Introvert or Extrovert Which One Are You?

You’re not your personality

It’s not who you are now but what you want to do now, and be happy doing it. How can you take the upsides of whether you are extroversion or introversion to help you have a happier life?

If you’re the life and soul of the party, does it in fact mean you’re an extrovert or does it just mean that at this particular time your requirement is to be stimulated?

Personality is a changing target, some of the traits of personality will change over time through our core personality but who we are remains constant within a degree of flux.

It’s closer to chaos theory, personality is chaotic within a structure and thus what we see and label are the fluctuating parts of the constant called ‘my personality’.

You are not an introvert nor an extrovert – you require degrees of stimulation that will change from one situation to another.

How you handle each of these situations is more down to your beliefs, capabilities and willingness to learn, grow and change.

Your endeavour to success

If you require more stimulation to be satisfied this implies the threshold levels are higher than if you require less.

This might also be why people that are extroverted require ‘big’ life changes to make the change; to travel around the world, to meet with Gandhi, a fire-walk.

Whereas someone with lower thresholds for stimulation would probably require less significant encounters to achieve change. Their sensitivity to change is measured by granularity and not rocks.

So before you go for that new job or promotion think about how much stimulation you need and whether the position will be right for you based on the amount of stimulation you require.

If you want a change, will a firewalk do it for you, or do you want something more personal and subtle.

In summary

Just because you prefer silence doesn’t mean you don’t love a good ol’ rock concert.

Introverts and extroverts do however have certain preferences and are better at certain roles than their opposite. We are on an ever changing scale but we generally lean to one side more often than the other. Environment, circumstances and motivation requirements can lead us to swap from our dominant side to the other and back again.

After all this are you an introvert or an extrovert?

I think the case here is not whether you are one of the other or in the middle, rather when is it most useful to have the strengths of each given the presenting situation and how do you switch from one to the other in order to help you achieve what it is you most want.

So stop thinking whether an Introvert or an Extrovert is good rather what can you do to make sure you have the right amount and kind of stimulation that makes you happy.

If in doubt, just act as if…

Rob