Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep12: Signs you’re an introvert.

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

✅ Get My FREE '5-Day Career Growth' Guide + Training 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Grow your career in the 9-5 corporate world with clarity, confidence and opportunities! ⚡ 👋 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — corporate career coach, ex-corporate leader who has led multimillion-dollar projects across 43 countries and creator of the ultimate career course for 9-5 professionals, The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your career in the corporate world without getting stuck with Mei Phing's 3-step framework to gain career clarity, improve work confidence and attract new job opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/5days ✅ COURSE & COACHING ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡ 📌 ABOUT MEI PHING: Mei Phing Lim is a Professional Career Coach and former Corporate Leader in the financial services and consulting industries. Mei Phing went from a shy quiet introvert to leading multimillion-dollar projects with teams from over 43 countries as the Senior Director and Head of Governance at Standard Chartered, and now teaching 9-5 professionals how to navigate the corporate world and grow their careers with her career coaching course, The Corporate Survivor™. Mei Phing has been featured as a LinkedIn Top Voice 2023, sharing expert career advice in guiding young professionals to plan, navigate and grow their careers. Mei Phing is a keynote speaker on corporate culture, work performance and career growth, and sharing perspectives on what truly takes to build a strategic and successful career without getting stuck. ✅ LEARN MORE: https://www.meiphing.com

Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. In today's podcast, I want to talk about introvert and specifically signs you're secretly an introvert. It's very interesting to note that introversion is not the same as social anxiety or shyness

if you're an introvert it doesn't actually mean that you're constantly feeling socially anxious or you are extremely shy and you don't talk. That is a very, very big misconception about this personality type. And it's something that I hear a lot when I talk to people in my course of work, either as a coach or even previously in a senior level position at my corporate job. And I can hand to heart tell you this because I'm an introvert myself. In fact, my introversion level is quite high, probably about 80%. That doesn't mean that I or other introverts out there are quiet people. So as you guys know, I do videos, I share a lot on my social media, and I'm also recording this podcast. So today I really want to talk about

what is an introvert, and I guess more importantly for those of you who are still wondering if you are truly an introvert or maybe you could be an ambivert or you're trying to deal with an introvert i think the first step is always to start by identifying one so i'll go through a couple of pretty common signs of an introvert and if these are some of the things that you can resonate with then yeah write it down and then you can definitely read more about some practical strategies that you can um yeah can really leverage this personality trait i'm also going to be doing a five-part introverts unite series next week, Mondays to

Fridays, so do check that out as well. All right, so let's get started. So the first most important thing about being an introvert is the fact that being around a lot of people drains your energy so you find yourself extremely exhausted after you spend time with people especially in parties in massive groups so like i always say an introvert operates like a battery so we will go out in the world we have 100 of battery for that day. So the more you interact with others, it just drains that battery bit by bit, bit by bit. And until when it kind of goes into zero, that's when you need to retreat to a quiet place and then have a lot of time for yourself to recuperate.

So as an introvert, you spend a lot of energy in social situations instead of gaining energy so as you expand it that's when your little battery will drain and then you get very tired so it's not saying that introverts don't spend don't enjoy spending time with others the thing is that they prefer close friends. The other part of it is that as an introvert, you actually enjoy time to yourself. Whether it's a nice afternoon, it's time after work,

a few hours alone actually sort of pumps you up, right? It allows you to recuperate, regenerate, and regain all the energy that you have expanded throughout your day or in parties and whatnot. The next point is you tend to have a small group of friends. And it's predicated upon the fact that you don't really enjoy a lot of social interaction especially in big groups and that would also limit the social group that you have in terms of acquaintances or friends so the natural tendency is to have a small group of friends that you can connect with and you feel extremely comfortable with so i also have friends who mistake themselves or comes up comes across as an extrovert because with their close friends they have a lot to talk about so the friends told them say okay I never

knew that you were an introvert because every time we speak you seem to have so much to share with me and you're extremely open and you we a lot of time together. But understand that this is a very select group that have made into the introvert's close circle. So if you're that friend to an introvert, call up your introvert and say, hey, I love you, right? I really appreciate you. That would be really awesome. The next point is some people find you very quiet and may also find it quite difficult to get to know you because quite a number of introverts can be reserved and they don't tend to share a lot about themselves,

maybe in the first meeting and whatnot. And sometimes this will get mistaken as you're just being shy and like what's up something is wrong with you it's not the case and i'll go you know into this in more detail in my series next week but yeah but if you're generally a fairly quiet type and a bit reserved you might probably be an introvert subject to a bunch of caveats. Okay, moving on to the next point, too much stimulation can leave you extremely distracted and unfocused. Because as an introvert, we live in our internal world and our internal world is very controlled, right? So that's why we take time alone and, you know, we stay at home.

And sometimes too much stimulation will get you extremely distracted because in your mind and kind of in your mind, heart and body, there is no calm. And when you get distracted, you tend to be easily triggered and potentially not very focused as well, just because there's just too much going on and you may or may not know how to deal with it and I think for the younger introverts out there that I've spoken to I find that this is something that's quite common so that's why you know taking that time alone and recuperating rejuvenating to recover from your overwhelm, that's always very critical. The next part is as introverts, you tend to be a little bit more self-aware or maybe for some people very self-aware. So self-awareness is a very big part of what I consistently talk on because I don't see this enough in the current society today.

And I think as an introvert, you have a higher chance of developing self-awareness because naturally you are pretty inward looking because you spend a lot of time sort of thinking about your own experiences and just contemplating about stuff, right? And a lot of this stuff are things about yourself. So it's knowledge about yourself. It could be motivations, could be feelings. So a lot of things tend to kind of happen in your mind. And you'll spend quite a bit of time trying to learn and explore the things that you like. The next thing is you are a very sharp observer or you learn by watching and you are very observant.

So this is something that I personally resonate with a lot. So I normally can tell a lot about a person within the first maybe 10 minutes of speaking to them because I observe everything. The way the person is, the way they speak, what they enjoy, what do they do. So I learn by observation, not just by hearing the words they say, but also observing what they do. And that has really helped me a lot in my career because I was given a lot of opportunities when I was fairly young. So in my 20s, I was running a multi-million dollar project at an international bank.

The thing is that you can learn something quickly by observing how other people do it and then practicing it on your own. So observing is something that I really enjoy. And up to today, when I travel to the many, many countries that I've been to, I always enjoy observing people. Yeah. So back to the point, right? Just because you're observant and you're fairly quiet, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're an introvert. In fact, extroverts also might take some time off if they need to focus and spend some time in solitude as well. So there is no sort of a definite, I guess, identification process per se, but I would say this, introversion ultimately is a spectrum.

Most people are not 100% introverted or the other way around, right? So they all lie sort of fairly in the middle. So you may identify yourself as, I don't know, 80% introvert and like a 20% extrovert. So it's all about how you expand your energy and you do also recognize that your life experiences can also affect your personality. So over time, you know, as you gain more experiences, you gain more insights about yourself, the percentage and the extent of your introversion may change, right? You could become more introverted or you could, you know, ready to step out there and share more about yourself in the world.

So all of these are great too. So I hope that I've given you a pretty helpful list about identifying and confirming that you're an introvert. And if you are not an introvert listening to this podcast, I hope that the list has also helped you to identify introverts in your friendship circle. So I want to let everyone know that I will be running a five-day series on Introverts Unite next week, released Mondays to Fridays, 7am Singapore Malaysia time.

So just listen to it. There are a lot of interesting things that you may not know about introverts that I love to share with you so till next time bye