Last updated on 8 December 2020
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“We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal–the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight…We like to think we value individuality, but all too often we admire one type of individual–the kind who’s comfortable ‘putting himself out there.’ –Susan Cain in her wonderful book, Quiet.
In 1975 I fell in love with a movie called Three Days of the Condor. Robert Redford played a bookish CIA agent in a secret office in Washington, DC who analyzed the plots of spy novels. He spent his workdays reading to see if any fiction writers stumbled on operations the CIA conducted. One day, while he slipped out a basement door of the nondescript townhouse for lunch, all his co-workers were murdered by a rogue CIA operation.
Redford, whose code name was Condor, was an unlikely hero spy. He spent the movie trying to figure out why everyone in his office was killed and why they also wanted him dead.
I identified with Redford’s character because, I realize now, he was a consummate introvert. His co-workers ignored him. He worked alone in the CIA office, contentedly reading and writing reports he never knew if anyone ever read.
When I was a kid I spent long hours by myself in my room drawing and building model cars. On the card my parents gave me on my 13th birthday, my father wrote, “There are more things in life than pizza and models.”
When I was older, I played tennis and played into college. In 10th grade I ran cross-country. I enjoyed that both were mostly solitary endeavors. In tennis my focus was not the player on the other side. I didn’t play someone else as much as respond to the direction, speed and rotation of the tennis ball. My college coach always told us to “play the ball, not the guy on the other side of the net.”
On the card my parents gave me on my 13th birthday, my father wrote, “There are more things in life than pizza and models.”
During cross season, my five teammates and I did training runs through the tall cornfields not far from school, running loops around the perimeter, then back on country roads to school. Even if we ran as a team, I spent most of the time somewhere else, getting lost in the rhythm of my footsteps and the thoughts floating around inside my head.
What drew me to running all those years ago was the chance for solitude. The thousands of miles over the past 30 years have been my time to contemplate, to just be by myself, even if I ran with others.
My wife just finished Susan Cain’s book, Quiet, which we discussed often as she read. Ms. Cain has validated many of my notions about the past. What I once saw as social and career failure, she has helped me re-frame: I was an introvert trying to be an extrovert. According to Cain, this is like being a woman in a man’s world, “discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.”
Clarity about one’s true nature, understanding what ignites one’s soul and what crushes it, is one of the most direct routes toward personal contentment we can hope for.
Clarity about one’s true nature, understanding what ignites one’s soul and what crushes it, is one of the most direct routes toward personal contentment we can hope for.
For most of my life, I thought I was supposed to be outgoing, gregarious, joking, overtly friendly–an extrovert. I remember a conversation with my dad once at the grocery store. We were talking about work politics and I asked my dad about his approach.
“I haven’t been very good at the politics,” he said. “You are much more outgoing.”
It is common in our society for introverts to try to be extroverts, much to their detriment. Cain says our society favors the extroverts. The loud, glad-handing, attention-grabbing individualists to whom everyone gravitates. When I look at my past, at the tennis and cross-country which I embraced, the friendships I built, the field sales jobs I took, and the intimate relationships I sought, I see introvert written all over them.
To prove something to myself, I took one of the personality tests you can find online. I invited my wife to take it too. You can find it here .
The test confirmed it: I am INFP. Introvert. Intuitive. Feeling. Perceiving. (Incidentally, my wife is exactly the same).
When I apply this new-found perspective to my work life, for example, I can see why things happened as they did. There were times that work felt like a frenetic popularity contest. My opinion had to be noticed and appreciated. I got a kind of high on being recognized for my humor and constant contributions to the conversation. When I wasn’t the center of attention, when my jokes failed or I wasn’t included in conversations, my self-esteem plummeted. I became an approval junkie.
There was some deep need for external approval from my co-workers. But the game of trying to stay the center of attention wasn’t something I was good at. It tired me out. I wasted so much time trying to be an extrovert instead of playing to my strengths, which are observation, intuition, quiet contemplation. I am an introvert.
I wasted so much time trying to be an extrovert instead of playing to my strengths, which are observation, intuition, quiet contemplation. I am an introvert.
For all my efforts at trying to be a popular, outgoing, sociable and significant part of the chemistry of workgroups, I often found myself retreating back into my head. At one point, work friends started calling me Houdini, because after all-day meetings and the social dinners and then drinks til late in the night, I would simply disappear. I just needed to be by myself.
As a child I spent gobs of time alone. This set the tone for me as an adult. Though I thought the game was played by being extroverted, my very nature has always been introversion.
“Many people believe that introversion is about being antisocial, and that’s really a misperception. Because actually it’s just that introverts are differently social. So they would prefer to have a glass of wine with a close friend as opposed to going to a loud party full of strangers,” Cain writes.
There is little more powerful than understanding what makes one tick. Had I listened to the little, quiet voices in my head and my heart, I could have been truer to my real temperament. Who knows what life would have opened up for me then?
***
If the notion of introversion interests you, I strongly recommend a read of Susan Cain’s book, Quiet. Far from either introversion or extroversion being absolute personalities, many of us are some of both. Here is her website. Of course you can find her book on Amazon. I always recommend either buying directly from the author if possible or supporting your local bookstore. They are great places and run by people who live in your town.
As always, thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think about introversion/extroversion. I’d love to start a conversation.
-christian
