INTROVERT/PERSONAL GROWTH

This Statistic Made An Introvert Like Me Feel I’m Quite ‘Normal’!

96% of introverted adults had a tough early life.

A whopping 96%! That’s a huge figure!

“Ask 96% of introverted adults, and they will tell you that they had a tough and often alienated early life.”

~ Alex Mathers on his topic on introverts

Maybe this explains why many introverts turn to the web and how happy they find their kindred spirit here — feeling ‘I’m not alone, I’m not weird’, and thankful that they’re born in the digital era that gives us more options to excel and better use of our natural talents of deep thinking and works better alone.

I’ve been feeling out of touch with this world and oftentimes feel I do not belong to this world. I even thought that I came here to pay back my bad karma in the spiritual sense. I’m like the square peg in a round hole!

I once even doubted my existence and wished that I had never been born! I just feel awkward among my species, especially since I was growing up alone as the youngest child and my age gap is wide with all my other siblings.

My family background

My brother that is born before me is 5 years gap and my eldest sister is 20 years gap! I was often mistaken for my elder sister’s daughter when we went out together.

I was the ‘accidental child’, my parents had stopped wanting children after my brother was born as we were very poor by then and couldn't afford to have more children.

We’re a family that consists of 7 children, which is quite a big family by today's standards but was common during my parents’ generation.

How my negative aura came about

I once heard that negative energy was born when a parent tried to abort her baby in her womb even in the early stage of pregnancy. My mom tried to abort me by drinking some traditional herbal drinks that believed could help to abort the baby.

However, I survived and came into this world still.

You may say that I was strong and survived the abortion but it had left its footprints on me — a little deformity that needed a surgical procedure to make me look ‘normal’ like other kids.

Hence I think that's how my negative energy starts to build up and continues to become bigger through my growing-up years. I had to endure this pain and confusion while other healthy kids were growing up healthily emotionally and mentally enjoying what the world could offer.

I was often left alone at home where my parents went to work and all my siblings went to school. I used to play with my neighbor's kids but as though it was by fate they all moved away as I was growing up and I ended up with no kids to play with.

I was not a loveable kid in terms of my look and this has worsened my condition. I’ve inherited my mom’s sensitive nature and all of these reinforced my negative energy further over the years. It was so hard for me to shake it off after I made a few major bad decisions in life.

It just snowballed and almost suffocated me.

Hence this unhappy and negative introvert. As I felt I was ‘unwanted’.

How I overcome the negative aura

It took me many hard knocks to wake up. If you do not overcome all these hard knocks in life, life will keep giving it to you till you get it.

Life may has no mercy at times. It could be a very stern and harsh teacher but it is the best teacher.

Please do not let the best teacher turn into a monster. Learn your lesson quickly and be a good student in life — even as an introvert usually also a late bloomer — another description of me.

All my strings of hard knocks in my personal life and career finally woke me up and looked deeply into my soul. I often do meditation to quiet down my mind and get a perspective of my whole life. With the help of my loved ones, I eventually managed to shake off those negative vibes and developed a more positive aura.

“Do not allow the past to interfere with your right to live well.”

Parting words

Although there’s no indication of the source of this statistical figure, it offers me a sense of ‘relief’ feeling that I’m not alone. Let’s hope that with more acceptance of introverts knowing that it’s not a flaw and by leveraging on its strengths, with the acceleration of the digital era, this figure will be shrinking in times to come.

This is the article I stumbled upon written by Alex Mathers: