I heard something similar on a podcast recently. The interviewee...

I heard something similar on a podcast recently. The interviewee commented that he could often learn things from others that he had trouble learning himself, because once he actually saw the others doing the thing, some deep part of him realized it was a possible thing, and he could do it. Before he saw someone do it, that deep part of him didn’t believe it was possible.

I know this is true from working with young magicians, and my own experience as a young magician. There were many sleight-of-hand techniques which, when one attempted to learn them from a book, no matter how clearly described and illustrated, just frustrated you in your attempts. The result was that very, very few magicians every mastered those sleights.

However, once teaching on video became popular, with top performers teaching and demonstrating those same techniques, a whole new generation of young magicians was suddenly able to pick up the kind of sleight-of-hand skills very quickly. Those things you could tell yourself “were just impossible” when you tried to learn them without the human example before you showing you otherwise, quickly became much less difficult.

So… what tasks are you looking at and thinking must be impossible, or at a level of difficulty far beyond your abilities? Go find someone doing exactly those things. You’ll be amazed at what you can do once you know it’s possible!

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