Just Do iT!: How Do You Build Your Magic Confidence?

[Lavie Enrose]

The hardest part about magic for me is not learning the moves (although that can be very difficult) it is finding ways of building my confidence to perform what I have learned. The best way I found to build my confidence is to perform for other people after I have learned and practiced a piece of magic. That sounds simple, but it isn't.

I used to always 'wait for an opening' to perform some 'trick', but I found those 'openings' few and far between. I found I was always waiting for the 'perfect moment', but that moment never came. I started to get frustrated, until I read something by Jeff McBride.

Jeff's advice was not to 'wait for an opening', but to 'just do it'. He wrote about performing any trick you have that can be done anywhere, at anything, for anyone. Quick tricks, no matter how simple. Jeff wrote about performing a quick trick for a store clerk as you pay for something, as an example.

Now, these are not 'take a card' type tricks. For example, I might pull a coin out of the air to pay for a pack of gum. I might stop at a store window while I am walking by, and do a simple vanish, reproduction, of a playing card, or a ball, for a store clerk who is not busy, and just staring out the window. Or a person waiting at a window table at a restaurant. Nothing more than that. I'm not pushing a magic trick on someone. I'm not doing a show. It is quick, and to the point.

The point is, I am performing magic in public, and for people who are strangers. Two things happen: I get some confidence by performing some of my magic, and the people I perform for (hopefully) get a real thrill.

 

[Voob]

...I am performing magic in public, and for people who are strangers. Two things happen: I get some confidence by performing some of my magic, and the people I perform for (hopefully) get a real thrill.

That's great, but how about doing it in a setting where you can get more feedback from the spectators? When they freak out and ask for more it's a real confidence booster.
I'm lucky. I do a lot of private lessons (not magic) at my place at most of the students like magic, so I can try out stuff daily, if I want.

I just typed a few paragraphs, but they were really off-topic, so I'm starting a new thread.

 

[fsol]

I tend to take a couple of packs of cards with me when I go out to the pub and just mess around with them. "Just do it" is exactly the best way to do it.

 

[Lavie Enrose]

That's great, but how about doing it in a setting where you can get more feedback from the spectators? When they freak out and ask for more it's a real confidence booster.

It only takes about 5 seconds to change someone's attitude or mood. I don't need to do a 'show' or have anyone say even a single word to me for me to know that I have had a profound impact on a person, even with the simpliest of magic.

What I am doing is moving the magic from my mind, out into the real world. I am following the idea that all the world is a stage. My objective is to perform magic for as many people as I can during the day, in all kinds of enviroments and conditions to build my performace confidence, and to learn how to make adjustments to my routines to fit any performace conditions.

 

[epepke]

Whenever I meet someone, and I have business cards, I usually do the "printing business cards" trick. That leaves an opening to ask, "Wanna see another one?"

 

[Brown]

Whenever I meet someone, and I have business cards, I usually do the "printing business cards" trick. That leaves an opening to ask, "Wanna see another one?"

I like this trick. It takes only a little practice, and you can really make eyes pop out with this one.

There are quite a few good rubber band tricks that are easy to do at a moment's notice and that really leave folks wondering how you achieved the effect (in particular, I favor the linking rubber bands trick and the jumping rubber bands trick). Just say "Hey, look at this, this is weird..." and do the trick.