So I used to want to be liked. Hell, I still do. We all do. We want people to think we’re cool, interesting, and fun. We want attention. Some want more personalized attention, some want everyone to look at and listen to them.
Over the years I’ve become an expert at trying to become interesting. I thought that’s how people would come to like me. And you know what?
It worked.
Interesting obviously means different things to different people, but I held this romanticized notion in my head that if I do all these random, “interesting” things, for some reason there would be more love from the world for me at the end of the tunnel. And there was.
I’ve cooled off a little on this front. But it’s something that I have to work through and get over – because it doesn’t lead to peace.
But it can be a hell of a lot of fun in the meantime.
1) “Are you having a good day?”
“Whatsup?” It’s the most common question/non-question. It’s terrible. It doesn’t start conversations, nor does it show that you care. Nor do people have to think. It’s a loser. No.
You have to break people out of their habitual responses. “Are you having a good day?” requires a yes or no response, which can prompt a “Why?” “Why?” is the secret to getting closer with ANYONE.
Other questions that break people out of habitual patterns:
“Anything good happen/happening today?”
Judgment based on emotion* “You seem ____, what’s going on/up?”
Just not “Whatsup?”
2) Storytelling hacks
Steve Jobs once remarked that those who truly have power in the world are storytellers. Then he started Pixar.
Storytelling is probably the social skill that takes your personality, straps it to a rocket, and then blasts you to being the life of any social situation. And it’s really simple. From bars to friends to dates to interviews, learning how to tell stories will change your life.
98% of people’s stories can be improved with character development. I’m talking recognizing who is important in your story and building up their personalities. How were they feeling? What are they like? Act them out. Shamelessly. Be loud. Be soft. Use gestures. Act and describe characters.
3) Want to be funnier? Watch Standup Comedy
You will start talking, gesturing, and even thinking like your favorite standup comedians. I personally went from being an incredibly shy person to becoming a sort of class clown. In two months. Seriously, I watched comedy everyday and it wore off on me.
This is sort of like the “you are the five people you spend the most time with rule”, except you DECIDE who you spend time with. It’s genius, trust me.
4) Set cues to smile through your day
Arriving to work? Make sure you smile when you walk in. Visualize walking through the door and grinning. Lunch finished? Same thing. This will not only make you happier, but will make everyone around you happier, which will make you happier, and will start a perpetual cycle of positive emotions that will waterfall over your smiling face everyday.
You should do this at least three times a day.
5) Give yourself 1/3 of the time to finish most tasks
You are far more capable than you give yourself credit. For most things (not all – but most – some work should really take time but I leave that to your discretion), imagine you only had a third of the time to finish it. Make that time real. Really feel it. You will.
Watch your creativity, insightfulness, and concentration triple within minutes.
Because you have to get this done, right? If you don’t make the feeling real, then you won’t reap the benefits from this no matter how hard you try. So it’s important to really feel, really believe, and really seed the idea in your head that you must finish in a third of the time. Creatives need deadlines. It makes them more creative.
6) Meditate – in everything you do
Meditate, yes. But be lost in the things you do. And I literally mean take pleasure in washing dishes. Focus on the thing you are doing. Don’t think about what you have to do or how far away you are.
This allows you to be fearless.
This might sound stupid, but yesterday I did 1,000 pushups for the 20X your potential challenge (link). I meditated for almost the entire thing. I didn’t do 1,000 pushups. I did 50X 20 pushups. And it worked. I did 1,000. It didn’t seem crazy when it was happening, only looking back.
Do you think LeBron James thinks in the act of throwing down a dunk “damn, it’s crazy that I can jump this high, I wonder if I’ll be on ESPN tonight”? No! He thinks it seconds after. Not while doing.
Meditate in everything. Take leaps. Watch what you can do.
7) Order spicier food
Or food that you don’t recognize the name of.
8) Walk, bike, or hitchhike wherever you need to go
I just traveled like this around France by myself for the holidays. It was amazing.
It’s much more creative. It’s much healthier. Better for the planet. Better for your social skills. Your world experience. And in the case of hitchhiking, it is simply more fun, you meet more interesting people, and have great fodder for those stories you are going to tell.
9) “Word association”
Run out of things to say? Awkward conversation. Never. Again.
Person talking about their trip to Costa Rica? What do you think of when you think of Costa Rica? Beach? Tan? Surfing? Beer? Palm trees? That one time your friend went and something crazy happened?
The more you do this, the better you’ll get at it. You’ll be able to talk and think of witty things to say on the spot for any situation. It takes practice in the beginning, but is a useful way to never have an awkward silence again.
10) Be interested in history
Look. Where we came from, why we’re here, what our ancestors did, all influence who we are. It’s like learning more about yourself. You weren’t teleported to this earth from a spaceship. You literally sprouted from it. We all did, just like everything else.
The best cure for apathy, depression, etc. is curiosity. You will have a much richer life when you learn the context of where things came from and how.
In fact, the most important thing for learning anything is to be interested. This (by experience) is something you can force, but at the same time it helps to follow things you already like. Learn the history. Who inspired Jimi Hendrix? I don’t know. But if you like the guitar, you sure as hell should.
11) Go into nature
Along the lines of the “you’re human so be interested in human things” track, most of the civilized world has forgotten about nature. Yeah, we see pictures on buzzfeed or whatever, but it’s not the same.
Go camping and don’t bring a phone. Go swimming in a lake. Jump off a waterfall. There are parts of our mind and body that have long been inactive because they have become desensitized.
Go climb a mountain.
12) Do an activity (preferably weird – weightlifting doesn’t count)
And like it. Or learn to like it.
Yoga. Muay Thai. Salsa dancing. Cooking classes. Body weight exercise. Whatever. Experiment if you don’t know what you like.
I have done/do all of the above and have met a ton of people as well as had a richer life experience and have seen myself do things I never thought I would or could do.
13) Get better at sex
14) Beginner’s Mind
Forget about being interesting. Most of that is done by being interested – in nature, history, capoeira, improving your Spanish, and having better, deeper conversations with people. Be interested.
Meditating helps with this a lot (Beginner’s Mind is a Zen concept), but fundamentally it’s easy to apply. Try not to fall into your conditioned way of seeing the world that thinks, “work at 9, lunch at 12, I have to go to the gym at 6, and then do it all over again.” No. With the meditating in everything you do technique (number six), see what’s in front of you. If you can do this, and can do it well, you won’t have a want for interest. Everything will be interesting.
And to other people, you will be too. But to you, that won’t matter.
