New Year’s Resolutions for Introverts
quietrev.com
quietrev.com
5 years ago, I'd definitely have called myself an introvert- except I used it as a crutch to justify certain behaviors that were actually harming my broader self development. Just do what feels right for you- don't want to go to that party? Don't! But maybe interpret it more as "I'm not feeling it tonight" rather as a consequence of an eternal truth about yourself.
Avoid thought patterns of the form "well of course I can't do X/of course this would make me feel Y- I'm an introvert!". Sure, I'm still more on the quiet "stay at home alone" side of things than most people my age, but I still did a lot of work on getting out of my comfort zone and getting better at small talk, and other silly social interactions, etc, and while it was painful at first it made me a much more balanced, well rounded person. It led to meaningful connections and friendships I'd never have had otherwise.
EDIT: can't agree enough with laynnn's comment.
I would also add a 0.5) Stop waiting a full year to change things you want to change. Resolutions can be made at a faster pace!
Or as someone more eloquent than me put it: People would worry a lot less about what others think of them if they realized how little they do.
Or put even a third way: you're the main star in your movie. In everybody else's you're a very minor side character. Often barely an extra.
This means you can do almost whatever and see what works. Experiment. Say stupid shit.
relevant comic: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/3f/d8/7f/3fd8...
None of these binary labels affect how I perceive myself, they are just very useful in communicating who I am to other people. I understand your point, that there are spectra of manifested behaviors, but as a self-identifying introvert I find much within the article syncs with my feelings, even if it isn't advice I would necessarily follow.
0. Stop letting people tell you that your personality and preferences are defective, and the only way to be a functioning human is to adopt theirs.
It's not more correct to be at home on the dance floor. Exhortations to "get out of your comfort zone" and adopt behaviors that are the most fun, natural thing in the world for the person making the exhortation are... unconvincing, at least. Over time I've come to believe that it's really all just preferences, with one side being at times obnoxiously preachy about theirs.
We are not lesser. The compulsively social have as much to learn from us as we do from them. I mean, sure, work to change your behaviors to the extent you feel is useful, but you don't have to start from the assumption that your current state is inferior.
If you are content staying in, great. Many people face paralyzing fear or anxiety and want to overcome it or maybe just aren't happy with 100% of who they are. If you are, great, I don't think you're the target audience.
Do you think it's the discomfort itself that helps you grow as a person, or something else? If not, what?
For myself, I think I've probably got about as good as I'm going to get at faking sociability. Sometimes that's useful, but I don't see much point in experiencing discomfort for discomfort's sake.
There is a chance that doing a not fun thing will result in longer term gains of fun via meeting people, but strangely when I'm miserable and uncomfortable it's unlikely I'll make friends and influence people. So I'll weight that with an appropriately small number and find that my overall happiness is higher by avoiding the above scenario.
I could of course start drinking to take the edge off but that doesn't seem like a great idea overall. I'll stick in my comfort zone for now, where it's comfy. And there's tea.
Then he "did my chart" on an interactive website and told me my second sign was the same as the first one.
The point is sometimes a little discomfort can lead to benefits greatly outweighing the discomfort.
These "binary labels" allowed me to read about other people's experience and feel "normal", that my disdain for certain experiences or environments wasn't a flaw. In fact, it's common. You can dismiss them, but they've been helpful to me.
I agree somewhat but above is generally not how it goes. It usually is the case of "I never feel" which then becomes a loop from which you never come out. So, there's actually nothing wrong with having a framework/label, binary or otherwise.
Articles like this reinforce a certain paradigm of behaviour as something inescapable or unchangeable, thus limiting one's ability to explore their environment in more productive ways. I believe it limits one's freedom and one's capacity to change.
Sure, you can take a bunch of people and according to any measure that you create, generate enough statistics that conform to the particular linguistic structure that is behind your hypothesis.
But that doesn't mean that the structure is really there.
If you change either your environment or your perception of it your behaviour will change accordingly. If you reinforce your baseline perceptions and avoid looking at them in a more distant way you will not change your behaviour.
I was very introverted as a child, due to some shattering events in my childhood and always assumed it was a part of me, it was my nature. As time has passed I've changed, not to say that I've become textbook extroverted, but I see my environment differently and I can embrace things in a more productive way. I can move between those definitions of interpersonal behaviour and be aware of what triggers certain patterns that I'm already aware of, and move into mental spaces that I don't feel can be described by this binary classification.
Language, as in your internal narrative, can become either your freedom or your prison. You can choose where you lay down your walls, or if you will lay them down at all.
They might somehow look the same, but they certainly aren't and you can't just overcome your introversion like you can overcome your shyness or social anxiety.
As far as I can see, the grandparent's definition of shyness matches my experience with shy people very much (and also the depiction of shy people in media that I consume).
There's no sharp definition of both that clearly differentiates them, at the end it's about personal traits that can't be clearly defined like a math equation, but IMHO the key thing for me is, if fear is the determining force and not your free will.
Please don't ask now about the free will. ;)
Theres this notion of a "highly sensitive person". I hate describing a person as sensitive because it kind of implies a person that watches romantic comedies all day, but, if you take "sensitive" as a person with hightened awareness of subtle cues, theres a plausible basis to think that there are people that just are way more sensitive. Imagine if every sound you heard was twice as loud as what everyone else heard. On the one hand, you would have super hearing, but on the other hand, you would probably hate loud concerts.I'm not saying introverts ear better, but maybe they pick up on things you dont, and maybe every element costs a little bit more energy.
So like, yeah, some people use introversion as an excuse not to grow, but some other people pick up on 5x more detail than their more normal compatriots and find themselves thusly exhausted a lot quicker.
I'm kind of in your boat where I see facebook acquaintances sharing articles about introversion or aspergers and im like "maybe you just need some social skills" but I dont think the condition doesnt exist.
That's why I feel like an introvert; socializing with people is fun, but will eventually drain me.
But there is a very real difference between the two groups in terms of how they 'recharge' or 'relax'. I'm an introvert, which is to say that I prefer to spend time on my own to mentally relax. I am perfectly capable of socialising - and need to as much as anyone else - I just need to balance it with alone time.
Socialising to me is exhausting. I need it, I enjoy it, but it is work and it tires me out. Others recharge from the socialising, and in that context it's useful and important information.
Growing up, I had a lot of people tell me that I needed to "Get outside [my] comfort zone," "socialize more," and "push [myself]." None of those things ever made me happy. They just drained me emotionally, and I couldn't wait to get home and read, write, or program something by myself.
As the author mentioned in resolution 1, introverts have limited energy for socializing. It drains us. It's not about being cowardly and shy, and having to muster up our courage and break through some social barrier that is holding us back. It is more like running on a treadmill at the gym. Eventually, you're going to get tired and worn out. It isn't like you can push through some invisible mental barrier and then run and run forever. Socializing is like running on a treadmill for introverts. It wears us out. I think a lot of people, even introverts, don't really understand this. Extroverts are charged emotionally by social activities. Introverts are drained. Therefore, it doesn't make sense for an introvert to just suck it up and act like an extrovert.
That's a horrible one. Minor details are the bricks of a relationship, the closer you are the more bricks--in quantity or quality--you contribute. If you don't have any bricks to offer, it is difficult to establish or to sustain a relationship. For instance, small after work gatherings often seem a waste of time, especially to those who aren't innately fond of socializing or unable to proficiently judge the value of such, yet exactly these have a chance to provide a more intimate atmosphere. Also, even a single wasteful meet-up might count as a step and with some number of steps you'd also cover a bit of distance.
As such, it isn't that there aren't meaningless meetings but it's the recommendation to evaluate and avoid such that is misleading.
Instead, one should be aware that because one has to invest energy to socialize one automatically tends to avoid doing so at all, which again reduces the amount one can store. Hence, do not avoid spending your energy supply but learn to judge the highest and to improve your returns on investment. What good return supposed to be is subjective but one shouldn't forget that profound happiness and success is build not suddenly acquired.
>7. Have more meaningful conversations and less small talk. Research suggests that the happiest people have twice as many meaningful conversations—and do less surface-level chitchat—than the unhappiest.
Avoiding small talk won't lead you to more meaningful discussions. It's common sense that people are happier if they found someone to converse with more in-depth but that doesn't reduce the value of small talk. You can't reach the station of happiness by skipping the traveling part, and traveling is often like long grinding work.
By the way, inversion isn't about the ability to socialize. The lack thereof is just a consequence of a more isolated course of life.
I'm seriously asking myself how anyone can enjoy these.
Not to mention that it is on you to set the bar of the relationship you want to pursue and I never implied otherwise.
Where does it say that? I read it as you should just embrace your introvert gut-feeling and not attend social events just because it would be "abnormal" not to. I struggle with this myself and think it's a great advice. Some people are just not the social type and there's nothing wrong with that.
That doesn't mean there's no small talk at a hacker meetup, but rather, if I'm looking to optimize the number of deep conversations to chitchat, some social settings are better than others.
So avoiding "normal" bar chitchat to attend meet-ups focused on topics with deep potential does lead to more meaningful discussions.
(And hacker meetups are fun in that sometimes, people join on deep conversations and only then feel comfortable moving on to small talk, rather than the usual reverse.)
Starting out with a topical interaction is often the easiest way to establish a relationship and one can become quite close despite restricting each other to serious topics. But, there will always be a serious limit to how far you can go with just that. It is quite difficult to call someone a friend if you never shared something personal and trivia, but it works well if your aim is to stop at a working relationship with that colleague.
And don't forget that the 7th point is about the general approach to socializing or life rather than specific gatherings only, hence my broad descriptions.
>I'm about 100x as likely to have a serious conversation at a hacker meetup as a random night at the bar.
That is actually not a valid comparison. If you meet with someone of some common interest in a bar there's little preventing you from having a serious debate. You just need to seek out a location that allows you to converse comfortably.
Then at some point the term "ambivert" became popularized, with claims the majority of people fall into a vague middle category (http://www.today.com/health/winning-personality-advantages-b...). But this doesn't really clarify anything to me, from what I can tell it just adds another label onto a spectrum that isn't well-defined.
I'd love clarification on this, especially if anyone has a good authoritative source on it.
You might be interested in learning more about the Kolbe ($$) test. It is better than the well-known Myers-Briggs test.
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A very basic definition is that introverts have a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments.
This means that introverts tend to enjoy quiet concentration, listen more than talk and think before they speak. They tend think more and focus on quality over quantity in most things and tend to focus intently on a single project at a time (i.e. friendships and how they engage projects and hobbies at work/during free time).
Extroverts are energized by social situations and tend to be multi-taskers who think out loud and therefore need others' feedback to validate their ideas or nudge them in the right direction.
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I highly recommend the book, especially if you think you're an introvert or have difficulty accepting yourself as one. It really helped me see that it was OK being introverted and that there were certain advantages that extroverts don't have
What does that make me - someone who's sometimes introverted and sometimes extroverted? In that case these labels aren't very useful are they? Not to mention everything is relative. I'm more social than the average software engineer, but less social than the average salesperson.
My take is that some people are well characterized by being on one side of a dichotomy - say, introvert/extrovert, or analytical/intuitive. They really get something out of discussions like in TFA, because they fit the class. And the fit can provide a powerful high-level diagnostic on a lot of otherwise inchoate feelings.
But, some folks are not well captured by the dichotomy - like yourself. These people tend to say that TFA is reductive and simplistic, and does not capture reality.
And both sets of people are right. For themselves.
The popular understanding of introversion and extraversion has necessarily simplified the whole set up to 'loud, socialising people', and 'quiet, solitary' people.
Neither are true - both are caricatures of the truth.
I think it comes down essentially to how you recharge mentally - you do it in company by bouncing off others, or you do it alone.
Neither precludes the capabilities traditionally ascribed to either camp - introverts are perfectly capable of being social, as much as extraverts are perfectly capable of being cerebral.
I have my old MBTI lit from college, and it seems to agree with that -- extrovet versus introvert has to do with your focus and how you relax.
A common introvert versus extravert trait (and is the main one I used for the labels) is that introverts compose internally while extroverts compose externally -- eg, introverts take a few seconds to compose a reply, then say it while extroverts tend to talk their way through coming up with one. That behavior seems to be the one the other introvert/extrovert behaviors cluster around. (It also is one of the fastest to bother the other -- expecting them to compose in the opposite style.)
Ask yourself, do you ever see blogs, articles, etc. extolling the virtues of being extroverted or making declarations like this article? No, it's just sort of taken for granted.
Heard many extroverts wishing they could be more introverted? I haven't but I do know most introverts struggle in the opposite direction.
It's definitely an asymmetric situation...
I don't mind being social but no social gathering beats sitting home alone for me. I can do the thing I like the most for free but instead I spend money on things less enjoyable just because you're supposed to be social.
Write them. Read them. Live them.
If you see social interaction closely (but not too closely), you will notice it is best kept uncomplicated, low on substance and meaning with absolutely no expectations from others or from you and the attempt to finding a faint sense of connection.
With this in mind, you will realize, uncomplicated things are usually obvious and hence go unnoticed like what you wore to work on the last day of 2016. Thats a conversation starter right there.
When stereotyped, new years eve is about partying or just staying home or something else. Either can continue the conversation further for a couple more sentences.
And if all you care about is telling this to someone you bump into at the water cooler, you're likely to hear something similarly dumb and irrelevant to you.
But, lo and behold, you just had a social interaction. Uncomplicated, light, useless and just that.
Unfortunately, right now, you won't get things to talk about off the top of your mind. So making a list is a life saver.
Here are a few samples: TVs have gotten slimmer over the years. But not people. Being a traveller vs a tourist How your teacher from 4th grade looks so similar to someone you bumped into on your way here. Indian food.
Each can be connected to the next in more than 3 ways if you think :)
After 20 conversations like these, you'll just get good at them. And since you have a list of good conversations, you can always fall back to tried and tested ones. One misconception is that social interaction should just be natural. Puh-lease. Just do this, feel better and do what you really should be doing.
But for me, time spent by myself isn't an empty expanse that I'm too scared to fill with socializing. It's absolutely vital to me, it's when I can really think, write, read, be creative, experience my emotions, etc.
I'm fine with socializing (preferably in a small group, with close friends -- I don't get much out of parties or big get-togethers) but I need to make room in my schedule for solitude.
After reading I was pleased to find out that was not the case.
Sure, in the first stages you will feel uncomfortable, your heart rate will spike. But I think it's good to practice being more extrovert. I don't mean to change who you are, but leave your comfort zone more, learn new social skills. It's important.
> Someone asked a few days ago what the best habit was that HNers developed last year and what the health benefits were. I realised I shouldn't do things because I thought they'd make me happy, and it has changed everything. Put another way, I don't only do things I think I'm going to enjoy any more.
It's an incredibly powerful mindset to not have an expectation of happiness or enjoyment as an outcome of an action. I used not to do a lot of things because I couldn't see the point or because I thought I wouldn't like them. Now I do those things anyway, more just to see what they're like rather than because I expect to enjoy them. I do things to see what actually happens instead of limiting myself to my own preconceptions. Most of the time, I'm right, and I don't enjoy those things, but that's OK. They're still showing me different aspects of life and allowing me to exercise arguably our most innate gift, the ability to experience. There have been a few surprises though. I've taken up sports I'd previously discounted, and now I've stuck with them long enough I can see the appeal. I'm learning a musical instrument and get much less frustrated because I see the learning process as just training my brain, a function of time and effort. There's no point in being frustrated.
Now I just view experiences as things to be experienced, without requiring anything more of them. This means there's less pressure on me and on them to give me anything. My attitude to them and awareness of them is more important than deriving happiness and enjoyment.
Now I've written that it reads like zen, but when I practiced zen it was because I wanted to be happy from it. The thing with learning is it's not enough to have the knowledge. You need the insight to really internalise something. It's that "A-ha!" moment. I guess I arrived at the same conclusion as the Zennists from a different direction. Only doing things you think will make you happy is just a way too limiting mindset. It really has been a complete revolution in my approach to life. I can't recommend it enough. And it looks like this attitude will keep my brain healthy too.
> This approach opens you up to far more opportunities. Say you have a spare weekend and you aren't sure what to do with it, but feel like going out. You could use the opportunity to try something you wouldn't normally do: go to an event on something you know nothing about, or even on a subject you don't really like. When you're there, find people who are really into the subject and try to understand from them why they like it. Maybe you'll see what they see, maybe you won't. But this curious mindset will pay dividends if you need to be creative, or develop rapport with people, or just want to see what's out there.
I'd had some things going on and wanted a holiday. So I went on my own. I went out to bars on my own, which I wouldn't have done before because I'd have thought I'd have a had a rubbish night. But I ended up meeting a few people, then a few more and had an amazing night. I realised that it was down to me to make the effort to have a good night, so I started speaking to the people around me.
There are so many opportunities every day just waiting to be taken. I used to close myself off from them because I wanted to somehow cherry-pick in advance only those that would make me happy, or lead to 'good' outcomes. When you remove that constraint, you become open to much more of life.
I don't think you should join a cult, but the four agreements have become a mantra for me in almost all the relationships I have. And it's a much shorter list than these 12 rules.
It definitely help me understand my interactions with people better:
1. Be Impeccable with your Word 2. Don’t Take Anything Personally 3. Don’t Make Assumptions 4. Always Do Your Best
You should be introvert by choice, not for some crypling fear and stereotypes. There is nothing worse to discover late in life, that you are actually extrovert.
Social interactions are easy, but it is hard to see through smoke screen. There are books which deconstruct and explain interactions word by word. There are drugs which temporary bypass anxiety.
Do not listen to people who say it is cool to be introvert (and have even playlist for introverts).
Feynman bio is a good start