's not important for your health. Lack of higher-order meaning is one of the biggest problems that you have to solve if you value your mental and physical health and well-being. Summary and synthesis To tie this back to Being, having a daily habit like a meditation habit, outsourcing mental activity by writing notes, not terrorizing yourself by cheating on your work schedule, and figuring out a trajectory for your life, directly feeds back into your ability to feel alive, to enjoy having a functioning body that is not aching, to enjoy having a mind that is not cluttered with useless noise and that is able to think amazing things. All of this is intricately tied together into one holistic mesh, which is why your approach to achieving Intrinsic Health should be holistic as well, meaning you will not ignore anything that your conscience tells you to do. Your conscience is the divine spirit that tries to guide you towards ever higher levels of love. Meaning is the way you manifest your conscience in your daily life, and Being is how you experience the fruits of all that.

Teehee! ? It's not really disdain. It's a preference. I can eat cake. I just don't want to Heh maybe. At least I didn't test something like Fe dominant (or actually I did once, but I felt the test was really subpar). Anyways, I'll stop repeating the same two points now.

Thank you very much! ? Yeah, it's really all about finding your truest/best self.

That is another thing I'm skeptical about. What exactly qualifies as a cognitive function seems like an infinite sea of possibilities. Thank you! It didn't feel like effort though. It was a pure joy writing it. It was like I was channeling something ?

Interesting. Want to read my favorite topic "How to develop Intrinsic Health" and tell me what you see? Pls? I think that is the most accurate representation of myself imo. https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/78774-how-to-develop-intrinsic-health/#comment-1100296

Who is to say my Fe isn't higher than Leo's? Who is the real INTP then? ?

Let's just ignore that ~40% of my tests had Ti dominance. How convenient Can you predict my future now?

I've tested myself a dozen times with various test (MBTI and cognitive functions), and so far I'm always right in between INFP and INTP, slightly favoring Fi. That is also another thing that doesn't make much sense. How can I be two types? ??? Who decides when my slight Fi dominance qualifies as INFP? ? Not SD. I would go to Don Beck for that ;D

Then you might want to check out the main author of the book David Buss and see that he is listed as the 10th most cited personality psychologist ever.

He is by all means an expert in the field judging by the amount of citations he has in that book alone.

Hear it from a researcher in personality psychology... oh it's Jordan Peterson!: He is basically reciting this book verbatim (and JP is cited many times in it): https://www.amazon.com/Personality-Psychology-Domains-Knowledge-Nature/dp/1259870499 Beautiful book for college students btw.

Then why are you thinking up hypotheticals and not linking stats? Btw, guess my type Oh, verifiable statistics? Now we're talking. Whip em out!

Do it! Prove all the university books wrong ? Do it!

Another misunderstanding solipsism thread. Here is an idea: instead of calling it "solipsism" (solus = alone, ipse = self), call it "unipsism" (unus = one, ipse = self), because there is only one self, and the misunderstanding comes from assuming there are multiple selves. There are no other selves to not be conscious. Everything is conscious-ness.

I'm sure there is a lot of logic behind it. For example, surely the seasons affect behavior, and the mother's behavior surely affects fetal development, and fetal development is crucial for future development, so your date of birth could certainly have something to do with personality. However, the question is if it's a significant factor for predicting said things or not, and that can be tested, and here MBTI fails just as much as star signs do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, that's an odd combo (or maybe not) ?

I know the differences. It's just confusing when it's used interchangeably all the time (MBTI is based on the functions after all). I'm also starting to think that the word "typology" is used in a different way to describe Jung's functions than MBTI's personality types, which means that some of the criticism in my first post doesn't apply to Jung.

Did Jung combine the cognitive functions to create some similar typology to MBTI (e.g. "INTP" etc.)? If so, how would you describe the differences between the two? Is there anything known about the predictive utility of such a Jungian typology? True. But how do you explain how Big 5 has a high predictive utility while for example MBTI has none? I can point out what a normal distribution and a bimodal distribution looks like, and that's pretty much it ? Trying to go beyond that understanding was a sophistic move, and I feel ashamed now ? Next semester though

Woops. I haven't actually taken "proper" statistics yet ? Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that given a scale of 1-10 of any given personality trait, most people score around a 5, and very few people score on the extremes (e.g. 1 or 9). If instead most people scored either 1 or 9 and almost nobody scored around a 5, then that would make a better case for a typology. For one thing, it has to do with reproducibility. If you want to make your own Big 5, you can follow the same steps and predictably arrive at the same 5 traits. The Lexical hypothesis is also a very parsimonious starting point: ("any significant individual difference, such as a central personality trait, will be encoded into the natural-language lexicon; that is, there will be a term to describe it in any or all of the languages of the world.") This seems to matter, because it's a model with high predictability. MBTI has no predictability.

The binomial probabilities approximated by the normal curve represent a percentage of the population scoring low to high on a trait.

Then you can tell Thisintegrated to stop using the two interchangeably. I simply went along with it.

@thisintegrated You're making it sound like personality theory is something people do and not scientists do ? I tried to dumb it down instead of screaming into the void like I did the last 3 times I talked about this. So much for ease of communication ?

Is it a scientific failure, or is it a failure of laymen vocabulary? True. That's what I said What I said is there are many personality models that are more empirically and structurally sound than MBTI. There are also many domains of personality psychology (the cognitive domain is one out of seven) and many highly useful models (e.g. many in the evo-bio and emotion domain). It's all superceded by Big 5 though in terms of empirical backing.

What you're really saying is that it's not Big 5 that is flawed – it's communication that is flawed. That is true. Accurate communication is tedious, which is why people write books. It is "taught" in psychology classes, in the sense that it's briefly mentioned in the introductory personality curriculum and explained why it's not up to par with other theories (by bringing up the points I've mentioned). The reason it's a popular model is because it's rather normatively neutral (no one type is particularly "negative"), which is why companies like to use it, and like you said, it's easy to communicate.