Psychologists have (relatively) recently started studying Self-Monitoring Behavior.

Self-monitoring behavior refers to how people adapt their words and actions depending on the environment that they’re in. For example, high self-monitors can sometimes be seen as completely different people when they’re around friends as opposed to being around family.

High self-monitors also feel pressure to relate or sympathize with others (even when they can’t).

Which, for a self-monitor like me, is the perfect ingredient for an awkward moment. Last night I learned something about myself that I never realized before: I laugh when others are laughing, even when I’m not sure why something is funny.

We were sitting around one of those made-for-backyard campfires as a family when a couple of us started to get really goofy. I couldn’t even tell why they were laughing so much, but every time they burst out laughing I started to feel this strange pressure to laugh with them. Don’t laugh, it’s not really funny and you’re not really laughing, I would tell myself. Yet I would catch myself making laughing noises when I didn’t even hear the joke.

It’s got to be a sub-conscious desire to fit in, I decided. But then I realized what it really was: my self-monitoring behavior.

Which is why a lot of people are socially awkward: is it worse to laugh and not mean it, or stay straight-faced even when the rest of the room is rolling on the floor giggling?

Society makes life really hard for us introverted people. It makes us believe we have to go to parties, be social butterflies, and constantly seek after the praise and recognition of others.

That’s not all. Here are 20 more LIES that society tries to make us introverts believe:

1. You’re a loser if you stay at home on a Friday or Saturday night.
2. Dances and clubs are a good way to meet people.
3. It’s easy to ask someone on a date.
4. Making small talk is easy — after all, it’s small!
5. You shouldn’t have just one best friend.
6. Meeting good people requires meeting a lot of people.
7. Approaching someone you don’t know is easy.
8. Performing on stage gets easier the more you do it.
9. Public speaking is scary only because you’re afraid you’ll mess up.
10. Being quiet means you’re shy.
11. Being quiet means you have nothing to say.
12. Being quiet means you don’t like the people you’re with.
13. Meditation and contemplation are reserved for religious fanatics.
14. You have to talk while driving in the car.
15. Not wanting to talk to someone is rude.
16. Networking with people requires the exchange of business cards.
17. Introverts don’t like to be around people.
18. Pausing to collect your thoughts makes a conversation awkward.
19. You are either introverted or extroverted. Nothing in between.
20. You have to use Facebook and Twitter for producing information, not just consuming information.

Be strong, fellow introvert! You can make your own way in this world. Don’t fall victim to the knavery of those pesky extroverts.

Got any more lies? Leave ‘em in the comments!

Our energy always seems to be running low as introverts. For me, as an eight-hour workday wears on, it gets harder and harder to smile for each and every customer. That’s because being a social butterfly really saps my energy, and I need to deliberately recharge myself from time to time.

As an introvert, you already know that being alone is a great way to recharge. Not many of us are loners, however, so there has to be a good balance of other activities as well. If you have kids, being alone isn’t really an option anyway, so this list will be particularly handy to you.

Here are 34 ways to recharge yourself as an introvert:

1. Wake up a half hour earlier than normal. Taking extra time in the morning is really therapeutic.
2. Read for pleasure, a little each day.
3. Write a poem or haiku instead of a dusty old paragraph.
4. Talk about an idea, not a person, with someone you love.
5. Take the long way to work when you aren’t pressed for time.
6. Stay home on a Friday night — and don’t feel guilty about it!
7. Think of someone you should send a card or email to. And take pleasure in not sending it.
8. Cook a fancy meal.
9. Write in your journal for once.
10. Start a blog.
11. Go out for ice cream by yourself.
12. Take your laptop to the library — but don’t study, watch your favorite movie or TV show instead. Bring headphones!
13. Give yourself an extra ten minutes to do something or get somewhere.
14. Take a longer shower.
15. Go get a sunburn.
16. Don’t go to lunch with everyone else at work.
17. Find a bathroom in an area that’s predominantly the opposite gender as you — and pretend like you’re using the toilet.
18. Go for a walk with someone you love and have a no-talking rule.
19. Have a secret hiding place that only you know about.
20. Don’t bring an umbrella next time it rains.
21. Read the newspaper. Even an actual one made of paper, if they still exist.
22. Go window shopping at a store you can’t afford.
23. Go see a matinee movie.
24. Go to a sit-down restaurant by yourself. It’s only as weird as you make it.
25. Attend a church meeting or worship service.
26. Learn how to sit cross-legged. Then pretend to meditate.
27. Check out a part of town that you’ve never been to.
28. Drive home a different way than you’re used to.
29. Download music from a band or genre you’ve never heard of.
30. Clean your house.
31. Actually buy one of those on-demand movies from your cable company.
32. Set your alarm for a half-hour earlier than normal and lie awake in bed, pondering.
33. Go to a bookstore and read a book — but don’t buy it.
34. Ride your bike to get some Chinese take-out. Once you get it, go eat it under a nearby tree.

You’ve got an advantage over those pesky extroverts: you don’t need an excuse to do crazy, random crap like this. Live it up!!

I’m writing this post 32,000 feet above Oklahoma. I’m using an old-fashioned paper and pen, and except for the roar of the plane, everything is quiet. Thank heavens that poor baby that was crying fell asleep shortly after take-off.

Alone Time is Our Recharging Time

One of the defining traits of introverts is our special ability to capitalize on quiet time. Large chunks of time to ourselves, much like this non-stop flight from Atlanta to Denver for me, are opportunities for our souls to recharge. We literally get energy from being alone.

Extroverts don’t understand this. Long, empty periods of time make them anxious or bored. We, on the other hand, take this time to delve deeper inside ourselves and work ideas out.

When you’ve got some time to think, do you ever replay conversations in your head? Do you look for new angles to the things you (and others) said? Do you enjoy reading, writing, or just plain meditating? Is your mind constantly active, never resting, always concocting up something new? Do you play out what-if scenarios in your mind, like actors on a stage?

Herein is the blessing of being introverted: our minds recharge by being active, not by relaxing.

Yet Extroverts See Us as Zombies

When an extrovert catches us recharging (it’s inevitable that they do), they often think we’re zoning out or daydreaming. For them, silence is naturally uncomfortable and they perceive us as being bored (or worse yet, boring). We look like zombies to them, because our activity is all happening on the inside.

Some years ago, my best friend and I were riding in the car on a long trip with my Grandma. Both he and I are staunch introverts, while Grandma is definitely an extrovert — which made for a very long and tedious car ride.

See, we introverts were content with silence. Even through the quiet, our minds were whirring, and we were definitely entertained the whole time. Boredom didn’t even cross our minds. Yet Grandma was being drained by the silence and constantly pecked at us with small talk to keep some sort of interaction going on in the car.

Even six years later, Grandma still mentions how dreadful that drive was. I hope she doesn’t think we didn’t appreciate the trip. We just had an introvert-extrovert mismatch.

Finding Time to Recharge

We live in an extroverted world — anyone, including your Grandma, could be the exact opposite of you. That means recharging time doesn’t always come naturally, especially if you have children. You might have to (gasp) schedule moments of quiet time for yourself.

That’s because mental health as an introvert is really contingent on your finding this recharging time. If you’re not getting it now (chances are you’re not), here are 34 easy ways to get started. You’ll notice the stress levels in your life go down and your ability to smile to go way up.

This article is part 2 in the series, The Introvert’s Guide to Social Media.

As a Master’s student, I’m constantly on the lookout for post-graduation job opportunities. It’s an extroverted world out there, and I’m told that networking with others is the best way to land a sweet, high-paying job. Sound familiar?

Yet networking is torture for introverts like me. No matter how badly I want a job when I graduate, willingly trying to schmooze with people is miserable!

Maybe that’s why so many job-seeking introverts travel the dead-end routes of Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com, where you can covertly slip your resume into the corporate coffers without actually having to talk to anyone.

But talking to people is the way to go, even when you’re not looking for a job. Networking with others can also help you hire new employees, find new clients, outsource work, or simply get useful advice.

Fortunately, since you’ve been blessed with introversion, you don’t have to go about it the same way everyone else does. You can do things your way and still be successful.

Networking is as easy as not choking.

About two months ago, I attended a fancy meet-and-greet where students were given the chance to socialize with big-name executives. The hors d’oeuvres were delicious, but I was so terrified that I forgot to chew my roast beef. I ended up choking in front of everyone and had to leave the party early to get my suit dry cleaned.

What did I learn from the experience? For one, that I need to chew my food better.

But I also learned that for us introverts, putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations will never work. You can never be yourself if you’re uncomfortable. If you can’t be yourself, how can the people you’re “networking” with know who you are either?

The secret? Only do what you’re comfortable with.

You don’t need to attend fancy parties to network well. You don’t need to go to conferences, work parties, or even use social media. You only need to do what you’re comfortable with. That’s it.

If that means using only family and friends to find new clients or job referrals, so be it. If that means only using Twitter to make professional connections, more power to you. You’ll be very effective if you’re using the tools that you’re comfortable with, so you might as well not waste your time with everything else.

Of course, you always need to be open to new ways of connecting with people. Before you decide that work parties are useless for you, you better try going to a few. Momentarily get yourself out of your comfort zone before letting your introversion keep you away from valuable networking opportunities.

But don’t let those extroverts make you feel guilty.

Once you’ve chosen your favorite way to network, stick with it. Don’t let extroverts (or even other introverts) make you regret your decision.

Beware: an introvert that avoids work parties will likely be heckled for it. You will become the guy on a diet that has to walk by the donut shop every day, because people will constantly try to make you give in.

Be true to yourself. Hold strong. Society might tempt you into uncomfortable situations, but you know better. You’re in touch with your introverted self.

So, are you comforable with social media?

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about overcoming your initial social media preconceptions. Since using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN to further your career is a lot different from what the I-just-took-a-dump twitterers use social media for, you might as well give it a try to see if it suits your personality.

After all, if it’s not your thing, you can always commit Web 2.0 suicide. That’s your right when you’re an introvert that’s not comfortable.

For starters, here’s a preliminary test to see if you’re a good match for the social media scene. See if you answer YES to a majority of these questions:

1. Are you curious about what well-known people in your profession are doing?
2. Do you want to stay updated in the latest trends of your field?
3. Are you willing to give BEFORE taking?
4. Are you willing to check in at a computer at least twice a day?
5. Are you okay with others branding you as a nerd/geek?
6. Are you willing to promote a friend’s product or service out of pure kindness?
7. Do you like learning new (and initially useless) technologies?
8. Are you humble enough to watch and learn from others?

Did you pass? If so, great. A whole new world awaits you (insert cheesy Aladdin joke here).

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series, to be released soon! Return to the Table of Contents.

This article is part 1 in the series, The Introvert’s Guide to Social Media.

To start off, I must confess that I actively avoided using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN until early 2009. I’ve always been well-versed in these technologies, to be sure, yet my introverted personality has kept me far away. The very idea of tweeting or facebooking seemed pointless and retarded.

To be honest, it still seems a bit pointless and retarded to me. Yet the benefits of using social media outweigh the costs, so I’ve learned how to cope with using Facebook and Twitter as an introvert. You can too.

Social media is initially difficult for introverts.

Facebook and Twitter are both gold mines of opportunity for you, both personally and professionally. Yet because we’re introverted, social media is difficult to use:

• We introverts don’t like small talk. It saps a lot of our energy.
• We have trouble seeing the point of meeting random strangers.
• We prefer fewer, meaningful relationships over loose, superficial relationships.
• We don’t usually keep in touch with people from our past.
• We don’t like talking for the sake of talking, and most of us don’t feel like we have anything to say.
• Networking with others isn’t a top priority for us, even if we want to develop ourselves professionally.
• Offering our opinions to others is an intimate and delicate thing reserved only for close friends.
• Gossip is boring to us. Not because we’re ‘morally superior’ but because our brains aren’t wired to appreciate it.
• We have difficulty seeing the purpose of shouting out random messages into the cloud.
• We perceive social media as a superficial, self-aggrandizing show that people use to get attention.

Yet introverts can also be attracted to social media.

Even with these difficulties, however, introverts have some powerful advantages when using social media:

• We like writing and blogging. Writing is a way for us to share our ideas with others without a pesky conversation.
• We like having conversations online, because it is an impersonal medium.
• We like finding out information about random people that we know (aka Facebook stalking).
• We can find niche groups that fit our specific interests.
• We can listen without having to join in the conversation.
• We can direct the conversation however we’d like. We can talk about ideas instead of people.
• We can feel connected to the world without having to go anywhere. Popularity online is as good as popularity offline for many of us.
• We can be brief (even as short as 140 characters) without sacrificing any meaning.
• We can still develop fewer, personal relationships even over Facebook and Twitter.
• We’re conscientious of those we’re talking to, and will never spam or deliberately bother others.

Overcoming your initial resistance is crucial.

I promise, you’re not a self-aggrandizing bigot if you occasionally update your Facebook status. You’re not putting on a show if you send the occasional tweet. While posting self-centered statuses is definitely possible — like how you just fed your horses in Farmville or just took a crap at work — you can avoid that stereotype quite easily.

Through social media, you can be helpful to people. You can share your insights on ideas and cultivate rewarding relationships 140-characters at a time. This type of social networking takes much more effort than the I-just-ate-pancakes-and-need-to-tell-the-world extroverts are capable of, but that’s okay. You’re introverted, and that makes you powerful.

Want to know why I started using Facebook regularly? It was an experiment. I wanted to see if updating my status would reduce the chastisement people would give me for not keeping in touch with them. As an introvert, I don’t like calling people just to catch up. Anything that can give people the illusion of me keeping in touch is a valuable tool indeed.

The results of the experiment? It worked. Marvelously.

Move on to part 2 of this series, How to Painlessly Network With Others as an Introvert. Or, return to the Table of Contents.

Hello. My name is Cody Nolden, and I’m a self-proclaimed introvert.

If you’re not up on the latest news, introverts represent 57% of the population on earth today. We’re quiet, prefer quality over quantity when it comes to friends, and love getting to know ourselves and others through deep conversations about principles, not people. Some of our extremists could be classified as goths, emo kids, or even manga addicts. But most of us are really quite sociable, and enjoy being around people (if kept within limited doses).

Unfortunately, we introverts live in an extroverted world. With the advent of social media, things have gotten even more difficult. For the sake of our careers, we want to talk with people through tools like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN. Yet willfully networking with people sucks, both online and off.

You can conquer social media, even as an introvert.

That’s what this series is all about. Feel free to jump right to whatever is most interesting to you — we’ll be adding new parts all the time:

• Part 1: Why Social Media Doesn’t Click With Introverts
• Part 2: How to Painlessly Network With Others as an Introvert
• Stay tuned for more!

I hardly ever go to parties.

Don’t get me wrong — I love dancing, loud music, and being around friends. I love meeting new people, learning new names, and having a senseless good time. I can even make myself into a “social butterfly,” giving the impression that I really am enjoying myself.

Yet deep down inside, parties extract a lot of energy out of me. They force me to become unnaturally extroverted and make me very uncomfortable. As a result, I end up hating parties and avoiding them whenever possible.

It’s because I’m an introvert. Chances are, you are too.

Lots of words have been invented for party haters like me. People call us shy, reclusive, quiet, reserved, wet blankets. Psychologists take pity on us, however, and lovingly refer to us as “introverted.”

Fortunately, we introverts are not alone. More than 57% of people are classified as introverted, according to psychologist Dr. Laurie Helgoe.

And we’re not the wet blankets that we’re purported to be. “Being an introvert does not mean you’re antisocial, asocial, or socially inept,” according to Dr. Helgoe in her recent book, Introvert Power. “It means that you prefer spacious interactions with few people. And it means that, when you converse, you are more interested in sharing ideas than in talking about people and what they’re doing.”

So being introverted isn’t a bad thing. We have fun, too — it’s just different from our extroverted counterparts. Where they gain energy from socializing and having a large number of acquaintances, we gain energy from being in touch with ourselves and having a few cherished friends. It’s apples and oranges, really.

Yet society shoves extroversion down our throats.

So why do I feel bad for not going to parties? I’ve spent the last three years of my college career forcing myself to be extroverted, because that’s what seems socially acceptable. Having fun in college means going to parties, having lots of friends, and making small talk with random people you don’t know. Right?

What about having a quiet evening at home watching a movie? What about writing a novel in your spare time, because that’s what you like to do? What about having three or four close friends (and a girlfriend, of course) that you love doing things with?

Why do you need to dress up like a banshee every Halloween, act like a retard when the football team wins, or put on a show when you speak in church? What if that’s not you, even though society dictates that it should be?

You can be yourself and be happy, too.

I’m here to tell you that it’s okay to be introverted. It’s okay if you don’t quite fit the mold that society imposes on you. I’ve felt for years like I’m different, and it’s bothered me. But now, since I’ve started learning about what it means to be an introvert, I’m starting to feel like it’s okay to be myself.

But please be careful. It’s not okay to be sad, depressed, lonely, or unwanted. You should never mask deeper problems under the ruse of introversion, and you should definitely seek help if you really feel something’s wrong. If you’re truly introverted, being alone shouldn’t make you feel lonely at all.

I got Introvert Power for Christmas this morning. After only three chapters I’m feeling the social pressure of the last five years lift off my shoulders, and it’s wonderful.