How To Be Interesting

Simple Ways to Increase Your Personal Appeal

David Gillespie, Mark Warren

• Publisher: Capstone
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857084040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

An irreverent, colourful guide to becoming more interesting and successful by gaining self-knowledge and building your confidence and charisma

In addition to having scads of acting and writing credits between them, actor David Gillespie and writer Mark Warren are co-founders of a unique organization. Called The Speechworks, it is a group of performance-based professionals who draw upon their professional expertise to teach clients—including businesspeople, sports stars, politicians, actors, writers and celebrities—the skills they need to communicate more effectively, to impress others with charisma and find greater success at work and in life. In this wildly funny, irreverent and practical guide they share their proprietary formula for achieving a heightened and sustained level of interestingness.

• Practical tips for achieving everyday interestingness, along with personality tests to aid self-knowledge
• Tons of fascinating quotes, outrageous humour and vibrant visual material—including mindmaps and infographics
• Everything you need to increase your personal appeal, engage more effectively with those around you and lead a more enjoyable and fulfilling life
• The Speechworks clients include Fortune 500 & FTSE 100 companies, professional bodies, start-ups and SMEs, charities, politicians and sports personalities

Why do you want to be
interesting?

Not a daft question. It has to be one of the basic human needs. In order
to survive on a daily basis you have to have the attention of someone
and on some days a lot of people. This is purely functional but the need
seems to go beyond that. Why do you want people to take an interest in
you? Do you actually need them to? We think so.

We crave the company of other people for security, protection,
companionship, comfort, entertainment and sex. It stops us going
mad. We want to be interesting to others for many reasons. Socially it’s
important for us to be interesting in order not to be left out and ignored.
Domestically we want to be interesting for some of the more basic
reasons of love and comfort. In business we want to be interesting to our
colleagues and be part of the team, to our clients so they continue doing
business with us and to our superiors so we are not overlooked when it
comes to promotion and pay rises. Being of interest for most people is a
primary requirement for wellbeing.

Being talked about can also make us feel interesting.

“There’s only one thing worse than being talked about and that’s not being
talked about.”

Oscar Wilde

When you have the interest of others it means that you have a good chance of
being stimulated in one way or another.

1

So what do we mean by interesting?

It is an interesting word, interesting. What does it actually mean?

The Oxford English
Dictionary definition:

1) that concerns, touches, affects
or is of importance, important.

2) adapted to excite interest,
having the qualities that rouse
curiosity, engage attention, or
appeal to the emotion of interest.

3) to be in an interesting
condition – pregnant.

Causing curiosity;
holding the
attention

Interested

Concerned, affected,
having an interest,
concern, or share in
something.

Interest

n. attention,
attentiveness, care,
commitment, concern,
curiosity, involvement,
notice, regard. Scrutiny.

v. absorb, appeal to, arouse the
curiosity of, attract, capture
the imagination, captivate,
concern, divert, enchant,
engage, engross, entertain,
enthral, fascinate, intrigue,
involve, occupy, preoccupy,
stimulate, turn on, excite.

Maybe pinning down what interesting is, isn’t as easy and
straightforward as we thought …

2

(interest someone in) persuade someone to undertake or acquire (something)

The state of
wanting to know
or learn about something or
someone.

Interesting – absorbing, appealing, attracting, challenging, compelling, curious, engaging, engrossing, entertaining, fascinating, gripping, riveting, imaginative, intriguing, inviting, original, piquant.

Interesting in 11 other languages

Interesa – Esperanto
Interessante – Afrikaans
Ddiddorol – Welsh
Ilginç – Turkish
Interesgarria – Basque
Interessanti – Maltese
Enteresan – Haitian Creole
Kuvutia – Swahili
– Hebrew
Suimiúil – Irish
Daj – Klingon

It seems that “interesting” and
“being” are very closely linked…

The Latin verb, interesse = “to concern, to be of
importance”
inter + esse = “between” +
“be”
Esse = “to be”

English word
essence or the being
of something.

3

4

What is the opposite of
interesting?

The opposite of interesting? Well, that would be boring. So what is a
bore? The old adage would have us believe that “a bore is someone who
talks about themselves when you want to talk about yourself”.

Do you remember the last time you spoke to someone who bored you?
Or worse still, the last time you spoke to someone and noticed him or
her glazing over? How did it make you feel? Not good. We all want to be
appreciated and th...