Introversion is a behavioral mode I lived for many years, and one I still default to in many situations. And you know what: it's a good thing, much of the time.
I learned about gobs of things, and wrote down some terms the author uses:
- Core personal projects: for something you're really passionate about, something that really turns you on, you become a pseudo-extravert to push it. She uses the example of a highly-successful university professor whose students adore him, and he has to be speaking in public quite often. But because he loves it so much, he does it.
- Hideout sessions, also known as restorative niches: Introverts are defined as being high-reactive, meaning they react more strongly to external stimuli than extraverts. Large crowds, particularly a requirement to speak in front of them or to schmooze with a roomful of people at a cocktail party, are something introverts resist. Now, put them in a corner of the room with one or two people discussing an idea about which they're passionate, and they begin to have fun.
- Between lectures, the university professor would take walks along a riverbank, and when that wasn't available, he would hide in the building's rest room stall number nine for as long as 90 minutes, simply for downtime to collect himself, to become himself again, and to re-enter the extraverted world that he became quite good at it. But he insisted on the downtime, to become himself again.
- Self monitors: Introverts who view the social scene and their naturally-introverted behavior and manage it to a degree to become more extraverted, if only for a while. Easier to do for a loved one, or in support of a core personal project.
- Emotional labor: the work your personality does to deal with the practical and moral issues arising from exposure to stimuli with which you're not emotionally comfortable - crowds, confrontation.
The book is honest, it is thorough, it is thoughtful. I learned a lot.
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