Interested Vs Interesting: Win Friends

Zahid Malik
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read
The more interested a person is, the more interesting he or she will become

Interested shows that you are humble, you want to know the story of others, you actually want to know them. Whereas Interesting is somewhat, you like many things but you don’t want to involve or don’t want to be the part of those things.

I was a person like just interesting, expecting others to be interested in me, resulting in a limited amount of friends, but then eventually I came to read a book of “Dale Carnegie” titled “How to win friends and Influence people”, one of the best book I read, In his book he wrote that if you want others to like you, if you want to develop real friendship keep this principle in your mind all the time: “Be genuinely interested in others”, to be genuinely interested in others is one of the most important quality one must have to became a best person or to develop the best friendship.If we want to make friends, let’s put ourselves out to do things for other people — things that require time, energy, unselfishness and thoughtfulness.

People are not interested in me, you or anyone else, they are interested in themselves. You have to be interested in people if you want to be successful. This was actually the secret behind the success of “Theodore Roosevelt”, 26th president of US, even his servants love him. James E. Amos, his servant wrote a book on him, He related there that whenever Roosevelt went by out cottage we would hear him calling 0ooo Amee! or Ooo James!, It was just his friendly greetings. How could employee keeps from liking a man like that.

All of us, be a worker in a factory, clerk in an office or even King upon his throne — all of us like people who admire us. Take the
German Kaiser, for example. At the close of world war 1 he was the most despised man on the earth, even his nation hated him and million of people are there to tour him in pieces. He fled to Holland to save his life. Apart from this there was a little boy who wrote a letter to Kaiser that no matter what people thing about you, I love Kaiser as our Emperor. The Kaiser was deeply touched with the little boy and called him for a lunch with him. The little boy came- so did his mother and Kaiser married her. So a small words of a little boy made him the prince :).

After reading this book I decided to apply this rule in my daily life, believe me the results were awesome. I decided to took interest in other people and start asking question about themselves, trying to know their story, What I got from my experience is, People who ones seem boring to me, when I try to know them, they are extremely jolly people having a great stories to share with me. By taking interest in others people, they start sharing their experience, their life stories and than you can easily know their personality, attitude and their behavior, in this way one could maintain a long term friendship. Seriously I made 3 new friends in just 24 hours by applying these rule.

Lastly a quote from Alfred Adler ‘s, a famous psychologist, book entitled “What life should mean to you”, It is the person, who is not interested in his fellow men, has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures come.

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