Why Being an Introvert Can Make You Poor

I grew up as an introvert. I didn’t like going outside my comfort zone, I didn’t like asking for things, I didn’t like meeting new people, and I ultimately enjoyed being by myself working on tasks. Sound familiar?

I forgot to add, I also didn’t succeed at things that involved other people. This meant I had to play small-time at everything because at some point EVERYTHING was going to involve other people. It is inevitable. Being introverted was holding me back from financial success. Unfortunately, we have just accepted that some people are “born that way” and that’s just the way it is.

However, I learned how to become more extrovert and it has massively helped me improve my finances as a result.

Now I want to clarify my position on why being an introvert can make you broke.

Our lives are about interactions and exchanges with others. Think about it. From the moment we were born, we immediately had an exchange and an interaction with our parents. We are going to give them purpose and love in exchange for their care and help. If they fail to hold up on their exchange the interaction doesn’t work out and if we fail to hold up our end of the exchange the interaction again doesn’t work out. This exchange is a law of life. Every interaction must have an exchange, and without one, we fail to survive and expand. We literally have a law that states “for every action there is an equal or opposite reaction”.

Life is centered around external interactions and reactions. And this also happens to be where all things financial happen as well.

Now in order to make a meaningful exchange we must know what is wanted by the party we are exchanging with. This requires communication, which means we cannot be introverted. Once we get the information from the other party, we must produce what they asked for. Once we’ve produced what they ask for, we must go bring it to the other party and give it to them. This requires communication again, which means we cannot be introverted. The process of exchange requires us to communicate and be extroverted. The exchange cannot happen unless we go outside of ourselves and interact with others. As someone who was an introvert, you can probably see or even relate to the problem I was having here.

Now once we’ve made the exchange, we must keep doing it more to keep earning more income. Life is a continual process, and this means we must keep making more and more exchanges with more and more people in order to survive. Which means we will continually communicate and extrovert. Failure to do so is failure to survive. Every moment of every day for the 90 or more years we are alive will be comprised of various exchanges with different people. Being introverted just doesn’t fit the model of how life works.

So, what do we do about it? For me, it was a few things. I had to mentally confront the reality of where I was at in life. A lot of my introversion was caused by me dwelling inside myself on old, stale, and musty memories and experiences and not based on what was actually going on in my life right then and there. So, by getting my mind present and focusing on the future, I had to consciously make the decision to look forward and outward rather than inward and backward.

I also would go people watching. It might sound creepy but when we grocery shop, I would people watch. I’d just watch other people and realize they weren’t that much different than me. They’re not scary, they’re not so unusual that I can’t relate to them, and they are pretty much the same as I am. When I was introverted, the truth is I really didn’t like people that much. And by not liking people, I really wasn’t liking myself…because I am one of those “people”. Hard pill to swallow, right? Try it. Go out and just study people around you. Look for commonalities you have with them. They’re living life just like you are and trying to do the same things you are.

Bottom line, life is a long road filled with things we must exchange with other people in order to get the things we require to survive. If we introvert, those exchanges don’t happen abundantly and we inhibit our own survival. Being an introvert makes you broke because it limits those interactions and therefore limits the exchanges you have with others, which directly limits your prosperity. In order to thrive we must interact with others, exchange value with them, and this requires us to be extroverted.

Now what about today?

I interact with LOTS of people in meetings, on social media, with my staff, and those interactions are in the thousands per week. But I have to be honest, I still enjoy time by myself the most. Most people wouldn’t guess it, but I’m still kind of an introvert. How do I manage it and still expand? Well, I schedule time where I’ll do my interacting with people because I know that’s a requirement for financial success in life and then I also schedule time where it’s just me or just me and my wife so that I can unplug from all of the interaction and have some time without all of the people.

In order to really overcome this barrier though, for me it had to hit home that the more introverted I was, the more broke I’d be and when that became completely real to me, I began to consciously make sure I was having more meaningful interactions with others.

Now, beyond just a monetary standpoint, there was a study done by Stanford University that found the #1 factor behind a longer life expectancy was the number of positive social interactions a person had with others. So not only does extroversion make you more financially prosperous, but it also makes you live longer.

I hope this article gives you some tools to help you with this if you’ve struggled with it the way I did.

In closing, my mission in life is to help good people build more wealth who make the world a better place.

So, if you’re a good person who wants to help make the world a better place and this article helped you, I want to encourage you to start planning your next quarterly trip and putting this into practice. And feel free to write to me and let me know how it went.

If you’re a client of mine and you’d like help leveling up, send an email to my team with “Level Up” in the subject line to Contact@WealthDynamX.com.

If you’re a follower and have not read my book The Blueprint to Financial Freedom yet, that is the place to start. This book covers the specifics for each level in the various chapters and you can grab the book for free as my gift.

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The Blueprint to Financial Freedom by Jerry Fetta

To Purpose, Wealth & Freedom,

Jerry Fetta

Jerry Fetta is the CEO and Founder of Wealth DynamX. He is a nationally recognized financial expert featured in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, Fox, Chicago Weekly News, New York Finance, interviewed on 100+ podcasts with world renowned experts, earning endorsements and affiliations throughout his career with names like Kevin O’Leary, Grant Cardone, Dave Ramsey, and Pamela Yellen.

Jerry’s mission in life is to help create millions of financially educated and solvent families achieving greater financial freedom and sharing the truth about money with those around them.

Learn more at www.WealthDynamX.com

(DISCLAIMER: The information in this content should not be considered tax, financial, investment, or any kind of professional advice. Only a professional diagnosis of your specific situation can determine which strategies are appropriate for your needs. Wealth DynamX can and does not provide advice unless/until engaged by you.)