The short answer here is no.

The slightly less short answer is that a person isn’t missing out on life because of his or her introversion.

To make the answer a bit longer, it would be that you’re only missing out on life by being introverted if you view your introverted personality as a liability rather than seeing the coolness and beauty in it and realizing that your introverted life isn’t going to look like the media’s portrayal of what a life should be – both because you’re an introvert and because the media does a fine job of making everyone – introverts and extroverts alike – think their life sucks because they aren’t as rich, pretty, busy, exciting, successful, sought-after, clean, dirty, saintly, evil, young or old as those characters that are made for TV and the movies. Neither is your introverted life going to look like your extroverted neighbor’s life (but seriously, do you want it to?). That stuff’s all on the outside anyway.

The problem isn’t with you being introverted. If you feel like you’re missing out on something in life, the problem could be that you don’t know for sure what you want and you’re not sure how to find out what that is and then how to get it.

Besides that, there is pressure to be like everyone else (because this makes other people comfortable – think about it). You might be doing all those things that you think you should be doing in order to not miss out, and in the process be missing out!

So maybe for some introverts the answer is, yes – you’re missing out on life. But again, it’s not because of introversion. It’s because you haven’t yet defined yourself and your life and honored that.

Here’s my caveat for the day: That definition of self isn’t going to be the same today as it will be ten years from now. There’s a flow to this concept.

If you’re wondering how it is that you would go about finding out what you want out of your life try blocking out all the outside stimulus and influences that tell you what you’re supposed to be and then give yourself some time to think about and discover what’s really important to you. You might have to try a few things. You might have to experiment and check out some uncharted territory. It’s OK. You don’t have to commit to any of it until you find what makes you feel like you’re living.