How the Average Person Can Develop Everyday Humor

"I'm just not a funny person."

If I had a dollar for every time, someone said that to me, I could buy a nice dinner ordered through a clown’s mouth. No one admits to not being funny because, deep down, we want to be hilarious, and in our minds, we probably are. Still, most people are too nervous or lack the confidence to let the zingers fly because they feel unnatural.

I'm here to let you in on a little secret as a sometimes comedy performer and all-around humour nerd: Being funny has nothing to do with natural talent and everything to do with skill development. Like playing the guitar or speaking a foreign language, humour takes education and practice. The good news? You can learn to be much funnier in your everyday life with the proper techniques.

This isn't about forcing laughs or memorizing joke templates. It's about understanding the core principles of humour, building key skills, and developing an authentic comedic voice that amuses and delights those around you. Consider this your comprehensive guide to unlocking your inner funny person—no questionable bow ties or squirting flowers required.

The Scientific Secrets of Laughter

Before we discuss humour tactics, let's examine why we find things funny. It turns out that humour is rooted in some fascinating neuroscience.

When something surprises our brain—like an unexpected punchline, quirky observation, or silly facial expression—it creates a feeling of shock and then a quick realization that we weren't actually in danger. This prompt resolution is known as the "benign violation theory," coined by psychologist Peter McGraw. Our brain fires signals of shock/violation followed immediately by an "all clear" message. It's these alternating signals that cause the physical reaction of laughter.

In essence, effective humour tickles the problem-solving parts of our brain by presenting something unexpected and then quickly resolving it as harmless. This toggling between states creates a tension release that mirrors physical tickling, which is why most laughs start deep in our bellies.

Laughing is highly contagious because of mirror neurons that model other people's behaviour. Our instinct is to join in if we see laughter (or just laughter cues in the voice). This neural mimicry allows humour to spread like viral contagion, building social cohesion through shared experience. It forges mutual understanding and connection, so we often feel closer to people after joking together.

In other words, humour is anything but trivial. It's a powerful social bonding tool with tangible impacts on our health, relationships, and sense of belonging. While it has genetic components, the ability to amuse others is a teachable skill—as we'll see.

Develop Your Humor Radar

All humour starts with paying attention. The person who notices quirky details relates shared experiences and spots the little absurdities around them has way more comedic fodder than someone floating through life on autopilot.

Building observational skills is all about practice, and that’s fortunate for us.

Here are four techniques to train your humour radar:

1. Seek Out Surprises: Look for things that grab your attention as unusual or out of place. Maybe it's a hyper-realistic statue that makes you double-take, an oddly placed traffic cone that seems to serve no purpose or a "baby on board" sticker where the baby is now clearly a teenager. The more you notice, the more you'll naturally spot humour potential.
2. Find Shared Laughs: Pay attention when people describe relatable experiences or gripes. Most of life's laughs come from the highly inconvenient and ridiculous, like the commute, tech fails, forgetful moments, awkward interactions, and wardrobe malfunctions. Start logging these in your mental notebook.
3. Collect Contradictions: We love absurd contrasts like fancy cars with weird bumper stickers, tough-looking people with tiny dogs, or health gurus housing donut addictions. Whenever you spot something that doesn't line up, snap a mental photo. These strange combinations are comedy gold.
4. Keep a Humor Journal: Writing things down cements observational skills and gives you a library of laugh inspiration. Note anything odd that strikes you as funny or fodder for jokes. Doodle bizarre scenes that come to mind. Log real conversations where you made someone laugh. Revisit regularly for fresh inspiration.

Soon, you'll start seeing humor potential everywhere. But (very important) not everything that occurs to us is funny for others. It's time to level up your audience awareness.

Reading the Room

Humour has to resonate with the people around you. What delights your best friend might offend your grandma. The contrasting clues inform your comedic choices:

1. Pay Attention to Reactions: Watch people's body language and facial cues. Does that eyebrow raise mean they love your joke or think you're ridiculous? Is the smirk amusement or thinly veiled judgment? Know the signs of genuine laughter so you can adapt.
2. Consider Cultural Context: Humor norms vary greatly across (and even within) social groups. Get familiar with what topics or angles tend to delight or offend different audiences so you don't step on landmines.
3. Match Energy Levels: Is this group silly and outrageous or more subtle and wry? The vibe of the room should guide your comedic tone and style. Start more subdued until you gauge receptiveness.
4. Consider Appropriateness: Work happy hours call for different jokes than family dinners. Bawdy punchlines that slay at girls’ night might not impress your new boss. Consider setting before going for big laughs.

Soon, this situational awareness will become second nature. Then you can...

Build Your Humor Toolkit

Alright, it’s time for the fun stuff! Let's learn skills to make you a laughter legend!

Let's look at three must-have techniques in every aspiring funny person's wheelhouse.

Comedic Timing

Even the cleverest punchline falls flat without polished delivery. Mastering comedic timing is about heightening anticipation and then releasing tension. Here are some key rules:

• Use strategic pauses: Drawing out silence before a big reveal builds nervous energy, making the eventual punchline more satisfying.
• Try callback timing: Briefly mention a quirky observation, then circle back for a laugh later when people have had time to absorb the absurdity.
• Lean on crutch words: Peppering filler terms like "so," "um," or "you know" between jokes lets the audience decompress while sustaining momentum.
• Vary speed: Like a comedy Vitamix. Mix quicker one-liners with longer stories. Faster sequences heighten nervous energy; slower ones offer release. 
• Practice delayed reactions: Let jokes sink in a few beats before reacting yourself. This gives the audience permission to fully appreciate the humour.

Storytelling Techniques

Drawing people into funny stories makes your humour more contagious. Master these elements:

• Lean into relatability: The more audiences connect with characters and situations, the harder they laugh. Vulnerable self-disclosure also charms.
• Pile on preposterous details: Exaggeration drives absurdity. Add increasingly ridiculous layers to heighten the nonsense.
• Use acted-out dialogue: Mimicking real conversations hooks attention while allowing you to showcase wacky mannerisms and voices.
• Incorporate physical comedy: Gestures, expressions, and pantomimes juice up stories visually, especially for physical laughers.
• Stick the landing: End on a high note with a killer callback line, hilariously apt description, or dramatic plot twist that releases pent-up amusement.

Wordplay Wizardry

Clever quips delight wordsmiths and thinkers alike.

Have fun with:

• Playful phrasing: Twist idioms and cliches in surprising ways, like "cool as the underside of my pillow" or "sweating like a sinner in confession."
• Double meanings: Use innocent words with subtle secondary interpretations, aka double entendres. Great for innuendo.
• Puns for days: Spoonerisms, homonyms, malapropisms...if it bends language humorously, use liberally.
• Hashtag ready: Craft unexpected analogies and creative comparisons guaranteed to earn social shares.

The more linguistic tricks you pick up, the more agile and quick-witted you become. Expand your wordplay comfort zone!

Becoming Quicker and Wiser

Alright, we've covered the core foundations. Now it's time to take your show on the road!

Here are tips for building everyday humour skills across common scenarios:

Workplace Humor

Making colleagues laugh has professional benefits, but tread carefully. Follow these office humour guidelines:

• Avoid politics, religion, and sex: Basic etiquette applies.
• Self-deprecation is great; mocking others is not: Make yourself the butt of jokes.
• Before escalating humour, read reactions: Clients may not tolerate what employees do.
• Remember public boundaries post happy hour: Drunken jokes between coworkers should stay there.

If you slip up, apologize sincerely rather than trying to excuse your behaviour. Learn and do better next time.

Social Situations

Making new friends or chatting up potential partners? Hone these humour social skills:

• Start conversations playfully: Offer unusual observations or funny stories as conversation fodder rather than just small talk.
• Use inclusive language: Bring quieter folks into the humour with questions and gentle callouts. Make sure everyone feels part of the inside joke.
• Avoid outright sarcasm: It rarely translates with strangers. 
• Good-natured teasing: Use only after establishing rapport.
• Manage group dynamics: If jokes fall flat, take the attention off yourself with questions for others instead of trying to win the crowd.

Master the art of party banter; you’ll never stress social events again.

Digital Comedy

Our online world demands different humour tactics:

• Use emojis to replace physical cues: Compensate for missing body language and tone. The raised eyebrows face is your new best friend.
• Add humour signposts: Hashtag jokes to highlight punchlines that may land differently in the text (#dadfail).
• Parody online culture: Memes, overly earnest influencers, and spam emails all make great fodder.
• Limit inside jokes: Digital audiences won’t share the context of personal humour. Adapt material to translate more universally.

As our world gets increasingly tech-based, virtual wit will become more important. It’s time to ensure your emoji game is on point!

Owning Your Weirdness

Here's the best part about developing everyday humour: You already have all the raw material inside you. It comes from our unique inner weirdness—that strange lens on the world formed from our personality quirks, background, values, pet peeves, and even traumas.

Owning and celebrating those personal absurdities is the fastest way to authentic humour that NO ONE else could recreate. So be unapologetically yourself. The people destined to love your brand of fun will feel like they found their tribe.

Remember, everyone fumbles jokes. It's all part of the glory of risk-taking required for great humour. If you're thoughtful and avoid mean-spirited territory, laugh at yourself and move on when they don't always land. Not every bizarre flight of fancy soars...but the ones that take off make it all worthwhile.

So, unleash your inner strangeness in the world! May you make new friends and confuse old ones. Here's to a life filled with laughter waiting around every bizarre corner.