Are you afraid to be interesting?

Seth Godin asks today,

Are you interesting?

More interesting than you realize.

An interesting person is interesting to us because she combines two things: Truth and surprise.

The truth: Not necessarily a law of physics, not necessarily a measurable truth in nature, but merely the truth of experience. "I believe this," or "I see that."

And surprise. Note that surprise is always local. Surprising to me, the audience. That's one reason that it's said that interesting people are interested—they are empathetic enough to realize about what might be surprising to the person in the room, and they care enough to deliver on that insight.

Everyone is capable of telling the truth. And everyone has been surprising at least once.

Which means that being an interesting person is a choice. We can choose to show up, to care enough to contribute our humanity to the next interaction.

It's a choice, but a difficult one, because being interesting feels risky. People are afraid to be interesting, not unable to be interesting.

You're not born uninteresting. But it's entirely possible you've persuaded yourself to be so frightened of the consequences that you no longer have the passion, the generosity or the guts to be interesting any longer.

Without a doubt, we need your interesting.