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Caring for Your Introvert

Caring for Your Introvert
From Atlantic Unbound: Interviews: "Introverts of the World, Unite!" (February 14, 2006) A conversation with Jonathan Rauch, the author who—thanks to an astonishingly popular essay in the March 2003 Atlantic—may have unwittingly touched off an Introverts' Rights revolution. Follow-up: The Introversy Continues Jonathan Rauch comments on reader feedback about introvert dating—and poses a new question Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren't caring for him properly. I know. Oh, for years I denied it. What is introversion? Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. How many people are introverts? Are introverts misunderstood? Are introverts oppressed? Extroverts therefore dominate public life. Are introverts arrogant? Third, don't say anything else, either. Related:  Psychology

Opinion: Instant Messaging for Introverts From time to time, someone I know asks me an ordinary and reasonable question: "What's your iChat (or Skype) ID?" My usual reply is to give them the information along with a big disclaimer: I'm almost never logged in. In fact, let me be completely honest and say I thoroughly dislike instant messaging (IM) except in a few specific situations. For months, I've been thinking about why this is - both the technological and psychological aspects - along with whether it somehow exposes a fundamental character flaw, and whether it's something I should attempt to change. Having experimented with a variety of approaches to instant messaging (as well as its close relative Twitter) and having done a considerable amount of introspection, I'm inclined to think that my personality type is fundamentally ill-suited to instant messaging. This notion has been difficult for me to come to grips with, because I'm a self-professed computer geek since way back when, someone who lives and breathes technology.

How Other People’s Unspoken Expectations Control Us We quickly sense how others view us and play up to these expectations. A good exercise for learning about yourself is to think about how other people might view you in different ways. Consider how your family, your work colleagues or your partner think of you. Now here’s an interesting question: to what extent do you play up to these expectations about how they view you? This idea that other people’s expectations about us directly affect how we behave was examined in a classic social psychology study carried out by Dr Mark Snyder from the University of Minnesota and colleagues (Snyder et al., 1977). They had a hunch that people automatically sense how others view them and immediately start exhibiting the expected behaviours. Feeling the attraction To test this in the context of interpersonal attraction they had male students hold conversations with female students they’d just met through microphones and headsets. Changing others’ behaviour

Your Mental Health is More Important Than Your Grades | Huffington Post Pursuing your degree? Feeling the pressure? It’s that time in the term, when the heat is turned up-between deadlines, exams and everything in between. If you are a student of today, you likely have a lot going on in the between. This isn’t the kind of stress that gives us enough juice to perform and stay on task (known as “eustress”). It’s no joke. Having taught at every grade level in education (yes, from Pre-K through doctoral students), and also worked with them in the therapy room, I’ve seen firsthand the perils we can face at each juncture of development. I started becoming worried about my students, who are professional adults seeking new and advanced degrees. It didn’t take long to discover some good and bad news. The bad news: Students were marinating in stress, and they weren’t worried just because of academic pressures, but mainly from their work and personal demands. 1. 2. 3. 4. Which of these lessons do you need to put into action first? Edward Honaker

Portrait of an INTJ As an INTJ, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you take things in primarily via your intuition. Your secondary mode is external, where you deal with things rationally and logically. INTJs live in the world of ideas and strategic planning. With Introverted Intuition dominating their personality, INTJs focus their energy on observing the world, and generating ideas and possibilities. INTJ's tremendous value and need for systems and organization, combined with their natural insightfulness, makes them excellent scientists. INTJs are natural leaders, although they usually choose to remain in the background until they see a real need to take over the lead. INTJs spend a lot of time inside their own minds, and may have little interest in the other people's thoughts or feelings. The INTJ's interest in dealing with the world is to make decisions, express judgments, and put everything that they encounter into an understandable and rational system.

The introvert’s guide to dating Though there are a few fans of the “cold call” approach to dating — the idea that we’re supposed to encounter a total stranger in a bar or at a party and sell ourselves between bursts of deafening music — introverts detest the idea. Why? Look at what defines an introvert The brains of introverts become very active in response to what’s going on around them. The inner bells and whistles go on, and the introvert wants to crunch the data, understand the story, to make sense of it all. Because there’s so much activity inside, too much activity outside (noise, social input) can turn a “fun” event into an exhausting chore.Introverts like to think first and talk second. Here’s the good news: Romantic cold calling is more suited to cinema than real life, and the path to finding love can take a wonderfully introverted course. Here’s a road map Warm up. More dating tips 4 Signs your Prince Charming is a fake Help!

Test for Dwindling Retail Jobs Spawns a Culture of Cheating How to Work Like the Masters | LifeRemix Written by Jay of Dumb Little Man. When I need work done on my car, I consult with a mechanic. When it's time to build a deck in the backyard, I will search for an expert and listen to what he says. So when it comes to life itself, why wouldn't you at least consider what experts think? With that, LifeRemix has done some homework and we're bringing you a list of things that you'll need to consider. Here are a handful of tips on working from the most popular productivity bloggers on the internet, along with bloggers on organization, the environment and more. From Wisebread: Achieve greatness fifteen minutes at a time. From Dumb Little Man: Gain 10 days per year by adjusting your sleep. From Zen Habits: Eliminate all but the essential tasks. From LifeDev: Take creative breaks. From The Happiness Project: Walk around the block. From No Impact Man: Let your TV rob someone else's time. From Success From the Nest: Don't let someone else define your creative process. From Pick the Brain: From Behance:

The Demoralized Mind © Robin Heighway-Bury/Alamy By John Schumaker / newint.org Our descent into the Age of Depression seems unstoppable. Three decades ago, the average age for the first onset of depression was 30. Today it is 14. By contrast to many traditional cultures that lack depression entirely, or even a word for it, Western consumer culture is certainly depression-prone. Contributing to the confusion is the equally insidious epidemic of demoralization that also afflicts modern culture. Existential disorder In the past, our understanding of demoralization was limited to specific extreme situations, such as debilitating physical injury, terminal illness, prisoner-of-war camps, or anti-morale military tactics. Rather than a depressive disorder, demoralization is a type of existential disorder associated with the breakdown of a person’s ‘cognitive map’. Research shows that, in contrast to earlier times, most people today are unable to identify any sort of philosophy of life or set of guiding principles.

INTJ According to Myers-Briggs the INTJ represents "The Mastermind." INTJs are one of the rarest of the 16 psychological types and account for approximately 2-4% of the population.[2] Women of this personality type are especially rare, forming just 0.8% of the population. The MBTI assessment was developed from the work of prominent psychiatrist Carl G. Prominent American INTJs are believed to include Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, John F Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. The MBTI instrument[edit] The MBTI preferences indicate the differences in people based on the following:[6] How they focus their attention or get their energy (extraversion or introversion)How they perceive or take in information (sensing or intuition)How they prefer to make decisions (thinking or feeling)How they orient themselves to the external world (judgment or perception) By using their preference in each of these areas, people develop what Jung and Myers called psychological type. Statistics[edit]

Kingdom of Introversion | The World according to the 'introvert' and the 'nerd' How your friends' friends can affect your mood - life - 30 December 2008 IF YOU live in the northern hemisphere, this is probably not your favourite month. January tends to dispirit people more than any other. We all know why: foul weather, post-Christmas debt, the long wait before your next holiday, quarterly bills, dark evenings and dark mornings. 7 Secrets of the Super Organized A few years ago, my life was a mess. So was my house, my desk, my mind. Then I learned, one by one, a few habits that got me completely organized. Am I perfect? Of course not, and I don’t aim to be. But I know where everything is, I know what I need to do today, I don’t forget things most of the time, and my house is uncluttered and relatively clean (well, as clean as you can get when you have toddlers and big kids running around). So what’s the secret? Are these obvious principles? If your life is a mess, like mine was, I don’t recommend trying to get organized all in one shot. So here are the 7 habits: Reduce before organizing. If you take your closet full of 100 things and throw out all but the 10 things you love and use, now you don’t need a fancy closet organizer. How to reduce: take everything out of a closet or drawer or other container (including your schedule), clean it out, and only put back those items you truly love and really use on a regular basis.

13 Cognitive Biases That Really Screw Things Up For You | The Huffington Post The human brain is a natural wonder. It produces more than 50,000 thoughts each day and 100,000 chemical reactions each second. With this amount of processing power, you would think our judgment would be highly accurate, but that’s far from the case. Our judgments are often inaccurate because the brain relies on cognitive biases over hard evidence. Researchers have found that cognitive bias wreaks havoc by forcing people to make poor, irrational judgments: A Queensland University study found that blonde women earned, on average, 7% higher salaries than redheads and brunettes. A Duke study found that people with “mature” faces experienced more career success than those with “baby” faces. A Yale study found that female scientists were not only more likely to hire male scientists but they also paid them4,000 more than female scientists. Let’s explore some of the most common types of cognitive biases that entrench themselves in our lives. 1. 2. 3. 5. 6. 8. 9. 11. 12.

Who are you, really? - Mandy de Waal There’s a scene from Little Miss Sunshine that has stayed with me for the longest time. If you’ve seen the movie you’ll remember it instantly. Miss Sunshine is of course the film about a family on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and the scene in question is between Dwayne and Frank who are musing on the meaning of life. Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is? Before I knew better, like Dwayne I thought that life was curative. Apart from writing that one incredible book 'that almost no one reads' Marcel Proust created an interesting questionnaire in his teens that serves as a personality confessional. The original manuscript of Proust’s answers entitled “by Marcel Proust himself” was auctioned in 2003 for €102,000. I’ve done the Proust Questionnaire at various stages during my life and found that the degree of thought and self revelation in the exercise intriguing.

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