
Learning to be Interested rather than Interesting!

This activity itself is pretty interesting. So I just read the chapter titled: “Do This And You’ll Be Welcome Anywhere” from Dale Carnegie’s book: “How to Win Friends and Influence People”
The idea of “being Interested and not interesting” might be pretty simple to understand just by reading. But it’s actually difficult to implement this idea in our daily life activities. This concept is very important. It’s a very valuable lesson in general and also from professional point of view. as William Osler said: “the very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it” and it teaches us many things at once. To start with…
1) It teaches us to be less self-centered or self-obsessed.
What I mean to say is who doesn't like to be everyone’s favorite, to be the center of attention, to be admired by all, to think that he’s the life of the party, to be looked up to. Of course this is basic HUMAN NATURE. Almost everyone likes attention, everyone want the spotlight to be on them. And sometimes people do so much for attention. But the point is to:

The idea here is to look away from oneself, and try to be attentive towards others, try to make others feel special and not just being egotistical. It will simply make others feel that you are interested in them and in their life stories. And as a result It makes people interested in you
2) It teaches us to be a Good Listener:

One should train himself to learn when to Talk and when to Listen. When you show attention towards someone. When you make someone realize that you want to talk about them and want to listen to their life or their point of view, it shows that you are willing to listen to them patiently without starting to talk about yourself. This makes them feel that you are actually being nice to them. listening to them makes them feel special and they feel liked and understood. and this also makes them interested in you.
So basically “Being INTERESTING is actually a by-product of Being INTERESTED”. If you show interest in someone they will automatically find you interesting.

When I started working on the activity I talked to some of my friends with whom I haven’t been in contact for a while now, including a friend whom I saw a few days ago after like 10–11 years, and an old neighbor. I came to know many new things about them that I didn't know before. One of my friends told me about the research she’s doing now a days, another one told me about the subjects she had to repeat, one told me that her classes are starting again and that she’s missing home since she’s originally from Saudi Arabia, another one told me that she’s planing to go to Korea for further studies and that She’ll tell me about the universities there when she gets there. Here’s the thing. I might have never know about all this stuff if I just kept talking about myself. If I didn't let them speak they might have found a way to make me go away by saying they’re busy or something.
What I learned was that sometimes it’s good to listen to others, to make them feel special, to let them talk, and to hear to what they have to say. It makes them interested in you and automatically makes you INTERESTING. And that’s what we all want “to be interesting”.

