With all of the wonderful feedback, posts, and PMs about sharing my blog entries, I am offering these words from today posted on http://www.magicvault.net blog...



Staying motivated with magic…
Posted on August 5th, 2008 by Mark Reed
In our past blogs we have covered how to learn an effect and make it your own, as well as how to get to know the “soul” of an effect and the critical importance of books as a learning tool.

We now come to a topic that deserves a great deal of attention - as it is the root cause of failure for many magicians. It is something we all encounter at least a few times in our magic lives. I am speaking of “self destruction”. Now I know that sounds harsh, and in a way it should… since self destruction is composed of many faces: procrastination, lack of focus, lack of motivation, poor time management, and the list goes on and on. We are going to touch on self destruction of your magic self as a whole, and also touch on a few of the key faces.

We all come to a point where we have spent hours reading, hours practicing, and hours being frustrated. We have found ourselves in places where we question why we even bother. Others make those sleights and flourishes look so easy - yet we struggle only to seemingly not progress. These are common frustrations and are often the soil that self destruction is planted. Our frustrations feed habits of self destruction…

We procrastinate. “I will practice tomorrow.” “I will finish reading that book next week” Frustrations often damage the sense of urgency of doing it NOW!.

We loose focus. We jump from topic to topic, unable to immediately master it, we move on the next only to repeat the vicious cycle.

We loose motivation. Magic seems hard, so we look for other ways to entertain that are easier. Have you ever met a “magician” that seems to only tell jokes and perform in a “stooge-like” manner of physical comedy? While these acts are fine and have their place, many magicians fall into this path as a result of giving up the more refined magic arts.

We fail to set time aside for our magic. How can one learn magic that has taken centuries to develop by only spending a few hours with it? In today’s world of fast paced news coverage, instant downloads, and microwave meals, we all loose track of the fact that some things JUST TAKE TIME.

We have touched on a few of the damaging elements that lie within us all - but how do we combat them? While in the end, the only true weapon against self destructive habits is self discipline, there are a number of tools and methods to help ease and do a little “damage control”.

Understand that your magic is just as important as other things in your life. Give yourself three magic priorities and get them done TODAY. Take no excuses for not accomplishing them.

Stick to your focus. Identify an area of magic that interests you and master it. Do not skip around everything magic offers without having some depth to at least one or two of those areas. For example, if you like spongeballs - learn all you can. Master them. Perform them often. Become known as the magican to ask about sponge work.

Join a local magic club. Motivation is often fueled by association and socialization with those of a like mindset. Surround yourself with other magician friends. If you cannot attend a club, there are many online resources to use. This blog is one of them, as are the forums at http://www.themagiccafe.com. When you have others you deal with that are magicians, you will naturally want to keep on your path of learning magic. It is the common trait that binds you to the other magic people in your life.

Find a mentor. Many magicians have people they look up to and respect. They have certain people they study and value over others. Ideally your mentor should be someone you can communicate with, however many have been successful using mentors of the past - Dai Vernon, for example has been a mentor of many and continues to do so. Just as athletes look up to other athletes - find your magic superstar to look up to.

Reward accomplishments. Once you get an effect down - perform it over and over again… not until you get it right… but until you don’t get it wrong anymore. Once you do that - stop and reward yourself. Treat yourself to something completely relaxing and self-endulging. Your mind will start to associate hard core accomplishment with the sense of feeling good beyond just that accomplishment - and that will have you working even harder.

This blog, while commonsense in nature, is meant to stress to those new to magic that we all encounter the feelings of self destruction. It is natural. The key is to be able to identify those feelings and know they are just tumbleweeds on the path to success in magic. I did not want this blog to sound like a “power of positive thinking” infomercial - but in all reality that is what it boils down to. Those that become great in magic become great by working hard, staying focused, and not letting themselves become their own obstacles.

Study magic. Read about magic. Practice magic. Perform magic. Think about magic.

Surround yourself with magic and great things will happen.

Thank you for that post, it is what I needed to hear today. Card magic is not coming easily nor quickly for me. I have a great friend who is a superb card magician, who encourages me to stick with it, and to be patient with my progression. I will continue steady on the Royal Road, and stop asking myself why I'm not there yet..

One thing that I trapped myself with in earlier years - I set myself up as a paid performer (doing birthday parties). People booked me and I performed - but I stunk!!

With my regular job, my family, and other comittments, I had no TIME to give to ~perfecting~ a routine - it was all I could do to learn the "trick". Of course, with this method, I was always searching for "that one good trick" that would make me a _real_ magician.

Do not lock yourself into any kind of performance - or even let people goad you into performing - before you are ready to be magical! Oh, they'll nag you all right - "Show me that trick you did for Bob last week!" Don't be afraid to say "No, I caught some things I did rather poorly, and I'd rather show it to you when I've got it fixed. Ask me again in a week or three."

There are some issues of performing that will never be resolved until you put the routine out in front of real people. But don't let yourself get into a place where you _must_ put out anything less than the best you have. Then performing becomes an environment for improvement - not a substitue for the TIME you should have spent practicing!

Excellent post, Mark! Thank you!!

Ed

Thank you for sharing.

Good point Ed, I frequently have to force myself not to perform a trick I know need to brush up on so as not to give it away.

There is a hidden pleasure at working on improving our effects, writing scripts and practicing which (for me) never faded away. It's possibly as enjoyable as performing when a new step is reached in an effect

I have really really improved at sleight of hand precisely because I am so completely unmotivated to learn magic tricks, practice and rehearse magic tricks and also to learn new sleight of hand. Because of this I get hours of practice every day on the sleights I already know, while watching movies or while reading these forums.

Today again I tried to force myself to watch a tutorial DVD. It is so boring that I almost contemplated a nice free fall from my window onto the pavement instead. I really can't stand it. The patience for slow beginnings is gone. But understanding a sleight well enough to be able to practice the mechanics, I love. I watch around 8 hours of mindless entertainment every night and my hands work through all of that. I work on old sleights as they come to me. Shuffles, culls, passes...

The worst part is all the stuff I need to put down in my notebooks. So much writing. I cannot find the energy so I have mountains of opened books with bookmarks all over my desk. I cannot let a new effect I really like "go" to be forgotten, so when I happen upon one I will spend months trying to get myself to write it down in my notebook. Write it down properly so that it has meaning later. The stacks of work grow and grow.

It has been like this for a long time. But it isn't as bad as it may sound. Because of this I have reached a level with many crucial sleights that would have taken me many years should I have devoted much of my time to other things. I can always work on the effects later. So being unmotivated to do some things can be good for other things.

Anyway... an interesting article! Thank you!

Really good advice and just what I need it for the day.
Sometimes I just feel like I need the extra push.

Thank you for the advice. I've been finding myself putting off practice more and more since I don't seem to get anywhere.