Recently, I watched a Youtube short by Vinh Giang where he talks about a friend he had in high school. He talks about his friend's ability with an instrument and connects it to social skills in a brilliant way. After hearing the comparison, it makes total sense. When we learn social skills, we are mastering our instrument. When we master something, we become more confident. Based on my own experience, I can attest to the argument that social skills lead to more confidence.

Take a look at people who have amazing social skills. These people tend to be so confident and radiant.

It makes sense that we become more confident when we have good social skills. We are social animals after all.

Rather than tell you this and send you off, I want to give you some ways to develop your social skills so you can lead yourself to more confidence. Here are the two biggest tips I can give you.

1. Know your own sense of humor

Everybody loves to laugh. Everybody loves a good time. But if you can't make people laugh, having a good time is a lot harder to do. The easiest way to make people laugh is to know your sense of humor, specifically what kind of humor best fits you.

This requires you to do some self-reflection, but it's worthwhile. You kind of already know what sense of humor you have.

You just have to pay attention to what you find funny or amusing. An easy way to figure out the specifics is to watch comedy routines on YouTube or think back to moments that you found to be funny or amusing.

Note, I said funny OR amusing. Oftentimes, we equate humor with funny. In reality, humor is more often than not amusing and not necessarily funny.

It's possible to make somebody laugh without being funny. I don't think anybody would think that sarcasm or teasing is funny the majority of the time.

Yet, these things make people laugh so much. They have a lot of fun with it, and that's the key.

To find your sense of humor, you need to find your sense of fun. Is sarcasm your style of fun? Is it absurdity? Is it making smooth, funny jokes?

The key to being funny is to be fun. If you want to easily find and hone your sense of humor, you need to know your style of fun.

2. Make actual connections

As much as you can have interactions that are super fun, a lot of them tend to fade into memory. You forget them no matter how fun they were, people especially. This is because there is no connection between you and them, whatever they are.

When we interact with others, we have the opportunity to create a truly unique moment with them. Yet, most of us ruin it by keeping it way too surface-level.

This doesn't mean you need to tell each other your life story, that's going overboard. However, learning about each other's hobbies or interests is not a bad thing.

To make actual connections with others, we want to ask questions about them. From simple ones like how their day was, to ones that are more involved like what kind of hobbies they have or what a typical day looks like for them.

If you've ever suffered from interactions dying down too early and not knowing what to do, it's extremely likely that you kept the conversation way too surface-level.

It's ok to dive a little into some detail. This does require a bit of skill and quick thinking on your part, which is why it's best for you to practice by talking to others.

Next time, when you ask somebody a question about themselves, listen to something that you can continue the conversation with.

On the flip side, when you are talking to somebody about yourself, it's best to leave multiple different threads they can pull in to continue the conversation.

Once you've gotten this down, your conversations will end up becoming much deeper much faster.

A science, but not for rockets

In general, good social skills revolve around making things easier for the other person to become engaged in the conversation without hurting them. This is actually much easier than most people think.

You don't need the perfect response. You don't need to say every word perfectly either. 

You just need to convey your intent properly and your social skills will lead you to more confidence in no time.

- Karl