Does this sound like you? If you answered yes, keep reading.
First of all, nobody is born an introvert or an extrovert. All humans are born tabula rasa (which means plain slate, with no ideas or concepts in our infant minds at birth).
Everything we are is a result of things we learned growing up, our environment, significant moments in our lives, and our upbringing. We cultivate “learned behaviours” and these behaviours shape us into the humans we are today.
In essence, you either became introverted or extroverted because of how you were raised, where you were raised, what you were raised on, and the effects of very strong emotional and significant moments in your life that altered the course of your future.
I also want to point out that being an introvert does not mean you’re not as “good” as an extrovert or vice versa. Each personality has its own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. How you fare in life comes down to how you use your strengths to your advantage.
At some point in your life as an introvert, you either found a passion, purpose or a career path that requires the natural strengths of an extrovert and you may have moments where you feel overwhelmed, inadequate or even have bouts of anxiety. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way.
There are some things you must know and some things you can do, to help you thrive in your extroverted career (careers like this may include being an influencer, a public speaker, an organizer, politician, OAP and more).
The first thing you must know is that being an introvert is a learned personality, so is being an extrovert.
You must also learn to adopt the growth mindset that says that “everything is learnable”. You can “learn” the strengths of an extrovert.
You can learn to speak up, speak out and be heard in a social gathering. You can learn to speak with confidence and charisma.
You can learn to hang out in public for hours on end without wanting to run away to the safety of a quite place. You can learn to enjoy the company of others.
Some skills that will help you in your learning journey include: Emotional Intelligence, Neuro Linguistic Programming, Communication, The Art of Public Speaking, The Art of Networking and Social Intelligence.
Now, you can also lean into your strengths as an introvert and use them to your advantage to help you in your extroverted career.
Some of these strengths include: Critical Thinking, Listening Skills, Empath (there are more empath introverts than extroverts), all the random facts and knowledge gathered from all the times you spend alone, diplomacy skills from all the times you spent rejecting social invitations nicely without hurting people’s feelings, and more.
So you see, you don’t have to be an extrovert to do well in a very extroverted job. Just remember to take time to yourself very often, to reset and recharge. Shut off and shut down when you can and remember, every behaviour is learned.
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