To become interesting, be authentic

Look around you – how many interesting people do you know? How many do you work with? How many do you encounter out in the streets? The answer to all these questions is a disappointing one. If you carefully look around, you’ll notice that people are but mild to extreme copies of each other. Profession and designation decree one’s costume, restaurant favourites, TV show choices, and vacation spots. Apart from this, a desperate desire to ‘belong somewhere’ has driven people to seek security in conformity and freedom in repetition. This lack of authenticity has made our surroundings boring and our conversations uninspiring.

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In order to unburden the world of the pain of the insipid, allow the following to show you the way.

Read to know, not to show

A wise person once said, “Reading without internalising is like eating without digesting.” Serial reading is like being on a journey that’s purposeless. If you don’t internalise the psychological, mythical, tactical, fictional, and medical information that a book you read lays on your mind, you are but a child lost in the wilderness without guidance. Too much reading may make you look like an intellectual, but without real intelligence, you’ll appear imposing rather than interesting.

When you apply active thought and the tool of retrospection to reading, you will realise that reading books is not entertainment. It’s a great responsibility. And when you drink responsibly from the pages of a book, you’ll discover such hidden treasures that your mind and conversations will never run out of interesting insights.

To begin with, instead of reading a lot of books, start reading into them.

Have ‘conscious’ experiences

We live in a world that runs on labels. The most unfortunate among all labels is the labelling of experiences. Today, experiences are sold in end of winter sales, on vacation pamphlets, menus of exotic diners, and festival offers on gadgets. These experiences come with a shelf life, and after a point, their charm gets eroded and we begin to crave a new experience.

A real experience need not lie in such possessions. A true experience lives in our consciousness of having an experience. You can set the course of the day by becoming conscious of how you spend your mornings. You can make a cup of coffee memorable by ensuring that the moment doesn’t pass you by unrecognised. A conscious experience is the sign of an active mind and joyous heart. If your experiences are triggered by flashy packaging and special offers, know that your mind and heart need your immediate attention.

Travel because you must. Not because you can

One look at your FB feed and you are struck by the number of people in your friends list who are traveling like there’s no tomorrow. This incessant travel has widened the gap between people and the true meaning of travel, even though it has brought them closer to the world.

A real person is not a tourist disguised as a traveller. He or she travels to see the world through their own eyes and not those of a travel show host. Needless to say, an honest traveller is more qualified to benefit from inner revelations. The stories of an honest traveller will be exciting recollections of colourful markets and the rainbow interiors of their own inner topography. Tales recounted by a real traveller will indeed be imbued with discovering love for the self and love for another. They will be as much about food for the stomach as for the mind.

The only way to be interesting is to be authentic. In order to be authentically you, you must make yourself aware of the habits, expectations, worries, and duties that limit your experience to the label you belong to. As an entrepreneur, it’s upon your sturdy shoulders, and on the shoulders of everybody else, to make your thoughts interesting, which shall keep your actions and life interesting in return.