Extroverting When You Need to Is Like Eating Your Vegetables

You may not love extroverting. That’s understandable. But sometimes you need to do it anyway, trusting all the while that it’ll be good for you in the long run.

The thing I hated most about my high school basketball practices—aside from running punishment sprints, which the coach said would “improve [our] focus”—was working on left-handed layups.

I’m right-handed. So when I go in for what is called a layup (a simple shot from underneath the basket where you “lay” the ball up against the backboard and it banks through the net), I naturally go to the right-hand side of the basket, jumping off my left foot and laying the ball up with my right hand—that is, my dominant, preferred hand.

Left-handed layups are the opposite, and thus they go against every fiber of my natural grain.

For a left-handed layup, you approach from the left-hand side of the basket, jump off your right foot, and lay the ball up with your left hand.

As a right-hander, this is a bit like being forced to write left-handed when you’ve broken your “good” hand: You can do it. But it’s comically ugly, literally and figuratively.

Why practice left-handed layups, then?

Why not just do your layups right-handed when you’re right-handed and left-handed when you’re left-handed?

Adaptability Matters

As idiot high schoolers, we asked our coach this very question. Repeatedly. (Hence the punishment sprints.)

His answer was always the same—and, in begrudging hindsight, correct:

“You need to be able to do both.”

Because in a game, Coach went on, there’s this pesky dude called your opponent who won’t just stand there, staring into space.

Indeed, he will force you to go left sometimes when you want to go right.

And if you’re forced left and lay the ball up with your right hand anyway, you’re liable to get the shot blocked.

Or you’ll get hammered to the floor.

Or both.

It was the basketball equivalent of “eat your veggies; they’re good for you.”

And like I said: Coach was right.

That left hand did come in handy sometimes, even if it wasn’t the handiest hand at hand.

It’s Good to Have Options

Well, the same is true when it comes to your understandable and perfectly normal tendency toward introversion.

Inevitably—because life is life—you will need (or maybe even want) to call upon your extroverting skills to take over for a bit.

These situations will likely never be as pretty as the ones where you’re in your introverted wheelhouse.

But you can make them work, perhaps even rewardingly so on occasion.

If you practice.

Now, you don’t have to practice 
a lot.

And just so I’m crystal clear: You don’t have to become an extrovert, any more than you have to become left-handed when you’re practicing left-handed layups on the basketball court.

My suggestion: Partner up with an extroverted friend or family member and pick one thing you’ll each do “bad-handed”—i.e., against your introverted or extroverted default.

Let me give you an example that worked well for me and my extroverted career counseling colleague, Nancy White.

Years ago, when we first met, Nancy and I realized we were opposites on the introvert/extrovert spectrum.

So, sort of as a fun game at first, we began contacting each other using the other person’s preferred mode of communication instead of our own.

In other words, whereas I normally would have emailed Nancy about something, I instead picked up the phone and—gasp—called her.

And whereas she normally would have called me, she emailed me.

It sounds silly, but it was rewarding for both of us in several ways.

For starters, it gave each of us a chance to practice communicating with our “bad hand.” And so over time, we both became not only better at it, but more comfortable with it.

But there was a bonus benefit as well, one that I hadn’t foreseen:

There’s a feeling of satisfaction you get—a certain pride that emerges—when you go ahead and do something you normally wouldn’t do.

It’s a miniature victory, and those little victories add up over time.

Practice Extroverting with a Friend

So look for someone in your life who is more extroverted than you are, who knows what extroversion and introversion are really all about, and who is up for doing a little friendly experimenting with you.

You just might discover that you’re better with your “bad hand” than you thought.

But even if you don’t, you’ll be preparing yourself for those times when your “good hand” just isn’t an option.