The Luck of the 16 Personality Types

At last, St. Patrick’s Day is here, and in my part of the world, it features corned beef and cabbage, rivers and beer dyed green, and cardboard shamrocks everywhere. The holiday celebrates the Irish saint and missionary who, according to legend, drove all snakes from the Emerald Isle. (As summer slowly approaches, it would have made those of us in the Tar Heel State happy if Patrick had visited North Carolina and banished the copperheads from our yards, but no such luck.)

Speaking of luck, as part of the St. Paddy’s celebration, revelers dressed in green are likely to hear the phrase “luck of the Irish” throughout the day. Did you know that this saying was started in America and was spoken at its beginnings as an insult?

When the gold and silver rushes in the American West were making their marks on history, Irish and Irish American miners had a great deal of success finding the coveted mineral deposits. This success brought with it the phrase “the luck of the Irish.”

The phrase sounds positive to the modern ear, but the expression carried derisive overtones at the time. The connotation suggested that rather than using any wit or skill, those from the Emerald Isle were just lucky.

Fortunately, the idea of Irish luck took a warmer and gentler turn, and most people today think of it as a positive quality. Phrase or no phrase, the tales of leprechauns and their lucky pots of gold predate the gold rush and miners’ jealousy by a few centuries. These tales forever link good fortune and the Irish lore that represents the Irish people.

Our staff, always thinking about personality types, began to wonder how luck might play out among the sixteen types. So, carefully avoiding any blarney and telling the truth as we heard it, here are a few accounts of Irish luck and personality types.

Analyst Personality Types

Architect (INTJ)

After months of pondering the never-ending struggle to insert the USB plug into a port on the first try, our Architect finally imagined the solution in the form of a product. (We would share the solution here, but we think it’s currently going through the patent process. You know how it is.)

On the morning of March 17, luck would shine on our clever Architect. As he discussed his idea with a friend at their local Starbucks, an angel investor named Shirley who loved to finance innovative products benignly eavesdropped from the adjoining table.

Pleased with what she heard, Shirley offered to bankroll the start-up and asked for nothing in return. Well, nothing and a small cut of the profits when the product went to market. The investor’s lawyer drew up a contract, and the angel and the Architect signed it that afternoon.

Logician (INTP)

Our Logician played the popular video game Castles of Altoona for weeks. As the game would have it, he came to the Blue Castle of Cresson level. Each time he thought he was going to gain entrance, the Mermaid of the Moat overcame his character and dragged him into the murky water to die. Game over. He tried everything from endeavoring to slay the mermaid to attempting to leapfrog over her to using a catapult to fling his character over the wall. Each time, he sank to his murky grave. These valiant attempts went on for days.

On March 17, feeling discouraged, the Logician decided to give the game one more shot. Out of nowhere, it came to him. Don’t try to enter the castle at all, the thought balloon would’ve said over his head, were he a character in a comic strip. In fact, I’ll step away from the castle.

Our Logician turned his digital character away from the castle. Much to the gamer’s surprise, as soon as his character did an about-face, a new road appeared out of nowhere. By following it, the character was able to run completely around the world until he approached the unprotected back side of the castle. Suddenly, the Blue Castle vanished, and the path to the succeeding castle was now open and evident. “How fortunate to have discovered that the thing to do was go in the opposite direction of the obvious,” he said with glee.

Commander (ENTJ)

It was March 17, and our Commander came into work after her long and tedious commute. She was less than enthusiastic about the day. She yearned to be more influential around the office and was sure that this day would be as uneventful as the day before. Would she ever be anything more than a cog in the machine?

But her manager interrupted these thoughts. “I’m going to a conference today called Higher, Faster, Stronger. Would you mind being in charge and keeping an eye on things for me while I’m gone?”

She agreed, trying to act in a casual manner. But as soon as she turned away from her boss, her eyes lit up, and she formed a broad smile. She thought to herself, What an opportunity to test some new strategies to boost productivity.

Debater (ENTP)

While he sat at BuzzBees Coffee Shop having his morning cappuccino on St. Patrick’s Day, our Debater couldn’t help but turn his attention to a loud and boisterous individual at another table. The noisy man shared with the person sitting at his table that a police officer had stopped his girlfriend and had given her a ticket for taking a selfie while driving her new car.

“It infringes on her rights. Selfies are a form of free speech,” the man bellowed, loudly enough for those sitting many tables over to hear.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the Debater said directly to the gentleman. His interruption started a lengthy conversation between him and the man that got a bit heated at times – but neither contender was ever uncivil. The man with the vain girlfriend proved perfectly willing, almost anxious, to spar verbally with our Debater. The Debater was thrilled to have such a willing opponent. This argument alone would have made his day. But it got better.

“I’m the program manager at WLOI,” said the Debater’s friendly adversary. “We’re looking for a drive-time radio host to offer controversial topics and then take calls from listeners on the subject. I like your style. Are you interested?”

The Debater didn’t believe in luck, and he had often argued the point. But, if he did believe in luck, this would have been it.

Diplomat Personality Types

Advocate (INFJ)

While at her town’s recycling center, our Advocate noticed a woman almost ready to pour a large box of dusty electronic devices into the receptacle designed for cardboard.

“Excuse me,” said the Advocate. “That doesn’t go there.”

“But I’m recycling plastic. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” said the woman with the electronics, rather shortly.

Our Advocate explained where the electronics went and pointed out some other specialized bins. Then she braced herself, expecting the woman to tell her to mind her own business.

Instead, the woman appeared a little wistful.

“I’ve been concerned about the environment. I understand why I need to recycle, but I guess I didn’t do enough homework on the how. I want to recycle the right way. Thank you. I believe you changed my recycling life today.”

“With a little effort, each day brings us all a little closer to being the type of people we’re meant to be,” said the Advocate, feeling lucky to have been in the right spot at the right time.

Mediator (INFP)

Our Mediator didn’t expect to hear back. He’d written poetry his whole life and finally mustered the courage to send one of his favorites to a national contest. It had been a few weeks, and he’d stopped checking his email for the poetry society’s reaction to the piece of himself that he’d turned into words written in his journal.

Suddenly, there it was. The subject line of an email sent from the Histrionic Poetry Society on March 17. “Congratulations on writing the winning poem,” it said. He was so excited, his mouse trembled in his hand as he opened the email. Would he have to go somewhere and make a speech? Would he have to make small talk at some awards ceremony? Did he make a mistake sending it at all?

However, as he read about the prize, he smiled. They would publish his poem in their quarterly newsletter, and they would send a certificate and an “Our Favorite Puppies” 14-month wall calendar. No awards ceremony. No handshaking. No small talk. Only pictures of puppies.

Bathing in the appreciation of others, the relieved Mediator said to himself, “This is one of the best days of my life.”

Protagonist (ENFJ)

Our Protagonist had had enough. They did their best to make friends with everyone. That didn’t mean that all their potential friends responded in kind. They knew the world wasn’t like that. But that guy from World Literature would not stop. He would join a conversation uninvited in the quad after class. Then, almost daily, he’d drop another snide remark or two about the Protagonist into the conversation. Sometimes his remarks bordered on offensive.

“Look. I’m guessing you don’t like me,” said the Protagonist on St. Patrick’s Day. “That’s obvious. I don’t need your approval. But I certainly don’t want to listen to your insults either. Don’t bother talking to me if you can’t do better. I don’t even understand why you hang around. Are you hearing me?” they asked with some authority.

The World Literature guy seemed shocked. “I’m so out of it sometimes,” he said. “I was trying to be edgy, not offensive. I’m sorry.”

The Protagonist, being a Protagonist, couldn’t let a lost sheep remain lost. “I’d be delighted to point out when you’re being mean-spirited rather than edgy, if it’s okay with you. What are you doing after class? Do you roller skate?”

As luck and a measure of assertive behavior would have it, they became fast friends and often skated together after class. The Protagonist proved themself adept at teaching edginess.

Campaigner (ENFP)

The announcement was in a memo delivered to the Campaigner’s work email account just that morning. According to the email, management would be starting each day with a brief team-building gathering. The quick meeting would involve everybody in the department getting to know each other better, air their feelings and ideas, and share their appreciation when it was warranted.

“Great!” said the Campaigner. “Joe over in accounting has been looking glum lately. Maybe the new meeting is a good place to ask if he’s having a problem. We also need to talk about taking up the slack when someone leaves to take care of a family member. I’m going to bring doughnuts. Everybody bonds better over food. I wonder if they’ll let me take the lead sometimes. This is going to be so cool.”

He thought of the meeting’s potential throughout the workday, and, being popular around the workplace, when he talked up the meeting, his colleagues listened.

That afternoon the Campaigner created an extensive list of possibilities for the morning meetings. “This is such a sensational move on the part of the company,” he said to himself as he dropped the list off with the boss’s assistant.

Sentinel Personality Types

Logistician (ISTJ)

“You make your own luck,” the Logistician often said.

If the day went perfectly, he would point out what actions had led to such perfection. He always worked hard to make each moment a perfect reflection of the duties that were expected of him.

In his harsher moments, he would say, “Luck is for losers.” And seeing no instability that upset his life, his purpose, or his work affirmed that belief for him. Fortunately, no unforeseen force knocked down his “stable” house of cards on March 17, because, of course, nobody controls everything in their lives. (See COVID-19.) What’s the old Yiddish saying? “Man plans, and God laughs.”

Defender (ISFJ)

A vague sense of unease sometimes fell on our Defender. Was she invisible? She worked hard. Did anyone notice? She held that doing her job was reward enough, so she did it well. But on March 17, her sense of being invisible sat heavier than usual.

As she walked into the lunchroom, as she always did at 11:45 a.m., most of her coworkers stood around the room. The Defender stared, confused. The company had already celebrated her birthday three months ago, with two other colleagues who shared both the month and the cake. But she alone was the center of attention on this day.

On cue, the assembled group started singing, “For she’s a jolly good fellow…” The Defender blushed as her manager began listing all of her outstanding qualities and accomplishments. She noted the many minute details included in the list. Her boss gave her a stylish certificate, and she told him that she loved the beautiful frame around it.

When they asked her to say a few words, she thanked them all and gently rebuked them because “this is all too much, and you really shouldn’t have.”

But when our Defender finally found solitude after the celebration, she smiled to herself. She felt seen.

“I’m the luckiest person on earth,” she said to herself.

Executive (ESTJ)

“Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth,” our Executive would say to her husband after a long day at work. No matter how much she reminded them and cajoled them, her family never did what the chore list left for them. And worse, her husband never enforced the list. She would come home from work, and her husband would be playing with the kids while clothes lay strewn all over their bedroom floors and dirty dishes filled the sink. Nobody in the family did what she expected of them.

Until they did. The Executive would often hearken back to one March night as an example of what she’d wanted for years. Spotlessness reigned throughout the house. The children quietly sat in their clean rooms doing their homework, and her husband prepared a stew in their immaculate kitchen.

“What made me so lucky?” she asked herself on that particular evening. Taking off her shoes and putting up her feet, she relished a sense of accomplishment.

However, the next evening when she returned from work, everything had snapped back to the normal chaos. But she owned that one special day, and she knew for sure what they could accomplish together, with a little effort.

Consul (ESFJ)

“Let’s do something for St. Patrick’s Day,” the president of the neighborhood association suggested in late February 2022. “Let’s make it fun. We haven’t done anything since the pandemic ended, and people need to connect,” he said with his eyes on our Consul the whole time.

“What do you have in mind?” asked the Consul.

“I’ll leave that completely up to you, if you volunteer,” said the president.

It was the finest party the community had ever witnessed, and our Consul felt most fortunate for his part in creating the festivities.

Explorer Personality Types

Virtuoso (ISTP)

Our Virtuoso opened his toolbox at the beginning of the day.

That was it.

That was all the luck he needed.

He could take it from there.

Adventurer (ISFP)

Our Adventurer waited nervously in the hallway. His art project was due in 10 minutes. He’d put off the assignment. The strange assignment involved painting a watercolor using the inside of one of his kitchen cabinets as the subject. He had known about the task for two weeks.

Painting with watercolors left him cold. He never got the hang of the medium, and something else always caught his attention whenever the thought of completing the assignment came to mind. Now, he faced the hour of judgment. What would he do when the instructor asked him to bring his painting up to the front of the studio for the class to critique?

The Adventurer went into the studio and settled on a stool, waiting for the instructor to arrive. At 10 minutes past the hour, everyone began to get restless. Some students were reviewing the policy that covered missing instructors: “After fifteen minutes, we are within our rights to leave,” the Adventurer heard one say.

Could it be possible? he thought, with a sense of hopefulness.

At 12 past the hour, someone from the art faculty office stepped to the front of the studio and announced that the instructor had broken her leg in a skiing accident. There would be no class.

“Yes!” shouted our Adventurer, pumping his fist in the air before all the eyes in the room turned to him, and he realized how inappropriate his expression of glee appeared. But he’d missed a bullet on this lucky day, and he was feeling it.

Entrepreneur (ESTP)

Our Entrepreneur believed that there were no problems, only opportunities. The sign over her desk said so.

So when the accountant burst into her office on March 17 and announced in a breathless way that the company’s bank account no longer held funds, the Entrepreneur only smiled.

Just at that moment, the phone rang. The manager from the construction site of the company’s future new facility almost yelled as he explained that the city inspector wanted them to change much of the blueprint to bring it up to code. The changes would cost tens of thousands of dollars.

When the Entrepreneur hung up from speaking to the site manager, she noticed a text on her phone. Her husband had texted that he believed they’d grown apart, and he was at that moment embarking on a plane to leave her. Oh, and he’d had an affair with the Entrepreneur’s best friend, who was going with him.

The Entrepreneur smiled. Turning problems into victories was what she did.

“This is our lucky day,” she said to the accountant. “Look at all the opportunities.”

Entertainer (ESFP)

It thrilled the Entertainer in our story when he won the lead in the community theater’s rendition of My Fair Lady. He would be the perfect Henry Higgins. He uploaded photographs of every part of the play’s rehearsals to Instagram. The amateur actor always tried to add a little humor, and much to his surprise, his number of likes and followers increased rapidly. The Entertainer proved to be amusing even without a script.

His meteoric rise on Instagram and his humor caught the eye of a local TV newsroom, and they featured the Entertainer on the morning wake-up show. He proved to be charming in that format as well. Soon, he began receiving invitations to galas and social events and became the center of attention everywhere he went. His contact list grew almost as swiftly as his following on social media. The Entertainer found himself hobnobbing with the most popular among the local hobnobbers.

“All this because of a play we haven’t even performed yet. How lucky is that?” the Entertainer reflected.

Confession

Okay. Maybe we did indulge in a bit of blarney with our stories. But telling a yarn is a time-honored way to entertain others on St. Patrick’s Day, no matter your personality type.

And don’t forget that Zoom and similar apps are perfect places to tell your stories while wearing green. While you’re at it, raise a mug of green beer to the prospects of large public gatherings next year on St. Patrick’s Day. Here’s hoping.

Have an excellent St. Patrick’s Day, and stay safe.