I am here today to talk about the 6’s failure to land. You can tell a 6 at a glance because it’s the only type who changes their social stacking, their wing, or their tritype on a regular basis.

Each time, they are fully convinced of being right, absolutely sure in their assertion of being whatever they land on, and yet the process of self-examination starts over in a few days. Within a week, they are asserting a different type. Those with higher 3 fixes start writing with authority from this new angle, as if last week being a 5 didn’t exist. And yet, the running on the mental treadmill never stops. Two days later they are a 4 or a 9 or an so/sx instead of an so/sp.

But why?

Why 6s Can’t Settle Down and Stay Settled

Failure to land.

Being a 6 means living with uncertainty, as if there’s something in you that needs to jump up at a moment’s notice and reconsider your vantage point. I bounced around between MBTI types for six years, never able to feel sure of my type.

Part of it is the 6 doesn’t want to be pinned down or explained completely (despite wanting an explanation for everything others say), and the rest is the 6 focuses on what seems wrong or out of place, rather than what works and fits.

It’s like putting a puzzle together and noticing a minor flaw in one piece, which means the entire thing has to be thrown into the trash—rather than the 6 just recognizing this one thing does not apply to them or make them not a 6 or an ENFP or an so/sp. It’s myopic rather than big picture focused, even if they are an intuitive. And it’s worse if you are a 6w7.

The Puzzle Piece That Doesn’t Fit

Each time I landed on a type, I would update a friend with an e-mail about my new discoveries, full of confidence I had found myself at last. Two days later she would get a new one, about how I had been wrong and here was my new type.

And it’s not that she ever questioned me. It’s that within a few days, the itch would start again. The doubt. The questioning. I don’t do Y, so maybe X is wrong. Let me reconsider!

Fifteen years down the line, I’m now sure of being right about my type. Yet, I am still a 6, so if someone tells me they think I’m wrong, I start to doubt, question, and re-examine it.

It’s insane, but it’s my default. What if they are right? What if I am wrong? What if I didn’t read enough? I search my brain and try to contort myself into a new shape, and reach a decision, and two days later, am picking at it again, like someone peeling off a scab they can’t leave alone.

How Others’ Opinions Hijack Our Certainty

The 6w7 is never completely sure. There is always room for doubt.

And we cannot shut out others’ opinions, so the cycle repeats itself. We announce to the world, proudly, that we are a so/sp 3w2 369. A lot of thought has gone into it. A lot of study. It seems right.

And someone goes “nah.”

Our response is dismay. Disbelief. Disappointment. Why? Because it switches on our automatic rethinking. It can’t be helped.

Our brain instantly goes, “Okay, if someone doesn’t agree with this, we need to reexamine it.” Even if we insist they are wrong, the sand shifts under our feet. At first, we deny it. No, I am sure this time! To think about this again is stupid! … and two days later, we are thinking about it again.

Because we need to be right.

It’s Not Logic. It’s an Emotional Reaction

It may seem hopeless if you are a 6w7 that you will ever be sure of anything or land on anything and stay there.

One way to conquer this is to realize it’s your own 6-ness that is doing it, so your quest to land on “your correct type” has ended. You are a 6.

Because you are doing this—and following wherever it leads—makes you a 6.

One way to stop this from happening is to acknowledge and admit that the endless spinning of wheels is not being logical, but emotional, an emotional reaction to an outside trigger (“they think I’m wrong!”).

Learn to recognize that the underlying self-doubt comes from feelings, not from an attempt to develop an ironclad case.

To admit that you are prone to listening to others and self-doubt, and to be okay with that: to simply know it, and allow it to enter your mind, and then allow it to exit your mind without acting on it, and “rewarding” that dopamine hit.

To allow yourself to land without reconsidering it and see how long you can go before the itch to scratch the scab starts up again.

Recognize your own attachment 6-ness in how, when others challenge you, you reconsider your position deep down inside yourself, rather than ignoring what they say (you are not a withdrawn 9).

Reconsidering Isn’t Always a Flaw

While it may seem like reconsidering sucks, this quality of the 6 is not all bad.

It shows our humility, our desire to get things right, our love of analyzing, and our ability to change our mind. A 6w7 is never going to forever park their mental caravan in a toxic waste dump and sit there, without questioning it.

We are the type most likely to challenge our own thinking, to test it, to strengthen it, and—once we learn how—to have solid reasoning supported by the facts.

The Way Out Is Through Knowing You’re a 6

We are never wrong forever, if we can just land long enough.

We can grow as 6s out of this exhausting tendency to settle, leap up, and reconsider, and instead, use this to analyze and rethink the things that truly matter and find out what’s not working in our lives so we can fix it.

But we can’t do that until we recognize that our constant reconsidering proves our 6ness.

Learn how to grow as a 6 in my book 9 Kinds of Quirky, available on Amazon.com or digitally.