Benjamin was born and raised in Los Angeles as the only introvert in a family of five. Like all introvert children, he sought to feel safe in an extroverted world by adopting a “winning recipe.” At age ten, he decided he would be methodical in everything he did – one of the thousands of possible recipes that quiet people choose. This formula brought him honors at Stanford and an MBA from Harvard, but after he served as a US Army intelligence officer in Vietnam, the recipe enticed him into unsatisfying careers as an entrepreneur and an executive. Those roles led ultimately to a divorce in his thirties, a bankruptcy in his forties, and two job losses in a row in his sixties. At last he saw that what all these failures had in common was the recipe. He taught himself to detach from it, openly embraced his intro-version, and thereafter worked quietly as a writer and researcher. In so doing, he finally attained the success and safety that he was never able to achieve through a winning recipe. Ben and his wife Sandy of forty years live in the Tampa Bay area. They have four children and ten grandchildren.