Introvert Power Quotes

“...it is impossible to fully and fairly understand introversion without looking inside. We aren’t just going away, we’re going toward something.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“This book is not about finding balance—we are really tired of doing that! Besides, finding balance assumes that we have been allowed to be fully introverted. We have not. This book is about embracing the power of introversion. It’s about indulging, melting into, drinking in, immersing ourselves in the joy, the genius, and the power of who we naturally are—and not just on the occasional retreat, but in the living of our lives.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“...ultimately I found my community by pursuing what I loved: writing, acting, art, coffeehouses.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“If you retreat in response to desire rather than deprivation, the deprivation may never come.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Solitude is not lack.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.” —Walt Whitman”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Though I may be efficient at the family table, I linger at the table for two.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“The British attendees reported a similar difficulty identifying introverts in America because “U.S. Introverts exhibited behavior that in the United Kingdom was associated with Extroversion: sociability, comfort with small talk, disclosure of personal information, energetic and fast-paced conversation, and so forth.” Most Americans, whether introverted or extroverted, have learned to look like extroverts.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.” —Natalie Goldberg”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“I will say that the socially oblivious extroverts do not represent the whole. As with introverts, social skills are independent of extroversion: some are skilled, some are not. The skilled ones know how to listen. But in contrast to socially unskilled introverts, who keep to themselves, socially unskilled extroverts insist on socializing.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Is it better to part with your introversion or to accept a diagnosis that allows you to have it as long as you see it as a problem? The introverted child’s plea for solitude seems to be either unheeded or treated.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Salvador Dali offers these helpful reminders: “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing,” and “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Beware of extroverts in retreat center clothing!”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“I said to myself, ‘I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me’…I decided to start anew—to strip away what I had been taught—to accept as true my own thinking.” —Georgia O’Keeffe”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Here’s a well-kept secret: introversion is not defined by lack. Introversion, when embraced, is a wellspring of riches.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Introvert integrity means going the distance for what we love: moving from apology to acceptance, from acceptance to acknowledgement, and from acknowledgment to activism. And just as distance running requires training, we build introvert integrity through practice. We give ourselves regular sessions of solitude. We find friends who listen. We exercise the right to talk less and think more. We allow others to be uncomfortable, disappointed, and different. We practice trusting our own thinking, even when the thoughts “are not like what anyone has taught” us. When you can say with a smile, “Yes, I’m not an Extrovert,” people will want to know what you’re up to. They’ll wonder what they are missing out on by being so social. And, if they are wise, they’ll back off, shut up and wait. Maybe they’ll even apologize.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“It is hard for extroverts to understand how truly oppressive a party can be for an introvert.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Some introverts accept and even embrace alienation from society, and to the extent possible, drop out of the mainstream. These are the Shadow Dwellers, and whether they just keep a low profile or become openly hosile to the mainstream, you probably won't see them at a ''meet and greet'' function.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“draw on the following Bill of Rights for support: Unless someone is bleeding or choking or otherwise at risk of imminent demise, you have a right to think about it. Someone else’s pressure is their pressure. You have a right to let them keep it. If someone makes a request and demands an immediate response, say “no.” It is easier to change a “no” to a “yes” than it is to get out of something. You have a right not to know until you know, especially when you’re asked a big question. We all carry around a sense of knowing—that internal, inexplicable sense of when something is or isn’t right, but we can’t access that sense while under pressure. You have a right to obtain more information. If you don’t know, find out more. You do not have to jump in with affirming comments when you don’t feel it. You have a right to remain silent. Flow”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.” —Salvador Dali”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“James W. Pennebaker and his associates at the University of Texas have conducted extensive research on the benefits of journaling. His findings: if you want relief, write about your most upsetting experiences, write through the pain, and connect painful events with your life story.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“about? You have no interest in joining that club!” But that’s how programming works: society’s assumptions sink in, and we don’t even know it until we hear ourselves restating those assumptions—automatically, without thought. We change by becoming aware. We become aware by observing: watching our own conversations, noticing the lies, seeing the truth. And once we get clear about the truth, we can try something radically different: honesty. “Never”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Socially Accessible introvert looks like an extrovert on the outside and sees extroversion as a bar that he or she can never quite reach. These individuals are often very successful in social arenas, but fault themselves for not having more fun. This self-alienation is rampant among American introverts, as is the self-interrogation—society’s puzzled attitude turned inward. Alienation from self can lead to depression, which is, at best, a loss of empathy for the self and, at its worst, self-hatred.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“If you are drawn to the refined, take up calligraphy or grow a bonsai.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“In his seminal article, “The Capacity to Be Alone,” psychoanalyst and child development expert D. W. Winnicott asserted that the ability to be alone “is one of the most important signs of maturity in emotional development.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Children who cannot tolerate boredom and solitude become stimulus addicts, choosing the quick filler over the richness of possibility”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“So next time someone enters your contemplative space and tells you to get happier, say you’re busy attending to “the poignant enormity of life experience.” Bet that will get you some alone time.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Books, books, books! We can’t seem to get enough of them. A good book is like a friend waiting for you at home, providing comfort and familiarity alongside excitement and adventure. In contrast to “quick fix” diversions, a book lets the reader inside. You have time to get to know the character—her thoughts and secret yearnings—to live inside of a story, or to master a subject. Through a single book of nonfiction, you can obtain inside knowledge gleaned from a lifetime of experience. And through fiction, you can inhabit another life, another time, even another world. Reading is like travel, allowing you to exit your own life for a bit, and to come back with a renewed, even inspired, perspective.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“An introversion party is three people sprawled on couches and pillows, reading and occasionally talking. Or a couple cuddling by a fire at camp, savoring the music of crackling wood and crickets. Your introversion party might be a solitary walk where thoughts are exposed to air and become clear. You might find your party in meditation, when time expands and everything seems possible. Your party might come with popcorn as you passionately observe the big screen of the theater or with a steaming cup of Ethiopian blend as you watch people from your table at the coffeehouse, or with a cold beer as you watch the world go by from your porch.”
― Laurie A. Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength