Oct
12
How To Be Genuinely Interested In People
Filed Under Career, Entrepreneurship, Relationships, The Bigger Perspective |
In Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People, he listed genuine interest as one of the most important aspects of a good relationship. I can’t agree more with that statement! In all of my interactions with people and my discussions with people who I think interacts well with other people, this concept has proven itself over and over again. So why is genuine interest so important in relationships? How do we go about showing genuine interest?
Imagine having the following two conversations:
A Conversation Without Interest
“Hi Bob”
“Hey Jim”
“How was your weekend?”
“It was great! I went fishing with my son at Lake Tahoe and we spent so much time together!”
“Oh, good. Are you enjoying this show we’re doing?”
“Yeah! I love it, it’s my first show ever!”
*got a grape while Bob was talking* “Hey, good for you. The weather’s been pretty nice lately huh?”
“…”
A Conversation With Genuine Interest
“Hi Bob!”
“Hey Jim!”
“How was your weekend?”
“It was great! I went fishing with my son at Lake Tahoe and we spent so much time together!”
“That’s great! It’s really awesome that you’re spending so much time with your children.”
“Yeah, it’s not easy to find time these days, but you got to make the time for your family.”
“Oh, definiately. I have two kids and …”
What Genuine Interest Says
Which of the above two conversations would you rather be involved in if you were Bob? (If you picked the first one, umm.. you’re kindda weird! Leave me a note though …) Probably everyone has had the first conversation with someone at one point or another. On the surface, Jim is asking a lot of questions and technically “demonstrating interest”. Yet, as the receipient of his questions, Bob would feel annoyed. Why is that? Isn’t he doing a good job keeping the conversation flowing?
Well, yes, the conversation is “flowing”, but it’s about to be shut off really soon. That’s because Jim isn’t demonstrating any understanding of what Bob is saying. He is going from topic to topic, practically oblivious to Bob’s answers. In fact, if you just take out Bob’s lines, you have basically a script that Jim prepared. In that case, what’s the point of Bob even being there?
And that’s exactly the point! From the meaning of life, we know that people want to exist. When people follows a script like and you might as well not be there, it demonstrates your complete unimportance to them. It’s almost like trying to have a conversation with a tree, except the tree happens to ask a lot of random questions. You can not exist and it won’t make any difference in the conversation!
Now consider the second conversation where Jim shows genuine interest in Bob. If you take out Bob’s lines, it’s clear that part of the conversation is missing. It is clear that Jim values what Bob has to say. If Bob didn’t exist, Jim would be less of a person because he wouldn’t be able to learn the things he did. That is to say, the conversation itself provided a lot of value to Jim, and Bob, as a participant of this conversation, is very important in Jim’s mind. As a result, Bob exists more just by telling Jim what he knows!
So now that we know how important genuine interest in people is for relationships, just how exactly do we go about showing it?
How To Be Genuinely Interested
Let’s say you are talking to someone, and you find yourself being really really bored. How do you turn it around and make the conversation interesting by showing genuine interest?
The answer is - you don’t! Take a moment and think about what genuine interest means!! It’s genuine interest! That’s real interest in the person or subject matter the person is discussing. There is a set of things you are really interested in that is very tied into your feelings. This is not something you can change in a few minutes, or even over a period of months or years. You just can’t have genuine interest when you’re not interested!
The thing is, you already know how to show genuine interest. If you’re interested, it doesn’t take an article to tell you how to act. If I’m interested in baseball, I ask a lot of questions about baseball. If I’m interested in reading, I ask questions about books I’ve read, books I want to read, etc. Every single person already does this part really well!
The real key that isn’t so obvious is talking with people who you are not genuinely interested in. If you are bored with a topic or person, leave. That way, you have more time to pursue the people and conversations that you actually are interested in!
After all, what’s better - 50 routine, boring conversations, or one conversation that opens your mind and really allows you connect with someone? Plus, that one conversation takes a lot less time than 50 boring conversations!
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So what do you do if you are bored by almost everyone? What do you do if it takes 100, 200, 1000 boring conversations to find that one person you are interested in?
That’s a really good thing! It often DOES take 1000s of conversations to find a really really interesting one. However, once you’ve found a person who has insightful ideas, people like that tend to stick around forever, and that’s how solid friendships form.
Probably explains why I haven’t found any good friends in the past several years…
Oh so close, but then you stopped!
You’re right, you can’t force genuine interest, however our bodies our rigged in such a way that we can direct our attention. When we’re uninterested in a conversation, we’re focused on the wrong things, namely the things that don’t interest us. The answer is not to give up and leave. The answer is to draw focus to the things that do interest us. Sometimes these things must be unhidden. If someone is talking about sports, and you think sports are stupid, instead of walking away, ask the person why they like sports so much.
Their answer will help you understand them better, and could even change your own feelings on sports.
That I think is the essential ingredient here. Willingness to change. If you’ve already made your mind up that sports are stupid and you believe you are right, then you can’t have a genuine conversation without blatantly switching topics. But if you’re willing to discover something new, to change, you’ll find that you may relate to the other person’s love of sports. (Its complex, challenging, its pure… whatever) This will most certainly bring up your own memories of similar activities that you are passionate about, and now with something analogous to talk about, you have genuine interest.
Hi seg!
Thanks for dropping by - those are really insightful comments!! I think you’re very right that you can try to focus your attention and learn more about the subject at hand. Although, I think in that case, you have some inherent interest in getting along with that person, or maybe in learning something new.
Those definiately sound like the right thing to do if you’re open to discovering new interests (which is great when you’re not busy :-)) and meeting people!