introversion Archives

Marketing Tips for Introverts – with Marcia Yudkin

November 18, 2022

Marcia Yudkin shares insights on myths about introverts and marketing and tips for how to market in your own way as an introvert.

Welcome to Episode 21 of the Create Your Story Podcast on Marketing Tips for Introverts. I’m joined by Marcia Yudkin, author and specialist in the area of introverts and marketing, based on many years’ experience as a marketing coach and consultant.

You can listen above or via your favourite podcast app. And/or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

In this episode, we chat about:

Myths about introverts
Ways of being bold as an introvert
Myths about introverts and marketing
Push vs pull marketing – and what works best for introverts
Authentic marketing for introverts
Content marketing and pull marketing – what’s the difference
Being clear in communicating who you are and how you work
Substack as an option for free and paid offerings and writing
Being inclusive of introverts in marketing
What we can learn from introverted characters in fiction and real life

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Welcome to Episode 21 of the Create Your Story Podcast and it’s the 18 November as I record this.

I’m excited to have Marcia Yudkin join us for the podcast today.

For more than 10 years, Marcia Yudkin has stood up and defended introverts as worthy of respect and understanding. This developed out of her work as a marketing coach and consultant. She’s the author of 17 books and too many ebooks, online courses and so on to count. Her current focus is a Substack newsletter called Introvert UpThink, which critiques society’s misunderstandings and disparagements of introverts. She lives in the woods of Western Massachusetts, where she walks or runs five miles every day in the company of chipmunks, beaver, deer, porcupines and occasionally bears.

I was so excited when Marcia and I connected to be able to explore more about the area of marketing for introverts and to share these insights with you. Bringing an incredibly rich background as marketing consultant, coach and author together with personal and professional experience on marketing as an introvert, it was fabulous to dive deep into this topic. We explore myths around both introversion and marketing as an introvert with so many tips for helping you to share more about you and your work with the world if you are an introvert.

I had so many personal aha moments in this conversation. There are many powerful examples that illustrate the tips provided. It is a fantastic reminder to be ourselves in how we market including as introverts and how this can be a successful path. Take some time too to learn about Marcia’s work and books and connect with her via her fabulous Substack newsletter, Introvert UpThink. Plus Marcia has many valuable books and resources on this topic as well. Links in the show notes as ever.

So let’s head into the interview with Marcia.

Transcript of interview with Marcia Yudkin

Terri Connellan: Hello Marcia, and welcome to the Create Your Story podcast. It’s so great to connect with you and to chat about introversion from many perspectives today, including marketing and media.

Marcia Yudkin: Hi Terri. Thanks for having me.

Terri Connellan: So to kick us off, Marcia, can you provide a brief overview about your background, how you got to be, where you are today, and the work that you do?

Marcia Yudkin: Sure. As a kid, I was a bookworm. I loved words, and I was very much a classic introvert. My mother wished that I had more friends, and I found out recently that in this, she was just like, Ayn Rand’s mother who was always bugging her. Can’t you find some more friends? But I turned out fine.

In school. I studied philosophy in college, in graduate school. I taught philosophy for a while, quit academic life. I became a freelancer, because remember I said I had always loved words and so I thought, okay, writing is the next thing for me. And that morphed into becoming an expert in publicity and that developed into becoming an expert in marketing, which also used my love of words. And at some point I discovered that I’m an introvert. I think this was in the late two thousands, like 2008, something like that, and I started making more and more connections between things I saw in myself, things I saw in my clients, things I saw in my past, and reading that I was doing about what an introvert was.

And now I’m transitioning from marketing to concentrate on a newsletter that I started called Introvert UpThink, which looks at the prejudices against introverts in society and gives people resources for thinking positively about themselves as introverts.

Terri Connellan: Fabulous. And I love how your love of words is just woven through everything that you’ve talked about in different ways.

Marcia Yudkin: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Terri Connellan: It’s just fantastic. And, love the focus that you have through that weave of your life, bringing together that love of words, marketing and understanding about your own introversion and then helping others with theirs in areas of your strengths. So that’s really fabulous. So you’ve been working in that area now for more than 10 years in the area of marketing for introverts. Can you tell us a bit more about why you chose to focus there and how you help people?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, one thing I discovered when I was looking around and thinking about. What I was doing on a daily basis is I noticed that about 75% of my own clients were introverts, and I think that was because they saw in me a reflection of themselves and they wanted to work with somebody they could admire and who was like themselves and therefore was not going to push them to do things that did not come naturally to them.

So in addition to making those kind of observations, I also interviewed people who I saw as introverts, as successful introverts, especially in the marketing field and also in the writing field. And I wanted to find out, okay, what were their strategies for becoming successful as an introvert, not making a lot of compromises with their own personality.

Interestingly, some of these people weren’t themselves sure that they were introverts, even though I was sure that they were. And, I also analyzed things that I saw commonalities in my introverted clients. One of the things I noticed was that, Initially they were very set against marketing. There was something that didn’t sit right with them and I think it was because they were being told they had to do it in a way that didn’t fit their personality.

And then once I showed them that they could think about marketing in a different way, then it made a big transformation. In their ability to bring in clients. So that was gratifying, watching that happen with them. I’m not coaching clients anymore, but I’m still writing about things that I’ve learned, throughout my life and in working with clients.

Terri Connellan: Fabulous. And, it’s interesting what you say about introverts having a set against marketing and that idea of there’s a particular type of way that marketing should be done that might not be in line with introvert preferences.

Marcia Yudkin: I was noticing that, well, as a marketing expert myself, I wanted to see what my colleagues were saying, and a lot of them were saying really nonsensical things or things that would be downright harmful to introverts. Like, just get over yourself, don’t be such a wimp. Go out there and be aggressive and you didn’t have to do that, and we’ll get to that. What’s the alternative to that? But, I just noticed that there was so much in the marketing guru space that was only applicable to extraverts, really. And in order to follow that advice, you would have to be an extravert or skilled at pretending you were an extravert. And as you know, that’s really a strain and that’s a drain on energy.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. It’s like we have our natural preferences and when someone’s trying to push us into what is not natural. The natural reaction to that is to just move away from it, as you’ve said, to avoid or just to step away from that space altogether.

And I think as you’ve highlighted from what you’ve learned and what you’ve experienced for introverts often, and it’s part of why I called my business Quiet Writing, you have to find another way to share who you are and what you do that may go against the grain a bit or may involve new practices that will go through as we chat.

So, let’s talk about introverts and myths about introverts generally. So what are the most common myths that you see and how do they impact people with introverted preferences?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, I’ll just talk about two of the myths. There are a lot of them, but the first one is that introversion is a weakness, a personality weakness that you can get over, that you can overcome, and you can learn to be like all the extroverts and you can learn to get business the way that they get business.

And to some extent that’s true. You can, you can try those things, You can force yourself to do those things, but it’s exhausting. So my perspective is always to try to figure out a way to work with your natural preferences rather than against them. So introversion is not a weakness and it’s not something you can get over. If you were an introvert as a kid, you might learn to adapt in certain ways, but you’ll most likely still be an introvert when you’re grown up.

And the second myth is that introverts are timid and retiring. And from the way I look at it, we just have a different way of being bold. So, an amusing example of this is I have an extroverted friend. And, she does things that I would never do and I do things that she would never do and we surprise each other. So one of those surprises was, maybe 25 years ago, a big way that I kept my business going was by sending out postcards and they would be these hot pink postcards with announcements of my upcoming classes and special coaching programs.

And, my friend Shifra said to me, I could never send out postcards like that. I said, What do you mean? What do you mean you couldn’t send out postcards? She said, I don’t know. It’s so out there and to her that that was something that she couldn’t see herself doing, and to me was totally natural, totally easy and, you know, I wrote the postcards and I even put the stamps on them and everything. But for me to go up to strangers and start a conversation, that’s much more difficult. And for her, that was the most natural thing in the world. So, of course, If I were giving advice to her about how to market herself, I would set her up all these different ways she could have those conversations, and for me, that’s not what’s the best way.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And there are two really key myths about introversion, aren’t they that just pop up and are persistent. Even though we’ve had a lot of books and focus on introversion as a strength, I think it’s still something that we need to continually be working on personally and as a society. Introversion is not a personality weakness, as you said, you can overcome. It’s not something you can get over. And I loved your point too about the fact that you can force yourself to do things in a different way, but it’s the impact on people who are introverted, that it is exhausting. Cause again, you’re working against your natural preference, everything is harder.

Marcia Yudkin: Not only do we still hear this idea that introversion is a weakness, we sometimes hear it that it’s a mental illness. And, I’m researching this for an upcoming article about different ways in which people who should know better, identify certain aspects of being an introvert as being some kind of abnormal tendency and downright mental illness. But I still see this a lot when I read general interest things.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, it’s out there on the public domain still. And, I loved your example too, of the different ways of being bold. That was great because, it’s true, there are things that might be again, quite natural for us that we do that don’t feel bold at all. But it’s interesting, there’s lots of ways introverts can be bold, be quite rebellious at times, be quite different. Exactly. Yeah. And, it’s just natural for us.

Marcia Yudkin: I’m very bold in writing, so I’ve had a lot of success writing letters to perfect strangers where I’m proposing something and I know how to use words to get attention. That’s one of my strengths. And I’ve said things that some other people wouldn’t say or that they wouldn’t know how to get attention.

So I’ve made a lot of connections with editors, especially earlier in my career when I was a freelance writer, I was able to contact these national magazines. And just in half a page, this was before email, just in half a page of a letter, get their attention and have them call me and say, Let’s talk. Come to New York and meet with me. I want you to write for us.

Terri Connellan: That’s a great strength and a great skill and my learning in this space is that it is taking the time to become more self-aware and educated. That’s why I use that term self leadership, like understanding yourself and what your strengths are so you can as you’ve shown through that beautiful example, deploy them effectively to meet your needs and to share what you have to share with the world.

So, we’ve talked about some of the myths around introverts generally. What specific myths do you see around introverts and marketing, and what’s their impact?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, we talked a bit about the idea that you need to be aggressive, that you need to get yourself out there. Another idea is that you need to interrupt people and pressure them. And introverts absolutely hate that. That’s like one of the things we most hate because we hate being pressured. We hate being interrupted. And what I tell introverts is that instead of being pushy, you use attraction. So you can pull people to you instead of pushing them toward you.

And there’s a whole genre of marketing that I call pull marketing, which is that you put things out there in the world and the right people, the people who you want to be attracted to you and who you want to work with, will find it and come to you. And that’s a very natural, very comfortable process for introverts. There’s nothing pushy whatsoever about it. It’s very authentic. It’s very natural, and it’s very effective.

Terri Connellan: And is that the same as content marketing?

Marcia Yudkin: I guess you could say content marketing. I like talking about it in terms of push and pull because I think that makes it very clear what the advantage is for introverts.

Terri Connellan: Mm. Yeah. I love that. I do. And it’s that idea of putting ideas, putting content, putting information, branding out there that will help people find you, be drawn to you, as you say. And it’s that natural attraction I guess that brings people to you and to the ideas that you share. And so what about discoverability in that space? Cause a lot of time, I think a lot of introverts can feel they’re putting information out there, but it doesn’t get read or it doesn’t get seen. So how could introverts be seen?

Marcia Yudkin: There’s some strategy there that you have to think through. So you have to think about first, who do you want to be speaking with, and you find out where they hang out, what do they read, what do they listen to, what do they watch? And you need to figure out how to get in front of the media that they’re already using. So, maybe that’s an online forum that your ideal clients exchange ideas on, and you can go there and depending on the rules of the forum. You find out, okay, what can I do to participate and become known, and then have those people want to find out more about me and so on.

Terri Connellan: Great. No, that’s really, an excellent idea because it’s probably easy for introverts to just think, I’ll put this information out and people will come and it’s not always the case. So, I think the sort of area that you’re working in to really articulate what we can do is just so powerful.

Marcia Yudkin: Let me say one more thing. The reason I hesitated about when you asked about content marketing is that there are other ways of attracting people that don’t have to do with creating content. So, for example, one of the people I worked with, was a Reiki practitioner, alternative medicine practitioner.

And she said she felt really alienated from marketing, from the whole idea of marketing because, to her, it had to do with communicating with these faceless masses of people that she couldn’t relate to at all. However, her strength was, she told me that when she got face to face with someone and was talking with them in a conversational way, that she was able to explain to them in a very persuasive, very compelling way what reiki was.

And what it could do for them in a natural conversation. So we decided that her marketing strategy would be to figure out ways in which she could have those conversations. So that’s not content marketing, but it still is pull marketing because you’re not being pushy. So she would, attend health expos for example. She would offer free sessions at places where people were already going. So she would make a deal with a yoga studio or a health club to offer free sessions there at a certain time and place. And that really, really helped her build her practice.

Terri Connellan: Mm, thank you. I really appreciate that distinction and additional comments about that idea between content marketing and pull marketing. I can see what you’re saying because, I think, content marketing perhaps can seem a little bit passive. And I guess what you are describing there too is that actively identifying how you might do things, including in a face to face way. So it’s not necessarily all putting content out there, it might be putting yourself out there in a different way.

Marcia Yudkin: Right. And I’ll give you an example of how this stuff works. So, years ago I gave a class on writing websites basically. And I had 12 people in the class and my idea was that everybody in the class would use what they were learning to create their own websites. But what happened was that, and this was totally not my intention, some of the people in the class realized that this wasn’t something that they wanted to do themselves. And they took what they were learning from me to ask me to do it for them, and that was a very natural outcome of something that I was already doing.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. That’s a really great example and it’s often working through areas that you’re working on and finding the best way for you. A lot of, it’s about finding a fit for a personality, cause there’s introverts, but there’s different types of introverts as well. So everybody needs to find, what works for them.

So what insights, practices and tools can help introverts with marketing themselves, their work and their business in the world?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, the first thing I would say is that You need to realize that you’re fine the way you are. And, 1 sentence I came across not too long ago was, No one wants to do business with a wallflower. You see how insulting that is to introverts, but also it’s just not true. Because what I saw again and again was that everybody’s not the same. So everybody doesn’t want to do business with dynamic, talkative, chatty people. There are many people who prefer to work with us quieter, less flashy, less pushy people.

And, so for example, in one of my surveys, I asked the introverts in the survey, if they found out that there was a local financial planner who was nationally famous, would they want to work with that person because they were nationally famous?

And one guy said, it was very surprising, he said, No, I definitely would not, because first of all, I would think that they would be too busy to give me any attention. And secondly, I don’t want somebody who’s spending half their energy trying to be famous and deal with that. I want somebody who’s just going to be doing client service.

And this goes against a lot of the advice that marketing experts are giving to people. You know, you have to build this big reputation. Well, not everybody wants to work with somebody who has a big reputation and somebody who’s just a local person and very good at what they do and has good referrals may be just perfect for a lot of people. That’s the kind of practitioner that some people want to work with, they actually prefer. So you don’t have to brag about yourself. You don’t have to boast, you don’t have to pretend. You can just be your best self and be how you like to work and use your strengths.

So the second thing I would say is, Figure out what you most enjoy doing and where you’re at your best vis a vis potential clients, and then engineer that. So if your best communicating by email, then you want clients who are comfortable that way and not everybody is. I’ve had a couple of clients who don’t want to settle anything by email. They want to settle everything by a phone call. And that’s stressful for me, honestly. I mean, I’ll put up with it to a certain extent if I really, really like the client and it’s the kind of work that I enjoy doing. But it’s a pain in the neck to me. And, it’s not the way that I prefer to work with people.

So figure out what works best for you. And there’s nothing wrong with telling people that you do most of your work by email, not over the phone. And that way you get the people who want to be working with you and you get the people who you want to be working with them in that way.

Terri Connellan: Great. I love that. It’s interesting as you described that because phone calls are not a preferred way of working too. So everyone has their preferred modes of communicating and their preferred ways of working, but I love that you stress that it really helps to be upfront about that and communicate that because as you say, people can often think that it’s not okay to say I use this preferred way of communicating where for somebody else that’ll make their heart sing.

I had to laugh a little while ago cause I was talking with someone about the phone and he said, Oh, I only use my phone for phone calls. I said, goodness. I use my phone for just about everything but phone calls. It was just hilarious. Both introverts interestingly, but it’s just interesting how we do have such preferences, personality driven or otherwise for how we want to be communicating.

So that’s a great point. And I also really appreciated your point about, you know, just being who we are. And as you were talking, I was thinking of Paul Jarvis’s book. I don’t know if you’ve heard of his book, Company of One. And it, he talks there about how he actually loves just being a company of one person and he doesn’t want to scale up. The way he wants to work is have a small team around him. He doesn’t want too many people. He doesn’t want to go big and his business and his marketing is driven by just keeping it small. So I think that’s really refreshing too.

Marcia Yudkin: And the thing to remember is however you like to work, there are people out there who also like to work that. So tell them. So for example, if somebody’s thinking of me as a writing coach, I need them to know that I’m candid, that I’m frank, that I’m not a touchy-feely kind of writing coach who’s going to always say, Oh yes, it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. That’s not the way I handle things. If that’s what they want, they should go to somebody else. And so it’s really important to know yourself and to communicate those things so that you get the kind of clients that you enjoy working with.

Terri Connellan: Absolutely. And are there any particular practices and tools that you encourage introverts to explore, to help with marketing themselves?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, as I said, I always start by asking, what is it that you do best? So I’m always surprised at the variety of answers that I get. So there was one woman I was coaching to be a marketing consultant, and I never met her face to face. We just talked on the phone. I never saw a picture of her. So my sense of her was just how we related over the phone and by email and my impression of her was that she was kind of mousey and quiet and retiring and I worried a little bit about how she would find her place as a marketer.

But one of the things I recommended to her was that because she was looking for local clients, I said, Why don’t you go try BNI? And if you’ve heard of BNI it’s a certain kind of local networking arrangement. They have chapters all over the world, so I don’t, I’m sure they have it in Australia as well, but, It involves a weekly face to face breakfast meeting with about 20 people.

So it turns out she was really good in that situation because she was able to relate to people one on one and have conversations about what they did and what she did. And she was able to explain what she did in a way that was not intimidating to her. And she got her calendar all filled up to start with from this networking group and it helped that the structure, BNI has a certain structure that facilitates those kind of one-on-one conversations within the group. And they encourage referrals within the group, but she was off and running much faster than I would’ve imagined, and it was great. I was so happy for her.

Terri Connellan: That’s great. I love that example because to me again, that can be a real introvert strength. That ability to have really focused one-on-one conversations and to find an organization that provides that sort of structure to enable that to happen, that’s a really fantastic way of looking at marketing yourself and putting yourself out there. Again, the stereotypical idea is you must talk to a room full of people and for many, that’s not the best way to reach people.

Marcia Yudkin: No it’s not. And when I lived in Boston, it’s a big city as big cities go in the United States. And I did a lot of networking when I was building up my business, but, I approached it in a certain way. My idea was that if I go to a meeting and I have one really, really good conversation with a potential client, I’m happy. It’s not a matter of collecting business cards. It’s not a quantity thing, it’s a quality thing. So I remember one time there must have been 200 people in the room and I somehow got talking with a certain woman and we really clicked and she became a client for 20 years.

Terri Connellan: That’s fabulous. And again, it’s just tapping into, strengths anyone can have. But I think particularly, for some introverted types, that ability to really have, focused meaningful one-on-one conversations is a real strength and something that we can be really good at and we can tap into and use that as a way of weaving into our practices. So we’ve got ways of connecting with people. So that’s a great example. Thank you. As someone with INTJ preferences for introversion, intuition, thinking and judging as I also have, what works for you in marketing, Marcia?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, some years ago I did a report called Marketing in Tune with Your Personality, and I interviewed one person from each of the eight introvert personalities in the Myers Briggs system and asked them how did they succeed in their marketing and what did they like and what did they hate? And then I wrote it all up. And so I went back and looked at what the INTJ person in the report said.

And he said what worked best for him was a free initial consultation, which unlike many other people, he did as an actual consultation. So instead, it was not a sales thing. It was really giving the other person advice, and here’s a quote from him. He said, ‘the one-on-one client first session does not feel to me like selling. It feels more like giving them a valuable gift and enjoying the transformational process of seeing them really get what I’m all about.’

Mm. So that was him and for me, I actually don’t do free initial consultations. I’ve never done them. Someone wants to work with me, I always made it, okay, you can read all about me on my. You want to work together, let’s get started and get started with a real paid consultation. And that worked for me.

But in terms of marketing, what was my secret weapon. My not so secret weapon was for more than 20 years, I did a free weekly marketing newsletter. It was called The Marketing Minute. And at its highest point, it had, maybe 15,000 subscribers. I don’t know if that sounds like a lot or not, but it was like a money machine because every week I would have literally something that took a minute to say out loud, 180 words. And then I would have a special offer. So anybody who was reading the tip of the week or the example of the week or whatever it was, then their eye would naturally go to the special offer. And some of them worked, some of them didn’t work, and some of the ones that worked, worked really, really well.

So it was like, My marketing minute went out and a couple hours later I would look at my inbox, how many orders did I get, how many inquiries for consultations and so on. So that was my secret weapon, and it was something I really, really enjoyed doing. So, the only thing that got me to stop doing it was when I decided on my new newsletter, Introvert Up Think, and only then was I able to close down the other, the Marketing Minute newsletter.

Terri Connellan: Mm. And you’re using Substack for that, aren’t you? Which, um, Yes, I am. Is becoming quite popular, isn’t it, as a way of reaching people?

Marcia Yudkin: I like the platform actually, because almost everything that I wanted to do, it has an easy way of doing it. So they’ve created the infrastructure. And, I’ve read a couple things by the founder of the company and I like his whole philosophy as well. So he’s trying to create a culture of readers, and a culture of writers writing for readers, and the whole ethos of the company seems to be around quality writing. It’s not so much sell, sell, sell kind of marketing writing. I mean, maybe there’s some people who using sub stack to do that, but, the way the company talks to its customer base and the way it sets things up, it really is set up to make it easy for writers to communicate with an audience.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I’ve been looking at it too. I think it’s really interesting. And for those who might not be familiar, and correct me if I’m wrong, Marcia, but my understanding is that, Sub Stack works as a free platform where you can create content and it looks really beautiful. It looks a bit reminiscent of blogging in some ways, like a combination of blogging and newsletters, but then people have the opportunity to pay for additional content. So, yeah, so I think that’s a really beautiful, easy way, isn’t it, to bring people to services.

Marcia Yudkin: You can also import a list from some other platform without any problems. That was a big thing for me because I had so many subscribers from My Marketing Minute, not all of whom chose to go to the introvert newsletter, cause not all of them are interested in those issues. But anyway, I was able to import those people who wanted to join the introvert newsletter. That was easy. It has a free platform with no problem whatsoever. So maybe you’ll never charge anything for anything, for any of your content.

And if so, Substack is happy to have you as a customer. They’ll never make money from you. That’s okay. But they also make it easy to start charging for extra content from your subscribers, and they tell you what they think the the going rate is. People in these subject areas can charge more and if you’re not, don’t go there and so on. So if you set up an option for paid subscribers, then Substack will take 10%.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, which is great. So there’s not huge upfront costs, which I think is a really great model in this day and age where there’s a lot of costs isn’t there, and running a business. So it’s excellent. And encourage people to have a look at Introvert Upthink. We’ll put the link in the show notes cause it’s a great platform and great ideas there. So if people are aiming to market to introverts or be inclusive of introverts in their marketing, what might they think about in their marketing approaches?

Marcia Yudkin: Two things. The first thing is don’t force them into your paradigm. So if you have a certain paradigm that you think is the bees knees, it may not be right for introverts. Don’t try to cram everybody into it. So for example, I had a job coach who approached me and her number one question was, how could she get her introverted clients to do informational interviewing.

She thought that there’s no way that you can get a job in this day and age without doing informational interviewing. So in case somebody doesn’t know what that is, it’s where. You find somebody who’s in the job or in the industry that you want to get a job in, and you call them up and ask them, basically to mentor you for the space of a lunch or a breakfast.

And so you can ask them questions and so on. And it’s an unpaid thing and you’re basically asking them to do this huge favor. And I told her, forget it, . This is not something that introverts are ever going to be comfortable doing or be good at doing.

And in fact, if somebody asked me to do an informational interview, I don’t know if I would even agree to it, and I certainly would not agree to do it if I were looking for a job because I don’t like asking favors of people. Hmm. It’s just something that’s unpleasant to me. And because if I wouldn’t do that favor for somebody else, why should I expect somebody else to do that favor for me? And so she wasn’t happy with this. She wanted me to tell her how to convince introverts to fit into her system and that wasn’t going to work.

And the second tip is to respect their privacy. A lot of introverts are really conscious about and protective of their privacy. So here’s an example of something that that is respecting privacy. So I signed up for a writing class and they have an online forum where the people in the class can interact and ask questions and so on. And it’s set up so that all the students in the class appear when they post something with their first name and their last initial. I’m really comfortable with that, and it made me happy that I wasn’t outed to all the other people in the class by my full name unless I chose to do that.

And so that’s the kind of thing that an introvert may be very attentive too. And, I’ve had introverted clients who wanted to give me a testimonial, for example, but they were very unsure about the idea of having their city and state put at the end of the testimonial, which is customary that a lot of people do it that way. And so I said, Fine. You know, we don’t have to do it that way if, if you’re not comfortable with that.

Terri Connellan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there are two great tips, particularly the idea of not forcing, trying to get introverts to do something that might be good for them is almost what it sounds like from what you’re describing. And, it’s just finding that shoe that fits for the right way of doing things, both in terms of privacy and in terms of paradigm. So thank you for that. I was really interested to see that you run an introvert book club, which highlights the work of introvert creators and introverted characters, which is a great idea. So what can we learn from introverted characters, whether it’s in fiction or real life?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, this introvert book club is part of my Introvert Up Think newsletter. So once a month I have a post that is, focused on the book of the month, and that’s for my paid subscribers. So that’s my added value that I’m giving to the people who pay for the newsletter. So I’m going back through a lot of classics, the kinds of books that we may have read in high school or in college. And I’m going back to them to see what we can pull out of them or learn from them specifically about introverts. And it’s just been so interesting to me.

So for example, I did The Great Gatsby and my theme for the Great Gatsby was the mystique that introverts can have when they’re sort of distant and unattainable and on a pedestal and not very communicative. So I went through the novel and found all the places that highlighted the mystique that Gatsby had, and why is it that we think of him in terms of glamor. The novel takes place during prohibition, during the jazz age and he had these parties at his mansion on Long Island Sound. And, yet he didn’t really attend his own parties. Like a typical introvert. So you can look at characters in fiction and people in real life that we’ve heard about as famous names and try and see what are some introvert themes you can pull out?

So, for example, I did a thing on Thomas Edison. We think of him as the in inventor of the light bulb and this solitary genius. And, one interesting thing about him is that he actually built the world’s first research and development laboratory. He was not solitary at all. He set a world record for the most patents, but he had dozens if not hundreds of scientists and technologists and chemists and so on, working for him on all his little projects.

He was the brain behind it. He was not solitary at all. And the other interesting thing about Edison is that he lost most of his hearing when he was in his teens and as an adult, he said that that was an advantage because if he was having lunch with people, he wouldn’t have to listen to all their small talk because he literally couldn’t hear it. And so he could just be thinking in his own mind about his invention projects while everybody is blabbing around him. Somebody approached him once and said, You know, I’m working on some device that can help people who are hard of hearing to hear better. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He was happy being in his own world and it’s only an introvert that would respond that way.

Terri Connellan: So that just sounds amazing. And from that I see you’re also writing a book on what we can learn from famous and fictional introverts. So tell us a bit more about this book, how it’s going, and why you felt called to write it.

Marcia Yudkin: Well, I’m not actually writing the book per se. In doing the newsletter, I’m preparing to write the book and I’m also building an audience so that I can get a book contract.

So I’ve had book contracts from big publishers in the past. I’ve been sort of out of that for a while. And in order to get back in their good graces, I have to show them that I have people who are interested in this topic and who are following me and so on. So I have a number of subscribers that I want to reach, and once I reach that number, then I’m going to approach the publishers and I’ll have been working on the topic from all these different angles in my newsletter. And I’ll be able to put together a much better book proposal than I could if I just sat down now.

Terri Connellan: That’s really exciting and I love the way that that whole piece as you just described it, writing the book, connecting with an audience, and also preparing to pitch to publishers. So that’s fantastic and really exciting and interesting as well.

I saw you also had a session on, or a piece on Emily Dickinson, who I always find really fascinating as an introverted writer. So yes. Yeah. Fantastic. So I think people will find that really interesting. So again, we’ll link to The Introvert Up Think, and you’ll be able to find information if you’re listening and interested in that newsletter.

So, the last couple of questions, Marcia, are questions I ask every guest on the podcast. So the first one is how have you created your story over your lifetime?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, I thought about this and I wasn’t sure how to answer it. But what I can tell you is that I spent the year 2021 writing a memoir, and the theme of the memoir is Success Without Ambition.

And in my life, I talk about in, in the book, ways in which ambition led me astray and that I’m better off having come beyond that. So it’s a very philosophical book and very introspective book. It’s very much an introvert’s kind of book and I spent a year writing it. One of the things I had to do was reread all my old journals in order to get back into how I used to be and so on. And so since I finished writing it, I’m letting it sit. I need to get perspective on it and I need to get feedback on it before I go back and do the next draft. So I’m not quite ready to get back to it. But I will be, and I don’t know if that book will come before or after the introvert book. We’ll see.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. But I love that focus in your memoir around ambition and how that fits with success. I think that’s a really interesting perspective and example of, different ways we can create our story and look at the themes that thread through it. So that sounds a really fascinating project. Look forward to reading more. So the other question I ask guests is about wholehearted self leadership, related to my book, which has some tips on wholehearted self leadership and practices for women. So what would be your top self leadership tips that you would share with people?

Marcia Yudkin: Well, if you remember, when I saw that question, I asked you, Well, what is self leadership? And you gave me a nice answer and I didn’t quite understand it. And I went looking for more articles, more content about it. And there was something that was not clicking with me. And finally I realized that the reason I was having trouble with the words. That specific phrase is that to me it was a little redundant. And in my experience, probably I’ve always had self leadership and so therefore I never had to think about it.

So if I look back, even as a kid, whatever I was interested in, I went and did it. And when I was in college, again, there were things that attracted me, I pursued them.

So one of the things I did when I was in college, I went to Brown University, which is part of the Ivy League here in the United States. But what’s specific about Brown is that they have an option where you can go through all four years if you like, without having any grades from your professors.

Instead they write evaluations of you. And I really, really liked that idea. It’s a small enough school that you can get to know your professors, so it’s meaningful as well. But everybody told me, you’ll never get into graduate school if you don’t have grades.

I said, Okay, that’s fine, . And, when I went to apply to graduate school, I got into every graduate school that I applied to, so they were wrong. And I, attention to myself. Is that what you’re talking about?

Terri Connellan: Yeah, I think it’s that idea of self-awareness is one is one part of it. Like understanding yourself, an introvert, for example, as we’ve talked about through this conversation. And it’s that self mastery and that ability to make choices. But yeah, I think what I’m hearing from you is that self leadership’s been a really strong theme, or that self mastery, self belief has been really strong in you right from the start.

Marcia Yudkin: And so my tip for that is to listen to yourself. And this doesn’t come naturally to everybody. So when I was mentoring people who were learning to become a copywriter, what would happen again and again, and I noticed it and I learned from it. What would happen again and again was that we would have a conference about what they were learning.

And I would point out, you know, you really had to do such and such here. And the student would say, You know, I thought about that. And I would say, And… so over the course of this 10 week program, when I mentored them, they would have practice in listening to and respecting their ideas that they had just gone flitting through their mind.

And this was a huge step in making them confident and skilled in what I was teaching them. And I think anybody can learn to do that. It’s just a matter of attention and confidence and, you know, maybe a mentor.

Terri Connellan: Mm. And it’s that discernment in there too of knowing when to trust that voice and knowing when another thing like fear is talking, like that sort of. It’s hard to describe, but it’s a developing practice about wise listening, isn’t it?

Marcia Yudkin: Yes. And in this particular program, we were talking about ideas. So it wasn’t the fear so much that I was asking them to pay attention to, or that we were talking about. It was the ideas that, you know, had gone flitting through their mind, but they hadn’t taken seriously.

Terri Connellan: Yeah. I think that’s great advice that learning to listen to yourself, which I think is a lifetime practice, isn’t it?

Marcia Yudkin: Yes.

Terri Connellan: So thanks so much, Marcia, for your time today. It’s been really fascinating to hear more about you, about your work, particularly in the introversion space and the marketing space and how they come together, and also about your own writing and creativity, which is always fascinating. So where can people find out more about you and your work online?

Marcia Yudkin: They can go to introvertupthink.com spelled the obvious way. And, if you’re specifically interested in marketing for introverts or marketing to introverts, I have ebooks on those topics on Amazon and they’re just 2 99 each US dollars. I don’t know what they are, Australian or Euros or whatever, but, you know, just little things to get you thinking and get you started in this area.

Terri Connellan: Fabulous. That’s great. And we’ll put the link to Introvert Up Think and I can put the link to books too, if you like, in the show notes. That would be great to share with people.. Thanks so much Marcia.

Marcia Yudkin: Thank you very much for having me.

About Marcia Yudkin

For more than 10 years, Marcia Yudkin has stood up and defended introverts as worthy of respect and understanding. This developed out of her work as a marketing coach and consultant. She’s the author of 17 books and too many ebooks, online courses and so on to count. Her current focus is a Substack newsletter called Introvert Upthink, which critiques society’s misunderstandings and disparagements of introverts. She lives in the woods of Western Massachusetts, where she walks or runs five miles every day in the company of chipmunks, beaver, deer, porcupines and occasionally bears.

Introvert Upthink: https://www.introvertupthink.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/marciasmantras

Marketing in Tune With Your Personality: A Guide for Introverts: https://www.yudkin.com/intune.htm

Marketing for Introverts: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005ETBK9C

Marketing to Introverts: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DZYGYYH/

Terri’s links to explore

Books:

Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-book/ & quick links to buy: books2read.com/wholehearted

Wholehearted Companion Workbook: https://www.quietwriting.com/wholehearted-companion-workbook/ & quick links to buy: books2read.com/b/companion

Free resources:

Chapter 1 of Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition: quietwriting.net/wholehearted-chapter-1

Personal Action Checklist for Creating More Meaning + Purpose: https://www.quietwriting.net/checklist

Coaching and writing programs:

Work with me: quietwriting.com/work-with-me/

The Writing Road Trip with Beth Cregan: quietwriting.net/writingroadtrip

Connect on social media

Instagram: instagram.com/writingquietly/

Facebook: facebook.com/writingquietly

Twitter: twitter.com/writingquietly

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/terri-connellan/

introversion wholehearted stories

The courageous magic of a life unlived – a wholehearted story

February 28, 2019

This guest post from Bek Ireland looks at the courage and magic of exploring a life unlived.

This is the 16th guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing! I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.

I’m excited to have Bek Ireland as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Bek and I met via coaching and I had the pleasure of guiding Bek through a coaching series. We worked through deep wholehearted story work and Bek focused on getting back to the essentials of what was important. In this story, Bek shares how she has moved courageously into living that life unlived she imagined. It takes brave and sometimes unorthodox steps, but that’s wholehearted work. Read Bek’s journey of working through embracing her natural personality and living her life unlived!

Come in, come in, I’ll show you around. There’s a table, which also serves as a desk of course (excuse my laptop, notebook, 2019 diary on it!) and a gorgeous little kitchen, with coffee and tea and breakfast stuff.

In here’s the bathroom, with ‘Who Gives A Crap’ toilet rolls (love it). Here we have the bed (built high so you can store your suitcases or bags under there). The comfy couch is opposite the television, although we both know that’s not going to get turned on while I’m here, don’t we?

That’s one of the very reasons I’m here!

This is the third time I’ve stayed at an Airbnb in the last few years. It’s interesting that trips are stored in the app – my first time was June 2017, then June 2018, and now January 2019.

I rent them for two nights usually, but I don’t stay overnight. All three have been within a 5-minute drive of my own house. I come for the afternoon on the first ‘night’ and then the full day of the second ‘night’.

The first time was one night, because my daughter, who was nine at the time, had gone to a friend’s house and was possibly going to stay the night, depending on how she felt. I would’ve stayed the night if she’d stayed at her friend’s, but she didn’t. So I was only there for a few hours in the afternoon and evening.

Reclaiming sovereignty

The bliss of it though! The no-TV, no-power tools, nobody talking to me. Not even offering me a coffee – so, still interrupting, still intruding on what I was beginning to understand was an innate need for uninterrupted time to myself.

When you’re a people-pleasing INFJ like me, going against the grain of 40 years and trying to establish some boundaries with scant practice is hard work. Being interrupted with the offer of coffee is excruciating. Because yes, they’re interrupting when you’ve asked politely that they not talk to you, but for an ostensibly nice reason.

It’s all too much and you give up and give in and swallow yourself and go watch TV with them.

But not if you’re in a space of your own.

The second time I told my daughter and her dad that I was going on a two-day writing retreat, which was true. But it wasn’t until it was over that I explained I’d been the only one at the retreat.

I went for walks, I wrote, I read.

I didn’t talk.

I listened to cars driving past, blokes playing sport on the oval up the road. The sounds of birds, the wind, insects. I thanked the thoughts of guilt when they came, then let them dissolve.

Agency and guilt are two of the balls I juggle as I stretch my wings to test their strength. Please excuse the clumsy metaphors. Done is better than perfect, as they say.

Wings to fly

So those two were a year apart. That’s interesting. Come the Junes had I had enough? Did I need some counterbalance mid-year? And what was happening at those times?

I quite like the wings metaphor, let’s think Angelina-Jolie-in-Malevolence type wings. So, in June 2017 you might say I was feeling the nice itch and burn of them under the skin on my back. Perhaps they were starting to protrude a little.

I’d been six months in an assistant manager position at a company for whom I’d worked, on and off, for over 20 years. A company, by the way, that in Year 12 I had sworn I would never work for. Careful what you feel strongly about is my advice to you!

If you ask me where I would have planned to work at that age, I couldn’t have told you – and I guess the universe just fills in the blanks for you sometimes, doesn’t it? Which can be good, or not so good.

Strength and the validation it brings

Anyway, I digress.

By June 2018 my wings had sprouted. Not long after my first brief, blissful sojourn, I had completed a semester of a combined English and Creative Writing/Secondary Education degree.

I deferred the following semester while I held the fort for my boss, who had been promoted to a new role. I absolutely did not want her job – leading a team of 17 across three states – but I was happy enough to fill in till they advertised her job and found someone new.

And to be honest I had gained confidence, having met a kindred spirit in Terri and benefiting from a series of coaching sessions with her; with doing well at my studies; and by being considered competent enough to be the acting manager.

And here we are, six months later, in this glorious tiny space. I would love to sleep the night, but again, juggling with agency and guilt, I find it difficult to justify staying away from home when I’m in the same town. I travel a bit for work, to Adelaide and Sydney, and of course, I stay away from my daughter then. But I have no choice – because I’m so far away.

Here, I am only five minutes down the road. And having the whole afternoon and then the whole next day to myself is good enough, for now.

But as soon as I got settled in this one, I was already planning my next stay. And I won’t even wait six months this time, let alone a year. The first time this is available again is two months from now. The only reason I haven’t already booked it is that I don’t want to seem too weird.

Remembering who you really are

Creating time and space for solitude is symbolic of my journey along the path of wholeheartedness. Believing I deserve to create this time and space for myself. Acknowledging its importance.

e e cummings said,

To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Or condensed for modern times by Danielle LaPorte:

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

Getting away, stepping outside the realms of my normal life, into the magic of a life unlived, if only for brief periods of time, helps me remember who I really am. It is there I find myself. I have been there all along, but sometimes I am hard to find under the accumulated detritus of the world which does its best to make me (and all of us) everybody else.

In the majesty of silence, I can recalibrate, recharge, rejuvenate, rejoice. Quietly.

I remember thinking of Virginia Woolf and her room of one’s own. It’s a recurring fantasy of mine to rent a house of my own and semi-reside there. What riches could emerge? How might the fabric of the universe stretch and shimmer in those circumstances?

Trusting yourself and honouring your instincts

I also often long for a beloved, wise mentor. Someone who knows me, who sees me, who could guide me on the path. What’s the next right thing? Tara Mohr has an exquisite guided meditation, (you can find it here) where you journey to meet your future-self. I highly recommend it.

The last time I did it, my future-self lived alone (probably with a cat too) in a humble, funky, uncluttered small abode not far from the sea. She had wavy grey hair, and she was fit and strong. Her days consisted of long walks, reading, writing, and conversing with a community of like-minded folk from all over the planet via the world wide web.

I can see now she would live a waste-free life. She would cultivate vegetables and walk or ride to the local farmer’s market each Sunday to buy fruit and catch up with local friends face to face.

Besides solitude, reading is like breathing to me. I also love learning about astrology, and like many INFJ’s, have a wide smattering of interests.

Waking up

I have however recently acquired a new focus: climate change. I can’t believe I got to 43 knowing basically nothing about it.

In October 2018 I attended a local TEDx event. All the speakers were inspirational, but a talk by Darren Lomman of GreenBatch really stood out. He’s working to create the first plastic recycling facility in Perth, Western Australia because at the current rate, it’s predicted that there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had just released their latest report on the state of the planet and Sarah Wilson (of I Quit Sugar and First We Make the Beast Beautiful fame) had posted a summary of it on her blog. I love Sarah’s no-nonsense take on things, and read her views with interest.

Since then, I have been learning about carbon dioxide emissions, what ppm means (parts per million), who the planet’s largest emitters are and how we can avert the potentially catastrophic consequences of our mindless pursuit of economic growth.

I have bought cloth pads and a menstrual cup. I am trying to reduce, reuse, or refuse single-use plastics. I have a large bowl in the sink to save the water that would normally go down the drain when I wash my hands and rinse dishes. I have a bucket in the shower to capture a portion of the water that washes over me.

It makes me think about others that I share this incredibly beneficent earth with, others who do not have toilets or disposable pads or tampons. Others who walk miles to get water. Others who have as much right as I do to feel the itch and burn of newly growing wings under their skin.

Courage to grow

And I am delving deeper into the science and political history of the climate emergency we face, because I want to do more than aspire to waste-free living; I want to help drive policy change.

I need to educate myself, because as much as I’m growing, there’s a saying I still tend to live by: better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

I find myself noticing moments of quiet with more frequency now, and recognising that creating quiet – and solitude – for myself is a necessity, not a luxury. Quiet and solitude allow me to work out what it is that I think, how to apply the ideas I generate, and how to be confident that when I do speak, it’s from a space of considered knowledge. Reading Greg McKeown’s Essentialism guided me to figure out what was essential for me, and to live that.

I believe though that most of us are trying to raise our awareness, and knowing that I am part of a community of brave souls, finding the courage to test our wings and raise our voices, gives me hope.

With such hope, it’s delicious to imagine how the fabric of the universe might stretch and shimmer.

Key book companions along the way

Here are some books I love that have supported me:

Presence – Amy Cuddy

Essentialism – Greg McKeown

The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg

Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott

The Hate Race – Maxine Beneba Clarke

Autobiography of a Yogi – Paramahansa Yogananda

Anything We Love Can Be Saved – Alice Walker

Quiet – Susan Cain (my first realisation that I was introverted, and not only was that a thing, and okay, but it brought incredible gifts)

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Salt – Gabrielle Lord

This Changes Everything – Naomi Klein

Eaarth – Bill McKibben

Requiem for a Species – Clive Hamilton

About Bek Ireland

Bek Ireland leads a team of specialists helping communities build their financial capability. Bek loves reading and learning, and is passionately interested in the connections between things. She has studied, amongst many other things, astrology, English Literature, crystal healing and education. She is an INFJ and is interested in psychology and esoteric teachings. Bek has recently joined 350.org and is learning how she can contribute to raising awareness of global warming, and a sustainable future. You can find Bek on Instagram and Twitter.

Photographs 1, 4, 6 & 7 provided by Bek Ireland and used with permission and thanks.

Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide

You might also enjoy my free ‘Reading Wisdom Guide for Creatives, Coaches and Writers‘ with a summary of 45 wholehearted books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.

You will receive access to the Wholehearted Library which includes the Reading Wisdom Guide and so much more! Plus you’ll receive monthly Beach Notes with updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes writing, personality type, coaching, creativity, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook Instagram and Twitter so keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

creativity inspiration & influence personality and story

Creative and Connected #4 – the wholehearted edition

July 7, 2017

Inspiring resources to keep you creative and connected and an exciting wholehearted Quiet Writing guest posting opportunity!

Here’s a round up of what I’ve enjoyed and shared this week on various social platforms with a focus this week on being wholehearted in life and creativity.

One of the core concepts behind Quiet Writing is being wholehearted and having the self-leadership to connect with others and feel integrated within ourselves to achieve our creative goals.

This week, Creative and Connected explores this theme:

What is wholehearted? Why is it important? What are the factors in having a great life? How can we bring our whole selves to our careers and creative practices?

And there’s a special opportunity for you to share ‘Your Wholehearted Story’ on Quiet Writing! Yes, I’m putting out a call for for guest bloggers – I’m looking for some special people to write for Quiet Writing about what being wholehearted means to you. More on this below but I’m very excited to be opening Quiet Writing up to our collective voices so we can share the living of a whole, creative and connected life in support of each other.

Podcasts on wholehearted living

The 3 Most Important Factors for Having a Great Life with Jonathan Fields

Jonathan Fields is a leader in helping people create meaningful, connected and happy lives. In this interview on Melyssa Griffin’s Pursuit with Purpose podcast, he shares his work across different careers including shifting from law into different directions that were more in line with his heart and what he wanted in life.

Key points for me were:

Jonathan’s core set of questions and metrics to consider when making a life change
The three areas of your life that determine whether or not you’ll have a fulfilled, happy life: connection, contribution and vitality – and suggestions for how to achieve these.

Elizabeth Dialto on The Wild Soul Woman

This fabulous podcast chat between Julie Parker and Elizabeth Dialto on The Priestess Podcast was so much fun. Elizabeth is the founder of Wild Soul Movement, author of Untame Yourself, and host of the popular Untame The Wild Soul Woman podcast.

This conversation is about how the Divine Feminine can mean all manner of things for women in being untamed including embracing less traditionally female archetypes. The podcast also explores some of the traditional roles that women play that can keep us in people pleasing mode and not embracing our fuller, wilder, more assertive soul within. Super enjoyable and an invitation to wholehearted divine feminine living!

Books and reading notes

Reading wise this week I started Tracy Chevalier’s At the Edge of the Orchard about a dysfunctional family of apple-growers in 19th century America.

Tracy Chevalier is a favourite author of mine. Her specialty is historical fiction and she has a wonderful way of taking a historical story and building on it with a fictional narrative. She is especially strong on creating a sense of place. ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ is probably her most famous book but my favourite is ‘Remarkable Creatures’ set in Lyme Regis in Dorset and based on the real life story of pioneering fossil hunter, Mary Anning.

Tracy Chevalier announced on Twitter this week that Remarkable Creatures is currently being made into a movie.

Fossil hunters everywhere, rejoice! Mary Anning is coming to the big screen https://t.co/ZCDcOJsLuQ pic.twitter.com/Nw2VCg0ceO

— Tracy Chevalier (@Tracy_Chevalier) June 27, 2017

This is so exciting! When I read Remarkable Creatures it just begged to be made into a movie – it’s so evocative and visual and such a fabulous story. Plus if you love Lyme Regis, Dorset and fossils as I do, it’s just pure heaven. It’s a story of discovery, self-belief and strength, especially of female strength and courage, in the face of opposition.

Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:

There have been some interesting blog posts on wholehearted living, being clear, moving through and understanding your personality type and its influence recently:

The only 3 things you need to live a good life explains Jonathan Field’s concept of how the joy of living can be seen in terms of three simple buckets: connection, contribution, and vitality. It’s easy to focus on and check in with, clear and remarkably helpful.

In Why your introversion doesn’t dictate your career path over on The Introvert Effect, Rebecca McFarland explains how being an introvert doesn’t limit you with your career paths and ways of working. You just need to learn to work it differently. Rebecca shares some fabulous tips for managing career and roles outside your comfortable energy zone.

In a great post on The Leadership Styles of Every Myers-Briggs® Personality Type, Susan Storm explores each MBTI type around the strengths and weaknesses of its unique leadership style. The key message?

Any type can be a leader, but every type is going to do it a little bit differently.

Insightful, thorough and grounded in practical experience, it’s a valuable reference for understanding leadership and personality type.

A post that spoke to me deeply this week was Nicole Cody’s Small Steps and a Pep Talk for Hard Days. It seems I’m not alone in finding this year to be a challenging one. Sometimes it’s hard to see that we are making progress. This post is a great reminder to pause and reflect on how far we’ve come. This is also a theme that popped up for me this week in my Tarot Narrative intuitive messages.

My own post on 10 Amazing Life Lessons from Swimming in the Sea was also really positively received in all sorts of ways which was so heartening. I loved writing this post on the many things that swimming in the sea has taught me this year. It’s been such a valuable learning experience in exercise, connection with community and feeling more whole through vitality and being coached by inspirational fit women buddies, Jeanette Buchanan and Samantha Wheatley.

An invitation to guest post on Quiet Writing on ‘My Wholehearted Story’

And now to an exciting opportunity to guest post on Quiet Writing!

Quiet Writing celebrates wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity.

But what does wholehearted mean to me – and you?

It’s a word I found coming out of my mouth in a negative sense firstly. About a year ago, I found myself saying, “I am just not feeling wholehearted any more.” And this sense started a deep search and a time of transition to a more wholehearted way of creating and living that is expressing itself in many ways. This is through Quiet Writing here, in my writing, in learning to be a Life Coach, in becoming certified in personality type assessment and in working more with intuitive tools such as tarot and oracle. And it’s also expressed in my developing work in coaching to support others who want to feel more creative and connected. And I am so loving all of this!

In the early stages of this transition journey, I listened to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast “Who gets to decide if you’re a legitimate artist?‘ with poet, teacher, storyteller and artist, Mark Nepo. In discussing how to help Cecilia, a poet who has become marooned with writing because of not feeling good enough, being rejected and not being able to get into an MFA program, Mark offers her the word ‘wholehearted’ as advice and reads his beautiful poem:

Breaking Surface

Let no one keep you from your journey,
no rabbi or priest, no mother
who wants you to dig for treasures
she misplaced, no father
who won’t let one life be enough,
no lover who measures their worth
by what you might give up,
no voice that tells you in the night
it can’t be done.

Let nothing dissuade you
from seeing what you see
or feeling the winds that make you
want to dance alone
or go where no one
has yet to go.

You are the only explorer.
Your heart, the unreadable compass.
Your soul, the shore of a promise
too great to be ignored.

I listened to Mark reading this poem on the podcast again today and cried (again). It touches me so deeply and is what Quiet Writing is all about: letting no one keep us from our journey and being the creative explorer of our hearts.

So I’ve decided it’s time to hear more voices around wholehearted living and what it means to us here at Quiet Writing.

I am offering you the opportunity to consider guest posting here at Quiet Writing on ‘My Wholehearted Story’. Initially, I have six places on offer for 2017 – one per month to be featured here so that we can learn from each others’ journeys of the heart in this space.

I am hoping that we can also consider a regular or one-off publication or online magazine as well. I feel that there is a wealth of wholehearted stories to tap into to support us all, as source that we can add to and connect with over time.

What is ‘My Wholehearted Story’?

So here’s a summary of what I am thinking and what I am looking for:

What is wholehearted?

bringing your whole self to career and creative practice
not leaving parts of you, especially the creative, poetic, spiritual aspects, at the door, any door
being whole, being authentic, being light, being present
self-care and care of and connection with others
yin and yang, dark and light, strength and weakness, shadow explorations
living our unique passions, gifts and influences
being our body of work in the world

How does it connect with Quiet Writing?

Quiet Writing focuses on the core values of being

creative, intuitive, flowing, poetic and connected

It’s about the strength that comes from working steadily without fanfare in writing and other spheres to coalesce, create, influence and connect. And it’s about honouring the process as much as the product; the being, becoming and journey, as much as the arrival. It’s about the artistry behind closed doors and how it merges and weaves into that of everyday life.

This beautiful quote, from Irene Claremont de Castillejo, in the frontispiece to The Heart Aroused by David Whyte captures the feeling for me around this more soulful kind of living:

Only a few achieve the colossal task of holding together, without being split asunder, the clarity of their vision alongside an ability to take their place in a materialistic world. They are the modern heroes….Artists at least have a form within which they can hold their own conflicting opposites together. But there are some who have no recognised artistic form to serve this purpose, they are the artists of the living. To my mind these last are the supreme heroes in our soulless society.”

What might you write about?

I’m interested in the ways that you have strived to build all or any of these values – creative, flowing, intuitive, poetic and connected – into living more wholeheartedly. And how you have worked and written and created quietly to make this happen, behind the scenes, as a form of the art of the living.

I’m interested in guest blog posts and writing around these types of questions:

What makes you feel wholehearted and what does it mean to you?
What have your learnings been about being whole in heart and mind?
What tools, tips, practices, do you have for others?
Which intuitive tools, exercise, learning, skills or courses have made a significant difference for you?
How have you worked your strengths and weaknesses to blend and find wholeness?
What have been the challenges, the shadow journeys and how have you overcome them?
What fears have you faced and wrangled on the way and what have you learnt from this?
Which passions and loves come together to make you feel whole?
What have been the features of connecting to feeling more whole: rhythms, women’s voices, cycles, the journeys of others?
What have been your key influences: which book or other inspiration helped make sense of all this for you?
What aspects of your identity or personality journey have you worked through eg introversion, extraversion, understanding of your personality/MBTI type, your artistic or poetic self?
Which critical learnings about an aspect of your personality made all the difference in feeling whole and comfortable in your uniqueness?
What symbols, archetypes or natural cycles work for you and how do you work with them?
How have you practised self-leadership to feel more wholehearted?

As you can see, there are so many ways of looking at this concept of wholeheartedness and what makes us sing and be able to do our unique work in the world. I’d love to hear your story!

You would need to contribute:

a 2000 word (maximum) blog post draft to me a week in advance of an agreed date for publication
any suggested accompanying images and photos that you would like to include
a bio and accompanying photo

What are the benefits?

The benefits for you are:

being featured as a creative and connected voice in the Quiet Writing community
the opportunity to share your work, business, writing and learning
the opportunity to flex your writing muscles in new ways
the chance to reflect on your journey and experience in being wholehearted and share this
increased connection with like-minded others
the possibility of inclusion in a regular or one-off online publication if there is sufficient interest

The benefits for the Quiet Writing community are:

our voices coming together to celebrate being creative, flowing, intuitive, poetic and connected
sharing journeys to living more wholeheartedly so we can help each other to shine
feeling more connected with a community of like-minded people around creative living and blending this with career and other aspects of life
the opportunity for publishing as a collective of voices to help inspire others in wholehearted creative living

If you’re interested?

Initially, I have six guest blogging spots available for each remaining month of 2017. But I’m hoping that the response will be such that we can consider an ongoing ‘My Wholehearted Story’ feature each month or more regularly as well other ways to showcase our stories together.

If you are interested in one of these initial guest blogging spots, please contact me as soon as possible at terri@quietwriting.com with your immediate thoughts on what you would like to focus on for your piece.

I’ll provide more details on specifics following this but I’d love your initial thoughts and a sense of response.

Or feel free to provide any thoughts on the concept of ‘My Wholehearted Story’ in the comments or via email. I’d love to hear your thoughts and can’t wait to receive your responses!

Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday – previous posts below. I hope you enjoy it. I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.

Have a fabulous creative weekend!

Underwater swimming image via pexels.com

Keep in touch

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017. This includes MBTI developments, coaching, creativity and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world. My free ebook on the books that have shaped my story is coming soon for subscribers only – so sign up to be the first to receive it!

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality including Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

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Being a vessel or working with introverted intuition

February 10, 2017

Practising introverted intuition

Introverted Intuition is my dominant preference as an INTJ Myers-Briggs Type. I’ve been working recently at how to tap more into this strength more. It’s a creative gift and I am focusing on how to translate this into words.

Learning to be aware of and capture my night thoughts has been a crucial part of this. This post outlines how I’m working with my introverted intuition to inspire my creativity and direction. I hope it may also inspire yours.

What is introverted intuition?

Introverted intuition is one of the eight psychological types developed by Carl Jung and described in his work, ‘Psychological Types‘ first published in 1921. Jung saw these different personality types as gifts. Introverted Intuition can be seen as having the gift of visionary insight. Angelina Bennet in The Shadows of Type, describes Introverted Intuition this way:

Introverted Intuitive types quickly see the connections between things and use these to create new concepts. They enjoy theory, innovative ideas and making connections. They are motivated by implementing original ideas and value inspiration and originality.

So true! Another phrase to describe the Introverted Intuitive is ‘The Seer’. Gary and Margaret Hartzler in their book, Functions of Type, describe the hallmarks of Introverted Intuiting skills, including:

insights that seem to come out of thin air and learning to rely on them
the ability to see intrinsic patterns and working with them from different perspectives, and
being energised by and making meaningful connections using visions, images and symbols.

From this you can see why an Introverted Intuitive like me loves poetry, imagery, writing, strategising, big picture visioning and imagining what might be. Balance can be provided by realising that some things are just as they are and by focusing on the senses more. This rounding out tends to develop more fully later in life. As Hartzler & Hartzler put it:

This leads the individual to being much stronger, both ethereal and real.

What a fantastic combination to strive for! This post describes and explores the experience of working with introverted intuition to make it both ethereal and real.

Listening to introverted intuition

On this occasion, I wake in the night with a word clearly in my mind. It happens quite often. This time, the word is ‘vessel’. I note the word down, knowing that, as clear as it is, it can be forgotten by the morning. When day breaks, I reflect on this word that spoke to me from my inner voice in the night.

I start with definitions and check in with Google and dictionary.com and come up with:
• a ship or large boat
• a hollow container, especially one used to hold liquid, such as a bowl or cask
• a duct or canal holding or conveying blood or other fluid.
• person regarded as a holder or receiver of something, especially something nonmaterial: e.g. a vessel of grace; a vessel of wrath.

In essence, I see it’s about being a receptacle or conduit, especially in relation to liquids or transportation, and apparently derives from the Latin word ‘vascellum’, meaning ‘vase’ and also ‘ship’.

Being a vessel

I think of what ‘vessel’ might mean at this time: being a conduit, a channel, surrendering a bit more, allowing things to move through me as blood moves, intuition, ideas, finding my purpose, what others might need, with me as a channel. Maybe it’s about a quieter way of being, without the ego chattering away.

I wouldn’t want to be an empty vessel making the most noise. I would hope that I could be a vessel that can conduct things of value, like: life, blood, music, words, something created out of silence and flowing, moving through to keep things, me, other people, alive. A receptacle: receptive, open, transporting, watery, fluid, flowing.

Then I remember I have written a poem called ‘Vessel’ many moons ago.

Only yesterday, I went through all my poetry files and created a receptacle for them, something I have been trying to get to for too long.

The placeholder, entitled ‘Poetry Working Files’, is now set up in the Scrivener writing software space, ready to be filled. Elsewhere, I have all the files organised in alphabetical order by poem. It’s a small but powerful thing now to transfer them in as a body of work. From there, I can conduct magic with them. I know where they are, where they’ve been, how I can combine them, coalesce, revise, add to, edit and seek to publish them, if I so choose.

It’s a receptacle now, an empty vessel right now, but one easily filled with the richness of years. Receptacle, coming from the Latin – ‘recipere’ – to give back, receive, be receptive. I now have a place to receive, and give back. I have a place for poetry’s heart; even if it’s only on my computer, it’s a start.

Vessel – the poem

‘Vessel’ is actually a poem I love, previously published in a writing anthology, Writers at the Raglan. I don’t know where the title came from. The titles of my poems are often a word or phrase that just arrives capturing something more than I know. Sometimes arriving in the dead of night.

Vessel

Your hands are all encompassing
in their imminence,
but maybe you are simply
too large.

And I, the virgin field
of your imagining,
dressed in white
for your uncovering,
feel the widening flaws
expose the cotton armour
of my longing.

Will the hard rubbing
of your words
make me shine
above the clouds
I manufacture
in silence
without you.

The poem captures the feeling of being an empty vessel, waiting for another’s blessing, being alone and feeling vulnerable. There’s abrasion, exposure, a waiting to be filled.

It’s from a long time ago when I used to spend a lot of time waiting for others, waiting to be blessed, ordained, consecrated, to be made pure, to be approved of. It’s not a practice I engage in so much now, if at all, but it’s good to be reminded of the risks through these words penned from another time.

Preparing for transition

So I am now preparing this vessel again, this space to fill with words, receptive and ready to transport and be transported. I think of the imagery of the Six of Swords, the journey across the open water into the unknown and the card I used to symbolise the start of the Quiet Writing journey. It’s a message of surrender, but a soulful surrender, creating a vacancy for the new, for what is to come.

It’s a watery journey, and there’s spirit involved, fire as well – all the elements coming into play, as I ground myself as a channel for what comes next. The destination is open-ended with an out-stretched sky, but a faint horizon to anchor me, there in the distance.

There’s receiving and giving – being open-hearted, flowing, dressed in white perhaps but not feeling quite so vulnerable. My own skin is now something I am much more used to and happy to be sitting within. The lifeblood of poetry is coursing through again and taking me to new places with the heart of the old whispering guidance.

I’ve learnt you need to listen and watch for signposts that quietly show the path: like two white feathers and a shy rainbow one day recently. And words that arrive in the night. Like the single word ‘vessel’ that started this piece and the train of connection to form a message winging its way through the dark to inspire a circle of light.

Thought pieces

For more on Introverted Intuition, one of the eight personality functions, this article is a great introduction. A key thought:

The powerful means by which Introverted Intuition reveals its solution are associated with a gut sense of conviction and certainty. INJs “know” at a deep intuitive level that it is correct. But they cannot stop there. Once they have received the intuition, they must work to flesh it out. They must articulate and illustrate it in order to render it accessible and useful to others.

Hence this article!

I would love to hear your thoughts on Introverted Intuition and creativity. Jung has described the Introverted Intuitive as one of the most difficult of the types to understand, one that has elements of mystery.

So I encourage your comments on this as we explore writing with spirit here. Please share in the comments below or on the Quiet Writing Facebook page.

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is now on Facebook so please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on creativity, productivity, writing, voice, intuition, introversion, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), tarot and yes, passion!

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017 – including MBTI developments and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

2 Comments

introversion

Marcia Yudkin shares insights on myths about introverts and marketing and tips for how to market in your own way as an introvert.

Show Notes

Transcript of podcast

Introduction

Transcript of interview with Marcia Yudkin

And now I’m transitioning from marketing to concentrate on a newsletter that I started called Introvert UpThink, which looks at the prejudices against introverts in society and gives people resources for thinking positively about themselves as introverts.

And so you can ask them questions and so on. And it’s an unpaid thing and you’re basically asking them to do this huge favor. And I told her, forget it, . This is not something that introverts are ever going to be comfortable doing or be good at doing.

Marcia Yudkin: Well, I’m not actually writing the book per se. In doing the newsletter, I’m preparing to write the book and I’m also building an audience so that I can get a book contract.

Marcia Yudkin: Yes. And in this particular program, we were talking about ideas. So it wasn’t the fear so much that I was asking them to pay attention to, or that we were talking about. It was the ideas that, you know, had gone flitting through their mind, but they hadn’t taken seriously.

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Reclaiming sovereignty

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Podcasts on wholehearted living

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An invitation to guest post on Quiet Writing on ‘My Wholehearted Story’

What is ‘My Wholehearted Story’?

What is wholehearted?

How does it connect with Quiet Writing?

creative, intuitive, flowing, poetic and connected

What might you write about?

What are the benefits?

If you’re interested?

Keep in touch

Share this:

Like this:

Practising introverted intuition

What is introverted intuition?

Listening to introverted intuition

Being a vessel

Vessel – the poem

Preparing for transition

Thought pieces

Keep in touch

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Like this:

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