Introverts: You will understand these - Part 3

This was interesting on Instagram.

The 21 things that only introverts will understand. I'll spend a few days going through them and maybe explaining them to you from my experience. The passages in bold are from the Instagram post:

7. When you go to a party and end up spending the whole night talking to the one person who you feel comfortable being around. 

Yep. Being there done that. Sometimes it is the best way, especially if you are talking with someone who is also not that comfortable in a big group situation and you have some kind of common, shared interest.

I remember I was at an event and I met someone who I had played cricket against a few years earlier. We spent the rest of the night talking about cricket. I could tell that he wasn't that interested in being there. He was just there because of his wife who I met later. She was obviously the social butterfly of the pair as she had met the whole room basically.

Whatever gets you through the night, right?


8. When you're at a party and say, "I'm getting really tired, so I'm going home." You are not actually sleepy, you're just tired of being around people. You go home and stay awake for three more hours, checking Facebook, watching YouTube videos, or reading.

You need to know when to eject and their are ways to do it. The extroverts at the party will try to make you stay because to them the more the merrier. You have to be strong. Make up some kind of an excuse like you have to get up early the next morning and leave. Don't hang around.

After five minutes of you leaving, they are going to forget you were there anyway. You could explain to them that your social batteries are running low but that will go over the heads of most extroverts and they will think you are being anti-social when in fact, you sticking around at the party would mean that you are anti-social because you will become more and more tired and you will get that dreaded question, "what's wrong with you?"


9. When you're having trouble explaining your thoughts or feelings. Everything makes so much sense in your head, but it never comes out eloquently as it seemed in your mind. Other people are like, "Come on, spit it out, what's the problem?"

Yep, this is another situation I have encountered on a number of occasions. I assure you, it does sound a lot better in your head but all of those wonderful thoughts and ideas all try and rush out of your mouth at the same time and it can get you all tongue tied and it just all turns to custard unfortunately. Of course it doesn't help at all that these stupid people are standing over you telling you to spit it out. Do you think maybe that is what we are trying to do?

It reminds of this scene from the movie School Ties. The student was trying to get it out and the teacher was being an asshole in my opinion. Rather than encouraging the student he was was being overbearing and the student couldn't handle it. Not good.

Introverts: You will understand these - Part 2

This was interesting on Instagram.

The 21 things that only introverts will understand. I'll spend a few days going through them and maybe explaining them to you from my experience. The passages in bold are from the Instagram post:


4. When you check your phone at a party/get-together for a long time simply to avoid talking to people. 

Yes, I have done this on multiple occasions. You look at you phone and no matter what you are looking at, the weather, rugby scores or Snapchat you shake you head and look annoyed. People will think you are working or have some kind of problem and will stay away from you.

Look at this video if you are wanting an example:

5. When you hang out in the bathroom for a just a few seconds longer than needed, because it's the only quiet place in your school or office.

Do you know what has happened recently? We hang out a lot longer than we used to. Do you know why? The smartphone. When you are waiting for a public toilet to become vacant and they all seem to be in the cubicle for hours and hours. Yes, they are hiding from society a little bit but they are also hiding from reality by looking at their phones. It's pretty obvious that the people who come out quickly have forgotten their phones. It must have become the longest two minutes of their lives. I know it is a long two minutes for me.


6. When people say, "Tell me about yourself!" and you momentarily freeze, then mumble a few generic sentences because you have a hard time being articulate when you're put on the spot. As an introvert, you tend to process your thoughts deeply and need time to think before speaking. 

I remember I was at a seminar a few years ago and I was put on the spot. I had no idea what the answer was or what I was going to say. I proceeded to look at the ceiling for about thirty seconds. (it seemed like about thirty years) In the end I managed to blurt out an incoherent answer and I still haven't forgotten it. I know that if someone was more extroverted they would have rabbited on for half an hour and said absolutely nothing. Me, I tried to give an insightful answer and failed miserably.

So, how do you overcome these 'curly' questions?

You have to prepare some answers for those kind of questions. Try to anticipate them. Write them out. Don't worry if it appears to be a script (which it is), most of what we say is a script anyway. Analyse what people say on a daily basis and most of the time you could almost predict what they were going say. You don't believe me? Listen, it is all canned material. I assure you.

Introverts: You will understand these - Part 1

This was interesting on Instagram.

The 21 things that only introverts will understand. I'll spend a few days going through them and maybe explaining them to you from my experience. The passages in bold are from the Instagram post:


1. When people interpret your quietness as you being stuck up, standoffish, or rude. It's not that you think you're better than other people; you really do care deeply about others. It's just that you often don't know what to say.

Ahhhh, sound familiar? Dear Extroverted people. Yes, we literally have nothing to say. We don't have that ability to keep on moving our jaws for hours on end talking about absolutely nothing. This doesn't make me rude, it just makes me different from you and do you know what, that is OK. It is OK to be different from you because that is what makes the world an interesting place.

I'm not sitting there judging you. (well, maybe a little bit) What am I doing is just sitting there enjoying the atmosphere in a relaxed manner. I am showing my enjoyment by continuing sitting there. I don't have to stand up and shake my body to the loud sounds of the DJ to enjoy myself. I can sit there, drink a beer and enjoy the scenery around me and if I feel like it I will talk to someone or not. I'm enjoying myself.


2. When your friend invites you to a party/event and you have no desire to go. You'd rather stay home and recharge your introvert batteries, watching Netflix, reading, gaming, or just relaxing. But you don't want to hurt your friend's feelings, so you make up an excuse like, "I'm not feeling well."

This is OK. It is your prerogative to go or not. What is not OK however is two things:

     1. Your extroverted friend guilting you into going because they want someone to go with so as not to feel uncomfortable for the first five minutes of the event.

     2. You, as the introvert saying that you will go and then five minutes before deciding that you don't want to go and you bail on your friend. That is not very cool at all and I'm sorry I have no sympathy for you. If you don't want to go, say no but don't make up some bullshit excuse.


3. When you order takeout online instead of calling because you literally can't talk to one more person today.

I LOVE THE INTERNET.

 I think the internet was built for introverted people. In fact, I'm pretty sure Al Gore said once that he invented the internet. I'm sure he must love his 'invention.'

The only thing that they could do better about home delivery would be like milk bottles from years ago. You left the money out in the letterbox and the milk person came by and left the milk. Surely we could do that with pizza too.

There are some problems that I am sure all introverted people have experienced. Don't worry if you have experienced these because you are not alone, I assure you.

Using up energy singing karaoke

Dutch courage. According to the dictionary on my computer, it means the strength or confidence gained from drinking alcohol. I'm not too proud to say that I have used Dutch courage at various stages in my life to get over some nervousness at meeting new people or just to make being in a room with a lot of people more palatable. (Well, that is what I thought at that time anyway.)

The other day I was out with a few people celebrating the end of our season and we went to karaoke. I haven't been to karaoke for a long time and I felt out of practice but it was fun and I have learnt through experience that you should always pick songs that everyone knows and likes because if you only pick songs that you know it can be a very long three to five minutes. (Unfortunately I forgot that rule a couple of times.)

(For those of you who don't read Japanese, that bottle is something we got for free from the karaoke bar, it's called 'Karaoke voice drink.' Not sure if it is meant to make your voice better or stop you from getting a hangover. Unfortunately it did neither.)

What I noticed the other night was that the people around me were on a real high. Of course I thought that they were all drunk and because I had arrived late I thought that they had imbibed an obscene amount of beer.

A couple of people may have done that but I'm pretty sure they were just high on life and why is that? They were in a group and they were feeding of the energy that being in group does for some people. For me it was tiring and when most of the people were carrying on to the next place after the karaoke finished I knew that I had to go home as I was running on fumes at that stage. My energy was running low and I said my good nights.

That is the secret for people that may be introverted but still like going out on the town from time to time. By all means, get out there. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. Drink heaps. But know when your energy stocks are getting low and when you have to leave and just leave. Don't come out with a big long explanation, just say that you going because the more you stand around the more that the group will convince you to stay and if your energy is low it will turn into hell. Trust me on this, I know this from experience.

Do go out and have fun. Don't over do it. Do leave when you want to. Don't let people talk you from going home. Be strong. After about five minutes they will have forgotten that you were there anyway.

Cherry Blossoms: A sign of a new beginning

はなみ

It's spring time here in Japan and that means only one thing, hanami or we would say in English, cherry blossom viewing. 

When I first learned the word hanami, it sounded like the most boring thing in the world. Looking at flowers?!?!?!? No thank you. But when I came to Japan I found out what it was all about.

Hanami is all about celebrating that fresh start. The winter is coming to an end, the flowers are blooming again. It is becoming warmer and warmer and summer is on it's way. 

Nature has decided that it will change for the coming summer and it does it in a spectacular way with the bright colours of pink and white and others.

This is nice for nature and it is nice for us as well but we don't have to wait for spring to make a change. We can make a change at any minute of the day or night. We have the decision making ability to decide what we want and the good thing is that you can do it right now.

Sometimes I walk around during the course of my day andI realise that I don't have to be in a bad mood. I don't have to be annoyed at the idiot at the train station. I can just laugh it off.

There is that old saying that if you had $86,400 in your bank account and someone stole $10 from it would you spend the rest of the day trying to find that person so you can give them a real bashing. No of course not. But someone pissed you off for 10 seconds and you spend the rest of the day thinking about. The remaining 86,390 seconds of that day you are thinking about it. What you should do is make the decision that life is too short to worry about those kinds of trivialities and you are going to get back to focusing on your goals and objectives. 

Enjoy the spring and remember you can get back on track whenever you want, so why not now? I'm going to.

The Daily RBL Video Blog - Hanami

Here is the next video from The Daily RBL. Today we talk about cherry blossom viewing in Japan and the beauty it brings with it.

Various ways to regain momentum

Momentum is an interesting thing. You can build it up quickly to where you become unstoppable but you can also lose it very quickly.

What do you do when you find yourself losing momentum?

1. Go back to your goals. Remember why you wake up early in the morning and go to bed late at night.

2. Hit the gym. Just doing something as simple as working out for one hour will get you that energy back that you have lost.

3. Drink lots of water. You might spend a lot of time in the loo (toilet) especially in the winter but you will find that even drinking 500mls of cold water will left your spirits ten fold.

4. Watch what you eat. Try to plan each day so that you are not running around eating not so healthy food. Also, cut down your sugar content. I tell you from experience that that sugar content is probably slowing you down more than anything else.

5. Don't worry about perfectionism. Don't worry that it is not exactly what you think it is going to be. The fact that you have got something out there means that you can improve on it at a later date. If you just sit there and procrastinate then you are going to have all sorts of problems.

6. Take a day off where you don't do anything remotely related to what you are trying to achieve. You sit back and do something completely different to what you usually do. Go for a hike (tramp for New Zealand readers) or play tennis or do something that you don't do often.

There you go. There are 6 ideas that you can use if you get into a problem with your momentum.

I think that the most important thing is to realise that you have lost momentum and to acknowledge it and to not beat yourself up about it too much. You got to realise that it happens to the best of them and the best thing is to get back on the horse as quickly as possible.