It's a funny thing: For a very long time, I thought I was an introvert. I was always the quiet kid, reading a book in the corner instead of engaging in conversations with classmates. I didn't feel the need to talk to my peers, the idea always seemed too cost-ineffective. I occasionally did it just because that's what kids are supposed to do, in an attempt to appear "normal," but it always felt obligatory.
Yet I never had to struggle while talking to the adults. If I needed to ask a question in the class, I just did. I had a respect for adult people and almost considered them more-than human (from the child perspective). This started to change during high school. The teachers very often did not have satisfying anwers to my questions and I only increased the distance between me and my classmates. I had very few friends and even they were rolling their eyes together with the rest when I dared to raise a hand, before even saying anything.
I was getting a bit too comfortable in the role of a black sheep.
I started to realize that simply reaching the age of maturity does not make you more wise. The world is full of old children. None of us really know what we are doing. Some people are just more talented in the adult pretending. There is no correct answer to the question of how to conduct my life. If I should have any goal, it would be learning how to swim in this vast ocean of chaos.
At a certain point in my life, I had to switch to a job which required constant communication with people. My success was dependant on the way I formulated what I wanted to say. My old, straighforward, energy-saving way of communicating, designed only to obtain information as fast as possible, wouln't get me very far. I had to learn some crucial facts:
- People don't care as much about what you say as they care about how you say it. Non-verbal communication is even more important than the verbal one. Especially in environments consisting of non-native English speakers. Simply saying the correct words is not enough to pass the message.
- People don't remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel. It's not "Anything you say can be used against you" anymore. It changed to: "Anything I think you've said will be used against you!"
However I wish I could live in a world where communication is easy, straightforward and effortless, I have to accept that the reality is different and learn to behave by the rules of our society. At least while I'm in the public space. I realized that noticing and following the communication style of the other party is absolutely necessary and I've been putting a lot of effort into improving those skills ever since. I started to imitate the behavior of extroverts.
But What Does Extraversion Even Mean? The school definition usually includes phrases like enjoys talking to people, needs attention, focuses on the outside world more than on the inside, acts first and thinks later... None of these things has ever defined me. Even so, when I told my not-so-old friends: "You might not believe me, but I'm actually an introvert. I have to put a lot of effort into communicating with people properly," they just laughed and said "Sure, you are an introvert, that's a good one!" - or something of the like.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck... or is it?
It's not only the question of Introversion vs. Extraversion. There were many personality traits I believed I possesed, but was proven otherwise after entering a different environment. I'm starting to suspect that the way I behave and the way my personality shows depends mostly on the situation where I'm required to act. Have I changed that much, or is it all thanks to the improvement of my communication skills? Is it even a good thing, or should I perhaps be less compromising and hold onto my old ways of information exchange?
There is a difference between innate and learned personality traits. I have learned to pretend being an extrovert so well that I've become indistinguishable, I've become one of them. That does not mean I've ceased to be an introvert. Perhaps we can acquire many seemingly opposing traits and choose to use them to our advantage, depending on the situation. I am sure it is not only possible, but we are all doing it on various conscious and unconscious levels.
If that is the case, where does it leave us in relationship with our personalities? If we can learn to change them almost like a clothing, we are really just actors, performing the play of life where nobody knows the script and we make it up as we go. If personality trait is just a tool we can choose not to use, the nature of our self does not possess any aspects. Our motivations are created by the depth of our immersion in the play, by the level of our unawareness of our true nature.
What should we do with those realizations? If we detach ourselves from our personalities, we might lose our life motivations and stagnate, not being able to communicate, to perform properly. If we immerse too deep, we expose ourselves to the danger of developing patologic patterns of behavior. How do we find the balance? Will you help me find the answer? I will be grateful if you share your views and your experience!
Absolutely spot on..i love these deductions. Being an introvert i can totally relate to your post.
I am not an expert on personalities but i will give you my two cents here. We are what we are.. no matter how hard we try to propel ourselves in different dimensions, our true nature always finds us again..
Believe it or not i was a successful debater in my country and people used to think that since i was an excellent speaker, i must have also been good at socialising.. And they were wrong.
I dont think being an introvert is a problem or a disease for that matter.. the thing that matters is how we find peace.. thats all that matters. M almost 30 and i have had a rather twisted life. I was practically penalized for not socialising. But in the end, i found my peace in my true nature. For me, the balance was never to compensate between two different shades of being introvert and extrovert. The balance was to let go of the elements that my persona abhors and welcome the traits that my soul accepts as they are..
This article is worth a resteem.. great work...
Thanks a lot! I honestly did not expect that. I was wondering if perhaps someone might click on my article, but finding such a long and sincere reply makes my time spent writing really worthwhile.
I hope to explore some other aspects of human personality, behavior and communication in the future. I am constantly learning and just today I had a conversation (face to face) where I was pushed to the limits of my abilities and realized how easy it is for me to treat a discussion as a win-or-lose game.
Maybe it's because Steemit is such a young platform, but what I love about the interactions here is that people do not as much oppose each other, as they try to come up with complementing experiences and points of view. In relation to what I wrote in the article: Communication in this space is easier for me and there is less room for misinterpretation.
Again, thank you for your thoughtful comment and the resteem. I hope to see you around!
This is one of my favourite subjects, the way in the west we classify people as introverted or extroverted. Sure, there's lots of studies that prove you're either one or the other, so why do I feel like both? First and foremost i'm an introvert, but as a performer, i'm able to safely show my extrovert side. I'm pretty clear that I wouldn't be able to be so creative if I wasn't an introvert and started from introspection. In the west, we think being an extrovert is the right way to behave and introverted behaviour is wrong. We don't understand or accept shyness. We think it's a social mishap. I don't know if my introverted behaviour is learnt behaviour or not, but it is me.
You are right. I didn't consider that maybe I had the extroverted side in me all along, I just couldn't find a way to show it. But then, what other "latent" personality traits might be hidden inside of me? I guess we are all actors to a certain degree and we won't find out what we can do until the right opportunity comes.
Oh, wow... I've just found a list of asperger symptoms and I'm starting to see a pattern here. FML