AS CHILDREN WE all built a winning recipe to compensate for not being outgoing enough in an extroverted world. Today the recipe allows us to hide behind a socially acceptable way to be – aloof, emotional, grounded, philosophical, or superficial. Or any of the thousands of other guises introverts adopt to gain success. For example, my recipe is to be methodical by building step by step procedures to cope with life.
The past four posts discussed how to deal with fear. The solution is to avoid just doubling down on your winning recipe. Here we shift gears to discuss a related but different issue – how to avoid danger. Being able to identify it is not something that your recipe is good at.
As we saw in Post #9, your winning recipe tends to keep you focused on your internal world. That can cause you overlook what is going on around you. Ignoring the environment can trigger fearful surprises, and can be even worse than that. Behind the fear may be a danger capable of compromising your future. It is important to tell yourself the truth about that.
That is precisely what happened to me at the Harvard Business School.
How I Discovered The Truth Solution
AS AN UNDERGRADUATE I had perfected my study process to a high art and used it for four years to attain academic achievement. But the method was based on textbooks, lectures, note-taking and memorization, none of which cut any ice at Harvard. The Business School offered neither books nor lectures, only fifteen company case studies per week. Despite that, my winning recipe had me plowing ahead blindly using my old technology.
Four months into the term the Dean of Students sent me a letter saying that unless I brought my grades up significantly I would be expelled within ten weeks. I resolved the immediate danger by joining a discussion group of my peers, something that as an introvert I had long avoided. That move ended the risk of dismissal and eventually helped me to graduate.
But inside my winning recipe, that success had merely substituted one process for another – peer group discussion instead of note-taking. That hid a danger even more serious than expulsion: the reality that that I was not suited temperamentally to be either a senior executive or an entrepreneur. I went on to a lifetime of disappointment and mediocre performance in both of those roles because they required far more extroversion than I could sustain.
I belonged in research or writing, but my recipe would never have tolerated that. The processes leading to success were much too amorphous; those in business were crystal-clear. The solution to the danger here would have been to tell the truth about who I really was. I failed the test and paid for it for most of my career.
Unpacking The Truth Solution
YOUR WINNING RECIPE is a noisy, clamorous thing, constantly presenting itself as the solution to whatever situation you happen to be in. In my case it said, “Oh, to get out of this mess you just need to build a new study process.”
It did not say, “Gee, since you don’t even want to join a study group, do you think maybe you should reconsider a career where you are going to have to run large meetings day after day?”
I had an inkling that such might be the case, but I allowed my recipe to shut it down. I did eventually find a niche where I could do research and writing within a Fortune 10 company. But that was purely by chance, and it happened after decades of trying to be something that I was not.
How to Be Honest About Yourself
When a surprise comes up, and it generates fear, one advantage that you do have against your winning recipe is the little voice that tells you something is wrong.
Step 1: Listen to the voice. Instead of swatting it away, listen to it long enough to identify the inconvenient truth that it is bringing up. Mine said that if I did not even want to join a discussion group, maybe I did not belong in the world of business leadership.
Step 2: Look beyond the immediate solution. Will the answer your winning recipe is proposing lead to something long term that could crush your freedom to be an introvert? In my case I only asked whether I wanted the trophy of a Harvard MBA, not whether I wanted to be a business leader and participate in all the extroversion required to do that.
Specifically, ask these questions: Long term, will your recipe’s proposal cause you to have to…
- Talk more than listen?
- Speak before thinking, or speak rather than write?
- Engage in frequent, superficial conversations?
- Concentrate on many things at once, or work with many interruptions?
- Show or discuss your work with others before it is finished?
If so, that is probably the source of your little voice’s concern.
Step 3: Choose what to do. If there is no long-term problem and the recipe’s immediate fix will work, you are fine. But if there is such a problem, you then have a choice:
- You can continue on your path and suffer the consequences of not being an introvert, knowing that at some point there is going to be a reckoning.
- Or you can have the satisfaction of being an introvert by altering your present course. Doing so can be hugely disruptive and scary.
There is no right answer. Your winning recipe is all about denying or covering up your introversion, and long term it is toxic. Eventually you will have to deal with it, so maybe now is the time to start.
I Invite You To Be Honest About Yourself Today
- What has the little voice told you? What long-term problem did that uncover? If you would like us to consider sharing your story anonymously with The Satisfied Introvert community please email it to me at thesatisfiedintrovert@gmail.com.
- How can I help you to tell the truth about yourself? Please go to the Contact page and enter your name, email and questions. I cannot answer everyone, but will do my best – especially if the answer could benefit others.
- To be notified of new posts to The Satisfied Introvert blog, please go to the Subscribe section at the bottom of this post and enter your name and email. Under no circumstances will we share your information without your express permission. A new post appears every two weeks. Coming up next: “Curiosity Can Dull Your Winning Recipe And Sidestep Danger.” If a particular post does not apply to you, future ones most likely will!
Welcome to the liberation that comes from telling
yourself the truth, and ending the folly
of pretending that you are
not an introvert
© 2022 The Satisfied Introvert LLC
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