ENTJ Crusader
ENTJ Crusader
ENTJ Crusader
The Crusader!
As the ENTJ Crusader, you have the vision, hope, and drive
necessary to accomplish your goals, and to rally others to
charge into battle beside you!
Version 1.1.0 Updated 18 July 2015
There are numerous stereotypes and misconceptions about
personality typing, but here we’ll get to the root of it all:
Cognition, the underlying thoughts and desires that make
you who you are in your own individual way. You think the
way you do for a reason. Your secret desires, interests, and
fears make sense. Learning to understand how you think,
why, and what you can do with it, naturally helps everything
in life go more smoothly.
As a Judger, you are not any less fun or spontaneous, and you
are not necessarily any more organized, responsible, or deci-
sive, regardless of the plentiful oversimplifications on the
matter. Judgers simply prefer to chart a course and see it
through, doing whatever’s necessary to make it work along
the way. Even if it requires sacrifice, determination, or pain,
Judgers want to be up to the task of doing whatever it takes
to reach their goals. Some Judgers may be finicky or obses-
sively punctual, and some may be messy or scatterbrained,
yet all Judgers focus on plotting a course and following it
through. They get great satisfaction from finding ways to see
their will become reality, even if it means they don’t take as
much time considering all the possible routes they might
take to get there.
This is not to say that Judgers can’t grow quite adept at con-
sidering new options and learning new tools to apply to life’s
challenges; it’s simply not their primary focus. And likewise,
healthy Perceivers can become very driven to see plans
through, yet the accomplishment of deliberate plans isn’t
their main focus. The more Judgers let themselves be Judg-
ers, the more they’ll naturally find themselves learning new
tools and seeing more varied options with ease. The more
they take healthy joy in setting goals and doing what it takes
to make them succeed, the more they’ll want to consider bet-
ter alternative ways to make that happen. But if they’re
made to feel embarrassed when their plans don’t pan out
quite like they hoped, if they feel the need to succeed quickly
and simply on the first try, then they might become bitter or
afraid to try anything new, in case the new method doesn’t
work easily the first time.
It’s natural for EJs to forget that there are entirely different
ways of thinking; all the types tend to forget that. Learn
from others, especially from IPs who excel in drawing cor-
rect conclusions from the nuances of situations. Seek out the
zoomed-out perspective of IJs, and the people-focus of EPs
who use action least of all. As you do, you can mitigate the
dangers of rushing headlong into planned, deliberate, yet
unwise courses of action. It can be tempting for EJs to hurtle
forward half-cocked, wanting to just reach their goal as
quickly as they can, but such eager haste can overlook er-
rors, dangers, or others’ feelings without ever meaning to.
Efficiency is powerful, but there’s no problem so bad, no cri-
sis so dire, that swift, decisive, wrong action can’t make
worse.
EJs are sometimes maligned for being too focused on the lit-
tle things, too wrapped up in accomplishment that they lose
perspective on everything that really matters, but in truth
you’re supposed to enjoy getting things done! Yet antago-
nism frequently arises when EJs suggest that everyone
should be like them, which induces those of other types to
strike back. Keep learning more and more about other
types, more and more about other ways of approaching life,
see that there are numerous ways to be responsible, effec-
tive, and decisive, and as you do, you’ll feel freer to be happy,
decisive, and at peace in your EJ way.
Any healthy Thinker will learn to care for the intrinsic pre-
ciousness of things in the wider perspective of meaning, but
their natural focus will still be on the necessities of use
foremost. This results in a direct ability to understand the
steps needed to attain any goal, focusing on the benefit or
detriment of each possible step. This ties use back to the
wider picture of meaning, as “use” turns out to be “meaning
approached through the steps necessary to get there.”
With NT’s focus on the future of what things could be, they
end up thinking of people, actions, and everything in terms
of truth and error: Is this idea accurate, or not? If not, then
it won’t be of any use. If so, then let’s see how we can use it!
Often without realizing it, NTs think of right and wrong in
these terms. Accuracy and truth are good, leading to benefi-
cial results and useful progress, while inaccuracy and error
are bad, leading to frustration, stagnation, suffering, and
misfortune. iNtuitive Thinkers excel in understanding the
far reaching implications and applications of truth and error,
but they should be careful to remember that there are many
other facets of right and wrong, good and bad, and every-
thing that makes life worth living.
Cognition Steps – ENTJ
Now, we can combine all your letters to find your full cogni-
tive specialty: ENTJ! By combining the four Scopes—EJ, EP,
IJ, and IP—with the four Objectives—NT, NF, ST, and SF—we
derive the sixteen different facets of cognition, each with its
own unique strengths and specializations, which all the oth-
er types depend on. And each comes with its own particular
weaknesses as well, needing the support of other types who
are strong in those areas. Only with all sixteen types com-
bined can we enjoy and benefit from the entire spectrum of
zoomed in and zoomed out perspectives, collective and indi-
vidual focuses, usefulness and meaning, things as they are
and things as they can yet become. A deeper understanding
of each type leads to better use and appreciation for all types
of cognition.
Data and the resulting conclusions are your fourth and final
cognition step because they’re what you focus on the least.
This makes Data the weakest of your cognitive steps. As you
stride forward taking deliberate action, it can be easy to rush
past important details that would entirely change your opin-
ions and conclusions about a situation. And even when you
do notice details, it can be hard to keep all their implications
straight as you go forward forming new opinions. This is
nothing to be embarrassed about. Every type has a weak-
ness, just as every type has a strength that may appear al-
most superhuman to other types.
Everyone has good days and bad days; every type enjoys
successes and suffers through failures. Yet we each react to
those same successes and failures differently, depending on
our cognition. The things we value most, and the things we
focus on most, determine how we subconsciously interpret
everything that happens to us. While our Type Specializa-
tion reflects what we most desire out of life, every cognitive
type also has a Type Angst, a reaction to our deepest fears,
worries, and insecurities.
This is almost certainly false, but that doesn’t make the fear
any less persistent.
But since our minds therefore associate these fears with the
earliest experiences of childhood, we ironically tend to run
to these fears as if they were a place of safety. Childhood
usually feels warm, safe, and right in our minds, even if in
reality it was nothing of the sort. So when life gets hard,
when disappointment strikes, whenever we feel insecure,
overwhelmed, or uncomfortable at all, our minds naturally
and inadvertently rush back to these deeply ingrained child-
hood fears. The coping behaviors that result are our unique
Type Angsts.
Learn to let loose your inner Ranger. Delve deep into explor-
ing hidden worlds of precious meaning, and shine a light into
life for everyone to see and live by. Ask profound questions
even when you have no idea of the answer, and see where
they lead. Let yourself develop private worlds of personal
meaning, whether in writing or art or in the layout of your
own space, or anything at all that interests you. Be a quiet
and thoughtful philosopher, and let yourself take time just to
reflect on the significance of life’s precious details. The more
you let your inner Ranger come out in all you do, the more
you’ll naturally stand tall as a mighty Crusader in unprece-
dented strength, complexity, compassion, and genuine hap-
piness.
But when your car won’t start, you can throw up your hands
in surrender and accept that maybe it was never meant to
run in the first place, or you can learn how it works and find
out how to fix the problem. When life doesn’t match up with
what we really feel it can and should be, we can declare that
it was never meant to be that great anyway, or we can learn
how it works and find out how to fix the problems. You are
far more complex than any car, yet maybe the simplistic, ea-
ger dreams of childhood weren’t so far off. Maybe as you
learn to tune your own cognitive engine, you can slowly
grow to attain everything your deepest desires have always
reached for.
Now, there are plenty of people who work very hard to excel
at physical or mental pursuits, yet who are rather self-
serving. That’s not heroic. Heroism is not about having su-
perhuman abilities; it’s about learning how to do superhu-
man good with the abilities you have.
You do not need to wait to have greater abilities than you al-
ready have in order to be heroic. Heroes are those who use
their own abilities to selflessly help others, in whatever ways
they can. As we start with the desire to help, using the abili-
ties we have, then our abilities naturally increase. As we
humbly help in little ways, we grow more prepared and able
to see how the world needs our unique, personal strengths
in larger ways.
Stand tall as you, as the Crusader you are, with your own
style, your own experiences and insights and particular
skills. Just be you, and learn how to get out of your own way.
You can be a hero. You can rally others to accomplish un-
precedented achievements, clearing the way by charging
ahead with vision, passion, and hope. The more you grow in-
to the full measure of the ENTJ Crusader you’ve already al-
ways been, the more successful, fulfilling, and irrevocably
happy you can become, because it will just be who you are.
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