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.

Realizations

I was lucky that I got to have in-depth chats with a lot of people while in India, both the locals and European travellers. Coming back to cold cold Scandinavia, chats with colleagues are kept at a superficial level; making new friends is again difficult. I am grateful to have a roommate to socialize with, but at the exact same time, I wish I were living alone so I could get more quiet alone time with more personal freedom (my roommate doesn't quite get the concept that sharing accommodation with another person doesn't mean that we have to entertain/socialize with each other all the time).

I am still quite lost in terms of what to do about my future. I no longer have ambitious plans for achieving a great career. I just want a job that pays the bills and will let me living relatively comfortably. Compared to my Indian friends in South India, I am definitely fortunate in that I can travel the way I do, and my standard of living is very high. On the other hand, I am kind of jealous of their tight connections with their families and friends, then I remember that these are guys I had been interacting with. The women in India are tied to their housework and children and do not have nearly as much freedom as men. But still, I wish I had a tighter network of friends/community support. I guess that's why I went back - the servers on the beach were always happy to have a chat with the customer who's also a lone traveler.

On this trip I learned that I enjoy being over-dramatic about nothing; I act like a spoiled brat sometimes. I like excitements in life, but I act like the most boring person you'll ever meet at a party. I crave a lot of attention but I don't like to work to get it. I have a tendency to want to please other people at the expense of displeasing myself, and then I complain about being forced to do something I don't want to do. One of my Indian friends got really sick of this and told me, "If you want to do it, go do it. If you don't want to do it, don't go." It's so simple that this advice appears to tell nothing. Yet this sounded like a major wake up call for me. I realized that I cannot distinguish the times when life circumstances do not allow me to make this kind of call, versus situations where I do indeed have the freedom to follow my own desires. I have long chosen to give up my rights in choosing what I want in so many life situations in order to try to please other people, but end up failing regardless. In other words, I am often unhappy because I make myself unhappy. I let other people bully me and I get angry about it. It was a tough lesson for me to learn, but a lesson that made the expensive plane ticket worth its cost.

Still not mindfully settled

Back to Europe, just in time for the Nobel prize buzz. It was very exciting seeing newly minted Nobel laureates who have dedicated their life to science to humbly describe what they did to deserve this prize. In addition, a public discussion forum was held, with something like 50 prominent scientists, many of whom were past Nobel prize winners, to discuss about the future of genomics. It was a very exciting event. Sadly though, in a lecture hall packed with people (mostly young, bright-eyed students), I knew not a single soul in the room; not my boss, not my colleagues. I found out later that my Swedish coworkers no longer get excited about Nobel prizes. Maybe they got used to it since this happens every single year. They are also not all that enthusiastic about their (science) jobs either, which seriously dampened my uplifted spirits for the rest of the week.

I've only been working at my new job for a little over two months, but it feels like I've been at this for a long, long time. I still feel like I am completely under-qualified and shouldn't have been hired for this job. It feels like I've learned a lot over the past 2 months, but I don't learn nearly fast enough to master my tasks. The coldness and darkness gets to me. I do notice the gorgeousness of the city every single day on the way to and from work (parts of the city looks like a fantasy white Christmas land), but I am also hit hard by a severe sense of loneliness that I don't have anyone close who shares my sentiment. It feels like the people here appreciate the job, health, and human rights securities provided by their government, but they are sorely  lacking in feeling a sense of passion about anything in life.

I am also having trouble dealing with culture differences and socially awkward scientist colleagues and  roommate. I am feeling totally out of place and insecure at the moment. Too many people around me also feel insecure. We can't really read each other's intentions because our background cultures are so different. It's probably just a culture misunderstanding, but I feel like some people I have to interact with every day just seem overly polite about the most casual things and totally rude at other times. If it's one person then I can dismiss him/her off, but I feel this way about 3-4 people around me, which makes me start to doubt myself, whether I'm the one who's acting all socially inappropriate and being impolite. I'm just completely off my center and unsure about every thing I know. It's like I made a huge mistake coming here. But I don't think I will feel any better getting the same kind of job anywhere else in the world.

Hopefully I will be able to ground myself over the Christmas vacation. It's pretty sad that I feel the desperate need to take a break only 2 months into my job, but the perk for coming to work in Europe is that I get an obscene amount of vacation days. I should put them to good use and try to save myself from feeling completely lost and confused.

p.s. I signed up for a hot yoga class, because I needed to heat myself up from the persistent coldness that's with me at all times. Boy did it feel good. Will slowly find my way back to Ashtanga when I get the chance and find the right studio.

Yoga / bodywork addiction - good or bad?

I don't have a disciplined 6-day Ashtanga practice.  Last year I established a semi-regular routine where I practiced some sort of yoga (Power or Hot) about 3-4 times per week. In December, I went on vacation in Asia for 3 weeks.  I had not been on a plane ever since I took up yoga, so I thought that regular yoga practice would help me settle easier on the plane since I had become more flexible over the last year. I was completely wrong. On the plane trip back to Asia, I kept feeling this great desire to stretch. I couldn't stop squirming around in my seat, doing hamstring stretches, neck stretches, spinal twists, arm stretches, you name it. I left my seat about 3 times to the back of the plane where there was a bigger floor space and did every pose that didn't look too ridiculous, including forward folds, mini dancer's pose, mild triangle, more twists, neck circles, etc.  I felt like I had earthworms inside of me struggling to wiggle their way out.  After 3 weeks of doing almost zero yoga, my plane trip back to North America felt much more at ease. I didn't feel the need to wring out all my body parts like a towel and stretch them in every direction possible.

I didn't go back to yoga class right away and recently I'm just slowly building up my yoga practice to 2-3 times a week.  Now I feel and probably act like a squirmy earthworm again whenever I'm sitting still. Doing mild stretches just makes me want to stretch more. I blame it on the excellent Thai massages and deep tissue massages and Ashtanga adjustments I've been receiving the past year. I feel like my body is suffering from pamper withdrawal.  It's demanding more frequent deeper stretches, more yoga poses, and quality massages. It's as if I have a drug addiction. I'm worried if I keep on doing yoga, am I just going to become more and more flexible, and is my body going to scream at me if I don't wrap my leg behind my head at least once a day?  I thought committing to a more frequent yoga practice was the establishment of self-discipline, which would be a positive thing; but this feeling of yoga / bodywork withdrawal is kind of concerning.

For those who have practice yoga regularly for a few years (or decades), do you experience the same thing if you take a break from yoga for an extended period of time (say, a few weeks)? I look forward to hearing your opinions/experiences.