What comes to mind when you hear the word “introvert”?
This is just my personal take, but I feel that most people don’t have a particularly positive image of it. Why do I say that? Because I myself — an introvert — have long associated introversion with being less than, something that needs to be fixed, or even something to be hidden.
But something happened that began to shift that image for me.
It was a talk by an American woman named Susan Cain, given on a platform called TED, titled “The Power of Introverts” Thanks to that talk, I believe the perception of introversion — once filled with negativity — slowly began to change. At least, that’s how it felt to me.
As you’ll see in the video, she’s articulate, charismatic, and has a great sense of humor. At first glance, she may not seem like an introvert, but the content of her talk deeply resonates with those of us who are.
I used to assume that most Americans were extroverted (were there any introverts at all?), but I came to realize that introverts do, in fact, exist among them. (I’ve heard that about one in three people are introverts) For some reason, that realization gave me a sense of relief.
It felt as though I had been viewing introversion through the narrow lens of Japan, but by widening my perspective to a global scale, I was finally able to see the bigger picture.
Susan Cain’s talk gave me the courage to embrace my introversion, to go further, and to explore what I can achieve precisely because I am an introvert.
