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(Literal) Text Transcription of the video :
Olivier Roland: How do you make people laugh?
I was shy in the past. For a long time, I had a really hard time speaking to strangers, especially women. If you spoke to me, you would probably have an interesting conversation. But a funny conversation? No, not with me. And these days, I’m certainly not the funniest man in the world, but I have managed to inject humor into my life every day.
I make people around me laugh every day to lighten the mood when it is needed. I can tell a nice little joke at the right moment. This provides a lot of advantages. I am happier in my life, I connect much more easily with people, whether I know them or not, and quite simply people like me more.
To be funnier, the first thing to do is make the decision to get funnier. That’s what I did about two years ago.
I saw people around me who were much funnier than I was and I noticed all the benefits it brought them in terms of happiness, ease, communication, and connection with others. I thought it would be nice if I could at least make others laugh a little on a daily basis.
And from the moment I set myself this goal, I began to study everything around me, that could help me accomplish this.
So the first thing to do is set yourself the goal of becoming funnier, decide to be funny. And what is important above all is to do this without any pressure. If you apply pressure, it will stress you out and it will make it much more difficult to be funny.
The first key to being funny is to be as relaxed as possible because it’s extremely difficult to make people laugh when we ourselves are stressed out and we think that we absolutely have to crack a joke to make others laugh. If we are in this state of mind, and we try to crack a joke it simply won’t work. People will notice the discomfort, see that there is stress. If you want to prevent people from laughing, there’s nothing worse than stressing them out or communicating discomfort to them.
So the first key once you have decided to be funny, is to take it easy and tell yourself: Ok, I’ve decided to be funny. It will be an adventure, a path I have never been down, and I’ll take it one step at a time.
And you can also use different techniques to relax when you are in the presence of others. You can meditate every day. It has been proved time and again that meditation helps to reduce stress, and have a much more peaceful life. You can play sports, make love, do all the things we already know, to be more zen, more serene.
Be calm, don’t put yourself under any pressure and just decide to be funnier.
From that moment, find people around you who are funnier than you. Usually, once you start, there will be many people around you who will be funnier than you.
Just paying attention to the way these people interact with others will, slowly but steadily, make you funnier. It will not transform you overnight but it will be progressive. You’ll hear a joke that you can repeat. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the people who make you laugh invented everything they say from top to bottom. Often they have heard it elsewhere and they just retell it. Nothing wrong with that.
So, retell jokes, hint at something one shouldn’t really say in public but that the others understand. It’s about being surprising, being ironic. It can also be about saying something which, at face value, seems to be something quite serious, but we realize by looking at you more closely that you’re laughing and it makes others laugh. This is the contrast.
There are lots of things like this that you can spot along the way, that you can gradually adopt.
So a key point is to rub shoulders with funny people. And what’s great is that it’s not very difficult to do. It’s nice to be surrounded by funny people. All I ask of you is to laugh in the company of these funny people, but be attentive to what they do and say, once again without pressure, just in a naturally relaxed way. After a while your brain will record everything anyway if you pay careful attention and if you have set yourself the goal of becoming funnier.
Also, watch one-man shows, watch comics. There are professionals who manage to earn their living just with their humor. Just watching them with that goal in the back of your mind, means you will learn many things.
For example I have a colleague Aurelien Amacker who is probably the funniest entrepreneur I know on the planet, who draws a lot of inspiration from French comics. But he developed his own style and these days he is absolutely mind-blowing. You can talk to him for ten minutes and be laughing your head off half the time. It really is amazing.
There is no miracle method. No Buddhist monk of laughter to visit on a mountain top. You just have to decide to do it, be attentive, and it will just happen, steadily.
Obviously, if you spend all your evenings on your Play Station without seeing anyone, it will be more difficult. The more funny people you see in different situations the more you will acquire this skill, and faster too. It is more than a skill; it is a state of mind. When we have humor, when we know how to make people laugh, we have extraordinary power. For a start, we are making ourselves happier and we make others happier. Plus, they get much more of a kick out of being around us and communicating with us/