Quick Tips #5: Core Values and Forgiveness

Question: I find it very hard to forgive when people violate my core values and hurt my feelings. What should I do?

Both of the INFx types are extremely sensitive, especially to their core values, because they tend to hold their core values in a very private tender place deep within them, and they don’t often tend to let people even see those things. So when you have the confidence and courage to let people see those things, it’s very easy for those core values to get hurt, and to be violated. When that happens it’s very important that you realise that you don’t start to fall into a story of victim-hood, because when your feelings are hurt you feel like you are victimised.

I am not saying that you’re not allowed to feel victimised. It’s just that if you let that victimisation define who you are as a person, then you become a victim, a victim of circumstance, which then means that you are the receiving end of the world rather than being in charge of your own life and your own future. So when you’re in that victim mode it’s very hard to see anything other than that ‘story’ that is running your victim-hood.

So that story that’s underneath all of the clutter that feels victimised, that part of you that feels victimised by those actions and by that violation of your core values, that is the story of the victim, that is the thing that holds you back from your creative power and your self-actualisation as a full human being, and certainly as full actualisation of your type. The world needs the INFx types, it’s very important that we become as healthy as we can, and that we can really actualise in our full powerful INFx type selves.

Now, when you find that the core values are violated, or that you’re feelings are hurt, what would happen if instead of going into that inner victim, that introverted victimisation story, and you just came out to the extroverted world and just said to the person “listen what you just said (or what you just did) really violated my core values and it really hurt my feelings”. If you’d be able to do that, then the other person would have an opportunity to adjust their behaviour if that was right for them. But of course at the end of the day it all comes back down to this, we all have different values, and what your values are, are your values, and somebody else may not have those same values, and you cannot project your values on to other people, and you know all of this already, because you are an INFx type. You know you have this innate, not just curiosity about different types and how different people are, but this innate understanding and love for your fellow human being, that you understand that your core values are not necessarily shared with other people. But it’s very important for you to voice when your feelings are hurt, own it and voice it, and that gives the other person an opportunity to change their behaviour and adjust it in different way, or even explain where they were in fact coming from. Because it’s very possible, especially if you are stuck in your own story, that you don’t realise that there is nothing there that was meant to hurt you, that they were coming from a different perspective, but you made up to mean that you are now being attacked or your under attack. So that’s just something to keep an eye out for.

So, make sure that you realise that what you’re feeling right now, that there is another way to deal with this, then ask the other person, tell them that they’ve hurt your feelings or violated your core values, and then ask where they were actually coming from, did they mean to do that? And if they say “oh well I was being careless there” then you could say “perhaps there would be a space for a little bit of adjustment here because this is really important to me, would you be open to maybe changing that part in the future?”

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