My job since 2008 has been helping others improve their social confidence and social skills. I get a lot of questions from people who seek to better themselves in these two areas.
One of the most common questions I receive is “How can I be witty and funny in conversation?” Many people want to enhance their sense of humor and make others laugh in conversation. Which is perfectly understandable, considering how attractive and appreciated a good sense of humor is.
There is a lot of advice on how to be witty and funny out there. Unfortunately, as both myself and many of my clients have experienced firsthand, much of this advice does little to actually improve one’s sense of humor. I believe that it frequently reflects a lack of real understanding of how humor works and how human learning works.
Working to develop my own sense of humor and coaching many others in doing the same, I’ve managed to identify a few genuinely effective strategies for becoming wittier and funnier, and differentiate them from the popular yet ineffective strategies out there.
I’d like to share with you the two most effective strategies I know for improving your sense of humor, which have helped immensely both myself and many of my clients, and I’d also like to debunk two very popular but ineffective strategies. Let’s look at all four strategies, one by one.
Doesn’t Work: Just Trying To Be Funny
The first approach most folks use when they decide to improve their sense of humor is to just try and be funnier in conversation.
It goes something like this: while they’re talking to someone, after the other person makes a certain statement, they start thinking to themselves: “Find something funny to say! Find something funny to say!” They sort of try to force their mind to come up with a clever and amusing reply.
It’s a good old college try. However, it seldom works. I’ve discussed this strategy with literally dozens of people who’ve tried it, and I can’t think of a single one ever declaring that it helped them become visibly funnier.
This strategy is similar to the strategy of trying to “just be more social” when you’re shy or socially anxious, which I discuss in this presentation. Just as you can’t force yourself to be more social, you can’t force yourself to be funnier.
Your mind isn’t a vending machine. It’s not gonna come up with funny remarks just like that, because you demand it. This approach mostly puts a lot of pressure on yourself, which paradoxically, often makes you more tense and thus less able to be witty and funny.
Works: Practicing Out-Of-The-Box Thinking
Although just trying to be funny rarely works, there is a related strategy that works very well. This strategy is to practice looking at things from unconventional angles; to practice thinking out-of-the-box.
The difference is that during a conversation, after the other person says something, instead of asking your mind to come up with a funny comeback, you ask yourself: “What’s an unconventional way of looking at this?” And you let your mind explore.
So you’re not asking your mind to be funny, you’re asking it to look at things from a fresh perspective, which is a request your mind can actually follow. And looking at things from new perspectives is the leading way to generate witty, clever ideas. In other words, you’re addressing the root of humor (your style of thinking), which will genuinely make you funnier.
And the perk of this strategy is that you can also practice it outside of conversation. For example: look at the items on your desk or table, and think of some unconventional uses for them. Such exercises train your mind to think unconventionally in general, which means it will also become more creative in conversation, so you’ll naturally be funnier.
Doesn’t Work: Using Memorized Lines
There are lists of jokes and clever lines online, which you can memorize and seek to use in conversation. And many people try this approach to become funnier. There are two big problems with this approach though.
The first problem concerns the fact that conversation is very dynamic and fairly unpredictable, which is something people who lack social experience don’t fully realize. So while a certain clever comment may look good on paper, in practice it can be very hard to insert it in a conversation and make it fit.
Let’s say the conversation is about dogs, and all you have is a few witty comments about food, clothes and travel. How do you reconcile the two? You probably won’t manage to.
Even if you manage to insert a couple of funny memorized remarks in a conversation, you’re still far from being a genuinely funny person. You can’t be funny and entertaining all throughout a conversation by relying on memorized content. Even if you memorize 100 jokes, soon enough you’ll run out of them, and then you’ll have to rely on your real social skills.
I know this strategy can be alluring, especially if you’re somewhat shy or socially anxious, but it’s a very impractical and geeky approach to being funny. In my Conversation Confidence guide I explain why such an approach can actually reinforce your social insecurities. It’s definitely one to avoid.
Works: Learning To Relax In Social Situations
By far the most effective approach to becoming wittier and funnier in my experience is learning to relax in social situations. Almost without exception, when I talk with a person who isn’t too funny during conversations, I discover that they often feel nervous and self-conscious in conversations. That’s why they have a hard time being funny.
Being funny entails creative, unconventional thinking, as I already mentioned. And you need to feel relaxed and comfortable in order to think this way. If you’re tense, your thinking gets rigid and conventional, which is the most detrimental thing for your sense of humor.
In reality, you may be a very bright and creative person, so you have the potential to be very witty and funny when talking to people. But you have to learn to relax in social situations in order to create the proper conditions for your sense of humor to emerge.
There are some simple ways to become more relaxed in social situations, such as just taking a few deep breaths. Yeah, that helps.
But if you wanna relax significantly, not just a bit, maintain that state and eventually make it emerge naturally, you need to identify the underlying thinking patterns that make you feel anxious in social situations, and use an effective approach to change your thinking patterns.
Well, helping others do this is what I’ve been doing professionally for the past 6+ years.
So I recommend that you check out my Conversation Confidence guide, a program in which I will teach you step-by-step, with clear-cut instructions, how to identify and eradicate the thinking patterns that make you feel anxious in social situations, in order to relieve the anxiety, relax and become the fun person that you wanna be.
This guide is packed with tried and tested psychological tools for overcoming social nervousness.
Go here to find out what people who’ve already used the Conversation Confidence guide have to say about it, and go here to learn more about it.
