A host shares how he spent years suppressing laughter and emotion because of rigid ideas about masculinity. He learned that genuine humor and vulnerability aren't weaknesses but actually build real confidence. Laughing at others' cleverness and acknowledging their wins doesn't threaten you; it strengthens you.
Quick quiz. What is the fastest way to communicate intellect? Simon Is it through a story? SCOTT Humor. You kind of learn to be funny. You can have a great sense of humor even if you aren't intuitively funny.
And how do you do that? You laugh a lot.
I had some fucked up sense of masculinity when I was younger. Didn't cry between the ages of 29 and 44, didn't laugh out loud when someone says something funny. I purposely try to train myself into laughing out loud because 50% of having a good sense of humor is appreciating other people's cleverness. You learning to laugh, I would argue, is you learning to be vulnerable. I think when you're a younger man, sometimes you have this belief that recognizing someone else is funny. Acknowledging someone else's success somehow takes away from your success. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That it's a zero sum game. And what you realize as you get older is the guy who says to another guy, wow, you're so impressive, or laughs at his joke and says, wow, that was really funny. That's confidence.
Yes. You're describing confidence. I think the thing that we have to focus on in ourselves and helping our friends and our kids build is confidence. What are the mechanisms to help somebody build confidence over telling them the actions they need to perform or the superficial things they need to achieve in order to superficially communicate confidence? Build the real thing rather than just the communication of that thing.
