In the last blog post of this series I talked about how you can get a girl to like you by being able to share a little bit of your childhood with her. As you start getting more experience in sharing your childhood stories, you’ll inevitably find that some childhood stories are going to bring laughter to her.

While there are certain formulas for telling humourous stories and there are certain jokes that you can learn, you won’t be able to get a girl to like you for a long time if you keep ripping off material from other people. That’s like you posing to be a novelist but all you’re doing is writing the exact same words from Harry Potter or a Stephen King novel.

If you look at the different structures of the majority of jokes that your friends are telling, these jokes usually have a simple set up. They involve leading a person through a story that flows, and at the very last moment a punch line is delivered that is so off from what people expected that it makes them laugh.

Try Out Different Material to See What’s Funny

The trouble with all of this is that even the greatest comedians know that not everything they can possibly say is going to be funny. This is why they constantly try out new material in front of small audiences. Some of it stinks worse than horse crap, but others rock. It’s about trial and error. And that means you’ve got to take some chances in trying to be funny and finding out what works for you and your personality.

There are Always Common Situations Where You Have a Chance to be Funny

What’s interesting is that we are creatures of habits. Therefore we often create specific conversational situations that repeat again and again with different people. When these similar conversational situations happen, they also present us a great opportunity to show off our humour. We may not tell the exact same joke in a given situation, but we’ll give a similar joke that’s the same conceptually.

An Example of How I was Funny to a Girl

For example one of the techniques I used to do to make girls laugh before was this, let’s use a real life case. When I worked at cafe as a barista, I watched a girl come in with a hoodie that had the Toronto FC’s (the city’s soccer team) logo on it. I asked her if she was from Toronto and she said yes. I then asked her if she was a fan of the soccer team and she told me she was. I then looked at her with some slight disappointment, and shook my head, and told her, “It could have been the start of a beautiful friendship. But I’m a Vancouver White Caps fan and therefore it makes us mortal enemies.” Of course I’m saying this in a playful tone while smiling. She then smiles and laughs.

The structure in this case is simple, find out some “self label” she’s attached to but not too attached, find something that’s opposite of that, and tell her you can’t be: lovers, friends, daters, or married. But do it while smiling and sounding playfully disappointed.

Take Improvisational Classes

Someone at a conference asked me do I naturally put in humor during my networking workshops. Until he pointed it out, I had never even considered it a part of my public speaking. But how I believe it all came along was because I took Improvisational acting classes.

If you ever go to see a professional improv show, it’s pretty rare that someone is going to do a drama scene out of thin air. There tends to be a focus on challenging people to be in the moment and flow with it. It forces you to be creative without planning and without strategy. You are bound by certain rules by certain games, but those rules are designed to push you forward into the wonderful, whimsical, humourous world of comedy. To break these rules is to break the basics of comedy.

If you ever want to get good at being funny in the moment, and you’re serious about improving your dating and conversation skills then you should definitely go and take an improv class. Especially if you find yourself to be a bit of a dry person. It will sharpen your wit since most improv does not allow for racist or bathroom humor. Improv relies on pure wit.

Go study some jokes, try some of your own, and go take an improv class. In the next article of this series, I’ll be talking about being spontaneous.

Until then, have fun telling jokes!

When I worked as a manager, I would always ask people what is one personality trait or characteristic they would like to develop. One of the answers I received was, “I would like to be more assertive.” Six months after this person started working with me, she was promoted and soon managing people and being assertive towards others. Being assertive is no longer the issue.

What are some of the ways that you can develop and become more assertive in your life?

Effective Way 1: Know your Values and Belief Systems

Having a set of principles to live by will help you become more assertive in your life in the areas you believe are necessary. These principles that guide you will allow you to simplify your life in complicated situations and to know when to stick up for yourself and when it’s not as important to stick to your guns.

A set of principles to help you increase your assertiveness might be:

1) I will say “No” when I mean it. And give the person an explanation why. And stick with it.
2) I will learn to ask for help when I feel it is necessary.
3) I will compliment one co-worker every week.
4) I will disagree with a person’s view when I genuinely feel it. But I will let them finish their thoughts.
5) When friends ask me what I want to do, I will tell them directly instead of saying “What would you like to do?”

Effective Way 2: Be Assertive With Yourself First

Learn to act assertively on your own. If you’ve ever watched the movie Taxi, there’s a scene where Robert De Niro looks in the mirror and goes “Are you Looking at Me?”

He practices in front of the mirror to being more assertive in life. He acts in the way he wants to be. I’m not going to lie, for many people it’s going to feel like being really hokey and fake. But let’s face it if you can’t feel assertive about doing an exercise at home when there’s no one around and you feel silly about it, then that’s part of the big reason you can’t be assertive with other people. Have you noticed people who are assertive don’t mind being truly who they are. They don’t mind what other people are thinking about them.

You’ve got to step up and be assertive on your own, and this will help to start rewire the brain. It’s not going to be easy. It needs to be done consistently on a daily basis. Say to yourself, “I’m confident, assertive and I ROCK!” Say it until you mean it, because if you don’t believe it, how are other people going to believe you?

And you have to say it out loud, for some reason or other that I can’t remember, if we whisper thoughts in our own head we use the reptilian brain. A primitive area that tries to keep us safe, but when we say something out loud and mean it, we use our most intelligent part of our brain that is filled with creativity and courage. So yes, say it loud!

Effective Way 3: Choose Small Battles at First

I once mentored a student who had challenges being assertive. He decided to join a university club but felt that he wasn’t contributing much to the organization. He felt that he had a lot to offer and had so many great ideas. And he was ready to share them, but he was just a little too shy.

One day during a meeting he had the same idea as another person in the group. The other person spoke up and everyone raved about it, while my mentee quietly thought to himself what a great idea it would be but never shared it. He felt left out and in a way robbed from the experience of being able to share a wonderful idea. The following meeting, he did what he needed to do to be more assertive, he shared one idea vocally with his group, and he didn’t hold it in.

If you’re polite and courteous which are important, but want to build up your assertiveness, start off small. This can be when you’re at a meeting and someone asks for your idea, for you to actually share it. Whether you feel it’s a good idea or bad, you need to share it. When someone asks you where you want to go for dinner, tell them confidently that you would like to go here.

As you answer questions that people ask you, you will slowly develop more confidence in responding to others about your needs. Sometimes people imagine being assertive like being Donald Trump. That’s an unrealistic goal to work towards when you’re first starting out. Keep things simple when being assertive. And be patient, it’s a habit you’re trying to develop not a one night stand.

In the last blog post of the series “How to Get a Girl to Like You” I discussed about taking charge on your first date, and how important it is to be assertive. But part of getting a girl to be interested in you and liking you is to not only showing her that you have a strong confident side, but also to being able to emotionally connect with her.

Share Your Childhood

One of the best ways to emotionally connect with her is to be able to share a detailed story about yourself from your childhood that has personal meaning to you. This is definitely one of the best, tried and true, ways to get a girl interested in you. Now you don’t want to tell an embarrassing story about how you pissed your pants when you were three years old. Yes she might laugh and think that the story is cute, but she’s definitely laughing at you buddy, not with you.

Intrigue her with Your Childhood Story

You want to be able to tell her a childhood story that will draw her attention from the very start. This could be about how you stood up to your first bully when you were 8 years old. Or it could be a story about how your grandmother used to make this delicious food dish that made your mouth water, and only she made it in a special way that no one else could in the world. Tell her how much you miss her smile and her tenderness when she cooked, and it was one of the best memories you had growing up.

But the goal is to hook her in with a great line from the very start. For example, if you both are on the topic about food, then you would go, “Let me tell you about the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. My grandmother…” or it could be “There was this time when I was 8 years old where I nearly got a black eye. What happened was…”

Talking about Childhood = Feeling Intimate

Childhood stories are powerful to a girl because our childhood creates a feeling of intimacy when we talk about it with her. It’s a part of our life that usually only our family, and closest friends that we grew up with know about.

Think about your co-workers, how many of them talk about their childhood?
When we share our childhood with a girl that we like, it temporarily brings her into our world. And when you’re able to share vivid details with her, the way I did about my grandmother’s cooking, the smells, the way she smiled, the way her leathery hands were when she stirred the pot, all these details invite her to imagine herself being there.

Imagination is Powerful

Getting her to imagine what you imagine is powerful. Let’s turn it around, what if the girl you’re on a date with turns and talks to you about how she used to be bullied as a child or how she used to be such a nerd in school and tells you these intimate details (without going overboard with too much information). How would you feel? Would you feel that she’s more interesting and attractive? Chances if the story was done right, you’ll feel much more attracted to her.

So next time you’re on a date, go out and share a story from your childhood. Choose a story that you feel has enchanted girls in the past and feel free to keep telling the same story again and again to different girls. In my book Art of Conversation, I mention how important it is to be able to put emotions in your story, and to be able to fill it with rich detail. Invite her into your world!

In the next blog post of this maxi series, I’ll be discussing how you can be more funny to get a girl to like you.