Six Signs You’re an Introvert

1. You enjoy having time to yourself.
   
2. Your best thinking occurs when you’re by yourself.
   
3. You’re the last to raise your hand when someone asks for something from a group.
   
4. You most likely don’t seek a great deal of contact with others - you would keep your head down and look straight in front of you.
   
5. You receive more calls, texts, and emails than you make, unless you have no choice.
   
6. You don’t initiate small talk with salespeople or others.
   

In order to truly understand one another, we need to stop trying to change each other.

Don’t try to fix what is not broken. We don’t expect extroverts to be more introverted, so we should stop trying to convince introverts to be more extroverted. It really doesn’t matter how many times you tell an introverted person to become more social - it will not happen. It’s not that they don’t want to change; they simply can’t. You cannot just stop being one and become the other.

Just because they don’t keep up with the verbalizing does not mean they are not interested. The introvert sits in the classroom and watches everything that is going on. She/he don’t need to dive in and talk, so she/he pay more attention to what’s going on. As such, introverts may be more watchful and learn more with their observation skills.

Introverts don’t necessarily dislike other people, they just prefer smaller crowds, familiar faces and they don’t need to talk about everything. And they may not understand that others need to verbalize constantly. They need more alone downtime to reenergize after a lot of people interaction. The energy of introverts is literally being sucked out of them when there is constant and intense engagement and discussion. So don’t expect them to be upbeat when they are feeling drained.

If you think that introverts don’t like to talk or don’t have strong opinions, you couldn’t be more wrong. When it comes to the topics that interest them, introverts can be very talkative and passionate. They may speak more slowly or be more thoughtful in their delivery, so give them a chance to share their viewpoint and listen to it.