You put 120 % into it. The result is great.
And you still know it wasn’t enough.
Someone praises you, and you hear only that one reservation at the end. You finish something you could be proud of, and instead of joy comes “it could have been better”. Meanwhile next to you sits a person who hands in half of that and sleeps like a baby. This isn’t about being hard-working, nor about the self-confidence from the handbooks. It’s the fifth letter of personality typology, the one almost nobody talks about. And I write about it partly because I have it myself: I’m turbulent.
Where you get the feeling that you’re enough
This letter says one single thing: whether you have your sense of worth pre-installed, or whether you look for it outside.
Assertive was born with inner calm in the standard kit. Somewhere deep down it’s set that “I and my work have worth”, and so the outside wind doesn’t move him much. Criticism doesn’t break him, a mistake doesn’t eat him, stress slides off him. Picture a tree that barely bends in a gale.
Turbulent doesn’t have this feeling from the factory. He looks for his worth outside: in performance, in results, in other people’s eyes. In the wind his tree bends a lot. That’s why he puts 120 percent into things, why he’s a perfectionist and why his own work drains him so much: he keeps giving more than he has. The results tend to be great. So does the bill for them.
And one more substantial thing: this letter writes itself into all the others. A turbulent introvert doubts differently from a turbulent extravert, a turbulent planner whips himself with a system and a turbulent perceiver whips himself for not having one. That’s why it’s sometimes called the fifth letter: it isn’t next to those four, it’s underneath them.
More of an assertive
Worth pre-installed. The tree doesn’t bend.
- Stays calm under pressure, stress falls off him fast
- Weighs criticism and moves on, doesn’t take it to heart
- Sleeps well after a mistake, takes it as data
- Puts into a thing as much as is needed, no more
- Hard to convince him he’s wrong
More of a turbulent
Looks for worth outside. The tree bends a lot.
- Gives 120 %, great results, great exhaustion too
- Out of ten praises and one reservation he remembers the reservation
- Replays a mistake in his head for weeks
- Compares himself with others, even when he doesn’t want to
- He knows the word “enough” only from the dictionary
Each side has a gift. And each has a bill.
If you could choose right now, you’d probably take assertive. Hold on. As with all the letters, there’s no better and worse here either, just a different gift and a different bill.
The turbulent’s gift is an engine. His quality grows out of exactly that insecurity: he checks everything twice, tunes the detail, hears feedback, keeps learning. Turbulents tend to be the ones who pull the bar up. You know the bill: perfectionism, exhaustion and a voice that never says “that’s enough, good work”. If that sounds familiar, it’s the same voice I write about in the piece on the inner critic. Turbulence is the soil where it thrives best.
The assertive’s gift is calm and resilience the whole environment can lean on. His bill is less visible, because other people often pay it. The assertive has a blind spot: it’s hard to convince him he’s wrong, and he puts into things only as much effort as he thinks necessary. He does a fifth and honestly believes he did most of it. And when thinking, assertive and planner meet in one person, you get a force to the third power: “I’ll tell you how it’s done properly, and you’re seeing it wrong”. It isn’t him who then goes to therapy. It’s the people around him.
For turbulents: what to do about it
This is my home ground. I’m an INFP and a turbulent on top of that, I’ve worked with personality typology for over fifteen years, and I still haven’t beaten my own nature. But I’ve learned to handle it in a way that lets me live. Here’s what works for me and for my clients.
Know that the feeling isn’t a measurement
“I’m not enough” in a turbulent isn’t the result of an honest assessment of reality. It’s a setting that runs by itself, regardless of the facts. That’s why you’ll never quiet it with more performance: the gauge is broken towards the bottom. The first step is to stop trusting it as a judge and start treating it like the weather.
Finish the appreciation
A turbulent can finish the work but doesn’t finish the praise. He ticks it off and flies on. After each finished thing, try saying out loud, even just to yourself: “I did this well.” It sounds banal and at the start it’s uncomfortable, almost physically. That’s exactly how you’ll know how much you were missing it.
Decide in advance what 100 % is
Your inner ruler will always show “not enough”, so replace it with an outer one: before you start the work, write down what done looks like. Concretely, on paper. When it’s met, it’s done, and the voice saying “improve it a bit more” doesn’t get the floor. Not every thing deserves 120 percent. Choose where you’ll put them.
Rest is a skill, not a reward
A turbulent rests “once he’s earned it”, which never happens. Flip it: rest is maintenance on an engine running at 120 percent. Without it the engine seizes one day, and I say that as someone who’s been through it. Put your time off in the calendar before the work.
Measure yourself rung by rung, not against the summit
A turbulent compares himself with the ideal, and against the ideal everyone loses. Compare yourself instead with who you were six months ago. That’s the only fair yardstick you have, and surprisingly you usually win on it.
For assertives: what to do about it
You’re probably reading this because you live or work with some turbulent. Two things for you and one for the two of you.
Ask actively for feedback. Your wiring won’t give you a signal that something is wrong, not even when it is. Ask the people around you now and then: “What’s it like working with me? What should I do differently?” And then stand the answer without defending yourself. It’s your only route to the blind spot.
Recount your “done”. When you feel you’ve done most of it, check. Bluntly, if you like: what specifically is finished and what would the other person say? You’ll spare yourself a lot of conflicts with people who read your calm as indifference.
And for the two of you: a turbulent next to an assertive easily feels inferior, and an assertive next to a turbulent feels impatient. Once you know it’s about a letter and not about character, you can start trading the difference: he gives you calm, you give him the bar. Out of this pair come great teams.
Does this sound familiar?
Tick what fits you:
The first five = turbulent, the last = assertive. If you want to see how this letter fits together with the others into the whole picture, take the test.
If you’re running at 120 % and it still “isn’t enough”
This is one of the topics I open with clients most often, and also one of the most rewarding: the difference between “work harder” and “stop beating yourself up” tends to be felt after just a few sessions. The intro session is free and commits you to nothing.
Talk through how it is for me →