Having moved to a new place, Buenos Aires, I am finding a new hobby in the art of making relationships. I would say that there are two parts to meeting someone and making a relationship. Part 1 I call Saying Hello, and part 2 I call Being Interesting.
Part 1: Saying Hello
When you approach someone its natural to feel a little anxiety, that never goes away, but what can change, is how you relate to that uncomfortable feeling. With time you can learn to move that uncomfortable sensation into the background of your awareness, this takes time, perseverance, and just getting out there, and doing it. I am sure entire books have been written about this, but this is not the topic of this blog. If you have a rough idea of what you want to talk about before you say hello, that makes saying hello less difficult, which leads me to part 2 of building a new relationship, the focus of this article, being interesting.
Part 2: Being Interesting
Contrary to the popular belief that some people are interesting and some are not; I posit the following: "You can learn to be interesting", and "its not its not hard." Actually all you have to do is read this post.
If you say something interesting someone will say "that's interesting". If you say four or five interesting things they will say, "you are interesting." I know its difficult out in the field or bar to make up interesting things on the fly, so lets make it simple just pick out 4 of these preselected interesting items (courtesy of snapple) that you find honestly interesting. Fall genuinely into interest with one of the items coming up and share it with someone else. If you do this I guarantee people will feel that you are an interesting person and you will have a fun time assuming the other people are interesting and you want them to be interested in you.
For instance I find fun fact 94 very interesting, Lizards communicate by doing push-ups. I was interested enough upon hearing this that i was moved to spend 15minutes on you tube where I found this amoungst other inspirations.
I could follow up this interesting factoid with the obvious what do you think what are they communicating? How do lizards make you feel? What can you communicate through pushups? Then of course i could go into a hey lets have a lizard talk if i wanted to get myself into a push up competition / interpretive dace scenarion.
As you are reading think about when you could see throwing in these factoids, what kind of scenarios could you see these facts as bridges into? Please post your imaginations in comments, I genuinely want to know.
Snappel On Being Interesting:
(when you buy snappel you may have noticed some facts under the bottle cap, there are a total of 100 official fun facts http://chewables.org/samantha/snapple.html). I have edited them down to the funnies of fun facts.
#1 A Goldfish's attention span is three seconds
#2 Animals that lay eggs don't have belly buttons
#3 Beavers can hold their breathe for 45 minutes under water
#4 Slugs have 4 noses
#9 The average speed of a housefly is 4.5 mph
#10 Mosquitoes are attracted to people who just ate bananas
#11 Flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp
#15 All porcupines float in water
#16 The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1
#17 A hummingbird weighs less then a penny
#18 A jellyfish is 95% water
#19 Children grow faster in the spring
#20 Broccoli is the only vegetable that is also a flower
#21 Almonds are part of the peach family
#22 Alaska has the highest percentage of people who walk to work
#23 The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile national monument
#25 The only food that does not spoil is honey
#26 The Hawaiian alphabet only has 12 letters
#27 A ball of glass will bounce higher then a ball of rubber
#28 Chewing gum while peeling onions will prevent you from crying
#29 On average a human will spend up to 2 weeks kissing in his/her lifetime
#31 The average human will eat an average of 8 spiders while sleeping
#32 There is one million ants to every human in the world
#33 Termites eat through wood two times faster when listening to rock music!
#34 If you keep a goldfish in a dark room it will eventually turn white
#35 Elephants only sleep 2 hours a day
#36 A duck's quack doesn't echo
#40 It is possible to lead a cow up stairs but not down
#42 Frogs cannot swallow with their eyes open
#44 The bullfrog is the only animal that never sleeps
#48 Cats can hear ultrasound
#53 The average women consumes 6lbs of lipstick in her lifetime
#54 The average smell weighs 760 nanograms *
#55 A human brain weighs about 3lbs
#59 Brain waves can be used to power an electric train
#60 The tongue is the fastest healing part of the body
#61 Pigs get sunburn
#63 The average human produces 10,000 gallons of saliva in a lifetime
#64 Strawberries contain more Vitamin C then oranges
#65 A one-day weather forecast requires about 10 billion math calculations
#66 Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza a day
#67 There are 18 different animal shapes in the Animal cracker zoo
#68 The longest one syllable word is "screeched"
#72 The average person uses 150 gallons of water per day for personal use
#73 The average person spends 2 weeks of its life waiting for a traffic light to change
#75 The average person makes 1,140 phone calls per year
#76 The average person spends 2 years on the phone in his/her lifetime
#77 No piece of paper can be folded more then 7 times
#80 About 18% of Animal owners share their bed with their pet
#84 Oysters can change genders back and forth
#85 The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows
#87 A mile on the ocean and a mile on land are not the same distance
#92 Fish can drown
#94 Lizards communicate by doing push-ups
#98 When the moon is directly over you, you weigh less
#99 You burn 20 calories an hour chewing gum
#100 In a year, the average person walks 4 miles making their bed.
Warning! Premeditated social engineering is powerful, and power corrupts...
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