TED | 内向性格的力量

00:12

当我九岁的时候，我第一次去参加夏令营，我妈妈帮我整理好了我的行李箱，里面塞满了书，这对于我来说是一件极为自然的事情，因为在我的家庭里，阅读是主要的家庭活动，听上去你们可能觉得我们是不爱交际的，但是对于我的家庭来说这真的只是接触社会的另一种途径，你们有自己家庭接触时的温暖亲情，家人静坐在你身边，但是你也可以自由地漫游，在你思维深处的冒险乐园里，我有一个想法，野营会变得像这样子，当然要更好些，（笑声），我想象到十个女孩坐在一个小屋里，都穿着合身的女式睡衣惬意地享受着读书的过程。

00:54

野营这时更像是一个不提供酒水的派对聚会，在第一天的时候呢，我们的顾问把我们都集合在一起，并且她教会了我们一种今后要用到的庆祝方式，在余下夏令营的每一天中，让“露营精神”浸润我们，之后它就像这样继续着，R-O-W-D-I-E，这是我们拼写“吵闹"的口号，我们唱着“噪音，喧闹，我们要变得吵一点”，对，就是这样，可我就是弄不明白我的生活会是什么样的，为什么我们变得这么吵闹粗暴，或者为什么我们非要把这个单词错误地拼写，（笑声），但是我可没有忘记庆祝。我与每个人都互相欢呼庆祝了，我尽了我最大的努力，我只是想等待那一刻，我可以离开吵闹的聚会去捧起我挚爱的书。

01:44

但是当我第一次把书从行李箱中拿出来的时候，床铺中最酷的那个女孩向我走了过来，并且她问我：“为什么你要这么安静？”，安静，当然，是R-O-W-D-I-E的反义词，“喧闹”的反义词，而当我第二次拿书的时候，我们的顾问满脸忧虑的向我走了过来，接着她重复了关于“露营精神”的要点，并且说我们都应当努力，去变得外向些。

02:06

于是我放好我的书，放回了属于它们的行李箱中，并且我把它们放到了床底下，在那里它们度过了暑假余下的每一天，我对这样做感到很愧疚，不知为什么我感觉这些书是需要我的，它们在呼唤我，但是我却放弃了它们，我确实放下了它们，并且我再也没有打开那个箱子，直到我和我的家人一起回到家中，在夏末的时候。

02:31

现在，我向你们讲述这个夏令营的故事，我完全可以给你们讲出其他50种版本就像这个一样的故事--，每当我感觉到这样的时候，它告诉我出于某种原因，我的宁静和内向的风格，并不是正确道路上的必需品，我应该更多地尝试一个外向者的角色，而在我内心深处感觉得到，这是错误的，内向的人们都是非常优秀的，确实是这样，但是许多年来我都否认了这种直觉，于是我首先成为了华尔街的一名律师，而不是我长久以来想要成为的一名作家，一部分原因是因为我想要证明自己，也可以变得勇敢而坚定，并且我总是去那些拥挤的酒吧，当我只是想要和朋友们吃一顿愉快的晚餐时，我做出了这些自我否认的抉择，如条件反射一般，甚至我都不清楚我做出了这些决定。

03:19

这就是很多内向的人正在做的事情，这当然是我们的损失，但这同样也是同事们的损失，我们所在团队集体的损失，当然，冒着被指为夸大其词的风险我想说，更是世界的损失，因为当涉及创造和领导的时候，我们需要内向的人做到最好，三分之一到二分之一的人都是内向的--，三分之一到二分之一，你要知道这可意味着每两到三个人中就有一个内向的，所以即使你自己是一个外向的人，我正在说你的同事，和你的配偶和你的孩子，还有现在正坐在你旁边的那个家伙--，他们都要屈从于这样的偏见，一种在我们的社会中已经扎根的现实偏见，我们从很小的时候就把它藏在内心最深处，甚至都不说几句话，关于我们正在做的事情，

04:03

现在让我们来清楚地看待这种偏见，我们需要真正了解“内向”到底指什么，它和害羞是不同的，害羞是对于社会评论的恐惧，内向更多的是，你怎样对于刺激作出回应，包括来自社会的刺激，其实内向的人是很渴求大量的鼓舞和激励的，反之内向者最感觉到他们的存在，这是他们精力最充足的时候，最具有能力的时候，当他们存在于更安静的，更低调的环境中，并不是所有时候--这些事情都不是绝对的--，但是存在于很多时候，所以说，关键在于，把我们的天赋发挥到最大化，这对于我们来说就足够把我们自己，放到对于我们正确又合适的激励的区域中去。

04:41

但是现在偏见出现了，我们最重要的那些体系，我们的学校和工作单位，它们都是为性格外向者设计的，并且有适合他们需要的刺激和鼓励，当然我们现在也有这样一种信用机制，我称它为新型的“团队思考”，这是一种包含所有创造力和生产力的思考方式，从一个社交非常零散的地方产生的。

05:06

当你描绘今天典型教室的图案时，当我还上学的时候，我们一排排地坐着，我们靠着桌子一排排坐着就像这样，并且我们大多数工作都是自觉完成的，但是在现代社会，所谓典型的教室，是些圈起来并排的桌子--，四个或是五个或是六、七个孩子坐在一起，面对面，孩子们要完成无数个小组任务，甚至像数学和创意写作这些课程，这些你们认为需要依靠个人闪光想法的课程，孩子们现在却被期待成为小组会的成员，对于那些喜欢，独处，或者自己一个人工作的孩子来说，这些孩子常常被视为局外人，或者更糟，被视为问题孩子，并且很大一部分老师的报告中都相信，最理想的学生应该是外向的，相对于内向的学生而言，甚至说外向的学生能够取得更好的成绩，更加博学多识，据研究报道。

06:00

好了。同样的事情也发生在我们工作的地方，现在呢，我们中的绝大多数都工作在宽阔没有隔间的办公室里，甚至没有墙，在这里，我们暴露，在不断的噪音和我们同事的凝视目光下工作，而当谈及领袖气质的时候，内向的人总是按照惯例从领导的位置被忽视了，尽管内向的人是非常小心仔细的，很少去冒特大的风险--，这些风险是今天我们可能都喜欢的，宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的亚当·格兰特教授做了一项很有意思的研究，这项研究表明内向的领导们，相对于外向领导而言总是会生产更大的效益，因为当他们管理主动积极的雇员的时候，他们更倾向于让有主见的雇员去自由发挥，反之外向的领导就可能，当然是不经意的，对于事情变得十分激动，他们在事务上有了自己想法的印迹，这使其他人的想法可能就不会很容易地，在舞台上发光了。

06:48

事实上，历史上一些有改革能力的领袖都是内向的人，我会举一些例子给你们，埃莉诺·罗斯福，罗沙·帕克斯，甘地，--，所有这些人都把自己描述成，内向，说话温柔甚至是害羞的人，他们仍然站在了聚光灯下，即使他们浑身上下，都感知他们说不要，这证明是一种属于它自身的特殊的力量，因为人们都会感觉这些领导者同时是掌舵者，并不是因为他们喜欢指挥别人，抑或是享受众人目光的聚焦，他们处在那个位置因为他们没有选择，因为他们行驶在他们认为正确的道路上。

07:23

现在我觉得对于这点我有必要说，那就是我真的喜爱外向的人，我总是喜欢说我最好的几个朋友都是外向的人，包括我亲爱的丈夫，当然了我们都会在不同点时偏向，内向者/外向者的范围，甚至是卡尔·荣格，这个让这些名词为大众所熟知的心理学家，说道，世上绝没有一个纯粹的内向的人，或者一个纯粹的外向的人，他说这样的人会在精神病院里，如果他存在的话，还有一些人处在中间的迹象，在内向与外向之间，我们称这些人为“中向性格者”，并且我总是认为他们拥有世界最美好的一切，但是我们中的大多数总是认为自己属于内向或者外向，其中一类。

08:06

同时我想说从文化意义上讲我们需要一种更好的平衡，我们需要更多的阴阳的平衡，在这两种类型的人之间，这点是极为重要的，当涉及创造力和生产力的时候，因为当心理学家们看待，最有创造力的人的生命的时候，他们寻找到的，是那些擅长变换思维的人，提出想法的人，但是他们同时也有着极为显著的偏内向的痕迹。

08:30

这是因为独处是非常关键的因素，对于创造力来说，所以达尔文，自己一个人漫步在小树林里，并且断然拒绝了晚餐派对的邀约，西奥多·盖索，更多时候以苏索博士的名号知名，他梦想过很多的惊人的创作，在他在加利福尼亚州拉霍亚市房子的后面的，一座孤独的束层的塔形办公室中，而且其实他很害怕见面，见那些读过他的书的年轻的孩子们，害怕他们会期待他，这样一位令人愉快的，圣诞老人形象的人物，同时又会因发现他含蓄缄默的性格而失望，史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克发明了第一台苹果电脑，一个人独自坐在他的机柜旁，在他当时工作的惠普公司，并且他说他永远不会在那方面成为一号专家，但他还没因太内向到要离开那里，那个他成长起来的地方。

09:17

当然了，这并不意味着我们都应该停止合作--，恰当的例子呢，是史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克和史蒂夫·乔布斯的著名联手，创建苹果电脑公司--，但是这并不意味着和独处有重大关系，并且对于一些人来说，这是他们赖以呼吸生存的空气，事实上，几个世纪以来我们已经非常明白，独处的卓越力量，只是到了最近，非常奇怪，我们开始遗忘它了，如果你看看世界上主要的宗教，你会发现探寻者--，摩西，耶稣，佛祖，穆罕默德，--，那些独身去探寻的人们，在大自然的旷野中独处，思索，在那里，他们有了深刻的顿悟和对于奥义的揭示，之后他们把这些思想带回到社会的其他地方去，没有旷原，没有启示。

10:06

尽管这并不令人惊讶，如果你注意到现代心理学的思想理论，它反映出来我们甚至不能和一组人待在一起，而不去本能地模仿他们的意见与想法，甚至是看上去私人的，发自内心的事情，像是你被谁所吸引，你会开始模仿你周围的人的信仰，甚至都觉察不到你自己在做什么。

10:26

还曾跟随群体的意见，跟随着房间里最具有统治力的，最有领袖气质的人的思路，虽然这真的没什么关系，在成为一个卓越的演讲家还是拥有最好的主意之间--，我的意思是“零相关”，那么...，（笑声），你们或许会跟随有最好头脑的人，但是你们也许不会，可你们真的想把这机会扔掉吗？如果每个人都自己行动或许好得多，发掘他们自己的想法，没有群体动力学的曲解，接着来到一起组成一个团队，在一个良好管理的环境中互相交流，并且在那里学习别的思想。

11:03

如果说现在这一切都是真的，那么为什么我们还得到这样错误的结论？为什么我们要这样创立我们的学校，还有我们的工作单位？为什么我们要让这些内向的人觉得那么愧疚，对于他们只是想要离开，一个人独处一段时间的事实？有一个答案在我们的文化史中埋藏已久，西方社会，特别是在美国，总是偏爱有行动的人，而不是有深刻思考的人，有深刻思考的“人”，但是在美国早期的时候，我们生活在一个被历史学家称作“性格特征”的文化，那时我们仍然，在这点上，判断人们的价值，从人们的内涵和道义正直，而且如果你看一看这个时代关于自立的书籍的话，它们都有这样一种标题：，“性格”，世界上最伟大的事物，并且它们以亚伯拉罕·林肯这样的为标榜，一个被形容为谦虚低调的男人，拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生称他是，“一个以‘优越’二字形容都不为过的人”。

11:59

但是接着我们来到了二十世纪，并且我们融入了一种新的文化，一种被历史学家称作“个性”的文化，所发生的改变就是我们从农业经济发展为，一个大商业经济的世界，而且人们突然开始搬迁，从小的城镇搬向城市，并且一改他们之前的在生活中和所熟识的人们一起工作的方式，现在他们，在一群陌生人中间有必要去证明自己，这样做是非常可以理解的，像领袖气质和个人魅力这样的品质，突然间似乎变得极为重要，那么可以肯定的是，自助自立的书的内容变更了以适应这些新的需求，并且它们开始拥有名称，像是《如何赢得朋友和影响他人》（戴尔・卡耐基所著《人性的弱点》），他们的特点是做自己的榜样，不得不说确实是好的推销员，所以这就是我们今天生活的世界，这是我们的文化遗产。

12:45

现在没有谁能够说，社交技能是不重要的，并且我也不是想呼吁，大家废除团队合作模式，但仍是相同的宗教，却把他们的圣人送到了孤独的山顶上，仍然教导我们爱与信任，还有我们今天所要面对的问题，像是在科学和经济领域，是如此的巨大和复杂，以至于我们需要人们强有力地团结起来，共同解决这些问题，但是我想说，越给内向者自由让他们做自己，他们就做得越好，去想出他们独特的关于问题的解决办法。

13:21

所以现在我很高兴同你们分享，我手提箱中的东西，猜猜是什么？书，我有一个手提箱里面装满了书，这是玛格丽特·阿特伍德的《猫的眼睛》，这是一本米兰·昆德拉的书，这是一本《迷途指津》，是迈蒙尼德写的，但这些实际上都不是我的书，我还是带着它们，陪伴着我，因为它们都是我祖父最喜爱的作家所写。

13:55

我的祖父是一名犹太教祭司，他独身一人，在布鲁克林的一间小公寓中居住，那里是我从小到大在这个世界上最喜爱的地方，部分原因是他有着非常温和亲切的，温文尔雅的举止，部分原因是那里充满了书，我的意思是，毫不夸张地说，公寓中的每张桌子，每张椅子，都充分应用着它原有的功能，就是现在作为承载一大堆都在摇曳的书的表面，就像我其他的家庭成员一样，我祖父在这个世界上最喜欢做的事情就是阅读。

14:24

但是他同样也热爱他的宗教，并且你们可以从他的讲述中感觉到他这种爱，这62年来每周他都作为一名犹太教的祭司，他会从每周的阅读中汲取养分，并且他会编织这些错综复杂的古代和人文主义的思想的挂毯，并且人们会从各个地方前来，听他的讲话。

14:44

但是有这么一件关于我祖父的事情，在这个正式的角色下隐藏着，他是一个非常谦虚的非常内向的人，是那么的谦虚内向以至于当他在向人们讲述的时候，他都不敢有视线上的接触，和同样的教堂会众，他已经发言有62年了，甚至都还远离领奖台，当你们让他说“你好”的时候，他总会提早结束这对话，担心他会占用你太多的时间，但是当他94岁去世的时候，警察们需要封锁他所居住的街道邻里，来容纳拥挤的人们，前来哀悼他的人们，这些天来我都试着从我祖父的事例中学习，以我自己的方式。

15:28

所以我就出版了一本关于内向性格的书，它花了我7年的时间完成它，而对我来说，这七年像是一种极大的喜悦，因为我在阅读，我在写作，我在思考，我在探寻，这是我的版本，对于爷爷一天中几个小时都要独自待在图书馆这件事，但是现在突然间我的工作变得很不同了，我的工作变成了站在这里讲述它，讲述内向的性格，（笑声），而且这对于我来说是有一点困难的，因为我很荣幸，在现在被你们所有人所倾听，这可不是我自然的文化背景。

16:08

所以我准备了一会就像这样，以我所能做到的最好的方式，我花了最近一年的时间练习在公共场合发言，在我能得到的每一个机会中，我把这一年称作我的“危险地发言的一年”，（笑声），而且它的确帮了我很大的忙，但是我要告诉你们一个帮我更大的忙的事情，那就是我的感觉，我的信仰，我的希望，当谈及我们态度的时候，对于内向性格的，对于安静，对于独处的态度时，我们确实是在急剧变化的边缘上保持微妙的平衡，我的意思是，我们在保持平衡，现在我将要给你们留下一些东西，三件对于你们的行动有帮助的事情，献给那些观看我的演讲的人。

16:42

第一：，停止对于经常要团队协作的执迷与疯狂，停止它就好了，（笑声），谢谢你们，（掌声），我想让我所说的事情变得清晰一些，因为我对于我们的办公深信不疑，应该鼓励它们，那种休闲随意的，聊天似的咖啡厅式的相互作用--，你们知道的，道不同不相为谋，人们聚到一起，并且互相交换着宝贵的意见，这是很棒的，这对于内向者很好，同样对于外向者也好，但是我们需要更多的隐私和更多的自由，还有更多对于我们本身工作的自主权，对于学校，也是同样的。，我们当然需要教会孩子们要一起学习工作，但是我们同样需要教会孩子们怎么样独立完成任务，这对于外向的孩子们来说同样是极为重要的，他们需要独立完成工作，因为从某种程度上，这是他们深刻思考的来源。

17:29

好了，第二个：去到野外（打开思维），就像佛祖一样，拥有你们自己对于事物的揭示启迪，我并不是说，我们都要跑去小树林里建造我们自己的小屋，并且之后就永远不和别人说话了，但是我要说我们都可以坚持去去除一些障碍物，然后深入我们自己的大脑思想，时不时得再深入一点。

17:51

第三点：，好好看一眼你的旅行箱内有什么东西，还有你为什么把它放进去，所以外向者们，也许你们的箱子内同样堆满了书，或者它们装满了香槟的玻璃酒杯，或者是跳伞运动的设备，不管它是什么，我希望每当你们有机会你们就把它拿出来，用你的能量和你的快乐让我们感受到美和享受，但是内向者们，你们作为内向者，你们很可能有仔细保护一切的冲动，在你箱子里的东西，这没有问题，但是偶尔地，只是说偶尔地，我希望你们可以打开你们的手提箱，让别人看一看，因为这个世界需要你们，同样需要你们身上所携带的你们特有的事物。

18:33

所以对于你们即将走上的所有旅程，我都给予你们我最美好的祝愿，还有温柔地说话的勇气。

18:38

非常感谢你们。

00:12

When I was nine years old, I went off to summer camp for the first time. And my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. Because in my family, reading was the primary group activity. And this might sound antisocial to you, but for us it was really just a different way of being social. You have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but you are also free to go roaming around the adventureland inside your own mind. And I had this idea that camp was going to be just like this, but better. 

00:47

I had a vision of 10 girls sitting in a cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns. 

00:54

Camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. And on the very first day, our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. And it went like this: "R-O-W-D-I-E, that's the way we spell rowdie. Rowdie, rowdie, let's get rowdie." 

01:19

Yeah. So I couldn't figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incorrectly. 

01:34

But I recited a cheer. I recited a cheer along with everybody else. I did my best. And I just waited for the time that I could go off and read my books. 

01:44

But the first time that I took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, "Why are you being so mellow?" -- mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of R-O-W-D-I-E. And then the second time I tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing. 

02:06

And so I put my books away, back in their suitcase, and I put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. And I felt kind of guilty about this. I felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and I was forsaking them. But I did forsake them and I didn't open that suitcase again until I was back home with my family at the end of the summer. 

02:31

Now, I tell you this story about summer camp. I could have told you 50 others just like it -- all the times that I got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that I should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. But for years I denied this intuition, and so I became a Wall Street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that I had always longed to be -- partly because I needed to prove to myself that I could be bold and assertive too. And I was always going off to crowded bars when I really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. And I made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that I wasn't even aware that I was making them. 

03:19

Now this is what many introverts do, and it's our loss for sure, but it is also our colleagues' loss and our communities' loss. And at the risk of sounding grandiose, it is the world's loss. Because when it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. A third to a half of the population are introverts -- a third to a half. So that's one out of every two or three people you know. So even if you're an extrovert yourself, I'm talking about your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now -- all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our society. We all internalize it from a very early age without even having a language for what we're doing. 

04:03

Now, to see the bias clearly, you need to understand what introversion is. It's different from being shy. Shyness is about fear of social judgment. Introversion is more about, how do you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation. So extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they're in quieter, more low-key environments. Not all the time -- these things aren't absolute -- but a lot of the time. So the key then to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us. 

04:41

But now here's where the bias comes in. Our most important institutions, our schools and our workplaces, they are designed mostly for extroverts and for extroverts' need for lots of stimulation. And also we have this belief system right now that I call the new groupthink, which holds that all creativity and all productivity comes from a very oddly gregarious place. 

05:06

So if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: When I was going to school, we sat in rows. We sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most of our work pretty autonomously. But nowadays, your typical classroom has pods of desks -- four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other. And kids are working in countless group assignments. Even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think would depend on solo flights of thought, kids are now expected to act as committee members. And for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or, worse, as problem cases. And the vast majority of teachers reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research. 

06:00

Okay, same thing is true in our workplaces. Now, most of us work in open plan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant noise and gaze of our coworkers. And when it comes to leadership, introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions, even though introverts tend to be very careful, much less likely to take outsize risks -- which is something we might all favor nowadays. And interesting research by Adam Grant at the Wharton School has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees, they're much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extrovert can, quite unwittingly, get so excited about things that they're putting their own stamp on things, and other people's ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface. 

06:48

Now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts. I'll give you some examples. Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi -- all these people described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to. And this turns out to have a special power all its own, because people could feel that these leaders were at the helm not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at; they were there because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what they thought was right. 

07:23

Now I think at this point it's important for me to say that I actually love extroverts. I always like to say some of my best friends are extroverts, including my beloved husband. And we all fall at different points, of course, along the introvert/extrovert spectrum. Even Carl Jung, the psychologist who first popularized these terms, said that there's no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. He said that such a man would be in a lunatic asylum, if he existed at all. And some people fall smack in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, and we call these people ambiverts. And I often think that they have the best of all worlds. But many of us do recognize ourselves as one type or the other. 

08:06

And what I'm saying is that culturally, we need a much better balance. We need more of a yin and yang between these two types. This is especially important when it comes to creativity and to productivity, because when psychologists look at the lives of the most creative people, what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas and advancing ideas, but who also have a serious streak of introversion in them. 

08:30

And this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to creativity. So Darwin, he took long walks alone in the woods and emphatically turned down dinner-party invitations. Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, he dreamed up many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in La Jolla, California. And he was actually afraid to meet the young children who read his books for fear that they were expecting him this kind of jolly Santa Claus-like figure and would be disappointed with his more reserved persona. Steve Wozniak invented the first Apple computer sitting alone in his cubicle in Hewlett-Packard where he was working at the time. And he says that he never would have become such an expert in the first place had he not been too introverted to leave the house when he was growing up. 

09:17

Now, of course, this does not mean that we should all stop collaborating -- and case in point, is Steve Wozniak famously coming together with Steve Jobs to start Apple Computer -- but it does mean that solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they breathe. And in fact, we have known for centuries about the transcendent power of solitude. It's only recently that we've strangely begun to forget it. If you look at most of the world's major religions, you will find seekers -- Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad -- seekers who are going off by themselves alone to the wilderness, where they then have profound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the rest of the community. So, no wilderness, no revelations. 

10:06

This is no surprise, though, if you look at the insights of contemporary psychology. It turns out that we can't even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring, mimicking their opinions. Even about seemingly personal and visceral things like who you're attracted to, you will start aping the beliefs of the people around you without even realizing that that's what you're doing. 

10:26

And groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room, even though there's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas -- I mean zero. So.

10:42

You might be following the person with the best ideas, but you might not. And do you really want to leave it up to chance? Much better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well-managed environment and take it from there. 

11:03

Now if all this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? Why are we setting up our schools this way, and our workplaces? And why are we making these introverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by themselves some of the time? One answer lies deep in our cultural history. Western societies, and in particular the U.S., have always favored the man of action over the "man" of contemplation. But in America's early days, we lived in what historians call a culture of character, where we still, at that point, valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude. And if you look at the self-help books from this era, they all had titles with things like "Character, the Grandest Thing in the World." And they featured role models like Abraham Lincoln, who was praised for being modest and unassuming. Ralph Waldo Emerson called him "A man who does not offend by superiority." 

11:59

But then we hit the 20th century, and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality. What happened is we had evolved an agricultural economy to a world of big business. And so suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities. And instead of working alongside people they've known all their lives, now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers. So, quite understandably, qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to seem really important. And sure enough, the self-help books change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like "How to Win Friends and Influence People." And they feature as their role models really great salesmen. So that's the world we're living in today. That's our cultural inheritance. 

12:45

Now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant, and I'm also not calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all. The same religions who send their sages off to lonely mountain tops also teach us love and trust. And the problems that we are facing today in fields like science and in economics are so vast and so complex that we are going to need armies of people coming together to solve them working together. But I am saying that the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems. 

13:21

So now I'd like to share with you what's in my suitcase today. Guess what? Books. I have a suitcase full of books. Here's Margaret Atwood, "Cat's Eye." Here's a novel by Milan Kundera. And here's "The Guide for the Perplexed" by Maimonides. But these are not exactly my books. I brought these books with me because they were written by my grandfather's favorite authors. 

13:55

My grandfather was a rabbi and he was a widower who lived alone in a small apartment in Brooklyn that was my favorite place in the world when I was growing up, partly because it was filled with his very gentle, very courtly presence and partly because it was filled with books. I mean literally every table, every chair in this apartment had yielded its original function to now serve as a surface for swaying stacks of books. Just like the rest of my family, my grandfather's favorite thing to do in the whole world was to read. 

14:24

But he also loved his congregation, and you could feel this love in the sermons that he gave every week for the 62 years that he was a rabbi. He would takes the fruits of each week's reading and he would weave these intricate tapestries of ancient and humanist thought. And people would come from all over to hear him speak. 

14:44

But here's the thing about my grandfather. Underneath this ceremonial role, he was really modest and really introverted -- so much so that when he delivered these sermons, he had trouble making eye contact with the very same congregation that he had been speaking to for 62 years. And even away from the podium, when you called him to say hello, he would often end the conversation prematurely for fear that he was taking up too much of your time. But when he died at the age of 94, the police had to close down the streets of his neighborhood to accommodate the crowd of people who came out to mourn him. And so these days I try to learn from my grandfather's example in my own way. 

15:28

So I just published a book about introversion, and it took me about seven years to write. And for me, that seven years was like total bliss, because I was reading, I was writing, I was thinking, I was researching. It was my version of my grandfather's hours of the day alone in his library. But now all of a sudden my job is very different, and my job is to be out here talking about it, talking about introversion. 

15:59

And that's a lot harder for me, because as honored as I am to be here with all of you right now, this is not my natural milieu. 

16:08

So I prepared for moments like these as best I could. I spent the last year practicing public speaking every chance I could get. And I call this my "year of speaking dangerously." 

16:21

And that actually helped a lot. But I'll tell you, what helps even more is my sense, my belief, my hope that when it comes to our attitudes to introversion and to quiet and to solitude, we truly are poised on the brink on dramatic change. I mean, we are. And so I am going to leave you now with three calls for action for those who share this vision. 

16:42

Number one: Stop the madness for constant group work. Just stop it. 

16:51

Thank you. 

16:55

And I want to be clear about what I'm saying, because I deeply believe our offices should be encouraging casual, chatty cafe-style types of interactions -- you know, the kind where people come together and serendipitously have an exchange of ideas. That is great. It's great for introverts and it's great for extroverts. But we need much more privacy and much more freedom and much more autonomy at work. School, same thing. We need to be teaching kids to work together, for sure, but we also need to be teaching them how to work on their own. This is especially important for extroverted children too. They need to work on their own because that is where deep thought comes from in part. 

17:29

Okay, number two: Go to the wilderness. Be like Buddha, have your own revelations. I'm not saying that we all have to now go off and build our own cabins in the woods and never talk to each other again, but I am saying that we could all stand to unplug and get inside our own heads a little more often. 

17:51

Number three: Take a good look at what's inside your own suitcase and why you put it there. So extroverts, maybe your suitcases are also full of books. Or maybe they're full of champagne glasses or skydiving equipment. Whatever it is, I hope you take these things out every chance you get and grace us with your energy and your joy. But introverts, you being you, you probably have the impulse to guard very carefully what's inside your own suitcase. And that's okay. But occasionally, just occasionally, I hope you will open up your suitcases for other people to see, because the world needs you and it needs the things you carry. 

18:33

So I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly. 

18:38

Thank you very much.