Three Important Self-Acceptance Points of Being an Introvert

Fatmawati Santosa
4 min readDec 26, 2021

I had this belief for quite a long time, it had been like a mantra: “Being extrovert will be better than being an introvert”. The trigger of this was the first personal assessment test on the first year of high school when we had to choose between natural and social science. It was 2004, I was 15.

It felt like a destiny that I had to go for natural science. I always saw myself as a shy person. I rather to sit by myself, read books, work on the math exercises to prepare the national exam. When the teacher mentioned “presentation” or “singing test” I felt my world was crumbling. The personal assessment test result justified my feeling. The result was that I am good in math and physics, I have the potential to study architecture, and here’s the not-so-good-trait: I am not good in languages and I do not have big interest in the social engagement. I swallowed the result as a whole.

This is my version summary of the whole thing — and carry this for years: “Introverts will be limited in life, as they don’t have enough capability to socialize as the extroverts do.”

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Along the way, this personality label had became my excuse of not doing things or taking some of the opportunities. It has been an uphill battle when someone asked me to present something to the group, to share something to the community, I said to myself, “This is not the place for an introvert. Introvert is the spectator, not the presenter.”

Still, I am a human being with the need to connect with people. I have tried different social engagement approaches (I always felt uncomfortable at first for any of them). But before sharing which one works for me well, I would like to share on this post: how it is important to be comfortable to be an introvert, to accept myself, to stop labelling that being introvert is a lacking of something. By being comfortable of my personality and who I am, I redefine the weakness paradigm of being introvert into unique traits.

I am quiet most of the time. But I listen.

I often hear people say to me, “Why are you so quiet? Say something.”

I found the reason why I put the quiet mode on: while people express themselves or their ideas, I listen. I need the input before I output any comment or

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Fatmawati Santosa

sharing thoughts, experience, and lessons learned | an engineer on working days and a dreamer for most of the time :)