Good Vs Great – The Story of Two Mentalists
I recently re-read a modern day classic on mind reading and mentalism. The book is by Paul Brook and is called The Alchemical tools. The book is essentially a must have for any mind reader or mentalist - novice and professional. Google 'Paul Brook Mind Reading' for more information.
Anyway, after reading the book again I re-read the true story about how one day he had a disagreement with one of his pupils. Being a great mind reader Paul occasionally took on people to teach his secrets to. Paul gives the impression this particular pupil was a bit of an idiot and an argument ensued.
In the argument the pupil basically claimed he was now better than Paul and knew everything he needed to know and left Paul to go out on his own. He soon returned with his tail between his legs claiming he could only get a handful of bookings and needed Paul's help. Paul took pity on the poor fellow and said he would watch him at his next gig to see if there were any problems in his performance and why people didn't seem to recommend him.
After his gig Paul said he knew the problem, he said he was throwing too many tricks at the crowd in quick succession and not giving each trick a chance to build in the mind of the audience. The pupil wasn't convinced so Paul asked him to one of his own gigs in a couple of days time.
Paul's gig was table hopping at a private function and it was split into 3 sections – before seating entertainment, after desert entertainment and a final section after the other acts had performed. Anyway, Paul said that he would perform in the first section and the pupil in the second. Then, they would ask the guests to vote on who they wanted to see on the final section. The pupil looked smug and agreed to the challenge.
They each performed their bits and a vote was taken. Every single guest voted for Paul. The pupil was stunned..
The pupil asked the individual guests why they didn't choose him. They all replied along the lines of, “It's because Paul really got into our minds and gave us all goosebumps.”
How did he do it? Well, the pupil was busy throwing 100 tricks at the guests in quick succession barely giving them time to appreciate it. Paul only performed ONE trick on each table. That trick got everyone involved and lasted 15 minutes, building up the suspense each time.
The moral of the story – I'll say it again, take your time and don't worry about learning 100 tricks, just learn 5 or 6 REALLY well and make it special. That's the difference between good mind reading and great mind reading.
Finally.. A REAL NLP Mind Reading Trick YOU Can Perform
NLP has been a bit of a buzz word for a good few years in relation to mind reading and mentalism tricks due to the likes of Derren Brown and Cris Angel.
The actual limits of NLP is only known to people who have actually studied it extensively, like myself. Limited is the key word, as people claim to use NLP for just about everything, but us people in the know, understand what you can and cannot do don't we?
That doesn't stop us saying we're using NLP when we're not, but sometimes it's nice to use some real NLP skills to perform our mind reading and mentalism.
So what NLP mind reading tricks are possible? Well I've already talked about how anchors can be used, but there are a few others too.
This one in particular isn't strictly NLP, but it involved reading subtle body language cues so I suppose it counts.
So here's the trick..
You show a spectator 5 playing cards, 4 of them are black number cards and one card is the queen of hearts. There are 2 versions of the trick you can use depending on who you perform it on. To one type of person you say that when they see the queen of hearts they are to think about SEX. To other people you just tell them to think about MONEY.
What you do is show them the queen of hearts first, tell them to think about sex/money. Get them to really think about it while they are staring at the queen of hearts. What this does is anchor the queen of hearts to that emotion.. I'll explain why in a moment.
What you do them is mix the cards face down and one after another show them each card and tell them to think about sex/money when they see the queen of hearts. When you show them each card, make sure you can't see the cards you show, but you need to be able to see their eyes.
Just by looking into their eyes, you can tell which card is the queen of hearts.. how?
Not by the reflection in their eyes. You can tell by their pupils dilating. When people think about sex or money. Their pupils dilate. When I say sex, I mean they need to really think of the act, and when they think about money, they need to imagine they have loads of it around them and to get excited.
So when you show them each card, watch their pupils and you will be able to tell which is the queen of hearts by when their pupils dilate (get bigger).
Try it out, it's a pretty decent little trick and you can even explain how you did it after. It's a good way to use as a build up to a really proper, stronger trick and to make them think you're a real body language expert.
If you want to have an arsenal of amazing mentalism tricks you can whip out on any occasion to literally freak people out, check out --> mind reading <-- and grab a copy of the ultimate mind reading manual before it's too late..