Flow is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity...In a state of flow, you're neither bored nor anxious, and you don't question your own adequacy. Hours pass without your noticing.

Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it. If this requires public speaking or networking or other activities that make you uncomfortable, do them anyway. But accept that they're difficult, get the training you need to make them easier, and reward yourself when you're done.

Many Introverts are also "highly sensitive," which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you're more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience.

As a parent, if give yourself what you need, your children will watch you doing that and will give themselves what they need.

Your tendency to be inward-directed or outward-directed is huge; it governs every part of the way you live and work and love.

In the first study, Grant and his colleagues analyzed data from one of the five biggest pizza chains in the United States. They discovered that the weekly profits of the stores managed by extroverts were 16 percent higher than the profits of those led by introverts—but only when the employees were passive types who tended to do their job without exercising initiative. Introverted leaders had the exact opposite results. When they worked with employees who actively tried to improve work procedures, their stores outperformed those led by extroverts by more than 14 percent.

I'm insatiably curious about human nature. I feel very lucky that as a writer I get to learn so much about it just to do my job right.