Every Introvert Has A Harmful “Winning Recipe.” Here Is What To Do.

SINCE CHILDHOOD EVERY introvert has known that we live in an extroverted world. Consequently in the back of our minds we have long thought that we do not have what it takes to succeed in life.

To get by we use some kind of a success formula, or “winning recipe.” It is the largely unconscious choice of a way to be in order to cover up our perceived deficiency. The recipe does this by allowing us to behave in some way other than as a full-on introvert.

To get through life everybody has a winning recipe of some sort – not just introverts. But this site is about us, so introvert winning recipes are what we will be addressing in these posts.

Your winning recipe could be anything – to be thorough, or diplomatic, or careful, or helpful, or honest, or mysterious, or noncommittal.  Or any of the thousands other ways to be that compensate for being an introvert. You have long gotten success from doing that.  Meanwhile you have polished and hardened the behavior into an approach that you have relied on ever since.

The Disaster That Is Your Introvert Winning Recipe

THE RECIPE FEELS great. It allows you to get results without having to interact too much with other people. That matters, because as an introvert you easily become overwhelmed when a lot is going on around you.

But as I can attest after a lifetime of living out my own winning recipe, it spawns a series of effects that make it a ruinous way to live.

• It is ultimately unsatisfying. Because you are being a certain way not for itself, but to cover up that you are an introvert, you eventually end up feeling hollow. The recipe becomes an exercise in going through the motions rather than in doing something you love.
• It can get in the way of relationships. You built the winning recipe to win without relating to people too closely.  Consequently that is what it tries to do. It is not designed to help you to get close to others, and may have the opposite effect.
• It can create a great deal of drama. Winning recipes often have unintended consequences that show up as painful surprises.  As a result they can undo the very peace and stability that so many of us long for.

These effects make it vital for you to identify your winning recipe. Only by doing that can you become aware of the costs that are accumulating in your life.  They show up in terms of dissatisfaction, distant relationships, and disruption.

You Will Not Find Help In Articles And Books

VIRTUALLY NOTHING IN the advice for introverts about how to cope in an extroverted world talks about the existence of winning recipes or how to short-circuit them.

A brief survey of online articles about “how to win as an introvert” shows that the recommendations tend to fall into three laundry baskets of lists:

• How to achieve success. Schedule alone time, write, smile, pitch win-wins, meditate.  Visualize social success, don’t self-isolate, stay healthy. Get over guilt at leaving social gatherings early or for speaking awkwardly. Adopt a growth mindset, prepare for social situations in advance.
• How to achieve extroversion. Get out of your comfort zone, fake it, learn to be flexible.  Engage in small talk, defy your fear, fit in.  Over- communicate, do not let extroverts squash you.
• How to be some other way. Learn to be self-directed, be technical, be knowledgeable, and so on. These are admonitions to take on a new winning recipe without saying so or addressing the underlying mechanics. Some articles do exhort us to be OK with being an introvert, but almost never tell us how.

All of these approaches have the same problem: They miss that we already have a deeply embedded winning recipe. It is the core reason we are not satisfied and they do not detect it or address it.

A deeper issue is that most of this advice is about doing things. Winning recipes, on the other hand, are problems in the realm of being – trying to be something other than as introverts.  Consequently no amount of “doing” will fix that. In the end our recipes remain unsatisfying, or hard on relationships, or disruptive due to unintended consequences.

My life is a case study in that.

The Steep Costs Of My Own Introvert Winning Recipe

AROUND AGE FOUR I decided that I did not like being around other people all that much. When I was ten I had to present a current event in front of the class.  I overcame my fear by using a step by step process to prepare. It allowed me to get a predictable, favorable result without having to focus too much on people.

I became a fanatic about processes. The more I created the more my grades soared. I became co-valedictorian of my high school class and went on to graduate With Great Distinction from Stanford.  And I got admitted to the Harvard Business School. Never mind that I had almost no friends, was socially inept and got nowhere with girls until I was in my twenties.

• The Harvard fiasco. At the Harvard Business School I blindly worked my undergraduate study process.  But the Dean of Students advised that unless I brought my grades up soon I would be expelled. I turned things around by adopting a new study method. However, it hid the fact that temperamentally I was not suited for a career as an entrepreneur or a senior executive. For years afterwards I struggled both emotionally and financially.
• The Panama shakedown. In 1974, at age 31, I was living in Panama.  As part owner of a construction firm I built low-cost, earthquake-resistant houses. Manuel Noriega, a corrupt and murderous drug dealer, was the shadowy power behind the government. I was focused on a financial management process to keep our struggling company afloat.  As a result I ignored the threat that he might represent. One day in an effort to extort $50,000 he sent two armed goons to pick up my passport.  I could not leave the country, but did escape the squeeze.  I  abandoned my winning recipe long enough to sue Noriega personally before the Supreme Court of Panama.
• The Miami bankruptcy. In 1992, at age 49, I was in a wonderful second marriage to a woman named Sandy. I had learned my lesson from the first marriage and consequently paid full attention to this awesome lady. But I was back to implementing a process, this time for writing computer manuals. I was blind to the small size of the market.  To save our house from the IRS Sandy and I had to declare personal bankruptcy.
• The Minneapolis debacle. In 2006, at age 63, I was in a job at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota.  My role was to use a statistical process to remove variations in business processes.  Meanwhile I did not grasp how dissatisfied my manager and my team were with me.  Two months into the job I got fired.

These were only some of the prices I paid for being so devoted to my winning recipe. What amazes me today is that at the time I did not realize what was happening. Only when I consciously looked back did I see how appalling the impact of my winning recipe had been on me.  

It did not have to be this hard.  As you will see in later posts, I did attain financial success, ultimate satisfaction, and enduring happiness.  But they came late in life, only after I detached from my recipe and learned to live openly as a full-on introvert.  

Your experience may not be as extreme as mine. But you have certainly suffered adverse effects from your own recipe and it is enormously helpful to identify them.

How I Found A Solution

I STARTED WRITING a memoir as soon as I retired. One of the first things a guide book asked me to do was to identify the theme of my life. The theme? Yes, the guiding idea or topic that tied all the experiences together into a compelling story.

In researching the book I recalled that I had taken a personal development course called the est Training in 1980 (it is now called The Landmark Forum). While there I learned that my process-driven approach was what they called a “winning formula.” They pointed out how such a strategy worked and what the negative consequences were. But I did not realize how much damage I was incurring.

In 2009 I accidentally stumbled on a way to escape from the worst effects of the recipe. That year I detached from it and above all narrowly avoided another catastrophe.

Four years later I read Susan Cain’s classic book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. In short I realized that as an introvert I no longer had anything to compensate for.  I was not deficient.  As a result what followed were the happiest and most financially successful years of my life.

It was not until 2019 that I finally saw how disastrously costly my winning recipe had been for me all along.

The Way Out: Focus on Being An Introvert

I LEARNED THAT the only way to short-circuit your winning recipe is to fill the void within you that provoked the recipe in the first place.

That void is the decision that as an introvert you did not have what it took to win in an extroverted world. No amount of “doing things” will fill it. And no amount of switching around different “ways of being” will fill it either. The only way to fill it is to be a straight-up introvert and take pride in it.

Here is how to do it:

Step 1: Pinpoint Your Introvert Winning Recipe

IN READING THIS you may have already identified your winning recipe. If not, no problem – here are some memory joggers:

• What way of being do you rely on time and again to gain success in life?
• What way of being do you tell other people to use to be successful in life?
• If you asked your boss, what would she or he say you are really good at?
• If you asked your spouse, coworkers or friends, what would they say?
• On your resume, what recipe stands out?  
• Failing all that, look at the key wins in your past – what way of being did you use to achieve them?

If you are still having trouble, scan the following list of examples to see if one of them or something close resonates. The list is by no means comprehensive – there are thousands of ways to compensate for being an introvert.  (If the list does not appear here, please scroll to the bottom of this post to see Winning Recipe Examples.)

Step 2: Get Clear On What Your Winning Recipe Has Cost You

SEE IF YOU can recall the half dozen biggest wins you have ever had. In each case, ask yourself whether one or more of the following occurred. Most importantly, each of these may have taken years to show up:

• Was the win ultimately unsatisfying?  In what way?
• Did the win get in the way of any of your relationships?  Which ones?
• How did the win produce one or more painful, unintended consequences?

Keep looking at the harmful outcomes associated with those wins, and any others you can recall, until you become passionate about detaching yourself from your winning recipe.

Step 3: Start To Accumulate Small Wins By Being An Introvert

BOOKS AND ARTICLES tell us to be OK with being an introvert, but we have no experience with doing that. Our only experience is with our crummy winning recipes – and they are designed specifically to cover up our not being OK with who we are.

To be comfortable with being an introvert you have to get experience with winning as one. This means isolating the strengths of the typical introvert.  And then using them, one by one, in relationships and at work to produce modest and finally more substantial successes over time.

Here is a list of traits based on the seven in Susan Cain’s book (page 11) that struck me as the most useful for achieving success by being an introvert: 

How can you…

1. Be a good listener to your advantage?
2. Think before speaking as a strength?
3. Express yourself in writing to get results?
4. Use one-on-one conversations as an asset?
5. Use your ability to concentrate easily to further your goals?
6. Dive into work with few interruptions as a tool for success?
7. Not show or discuss your work with others until it is finished to achieve solutions?

Gradually hone as many of these traits into skills until they become even more hardened than your winning recipe.

After I detached from my recipe in 2009 I used all of these skills while serving as a pinch hitter for a Senior Vice President at UnitedHealthcare. He was something of a rabble-rouser who constantly generated ideas that challenged the conventional wisdom. He relied on me to think through, research and build out the ideas in writing position papers and PowerPoint presentations that he delivered. We did not always get traction in the company, but we got enough wins to make the effort worthwhile.

I was ecstatic. To clarify, he fully supported my backroom role and provided me with steadily increasing income. I was doing exactly what I loved the most – to be a full-on introvert and add value in the seven ways that as an introvert I could contribute most fully.

Recap

THE CORE PROBLEM facing you as an introvert in an extroverted world is that you simply cannot win by not being an introvert.  To sum up,  you cannot ultimately be satisfied by using a winning recipe to be something that covers up who you are.

If you do that for decades the recipe will likely leave you feeling empty inside, complicate your relationships, and inject pain and uncertainty into your life from unexpected consequences.

You will never completely get rid of your winning recipe – in retirement I still engage in processes all the time (just ask Sandy!). But I have detached from them – I no longer use them to compensate for being an introvert. Most of them support my health and wellness through sleep, diet and exercise. Consequently they are satisfying, do not threaten the relationship, and rarely cause unintended consequences. They simplify my life.

You can achieve that sort of detachment yourself, but only if you get clear about the identity of your recipe and own it.  That means being completely aware of how it has harmed you in the past and is harming you today.

The key way to detach from it is to understand that there is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing missing from you as an introvert that would prevent you from being fulfilled in life. To get to that point you only need to take the steps listed above.  First nail down the recipe, then get present to its harmful effects, and finally use your strengths as an introvert to succeed in relationships and in your work.

Doing this brought me enough financial success to retire in 2019. It also brought me the love of my life, because when I met her forty years ago I realized what a treasure she was. I escaped from the recipe enough, even back then, to stop compensating and be an introvert with her – to build a deep personal relationship by appreciating, paying attention to, and simply adoring her.

I Invite You To Begin Detaching From Your Winning Recipe Today

• What is your recipe story? If you would like us to consider sharing your story anonymously with The Satisfied Introvert community please email it to us at thesatisfiedintrovert@gmail.com. We will do our best to publish it but unfortunately we cannot do so for every story. Please note that all submissions become the property of this site.
• How can I help you discover or detach from your recipe? Please go to the Contact page and enter your name, email, and any questions. I cannot answer everyone, but will do my best – especially if the answer could benefit others.
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Welcome to your new life as an introvert – one where

you are fulfilled, have deep relationships, and are

free from the unintended consequences

of trying so hard to not be yourself

© 2022 The Satisfied Introvert LLC