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Comment by mg | Hacker News Reader

I have the theory that the most powerful way to be someone people love to talk to is to learn to get into a good mood.

This theory is two-fold.

First: Mood is contagious. So being in a good mood yourself is the most direct way to make others get into a good mood too. And that's what makes us like being around someone. When they make us feel good.

Second: It is possible to learn how to get into a good mood. It's not so much related to the situation around you, which mood you are in. It's more of an internal state. Similar to how you can change your physical posture, you can put yourself in different mental postures. The more you practice, the better you get at it.

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I came to what I think is a related conclusion fairly recently (https://twitter.com/mightybyte/status/1749513355038220653): One of (if not the) most valuable skills in life is being able to choose that you're going to consider an arbitrary thing fun.

Your good mood skill seems like the interpersonal version of that. It's always fun to see ideas from different areas form a coherent big picture.

This is why I love taking notes in my overly elaborate vim notebook setup. It's a delight, so it adds fun to any mundane task at work.

I have very rarely actually looked at old notes.

Funny you mention that. I do that too, except in my case it's Spacemacs in vim mode. I do go back to them from time to time, but that's mainly because it's an easy ripgrep search of the whole notes directory tree. If I didn't have search and was only using the editor to look things up, I might never refer back to the old notes.

I agree that mood is key but when it come to being around, not necessarily talking to. Sure, that will also influence talking to but I find that being better at crafting conversation that takes the listener for a ride into a story to be the main factor here.

This sounds like one of these things that are trivially true and yet super useful if you embrace it. Do you have any more reading material about this idea?

The book 'feeling good'

I somewhat disagree, I think a large part of it is being genuine.

Nobody loves talking to a genuinely morose person

People only like the genuine people they agree with.

I just had a conversation with someone who disagreed with me on almost every topic. When it was done I thanked them for disagreeing with me civilly.

you're obviously free to believe whatever nonsense you want, but it says more about your lack of social skill than anything approaching a truth.

I go to a D&D group with 2 devout christians, 1 agnostic, 1 atheist, and 1 hindu.

We've all been good friends for probably 15 years at this point. Do you think we all agree?

maybe stop limiting yourself.

You specified that they disagreed with you "civilly", which generally means they behaved in a way you agreed with, even if they had differing opinions on non-behavior topics. People still only like genuine people when the genuineness includes behavior they like.

that's not the definition of the word civilly. words have meanings. Generally speaking, when you find yourself redefining the meaning of words it's a strong indicator that your argument is poor.

My mom had a saying that sums this up: “you are your thoughts, your thoughts expand”

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