Focus on the positive things in your life and you’ll be shocked at how many more positive things start happening. But before you start to think you just got lucky, remember that it’s magic, and you made it yourself.
7
I Am the Antifashion
Why fit in when you were born to stand out?
—Dr. Seuss
As the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre so poignantly put it, “Hell is other people.” While I no longer agree with this sentiment, I can empathize with the guy. When I was about four or five, my parents threw me a birthday party. There was cake, presents, and a piñata. When the time came, I lined up, got blindfolded, spun around in circles, and whacked the poor papier-mâché donkey with a broomstick, just like all the other kids. Hitting something with a stick was very gratifying, but I had never seen a piñata before, and had no idea that there was any sort of end goal. Therefore, it came as a complete shock to me when another child’s final whack knocked the donkey’s head off; it split open, spilling its candy guts onto the ground. The sight of Tootsie Rolls and Starbursts turned the other kids into screaming primates and as they immediately dove for the candy, I stood frozen. I was completely unaware that such a treasure trove even existed inside that piñata, so instead of jumping into the melee to fight for my rights, I turned, ran straight to the nearest table, and promptly crawled under it. And there I stayed until the last sugar-sodden five-year-old party guest had left and I felt it was safe to emerge from my cave.
Twenty-five years later, I’m still not a huge fan of surprises.
This is your brain on introversion.
Though it might not seem like it from the outside, I’m actually an introvert. Common knowledge used to dictate that extroverts were outgoing and introverts were shy, and this certainly never applied to me. I’m about as far away as you can get from a shrinking violet. However, research over the last few years has been focused on how the two personality types are actually more defined by what energizes them. Extroverts get their energy from being around a lot of people, but introverts find large groups draining and require time alone to recharge.
Introverts and extroverts also process external stimuli via different pathways in the brain, which means that something an extrovert would find completely fun and novel—such as a bunch of kindergarteners rioting for candy—would be totally overwhelming to an introvert like me.
However, as a kid you’re not self-aware enough to understand why you’re different; you just know that you are. Being an only child meant that I naturally spent a ton of time alone. I preferred it this way and was never lonely. Yet at school this tendency to be alone made me feel weird. It was considered strange to want to be alone on the swings while everyone else was on the jungle gym, even if alone on the swings was where I was happiest. As a result I spent way too much time thinking about what other people thought about me, and what I could possibly do to make them like me more. Did they think my family’s house was big enough? Did they think I was pretty? Did they like my backpack? I think it’s cool, but what if this backpack makes me look like I’m in sixth grade when really I’m in seventh? Just typing that paragraph makes me exhausted, so I think it was no wonder that by the time I was a teenager, I ended up preferring to make tuna sandwiches at Subway, where at least I could be alone in my head, rather than subjecting myself to the nonstop emotional roller coaster they call adolescence.
Introverts are naturally more sensitive because they don’t need a ton of dopamine, the “feel-good” neurotransmitter that your brain produces in response to positive stimuli. Conversely, extroverts can’t get enough. They even love adrenaline, the chemical that your brain produces in the face of fear, so they need bigger and riskier situations to produce the same natural high that an introvert gets from just having a conversation with a close friend. Introverts are also more apt to pay attention to the small details (and an eBay store is a treasure trove of small details).
Much of the world, from school to the workplace, is set up to reward extroverts, and therefore it can be easier for introverts to feel overlooked or as if they don’t measure up. For instance, even if you know all the answers but don’t want to call attention to yourself by raising your hand, you might end up feeling, or being perceived as, less smart than the kids flailing their arms to get the teacher’s attention. Same goes for work. Just remember, as Susan Cain writes in Quiet, “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”
In business, a disproportionate amount of importance is placed on the ability to network. If you don’t thrive on going out and meeting a million people, you might end up feeling that you have less of a chance of getting ahead in your career. Also, introverts might hang back in meetings and thus not be perceived as “leadership material,” even though introverted people frequently make more empathetic managers. As I’ve said before, part of the reason that I started Nasty Gal was that I wanted a job where I could be by myself and not have to deal with people. I wasn’t great at in-person customer service, because I can’t fake a smile to save my life, but it turned out that I was really good at it electronically. Over e-mail, eBay, and MySpace, I was a customer service queen—able to respond to people politely and genuinely, infusing everything with a digital smile. Psychologists now believe that social media is a really valuable tool for introverts, because it allows them to communicate and even network on their own terms.
Even though introverts might keep quiet during meetings, they have several tendencies that actually come in handy in the world of business: They make fewer risky financial decisions (hello, $1 million in the bank at Nasty Gal!), are more persistent when faced with a problem that isn’t easily solvable, and can also be very creative. A lot of the world’s great artists, thinkers, and even businesspeople are and were introverts (Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, and J. K. Rowling, to name a few), so in no way does being an introvert doom you into a life in the shadows.
Getting Off at the Wrong Stop
I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no rational life here.
—Robert Anton Wilson
I was once (and still am) a not-so-secret metalhead. I’ll admit that sometimes feeling bad feels good. A lot of people poo-poo downer music, but they must just be really well adjusted. Nothing, for me, feels more comforting than the sound of an angry, misunderstood man.
There is a great song, “Born Too Late,” by a band called Saint Vitus that I have always loved. I can still recite some of the lyrics by heart, because they’re just too good. And by good, naturally, I mean bad.
Every time I’m on the street
People laugh and point at me
They laugh about my length of hair
And the out-of-date clothes I wear
They say my songs are much too slow
But they don’t know the things I know.