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It's easy to be boring. It's harder to be interesting. Want to learn how? Jessica Hagy offers the following advice, excerpted from her book "How To Be Interesting."
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Go exploring.
Explore ideas, places, and opinions.
The inside of the echo chamber is where all the boring people hang out.
To embarrassment. To ridicule. To risk. To strange events and conditions. To wild ideas. To things that make you cringe. To strange vistas and new sounds. Trust me. It'll be fun.
Wake up before the alarm. Steal moments between stoplights to compose poems. Sneak off to a moonlit spot when you'd otherwise be watching something on a glowing screen. Work at night and play in the daytime. Carve out hours for the dreams you've been putting off. There's always time to explore. You get to decide when it is.
How To Be Interesting/Workman Publishing
Keep asking why.
Parents hate it when kids do it.
Why? Because.
Why? Because.
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Why? Because.
And on and on. But try it. You'll be surprised at how quickly a simple Why? can turn into a fascinating Because.
Do not wait until tomorrow. Say, do, or make it now. Go where you need to be. Do not wait to be invited places. Host your own parties. Do not sit by the phone. Pick it up. Spread the word. Press the buttons. Buy the tickets and enjoy the show.
How To Be Interesting/Workman Publishing
State the obvious.
What's known to you is often a mystery to others. Your old fact is someone else's new lesson. Your simple task is someone else's impossible chore. Your mind is full of treasures that no one else has seen. Pass them on. An idea shared is not diminished: It's multiplied.
Dance. Talk. Build. Network. Play. Help. Create. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you're doing it. Sitting around and complaining is not an acceptable form of "something," in case you were wondering.
Join a club. Take a class. Volunteer. Have a party. Take a meeting. What we do shapes who we are. Be someone who's been there, done that, and wants to do new things tomorrow.
Start with a wonder. How does this work? What makes that happen? Then poke. Take things apart and put them back together. Push buttons. Change settings. See how the pieces fit. See what powers the engine. See how interesting it all is.
