Susan Cain Quotes

It’s about the call of his conscience. “It’s about the survival of the planet,” he says. “Nobody is going to care who won or lost any election when the earth is uninhabitable.” If you’re a sensitive sort, then you may be in the habit of pretending to be more of a politician and less cautious or single-mindedly focused than you actually are. But in this chapter I’m asking you to rethink this view. Without people like you, we will, quite literally, drown.

One honest relationship can be more productive than fistfuls of business cards.

Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it. If this requires public speaking or networking or other activities that make you uncomfortable, do them anyway. But accept that they're difficult, get the training you need to make them easier, and reward yourself when you're done.

I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing … I like to think before I speak (softly).

If you're an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts. You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. You enjoy relative freedom from the temptations of superficial prizes like money and status. Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you're focused on a project you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.
So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow, steady way, don't let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. It's up to you to use that independence to good effect.

"Even though we can reach for the outer limits of our temperaments, it can often be better to situate ourselves squarely inside our comfort zones. . . .

Once you understand introversion and extroversion as preferences for certain levels of stimulation, you can begin consciously trying to situate yourself in environments favorable to your own personality — neither overstimulating nor understimulating, neither boring nor anxiety-making. You can organize your life in terms of what personality psychologists call "optimal levels of arousal" and what I call "sweet spots," and by doing so feel more energetic and alive than before."

The Emory University neuroscientists James Rilling and Gregory Berns found that helping people in need stimulates the same brain region as winning a prize or eating a delicious meal. We also know that depressed (and formerly depressed) people are more likely to see the world from others’ points of view and to experience compassion; conversely, high-empathy people are more likely than others to enjoy sad music.

How did a nation founded on so much heartache turn into a culture of normative smiles?

Purification and redemption are such recurrent themes in ritual because there is a clear and ubiquitous need for them: we all do regrettable things as a result of our own circumstances, and new rituals are frequently invented in response to new circumstances.

...the simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity...What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.

Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling, said Jung, extroverts to the external life of people and activities. Introverts focus on the meaning they make of the events swirling around them; extroverts plunge into the events themselves. Introverts recharge their batteries by being alone; extroverts need to recharge when they don’t socialize enough.

Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess sucha key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole. She didn't choose to go to Wonderland - but she made of it an adventure that was fresh and fantastic and very much her own.

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami — a man who has achieved self-mastery — convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise.
“I told you not to bite,” said the swami, “but I did not tell you not to hiss.”
“Many people, like the swami’s cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite,” writes Tavris.

Probably the most common — and damaging — misunderstanding about personality type is that introverts are antisocial and extroverts are pro-social. But as we've seen, neither formulation is correct; introverts and extroverts are differently social.

Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured...Spend your free the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to.