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Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling, said Jung, extroverts to the external life of people and activities
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Susan Cain |
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The things that interested him, music and writing, held no value for the people who mattered most back then: his peers. "People would always tell me, 'These are the best years of your life,'" he recalls. "And I would think to myself, I hope not! I hated school. I remember thinking, I've gotta get out of here."
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Susan Cain |
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Psychopaths and heroes are twigs on the same genetic branch.
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Susan Cain |
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There's a word for "people who are in their heads too much": thinkers."
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Susan Cain |
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Most great ideas spring from solitude.
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Susan Cain |
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We often marvel at how introverted, geeky kids "blossom" into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it's not the children who change but their environments. As adults, they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them."
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Susan Cain |
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When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly.
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Susan Cain |
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Participants in brainstorming sessions usually believe that their group performed much better than it actually did, which points to a valuable reason for their continued popularity--group brainstorming makes people feel attached. A worthy goal, so long as we understand that social glue, as opposed to creativity, is the principal benefit.
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Susan Cain |
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sensitive types think in an unusually complex fashion. It may also help explain why they're so bored by small talk. "If you're thinking in more complicated ways," she told me, "then talking about the weather or where you went for the holidays is not quite as interesting as talking about values or morality."
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Susan Cain |
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parents need to step back from their own preferences and see what the world looks like to their quiet children.
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Susan Cain |
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If your children are quiet, help them make peace with new situations and new people, but otherwise let them be themselves. Delight in the originality of their minds. Take pride in the strength of their consciences and the loyalty of their friendships. Don't expect them to follow the gang. Encourage them to follow their passions instead. Throw confetti when they claim the fruits of those passions, whether it's on the drummer's throne, on the..
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Susan Cain |
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Why are some people talkative while others measure their words? Why
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Susan Cain |
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Can introverts be leaders? Is
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Susan Cain |
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These exceptional CEOs were known not for their flash or charisma but for extreme humility coupled with intense professional will.
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Susan Cain |
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High-reactive kids who enjoy good parenting, child care, and a stable home environment tend to have fewer emotional problems and more social skills than their lower-reactive peers, studies show.
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Susan Cain |
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three explanations for the failure of group brainstorming. The first is social loafing: in a group, some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work. The second is production blocking: only one person can talk or produce an idea at once, while the other group members are forced to sit passively. And the third is evaluation apprehension, meaning the fear of looking stupid in front of one's peers.
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Susan Cain |
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They found a striking difference among the groups. All three groups spent the same amount of time--over fifty hours a week--participating in music-related activities. All three had similar classroom requirements making demands on their time. But the two best groups spent most of their musicrelated time practicing in solitude: 24.3 hours a week, or 3.5 hours a day, for the best group, compared with only 9.3 hours a week, or 1.3 hours a day, ..
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Susan Cain |
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talk is for communicating need-to-know information; quiet and introspection are signs of deep thought and higher truth. Words are potentially dangerous weapons that reveal things better left unsaid. They hurt other people; they can get their speaker into trouble. Consider, for example, these proverbs from the East: The wind howls, but the mountain remains still. --JAPANESE PROVERB
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Susan Cain |
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I discovered early on that people don't buy from me because they understand what I'm selling," explains Jon. "They buy because they feel understood." Jon"
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Susan Cain |
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We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing ("I was never the same again after my wife left me"), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise (..
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Susan Cain |
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She also knows full well that "shy" is a negative word in our society. Above all, do not shame her for her shyness."
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Susan Cain |
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I realize it's not true that I'm no longer shy; I've just learned to talk myself down from the ledge (thank you, prefrontal cortex!). By now I do it so automatically that I'm hardly aware it's happening. When I talk with a stranger or a group of people, my smile is bright and my manner direct, but there's a split second that feels like I'm stepping onto a high wire. By now I've had so many thousands of social experiences that I've learned t..
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Susan Cain |
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It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They're valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.
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Susan Cain |
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One highly successful venture capitalist who is regularly pitched by young entrepreneurs told me how frustrated he is by his colleagues' failure to distinguish between good presentation skills and true leadership ability. "I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas," he said. "It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a goo..
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Susan Cain |
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In China there was more emphasis on listening, on asking questions rather than holding forth, on putting others' needs first. In the United States, he feels, conversation is about how effective you are at turning your experiences into stories, whereas a Chinese person might be concerned with taking up too much of the other person's time with inconsequential information.
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Susan Cain |
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Montgomery, Alabama. December 1, 1955. Early evening. A public bus pulls to a stop and a sensibly dressed woman in her forties gets on. She carries herself erectly, despite having spent the day bent over an ironing board in a dingy basement tailor shop at the Montgomery Fair department store. Her feet are swollen, her shoulders ache. She sits in the first row of the Colored section and watches quietly as the bus fills with riders. Until the..
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Susan Cain |
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We are like rubber bands at rest. We are elastic and can stretch ourselves, but only so much.
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Susan Cain |
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A hundred people are very stimulating compared to a hundred books or a hundred grains of sand." Many"
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Susan Cain |
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Nor are introverts necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating.
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Susan Cain |
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I've never been in a group environment in which I didn't feel obliged to present an unnaturally rah-rah version of myself.
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Susan Cain |
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Temperament refers to inborn, biologically based behavioral and emotional patterns that are observable in infancy and early childhood; personality is the complex brew that emerges after cultural influence and personal experience are thrown into the mix.
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Susan Cain |
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In other words, the four-month-olds who thrashed their arms like punk rockers did so not because they were extroverts in the making, but because their little bodies reacted strongly--they were "high-reactive"--to new sights, sounds, and smells. The quiet infants were silent not because they were future introverts--just the opposite--but because they had nervous systems that were unmoved by novelty. The"
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Susan Cain |
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We're told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We
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Susan Cain |
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We're told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts--which means that we've lost sight of who we really are.
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Susan Cain |
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For very different reasons, shy and introverted people might choose to spend their days in behind-the-scenes pursuits like inventing, or researching, or holding the hands of the gravely ill--or in leadership positions they execute with quiet competence. These are not alpha roles, but the people who play them are role models all the same.
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Susan Cain |
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a high-reactive child's ideal parent: someone who "can read your cues and respect your individuality; is warm and firm in placing demands on you without being harsh or hostile; promotes curiosity, academic achievement, delayed gratification, and self-control; and is not harsh, neglectful, or inconsistent."
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Susan Cain |
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Even T. S. Eliot's famous 1915 poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock--in which he laments the need to "prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet."
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Susan Cain |
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They have difficulty when being observed (at work, say, or performing at a music recital) or judged for general worthiness (dating, job interviews). But there were also new insights. The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive (just as Aron's husband had described her). They dream viv..
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Susan Cain |
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At the university level, introversion predicts academic performance better than cognitive ability.
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Susan Cain |
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Galen's Prophecy,
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Susan Cain |
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Whenever you're in an army group and somebody says, 'I think we're all getting on the bus to Abilene here,' that is a red flag.
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Susan Cain |
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It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They're valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking." In"
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Susan Cain |
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510dc9d
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not everyone aspires to be a leader in the conventional sense of the word--that
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Susan Cain |
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Scientists now know that the brain is incapable of paying attention to two things at the same time.
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Susan Cain |