Your friend's neighbors seem affable enough, but you feel pressured to make small talk above the din of music. Now—bang, just like that—you've fallen out of your sweet spot, except this time you're overstimulated. And you'll probably feel that way until you pair off with someone on the periphery of the party for an in-depth conversation, or bow out altogether and return to your novel.
Imagine how much better you'll be at this sweet-spot game once you're aware of playing it. You can set up your work, your hobbies, and your social life so that you spend as much time inside your sweet spot as possible. People who are aware of their sweet spots have the power to leave jobs that exhaust them and start new and satisfying businesses. They can hunt for homes based on the temperaments of their family members—with cozy window seats and other nooks and crannies for the introverts, and large, open living-dining spaces for the extroverts.
Understanding your sweet spot can increase your satisfaction in every arena of your life, but it goes even further than that. Evidence suggests that sweet spots can have life-or-death consequences. According to a recent study of military personnel conducted through the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, introverts function better than extroverts when sleep deprived, which is a cortically de-arousing condition (because losing sleep makes us less alert, active, and energetic). Drowsy extroverts behind the wheel should be especially careful—at least until they increase their arousal levels by chugging coffee or cranking up the radio. Conversely, introverts driving in loud, overly arousing traffic noise should work to stay focused, since the noise may impair their thinking.
Now that we know about optimal levels of stimulation, Esther's problem—winging it at the podium—also makes sense. Overarousal interferes with attention and short-term memory—key components of the ability to speak on the fly. And since public speaking is an inherently stimulating activity—even for those, like Esther, who suffer no stage fright—introverts can find their attention impaired just when they need it most. Esther could live to be a one-hundred-year-old lawyer, in other words, the most knowledgeable practitioner in her field, and she might never be comfortable speaking extemporaneously. She might find herself perpetually unable, at speech time, to draw on the massive body of data sitting inside her long-term memory.
But once Esther understands herself, she can insist to her colleagues that they give her advance notice of any speaking events. She can practice her speeches and find herself well inside her sweet spot when finally she reaches the podium. She can prepare the same way for client meetings, networking events, even casual meetings with her colleagues—any situation of heightened intensity in which her short-term memory and the ability to think on her feet might be a little more compromised than usual.
Esther managed to solve her problem from the comfort of her sweet spot. Yet sometimes stretching beyond it is our only choice. Some years ago I decided that I wanted to conquer my fear of public speaking. After much hemming and hawing, I signed up for a workshop at the Public Speaking–Social Anxiety Center of New York. I had my doubts; I felt like a garden-variety shy person, and I didn't like the pathological sound of the term "social anxiety." But the class was based on desensitization training, an approach that made sense to me. Often used as a way to conquer phobias, desensitization involves exposing yourself (and your amygdala) to the thing you're afraid of over and over again, in manageable doses. This is very different from the well-meaning but unhelpful advice that you should just jump in at the deep end and try to swim—an approach that might work, but more likely will produce panic, further encoding in your brain a cycle of dread, fear, and shame.
I found myself in good company. There were about fifteen people in the class, which was led by Charles di Cagno, a wiry, compact man with warm brown eyes and a sophisticated sense of humor. Charles is himself a veteran of exposure therapy. Public speaking anxiety doesn't keep him up at night anymore, he says, but fear is a wily enemy and he's always working to get the better of it.
