We introverts have an easy life with ourselves, completely at peace with oneself, never bored. Extroverts dread this, they need external stimulus to feel alive, alone they get bored and depressed quickly. Hand in hand with that go things like imagination, alone you simply have much more time to train it.
As I grew up, I realized how stupid and immature it is to try to blend with the rest of the crowd, where extroverts naturally stick out and introverts feel like they are doing something wrong and should emulate more visible ones. Embrace yourself as you are, focus on aspects you don't like yourself but enjoy the rest, it can be a real strength if you use it well.
Friends and family are one aspect of it, but also how you approach hobbies, traveling etc. Ie my extroverty boss can't simply go to gym, he has to go with some friend. So he goes rarely and he sucks in it. Bunch of friends simply can't travel alone, while I repeatedly explained to them that ie backpacking around the world alone is extremely positive and character-building experience that can't be achieved in any other way. So eventually one of them went, but for 2 weeks only to effin' Singapore and not a step further, to hang out with former colleague for 2 weeks. While having amazing places to keep discovering all around him, or ie jumping on a plane to Bali/Lombok/Gili islands for a week.
I remember at some point (as an introvert) my mental model of extroverts flipped and I suddenly began to see them not as super humans but almost like disabled people. Unable to function independently because of a severe deficit in their mental makeup that makes them unable to sustain happiness without supplementary support from presence of other individuals. I still envy them in certain ways but now I have a much more balanced view of it than when I was younger and I really felt like something was wrong with me.
Unless you mean that you eventually grew out of the view that extroverts “suffer from severe deficit in their mental makeup”, I wouldn’t call your position “balanced” at all. You’ve just swung from one extreme to another.
I don’t know you, but I have a feeling that you’ll eventually come to understand “extroverts” better than this.
> Ie my extroverty boss can't simply go to gym, he has to go with some friend
I would venture to suggest even that your boss can't simply go to the gym because he doesn't actually want to go to the gym. He wants to socialise inside a gym.
As I grew up, I realized how stupid and immature it is to try to blend with the rest of the crowd, where extroverts naturally stick out and introverts feel like they are doing something wrong and should emulate more visible ones. Embrace yourself as you are, focus on aspects you don't like yourself but enjoy the rest, it can be a real strength if you use it well.
Friends and family are one aspect of it, but also how you approach hobbies, traveling etc. Ie my extroverty boss can't simply go to gym, he has to go with some friend. So he goes rarely and he sucks in it. Bunch of friends simply can't travel alone, while I repeatedly explained to them that ie backpacking around the world alone is extremely positive and character-building experience that can't be achieved in any other way. So eventually one of them went, but for 2 weeks only to effin' Singapore and not a step further, to hang out with former colleague for 2 weeks. While having amazing places to keep discovering all around him, or ie jumping on a plane to Bali/Lombok/Gili islands for a week.