Misdirection. A valuable lesson. #magic #magician

so many people ask me about learning misdirection and um I always say it's one of those things you've got to you read about it but then try out and today I'm kind of researching this direction for a course I'm putting together uh and it's something I've been using for a long time of course in work and we all do as magicians but it's there's not loads of places where I find it's clearly described and I've gone back I've read it a lot but I'm hav't read it for a long time to the Books of Wonder Tommy wonder and his essay or piece on misdirection and you forget how good it is getting the Miss out of misdirection talking about you know using Direction instead of misdirection and all that and I won't go through all of it but one of the things that I think is so underwritten about or underd discussed is the confidence and the belief that it's going to work and he talks about you know when you go out and perform a trick for the first time you lack that confidence of course because it's the first time you get that nerves and maybe because of that lack of confidence the misdirection doesn't work and you get caught out or something doesn't flow smoothly and then you go into this spiral this kind of downward spiral the next time you do it you're worried about that happening again so it happens again and then after a while you quit because you think it's not for you and I've experienced that at every level you know doing magic for 30 years I still experience it now I've just been just got over that with pickpocketing I'm starting to really believe that I can do it and the minute that belief came in it was the Improvement was so vast the moves were the same but the Improvement was just massive and with watch dealing now obviously in an entertainment situation I'm faltering at that still I kind of had a bit of confidence in it and now that's gone because I got caught a couple of times so it's and I've noticed on reading this that I haven't tried it in a while I went through a period not long ago of just trying it all the time and even subconsciously I'd I'd fallen into that downward spiral so I think that well a read if you've got the Books of Wonder um well if you haven't get them if you're a magician and read and reread and reread the the piece on a misdirection and take notes you know and go through those notes and and and then they're kind of there when you start working again or go out and try a trick even the most simplest of self-working tricks I think it's something we can try out and of course he he talks about trying it in tricks that don't require it so if if you get caught on a bit it doesn't ruin the whole trick it might make one bit slightly less magical and he uses one of his tricks um as an example but really recommended if you can get hold of it read the essay on M well read the whole books but read the essay on Mis Direction