Balancing reward-based vs. threat-based tendencies

This survey comes from the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

You a reward-oriented person if the following statements are mostly true for you:
1. When I get something I want, I feel excited and energized.
2. When I want something, I usually go all out to get it.
3. When I see an opportunity for something I like, I get excited right away.
4. When good things happen to me, it affects me strongly.
5. I have very few fears compared to my friends.

You are a threat-oriented person if you agree with the following statements:
1. Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit.
2. I feel pretty worried or upset when I think or know somebody is angry at me.
3. If I think something unpleasant is going to happen, I usually get pretty "worked up".
4. I feel worried when I think I have done poorly at something important.
5. I worry about making mistakes.

All 5 statements for threat-oriented traits apply to me. I'm so worried about making mistakes or something bad will happen to me that I don't always dare to pursue something I want. I monitor myself so carefully that I don't dare to try anything that I haven't tried before or that anybody warns me not to do (regardless of how irrelevant the warning is to me).

My personality does not jive well with my upbringing - I went into science because my mother bought me a lot of books on science - biographies of famous scientists such as Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Marie Curie (although she was hoping I would become a medical doctor). I dare to travel to random countries because my mother used to - without explaining to me or reassuring me beforehand - just place me in random summer camps that seemed just as foreign and scary to me as say, Somalia and Afghanistan (although in her mind there's nothing to be fearful about because she actually knew what the camps entailed about and who organized the events. She didn't feel the need to explain anything to me). I was told that I shouldn't touch business and commerce because of my personality, so I actually believed that I am not capable enough to ever try to understand how the business world works. If I weren't pushed to try out an activity (and I got placed into many extracurricular activities without being notified beforehand), I didn't gather up enough courage to sign up for something I really wanted to learn myself because I got the impression that I could not trust my own judgement to decide anything for myself.

It just seems really unfortunate to go through life being warned the whole time that the world is a dangerous place full of people that cannot be trusted, when I already set up so many stops and checks for myself as long as I can remember. What I really needed all along were reassurance, trust, support, and encouragement. I did NOT need more restrictions, rules, notions that led me to believe I am not outgoing enough to try x, or that it's too dangerous for me to attempt y. Now that I look back, I've been raised with contradictory values - I gain critical thinking skills from my education, but I'm only supposed to be as good as the direct knowledge transmitted to me from my classes (ie. my field of major) and I should never step out of line to try something else. I think this has been the source of my inner struggles.

It's a challenge for me right now to feel comfortable in a foreign country, to make new friends and to feel competent at my new position. I need to learn to shift from feeling really nervous and "worked up" about my life to feeling "excited and energized" about the opportunity I've been given. Sounds easy to say, "Just make that mental shift! Right now!" but in reality it hasn't been easy at all. I will keep working on it though.

Thanks for asking, but I don't feel like talking about my yoga practice with you right now

I never ever thought I'd get to this point, where I don't want to discuss yoga with people (specifically non-yoga practitioners. To my yogi friends: you guys don't apply to this category).

From the amount of yoga videos and yoga articles that I compulsively post on Facebook, most of my friends whom I haven't seen for a long time get the hint that I am slightly obsessed about yoga. When I first started yoga, I couldn't stop talking about it, whether people wanted to hear about yoga or not. Like a zealous religious fanatic, I would shove complementary yoga passes into people's hands and try to get them to come to a yoga class with me. Over time, I learned that most people have strong mental resistance against trying something new. Some people didn't enjoy physical education in high school and concluded that all physical activities suck, period. Others seemed to think that I would be so inconsiderate that I would take them to an advanced yoga class when they are not that active in their day-to-day lives (or maybe they think all yoga movements are too advanced for them). So I stopped mentioning yoga in social situations. However, whenever I meet up with friends, especially the ones who are on Facebook but whom I haven't seen for awhile, they would always casually ask me about my yoga progress. I get questions like "How's it going with you? Are you still doing yoga? (It's only been 2 years) Wow, you must be a yoga master by now"; "So which new poses are you learning lately?";  "Are you going to become a yoga teacher soon? That's not a bad profession, eh? Probably make a good side income."

For awhile I got so tongue-tied that I couldn't even answer them. I blame too many years of grad school for worsening my social skills (which were not so good to begin with). As a total nerd I'm pretty clueless about what people want to hear, since they obviously don't care for yoga. I do admit also I got a little offended by the implications of these questions (which I can't blame them because they honestly don't know much about yoga besides what mainstream media portrays it to be, but it still affected my ability to think straight), so I usually just answered, "Yep, still do it sometimes", and left it at that. I would get a somewhat stunned look and an awkward pause, before people clumsily find another topic to talk about. There's a good chance I have offended them for shutting down an innocently casual conversation-starter like that.

Upon some serious pondering (the only thing that a nerd like me knows to do), I believe that people want me to casually talk about my yoga progress, with a sense of humor, and maybe some gossip, as if I were reporting about my progress in, say, salsa dancing or figure skating: "Oh it's going great! I fell on my butt soooooo many times but I just mastered pirouetting on one foot last week!" "I'm so much more flexible now that before I started yoga. I used to not be able to touch my toes, and now I can almost do a split!" "OMG, there's this one yoga teacher who is super hot! Men who practice yoga have such nice bodies! I go to his class all the time, and he's the only teacher who can get me into a handstand! You should come try his class with me sometime! He has the most sexy voice ever and you'll feel so relaxed in this class!" "My butt is so much perkier now after all the yoga I've been doing. It's super awesome. The yoga inversions help reverse the aging effects that gravity has on a woman's skin and boobs! I feel younger than ever before!"

The above examples have nothing to do with my personal practice, by the way (or maybe some of them do, but I don't really talk like that in real life), but I think these are the type of things people who don't do yoga expect to hear. I'm not sure if they want me to sell yoga to them as a miracle panacea, make self-deprecating jokes about yoga, brag about how many poses I've mastered, demo some fancy asana on the spot, make claims about how close I am in becoming a teacher, or what. Fellow yogis and yoginis, please share your experience with me on this matter.

I guess I personally take (Ashtanga) yoga sort of seriously, even though I haven't been practicing it regularly. I'm not saying it has to be so serious; I'm just in a weird mental state at this moment and just don't feel like going along with what people want by feeding them superficial comments about yoga (I'm 99.5% certain they prefer to hear something short, funny and snazzy rather than how I'm trying to burn through my samskaras with metaphoric/energetic fire generated by breath and postures). Don't get me wrong; I'm not going through post-graduation depression. I'm feeling a sense of peace that I haven't felt for years, as I used to always have my thesis project in the back of my mind at all times. I don't really feel like defending myself or pretend agree with people when they make uncreative assumptions about my vacation plans, career plans, or my yoga practice. I'm aware my social behaviour makes me seem like a total snob, and I'm pissing off some of my friends. Let me be clear: I don't think I'm above other people. I just feel like I need to step off the hamster's wheel of social expectations (how to talk; how to behave; how to proceed through life in a conventional way) for a bit and just be. I'm pretty sure it's only a temporary phase, some sort of cognitive fatigue (societal expectation fatigue?) maybe. Once the phase passes I'll happily get back on the hamster treadmill and conform to social norms again.

We are all conditioned beings

Nobel wrote about the observation of a roomful of people looking like they do not want to be there at Chuck E Cheese. That's somewhat understandable since not many adults would enjoy being in a roomful of screaming 3-6 year olds. However, I remember going to a gorgeous vacation spot in Mexico called Tulum, which is a Mayan ruins situated right next to a gorgeous turquoise beach - how cool is that? I was a bit bummed when I saw buses after buses of tourists being unloaded at the spot, but it's understandable that tourists would want to see this amazing sight. What shocked me was the expression on these people's faces:  a large percentage of these tourists walked around the ruins looking like zombies, with a bored-looking, I'd-rather-be-somewhere-else face. It made me wonder: what, if anything in the world, will keep these zombies happy for a prolonged period of time?

I'm guessing perhaps the zombies were tired from the heat and mosquitos and too much walking and being shipped around between different sight-seeing spots. Perhaps they wanted to skip the ruins and just hit the beach (one must walk through the ruins to get to the beach). Perhaps they'd rather be back at their fancy air-conditioned hotel and use the swimming pool instead.

I have so many thoughts about this observation. Is it true that not all humans enjoy nature to the same extent? I suspect the answer is yes. I like fancy hotels too, but the sight of a pristine beach or exotic rock formation widens my eyes more. It's the other way around for some people; they get more wide-eye excited about a 5-start hotel room than any kind of nature's wonders.

So that begs the question: if these people know that they prefer the comforts of home or fancy hotel rooms, why did they sign up for this sightseeing tour? This, I think, points out a common issue in society. I'm thinking that people get stressed out at work, so they sign up for a vacation package, without reading the details of the tours carefully. Or, Grandpa's paying for the trip, so the whole family should go, knowing that the kids would hate it. Or, when in Mexico, one should go to all the must-sees, even though one cares neither for Mayan ruins nor for beaches in general. Or, how should one use up the vacation days? Everyone else seems to do these Mexico all-inclusive trips, because it's cheap, and the photos would make everyone back home jealous, so one should follow the crowd and be sheep.

Are we so conditioned that we go through our lives signing up for this and that trip/activity/process without really understanding our own needs and wants? What's the solution to this? Should we wake up, stop taking jobs we don't want, stop bringing kids to birthday parties at places we hate, and stop signing up for vacations we know we won't enjoy? Or, should we somehow learn to be more appreciative of the present moment, no matter what situation we're in? I wouldn't know how to make myself enjoy the present at the Chuck E Cheese party described by Nobel; maybe bring ear plugs, or find ways to laugh at those who are miserable, or suck it up and hypnotize myself into enjoying the situation? (Sounds like what my family tells me I should do at family gatherings).

By the way, I was so breath-taken by the pristine beach, I wished I could meld with the nature (yah I know I'm weird). I wanted to drink the sight with my eyes. I wanted to breath the crystalline turquoise essence into my body.  My legs looked like they made 100 mosquitoes rub their bellies with happiness but I took no notice of it until I got back to the hotel that afternoon.  Actually, when I do yoga, I also have a similar feeling that I'm melding with something bigger.  Is this how it feels when one is truly present? The beauty of nature and the rhythmic breathing with my body movement both seem to have the ability to draw me out of my thinking mind into the present.  Either one is good enough; it's not necessary to have both (ie. I do not need to be practicing yoga at a fancy yoga retreat in order to have an ecstatic experience).