#introversion

In “America the extroverted,” relationships are good, and even if they are very bad, they are better than no relationship. Introverts don’t think this way. Many of us want and have great relationships, but we generally prefer “no relationship” to a bad one. Quality matters. We conserve our relationship resources, because we know they are limited. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

I prefer to interact with people one-on-one. Any more than that, and the dynamic becomes competitive. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

Our challenge as introverts is to adopt the attitude, based on the introversion assumption, that your need to retreat requires no explanation—it is self-evident. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#attitude

...according to the prevailing extroversion assumption, inviting you is a nice gesture, and pressuring you is a compliment—an indication that you are wanted. How many times have you equivocated on or even declined an invitation, only to be asked again—and again? ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

Is it better to part with your introversion or to accept a diagnosis that allows you to have it as long as you see it as a problem? The introverted child’s plea for solitude seems to be either unheeded or treated. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

I heard, for the first time— nothing. I danced and did somersaults, lay down in a bed of grass, felt the breeze. And for the first time, I heard my heart, and I knew who I was. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

I will say that the socially oblivious extroverts do not represent the whole. As with introverts, social skills are independent of extroversion: some are skilled, some are not. The skilled ones know how to listen. But in contrast to socially unskilled introverts, who keep to themselves, socially unskilled extroverts insist on socializing. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

Introvert integrity means going the distance for what we love: moving from apology to acceptance, from acceptance to acknowledgement, and from acknowledgment to activism. ↗

— Laurie Helgoe

#life

Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to. Stay home on New Year's Eve if that's what makes you happy. Skip the committee meeting. Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances. Read. Cook. Run. Write a story. Make a deal with yourself that you'll attend a set number of social events in exchange for not feeling guilty when you beg off. ↗

— Susan Cain

#extrovert #introversion #introvert #home

Even in a personal sense, after all, art is an intensified life. By art one is more deeply satisfied and more rapidly used up. It engraves on the countenance of its servant the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventures, and even if he has outwardly existed in cloistral tranquility, it leads in the long term to overfastidiousness, over-refinement, nervous fatigue and overstimulation, such as can seldom result from a life of the most extravagant passions and pleasures. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#introversion #neuroticism #art