Balancing the Internal and the External

As Jung explained, each person has both extraverted and introverted mechanisms, but betrays his dominant orientation under pressure and in times of stress. Each of us has a certain tendency to take one's own instrument a bit too far and ignore the other side of life, unconsciously expecting that "the socium" - i.e. society and the people around us - will take care of the rest for us. Often they do, baited by our valuable Ego-block "goods."

But other times, for various reasons, no one comes to the rescue. This is the chronically imbalanced (and often non-dualized) individual. Even dualization doesn't completely fix the problem of finding a balance between the internal and the external. With a dual nearby, one may find that, after an initial balancing-out where partners "soak up" each other's strengths and build up their own Super-id block, yet more energy is loosed to direct towards one's strengths, and the problem of keeping balance simply moves up to the next level of self-realization.

This is why, after the mechanisms of dualization have done their work and the hormone bath of passionate love is past, self-development requires will and effort. You need to consciously value the areas that balance you out and strive to maintain them and not let them go down the tubes as you coast down the road of least resistance.

For extratims, the path of least resistance is to be drawn into the external world with its chatter, competition, interchange, and rewards so much that you cease to maintain and develop your inner world or do the hard work of improving your skills and thoughts.

For introtims, the path of least resistance is to focus on developing and improving inner products and experiences that either have little or no real-world application, or you simply neglect the task of introducing people to them.

Examples of these are easy to find around us. However, successful people of extraverted and introverted types alike display competency in both the extraverted and introverted realms. Some examples:

Charles Darwin (ILI) was a pronounced introvert who almost spent too long of a time developing his ideas and could have missed his chance to be the first to publish them. However, he made the effort and carefully wrote a book that others would understand easily (and not only himself, which some ILIs are prone to do).

Vladimir Horowitz (ESE) was an extraverted performer who managed to take the time early on to submit himself to concentrated discipline and meticulously develop the piano skills necessary to achieve fame.

Garrison Keillor (IEI) is a rather quiet introvert who made the effort to take his rich inner experiences public and create a radio show that people would actually listen to.

Thomas Huxley (IEE), "Darwin's bulldog," was a master at exchanging ideas and engaging public discourse who took the time to become a specialist in his field (and not just chat about everything that is interesting as some IEEs are prone to do) and work on his understanding of different theories to the point that he could recognize Darwin's as being superior.

As we can see, great achievements involve a combination of internal and external effort. The internal component creates quality and depth, and the external is responsible for correctly assessing societal needs, expectations, and competition.