"She is an introvert. She is a loser," I had overheard a conversation when I was a kid about a distant cousin of mine. I swore never to become an introvert.
But then I realized during college that some people are great charmers and life of parties. I could never be them. Clearly, they were extroverts and I was not. So, was I a loser?
In The Introvert's Way, Sophia Dembling enlightens us about the way introverts source their energy compared to extroverts. This has got nothing to do with shyness, depression or fear of public speaking and has no correlation to success or failure. Introverts are inherently stimulated by lower sensations to brain compared to extroverts. Introverts comprise of 50% of the population in the US, the country that prides itself for extrovertedness.
The book is a good primer for those who consider introvert behavior to be a weakness. But, the solutions are not comprehensive enough to show a path forward. I would highly recommend Susan Cain's Quiet for a stellar book on identifying successful traits in introvert behavior.
An interesting point that I came across in Upstarts - book on AirBnB and Uber. The venturecapitalists in Silicon Valley look for introverts to bet their money on, as most successful startups (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon) were founded by introverts and CEOs of biggest tech companies (Satya Nadella, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai) are all introverts.
PS: One can never 'not become an introvert' or extrovert as I had planned during childhood.
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