Getting Interested in Your Own Life

Happiness studies recommend that to be fulfilled you need to have strong relationships. Building relationships is quite a challenge, though. We've all been through the awkward, "I can't wait to get out of here," times when you wish you could use disappear and promise yourself you will never, ever, ever, go to a party, volunteer event, or get-together again.

Being the person who is alone with one to talk with isn't fun. It's also not fun when the conversations are predictable and routine. Emotionally sensitive people would rather stay home and read a book.

A big part of finding friends is through initial conversations with people you don't know. How can you get through this phase with more ease? Maybe the responsibility is on you. How interesting are you? How interested are you in your own life? One of the skills for developing relationships is to be interested in your own life in a curious, fun way, and not a self-centered way.

Commit to being curious and interested in the world around you. Then do new activities just for the experience. For example, decide to view all the movies directed by a certain director or that Clark Gable starred in. Go for a month eating only food from a certain restaurant. Sample cheeseburgers from all the top-rated burger places on Yelp. Go to meetups on topics you know nothing about just to learn about that issue. (Decide ahead of time that you are OK being the one who is just there to learn.) Find an unusual hobby, such as becoming an expert on how to get the most airline points. Those experiences will be interesting to talk about and listen to.

Accumulate interesting information. Read biographies about interesting people, watch documentaries, and listen to podcasts. There are podcasts with unusual information and experiences. Did you know that people used to predict the weather by counting the number of chirps crickets made in a certain period of time?

Break out of your routine and go to new places. Go to parts of town that you don't know. Take a different route to work. Eat lunch in an area of town that you haven't been to before.

With all these new experiences, develop interesting ways to talk about what you've done. Vary your voice tone and your language. Practice. My guess is your conversations will be much more interesting.