3 Easy Ways To Be More Interesting (Without Holding A Martini Or Referencing A Passport)

Standing out isn’t so hard.

“Live an interesting life. No one wants to talk to an old man with no stories to tell.”

My grandfather’s advice for me as a teenager landed well as I’ve tinkered and trekked my way through several careers, but the call to do the unexpected thing doesn’t just pay returns later in life, it is relevant here and now. Because these days — whether in the job market or the online firehose of self-promotion — we are all in an arms race for attention and respect. Being dubbed “interesting” is a form of social stickiness because it means people are looking.

Eyes = currency.

Ok, but how to make your special sunflower stand out in a field of them? For a lot of people I work with, the feeling is that they don’t have enough time, skills, or money to add the pertinent flair.

Truth is, their immobility is not for any of those reasons. It’s because of size and surety. Let me start with the latter.

There Is No Magic Bullet

Since everything is on display these days, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be both the finished product and the breath of fresh air even before we’ve started. This fear of messing up leads to a whole lot of watered-down copycats, which is a whole lot of boring.

To be interesting to the world, we first have to be interested in it. We have to be newbies. We have to be curious, vulnerable, and purposely step into discomfort — or what I called in my TEDx talk, planned grit — and see what happens on the other side.

Things might not go as hoped. That’s ok. There are no sure things on the road to adoration.

As my colleague Lisa Zigarmi likes to ask her coaching clients, “Which pain do you choose?”

Let’s face it…depth, dimensionality, and a good story don’t come on the back end of a guaranteed result. So, since uneasiness is standard fare on our quest for intrigue, we should start small.

It Won’t Be Sexy (At First)

The power of planned grit does not need to be forged by going broke, launching a company, learning a second language, dueling on the top of passenger…