ISTJs have strongly positive personality traits. They are known for being extremely reliable, dependable, loyal, and trustworthy. They are family-oriented people who love to help others, and they have a great capacity for storing facts and knowledge.

It can be hard to imagine how these positive traits could cause an ISTJ to lack in self-confidence. This article will help ISTJs understand how to keep using their strengths for good, while avoiding the lurking potential for their traits to turn negative under the wrong circumstances.

Reliability

ITSJs can always be depended on. They are hard workers with a strong sense of duty, and they pride themselves on following through with what they’ve promised. ISTJs measure their self-worth by how efficiently and thoroughly they perform their jobs, chores, or favors for others.

What to Do

As an ISTJ, your stick-to-it attitude serves you well in your career. Once you’ve put your mind to something, you’ll make sure you accomplish what you set out to do. With your aptitude for memorization of hard facts and your love of structure, you have the ability to work through large amounts of routine work. This level of perseverance is an important trait for any employee, but ISTJs will also do well in executive or management positions, due to their organizational skills.

What Not to Do

Because you develop your sense of self-worth by always being dependable, you can easily overburden yourself. You might take on too many jobs or offer to help with too many projects. You have a hard time saying “no” when someone asks you for a favor.

When you’ve taken on too much and your stress level rises, you have a tendency to start seeing everything in a negative light. You focus on all the things that could go wrong and start berating yourself for everything you could have done differently.

To avoid this scenario, it’s necessary to create balance in your life. Only agree to take on the tasks that you can handle at the moment. You’ll be better equipped to accomplish them to your standards, and then you can move onto the next job.

Loyalty

ISTJs are very loyal and faithful, traits which are extensions of their dependability. They’re traditional, family-minded people who are dedicated parents and providers for their families.

What to Do

In personal and professional relationships, loyalty can be a rare and valuable trait. You're naturally a reliable and dependable partner, employee, or friend. Your sense of self-esteem and self-worth are partially dependent on how loyal you consider yourself to be, and you always do your best to remain faithful.

What Not to Do

In some ways, being extremely reliable and loyal puts too much pressure on yourself and those around you. If someone does not act in the same highly dependable way, you will be more hurt than you would if it wasn’t so important to you. Loyalty, faithfulness, and reliability often depend on a lack of chaos, which is not always present in the world. Life can be messy, and it’s important to not become paralyzed by it. ISTJs can benefit from letting go of some of their tight restrictions—just enough to allow for the inevitabilities of life.

Respect

ISTJs gain self-respect when they feel that they’re contributing to the good of society and the individuals in their lives. They feel best about themselves when they’re helping others or contributing in positive ways. However, their need to be reliable and dependable means that they don’t give themselves enough credit for their hard work. Instead, they view it as something that they should be doing anyway.

What to Do

As an ISTJ, you will feel best about yourself when helping or taking care of someone. You also enjoy contributing positively to your group, whether that’s expressed by efficiently running an office or home, or by contributing to a larger cause that you feel passionate about.

You will gain self-confidence through a sense of respectability that you get from these activities, especially when someone else recognizes your hard work. Getting positive feedback from others enhances your self-confidence and makes you feel both proud and grateful. It helps you continue your hard work and keep contributing.

What Not to Do

Don’t rely on validation from other people. That source of confidence will always be undependable. Give yourself credit for your achievements, and recognize the fact that you worked hard and followed through on your commitments. Those things are not a given for everyone, so acknowledge yourself for your work and accomplishments.

Experience

ISTJs hold facts in high regard, and they store many of them in their minds. They gather and store knowledge gained from their experiences, and use this knowledge to understand and work on new problems. They trust the facts that they’ve gathered from their experiences, and distrust anything that doesn’t seem to mesh with those facts. ISTJs are also traditionalists and like to do things by the book.

What to Do

You have an excellent ability to define tasks, organize systems, make plans, and follow them through to completion. You have tremendous potential for storing knowledge and using it to achieve your goals. You feel best when putting these talents to use for the greater good, or for the good of the people in your life. Always try to do this with an open heart and mind.

What Not to Do

Any ISTJ, if too concerned with their facts and traditions, can become quite inflexible—stubborn, insensitive to others, and judgmental. If you find that you’re unwilling to consider new ideas, it may be a sign that you’ve fallen into a habit of rejecting anything that doesn’t jive with your trusted facts. Don’t resist something solely on the basis of how well it fits in with your previous experiences.

Become a super confident ISTJ by acknowledging your own hard work, remaining loyal and dependable, and opening up your capacity for knowledge to new and unexpected ideas and perspectives.

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