I love a book that tells me I’m ok.
I used to wonder what was wrong with me. I despise conflict. I feel drained after being out and about, even if I’ve enjoyed myself. I do my best work on my own, and I recoil at the very idea of group projects. I hate small talk, but enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me. Just the thought of going to a cocktail party with 50 neighbors obsessed with Mad Men makes me want to slice my wrist open with a cheese grater. But all my perceived personality flaws, according to Susan Cain, author of Quiet, are perfectly normal for introverts.
Besides the formal permission to be myself, what drew me into Quiet was Cain’s description of a Tony Robbins seminar she attended in order to understand the Extrovert Ideal. The same one I attended two or so years ago.
Greeters wearing UPW T-shirts and exstatic smiles line the entrance, springing up and down, fist pumping. You can’t get inside without slapping them five. I know, because I try.
Inside the vast hall, a phalanx of dancers is warming up the crowd to the Billy Idol song “Mony Mony,” amplified by a world-class sound system, magnified on giant Megatron screens flanking the stage. They move in sync like backup dancers in a Britney Spears video, but are dressed like middle managers. The lead performer is a fortysomething balding fellow wearing a white button-down shirt, conservative tie, rolled-up sleeves, and a great-to-meet-you smile. The message seems to be that we can all learn to be this exhuberant when we get to work every morning.
Yup. Pretty much an introvert’s worst nightmare. I’d had the same your-shitten-me reaction as my soul-sister, Susan Cain.
I thought a lot about that Tony Robbins seminar after putting down the book. Three days of non-stop bear-hugging, of jumping around like a coked-up cheerleader, of sharing painful memories with a cluster of random people, of being “on” for nearly 36 hours in a row.
If you’re an introvert, too, you know this is how Dante describes the 7th circle of hell.
As hard as that seminar was on my nervous system, however, I walked away with an amazing gift. I learned to step away from the wall–where I can quietly observe–and reach out to engage with perfect strangers. I learned that extrovert or introvert, fat or thin, young or old, all anybody wants in this world is to be noticed and heard.
Something weird happens to you when you–and this is often why you’re standing at the wall– stop worrying about being judged, when you stop judging everyone else around you, and you just open your mouth. You start making friends (and keeping them) in the most unusual places.
Like the Irish lawyer whose office Walt and I popped into when we wanted to understand taxation. And the Dude from Las Vegas who sells dog training videos on the internet we kept running into while climbing mountains. And the chicks I met at a conference in California who became my Mastermind group. All people I would have passed on by before I learned how fun and easy it is to make new friends. Before I went to that jarring Tony Robbins seminar.
Sometimes it’s good to be jarred.
So. What would it look like if you began talking to strangers? How would your life be different if you sat next to somebody on a plane and asked them one deep question? If you chatted with the waitress pouring you coffee, or the lady in the next booth? If you asked the gorgeous girl where she got that killer dress? If you asked the old lady you always see in the grocery store how she met her husband? Believe me, these questions often lead to wonderful, meaningful revelations. They often lead to rich relationships.
Maybe it’s time you took a page out of the Extrovert’s Book, and killed your inner wallflower as well.
When you disengage, you can always go back home where it’s nice and quiet and regroup.
