Do only loud, confident people get to be a success in life?

This is something I wonder a lot...

Mainly because I'm not (Loud and Confident I mean).

Most people who know me would say I'm an extrovert. And I am. I love being around people. If you locked me in a cell by myself all day, I'd be depressed by the end of day one because I need people to bounce off.

On the flipside of that, though, I'm not always very confident, mainly when it comes to selling myself. I can push myself to do things - so I've got the determination. And quite often, the harder it is, the more of a challenge it is, the harder I push...

But as soon as I have to start telling people how good I am at something, that just makes me feel awkward and weird. See, I'm feeling it already...

I had to really fight to finish my book (just fitting it in, with a lot of very stressful stuff going on at the time). But as soon as it was done, instead of being all Gung ho about it - I just froze. I think because I'd put so much pressure on myself to do it - AND because it represented such a big thing to me (I've wanted to publish a book for soo long now) - I just couldn't take the next step. Even though I knew that even if people hated it I would be no worse off getting it published than if I'd not bothered.

But it's also important to me that I'm not someone who pushes their opinions/views/thoughts on other people.

The whole reason I want to write is to communicate ideas, to be creative, to get people talking about subjects that are never talked about and should be. But with all of my work, I want to do it in such a way that people are left to make their own decisions about the story, about what is right or wrong, or what it did or didn't mean.

It's the 'gentleness' of writing that appeals to me if you like. You get to cover a subject from all angles and then leave it to the reader to decide what it means to them.

And that's what I'm like if I am sat around a table with other people.

I like to listen to all sides of an argument and hate it when people start arguing as though only their view is right. But if I am passionate about something, I'll say.

But whenever you think about the film or TV industry (and I've worked in TV), you always think you have to be super confident to be a success.

Living in LA was interesting for that, because I was a student when I was there. And whenever I spoke to people about what I did, I could literally see their eyes glaze over the minute they heard I was just a student (I guess because I wasn't someone worth networking with as I didn't have the contacts).

As a person, I don't like cut-throat, fake, or pushy.

But in my mind to succeed in such a competitive industry, you have to be super confident. Which leaves me wondering how I'll do it. Because I'm not!

So to appease myself, I've been researching all the quieter souls in life who have gone on to achieve success (although by that I'm not saying if you're quiet you're not confident, I am sure there's a lot of very confident introverts, who are confident in what they do but just don't shout about it).

One of the visiting speakers at screenwriting college was award-winning writer/director Charlie Kaufman, who was very quietly spoken and unassuming.

Then there's artist Charlie Mackesy whose work I love, who was quoted in an interview as saying,

"At age seven I went to boarding school and I found that very painful. I sometimes wished I had a button that would make me feel less or a dial that you could turn down."

Now though, he uses that sensitivity to produce lots of beautiful, emotionally-evocative work.

I also jumped onto google (good old google) and typed in something along the lines of - quiet people who are successful - and found a really interesting article on goalcast - https://www.goalcast.com/2018/04/12/most-successful-introverts

And guess what? There are some real surprises in there!

Rosa Parks - 'the first lady of civil rights' - helped shape US history in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat in the coloured section of a bus for a white woman.

But in her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, author Susan Cain says of Parks:

"I had always imagined Rosa Parks as a stately woman with a bold temperament, someone who could easily stand up to a busload of glowering passengers."

But Cain says that when Parks died at the age of 92, the flood of obituaries described her as 'soft-spoken, sweet and small in stature' but with 'the courage of a lion'.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and one of the world's richest and most successful men, is also quoted in the article as saying:

"I think introverts can do quite well. If you're clever you can learn to get the benefits of being an introvert, which might be, say, being willing to go off for a few days and think about a tough problem, read everything you can, push yourself very hard to think out on the edge of that area."

Author JK Rowling is also quoted as saying when she had the idea for Harry Potter she was the most excited she had ever been about an idea before - but that she didn't have a pen on her and was too shy to ask anyone to borrow one!

And entrepreneur Elon Musk (very famous, very successful) says of himself:

"I'm basically like an introverted engineer, so, it took a lot of practice and effort to be able to get up on stage and not just stammer basically... As the CEO, you kind of have to."

All of which gives me hope.

I guess what I'm trying to tell myself is -

You don't have to be a super loud, super confident person to do well in life.

You just need to be knowledgeable about your subject, passionate about what you do, and determined to make it work--

Until it does.