Normally I’d be against using a corporate mascot as an example of anything positive, but I didn’t feel like looking for another picture.

As I have repeatedly said in these pages, if you want to overcome your social anxiety, whether it be a fear of public speaking, a fear of speaking to women, or just a general lack of confidence, the key is to make yourself an interesting person, rather than simply memorize routines of snappy pick-up lines and body language. Once you have made yourself an interesting person, a person worth knowing, you will find that everything else will fall into place-you will naturally find that you have more confidence when you know you have nothing to be ashamed of, and like magic you’ll notice you have less of a fear of public engagement. I’ve alluded to this in the past in my Katabasis articles, and more often than not when on the road to becoming a person worth knowing, you’ll be sufficiently humbled along the way, thus achieving both confidence and humbling.

But the $60,000 question remains: what is an interesting person, and how does one become this mythical entity? Speaking as somebody who has repeatedly been described as being “interesting”, “engaging”, “a character”, etc., I can safely say…that being interesting has a remarkable ability to not make me any money at all.

In all seriousness, you can make yourself interesting with a simple three step plan that…requires an immense amount of effort for each individual step—but that’s the best sort of plan!

Step 1) Become less ignorant.

Simply put, nobody wants to converse with some assclown that doesn’t know anything about anything. So, the easiest way to become somebody that another person might want to talk to is to learn something new—and as a side note, constantly learning new things will keep you mentally sharp for decades to come, and I’ve got a whole article on that for next week. But for now, ask yourself—are you learning anything right now (beyond this highly instructive article of course)? What was the last book you read? Do you read books that require concentration and intellectual effort, or do you just read blogs?

Don’t just devote yourself to one interest, learn about all sorts of different things and expand your base of general knowledge, which you can get from both fiction and non-fiction, although the latter will obviously be more educational.

On that note:

Step 2) Get interesting, constructive hobbies.

What is an interesting, constructive hobby? Its a hobby that A) Produces a tangible fruit of labor and B) You wouldn’t be ashamed to admit that you do. Telling somebody “I write music” or “I build furniture” is a lot less painful to your soul then telling them “I masturbate 5 times a day” or “I watch crappy animes where little girls shit on things”—to say nothing of how painful it would be for the woman in your life to tell her friends that her man is a fap-happy NEET.

Why else do you think I push my audience so hard into the physical fitness/self-improvement stuff, while simultaneously promoting the arts and sciences? Because engaging in all of those things will make you a better man, and a better human being. Or in other words, a man should be capable of the utmost barbarism and gentility. I’ve already taught you some of the fundamentals of how to work out, fight, mix drinks, tie knots, sharpen knives, and screw, and a veritable wellspring of knowledge in all the myriad fields I’m familiar with will come in the years that I plan on continuing to write for you. And, as I stated in Step 1, I always plan to expand my breadth of knowledge as well.

(Of course, don’t feel wedded to what I like to do, I trust you to be capable of figuring out what a “constructive hobby” is going off the simple definition proffered above)

And finally:

Step 3) Learn how to talk.

This can be considered to be an extension of both Step 1 and 2—for while learning rhetoric, elocution and the mechanics behind proper speech are not what most people would consider to  be a generally stimulating topic, they are of the utmost importance—simply put, no matter how accomplished and skilled you are, if you can’t convey it to people, you have failed the game of social interactions.

There are many resources you can find online as to how to go about doing this. Elocution books can be easily found on ebook websites such as Gutenberg. But, of course, there’s no substitute for practicing with actual people. Train the mechanics at home, but just like martial arts, you have to apply those theories in a state of panic. And eventually, you won’t panic, whether it’s a fight or a conversation.

And as I’ve repeatedly implied, this is not something that came naturally to me. I had to work at it, just like you my reader have to work at it. Helping you is something I’m glad to do. And even though I’m a little bit ahead of you, I am still on this journey myself.