From the Extroverted Ideal to Being Externally Referenced

Learning to be internally referenced.

Reviewed by Tyler Woods

Key points

• Extroversion has become an ideal that can easily have us locating our identities outside of ourselves.
• My work with hundreds of clients reveals this tendency to see ourselves in the external world.
• We can have siginificant dynamics like loyalty and trust be about our relationship with ourselves.
• Becoming internally referenced has us living closer to who we actually are.

We live in a strongly extroverted culture. This primarily means that extroversion is prized and introversion shunned. Extroversion is processing what you feel, desire, and believe out loud, verbally. On the other hand, introversion is processing those same topics internally and quietly. When extroversion became the ideal way to encounter others verbally, it also reshaped how we should think and act.

In Susan Cain's book, Quiet, she writes:

“Dale Carnegie’s metamorphosis from farm boy to salesman to public speaking icon is also the story of the rise of the extroverted ideal. Carnegie’s journey reflected a cultural evolution that reached a tipping point around the turn of the twentieth century, changing forever who we are and whom we admire, how we act at job interviews and what we look for in an employee, how we court our mates and raise our children.”

Cain’s quote shows that we weren’t simply interested in talking but increasingly valuing who we are regarding what we do in the external world. Hence, our identities became more externally referenced as we saw ourselves fundamentally doing something in the external world rather than in the internal world.

Here are some examples. Loyalty, forgiveness, trust, authenticity, generosity, and kindness are typically defined as externally referenced or meant to happen with others as an outside job.

Here are some consequences of becoming excessively externally referenced.

Diminished personal power. Once our roles strongly identify us, people and situations have more power to define us. They can decide we are not authentic, trusting, or loyal enough. They can even determine if we are worthy. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the main character, Willy Loman, gives testimony to this loss of power, mainly because his identity was reduced to he who sells something. “After all the highways and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.”

Self-estrangement. The more we allow external voices to tell us who we are, the more lost we become, no longer taking cues from our values and heart’s desire to inform us.

Difficulty creating meaningful relationships. The more self-estranged you are, the less of yourself you must bring to a significant other. When you bring social amenities and strategies to a relationship, the foundational material of what you genuinely love goes missing.

The loss of meaning. When primarily externally referenced, you become a depository of social expectations and recommendations. It becomes challenging to recall what truly matters.

Examples of Being Internally Referenced

Authenticity. Recently, while working with a client, he turned to me and said, “My colleagues say that I could be more authentic.” Our conversation soon revealed that he believed authenticity was a dynamic that happens only between him and others. I pointed out that he could commit to a self-examining life characterized by a curiosity about his emotions, beliefs, decisions, and motivations. He understood that he could be more or less honest about who he was.

Trust. Many of the experiments about trusting others employed an operational definition of trust: “If I trust you, then I hold two beliefs about you. I believe you will treat me kindly and tell me the truth.” Trust becomes an internally referenced dynamic when we believe we will be kind to ourselves and tell ourselves the truth about who we are and what we perceive happening around us.

Loyalty. Loyalty is internally referenced when we live in fidelity to our values and heart’s desire. Self-loyalty becomes the basis of living with integrity when our behavior is compatible with our beliefs.

Betrayal. Once we accept the importance of self-loyalty, self-betrayal becomes a possible internal experience. Self-betrayal is a reliable indication of how far I have stepped away from what I value and love. It simply allows me to get straight with myself.

Forgiveness. Many of us believe that forgiveness can only be given to us by others or given to others by us. That makes forgiveness an extremely externally referenced experience. I believe that one of our responsibilities is to take self-forgiveness quite seriously. This means it is primarily our responsibility to restore our personal worth.

Choosing. A middle-aged woman entered my office, visibly distressed. Moments later, she offered, “I need to choose my husband or the man I’m having an affair with.” I listened to her list of pros and cons and suggested, “If you decide to work with me, then you will be learning to choose yourself.” She did take on the task of choosing herself. She focused on where she came from and the pattern of being a compulsive giver, confused about receiving. She chose to modify her tendency to please others automatically. She chose to identify what she needed and give the need a voice. Eventually, she chose her husband and herself in that relationship.

We all need to be internally and externally referenced and find a confluence where the internal and external focuses are mutually beneficial. Since the culture’s bias is to be heavily externally referenced, we may need to initially overcompensate with internal referencing in order to find a useful balance. When facing life’s challenges, I prefer the starting point of “What do I want?” (internal) and then “What is this situation asking of me?” (external).