How To Make Yourself More Interesting To Others Today
- Ben Bylsma
- Aug 4, 2023
- 2 min read
It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about “I. -Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
If you want to be seen as more interesting today. Its simple. Ask three questions about someone else’s life before you talk about yourself in your next conversation today.
But not every question we could ask is of equal value toward a goal of being perceived as more interesting.
Trying to figure out where to start?
Vanessa Van Edwards has this brilliantly insightful and I would add entertaining, TED X talk on how our behaviors are contagious.
In her TED X talk Vanessa suggests that the three most overused questions we use to get to know someone are also the least impactful questions.
They are:
“So what do you do?”
“How are you?”
“Do you live around here?”
The reason these questions are not very impactful is because they do not produce a positive psychological effect.
They do not produce Dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that we produce when we feel pleasure. The same one that we produce when someone engages us or something we post on social networks in a positive way.
Van Edwards suggests that three better questions would be:
“What has been good this week?”
“Are you working on anything fun or interesting lately?”
“Are you planning any fun vacations?”
These are better questions because they create excitement because these subjects are generally more pleasing to us rather than things that are statistically not pleasing to most people: work, our emotions and where we grew up.
But why would you want to be perceived as more interesting to others?
Being perceived as more interesting makes you more memorable. People who are more memorable (in a positive way) find it easier to get buy in to their ideas.
A lot of our jobs as leaders is to get buy in from those we are leading. It's a lot easier to get buy in when people feel some kind of positive feelings toward us than it is when they do not.
May you be the most interesting person at work today!
