nervousness Archives

Ah, yes, do come in. Close the door behind you and take a seat.

Now, your test results are back from the lab, and I’m afraid I have some rather bad news for you. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but the results show you are suffering from Analysis Paralysis…’

Question: Do you have any close up magic tricks you constantly practice, but never show anyone? If you perform regularly, do you take a few tricks to most gigs but never perform them?
Here’s a short fable from Aesop:

The fox and the cat.

One day a cat and a fox were having a conversation. The fox, who was a conceited creature, boasted how clever she was. ‘Why, I know at least a hundred tricks to get away from our mutual enemies, the dogs,’ she said.

‘I know only one trick to get away from dogs,’ said the cat. ‘You should teach me some of yours!’

‘Well, maybe some day, when I have the time, I may teach you a few of the simpler ones,’ replied the fox airily.

Just then they heard the barking of a pack of dogs in the distance. The barking grew louder and louder – the dogs were coming in their direction! At once, the cat ran to the nearest tree and climbed into its branches, well out of reach of any dog. ‘This is the trick I told you about, the only one I know,’ she called down to the fox. ‘Which of your hundred tricks are you going to use?’

The fox sat silently under the tree, wondering which trick she should use. Before she could make up her mind, the dogs arrived. They fell upon the fox and tore her to pieces.

A single plan that works is better than a hundred doubtful plans. – Source

Just like the fox, many magicians find they have too many choices, and spend too long considering or analysing a routine or their performance before first trying it out. They are victims of a common problem called: Analysis Paralysis.

Analysis paralysis happens when we over-thinking a situation or problem. Spending too much time thinking about a trick, practicing and adjusting the trick or routine so that a decision to perform it is never made. The over thinking, in effect, paralyses the performer.

Because a magic routine can easily become over-complicated, with too many performance options, it’s easier to put it on hold, rather than try it out and change any parts of it, should a problem is found.

As we work to become better magicians, we are always striving for the ideal or “perfect” performance. It’s the fear of making any decision which could lead to a bad performance, when some unknown better solution or technique could be found.

Now, if you have explored more posts on this blog, you may well be thinking: ‘Hang on, many of Dominic’s posts urge me to keep practising and to slow down my learning to improve my sleight of hand. ‘ Yes, that’s true, and I still think most magicians would benefit from not rushing to perform a trick within a few days of receiving it. Analysis Paralysis isn’t about rushing to perform. It’s about finally making a decision that a trick is ready.

Chances are you have a few tricks that are already mastered and ready to go, but you keep working on them, practicing and tweaking the presentation in your practice sessions. In reality, they have been ready for months, but you haven’t ‘drawn a line’ and consciously labeled them as ready to go.

If you do have some tricks that are ‘on hold’ like this, unless you commit to trying them out, they will never be completed.

DO THIS: The next time you perform your magic, give one of these tricks a go. At the end of your normal set is usually the best time to try out a new trick. Once you have shown everyone your main tricks, you can relax and revisit groups of spectators that were particularly receptive to the magic. By this time, you have nothing more to prove. The trick’s presentation won’t be as good as it will be after your 100th performance, but it doesn’t need to be.

You are ‘breaking it in’ with a crowd who are already impressed with you, and on your side.

Every show that passes with that trick still in your close-up bag is an opportunity wasted. You know that you will kick yourself later on, when the trick has made it into your core act that you took so long to try it out.

How to Relax and be Less Nervous When Performing Magic Tricks

by Merchant of Magic 3 Comments

By Dominic Reyes

Matthew writes:

‘I am having difficulty with making my hands and arms look natural when performing. When I perform a magic trick involving showing or holding something, my arms tend to squash up and seem too close together.’

No quick fix for that I’m afraid Matthew, but it’s awesome that you have identified it and want to take steps to fix it too.

That’s ‘performing tension’ and is quite common Matthew. You need to learn to relax whilst performing.

One of the biggest causes of stiff arms or hunching up of the body, whilst doing a magic trick, is thinking about what you are doing whilst you are doing it.

It’s an instinctive response from the time when we all lived in caves. When you feel insecure and need to concentrate, your brain thinks it’s in danger. It’s sending signals to your body to get ready to escape. Your body tenses up, like a spring, in case it needs to take sudden emergency action. But how do you get rid of it?

It’s not easy, is it? You have to pay attention to the audience, remember the moves, check you are doing it right, and say something interesting whilst you are doing all this!

The cure to feeling nervous when performing magic tricks is switching over to routining your magic rather than practicing. That means you need to go through the whole routine, including patter from start to finish. You do this in a slow, natural way, over and over again. Over time, you become very familiar with the WHOLE performance and your body will relax.

Seriously consider filming your performance of the trick to an imaginary audience. Do this 15 times. Don’t stop or tweak the performance mid way through. Pretend the footage is live going out on TV. Afterwards, watch it back and see how much you have relaxed the tension in your arms between the first few full performances and the end ones. That will show you the power of routining rather than practicing just the moves.

Got more suggestions for Matthew to feel less nervous when performing magic tricks? Share your ideas in the comments section below:

Help! My Magic Thumb Tip Doesn’t Match My Skin Colour.

by Merchant of Magic 2 Comments

We get asked about the importance of matching a thumb tip, to a person’s skin colour so many times. We now have a canned auto response stored on the email system! So we might as well publish it here too, so everyone can read it.

Does a Magic Thumb Tip need to match your skin colour?
The answer to this is no. Yes, I know this seems odd but:

‘I asked the same question. The gentleman [at the magic shop] demonstrated the standard thumb tip vanish of a silk, and I couldn’t find the tip. He then pulled it out of his fist and showed me. It was stainless steel coloured metal tip with orange tape on the end.’ – C.S Stanton

Camouflage is not why thumb tips work

The human brain is amazing. It processes so much information all at once. But it also likes to take shortcuts.

When your eye scans around a room, thousands of instances of the world are captured and passed to the brain for processing. This has to happen instantly and without us being aware of the process. To speed this up, the brain used memory and images from previous ‘frames of vision’ to reduce processing demands.

Your brain already knows what a hand looks like. It sees them quite a bit! Because of this it will not process the visual information it receives as fully as when it has to understand a new or rare object. It fills in the gaps with its memories.

Dr Lars Muckli, from the University of Glasgow Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, explains this far better than I can:

“The brain’s main function is to minimize surprise – that is what it has evolved to do. Memory and the predictive power of the brain combine in a very powerful way to allow us to anticipate our surroundings. Any kind of predictive method is an advantage to a biological system.

If you are driving a car and a pedestrian is suddenly obscured – say by a pillar box or your rear view mirror – your brain still knows where they are and where they will reappear in your line of vision. Without that ability, we would be lost in everyday life.” – Source

You don’t need to match the skin colour of your thumb tip for normal use. However, if it is going to be in view for long periods of time, or attention is drawn to is, to it becomes a focus of attention, then a general similar colour may be advisable. For normal use and magic tricks like vanishes, there is no need to match the colour

But it looks obvious to me!
That’s because you know it’s there and are taking the time to examine it. Your brain treats the thumb tip as the most important object in your field of vision.

To overcome this fear, you can do a simple experiment. Wear the thumb tip and go out shopping. Pay no attention to it and see if anyone takes a second look. Slip one on for an hour when you go out with friends. Don’t mention it and don’t keep looking at it. Just pretend it’s not there. You will quickly see that it goes unnoticed.

I tried it, and they spotted it.
If that happen while you test it out with friends, think back to how you acted. If it was the first time you put it on, chances are you kept looking at the thumb tip to see if it was hard to spot. People will pay attention to the things that they see others focus on. You may have felt that you acted totally natural, but those sideways glances down to your hand were a real give away.

Try it out with some other people and remember to ignore the thumb tip. You will see just how powerful this little device can be.

Which thumb tips do most professional magicians use?
The best selling magicians thumb tip in the world is the Vernet Classic Thumb tip. It only comes in one colour and is the thumb tip we recommend to all the magicians that come to the Merchant of Magic for tuition.

Question: Do you currently use a thumb tip? If so, does it match your skin tone exactly and have you ever had a problem because of this? Please share your experiences in the comments section below: