"Being interesting is important" -- Why You Should Not Fear Conflict
Yo.
I was having a conversation with @everittdmickey over on a previous post of mine when he said this:
Wow...
This is a valuable lesson not just on Steemit but for life in general.
It got me thinking about what it means to be interesting, and why so many people are not outwardly interesting.
I had a few observations I wanted to share.
Fear
Many people are afraid to share the more interesting parts of their personality. They're afraid to rock the boat, to cause conflict, to upset others, to fail.
Interesting people lack these inhibitors.
When you think about it, the most interesting person in the room is also the most dangerous.
Conflict avoidance
Most people avoid conflict like the plague.
They don't want to offend the sensibilities of anyone else, and so they become milk toast.
Milk Toast
This is a cultural colloquialism. Let me explain it for you if you're not familiar with the term.
Milk toast is a food often given to sickly people with poor constitutions because it is easy to digest and has a lot of empty calories.
Milk toast is fed to people in order to not upset them. When you avoid conflict, you are milk toast.
To be interesting is to Fail
Sure, you could try making a meal of something other than milk toast, and it could be a complete disaster. It could also be the beginning of a new culinary discovery.
It is the same with people and their personalities.
Interesting people fail all the time. Because most attempts at new things fail. For every successful person you will find a thousand failures. Likewise, for every interesting person you will find a million failures.
Conflict shakes out the ugly truth
This is true in many fields, including relationships.
If you have a brother who is a drug addict, they don't want to have an intervention, but it's best for them.
If you have discovered that a friend has deceived you, it's not comfortable to expose the deception, but such a deception will kill a friendship.
If you have a spouse that is doing something that upsets you, to keep that feeling inside rather than expressing it in order to avoid the inevitable fight, is exactly what will cause the end of the relationship.
Be INTERESTING!
Say things that might be offensive -- if you really believe in it!
If something seems like a long shot -- don't be afraid to fail!
Use spices! Try new foods! Go ghost hunting! Play with children! Sit with gurus!
DO SOMETHING INTERESTING!!
Share your thoughts
Tell me what you think.
Is there something that is holding you back from being the person you really want to be?
Share with us in the comments below.
If you're not pissing at least some people off, you're probably not saying anything important.
I've definitely been the milk toast far too often in RL. But I feel like I'm outgrowing it daily.
I like your style, GigaFart.
This is a great post. I believe fear is the biggest dream killer there is. Not just fear of failure, but more importantly fear of actually succeeding. I found that most of my old friends had a high fear of both. And I say "old" because I needed new "interesting" people around me to average out my probability of success. They say you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with :) so it was only right! Thanks for posting again @shayne !
This is a great response and very true. The people one surrounds themselves with in life makes a huge difference in molding their outcome. Enjoyed.
Agreed ^_^ Thanks for commenting!
Ignore haters just do what you do!
Hey Shayne,
i think that is a great way to look at life. Rather than allow ego to get in the way of a potential lesson you can just look at the situation and see how you can learn from it. I enjoyed your post and learnt a lot myself, thanks so much for sharing! I followed and look forward to seeing more from you!
Mn
Don't try to avoid conflicts , indeed I always feel like the communication in an argument is always sincere, you should have learnt something in each conflicts.
You should never just tell people what they want to hear, it does not help most of the time, but people do this as many people do not like to hear the truth or alternative opinion!
I know lots of people that prefer eating the Milk toast.... Lol. I like this post.. 👌
great post @shayne
Please continue posting awesome stuff like this..
here I give you my Upvote! :)
Your post is crap! (I think I'm getting the hang of it!) ;)
Good post. I'm constantly causing a stir. Heck, just being a male living in Thailand is enough to spawn many "raised eyebrows", and I love it. :)