[miroljub]

That's something an extrovert would say :)

Strong words. I'd like to understand your choice of words here.

> Categorizing yourself

Also known as knowing yourself, your strengths, and your weaknesses.

> purposefully stunt your growth

A wild assumption that talking to everyone will magically let you grow. Some people just prefer to focus on people that matter to them.

> ... reduce opportunity for growth

By choosing to compete in an area that is your weakness, you already limited your growth potential.

> ... wasteful use of life

So refusing to talk to everyone is a wasteful use of life. Again, I find it more wasteful to talk to anyone instead of people who matter to me. Unless it's fun, of course.

[Cthulhu_]

Categorising / knowing yourself is important for sure - I think in the case of the extrovert/introvert thing, it's an important first step to helping yourself, because in my experience/anecdotally, a lot of introverts know they're different from others, yet feel insecure or anxious about it. Awareness and acceptance won't make you "not an introvert" suddenly, but it can help recover from the awkwardness, self-doubt and anxiety. Still anecdotally, me and some other people who (10, 15 years ago or so) learned about introversion found more peace with themselves, that it's OK to want to be home, and that they learn to say "no" or "you know something, I've had enough and am going home".

Learning about who you are helps you know your limits and boundaries, which means you can learn to do more within your comfort zone and how far you can stretch it, which means your comfort zone expands and you can do more. That's the kind of growth I think comes with categorising oneself.

[miroljub]

Excellent points.

Knowing who you are and what your boundaries are is important. Being an introvert is not a weakness, as much as being an extrovert is not a strength. It's only that extroverts are louder and more assertive, and that way they convinced the majority of people in between that everyone should be an extrovert.

[ajb]

There's a certain amount of evidence that getting over anxiety is harder if you try to do it by doing the thing you are most anxious about.

An alternative is to do things which allow you to become more comfortable with a reasonable degree of personal risk. Which can include things like rock climbing which you do on your own.