Interestingly, this is what the book "How to Win Friends and Influence Others" gets at. While it's ostensibly a sales book, the very basis is how to be genuinely nice to people so they want to talk to you and be around you. And from those relationships come sales opportunities.

As another person for whom relation stuff does not come naturally, this was incredibly helpful because little pieces of advise really do work, because they really are nice things to do/say.

A favorite example of mine, when starting to talk to someone who probably already doesn't care for you is to find something -- anything -- that it's clear they like or chose, which you also happen to like, and pay it a genuine positive complement. And perhaps talk about it a little bit.

It helps to know a thing or two, about a wide range of topics, for this reason.

Take for instance someone telling you about their career. "I'm a software developer".

You can express interest with a response like "Oh, thats cool, what made you go into that line of work?" but thats a very generic, shallow response.

If you know a thing or two about software, for example, you can ask more interesting questions that show your interest in them, and your knowledge of the space. "Woh cool, how is AI coding impacting your life?"

Suddenly, it seems like you're much more interesting yourself, AND you're interested in them.

The tricky part nowadays is everyone has very niche interests. It's harder than ever to really have a breadth of knowledge that is broadly applicable. This was easier before the internet, before travel, before telecommunication. When your community was your community and news traveled slowly, it was a lot easier to learn about what impacted others.

> most people respond positively when others are interested in them.

To be fair, most people are uninteresting.

Maybe the goal should be to be okay with being ordinary.

TRYING to be interesting (or interested) is just tiresome.