ESTP. The Adventurer
Theory and abstracts don’t keep ESTP’s interested for long. ESTPs leap before they look, fixing their mistakes as they go, rather than sitting idle or preparing contingency plans.
Very agile and adventurous. They are the most likely of all types to do something that has considerable physical risk and live to tell about it. They love taking action and despise boredom more than anything else. They are very tactical in orientation, especially with other people. They are experts at responding in the moment and have strong nerves. They might be the most persuasive of all personalities.
If you're an ESTP You need to be where the action is. You enjoy testing yourself against the elements. Even if that test doesn't exactly feel good, the immediacy, excitement, and the adrenaline make up for it.
What does it mean to test oneself against the elements? It could mean climbing Mt Everest, sailing across the Pacific Ocean, cage fighting, negotiating, flying through a crevasse in a wingsuit, performing delicate heart surgery, entering a risky business, or ski jumping. It could mean a lot of different things. But the central concept is that you are the test subject as much as you are the competitor. To engage in a test and come out the other side is what makes life worthwhile.
Life is to be lived directly if it is to be lived at all. Too much planning and routine takes the life out of life. You need to be able to think and act spontaneously. You're at your best when you are facing each moment without influence from the past or the future. That seems the most honest way to live. A good day is unpredictable, full of moments where you must think on your feet.
Learning is done best by taking action. A rehearsal involves action. Practice involves action. Other forms of study involving too many concepts and too much reading are a recipe for suffering.
At your best, you take life as it is and you take people as they are. You don't waste time and energy judging by some external standard. The standard is exactly that which appears before you.
When under severe stress you might start creating underlying meanings that aren't there. You might zero in on a particular and unsettling interpretation of your circumstances that seems unshakeable. Dreams and symbolism may flood your consciousness, becoming overly important, distracting you from the here and now. On the other side of sensory reality are the symbols, dreams, theories, and metaphors that tie the particular to the universal. If you spend most of your time in the sensory realm your ability to perceive the other side will likely be inaccurate and distorted. The flood of intuitive information is your consciousness trying to make sense of a foreign world where you have little experience. While it is worthwhile to be curious about what it all means. It's probably best not to rely on these intuitive perceptions or take them too seriously. This is true especially if there's a world-ending flavor to them. Concrete actions like making contingency plans can be helpful.
ESTP Quotes
“Learning to ... live completely in the very second of the present with no before and no after is the greatest gift [one] can acquire.” -Ernest Hemingway
“It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena.” - Teddy Roosevelt
"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities." - Winston Churchill
“I still have a gypsy sense of adventure. I don’t think I have slept in the same bed for more than three or four months my whole life.” - Hellen Mirren
“All my life I’ve known better than to depend on the experts.” - John F. Kennedy
"I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay." - Madonna