Sometimes the smallest of decisions or influences can have an outsized impact on your life. When I read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie in high school, it provided the much-needed tools for survival in a rich private school where, despite excelling in studies, I constantly felt out of place. I was near the bottom of the economic ladder amidst my peers and was full of shame for not being as fluent in English (because we never spoke it at home) or for not having the coolest bags and accessories (because most of my wardrobe was hand me downs from cousins) or for never taking any trips (because we couldn’t afford to). As I overheard peers recounting tales of being in Dubai, Singapore, or America for the summer, I had nothing to share back. My summer typically involved spending hours at the library and working on summer homework projects, which I so enjoyed.
The message I got in my school, which so many of us get in the world today, was that you need charisma and style to fit in and to be acknowledged, even loved. Short on money, there was only so much I could buy to create my “personal brand”, but Dale Carnegie gave me hope. Sure, I can smile and remember everyone’s names and so on. Many of you may have read this book, but if you haven’t or need some help recalling, here is a quick summary of the ten must-dos:
- Do Not Criticize, Condemn or Complain
- Be Generous With Praise
- Remember Their Name
- Be Genuinely Interested In Other People
- Know The Value Of Charm
- Be Quick To Acknowledge Your Own Mistakes
- Don’t Attempt To “Win” An Argument
- Begin On Common Ground
- Have Others Believe Your Conclusion Is Their Own
- Make People Feel Important
A pretty good list, right? Everything sounds relatively innocuous and there isn’t much to disagree with. No wonder this book sold millions of copies and became the bible for thriving in modern-day schools and workplaces. The earliest organization where I saw this book being taken to heart was my dance school. As a company member in training, I was encouraged to greet the students with big smiles, remember all their names, give them generous compliments, become interested in their lives, make them feel important, and keep them coming back to the studios. And it did work.
But over the years, I started to see some deeper, darker side effects of taking this philosophy too seriously. I lost interest in alone time. At the beginning of high school, I would spend hours reading and solving math problems – problems that I knew were much harder than what would be on the exam. I did it for the pure joy of learning and growing, and enjoyed my company as I did them. But my desire to spend time with myself slowly started to fade as I was rewarded so much more for being extroverted and going around the world trying to win other people’s attention. I stopped feeling satisfied with the few close friendships I grew up with or naturally fell into at school or in my dance studio. I had to know everybody and they had to know me. I would look for opportunities to penetrate other friend circles, especially those with a higher socio-economic status than mine, to make myself feel wanted. When the time came to choose my college major, I chose the more glamorous one “business” as opposed to computer science, which I was always inclined towards as a kid. I remember my fourth-grade teacher being so impressed with the mosaic I had created in Logo, a computer language from yesteryears when kids around me could only make haphazard shapes and lines.
I am not going to simplistically peg all these consequences on one book. There were deeper needs stemming from family circumstances that resulted in me being anxiously attached and looking for love and approval outside the home. But the book and many others like it played a major role in telling me what mattered. Years later when I look back on those years of my life, which I am sad to admit lasted much longer than I would have liked, I remember constantly trading contemplation for extroversion. Why go inward when all these goodies await you on the outside? The sad part is that I led myself to believe that the way I naturally operated, contemplatively and thoughtfully, was not rewarding and needed to change. One of the reasons I took so strongly to my identity as an extrovert is that I was not shy. But introversion and shyness are not the same. You can be not shy and still be introverted. It simply means that you generate more energy and do your best in environments that involve being by yourself rather than being surrounded by people.
Over the years, I have tried to correct this forced way of being and default to my natural self. I have gotten off almost all social media and have found other, more intimate ways of keeping in touch with my friends. I have embraced the work-from-home culture and been vocal enough to tell my bosses that I don’t do well in open office layouts. I have been meditating and journaling. But despite all this, the lure of being out there keeps showing up from time to time because it got so ingrained in me in my formative years. I, honestly, did not even have the words to describe the subtle ways in which the extroversion message affected me until Susan Cain came out with her Ted Talk and book, Quiet. I was relieved to hear that there were other supposedly smart people in the world who had fallen prey to the charm of extroversion messaging and had tried to prove to themselves that they were what the world wanted. In Susan’s case, she chose to become a wall street lawyer instead of the writer/researcher she would have naturally chosen to be.
Let me make it clear that neither Susan nor I am arguing against extroversion. If that is your natural state, then that is how you need to be. But if you were always of the introvertive variety, then please embrace yourself because that is most aligned with your true way of being. And occasionally, as Susan says, come out of your happy place and share your gifts with the world, because the world needs them. From a Vedic perspective, by respecting and nurturing your gifts, whether they involve working by yourself or working around many others, you are aligning your life with your “dharma” and every now and then, when the voice of the spirit calls you to do something that is different from your way of being, you must heed to that voice. My journey back to my true way of being is far from over, but every step closer has felt so right and rewarding. If you’ve been feeling that you’ve diverted from your authentic way of being, then I hope this post inspires you to get back to your core and stay true to it.
