Susan cain quotes

Some introverts are perfectly comfortable with public speaking; I'm not one of them.

Your tendency to be inward-directed or outward-directed is huge; it governs every part of the way you live and work and love.

I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country.

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.

In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who’s comfortable "putting himself out there."

.. it makes sense that introverts are uniquely good at leading intiative-takers. Because of their inclination to listen to others and lack of interest in dominating social situations, introverts are more likely to hear and implement suggestions. Having benefited from the talents of their followers, they are then likely to motivate them to be even more proactive. Introverted leaders create a virtious circle of proactivity.

Introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly.

Shyness is inherently uncomfortable; introversion is not. The traits do overlap, though psychologists debate to what degree.

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.

Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not.

Introversion- along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness- is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.

There are only a few people out there who can completely overcome their fears, and they all live in Tibet.

I've wanted to be a writer since I was four years old!

Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi — all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to.

Persistence isn't very glamorous. If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other ninety-nine percent.

(Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He's staring at your shoes instead of his own.)

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. Depending on which study you consult, one third to one half of Americans are introverts - in other words, one out of every two or three people you know.

I use a lot of old-fashioned expressions.

Everyone shines, given the right lighting.

INTROVERTS are especially vulnerable to challenges like marital tension, a parent’s death, or abuse. They’re more likely than their peers to react to these events with depression, anxiety, and shyness. Indeed, about a quarter of Kagan’s high-reactive kids suffer from some degree of the condition known as “social anxiety disorder,” a chronic and disabling form of shyness.

Introversion - along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness - is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.

Love is essential, gregariousness is optional.

In a way, education by its nature favours the extrovert because you are taking kids and putting them into a big classroom, which is automatically going to be a high-stimulation environment. Probably the best way of teaching in general is one on one, but that's not something everyone can afford.

All personality traits have their good side and their bad side. But for a long time, we've seen introversion only through its negative side and extroversion mostly through its positive side.

Naked lions are just as dangerous as elegantly dressed ones

...if you can think of meetings you've attended, you can probably recall a time - plenty of times - when the opinion of the most dynamic or talkative person prevailed to the detriment of all.

Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can.

It's never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population.

Should we become so proficient at self-presentation that we can dissemble without anyone suspecting?

In most job interviews, people say they are looking for people skills and emotional intelligence. That's reasonable, but the question is, how do you define what that looks like?

One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.

Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell”—that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same.

I'm continually amazed by how many people who appear to be extroverts are actually introverts.

College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups.

I'm insatiably curious about human nature.

Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.

The pressure to entertain, to sell ourselves, and never to be visibly anxious keeps ratcheting up.

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns.

The other thing Aron found about sensitive people is that sometimes they're highly empathic. It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world. They tend to have unusually strong consciences. ... they're acutely aware of the consequences of a lapse in their own behavior.

Though shyness per se was unacceptable, reserve was a mark of good breeding.

Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it

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. 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.

The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself.

We don’t ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well.

Women were also urged to work on a mysterious quality called 'fascination.' Coming of age in the 1920's was a competitive business.

Introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation.

Introverts living under the Extroversion Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.

As a young boy, Charles Darwin made friends easily but preferred to spend his time taking long, solitary nature walks. (As an adult he was no different. “My dear Mr. Babbage,” he wrote to the famous mathematician who had invited him to a dinner party, “I am very much obliged to you for sending me cards for your parties, but I am afraid of accepting them, for I should meet some people there, to whom I have sworn by all the saints in Heaven, I never go out.”)

Psychologists usually offer 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.

Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it. If this requires public speaking or networking or other activities that make you uncomfortable, do them anyway. But accept that they're difficult, get the training you need to make them easier, and reward yourself when you're done.

Whoever you are, bear in mind that appearance is not reality. Some people act like extroverts, but the effort costs them energy, authenticity, and even physical health. Others seem aloof or self-contained, but their inner landscapes are rich and full of drama. So the next time you see a person with a composed face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the powers of quiet.

Solitude matters. And for some people it's the air they breathe.

Even when the attention focused on me is positive, I am uncomfortable being looked at by a lot of people - it's just not my natural state of being.

Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess such a key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole. She didn't choose to go to Wonderland - but she made of it an adventure that was fresh and fantastic and very much her own.

I'm not saying abolish group work - I think there's a time and a place for people to come together and exchange ideas, but let's restore the respect we once had for solitude. And we need to be much more mindful of the way we come together.

Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to. Stay home on New Year's Eve if that's what makes you happy. Skip the committee meeting. Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances. Read. Cook. Run. Write a story. Make a deal with yourself that you'll attend a set number of social events in exchange for not feeling guilty when you beg off.

Theodor Geisel (otherwise known as Dr. Seuss) spent his workdays ensconced in his private studio, the walls lined with sketches and drawings, in a bell-tower outside his La Jolla, California, house. Geisel was a much more quiet man than his jocular rhymes suggest. He rarely ventured out in public to meet his young readership, fretting that kids would expect a merry, outspoken, Cat in the Hat–like figure, and would be disappointed with his reserved personality. “In mass, [children] terrify me,” he admitted.

I get a lot of letters from introverts asking how they can meet people. The key is to make sure that you are doing things you enjoy.

Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you’re focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.

The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither E=mc2 nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal.

Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They’re associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure.

What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?

Solve problems, make art, think deeply.

you once said to would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing one self to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind...That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.

We often marvel at how introverted, geeky, kid '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. They don't have to live in whatever culture they'er plunked into.

Evangelicalism has taken the Extrovert Ideal to its logical extreme...If you don't love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It's not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the divine; it must be displayed publicly.

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.

Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances.

We've known about the transcendent power of solitude for centuries; it's only recently that we've forgotten it.

Many Introverts are also "highly sensitive," which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you're more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience.

Opposites attract, and I think temperament is so fundamental that you end up craving someone of the opposite temperament to complete you.

Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place.

We don't need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

Introverts .. may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas.

Our culture is biased against quiet and reserved people, but introverts are responsible for some of humanity's greatest achievements.

You're told that you're in your head too much, a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral. Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.

Every American was to become a performing self.

A widely held, but rarely articulated, belief in our society is that the ideal self is bold, alpha, gregarious. Introversion is viewed somewhere between disappointment and pathology.

Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can. This does not mean aping extroverts; ideas can be shared quietly, they can be communicated in writing, they can be packaged into highly produced lectures, they can be advanced by allies. The trick for introverts is to honor their own styles instead of allowing themselves to be swept up by prevailing norms.

Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race. And the single most important aspect of personality ... is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum.

Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They like to focus on one task at a time and can have mighty powers of concentration . They're relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame.

Most people who have grown up introverted in this very extroverted culture of ours have had painful experiences of feeling like they are out of step with what's expected of them.

The same person who would never raise his hand in a lecture hall of two hundred people might blog to two thousand, or two million, without thinking twice. The same person who finds it difficult to introduce himself to strangers might establish a presence online and then extend these relationships into the real world.

We put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.

Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.

I've never given a speech without being terrified first.

I had always imagined Rosa Parks as a stately woman with a bold temperament, someone who could easily stand up to a busload of glowering passengers. But when she died in 2005 at the age of ninety-two, the flood of obituaries recalled her as soft-spoken, sweet, and small in stature. They said she was "timid and shy" but had "the courage of a lion." They were full of phrases like "radical humility" and "quiet fortitude.

Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn't soothe anger; it fuels it.

There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.

Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral. Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.

What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.

...remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it's creativity you're after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can't see each other's ideas until everyone has had a chance to contribute.

In the first study, Grant and his colleagues analyzed data from one of the five biggest pizza chains in the United States. They discovered that the weekly profits of the stores managed by extroverts were 16 percent higher than the profits of those led by introverts—but only when the employees were passive types who tended to do their job without exercising initiative. Introverted leaders had the exact opposite results. When they worked with employees who actively tried to improve work procedures, their stores outperformed those led by extroverts by more than 14 percent.

We have a two-tier class system when it comes to personality style. To devalue introversion is a waste of talent, energy and happiness.

It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world.

The bias against introversion leads to a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness.

In our culture, snails are not considered valiant animals - we are constantly exhorting people to "come out of their shells" - but there's a lot to be said for taking your home with you wherever you go.

Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.

Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases ... If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.

[Introverts,] the world needs you and it needs the things you carry. So I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly.

It's not that there is no small talk...It's that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end...Sensitive people...'enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep' says Strickland. 'When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else.

Solitude is one of our great superpowers... Solitude is the key to being able to make effective decisions and then having the courage of convictions to stand behind those decisions.

America had shifted from what influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a culture of character to a culture of personality, and opened up a Pandora's box of personal anxieties of which we would never recover.

As a parent, if give yourself what you need, your children will watch you doing that and will give themselves what they need.

But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.

Another study, of 38,000 knowledge workers across different sectors, found that the simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity. Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth.

The emphasis is on community, on participating in more and more programs and events, on meeting more and more people. It’s a constant tension for many introverts that they’re not living that out. And in a religious world, there’s more at stake when you feel that tension. It doesn’t feel like ‘I’m not doing as well as I’d like.’ It feels like ‘God isn’t pleased with me.’

I think the shyness one feels in childhood is often overcome with time. There are children who hide behind their parents' legs, but you don't see grown-ups hiding behind people. It just doesn't happen. I mean, not that often. People develop social skills over time.

We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard's education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of power, but to use well the kind you've been granted.

So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don't let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way.

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting.

we have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally

Do you really believe in what you said or wrote – in the thing that’s bringing criticism? And if I do believe it, I can withstand anything.

Schwartz's research suggests something important: we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizeable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.

When you're more focused in getting your message across than you are worrying about how people are viewing you, that's huge.

...true self-esteem comes from competence, not the other way around.

Remember that introverts react not only to new people, but also to new places and events. So don’t mistake a child’s caution in new situations for an inability to relate to others. He’s recoiling from novelty or overstimulation, not from human contact. Introverts are just as likely as the next kid to seek others’ company, though often in smaller doses

I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing... I like to think before I speak (softly).

There is no one more courageous than the person who speaks with the courage of his convictions.

The next time you see a person with a composed face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the power of quiet.

When you go to a football game and someone offers you a beer [...], they're really saying hi, have a glass of extroversion.

Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way.

I'm insatiably curious about human nature. I feel very lucky that as a writer I get to learn so much about it just to do my job right.

...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.