49 Quotes & Sayings By Susan Cain

What's so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it's only when you're alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful - they're counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them. . Susan Cain

A Manifesto for Introverts1. There's a word for 'people who are in their heads too much': thinkers.2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths.4. Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert. There will always be time to be quiet later.5. But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters.6. One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.7. It's OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk.8. 'Quiet leadership' is not an oxymoron.9. Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.10. 'In a gentle way, you can shake the world.' -Mahatma Gandhi . Susan Cain

So the next time you see a person with a compose face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the powers of quiet. Susan Cain

Because conflict-avoidant Emily would never “bite” or even hiss unless Greg had done something truly horrible, on some level she processes his bite to mean that she’s terribly guilty–of something, anything, who knows what? Susan Cain

Solve problems, make art, think deeply. Susan Cain

Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They’re associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Susan Cain

Now that you're an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you're told that you're "in your head too much", a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral. Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers. . Susan Cain

Use your natural powers - of persistence, concentration, and insight - to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems, make art, and think deeply Susan Cain

There is no one more courageous than the person who speaks with the courage of his convictions. Susan Cain

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions. Susan Cain

It's not that there is no small talk... It's that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end... Sensitive people...'enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep' says Strickland. 'When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else. Susan Cain

Introverts living under the Extroversion Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. 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 Susan Cain

If personal space is vital to creativity, so is freedom from "peer pressure". Susan Cain

The longer you pause to process surprising or negative feedback, the more likely you are to learn from it. Susan Cain

I need a break after school, " she told me later. "School is hard because a lot of people are in the room, so you get tired. I freak out if my mom plans a play date without telling me, because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings. But I'd rather stay home. At a friend's house you have to do the things other people want to do. I like hanging out with my mom after school because I can learn from her. She's been alive longer than me. We have thoughtful conversations. I like having conversations because they make people happy. Susan Cain

Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can. Susan Cain

Osborn was a founding partner of the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn (BBDO), but it was as an author that he really made his mark, beginning with the day in 1938 that a magazine editor invited him to lunch and asked what his hobby was. “Imagination, ” replied Osborn. Susan Cain

...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward. Susan Cain

The trick for introverts is to honor their styles instead of allowing themselves to be swept up by prevailing norms. Susan Cain

Extroverts are more likely to take a quick-and-dirty approach to problem-solving, trading accuracy for speed, making increasing numbers of mistakes as they go, and abandoning ship altogether when the problem seems too difficult or frustrating. Introverts think before they act, digest information thoroughly, stay on task longer, give up less easily, and work more accurately. Introverts and extroverts also direct their attention differently: if you leave them to their own devices, the introverts tend to sit around wondering about things, imagining things, recalling events from their past, and making plans for the future. The extroverts are more likely to focus on what's happening around them. It's as if extroverts are seeing "what is" while their introverted peers are asking "what if. Susan Cain

Ask your child for information in a gentle, nonjudgmental way, with specific, clear questions. Instead of “How was your day?” try “What did you do in math class today?” Instead of “Do you like your teacher?” ask “What do you like about your teacher?” Or “What do you not like so much?” Let her take her time to answer. Try to avoid asking, in the overly bright voice of parents everywhere, “Did you have fun in school today?! ” She’ll sense how important it is that the answer be yes. Susan Cain

We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard's education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of power, but to use well the kind you've been granted. Susan Cain

Introverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions. Susan Cain

It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world. Susan Cain

Soft power is quiet persistence. Susan Cain

He had a courtly way of exclaiming over whatever was exclaimable in people — especially kids. Susan Cain

Events like this don't give me the sense of oneness others seem to enjoy; it's always been private occasions that make me feel connected to the joys and sorrows of the world, often in the form of communion with writers and musicians I'll never meet in person. Proust called these moments of unity between writer and reader 'that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude. Susan Cain

What's so magical about solitude? In many fields, it's only when you're alone that you can engage in deliberate practice. This is the key to exceptional achievement. Susan Cain

One noteworthy study suggests that people who suppress negative emotions tend to leak those emotions later in unexpected ways. The psychologist Judith Grob asked people to hide their emotions when she showed them disgusting images. She even had them hold pens in their mouths to prevent them from frowning. She found that this group reported feeling less disgusted by the pictures than did those who'd been allowed to react naturally. Later, however, the people who hid their emotions suffered side effects. Their memory was impaired, and the negative emotions they'd suppressed seemed to color their outlook. When Grob had them fill in the missing letter to the word "gr_ss", for example, they were more likely than others to offer "gross" rather than "grass". "People who tend to [suppress their negative emotions] regularly, " concludes Grob, "might start to see their world in a more negative light." p. 223 . Susan Cain

But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think. Susan Cain

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. Susan Cain

There's nothing more exciting than ideas. Susan Cain

Introverts just just don't buzz as easily. Susan Cain

Yet today we make room for a remarkably narrow range of personality styles. We’re told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. Susan Cain

If you don't love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It's not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the Divine. It must be displayed publicly. Susan Cain

You once said to would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing one self to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind.. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough. . Susan Cain

If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. Susan Cain

We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally. Susan Cain

I was the nicest person you'd ever want to know, " Alex recalls, "but the world wasn't that way. The problem was that if you were just a nice person, you'd get crushed. I refused to live a life where people could do that stuff to me. Susan Cain

Most people who have grown up introverted in this very extroverted culture of ours have had painful experiences of feeling like they are out of step with what's expected of them. Parenting can pose unique challenges for introverted parents, who fear that their own painful experiences will be repeated in their children's lives. Susan Cain

We need to do teacher training to educate them about what temperament means. Shyness is painful and you want to help a child with shyness - but the underlying temperament of being a careful, sensitive person is to be honoured, valued and respected. Susan Cain

In most job interviews, people say they are looking for people skills and emotional intelligence. That's reasonable, but the question is, how do you define what that looks like? Susan Cain

Shyness is about the fear of social judgments - at a job interview or a party you might be excessively worried about what people think of you. Whereas an introvert might not feel any of those things at all, they simply have the preference to be in a quieter setting. Susan Cain

All personality traits have their good side and their bad side. But for a long time, we've seen introversion only through its negative side and extroversion mostly through its positive side. Susan Cain

A widely held, but rarely articulated, belief in our society is that the ideal self is bold, alpha, gregarious. Introversion is viewed somewhere between disappointment and pathology. Susan Cain

In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who's comfortable 'putting himself out there.' Susan Cain