I’ve been buying magic tricks and practicing for over a decade but I’m getting nowhere.

Suhail writes:

Hey Dominic,

First of all a huge thanks to what you are doing for the community. Your e-books are very helpful and I am following the 20 minute practice session every morning and evening. Now I’ll get to the main problems that I face in magic and I hope you will be able to help me out on that. I started dabbling in magic since the age of 14. I am 23 now and still am ashamed to say I am an amateur who does a couple of card tricks. Now I have a huge collection of magic tricks which I had amassed along the way. But whenever I start practising a magic trick a new and better version comes along the way and I lose track of the one which I started practising on.

You’re welcome Suhail. What you mention is very common. It’s what holds back 90% of people that want to explore performing. Here’s the REAL problem:

Buying magic tricks for almost a decade, but getting nowhere because you don’t have an end in sight.

It’s totally fine to simply play with magic your whole life as a hobby. Don’t be swept up in the hype that you HAVE to perform to enjoy magic. It’s only a waste is if you WANT to perform but you have not reached that goal. You see… the secret is having a GOAL. You have to have an end point to all the buying of magic and practice. Hardly anyone sets goals. Most people prefer to keep on acquiring more and more magic with no purpose other than the fun of it.

Here’s the single biggest piece of advice anyone in magic can give you:

The key really is to set a GOAL

You HAVE to decide ‘what ‘done’ looks like’

I tell every magician that I personally coach the exact same thing. STOP BUYING MAGIC until you have set yourself some goals. It’s so hard to work towards something if you haven’t really thought about what the finished job will look like. Your GOAL is the end point of all the stages you need to complete to get to the finish line of where you want to be with your magic.

You need two types of goals. An overall long term goal and several short term goals. Your overall LONG TERM GOAL could be: Performing magic commercially for the public.

Once you have a long term goal, you know what ‘done’ looks like.

Ask yourself: what short term goals do you need to make the long term goal happen? Here’s 3:

Build a working act
Market yourself as a magician
Perform for the public

Your short term goals work towards making the long term goal happen. Once you define a few short term goals, don’t do ANYTHING other than work on each of those in term. Goal number 1 is to plan an act. So start looking at magic that would fit into a set together. Put those tricks together and work on them JUST DO THAT. Any other stuff is a distraction. Stop browsing magic forums, buying tricks just because they are the latest releases, or collecting playing cards and magic accessories.. JUST WORK ON YOUR GOAL.

The Magic Butterfly

That’s really the answer for you Suhail. The route cause of your lack of progress is that you don’t have a plan to reach a goal, and that is turning you into a magic butterfly.. That’s when magicians jump endlessly from one trick to the next without ever mastering anything. Why should they, they are not working towards any finish line, so there can never be an end to it.. Just like a butterfly goes endlessly from flower to flower..

I hope this helps you in your magic

Dominic Reyes

If you would like more information about setting goals for your magic, check out this free ebook:

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