About "Quiet"

A few days ago, I finished the book “Quiet” by Susan Cain. In this post, I am going to share what I learned with you. The book talks about introversion and how introverted people have been underrepresented and undervalued in our communities. The book is written with extreme passion. The author experienced any challenge with her flesh and blood and the wisdom in the lines comes from a life of frustration and self-discovery. I highly recommend reading this book, regardless of how you think of yourself. If you are an educator or a manager, it is bread and butter for you.

The idea that I am an introvert was not new to me at all. I have been very quiet and shy as long as I remember. The description of introverts in the book resonated with me. I love meaningful conversations with a small group of friends. Small talk for a long time can make me sick. Although I have never hidden in a toilet to avoid the overwhelming experience of meeting too many people, sometimes I leave events earlier because it feel that is enough.

One of the most important concepts that I learned from this book is the idea of a highly sensitive person (HSP). I did not know that such a concept exists. I thought I am sensitive because I am a woman. The other mind-blowing fact that I learned is the association between being emotionally sensitive and being sensitive in the physical sensory system. I am very sensitive to what I eat. Caffeine in the coffee and tea keeps me awake while garlic makes me sleepy. If you give me two brands of coffee, I can tell you which one has more caffeine and if the difference is statistically significant. I am a caffeine live “t-test”. Because of that, I cannot drink tea or coffee after 10:00 AM. Otherwise, I will have trouble sleeping at night.

Sometimes I am agitated and restless and I feel that the vitamin R in my body went down. Yes. It is not a typo: Vitamin R. It stands for reading. In these situations, I plan for a reading day. I try to minimize my exposure to TV, laptop and electronic devices and I read most of the day. By reading, I mean reading in the old-fashioned way from a paper book. It has an amazing effect on my happiness and well-being. Whenever I read, I see how my brain transforms and how it becomes calmer, more organized and more creative. Regardless of what you are reading, you can take advantage of the healing power of books.

Social media is constantly bombarding us with stories of extroversion. Posts on Facebook and Instagram remind us that you are happy as long as you are “with someone at somewhere” or “flying from A to B” or “eating pizza at a café”. You cannot be with Socrates or Rumi or George Orwell or Jane Austen because they passed away. You cannot be in the Wonderland or Yoknapatawpha County (in the works of William Faulkner). The person has to be alive and the place has to be located on Google maps. In my eyes, reading a new book is much more interesting than a new kind of pizza but this is sadly we are hearing all the time.

There is no doubt that we underestimate the value of introverts. The story is even worse than what is narrated in the book. If you take a look at organizational behavior books, especially in the chapter for personality traits, you see that introversion has been considered as a personality weakness, the inability to communicate and the potential for creating misunderstanding and trouble. In other words, it is described as a disease that you should get rid of as soon as you can. Otherwise, you are an organizational misfit for a life and the blame is on you: you could not improve your behavior. Therefore, it is no surprise that Harvard Business School can be such a scary place (read the story in the book).

Needless to say, we need people with a wide range of temperaments to succeed. Discrimination against any of the groups deprives a community of the values these people create and the services they offer. At a higher level, it deprives all of us of living a healthy and fulfilling life; what many of us are dreaming about. Furthermore, we should not let these terms limit who we are. Most of us are not purely introvert or extrovert and fall in between the extremes. These are just labels to show some of the patterns in the human behavior. What is important is how much original we are and how we contribute to the world to make it a better place.