How To Be More Interesting

Being able to share experiences that capture and hold the attention of others can make social interactions very rewarding.

Sometimes becoming an interesting person is treated as some complicated feat to achieve – one that requires intense effort. The reality, though, is being interesting just requires a little work and self-development. Some people are already very interesting but they simply lack the ability to communicate in a way that shows this.

Regardless, if you feel that you want to become a more interesting person you might find the job is not that hard.

Ways to be more interesting

Here are some ways to become a more interesting person.

1. Be an expert communicator and storyteller

Communication is the means by which an interesting personality is shared to others. If you want to become more interesting, it’s important that you have the skills to verbally convey who you are in an effective and interesting manner. Being a skilled communicator involves being able to choose the right words at the right time and express them in the right way.

Strengthen your vocabulary and word retrieval skills to have a strong word bank available for you to communicate with. Learn effective methods to phrase things personably and in a way that’s easily understood. Practice in front of a mirror because communication is not just words but also body language, facial expression and tone of voice.

Using communication to appear more interesting will often also involve storytelling. Storytelling is a major subsection of communication. Interesting people are usually expert storytellers who can share experiences passionately.

Storytelling skills shouldn’t be understated. Sometimes a boring story is told so well with so much emotion that it actually becomes interesting. Other times an interesting story could be told poorly and end up being a missed opportunity. With storytelling it’s important to make sure you tell the truth. A lie could end up just getting caught and have you telling a poor quality story.

What you can do is add some emotion to stories to make them more interesting. Tell the story passionately and make your emotions reflective of what the story needs. I.e. a sad story should be told in a sad way and a happy story in a happy way. Add in some personal opinions or feelings you experienced in the moment to add some style. For example, a statement like “it felt like my heart was gonna drop” in a story can make it seem more thrilling.

2. Live an interesting life

It might be a little hard to be an interesting person if you don’t live an interesting life and gain interesting experiences. If you want to be more interesting it’s important to live an exciting life. This absolutely does not mean doing anything risky or dangerous. No! It also doesn’t have to mean spending absurd amounts of money.

You can live an interesting life by taking on a new and fascinating hobby or by staycationing. You can go on a picnic or have a gathering with friends and family at your house. Some seemingly simple adventures can go a long way when it comes to building experiences. You can use these experiences for learning new things or picking up on some new stories to share.

3. Read

For starters, reading is a great way to learn skillful communication. Imagine reading material and picking up on the nuances of the storytelling within the content. You can learn storytelling techniques, words and phrases.

Second, reading is a great way to learn new things. Knowledge is a major foundation for conversation and (by default) being a more interesting person. Being able to navigate conversations about different topics as well as having a lot of knowledge to share with others can make you more interesting. You need not be an expert in every single field, just having some knowledge about a few subjects here and there can be helpful.

4. Ask questions

Asking other people questions may seem like an unrelated point when it comes to being more interesting but it’s actually very important. Asking questions is itself a way to show interest in others and build a connection with them.

People tend to like it when others take interest in what they have to say. Capitalize on this by asking questions and showing interest. This itself can be a strategy for becoming more interesting yourself.

You can also use questions to your advantage by leveraging them as an opportunity to learn what interests others have. This way you know where to focus the interaction in order to keep them engaged. It also minimizes the risk of moving the conversation towards topics they have little or no excitement towards.

But asking questions isn’t just about learning about others, it’s also a chance to learn from them. I think that any person may have information that is of great value to me and I can learn it by interacting with them. The knowledge you acquire from asking questions could go towards making you a more informed and interesting person.

5. Build an interesting personality

When trying to be more interesting, it’s important to pay attention to how you carry yourself overall. Do you have an interesting personality? Do you have an interesting tone and inflection of voice, interesting body language and an interesting choice of words? Your personality is composed of many different features that all showcase who you are. The more interesting your personality is, the more interesting you become.

There’s really a lot that can be said about something as complicated and multifaceted as personality. To make matters more complex, what makes a personality interesting to one person may not make it interesting to another. That’s important to consider before making personality changes. I’ve been in situations myself where people didn’t like me very much and others seemed to gravitate to my character. This is really just the way it is with personality.

What you can do to help your personality is try to be as natural as you can. If you have something about your personality that you feel is actively bad for you as well as bad for how others perceive you, it’s best to address it. But it’s important not to ever change anything about you that is not harmful simply because others don’t like it. In fact, many people who are likable despite flaws usually find a way to turn shortcomings into positives.

Let me put it in different words. Say you generally have an angry personality. The reality is that’s usually not liked by most people – many may even avoid you because of this. Moreover, it’s not healthy to be overly angry. That’s a personality feature you can and should change. On the other hand, if you’re a little quirky in conversation once in a while and people don’t like that, that’s just too bad for them. It’s really about picking what should be improved vs. what really doesn’t need to be.