The Life-Changing Magic of Introverting Online
Hello, daaaaaahling!
So, last week, we talked about how the internet is magic and how now is the perfect time to bibbidi-bobbidi-boo all over it.
Here are the top 5 reasons why that’s true!
1. CONTROL OVER YOUR WHERES, WHENS, AND HOWS
This is the High Holy Moly of the internet’s advantages for introverts.
Using the internet to send our ideas whizzing around the globe lets us take control of our lives and businesses. It gives us Instagram-humblebrag-yogi levels of flexibility with the whens, wheres, and hows of using our most powerful finite resources—time and energy. Becoming a Timelord has never been easier.
Control your time and you can control your quiet.
Solitude is the most vital nutrient for bold introverts. It’s where our ideas are born, where our visions take shape, where our soul and pride and determination get nourished.
The internet can gift us more of this solitude.
So long as we don’t read the comments. Because then we’re bound to turn all red-faced and screamy and the sacred silence flies away like a pissed off pterodactyl. DON’T READ THE COMMENTS. Seriously.
2. ELIMINATING THE GATEKEEPERS
We’ve heard the stories about people who catapult to success via their YouTube channel or runaway-hit blog. As we’ve talked about before, I don’t think those overnight success stories are always the best ones to focus on. Yes, they happen, but they’re not the uszh and that’s okay.
The salient point is that you don't have to use all your energy trying to prove your worth just to get a seat at the table you want to influence. This is especially powerful for introverted women and BIPOC who have to work that much harder to be seen and heard.
Using the internet to build my business and serve the people I adore is the most liberating and empowering thing I have ever done. That includes packing two suitcases full-to-busting with my crap and moving to an island sight unseen.
I did it without asking for permission.
There are no gatekeepers when you build your own damned gate! This is why I love filling my client roster with badass entrepreneurs—whether aspiring or established.
3. YOUR INCOME DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A DIRECT TRADE FOR YOUR TIME AND ENERGY
Oof, the slog of grinding out hours of work rather than value of work in exchange for income. For introverts, whose energy and well-being are tied directly to the amount of time spent engaging with the world, this can feel like a never-ending cycle. We can never get a leg up. God forbid we work in an open-plan office 🤮 on top of it!
The internet can help introverted entrepreneurs gain even more control over their whens, wheres, and hows when they create intellectual property that is not tied to working one-on-one. There’s lots of talk about creating digital courses right now—and that is just one example of how to make this happen.
Doing this allows you to keep your battery/soul/cactus-shaped margarita glass filled up more of the time.
Don’t get me wrong, I looove doing the one-on-one work coaching quiet rebels. But having other forms of revenue generation allows me to be selective about the people I work with (i.e. the HUNGRIEST ones)!
See, I’m a 100% bona fide control freak. Or in personal development lingo, I cultivate and uphold strong boundaries. Having this much power over my time makes me feel a little like Ursula the Sea Witch presiding over her creepy, wiggly garden of Poor Unfortunate Souls—except that my power hits come from helping people find and use their voices, rather than taking them away. Win/win! Mwuahahaha.
4. DON’T GIVE IT AWAY, ARIEL!
Remember when Ariel was a dumbass and gave her voice away because of some dude? (I’m leaning hard into these Little Mermaid references. It’s probably the closest I will ever get to my dream of wearing a seashell bra.)
Well, the internet is the opposite of that. The internet is Ariel teaching a sold out masterclass on how to use her patented Dinglehopper™ hair tool for added volume. It offers the opportunity to use our voices in ways that are dynamic, powerful, and our own.
I'm not that captivating in person—at least not all the time. I can turn on the *charm lights* and entertain the pants off you (Literally? Figuratively? Both??? 😈). But my usual mode of operation involves a furrow between my eyebrows from being deep in thought. I’ve been called “unapproachable” on innumerable occasions.
My inner world though? It's fucking Disney World*.
It’s uninhibited and limitless inside my head. Sometimes it’s an enchanting kaleidoscope of ideas and perspectives. Other times it’s more of a laugh-until-you-pee-just-a-little type place. All of that gets to come out in one life-affirming, confidence-fortifying way: written words.
Introverts have a way with words that extroverts often don't.
Extroverts can talk, but introverts can write.
Luckily, everything on the internet involves writing. Even online videos usually have a script. Like this amazeballs video from an internet entrepreneur that will leave you asking, “What the frick frack snick snack did my eyes just behold?!” It’s sooooo good.
Her niche is writing people’s bios (which is SO DAMNED DIFFICULT for introverts). The production quality of that video is the stuff naughty dreams are made of. But none of that would matter without the script. Without the story. Without the words in black ink.
Words have power. They don’t need to be spoken to wield it.
There’s so much beauty in writing. In the backspace button. In the elongated minutes of contemplation between sentences. In the time allowed—and cherished—that lets us step outside of our heads and into the heads of others to hear how our words ring in their ears. The internet lets us revel in that beauty in ever-expanding, dynamic ways.
So, if writing is your whole-ass jam, why not get in on this bibbidi-bobbidi business?!
5. BOSS B*TCH (I’M DEEPLY ASHAMED AT HOW MUCH I LOVE THAT PHRASE.)
Real talk time: I cannot imagine having a boss. Ever. Again.
Once you get a taste for the internet entrepreneur life—as difficult as it is, and it is difficult—going backward is like going from life in technicolor to life in black and white.
Watching my ideas get decapitated. Feeling my inspiration's legs kicked out from under it again, and again, and again. No way, my friend!
This is not the easy option but, hot damn, it's a fulfilling one.
I always thought the cliché about pain reminding you that you're alive was a Zoloft-sponsored way to look at life.
But when it's chosen pain—the struggle of creating something that has never existed before—that shit will make you feel like you just dove into the ocean for the first time, which is the most alive I have ever felt. (Thanks to a dear friend, I have photographic evidence of the exact moment.) But you get to feel that feeling every damned day.
When you're under someone else's thumb, serving someone else’s goals, pain is just pain. When you're in control of your choices, it’s temporary. It’s growth.
I want to hear from you! What excites you about leveraging the magic of the internet? What’s holding you back if you haven’t taken the leap? HOLLER AT ME!
XO,
Angela
*I’m expecting an affiliate check from Disney any day now…