How I, An Introvert, Became An Extrovert

I remember the exact day when everything changed. I remember the moment and every detail of what happened. Yes, I remember the day that I became an extrovert. But let's define introvert and extrovert first. Introvert doesn't mean that you're shot. It doesn't mean that you hate being around other people. It just means that a long time is where you replenish your energy. An extrovert doesn't mean you're an exhibitionist. It just means that you get your energy from being around other people. Well, that ain't me. I'm an introvert by nature, just like most artists are. But regardless, I believe we're born to transcend our nature. And that once you do, you're supposed to help others transcend theirs. Today we are reading from the Book of Dairs. You are listening to Make Art Not Content. Brought to you by the Mystery School. The Mystery School? What's that? The Mystery School is an online program that helps creatives all over the world. Conquer the biggest obstacle they face. Themselves. And roll today at teagardnotcontent.com. I was fresh out of high school. Your typical late bloomer. I sucked when it came to girls. I sucked when it came to guys. I was pathetic. And it was right around that time that I saw the Madonna movie. Truth or Dare? Madonna. Truth or Dare? Dare. Show us with that bottle how you give it. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. And I watched that shit and it got me thinking, "What would happen to my art if I conquered my biggest fear, talking to strangers?" The one night, out of sheer desperation, I decided to do the math. I grabbed a sheet of paper and then I asked myself a simple question. Without every ten people I approached, nine people rejected me. A one person turned out to be a wicked life-changing adventure. Would it be worth it? Yes. Yes, I believe it would. Okay, okay. Fair enough. So now the bigger question, the bigger question, what if it took one hundred people, what if I had to endure a hundred rejections to get one life-changing adventure? Would it still be worth it? That's when I realized something crazy that most people never even think about when they're looking at the possibility of rejection. We don't actually know the odds. We're fearful of something we have no clue about. So on a mission, I called my musician friend Antoine, and I told him that I had a theory that I needed to test out with him. We met up at the mall, perfect place to do this, and I drew out my little diagram for him and explained my theory. Today, I want to find out what the real numbers are, and to do that, we're going to do dares. We're going to approach complete strangers, and I needed him for this because I don't want to be able to pick who I approached. It had to be totally random, it had to pick the person, it had to give me my opening line, and then I had to go and do it without protest right away. That was the dare. All this anticipation made my heart beat so fast that it was literally in my throat. I was scared, shitless. Ever notice how the words scared, the words scarred, have almost the same spelling? Was I about to be scarred for lifelike? And those are the things that go through your mind when you're fucking shy, dude. At a certain point, I couldn't take it anymore. I knew I had to do this now before I changed my mind about the whole thing. And that's when I turned to Antoine and said the magic words that would change my life forever, forever. Things that I would say thousands of times over the next few years, three words that meant that I was fully willing to step into the unknown. Throw me in. So Antoine, throw me in. Hello, how are you? Well we discovered that afternoon, shook our very foundations. Somehow I had been absolutely right about the numbers, but what I had gotten wrong was a distribution. It was totally reversed. In my interactions, I had had nine positive connections and only one rejection. This fear of rejection and everyone walks around with is totally unfounded. Those people you meet won't actually reject you, no matter how mean they look from afar, no matter how uninviting they look understanding their alone. Seriously, even when they look sad, most of the time they're not actually sad. People just wear unapproachable faces as armor, armor against life. The reality is, they're just as afraid of rejection as you are. Once the ice is broken, people were thanking me for approaching them. Once you see this for yourself, you can't unsee it. Our afternoon was so mind-boggling that Antoine, seeing how things had worked out for me, made him wonder how it would work out for him. Was I just lucky? Was I special? I will never forget the shock that I felt. And that shy motherfucker looked me straight in the face and said with conviction, "Throw me in, too." Hi. It was legendary. Antoine got the same results as I did, the same exact ratio. Nine beautiful interactions with complete strangers and one mild rejection. We made so many new friends that day, and I never looked back. What started out as a way of improving the art became the art, and eventually when there wasn't a friend around to throw me in, it started to start to throw myself in, doing what I now call self-imposed theirs. You dare yourself to interact with the world. You stop trying to guess how it's all going to go down. You stop trying to guess what people are going to say. Your imagination will never be as good as what reality can deliver. Take me, for example, I'm an introvert by nature. There should have been no wild parties in New York, no tours with the weekend, no stories upon stories that start out with strangers who become friends for life. But I believe that we're born to transcend our nature, and that once you do, it should be your mission to help others transcend theirs.