Acting interesting can ruin your adult life as well. Show-off employees, self-centered managers and pompous business owners rarely do well for long. The secret to popularity is not to be interesting, but to be interested.

"When a person becomes terribly interesting he has lots of problems, believe me. That is the chasm which is crossed by all of your celebrities, anybody who is foolish enough to become famous. He crosses over from being interested in life to being interesting. And people who are interesting are really no longer interested in life. It’s very baffling to some young fellow why he can’t make some beautiful girl interested in him. Well, she is not interested, she is interesting." — L. Ron Hubbard

If you are an actor on stage, you are interesting while acting. Seminar speakers are interesting. Comedians, models and magicians are interesting. Yet in real life, on a one-on-one basis, interesting people are irritating. They only do things to get your attention and admiration. They believe they are on stage acting for an audience of one. If you want people to cooperate with you, to like you or to open up to you, you must be interested. Instead of focusing on yourself, you start to focus on others. 

You notice what makes them happy or unhappy. Your attention comes off of you and onto others. When your thoughts are more on others than on yourself, you feel little stress. You act and respond with more intelligence. Your production level increases and you have more fun. When you are interested, people love your interest in them. They want to be around you. You are popular.