Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep13: Introverts are just misunderstood.

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 why introverts are not weirdos. This is the first part of my five-part, five-day series of Introverts Unite. So do listen on the thing is i have spoken to many introverts and being an

Starting point is 00:00:52 introvert myself there is always one big thing that i feel we we think about a lot. And there might be some truth to that. Which is, people out there think that introverts are weird. Weird because we are not always very keen to join the next party. We are not that keen in networking events. We don't always say yes to meetups. We spend a lot of time at home and people find that weird because what is there to do at home? My friends, let me tell you that there is a lot to do at home. You can read, you can write, you can learn something on YouTube, Google some interesting articles. And at the end of the day, if you enjoy

Starting point is 00:01:53 spending time in solitude, spending time at home to recuperate, there's really nothing wrong with that. It's just that in today's world, activities such as catch-ups, meet-ups, networking events, these are now highly prized because organizations and enterprises organize such events for pretty much like photo operation, right? They have to meet their budgets and whatnot i think unfortunately i think as an introvert because we don't we are not always as enthusiastic to join every single event and participate in the committee to run as many networking on social events as possible sometimes people think that we are weird sometimes people think that if you don't go out that means you are not meeting people and that's not true because a lot of our time right now we spend online and you know

Starting point is 00:02:52 online is almost similar to offline interaction as well and as we and i think over the years, we will see it in the virtual world and really merging with the offline world. So introverts are not weird. They just operate differently to an extrovert. So if you're an extrovert listening to this, you might find it so strange. You're like, why do these people want to stay at home and do nothing? Well, nothing is also something. Spending time with myself is something. And it's okay to get away from being highly stimulated.

Starting point is 00:03:35 That will then stop you from the ability to focus well. So sometimes, you know, stimulation is good. I think as humans, we need to be constantly simulated and that's where we learn that's where we grow but overstimulation is something else right when there's just too much noise and you the fact that you can't get mental clarity you can't focus you end up just getting moved around just because there's just so much information out there. The other thing that people might find a little bit weird is how come you don't have a lot of friends? How come introverts only seem to have a few friends and they don't know a lot of people?

Starting point is 00:04:23 Well, that's because introverts really value genuine authentic and close relationships so people that they can build a very long-term relationship with so i'll speak about this a little bit more in the next couple of days where i have podcast titled deep conversations are cool. The thing about, I guess the beauty about introverts and their friends is that their closest relationships tend to be very profound and significant. So they really highly value the time and the relationship with this other person or a few people that they have identified to be part of their inner circle. So like I said, if you happen to have an introvert friend and you guys are the closest buddies ever, then reach out to them today and just say, thank you. I appreciate being part of your inner circle

Starting point is 00:05:21 and you are cool. You're totally not weird you're freaking awesome quirky and super super amazing the one other thing that people might find a little bit weird about introverts is that they might be a bit too self-aware. So in this very noisy world right now, we're just bombarded with a lot of data information and just like the next big thing. It's always breaking news. It's always this is the new thing and that thing. I think a lot of time,

Starting point is 00:05:57 people don't take the time to really understand themselves and really explain and get know get a better insight understanding of their personality so if you're talking to an introvert you might be surprised to learn that they didn't they know a little bit about their personality so they will be able to tell you that okay i think i'm this way or that way because, you know, I've been thinking about it a lot, you know, I've thought about it and whatnot. So they tend to be probably a little bit more self-aware than you would imagine. And that's not weird.

Starting point is 00:06:36 I think we should all spend more time with ourselves and less time just, you know, getting hooked on either the internet entertainment food and basically any other addiction that you can find so being in your own mind you know i think introverts we spend a lot of time in our heads it's not necessarily a weird thing it just means that we are more contemplative we are more thoughtful in the things that we say. And if you have ever worked with an introvert, you'll notice that they tend to spend a lot of time thinking about what they want to say and not actually saying it as much. This is also one thing that I've seen a lot in my corporate job and I used to have team members who are highly introverted as well.

Starting point is 00:07:24 So this is a separate topic that I'll cover in another video but for today it's about recognizing that introverts are not weird it's okay for everybody to have their different different quirks right the other bit to this is the observation piece some people might find it extremely weird that why are you looking at other people and why are you, you know, having feedback and having thoughts and like being, I guess, a busybody about other people? Well, it's not really the case. You could just, the introvert or your introvert friend or spouse could just be genuinely curious because

Starting point is 00:08:06 a lot of a lot is happening in their mind right whether they're daydreaming or they're contemplating or trying to work something out so they might be curious and observation is definitely one of the one of the strong skills that introverts have because it allows them to reflect, research and then choose to, I guess, work on things that they like. So touching upon the daydream point a little bit, as an introvert, you know, you might be accused of zoning out, like, okay, I'm talking to you, why are you zoning out and whatnot they have not exactly zoned out they have zoned into their own mind so here's a different perspective for you doesn't mean that they are weird what it just means is that they operate in their head a lot so

Starting point is 00:08:58 if you're an extrovert you find yourself talking non-stop you might find that the introvert has pretty much zoned out from your reality world and have zoned into their mind and that's something that you might find it really strange and something that you cannot understand so that's why here's the answer and like i said hand to heart i can tell you it's absolutely true because I'm a highly introverted person myself and this is how I operate and it just it just happened naturally I mean all these things you know we are shaped by our environment there are a lot of things that we can improve on but recognizing that this is our natural default will be helpful because it's all part of self-awareness. So now that you know a little bit more about how introverts operate,

Starting point is 00:09:57 and especially if you are dealing with an introvert, right? You want to engage with an introvert. You want to communicate with an introvert. These are really, really critical tips that you need to be aware of. Rather than applying a judgment and saying that, okay, all introverts are weird, strange, and just someone that you can't connect with. I think recognize that different people have different personality types. We are all wired slightly differently. And there is always avenue to meet in the middle right meet halfway so starting point kudos to you for listening to this podcast today and educating

Starting point is 00:10:36 yourself to in terms of how to identify introverts so that you can then learn what how they operate in more detail and how you you can best engage and connect with them so kudos to you and if you're an introvert let me tell you today you guys are amazing you guys are awesome so there's no need to hide away your awesomeness so join me in the next couple of days as i explore other aspects of this introvert's personality. We'll talk a little bit more about that. And till next time. Bye!

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep13: Introverts are just misunderstood.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.