What Excites You

To break an old habit, I started replacing “what do you do for a living?” with “what are you excited about?”

People are surprised when I ask this. It turns out that there are a few people that are quite excited about their job, and there are many that find their jobs very dull, and their hobbies are really far more interesting. They’ll get eventually get to telling you about them, but I like using the excitement trigger as a way of launching into a conversation with someone new.

The first conversation, that bond that starts a friendship, functions much more efficiently if there’s excitement and passion involved. And if you’re excited about something, chances are your enthusiasm might make me excited about that same something, and now we have a deep personal connection, a starting point, a branch that can grow wondrous, beautiful leaves.