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How I Rewired My Brain to Be Ultra-Social
I’ve always been an introvert. As a kid, I spent many solitary hours taking things apart to figure out how they worked, making things with the limited resources that were available (like legos, sticks, and pieces of string), or programming computers. I didn’t have many friends and I didn’t particularly need them.
I was able to get along with people okay, but I often felt very anxious about meeting someone new or being in a large group in which I didn’t know everyone very well. Because I can be playful and entertaining, having even gone through a relatively successful stint as a standup comedian, as an adult I didn’t realize for a long time that I was an introvert.
I’ve come to understand, viscerally, that the basis of all business, all work, all technology development is relationship.
A few years ago, I read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, expecting that it would help me to understand my introverted psychotherapy patients. Only then did I realize that I was probably a pretty extreme introvert myself, and also that introversion is a trait to be prized. In contrast with the cultural stereotype of the successful, gregarious extrovert, the book explains how the most effective leaders and managers are actually…
