Clarification of the Extroverted Stance

I am involved with a Thursday morning bible study (which I started calling the Thursday AM Men's Club without their permission, so hopefully they are cool with that). I revealed to them today the existence of the Introverted Soul. One of them said that I had lost major cool points for having such a nerdy blog. I quickly retorted with my belief that I was already experience cool point deficiency, so there really wasn't much to lose.

This morning we discussed the idea of being the Introvert or being the Extrovert, and how it benefits/hinders our spiritual walk. Come to find out, 4 of the guys, including myself, claimed to be the Introvert, and only one claimed to be the Extrovert. We promptly voted to revoke his membership to the Thursday AM Men's Club. Just kidding, but seriously, after hearing my extroverted friend challenge my brilliant stances on the subject (ha!), I decided I needed to clarify some of my thoughts...

I am definitely not anti-Extrovert. I believe they are capable of the same depth of thought, relationships, and faith as the Introvert. Of course the Introvert acts as if their way is best, but at their core, they know and believe that the Extrovert can be just as deep of a thinker as the Introvert, with just as high regard for their way. We are each capable of achieving the same end results, we just arrive at those results in different ways...and that's OK!

One of the objectives of this blog is not to insult the Extrovert with my assertions, but to instead free the Introvert from feeling like an outcast. There are benefits to being the Introvert that provide distinct advantages. But the other side of the coin is that there are downsides to the Introvert. The Introvert can use their nature as an excuse for laziness, inactivity, and indecisiveness. As much as the Introvert doesn't want to admit it, there things the Extrovert does well, and rather than let our introversion dominate our personalities, we need to embrace extroversion from time to time to balance us out.

The ultimate goal is not to change who we are at our core, but to simply stretch ourselves a little bit to prevent introversion from becoming our detriment. The Extrovert needs to do the same, as I learned today, because they struggle with being so outwardly focused, that they neglect focusing inward and getting to know who they are. So in order to thrive, the Introvert needs to dip into some extroversion every so often, and the same is true for our extroverted brethren.

And that is the official stance of the Introverted Soul...Take luck!