The Introverted Extrovert Paradise of Skiing

This pandemic has been a boon to introverts, culminating in a JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) New Year’s Eve and a steady stream of introvert recharge time throughout the year. And while extroverts say they’re doing very well, up close and personal, 11 months in, they’re chomping at the bit. No amount of Zoom happy hours can make up for the visceral human contact that gets the adrenaline coursing through their veins. And what’s worse, not accustomed to making adjustments in a right-handed culture largely driven by their extroverted needs, they’re even more flummoxed about how to make things better.

But what of the introverted extroverts? Where do they stand at this time of the year, and how can those of us, the nearly 30-66 percent of us, stay fulfilled, happy, and connected? In this top-10 snowiest February, I found my bliss in the ambivert paradise of skiing.

You get on a lift and schmooze with a relative stranger about where they hail from, what they do to pay the bills and feed their passions, how they’re coping with the pandemic, and before your energy is flagging, you’re traversing the trails in your own introverted bliss. To top it off, on your next run, you hop on the lift alone to take in the beautiful vistas and let your mind steep like a good tea in the creative flow of your imagination. It’s a cup served best cold.

It’s a thing of beauty and grace to watch a consummate skier carve s’s into the snow. Like an ambivert, they continually glide back and forth between the extroverted and introverted worlds, letting gravity help them enjoy the ride all the way down.

Extraordinary people use their ambivert power to transform themselves and the world, to strike that rare balance of holding lighting in a jar. Fred Rogers, Roger Federer, Barack Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Duke Ellington, and Kendrick Lamar are a few of the ambiverts you’ve likely come across, and yet hardly anybody talks about the ambivert side that made them such phenomenal leaders, artists, and influencers.

Often upstaged by the more familiar dynamic duo who have captivated us for nearly a century, it’s time to introduce the lesser-known triplet. Although treated like the middle child—neglected and passed over—ambiverts have an equal birthright to being understood, celebrated, and supported in their journeys to be more fulfilled, productive, and creative, and for the special gifts they contribute to society.

It’s not surprising though that ambiverts have been forgotten. We live in a culture of binaries: liberal and conservative, good and bad, right and wrong, black and white. It’s no wonder that psychology itself would fall prey to dichotomizing too.

Ambiverts are synthesizers and empathizers with a knack for providing compelling alternatives to the binaries that reduce and oversimplify. Research by organizational psychologist Adam Grant heralds this ambivert superpower, an emotional depth perception he calls the ambivert advantage.

He found that extroverts were not the best salespeople. Because of their sensitive responsiveness to the social demands and their own articulate expression of their inner experience, ambiverts were better at making and closing deals.

We see this in ambivert leaders of the past and present too. A deeply solitary, introverted, and often melancholic man, Abraham Lincoln thrived in extroverted debates, sharing stories with friends late into the night, and oratory that still resonates in our collective consciousness. Drawing on his introverted side, he taught himself to read law with little formal schooling and mined his own pain—did you know he was put on suicide watch by his community on two occasions as a teen?—to meet the anguish of a divided nation. He held complexity and contradiction together and stood firmly behind words needed during a pivotal moment in American history:

“With malice towards none, and charity towards all … let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle.”

Oprah Winfrey too inspired others as a unifying ambivert. Raised in poverty by a young single mother, Winfrey used her adversity, being molested as a child and pregnant at 14, as an empathic vehicle to witness and uplift others. She elevated the daily talk show to more than a vehicle for entertainment, amplifying the voices of the voiceless, focusing on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Aligned with her introversion, Winfrey championed a popular and influential book club and magazine to speak across generations about how to carry pride and pain with great humanity. And yet, in that quintessential extroverted way, she knew how to bring an audience to their feet.

This gift comes with its own heartache. Your keen power of reading others and absorbing their emotions takes a toll. It’s confusing, exhausting, and lonely taking it all in. Like Peter Parker's sensitivity to neighbor Mary Jane's pain at the hands of an abusive father and insensitive boyfriend, not to mention his attunement to the rest of New York's residents, it's challenging to be Spiderman burdened with this invisible superpower.

Ironically, living in this Twilight Zone episode of a pandemic year, ambiverts are amongst the best-suited to transcend it and help our extrovert brothers and sisters find their way back to fine. So, slap on some skis and get to it. The world needs you now more than ever!