An earlier version of this post appeared at Art of Manliness.

Let me tell you about my friend Tom.

He’s one of those guys whose personal story just blows you away.

First of all, he went to West Point, which is like the Harvard of military schools.

Then he joined a U.S. Army special forces unit where his job was to parachute deploy into warzones from helicopters.

That’s right — his job was to jump out of a perfectly good helicopter.

And that’s not all. While he was still in the Army, Tom wrote two books and founded a boutique publishing company.

What a jerk.

Here’s the thing: Tom is actually a nice guy. If he wasn’t such a nice guy, I’d probably hate him.

But his background is so incredible – it so blows my coward butt out of the water – that it’s hard to imagine how he can talk about his background at all without coming off as an insufferable jerk.

Tom is actually quite modest, which is part of the reason I like him.

But the problem for guys like Tom is how he can share his background in a way that doesn’t come off as bragging.

In other words, one of the most interesting things about Tom is that he’s a combat veteran who got paid to jump out of helicopters, but he can’t always talk about the thing which makes him most interesting without alienating the person he’s talking to.

It’s kind of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation.

Tom’s not as different from the rest of us as you may think. Even if you didn’t do a stint in the U.S. Army as a helicopter-jumper, almost everyone has something interesting or memorable about them which makes for good cocktail party fodder.

Yet social norms tend to prevent many of us from sharing these great stories out of fear of alienating people who might think we are trying to show off.

One of the questions I frequently getting from running this blog is “Hey John, how do I talk about myself without bragging? I want to make small talk but sometimes if I talk about what I’ve done, it turns people off.”

Well, here’s your answer.  In this article, I am going to share 10 tips for how you can shares the stories and experiences that are most interesting about you so that you are memorable to others, without coming off sounding like a jerk and a blowhard.

In other words, I believe there is a better way – a way you can talk about your most interesting achievements without sounding cockier than The Situation on spring break.

Why You Should Talk About What You Have Accomplished

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