Okay, we were talking about your thinking boldness was an unusual descriptive for an introvert. There's a lot of gray in what only seems to be a black and white term, and it's driven by a variety of factors including situational, historical, contextual, psychological, instinctual, stress-related, etc. For example, I'm not given to making scenes, but I've acted outside my natural inclinations on a couple notable occasions when my sons' welfare came before my comfort zone.
I think you touch on my point in "outside my natural inclinations" though.
In other words, introversion doesn't automatically correlate to a lack of boldness, and one can be an introvert with some areas of extroversion and vice versa.
I don't mean to suggest the designations are absolutes. Left to our own devices how are we? What are our inclinations? As no one has set out the percentages, excluding me, it's hard to really know who is more or less wedded to a particular expression, so any address on the point has to be in the softer and more general sense.
It doesn't necessarily mean I'd avoid going to a large gathering altogether, although it can, depending.
I shouldn't think it would necessarily, though I'd expect it to indicate that's not your comfort zone, in general. Else you'd have answered that you didn't feel drained after a large group encounter or certainly your approach would differ from someone inherently invigorated by it, etc.
But it could be that if I do go, that I'll get to a point when my brain says "okay, I've had enough" and that's it, I'm done, and that might be a lot sooner than someone else's set point.
And that would be a marked and entirely understandable difference from someone in the harder end of the extrovert pool, who gains energy from the experience.
So then I have to find a quiet place to recharge, or I go home. I feel like that here sometimes too. The place gets too crazy, and I don't want to deal with it.
I think that makes perfect sense.
I did it for your sake, not mine.
Yeah, yeah.
I didn't think about the ramifications of how much that might be until I saw "holding court." Too often I've been on the other end of the royal chambers in real life, and when I see "holding court," I think "captive audience."
I think that's an interesting perspective, but it's not one native to me. Which is funny when you think about it.
You think it's unusual not to daydream about money, power, notoriety?
Sort of and depending. Hollywood, novels, television are all speaking to fame, to the potential for greatness in anyone, the chance to change the course of other lives through one means or another. I don't think we're all Walter Mitty, but I suspect there's more than a little of him in most of us who aren't Buddhists. That said, I didn't say daydream about money and power, but about the use of them. And I think what changes over time in most people who live in a way that evolves them is the particular application. So a kid may dream of being a great athlete or rock star or novelist, etc. where the adult imagines beyond that into the point and impact of it.
I have to say I'm a little taken aback by that.
I would have been too had I seen it the way you did. Hopefully if I did a bad job of communicating it the first time around I've done better with the above.
Do you think only extroverts have drive and ambition?
No. I'd be surprised if Bill Gates was an extrovert. But I'd bet introversion is an impediment in attaining that sort of power that requires bringing in investment and rallying troops and support.
See, that's what I'd mentioned upthread, not wanting to broadbrush extroverts or introverts with particular behavior traits, so I've tried to not speak for all introverts. I don't know how successful I've been. But no, I don't think it works that way at all.
I think you're doing fine holding that line. But it's hard for me not to speak in generalities on the topic, even if the problem with generalities is how they have an annoying habit of breaking down in application.
"Another weakness"? I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that as an extrovert, you see extroversion as a positive and introversion as a negative.
Not in general for either, but in the particular application I was speaking to, yes. That is, I think an introvert would be less effective as, say, a motivational speaker, on the whole. I've noticed that the best pastors I've known were extroverts, but many of the best preachers I've heard self described as introverts. I had a conversation with our Presbyterian minister on the point. He's a published and successful author and a great listen, but really has to work at the pastoral part, because it's contrary to his nature, the politics and gatherings in close quarters. He's much more at home in the pulpit and the quiet of his study.
And introverts don't necessarily have an inability to connect to an audience. It's not necessarily a connection problem at all. That's too black and white.
I don't believe it is entirely. But I'm fairly certain that my enjoyment of center stage gives me an advantage with, say, a jury. That's really an audience and they're going to sense my comfort or interest and respond to that.
Because I wish I had more time to talk about something I find interesting?
I think you should only make time to talk about things and/or to people you find interesting.
Your original point was you seeing TOL as a party and wondering why I'd be comfortable here.
No, that was you. I mean you began the party analogy with:
... So in that way it still feels like I'm in the proverbial corner at the party, so to speak. And I like it that way.
And I responded with: "Reasonable enough...and yet you know better and don't communicate exclusively by means that would guarantee that outcome and particular."
Which was my way of noting that you aren't really in a corner out of the general eye on a forum like this, absent PMs and maybe sealed profile pages. None of the regularly posting introverts are.
You responded with:
...I know what I just said...
Which I didn't know what to make of and
I talk to the person, not over his shoulder at the rest of the partygoers.
And I noted: And yet you have the conversation at a party. Or, if you only want to talk to a person there are ways to do that. So I think there has to be more to it than that...which is why I initially speculated that this was a good place for introverts to behave more as an extrovert would, absent some of the things that would otherwise be more distracting, like the actual physical presence of a crowd, instead of the knowledge that people would filter by and read at one point or another.
I suppose another way of looking at it would be it's also a good place for an extrovert to have the sort of time to consider and respond in a less immediately demanding environment, to move a bit close to the introverts wheelhouse. :think: I miss out on that a bit, tending to read and respond in the moment. But it's another thought to mull.
And when I told you how, you insisted that there was a dissonance between being an introvert and being at a party...
It's not the natural place you'd look for someone who finds the experience draining, true enough.
almost as if you thought I must not realize what I was doing.
No, more curious and a bit surprised to find so many here of the introvert persuasion and wondering aloud why that was and what it meant.
:cheers:
