Amidst the Activities of Your Daily Life, Seek Out the Introvert Oasis

If you’re intentional about it, you can almost always find—or create—an introvert oasis in your everyday life.

Gill Orthodontics in Fargo, North Dakota seems like it was designed for introverts, by an introvert.

Which is probably true, considering who Dr. Jared Gill is.

Think young Mr. Rogers, but without the red sweater and blue deck shoes.

Dr. Gill is soft-spoken, cerebral, kind, and good-humored. And he clearly loves teeth, so much so that the dominant visual element in his office’s waiting area is a giant braces bracket hanging from the ceiling.

An Introvert Oasis

The introvert vibe at Gill Orthodontics is apparent the moment you walk in the door.

Think introvert oasis.

On our last visit, for example, as I arrived with my daughter Katie for her appointment, I offered up my customary “howdy” to the woman behind the front desk.

She responded not with a return “howdy” but instead with a silent hand gesture that we should take a seat in the waiting area next to the mega bracket.

Turns out she was on the phone. But it wasn’t obvious at first because she was speaking on one of those beige (and thus hard to spot) headsets, which offer the added benefit to us lobby dwellers of never having to hear the phone ring while we’re on the premises.

But the real draw of Gill Orthodontics—speaking as someone who doesn’t have to get braces while I’m there, or have them tightened—is its mesmerizing ambience.

The big-screen TV on the wall isn’t blaring Jerry Springer reruns or breathless news-channel coverage. Instead, it pipes in music from an app called The Spa/Stingray Music as stunning photos of mountains, lakes, forests, and oceans stream by.

It’s like being at an Enya concert with Pink Floyd as the opening act (or vice versa), and more than once I have teetered on the edge of dozing off in that lobby.

Which got me to thinking during our last visit (when it almost happened once again):

If you’re anything like me as an introvert, you are probably drawn to similar places and environments. You may even seek them out, though probably subconsciously.

Why not seek them out consciously instead?

You can—and without making a big deal out of it—by simply incorporating that mindset into your everyday life wherever and whenever possible.

Oh, the Places You Can Go

Think about all the typical things you do in your everyday life.

You go grocery shopping.

You eat out.

You get the occasional haircut.

You go to the movies.

And on and on.

Why not be more purposeful about the places and environments where you do these things—these things you’re already doing anyway, and that you will continue to do throughout your life?

When my wife Adrianne and I and our family lived in suburban Minneapolis, for example, we sometimes chose to shop at grocery stores like Lunds & Byerlys or Kowalski’s Markets for one seemingly ridiculous reason: The floors were carpeted there, and thus the shopping experience was far less noisy and overstimulating than it otherwise would have been.

And thus our reason for choosing those stores wasn’t as ridiculous (to us, at least) as it might sound 
to others, even though the stores tend to be more expensive than most.

I use a similar strategy here in my new, adopted hometown of Moorhead, Minnesota whenever I need to go to the post office.

Instead of going to the bigger and relatively more impersonal Moorhead branch, I go to the tiny one in the nextdoor town of Dilworth, where I can generally walk right up to the counter—and where, over the years, I’ve gotten to know a couple of the workers on a first-name basis.

Bonus!

Consider the When, Too

Keep in mind, too, that sometimes it’s not so much where you go but when you go there.

I can tell you from firsthand experience, for example, that it is possible to have a calm, quiet experience at a normally nutty place like Costco.

How?

By going there at 7:30 p.m. on a cold Tuesday night in January, when, aside from a few stragglers, the only other people in the store are staff members who are cleaning up as they prepare to close the place.

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You won’t always be able to be in the right place at the right time, of course.

But as you go about the routine activities that make up your days, you can give yourself what you need as an introvert more often—and more easily—than you might think.

Just pick your places, and your times, with your introverted temperament in mind.