Love, Lei

(And Why Extroverts Are Overrated)

This is the title of an article from an issue of TIME magazine, and I found it to be highly intriguing. Here’s a few snippets from it, in case you’re interested:

• Introverted people aren’t bothered by social situations, they just prefer not to engage.
• Our culture expects people to be outgoing and sociable. It’s the unstated norm, and against that norm introverts stand out as seemingly problematic.
• Introverts may be able to fit all their friends in a phone booth, but those relationships tend to be deep and rewarding.
• Introverts are more cautious and deliberate than extroverts, but that means they tend to think things through more thoroughly, which means they can often make smarter decisions.
• Introverts are better at listening— which, after all, is easier to do if you’re not talking— and that in turn can make them better business leaders, especially if their employees feel empowered to act on their own initiative.
• The very fact that introverts are more sensitive to their environment often means they’re fully aware that they appear out of step with the expectations of others, and they can easily internalize that criticism. 
• The key is balancing three equal but very different identities. There’s our mostly inborn personality, the one that wants us to be introverted or extroverted; that’s the biogenic identity. There are the expectations of our culture, family and religion— the sociogenic identity. And then there are our personal desires and our sense of what matters— the ideogenic identity.