Is it wrong to trick students into believing in themselves?

At a barbeque on the weekend for my sister in law’s birthday, I met a number of interesting friends of the family, including a high flyer in the banking software world.

As a teenager trying to decide what to do with my life, I was completely unaware of the types of jobs that people that I meet these days, do. I was familiar with the staple professions of law, medicine, and accounting, but technical systems management and its impact on socio political banking was probably a little off my radar at the age of sixteen.

 I spent at least an hour questioning one guy about what it was that he did, how he got clients, and what he considered a reasonable remuneration rate for his time and skills. This dude charged a lot. I mean a LOT people! Taking note of my surprise, and helping me recover with the use of the Heimlich Manoeuvre, he asked what I did and I told him that I sold the benefits of an education to disenfranchised kids. It was now his turn to press for more information in an attempt to gain a better understanding.

I told him that through the speeches, workshops and magic effects, I created an alternate mental perception filter that allows those I taught to process their experiences in a wholly positive and self esteem building way. He pressed me for more info. I told him that pretty much all of the students I see have complex skills that they have mastered. Becoming aware that you not only have these skills, but that you are responsible for attaining them is the starting point for determining the process you used to initially acquire them.

Once we have that process sorted, then we look at the most positive states of mind to get into if we wish to learn new things, and finally how to trick ourselves into those states of mind at will. I explained that it seemed to me there were a lot of jaded, seen all that life has to offer at the age of thirteen year olds out there, who desperately needed some level of morale boost, because what they had seen so far had vastly underwhelmed them. What we needed was something on a biblical scale, I mean huge!

Now he was intrigued, and wondered what I could proffer to warrant such blatant hyperbole. So I told him about the Matrix. He now wondered if I was having difficulty separating fantasy from reality, to which I responded that I was, but how that was unimportant right now, because if you really thought about it, so was everyone else. Whatever random name we give a bunch of molecules is just that; a name we give to a bunch of random molecules, so if you want to call that reality you go right ahead. The thing is that not everyone experiences those molecules the same way, so their reality will in fact differ from yours.

Actually, a lot of the time, reality comes down to what the majority of people believe, and that becomes the norm. Let’s not even go down the flat earth avenue, let’s just say that if you don’t want to look out of place, you agree with what everyone else says and does, including in some cases, what they say about you and your ability. This is certainly true of a number of kids at mainstream school. So I go in and convince them that they can actually attain the skill sets and grades to enable greater flexibility of behaviour, when opportunities present themselves.

So, like a puppy with a new slipper, he refused to let this one slip away and enquired next as to how exactly I managed to engage and convince these kids that they can make this behavioural leap, to which I explained that I achieved these incredible results with the use of strategically implemented NLP techniques in conjunction with magic of the kind you are familiar with seeing Derren Brown, David Blaine, or Dynamo performing. At this point, my new found friend posited an important question. He wanted to know if there was no such thing as magic, why they should believe anything that I had to say to them. In fact, considering the level of cynicism you get with most teenagers, what chance did I think I had even trying to find a common ground?

 I told him that if I create an experience that they cannot explain, then as a by product I am also creating a state of wonder and possibility. These are the exact states of mind that I need them to attain in order for me to be able to shift beliefs. Magic reminds us all of a time when we were younger, and the realms of possibility were much wider than we see as adults. Presenting an experience to an audience who cannot themselves determine if it was true or not, allows one a certain amount of manoeuvrability. I like to move them towards self belief.

Then he got mad. He robustly informed me that it was his belief that I had no right to use such trickery on these students, because my tricks were not real, and therefore the students would just be deluding themselves. As opposed to believing that if they get a degree, they could just walk into a job that would allow them to live the celebrity lifestyle. Magic tricks aside, it was interesting to hear his beliefs. In his world, the use of psychological techniques to change a student’s belief about them self for the better was wrong, because you only have the right to do so if your techniques are real. So, I told him a story. Then as part of the story, I showed him a magical effect using a deck of playing cards. Then I asked him what was real. The story with the effect suggested one world was possible, his brain and common sense were desperately hanging on to the one he was standing in before the story.

When someone experiences something they cannot explain, their mind goes into a kind of freefall. Usually, they can construct somewhere solid to land, but it is quickly assembled from the remnants of the world they felt so strongly was unshakeable. Well we already have the landing pads for the new world, already constructed, with brand spanking new shiny beliefs about the nature of possibility and future success. We do this over and over again, with different stories, and different effects.

My new friend was perplexed. He knew that what he had experienced was just a stupid trick. Just because he didn’t know how it was done, didn’t mean that something absolutely incredible had just taken place, it just meant that it was a stupid little trick. That didn’t mean anything.

I’ll be working with his staff later this month. He still thinks it’s wrong for me to do this, but if anyone’s going to benefit from this persuasion business, then by thunder it’s going to be his business.

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Does magic threaten our notion of reality?

  We have all been there. At a wedding, in a restaurant, perhaps even on the street, someone approaches us with that mysterious gleam in their eye and offers us the chance to be enthralled by their incredible illusions, or some feat of impossible mental trickery. Many of us initially sigh, and succumb to what turns out most of the time to be an effect that whilst well polished and presented, remains nothing more than an example of what one can do with a bit of spending money and a lot of practice.

Having spoken to a number of people about their post magic state of mind, I found the majority of those people came away with a “So what?” attitude lingering in the air like an uninvited smell.  Yes, you did manage to pull off a trick that we can’t explain and well done for that, but let’s face it, at the end of the day, if you could walk through solid walls, make my card appear in my pants, or walk across water in broad daylight, then surely you should be rich, or fighting crime, or something right?  Because, as everyone who considers themselves even slightly savvy well knows, these are just a bunch of simple tricks. There is no such thing as magic. I mean come on everyone knows that right?

Well perhaps not.  Some people completely and absolutely believe that these feats of inexplicable trickery are real and as true as the nose on your face. The very fact that they witnessed the event live and direct is all the evidence they need to convince them that with access to all the information, they can see no trick, therefore it must be real.

The question is, if the illusion works, doesn’t that make the event a reality? I remember my old History teacher once telling us that History was written by the winners of a war. Not a great incentive to win then I thought to myself, especially if after all the blood and guts, you have to sit down and compose history books for school kids and librarians. Now of course I can see what he was on about, and I could also reconcile it with my impression of magicians collectively.

As winners write history, so magicians attempt to take control of, and then determine your memory of the experience.  They set the backdrop, control how it’s seen, and lead your attention to the working parts of the illusion that are most likely to result in you constructing a memory consistent with the explanation of the trick.

Recently, a talented young magician appeared to walk across the Thames River in London. Now, despite the last guy to manage this becoming a bit of a pin up, and the subsequent two thousand odd years of…unpleasantness, it still seemed like a good idea at the time.  There are those who will not have any problem believing that someone can do this. There are others who whilst not knowing how it was done will still exit the “possibility bubble “ by consigning it to the simple trick pile, and there are others still, who simply will not acknowledge the event for fear that they will look bad if they are seen to not know how it is done.

Constructing “Possibility bubbles” is the name of the game. Ask yourself “what would it take for you to actually believe that what you are experiencing could be true, real, or possible?”  You may well find, if you look closely enough, that there are a set of prover buttons that need to be pushed before you consider the event to be true or possible. Once these are activated, then you may well consider the event to be viable. 

This is where things get rather interesting, especially if you place that “possibility bubble” in your future. What I mean by this is that you suggest to yourself that what takes place in the bubble could soon happen in your life.

Now, consider for a second the advantages that you could experience if you were inside of the bubble. If you were, say capable of stepping into the bubble to reap the benefits of being inside it and either stay in indefinitely, or step out when you felt like it.    

How good would it be if you were the tenacious presenter and public speaker one moment, and then the mild mannered and down to earth, approachable manager the next? It is clear to see that one could wield tremendous and life changing personal power from these bubbles, and their creation and management are exactly what occurs when you come into contact with magicians, except it is they who are doing the creating. This is not necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary, it offers a much needed insight into the realms of possibility for each of us and our incredibly rich and fertile imaginations.

It has been said that those who have changed our world, have done so from positions of adversity. Some inner drive has spurred them on to accomplishing great feats through a desire to alter their perceived reality. They were unhappy with what they were experiencing, and they found a method to shift reality towards something that worked better for them. Where this has happened, others having seen the advantages soon followed suit.  These are the positive outcomes, yet we must be wary of the negatives. 

If you are not constructing these possibility bubbles for yourself, you can rest assured that others are doing it for you. These are being created without your best intentions in mind, very often resulting in a reality that neither works for you, nor moves you towards the person that you are capable of being.  This could be in your office, your school, your club, or any number of scenarios in your life where others adopt the position of creator and you fulfill the role of what is known in the trade as the mark.  Those who construct are the magicians, they effortlessly create the parameters of your possibility, and therein lies the problem, as it is they who frame your notions of what is real or possible. The more you accept their assertions, the denser the reality they create.

Adopting this method of thinking can have profound effects on people, particularly children and students. Having delivered speeches and workshops to several schools and colleges over the years, we have noticed considerable changes in the behaviours and attitudes of those children who adopt a measured and controlled attempt at possibility construction. Outlook on life is enhanced; self esteem is raised along with behavioural standards all through empowering those children to create and shape their own possible desired outcomes, whether they be academic, personal, or behavioural.

Business, Government, and marketing organisations use exactly the same techniques to construct and promote their take on what is real and possible, and we as consumers use these constructs to gauge where we are and how we relate to these world views. By taking the same methodology and applying them to ourselves, we find that we now have access to a sea of opportunities with regard to determining what works for us, and how we can actively reshape our understanding of what we are capable of into new and powerful tools to take us from where we are to where we really want to be.

It is fair to say that a number of adults have taken negative experiences from their schooldays into their work life, and these have manifest themselves into behaviour patterns that not only affect their interaction with colleagues today, but if unchecked also provide a blueprint for their future relationships with others.  Applying the methods used by illusionists enables ordinary people to access states of mind where ideal behaviour patterns can be adopted readily and easily, once the mechanics are set in place to determine what your personal optimal state actually is, as determined by the most important person – yourself.

For more information on accessing the skills you need to make this a reality for you, don’t hesitate to visit www.mobiusinfinity.co.uk and have a look at MYND REVOLUTION.

If you don’t wish to control your reality, we promise you, somebody else will…

                         ...................Shabazz