Susan Cain Quotes

I think it’s our culture,” explains Tiffany Liao, a poised Swarthmore-bound high school senior whose parents are from Taiwan. “Study, do well, don’t create waves. It’s inbred in us to be more quiet. When I was a kid and would go to my parents’ friends’ house and didn’t want to talk, I would bring a book. It was like this shield, and they would be like, ‘She’s so studious!’ And that was praise.” It’s hard to imagine other American moms and dads outside Cupertino smiling on a child who reads in public while everyone else is gathered around the barbecue. But parents schooled a generation ago in Asian countries were likely taught this quieter style as children. In many East Asian classrooms, the traditional curriculum emphasizes listening, writing, reading, and memorization. Talking is simply not a focus, and is even discouraged.

الأنطوائيون , في المقابل , ربما لديهم مهارات أجتماعية قوية ويتمتعون باللقاء في الحفلات والاعمال , لكن بعد حين يرغبون لو كانوا في قمصان النوم في بيوتهم . أنهم يفضلون تكريس طاقتهم الاجتماعية لأصدقائهم المقربين والزملاء والعائلة , أنهم ينصتون أكثر مما يتكلمون , ويفكرون قبل أن يتكلمون , و يشعرون غالباً أنهم أفضل في التعبير عن أنفسهم في الكتابة أكثر من المحادثة , وهم يكرهون الصراع , وكثير منهم يرعبهم الحوار القصير ولكن يتمتعون بالنقاشات العميقة

If we could honor sadness a little more, maybe we could see it — rather than enforced smiles and righteous outrage — as the bridge we need to connect with each other. We could remember that no matter how distasteful we might find someone’s opinions, no matter how radiant, or fierce, someone may appear, they have suffered, or they will.

Hayes and his colleagues have distilled these insights into seven skills for coping with loss. In more than a thousand studies over thirty-five years, they’ve found that the acquisition of this skill set predicts whether people facing loss fall into anxiety, depression, trauma, substance abuse — or whether they thrive. The first five skills involve acceptance of the bitter. First, we need to acknowledge that a loss has occurred; second, to embrace the emotions that accompany it. Instead of trying to control the pain, or to distract ourselves with food, alcohol, or work, we should simply feel our hurt, sorrow, shock, anger. Third, we need to accept all our feelings, thoughts, and memories, even the unexpected and seemingly inappropriate ones, such as liberation, laughter, and relief. Fourth, we should expect that sometimes we’ll feel overwhelmed. And fifth, we should watch out for unhelpful thoughts, such as “I should be over this,” “It’s all my fault,” and “Life is unfair.” Indeed, the ability to accept difficult emotions — not just observe them, not just breathe through them, but actually, nonjudgmentally, accept them — has been linked repeatedly to long-term thriving.

Extroverts are better than introverts at handling information overload. Introverts' reflectiveness uses up a lot of cognitive capacity, according to Joseph Newman. On any given task, he says, ''if we have 100 percent cognitive capacity, an introvert may have only 75 percent on task and 25 percent off task, whereas an extrovert may have 90 percent on task.'' This is because most tasks are goal-directed. Extroverts appear to allocate most of their cognitive capacity to the goal at hand, while introverts use up capacity by monitoring how the task is going.

the orchid hypothesis” by David Dobbs in a wonderful article in The Atlantic. This theory holds that many children are like dandelions, able to thrive in just about any environment. But others, including the high-reactive types that Kagan studied, are more like orchids: they wilt easily, but under the right conditions can grow strong and magnificent.

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.

It's not that pain equals art. It's that creativity has the power to look pain in the eye, and to decide to turn it into something better. ... The quest to transform pain into beauty is one of the great catalysts of artistic expression.

Philosophers call this the “paradox of tragedy,” and they’ve puzzled over it for centuries. Why do we sometimes welcome sorrow, when the rest of the time we’ll do anything to avoid it?

We’re built to live simultaneously in love and loss, bitter and sweet.

Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.

The tragedy of life is linked inescapably with its splendor; you could tear civilization down and rebuild it from scratch, and the same dualities would rise again. Yet to fully inhabit these dualities — the dark as well as the light — is, paradoxically, the only way to transcend them. And transcending them is the ultimate point. The bittersweet is about the desire for communion, the wish to go home.

Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.

Some of the world’s most talented people are introverts. Without them we wouldn’t have the Apple computer, the theory of relativity or Van Gogh’s sunflowers.

As a young boy, Charles Darwin made friends easily but preferred to spend his time taking long, solitary nature walks. (As an adult he was no different. “My dear Mr. Babbage,” he wrote to the famous mathematician who had invited him to a dinner party, “I am very much obliged to you for sending me cards for your parties, but I am afraid of accepting them, for I should meet some people there, to whom I have sworn by all the saints in Heaven, I never go out.”)