Basic Assumption #6: Interesting-ness

Our sixth assumption is that you are interesting. You have things that attract people to you. Maybe you knit. Maybe you follow the Eagles. Maybe you're a CNN junkie. Maybe you like the theatre. Maybe Mozart is your favorite composer. Maybe you're the great grandson of John D. Rockefeller's great nephew. Maybe you have a shrine to Lady Di. Maybe you collect plastic objects. Maybe you like wrestling, or you were a Deadhead before Jerry Garcia went and died on you. Maybe you bowl, or like to play golf, or are a curling addict. Whatever it is, you have a cluster of things that make you interesting. Out there are people who find you interesting. Not everybody. Just a lot of them.

In my case I was a Realtor. I call myself a "recovering realtor." I have a Ph. D. I know about social network analysis. I know about history. I know about entrepreneurship. I have travelled. I have read and written books, both fiction and non-fiction. I play chess. I play string quartets. I know about health care. I have gray hair and a beard. I can play squash badly, golf worse, and tennis even worser. When the subject of golf comes up, I can talk about it because I played for a lot of years coming up, but when people ask me if I play, I say, "No, I gave it up for the good of the game." People find that funny and laugh which communicates that I have a good sense of humor (but don't ask my wife). I have two African-American adopted children. I have done community organizing. I blog. And so forth. I can talk intelligently on at least 8 subjects. People find me interesting. I put myself out there and they are interested. That's great. And I'm no genius. You can too. It just takes a little confidence, willingness, thought, and time.

If you don't think you're interesting, it's not that you're not interesting, it's that you don't feel confident about yourself and you don't trust yourself in a social situation. Drew Carey said he wanted to be a comedian but he didn't know any jokes. So he went to the library and started looking up books of jokes. That worked for him, and he's no genius. But he is funny.

My advice, get interesting. Act as though you are interesting, not egotistically, but as a confident person. Inventory your background, what you like, what you don't like, what you're good at, what you're not good at. You are a real person and you are presenting yourself as you are, warts and all. Craft a story about yourself with you as the main character.

If you find that nothing interests you, you're not trying hard enough. But if you truly are not interesting to anyone, become interested in something. If nothing comes to mind, just try something. Go to a movie. Go to a sporting event. Go to a concert. Go to the library and read a book. Go volunteer for a charitable organization for a day. I don't know.

This of designed to help you realize who you really are. As I said before, if you don't know, that's okay. Nobody has everything figured out. Everybody has unresolved issues. Even me, though even I find that hard to believe. Also as I said before, the you that you present has to flow from the you that you are.

If you're still unsure, go ask your friends what they find interesting about you. Write down what they say. Ask if you can talk to them later when you're farther along. If they're your friends they will be delighted to help you. If you don't have any friends, get some.

I'm trying to improve people's connecting. Is this helpful?

Connecting is the life's blood of all my professional activities. It makes them go. It informs my entrepreneurial strategy. For my ideas on entrepreneurship go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

It makes Your Stop for Real Estate , my real estate referral business, go. See www.yourstopforrealestate.blogspot.com.

It powers my approach to writing. See www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com where you can read my mystery for free, download it for free or buy it from Amazon.com more cheaply than you can print it.

It fuels my publishing outlet, By and for Writers. See www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com where you can get a poem or a short story published.For other ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.