Self centered introverts

So the other day my friend and I were having this discussion about whether introverts are more self centered than others. The initial conclusion is yes we tend to be self centered because we spend so much time alone that we can’t help but love our own company which basically translates into a high degree of self-centeredness. We care more about what we do, who we spend time with, what we like and dislike because we spend most of the time with ourselves.
But if you really look around, most people are self-centered. They always try to tune to , WII-FM (what’s in it for me). The only difference is in the degree of self-centeredness. Some people are more concerned with themselves than others. Then you have other people who exhibit their self-centeredness in different ways. Take extroverts for example. A lot of extroverts love the attention on themselves. They go out with many friends, are surrounded by a crowd, etc etc etc. In order to have their brains overstimulated enough, they seek out experiences that shines the spotlight on -who else- them?
While introverts would exhibit their self-centeredness by not giving other people the pleasure of their company and enjoying their own solitude, extroverts exhibit their self-centeredness by hanging out with more people, which is why the general perception is that extroverts are not so self-centered.
Am I even making sense? What do you think of the topic? I would really like your opinion on the topic.

If I Were The Princess

So lately I’ve been going through some of my (very) old diaries and I just felt sorry for myself. I wish that at the time I had someone – an actual person – to explain to me everything that I was going through, someone who was not too old to call me childish, yet not too young to be as clueless as I was.
So one of the anecdotes I wrote about was of a friend in high school who convinced her other friend not to smoke by saying, “If you smoke, I won’t be friends with you again.”
I found the story interesting as I told myself that if I said that to a friend, they’ll probably smoke double to speed up the process of not being friends with me.
And if I were the princess held by the turtle -not dragon – in supermario, he would probably finish off all the stages, reach the turtle and pay him double to keep me locked up. That’s if he never ran in the opposite direction to begin with.
So yeah, my self esteem was pretty low, and to be honest enough I still think that way about myself to some extent; the only difference being, I really stopped caring about the whole “fitting in” considering that , figuratively, my view from the locked tower is quite awesome, and the dragon – or turtle (or just my introverted nature)- keeps people away so I have enough time to read, write and work on my own things.
But I still wish I had an older and wiser “me” to explain exactly what was going on with me at various parts of my life. Someone who would tell me to stop overdramatizing everything and take things at face values.
But then someone commented that sometimes it’s the cluelessness that makes some experiences so rich and beautiful. Because rationalizing and putting psycholabels on our sentiments and feelings is what dries them out, making them like those pieces of mangoes my grandmother used to leave out in the sun to make acharis.
And that’s why growing up is no longer fun.
So what’s your opinion on the matter?

Regardless of how your childhood and teenage years turned out, one message remains true, and that is,

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.

It’s OK to be Different

So one of the things I liked about 2012 was discovering Susan Cain’s book,Quiet and Dr Martin Laney’s book, The Introvert Advantage; books that validate people like me are normal because as my friend puts it, “It’s good to know that we have a type.”
They claim that there are three extroverts to every introvert, and the world has come to value extroverts, outgoing people with charismatic personalities so that people like us are seen as just weird (at best) and psychologically ill (at worse). In reality, introverts are just different, not worse off than extroverts but different.
The idea they present is that extroverts recharge through external interactions- meeting with people, going to parties and doing all those extrovertish stuff -while the same things drain the energy out of introverts, leaving us feel overwhelmed, irritated as our brains become overstimulated.
And it is through no fault of our own, as our brains are wired differently. We can’t give quick answers because we’d rather think things through first so many of us are seen as quiet and maybe stupid, just because we delve deeper into the realms of our minds.
Our favorite pastimes don’t involve people as three becomes more than a crowd and we become overwhelmed. So we tend to recharge by sitting at home, making a hot cup of cocoa and reading. Extroverts find us boring but introverts totally understand our need for solitude.
And we communicate better in writing than through talking.
I’ve posted a couple of posts On Introverts but I felt like addressing the issue again because we still live in a society that finds it rude to turn down invitations to social gatherings not understanding that there is a limit to how many of these we can attend (I
personally limit myself to two per week-which my mother ends up organizing so don’t feel offended if I refuse an invitation, it’s just because usually my quota is already planned out for the week).
I really would like to raise awareness on the issue as I suffered a lot during my life with extrovert people trying to “mold” me into an extrovert when I cannot be one because it’s more a matter of neurological circuiting than social conditioning.
So I guess that’s it for today.
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Dear Single ladies – part 2

A friend of mine was talking about how lonely she is for being 29 and still single in a society where you turn into a spinster by age 23. She ended her post by saying,
“Everything is in Allah’s will, I understand but I can’t run away from the lonely feelings, the need to be cared for. Am still a human, and still a woman – I can’t run away from my hopeless feelings. I just hurt- and hide behind the masked face of being empowered.”

The words were really powerful but they really made me think of people who are at the other end of the spectrum, those who got married young and have half a dozen kids to take care for. Though I do not have direct quotes, but when they speak, they speak of not having any “me” time, of how they can’t do what they like to do because of a domineering guy, of how their movements and day plans are controlled by someone other than themselves.
So while the author of castle of words says she wants to share the long walks on the beach with someone she calls her husband, what if she got someone who doesn’t even like to take a walk (let alone take a walk at the beach) because their feet keep on sinking in the sand. I’ve seen women whose personalities have been shredded because of their husbands so they can’t even recognize who they are anymore, and there are those who are just sooooo tired of things demanding their attention that they just want to crawl into a hole somewhere and disappear. There are those who are going through the pain of discovering that their beloved husbands had been sooo loving, his love encompassed more than one wife, and there are those who don’t know how to talk to their children about a separation looming around the corner, and there are those who fall victim of domestic violence and there are those who are stuck in a loveless marriage just for the children, and there are those who had to bury their children because of a madman who entered a school with a gun or a mad president who just doesn’t want to let go of his chair (Syria).
So yeah, when you start looking at things in perspective, what single women go through isn’t so bad. Single women can take the edge off the pain of loneliness with a list of achievements that sees us move forward. I learnt all that by watching my single friends who yearn companionship as much as any other girl, but know better than to sit in bed, crying in self pity over romance movies while wolfing down a gallon of Baskin Robbins; young women who launched home businesses and keep on taking it to the next level, young women who volunteer to help orphans, those taking lessons to learn new skills and languages, those taking care of elderly parents and those who utilize their time to meet new people and go new places.

Sorry for the second post today but I couldn’t help responding to Castle of Word’s post, which I can’t link right now considering that I’m posting this through my phone.

Wedding Season

So it’s the peak of the wedding season, and I was stuck in yet another wedding this weekend if you’ve been following my twitter timeline. Nowadays I started to make use of weddings as they provide me with deep insight into the social behavior of people. Besides the fact that I utilize the time to get in touch with people through whatsapp (used to be bbm before I got rid of it). So this weekend the clamor from the stereo was too loud, I refrained from communicating verbally with anybody (I was on the ‘smile and nod’ mode). The thing is, I hate having to scream over the noise to be heard, let alone screaming under the noise because chances of that occurring were pretty high.
Anyhow, so I sat around watching how people were actually ‘talking to each other’ and it was quite fascinating. It made me think, how can they even hear each other speak? Until it dawned on me; maybe they don’t hear each other speak.

I mean, think about it, most people would rather talk than listen, and this is the perfect opportunity for them to talk without having to listen to what the other was saying because it was just too noisy.

So anyhow, this wedding was perfect because by 10.30 pm we were out the door (actually, to be more accurate, “We were out the tent flap.” )People who organize weddings in this part of the world need to do that more often; release people by 10.30 by feeding them earlier. Some weddings go all the way to midnight, and organizers need to consider that people still need to drive for 30 minutes to 2 hours if they live in another emirate. Plus they also need to think about how difficult it is to find parking at night. What saves us sometimes is that we live next to a hotel that has parking space, so we could get parking space that was emptied at about the same time by someone who was attending (yet another) wedding in that hotel.

Some people might say, “But it’s just one night when you’re going to reach home late.”

But this ‘just one night’ would get translated to a 100 nights per year considering how complex our society’s connections are. In some cultures, wedding attendees go up to 200. In our culture, it goes upto a 1000 because friends of family, family of friends, neighbors of family, family of neighbors, and just about any combination of “friends, family and neighbors” you can possibly think of. Plus we run in a lot of circles that are not only limited to Kemenies but can extend to Yemenis and Emiratis.

Fa khudlak.

If you’ve been following this blog for long enough you probably would know that I am not a big fan of weddings. Being an introvert, I hate the crowd, the noise, and just about everything about it. I feel people put so much attention into the details of the wedding, they stop focusing on the marriage itself.

I wonder what the results would be if somebody conducted a study to know how much people waste annually to attend and arrange for weddings, by considering the cost of dresses that would be worn only once, the time wasted driving to and from the place, the food that would go to waste…among other things.

That’s it for today

Flash Freezing Relationships

So inAccept Things and Let Go, I spoke about people who can play a major part in your life, but then decide to walk away; a theme that could teach you not to expect much from people or get too attached to them.  But stuff like that make me wonder why do people do that? Just walk away without looking back?

1) We view the same things differently. Our perceptions of the same reality might vary, and while something might have meant everything to (A), it might not have meant nothing to (B) – the person who walked away. That is the worse thing that could happen in a relationship – someone giving it a value more than the other – and so in the end all you end up with are people taking each other for granted and having hearts get broken. There’s an interesting quote that says, “Truth is a battle of perceptions. People only see what they’re prepared to confront. It;s not what you look at that matters, but what you see. And when different perceptions battle against one another, the truth has a way of getting lost….” So be careful of what you really see because in the end, if you get hurt because of your clouded perception, people are just going to blame you, and not the other person.

2) Maybe (B) wanted to keep (A)’s memories of the relationship at its best. There are times when people who play B’s roles just send emails once every two years, so that a time reaches when A’s most recent memory of them are just those emails. They don’t remember the movie nights, and the hangouts, and the study groups. They just remember those one-lined emails. So in an attempt to preserve the good memories, “B” just pulls the plug on the relationship suddenly, leaves at its best, instead of having  it deteriorate into nothingness. They basically Flash Freeze* the relationship.

Personally, once I put the concept of Flash Freezing in my mind, I felt much better because I finally started to forgive those who walked away (maybe that was not their intention, but remember to give your friend 70 excuses).  So stop holding on to what hurts, and make room for something more beautiful. And remember in the end, you can’t really control what happens to you but you can control how you react to what happens to you.

And that’s it for today.

(Technically Flash Freezing happens when objects are rapidly frozen by subjecting them to cryogenic temperatures using something like liquid nitrogen. The effect is pretty dramatic as you can see in the following image. So maybe it helps if you think of  your relationship frozen in the midst of all this white smoke…what you think?)

Image By Jeff Potter; © 2009 Atof Inc, http://www.cookingforgeeks.com

Back to School

Some people joke around that…

Ok I figured that the image isn’t exactly scary especially the Scary Movie face with the double o’s as eyes but I couldn’t resist the idea of putting my handwriting on my blog. Anyhow, since Eid holiday is over, it’s “back to school” season and the stores are competing to finish whatever that is left of parents’ salaries.
Back in the old days -OMG! I can’t believe I’m saying that – we used to prepare for school by buying new books and notebooks. And who remembers how we used to cover the books in those brown paper covers just to see them disintegrate a few weeks later? Nowadays kids are preparing for school by buying tablets such as iPads. Back in the days we used to write notes to each other during classes whenever we got bored. And we became sad when our friends were forced to sit far away from us because some classes would get so boring they would inspire us to say, “alhamd leAllah allathi a7yana ba3da ma amatana…” Nowadays, we contact our friends during boring classes using bbm and whatsapp even if they were half way across the world. Time zones become the main limiting factor for such conversations as some people could be asleep at the time of the sent message (maybe in their version of a boring class).
Then of course there are those who spend half the class pretending to type class notes on their tablets when in reality they are on Twitter. It’s like when a teacher asks, “What’s your favorite book?” And the student answers, “Facebook.”
Technology has changed a lot over the years, yet there are still some teachers happy to scribble on a blackboard with chalk, arguing that at least chalks can be used to throw at students who are not paying attention. As it was mentioned in Al Fateh episode of Khawater 8, children are used to smartphones and tabs at home, then when they see the outdated instruments used at school, they could develop schizophrenia.
Thee way schools are preparing children for the real world is like preparing people for war by teaching them how to fight with straws. I’m hoping to dedicate the month of September to post a series on “education” however that would take some time considering how much research the work would probably entail. So if you’re not interested, see you in October in’shAllah.
I’m leaving you with Khawater 8 Al Fateh episode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na0BZlqNyv8&sns=em

Drive by Daniel Pink

The book drive is all about motivation, not the act of turning the steering wheel in your hand to control a car. I enjoyed reading the book even though it was just a detailed version of his TED video (I.e. You could watch the video and get the gist of the book). The rest of the book acts as a sort of filler ( aka ma7shi) where he argues that people are internally motivated through autonomy, mastery and sense of purpose or contributing to a better good.
He says that the old carrot-stick philosophy of getting more work out of people through perks such as money or parking space can work when the tasks are routine and straight forward (“according to the procedure” style). But when the tasks deal more with creativity to increase productivity then the best way to get the most out of employees is to pay them enough to take the concept of money off the table and then produce an environment where employees are given autonomy and are encouraged to pursue mastery as well making then feel a great sense of purpose.
The book talks about how management is so last-century. That in our current fast-changing world, we need to move towards self-direction, where “ex-managers” provide the correct environments so that their employees are self-motivated and don’t need someone watching over their shoulders with a bamboo stick waiting for them to log onto Facebook.
The research done in the book was great (so great that I’ve added some of his references to my wishlist). And his book reminded me of a book I read two years ago called “seven-day weekend” by Ricardo Semler where he talks about how he built a successful company out of a total state of chaos, no mission statements, no hierarchy, no perks…his book was a sort of implementation of the psychology that Daniel Pink discusses. I remember when I read Semler’s book I was a bit disappointed because he spoke about all the weird (lack-of-)rules that worked without actually saying how they worked. Maybe now if I re-read it with Pink’s book in mind I’ll understand the psychology better.
I personally enjoyed reading Drive and would give it a 4/5 only because I was hoping for many more examples than his TED videos but was disappointed in that aspect.

On Introverts Part 2

You know how they sometimes have awareness campaign for autism, AIDs or breast cancer. I think there needs to be an awareness campaign for introverts. I’ve written about Susan Cain’s book (quiet) in a previous post, and it hit me as ironic that people who need to read the book are actually extroverts; extrovert parents who should stop treating their children as abnormal, forcing them to go to social events and (eventually) psychiatrists “to get out of their shells”; extrovert colleagues who should stop thinking that just because someone is quiet doesn’t make them stupid with nothing to contribute. Extrovert spouses who may think the introverts have so much to hide.

The thing is, just because extroverts talk a lot doesn’t mean they talk a lot of sense. It’s well known from biology that the circulatory blood system is required for the body to remain alive.

The thing with most Mombasa people is that the blood that keeps the society alive is called maneno-ism. (Note that I said “alive” and that does not necessarily mean “healthy”). So just like harmful CO2 is replaced by healthy O2 with the help of the blood, talk tends to be taken from one place to another.The only problem is that while the circulatory system makes sure that the body is well and healthy, maneno-ism system poisons society. And the sad thing is, people thrive on that, from deciding where they go to have their morning tea, to where they go for aerobics class to where they decide to work (or not). Kids are taught to mind everybody’s business and spread it if they can because after all people’s reputations need to be known to the public if they are going to get married at some point.

A change in this could be done through blood transfusion; changing the talk that’s going around but that would be difficult especially because it is only natural that the more scandalous talk is the more it gets around. So detox would be difficult. Maybe that’s why introverts keep to themselves a lot. Yet the society don’t see it that way. Susan Cain wrote, “Introversion is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.”

Interesting enough she also noted that Introverts are more likely to talk about their lives online. Maybe it’s the anonymity. Maybe it’s one way thet involves expressing themselves without having to come face-to-face with people.

So maybe introverts need to wear a t-shirt that says

Image taken from AboutYouInc.com

Facebook vs. Twitter

So I have to admit I’m becoming more of a twitter fan nowadays. Facebook is becoming Face-boring, maybe it’s because what fills one’s wall is the specific details of people’s lives not limiting itself to the milestones like weddings, graduation and a baby’s birth, but going into as many details in between as possible, like what food was there at the wedding, what happened behind stage during graduation, the progress of a mother’s size before delivery….

In other words; B-O-R-I-N-G!

Facebook is becoming the new-age platform of stalking others. The funny thing is, in real life, the stalkee doesn’t want to be stalked by the stalker, but on facebook, the stalker doesn’t want to stalk the stalkee but is forced to because their life is out there for all to see. Since facebook has become an expert in inundating our lives with the details of all our friends’ lives, twitter came along to clear the clutter and limit one’s status to 180 characters (Phew! What a relief). Pictures and videos are posted as short links so if you don’t want to see what food someone is having for dinner, you don’t see it!

Then there’s the fact that the people on your twitter do not have to be friends you know in real life. So you’re not left wondering how that person who barely graduated from high school is making millions right now. What joins tweeps are the tweets (or the ideas in the tweets that are highlighted by hashtags). So I personally tend to follow aspiring writers, quote pages, and news accounts, because that’s exactly what I want to see on my timeline. If someone’s statuses become annoying, just unfollow them and life goes on. They won’t necessarily come to you in real life and tell you, “Why did you unfollow me? We are no longer friends in real life…” the way it can happen on facebook.

Even though twitter is not entirely anonymous. After all, the virtual accounts are updated by real people, and there’s no such thing as anonymity in the social media anyway. You can read about the 4 people jailed in Abu Dhabi after Twitter spat, and thieves caught after one forgot to log out of Facebook.

So I personally think that twitter is more efficient at delivering what I want from social media than facebook, even though I still use facebook to post my blog posts only because most of my audience is there until now. But it might be different for you, so which do you prefer, facebook or twitter?

If you have a twitter account, follow me @ahechoes

Quote of the Day: Eleanor Roosevelt said “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” So guess which social media platform is better at initiating discussions about ideas and which one is better at initiating discussions about people?