I prefer to spend a lot of my time in front of tv since I was child. I am not really like to join an organization club at my school. I prefer spend my day at home, watching tv or do some stuff I like. And now I've already drown into the working world and face the real society. Firstly when I am working, I feel a little bit hard to adapt in new place. I am not some typical who can change other people's mind, and make them follow my opinion. I also feel as a thinker, than a doer. That's my lack that should be change. To be a doer, and not just a thinker. And I wanna share some of my googling search about the introvert.
Susan Cain spoke in TED Conference on February 2012 about "The Power of Introvert"
The translation:
When I was nine years old I went off to summer camp for the first
time. And my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me
seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. Because in my family,
reading was the primary group activity. And this might sound antisocial
to you, but for us it was really just a different way of being social.
You have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but
you are also free to go roaming around the adventureland inside your
own mind. And I had this idea that camp was going to be just like this,
but better. (Laughter) I had a vision of 10 girls sitting in a cabin
cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns.
(Laughter)
Camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. And on the very
first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a
cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the
summer to instill camp spirit. And it went like this: “R-O-W-D-I-E,
that’s the way we spell rowdie. Rowdie, rowdie, let’s get rowdie.” Yeah.
So I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be
so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incorrectly. (Laughter) But I
recited a cheer. I recited a cheer along with everybody else. I did my
best. And I just waited for the time that I could go off and read my
books.
But the first time that I took my book out of my suitcase, the
coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, “Why are you
being so mellow?” — mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of
R-O-W-D-I-E. And then the second time I tried it, the counselor came up
to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point
about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.
And so I put my books away, back in their suitcase, and I put them
under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. And I
felt kind of guilty about this. I felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and I was forsaking them. But I did forsake them and I didn’t open that suitcase again until I was back home with my family at the end of the summer.
Now, I tell you this story about summer camp. I could have told you
50 others just like it — all the times that I got the message that
somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the
right way to go, that I should be trying to pass as more of an
extrovert. And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that
introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. But for years I
denied this intuition, and so I became a Wall Street lawyer, of all
things, instead of the writer that I had always longed to be — partly
because I needed to prove to myself that I could be bold and assertive
too. And I was always going off to crowded bars when I really would have
preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. And I made these
self-negating choices so reflexively, that I wasn’t even aware that I
was making them.
Now this is what many introverts do, and it’s our loss for sure, but
it is also our colleagues’ loss and our communities’ loss. And at the
risk of sounding grandiose, it is the world’s loss. Because when it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best.
A third to a half of the population are introverts — a third to a half.
So that’s one out of every two or three people you know. So even if
you’re an extrovert yourself, I’m talking about your coworkers and your
spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now —
all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our
society. We all internalize it from a very early age without even having
a language for what we’re doing.
Now to see the bias clearly you need to understand what introversion
is. It’s different from being shy. Shyness is about fear of social
judgment. Introversion is more about, how do you respond to stimulation,
including social stimulation. So extroverts really crave large amounts
of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their
most switched-on and their most capable when they’re in quieter, more
low-key environments. Not all the time — these things aren’t absolute —
but a lot of the time. So the key then to maximizing our talents is for
us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us.
But now here’s where the bias comes in. Our most important
institutions, our schools and our workplaces, they are designed mostly
for extroverts and for extroverts’ need for lots of stimulation. And
also we have this belief system right now that I call the new
groupthink, which holds that all creativity and all productivity comes
from a very oddly gregarious place.
So if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: When I was going to
school, we sat in rows. We sat in rows of desks like this, and we did
most of our work pretty autonomously. But nowadays, your typical
classroom has pods of desks — four or five or six or seven kids all
facing each other. And kids are working in countless group assignments.
Even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think would
depend on solo flights of thought, kids are now expected to act as
committee members. And for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves
or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or, worse,
as problem cases. And the vast majority of teachers reports believing
that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even
though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable,
according to research. (Laughter)
Okay, same thing is true in our workplaces. Now, most of us work in
open plan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant
noise and gaze of our coworkers. And when it comes to
leadership, introverts are routinely passed over for leadership
positions, even though introverts tend to be very careful, much less
likely to take outsize risks — which is something we might all favor
nowadays. And interesting research by Adam Grant at the Wharton School
has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than
extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees,
they’re much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas,
whereas an extrovert can, quite unwittingly, get so excited about things
that they’re putting their own stamp on things, and other people’s
ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface.
Now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts. I’ll give you some examples.
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. And this turns out
to have a special power all its own, because people could feel that
these leaders were at the helm, not because they enjoyed directing
others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at; they were there
because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what they
thought was right.
Now I think at this point it’s important for me to say that I
actually love extroverts. I always like to say some of my best friends
are extroverts, including my beloved husband. And we all fall at
different points, of course, along the introvert/extrovert spectrum.
Even
Carl Jung,
the psychologist who first popularized these terms, said that there’s
no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. He said that such
a man would be in a lunatic asylum, if he existed at all. And some
people fall smack in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, and
we call these people
ambiverts. And I often think that they have the best of all worlds. But many of us do recognize ourselves as one type or the other.
And what I’m saying is that culturally we need a much better balance.
We need more of a yin and yang between these two types. This is
especially important when it comes to creativity and to productivity,
because when psychologists look at the lives of the most creative
people, what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas
and advancing ideas, but who also have a serious streak of introversion
in them.
And this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to
creativity. So Darwin, he took long walks alone in the woods and
emphatically turned down dinner party invitations. Theodor Geisel,
better known as Dr. Seuss, he dreamed up many of his amazing creations
in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in La
Jolla, California. And he was actually afraid to meet the young
children who read his books for fear that they were expecting him this
kind of jolly Santa Claus-like figure and would be disappointed with his
more reserved persona. Steve Wozniak invented the first Apple computer
sitting alone in his cubical in Hewlett-Packard where he was working at
the time. And he says that he never would have become such an expert in
the first place had he not been too introverted to leave the house when
he was growing up.
Now of course, this does not mean that we should all stop
collaborating — and case in point, is Steve Wozniak famously coming
together with Steve Jobs to start Apple Computer — but it does mean that
solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they
breathe. And in fact, we have known for centuries about the transcendent
power of solitude. It’s only recently that we’ve strangely begun to
forget it. If you look at most of the world’s major religions,
you will find seekers — Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad — seekers who are
going off by themselves alone to the wilderness where they then have
profound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the
rest of the community. So no wilderness, no revelations.
This is no surprise though if you look at the insights of
contemporary psychology. It turns out that we can’t even be in a group
of people without instinctively mirroring, mimicking their opinions.
Even about seemingly personal and visceral things like who you’re
attracted to, you will start aping the beliefs of the people around you
without even realizing that that’s what you’re doing.
And groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room, even though there’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas — I mean zero.
So … (Laughter) You might be following the person with the best ideas,
but you might not. And do you really want to leave it up to chance? Much
better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas
freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come together as a
team to talk them through in a well-managed environment and take it
from there.
Now if all this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? Why are
we setting up our schools this way and our workplaces? And why are we
making these introverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by
themselves some of the time? One answer lies deep in our cultural
history. Western societies, and in particular the U.S., have
always favored the man of action over the man of contemplation and “man”
of contemplation. But in America’s early days, we lived in
what historians call a culture of character, where we still, at that
point, valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude.
And if you look at the self-help books from this era, they all had
titles with things like “Character, the Grandest Thing in the World.”
And they featured role models like Abraham Lincoln who was praised for
being modest and unassuming. Ralph Waldo Emerson called him “A man who
does not offend by superiority.”
But then we hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture that
historians call the culture of personality.
What happened is we had
evolved an agricultural economy to a world of big business. And so
suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities. And instead
of working alongside people they’ve known all their lives, now they are
having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers. So, quite
understandably, qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to
seem really important. And sure enough, the self-help books
change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like “How to
Win Friends and Influence People.” And they feature as their role
models really great salesmen. So that’s the world we’re living in today.
That’s our cultural inheritance.
Now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant, and I’m also not calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all. The
same religions who send their sages off to lonely mountain tops also
teach us love and trust. And the problems that we are facing today in
fields like science and in economics are so vast and so complex that we
are going to need armies of people coming together to solve them working
together. But I am saying that the more freedom that we give introverts
to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their
own unique solutions to these problems.
So now I’d like to share with you what’s in my suitcase today. Guess
what? Books. I have a suitcase full of books. Here’s Margaret Atwood,
“Cat’s Eye.” Here’s a novel by Milan Kundera. And here’s “The Guide for
the Perplexed” by Maimonides. But these are not exactly my books. I
brought these books with me because they were written by my
grandfather’s favorite authors.
My grandfather was a rabbi and he was a widower who lived alone in a
small apartment in Brooklyn that was my favorite place in the world when
I was growing up, partly because it was filled with his very gentle,
very courtly presence and partly because it was filled with books. I
mean literally every table, every chair in this apartment had yielded
its original function to now serve as a surface for swaying stacks of
books. Just like the rest of my family, my grandfather’s favorite thing
to do in the whole world was to read.
But he also loved his congregation, and you could feel this love in
the sermons that he gave every week for the 62 years that he was a
rabbi. He would takes the fruits of each week’s reading and he would
weave these intricate tapestries of ancient and humanist thought. And
people would come from all over to hear him speak.
But here’s the thing about my grandfather. Underneath this ceremonial
role, he was really modest and really introverted — so much so that
when he delivered these sermons, he had trouble making eye contact with
the very same congregation that he had been speaking to for 62 years.
And even away from the podium, when you called him to say hello, he
would often end the conversation prematurely for fear that he was taking
up too much of your time. But when he died at the age of 94, the police
had to close down the streets of his neighborhood to accommodate the
crowd of people who came out to mourn him. And so these days I try to
learn from my grandfather’s example in my own way.
So I just published a book about introversion, and it took me about
seven years to write. And for me, that seven years was like total bliss,
because I was reading, I was writing, I was thinking, I was
researching. It was my version of my grandfather’s hours of the day
alone in his library. But now all of a sudden my job is very different,
and my job is to be out here talking about it, talking about
introversion. (Laughter) And that’s a lot harder for me, because as
honored as I am to be here with all of you right now, this is not my
natural milieu.
So I prepared for moments like these as best I could. I spent the
last year practicing public speaking every chance I could get. And I
call this my “year of speaking dangerously.” (Laughter) And that
actually helped a lot. But I’ll tell you, what helps even more is my
sense, my belief, my hope that when it comes to our attitudes to
introversion and to quiet and to solitude, we truly are poised on the
brink on dramatic change. I mean, we are. And so I am going to leave you
now with three calls for action for those who share this vision.
Number one: Stop the madness for constant group work. Just stop it.
(Laughter) Thank you. (Applause) And I want to be clear about what I’m
saying, because I deeply believe our offices should be encouraging
casual, chatty cafe-style types of interactions — you know, the kind
where people come together and serendipitously have an exchange of
ideas. That is great. It’s great for introverts and it’s great for
extroverts. But we need much more privacy and much more freedom and much
more autonomy at work. School, same thing. We need to be teaching kids
to work together, for sure, but we also need to be teaching them how to
work on their own. This is especially important for extroverted children
too. They need to work on their own because that is where deep thought
comes from in part.
Okay, number two: Go to the wilderness. Be like
Buddha, have your own revelations. I’m not saying that we all have to
now go off and build our own cabins in the woods and never talk to each
other again, but I am saying that we could all stand to unplug and get
inside our own heads a little more often.
Number three: Take a good look at what’s inside your own suitcase and why you put it there.
So extroverts, maybe your suitcases are also full of books. Or maybe
they’re full of champagne glasses or skydiving equipment. Whatever it
is, I hope you take these things out every chance you get and grace us
with your energy and your joy. But introverts, you being you, you
probably have the impulse to guard very carefully what’s inside your own
suitcase. And that’s okay. But occasionally, just occasionally, I hope
you will open up your suitcases for other people to see, because 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.
Thank you very much.
She also wrote a book titled Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking
And I'll give you some additional to make you know more about introversion.
10 Mitos Tentang Orang Introvert (Copy Paste)
Introvert adalah orang yang berorientasi
ke ‘dalam’ diri mereka sendiri (inward thinking). Mereka tertarik pada
dunia ide, pemikiran, dan konsep sehingga orang-orang introvert sangat
menyukai suasana tenang untuk menyendiri untuk berpikir ataupun
beraktivitas. Sumber energi mental mereka berasal dari proses
‘menyendiri’ ini sehingga bagi orang yang tidak mengerti, orang
introvert terkadang disalah artikan sebagai pribadi yang anti sosial dan
tertutup. Ketika orang introvert bersosialisasi dengan banyak orang,
maka ‘stock’ energi mental mereka perlahan-lahan akan berkurang dan
ketika itu terjadi, maka mereka akan ‘mengisi ulang’ dirinya dengan
menyendiri. Banyak pemikir, seniman atau orang—orang hebat yang
merupakan orang introvert. Nama-nama seperti Albert Einstein, Abraham
Lincoln, Steven Spielberg, sampai businessman sekelas Bill Gates adalah
contoh notable orang-orang introvert yang sukses dalam pekerjaan mereka.
Pada dasarnya, orang introvert juga suka
bersosialisasi, namun mereka sudah merasa nyaman jika memiliki 1 atau 2
orang teman dekat karena bagi mereka yang terpenting bukanlah kuantitas
teman yang mereka miliki tetapi lebih kepada kualitas atau ‘kedalaman’
hubungan yang mereka bangun. Beda halnya dengan orang ekstrovert, mereka
sangat senang bertemu dengan orang-orang baru dan membuat teman
sebanyak mungkin karena justru hal inilah yang membuat mereka nyaman.
Dalam dunia kerja, orang introvert lebih
cenderung bekerja secara sendiri atau dalam kelompok kecil yang tenang
karena bagi mereka cara kerja seperti itu terasa kondusif. Adapun orang
ekstrovert, mereka senang bekerja di posisi dimana mereka bisa
berinteraksi dengan banyak orang. Tempatkan mereka di lingkungan sepi
dan mereka akan merasa pekerjaan itu sangat tidak menyenangkan.
Perbedaan Introvert dan Ekstrovert :
Kalau diibaratkan,introvert itu danau yang dalam,sedangkan ekstrovert itu lautan yang dangkal.
Mungkin dikarenakan orang introvert hanya
25% dari jumlah manusia didunia,banyak kesalahpahaman dan anggapan yang
tidak tepat kepada orang-orang introvert.Berikut 10 anggapan kebanyakan
orang yang kurang tepat terhadap seorang introvert :
1.Orang Introvert Tidak Suka Bicara
Tidak benar. Mereka tidak mau
bicara,kecuali memang ada yang ingin atau harus dibicarakan. Mereka
kurang suka berbasa basi. Coba mulai bicarakan sesuatu yang menarik bagi
seorang introvert dan dia bisa bicara berjam-jam.
2.Orang Introvert Pemalu
Menjadi seorang introvert tidak harus jadi
pemalu. Mereka tidak takut terhadap orang lain,mereka hanya butuh suatu
alasan untuk berbicara/berinteraksi dengan orang lain. Kalau kalian mau
bicara dengan seorang introvert,bicara saja langsung,tidak usah segan
atau basa basi.
3.Introvert Orangnya Kasar
Seperti yang disebut sebelumnya,seorang
introvert tidak menganggap perlu suatu basa-basi,dan mereka jarang
berbelit-belit dalam berbicara. Introvert lebih suka berbicara jujur dan
apa adanya sesuai kenyataan,dan kebanyakan orang tidak suka hal seperti
ini,makanya seorang introvert terkadang merasa tidak cocok dengan suatu
kelompok atau orang lain.
4.Introvert Tidak Suka Orang Lain
Sebaliknya,mereka sangat menghargai orang
yang dianggapnya teman(meski teman yang dimilikinya tidaklah banyak).
Mungkin mereka tidak mudah berteman dengan orang lain,tetapi jika agan
menjadi teman dari seorang introvert,agan sangat beruntung karena
mendapat teman yang setia .Mereka manganggap suatu pertemanan harus
seumur hidup.
5.Introvert Tidak Suka Keluar/Ke Tempat Umum
Tidak benar.Seorang introvert hanya tidak
suka berlama-lama di ruang publik. Mereka juga cenderung tidak ingin
terlibat jika ada permasalahan di tempat umum. Introvert mendapat data
dan pengalaman dengan cepat,jadi kalau dia sudah "get it",dia akan
langsung pulang kerumah,dan "memproses" data serta pengalaman yang sudah
didapatnya diluar sana.
6.Introvert Suka Menyendiri
Orang introvert sangat merasa nyaman
dengan pemikiran mereka sendiri. Mereka suka berpikir,berimajinasi,dan
senang memecahkan berbagai masalah dan puzzle. NAMUN mereka akan merasa
kesepian jika tidak ada orang lain untuk berbagi pemikiran atau hasil
dari pemecahan masalah yang ditemukannya.
7.Introvert Itu Orang Aneh
Orang introvert sebenarnya cenderung
individualis. Mereka tidak ikut-ikutan orang lain.Introvert lebih
memilih pemikiran,nilai-nilai dan jalan hidup mereka sendiri.Mereka
tidak memilih keputusan berdasarkan apa yang populer atau lagi
nge-trend. Dengan kata lain seorang introvert itu ANTI MAINSTREAM.
8.Introvert Adalah Orang Yang Dijauhi/Diasingkan
Orang introvert sebenarnya lebih suka
bergelut dengan dunia,pemikiran serata batinnya sendiri.Bukan berarti
mereka tidak bisa memberi perhatian bagi sekelilingnya,tapi 'dunianya'
jauh lebih menyenangkan dan lebih bisa mnghargainya
9.Orang Introvert Tidak Tahu Caranya Bersantai Dan Bersenang-senang
Sebenarnya orang introvert lebih suka
bersantai dirumah atau di alam bebas ,bukan ditempat umum yang penuh
kebisingan. Jika teralu banyak orang-orang yang mengobrol atau
kebisingan,mereka akan menjauh. Otak mereka sensitif terhadap
neurotransmitter yang disebut Dopamine.
10.Orang Introvert Harus 'Berubah' dan Menjadi Ekstrovert
Jika saja dunia ini tidak ada orang
introvert, akan sangat sedikit jumlah ilmuwan ,musisi, seniman,
pujangga, pembuat film, penulis, dan filsuf. Kita
tidak bisa memaksa orang introvert mengubah dirinya menjadi ekstrovert.
Menurut penelitian,tingkatan ke-introvert seseorang berpengaruh
terhadap nilai IQnya
Source:
here
