Good music

If you took piano lessons as a child, you may have a better appreciation for music today and a musical skill, all of which is good. But it seems there is more to the way you were benefited by those lessons.

Looks like you are better able to function today as a result of the way your brain was trained during that study of music. "Musical training doesn't just affect your musical ability — it provides tremendous benefits to children's emotional and behavioral maturation."

image: brainmadesimple.com

A professor of psychiatry at University of Vermont says that if a child took lessons on a musical instrument, "it accelerated cortical organization in attention skill, anxiety management and emotional control." We could all use more of that.

Toxic people

The author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 thinks we can train ourselves to better handle the toxic people we have to deal with.  Some of them don't realize the damage they do to others' feelings, and some of them actually try to create conflict and stress (why??).

Either way, toxic people can leave you upset and drained.  "Emotional intelligence", "skill in perceiving, understanding, and managing emotions", could keep your work day (or whatever day it is) from de-railing after a bad encounter. 

"You don’t need to respond to the emotional chaos ..."  He suggests these things to stay calm:

1) Put a little distance between you and upsetting people
2) Don't blindly absorb their opinions
3) Focus on facts instead of on their chaotic feelings

These and more good insights here.

Introvert at a party

Since quiet people can be overwhelmed by noise and lots of people and social stimulation, it might be good to have a party-survival strategy!  Here's some practical steps that might help:

Value of introverts

Not everyone thrives in groups.  Not all good ideas are birthed in groups.  For quiet people, creativity takes off in solitude.

This author observes the extrovert/introvert split in her four boys, and provides appropriate environments for both ("In the Whirled: Socializing our kids to death")

Quiet but interested

(cont'd)

Maybe the main point of the book Quiet is that America ought to stop trying to make introverts more extroverted.  I agree, don't try to make everybody work in groups (as she emphasizes in her TED talk).

But let's admit that introverts, if they are Believers, will have to deal with their tendency to keep people at arm's length because people are God's idea and they are important.  My friend Dave sets a good example.  A quiet person, he's yet really interested in people and engages when he's in a one-on-one situation.

Here's a suggestion:  though author Susan Cain doesn't like the old self-help classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People, it has practical advice for how to relate to people.  You don't have to be in sales to learn how to be more of a blessing to just about everyone who encounters you.

Introvert

When I reserved Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking at the library, there were 500 people ahead of me!  It took about six months to finally get the book, and Hennepin County Library system (Minneapolis and suburbs) has 109 copies.   It was on the  NY Times bestseller list.  And Bill Gates counts the author's TED talk as a favorite.

Somehow this self-identified introvert woman has really made headlines, and it cannot have happened by accident.    So, she put herself out there in uncomfortable situations by speaking in public and promoting and doing whatever she had to do, all to affirm that it's really ok to be an introvert who likes to do none of this.  Interesting.

Author Susan Cain says on her website,  "I’m actually not sure if I went to the cafés to write or wrote so I could sit around in cafés, which is my favorite activity."

Here's her TED Talk, which has been viewed by 4.7 million people  She says that introverts should be allowed to do what they do best (see my post "Strengthen Your Strengths"), and that is to think and create in solitude.  

Personality

Extrovert or introvert, it's a Personality thing that you're mostly born into; it's not a Character thing.   In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, author Susan Cain says that American culture transformed from a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality early last century.

Character refers to high standards that anyone can choose to live up to:  diligence, honesty, duty, loyalty, compassion, these are character qualities.  Personality is more limited to what your genes give you:  whether you prefer to talk or think, whether you like loud or quiet environments, your natural ability to tell jokes (or your total lack of said ability), these are personality traits.

The kind of personality that made it big in 20th century America was the extrovert.  Author Cain traces the developing trend in books:  Masterful Personality in 1910, How to Win Friends and Influence People 1936, Organization Man 1956.  The ideal became the extrovert who dominates, charms, talks the most, entertains, and usually gets his/her way.

Introverts can feel they don't have much to offer in comparison.  For a classic story told from an introvert's point of view, read Rebecca through to the end and enjoy her paradigm shift.