MagicGizmo

What Does It Take to be a Mentalist?   Now, there’s a question.  This is something that a lot of the younger magicians ask my fellow mentalists and me.  We try to answer the question the best that we know how, but the answers never seem to be said correctly and as it should be.  The young magicians find it hard to follow or understand what we try to say.  We have pondered, considered and brainstormed this question and it is hard to understand.  We have tried to put it in a recipe form, a scientific equation, and even in a formula; nothing seems to make a dent in the process.  After, many years of thinking and many man-hours of struggling with the question, I am attempting to formulate a universal answer or at least a start to the answer.

The mentalist needs to be mysterious, but approachable; that is he must have an air of mystery about him and yet he needs to be able to talk with all sorts of people on a one on one basis at a moments notice.  When on stage he needs to be able to make people believe who he is.  When he is out among the people, he must be likeable and not snub anyone.  I can still remember I saw a famous magician perform and was lucky enough to meet him after the show.  He was the most insensitive, obnoxious, and mean person I have ever met.  He told me I would never be anyone and just because I had a “sneaky Pete’s” magic kit, I was not a magician.  He went as far as to tell me I was giving magic a black eye.  We must be careful in how we answer young magicians’ questions and make sure we promote them all we can instead of tearing them down.

Mentalists need to be humorous, but must also know when to be serious.  They should be able to turn serious and humor on and off like flipping a switch.  The most important part of this is to know when to be serious and when to be humorous.  All performance whether it is on stage or in life, one must know how to mix humor and seriousness sensibly.  It is always good to know how to bring out laughter in your audience, and when to get them on the edge of their chairs with anticipation (serious side).  A good mentalist will carry an arsenal of moods and lightheartedness around with him at all times.

The mentalist will need to know techniques on how to baffle, perplex, assist recall, evoke assistance, and produce telling reactions in people; these are just some of the necessary methods needed.  Probably some of the most important skills a mentalist can develop are his mental acuity and being a keen observant.  There are many different types of skills. 

There are ten basic types of skills that you should have or at the least be aware of:

1. Public Speaking - The ability to speak clearly, persuasively, and forcefully in front of an audience is important, whether an audience of 1 or of thousands. People who are effective speakers come across as more comfortable with themselves, more confident, and more attractive to be around.
2. Writing - Writing well offers many of the same advantages that speaking well offers. Learning to write well involves not just mastery of grammar but also the development of the ability to organize one’s thoughts into a coherent form and target it to an audience in the most effective way possible.
3. Self-Management - If success depends on effective action, effective action depends on the ability to focus your attention where it is needed most, when it is needed most. Strong organizational skills, effective productivity habits, and a strong sense of discipline are needed to keep your self on track.
4. Networking - Networking is not only for finding jobs or clients. In an economy dominated by ideas and innovation, networking creates the channel through which ideas flow and in which new ideas are created. A large network, carefully cultivated, ties one into not just a body of people but a body of relationships, and those relationships are more than just the sum of their parts. The interactions those relationships make possible give rise to innovation and creativity – and provide the support to nurture new ideas until they can be realized.
5. Critical Thinking - Being able to evaluate information, sort the potentially valuable from the trivial, analyze its relevance and meaning, and relate it to other information is crucial.  Good critical thinking skills help you learn to think on your feet and when you make a mistake, cover it.
6. Decision-Making - The bridge that leads from analysis to action is effective decision-making knowing what to do based on the information available. Being able to take in the scene and respond quickly and effectively is what separates the doers from the wannabes.
7. Mathematics - The ability to quickly work with figures in your head, to make rough but fairly accurate estimates, and to understand things like basic statistics gives you a big lead on most people. This skill will help you to analyze data more effectively and more quickly.
8. Research -  You don’t have to know everything, but you should be able to quickly and painlessly find out what you need to know. That means learning to use the Internet effectively, learning to use a library, and learning how to leverage your network of contacts.
9. Relaxation - Being able to face even the most pressing crises with your wits about you and in the most productive way is possibly the most important thing on this list.  Stress will not only kill you, it leads to poor decision-making, poor thinking, and poor socialization.  Working yourself to death in order to keep up, and not having any time to enjoy the fruits of your work, isn’t really “success”. It’s obsession.
10. Basic Accounting - Knowing how to track and record your expenses and income is important just to survive, let alone to thrive. It is a simple fact in our society that money is necessary. The principles of accounting apply more widely to things like tracking the time you spend on a project or determining whether the value of an action outweighs the costs in money, time, and effort.  Do not forget the knowledge of tracking your taxes.

While these are basic skills, we will call them the support skills that you will need to build on in order to be a good successful mentalist.  You usually learn these from schooling, working and life’s experiences.  Next are the three (3) skills that the mentalist must have:

1. Conceptual; The ability to think and conceptualize about abstract and complex situations.  This is the skill that will get you out of situations where failure is lurking.
2. Human; The ability to work well with other people.  This skill is very important; after all whom do you work with? people.
3. Technical; Knowledge and proficiency in a specific field.  This is the obvious one, it is so necessary to have, and not just in mentalism.

Now, we can get into specific skills necessary.  However, let me re-state that you need the three (3) skills mentioned above first, particularly number 3, technical. The ability to talk about anything and with enough knowledge to make it sound reasonable, believable, and credible is a very necessary skill to have or develop.  This could be called “the gift of gab”.  You must also have stage savvy; this can be learned quite rapidly compared to the others.  Stage savvy, is just knowing your way around the stage and the necessary lingo.  A beginning theatre class can teach you this or it can even be found on-line.  Stage savvy is totally different from stage presence.  Stage presence is either the natural ability to attract people and hold their attention or it can be learned, but not that easily.

This probably is not the time or place in this article to bring up “Cold Reading” but this is definitely a must for every mentalist.  It is not just a technique, a system, or procedure, it is a must have skill.  “Cold Reading” is one of the mind reading techniques that are commonly used in mentalism.  Cold reading is a series of techniques used to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that he knows much more about a subject than they actually do. Even without prior knowledge of a person, a skillful cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, religion, race or background, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc.

Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.  Ask the right questions. If you want to know how to read minds, you can start by asking the right questions. These questions won’t give you what you want to know directly, however, you would be able to figure out what the audience member (s) is thinking.  It allows you to enter his world and by feeding back to him what he says in a little different way and words, you are a true mind reader to him.

There is a ton of written materials and video on Cold Reading.  Everyone has his or her favorites to recommend, while I am no different, I rather not recommend any here.  I do not want to forget someone or recommend one because a friend of mine wrote it.  However, if you really want names, just e-mail me (see the end of article for where).  

I realize I am giving a ton of things you will need to have, acquire or learn, but mentalism is not an “overnight art” you can just start doing; there is a lot of studying, learning, practicing, and a ton of hard work.  With this in mind, here are four very necessary skills a mentalist must have:

1. Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, an observer can confirm sense data without necessarily implying understanding. Awareness is defined as a human's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.
2. Focus is the concentration of one’s attention or energy on something and one’s ability to sustain it.
3. Flexibility is making or willing to make concessions and being able to adjust readily to different conditions at a moment’s notice.
4. Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information.  Conscious understanding of something; vision, acuity; that which is detected by the five senses, not necessarily understood but also that which is detected within consciousness as a thought or intuition.

Now we will go back and describe how each plays a part in being a mentalist.

Awareness fits in with the ability to know or see what is going on around you at all times.  This skill helps you think and react to situation that can and usually does arise during a performance.  The mentalist becomes aware that an audience member is purposely giving him wrong information; this will give the mentalist the edge to turn the situation around in his favor.

Focus helps you keep track of what you are doing and how the audience is acting and reacting to you/your performance.  The mentalist concentrates on his performance but at the same time keeps track of what the audience is reacting to and if negatively he can change it.

Flexibility is being able to change what you are doing to something else in a split second.  The mentalist needs to be able to adjust his performance, timing, and speed of delivery, add or detract humor, and must be willing to do so.
Perception is being to see the entire audience/performance picture, and processing that information, thus giving the mentalist the insight as to where things can or need to be changed and then executing the action.

These skills are woven through your technical and presentation making it seem all you do is real.  This is what every mentalist should do or already does.  Every performance should be a learning experience and one should always strive to better each and every show and himself as well.

As always if you have any feedback, good or critical, please do not hesitate to contact me.


Bono Fortuna
Massimo
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