What is the life you want to create for youself? What is the purpose of your business? Have you thought seriously about those things? Have you made plans? Or is your plan just to “go along and get along” and hope for the best?
Great success doesn’t come without goals, without plans. So get busy. Now. Define your goals and make some plans!
Sometimes words can trigger us. Consider using different words!
Words have great power, both when we use them to communicate with others, and when we use them to ourselves. I used to tell myself, “you’re an idiot” when I did something that turned out to be a mistake. It wasn’t helpful. Now, I prefer, “Wow…I guess I’m still learning!” Or, “Whoops! I let my focus slip, there.” Both encourage me to keep growing and learning, to focus my attention on things I can improve. “You’re such an idiot!” just makes me feel bad about myself. Which would you prefer to feel? If you’re willing to try out some different ways of expressing yourself, you’ll be taking an important, empowering step towards changing both yourself and the world around you.
Who would claim to be such a silly thing? A character from fantasy and fiction, only…or it would be easy to dismiss the term that way. But true wizards exist in reality, and throughout history. Individuals who, but being willing to question the norms, to see their situations from not just one, but many points of view, and by taking the responsibility for changing that world to themselves…have done just that.
As Steve Jobs’ famous ad proclaimed, “Here’s the the crazy ones!” Or, to quote another great, John Lennon, “I hope you’ll join us!” Individually and together, we can make a better world. Learn more in my book, “The Wizard’s Way,” or come and explore our offerings here at Wizardventure.com.
Rita Hayworth performing in The Mercury Wonder Show, 1943
Just for fun on this holiday Monday…and for my friends who are magic enthusiasts…do you know the magician’s name who produced and starred in The Mercury Wonder Show?
Everything communicates. Your posture, your dress, your background, your words…everything. Here’s a way to influence someone at the other end of a telephone line, even before they tell you who you are.
As a happy by-product, it’s also a way to influence your own state of mind, just by establishing a new (and easy, and fun!) habit. Watch, consider…and change your life, one small step at a time. This one seems small, but can make a huge difference in your life in business…and in your personal life, too!
Wishing you all a magical Monday!
Too many of us develop strong and useful skills. We become experts at medicine, engineering, law or some other discipline. But we fail to learn the essentials of communication. Without those, our abiltiy to succeed–in our jobs, in building strong organizations, even in the ability to maintain good relationships with those we love–are compromised.
I find this to be a real shame–partly because it handicaps so many otherwise wonderfully talented people–but even more so because learning basic communications skills is much easier than most of those other disciplines. If you can learn the ins and outs of molecular biology, you have more than enough brain power to become a great communicator.
That’s why one of our most important offerings here at the Wizard Venture is in the area of communication. How do give better presentations, both online and in person. Learning to start with purpose, develop logic and data to get a point across, to develop persuasive visual aids, and, ideally, to turn your data and logic into moving stories–these are the primary skills we teach in these workshops. Are you ready to take the next step in becoming a powerful leader? Here’s where you start.
It takes a bit of nerve to perform a magic trick for your friends…and even more for a group of people you don’t know well. Performing is a great way to develop your leadership skills. So…here’s a bit of magic you can learn as you “play along,” with the video. Once you’ve learned it, I strongly urge you to share it with a group of your colleagues.
Successful performers “take charge” of the experience of their audiences when they perform. So do successful entrepreneurs, marketers and others. If you aspire to leadership, this is just one of the small lessions you need to master. Have fun with it!
Learn more from my book The Wizard’s Way, or by booking one of our keynotes or workshops available here at the Wizard Venture!.
Whatever “world changing” action you might be undertaking, this is a powerful and useful observation. Are you a speaker? You must get attention, and then control the attention of your listeners if you want them to “get the point” of your talk. If you’re a marketer, once again, you’ll succeed or fail based on your ability to control the attention of your potential customers. Leading a company? Take charge of your company culture, and direct the attention of your employees and your market to where you need it to be to achieve success.
As someone who has been directing magic shows and the careers of magicians for over 30 years, I’ve learned a few things about directing (and misdirecting) attention. Want to learn more of what I have? Drop me a note to tobias@wizardventure.com, or just explore our offerings at www.wizardventure.com!
Edwin De Bono is a wonderul “thinker about thinking.” In this littel video I cover his “Six Hats” method of examining any problem or situation from at least six different viewpoints. Since, in the Wizard’s Way, I’ve pointed out that the ability to see the same thing from many different angles can be a key to creating postive change…I thought you might like this very systematic way of doing just that. Try it out!
Think back just a bit…to a time when you knew you needed to act. To when you had enough information to make a good decision, but put it off. What were the results?
Now, remember a time when you went ahead and made a decision, just because it “felt right.” You jumped in with both feet. And though you might not have been completely right–it was your action that paid off.
While it’s true that nothing great was ever created that wasn’t first imagined–it’s also true that many, many things have been imagined but never created. Don’t wait for someone else to act, just because “that’s not my job.” Do what needs to be done, and you’ll start becoming the leader who is always seen as part of the solution, not the problem. I know that’s where I want to be. How about you?
Want to learn more? Examine our site here at wizardventure.com. Get in touch to schedule one of our keynotes, training sessions, or other transformative events. All available both online and live in person. We can help you “think different,” and take those “different” actions that lead to success.
Introducing one of my favorite real life wizards–and, incidentally, one of the world’s great magicians, as well. Known for his innovative performances combining masks, mime, Kabuki theater and amazing sleight-of-hand, McBride is also founder of McBride’s Magic & Mystery School, where we have been hosting magical teaching events for 3 decades. He is a dynamic and entertaining speaker and teacher on the subject of “Innovating like a Magician.” The talk and/or training sessions will inpire and empower your audiences, and can be delivered right now online, or live and in person whenever that becomes once again possible.
Enjoy the video, and do explore the site here at WizardVenture.com. I look forward to hearing from you soon!
This is one of the “big secrets” of true “wizard leaders.” When we realize that the world we experience is actually a reflection of who we are, and that each one of us has the power to change ourselves, we take a huge step forward towards empowerment. The change of mindset from victim (the world makes me miserable) to hero (I am responsible for everything I experience) is one of the most effective changes you can make…and it only involves taking control of your own mind!
I’m sometimes asked, “Why are things so much more meaningful in stories that in real life?” A good question, and one authors deal with all the time. What makes a good story?
Here’s something that is key: Good stories happen when you have an interesting character who wants something passionately–but can’t get it. The story tells us how that character struggles through and works their way to achieve the thing they want. They encounter obstacles, suffer reversals…and often have to learn some big lesson along the way. But they don’t give up until they reach their goal.
In real life, too few of us have figured out that thing or things that we most want, or we lack the passion to really go after it. Do you want your life to be as exciting as those stories you love? Figure out what you are most passionate about. Then make a plan, and get busy. Adopt the creative, proactive mindset, and make it happen. You’ll find your life suddently taking on purpose and meaning. Go ahead…don’t be aftraid. You were born to be a hero!
Einstein, Da Vinci, Feynman…so many of the great “world changers” relied just as much on feeling, intuition and imagination as on logic. Logic and critical thinking are important…but they tend you keep you where you are. They are useful at justifying decisions, maintaining (and improving) the status quo. The Wizard’s Way encourages us each to develop our whole selves…not just one or two aspects. If you’re naturally a left-brain, logical sort, go out of your way to develop the right-brain, feeling and intuitive parts of your nature. If you’re naturally more of a creative, right-brain type…go learn to code, or get a book of mathematical puzzles and try to figure them out.
Its time to embrace our full humanity and empower ourselves! We can help you with that here at wizardventure.com! Come explore!
For my students / consultees wondering why maybe they shouldn’t “just wing it” when making a presentation. If Mark Twain needed three weeks to come up with something good, what makes you think you’re going to do better?
Same for Steve Jobs. Did you ever watch one of the product-launch keynotes? He seems so relaxed, so “off the cuff.” It’s so easy to forget the days of rehearsal with a full team helping him make sure it would look like that!
Interesting that this should come up as I post today–I’ve just been promoting my class at McBride’s Magic & Mystery School on just this subject! Learning to build great systems to help you manage your business (and life!) is a great way to leverage your ability to create change. And the Wizard’s Way is the way of the master of change! Build a few for yourself…stop wasting time on trivial but necessary activities, and get on with the things that really matter to you.
If you’re a performer, you may want to check out the class, now available for registration at http://www.magicalwisdom.com/events#642.
OR…you can read the book itself, “Beyond Applause: Marketing & Management for the Independent Performer,” now available through Amazon.
Here’s an interesting though experiment. Suppose everything you experience is just an illusion! “Reality” is just the mental model you construct in order to make sense of the myriad sensory streams that you are bombarded with every second of every day. Now suppose, for just a minute or two, that you suddently realize your interpretation of one or more of those input streams has been wrong. Your whole reality can shift in a moment as a result of that.
This process is precisely what illusionists do. By showing how fallible our interpretations of reality can be, they hope ot open up our minds in ways that will empower us to do better. Better in our relationships with others, with our environment, in the running of our lives. Isn’t it worth it, just for a moment, to consider all the things you “know for sure that just ain’t so?”
Magicians and wizards both manipulate our perceptions. But, while magicians are very good at using their tricks to entertain us–real wizards have a different purpose. Whether we use our illusions to educate, as I’m doing here, or to change perceptions and beliefs in “the real world” as those like da Vinci, Ghandi, and Steve Jobs did, the wizard’s secrets bring about real change.
Learn more by exploring our site www.wizardventure.com, reading The Wizard’s Way, or having one of our speaker/consultants make a presentation for your group. Through the magic of video-conferencing, we can be with you anywhere in the world on just a moment’s notice. Or when time and circumstance permits, we’re happy to come visit and work with you and your group in person.
That desire to keep growing, to keep learning, is one of the things that sets true wizards apart from many others.
Learn some of the secrets of the real wizard-leaders from history in by book The Wizard’s Way (available from Amazon), or from one of our speaker/consultants at The Wizard Venture. You, too, can become a wizard-style leader. You CAN make a difference.
Doing something that scares you doesn’t mean being foolhardy. It means daring to push your own boundaries in ways that just might make you more productive. It means confronting people and things you feel strongly about, but might avoid because that might “rock the boat” in uncomfortable ways.
One way to get better at this is to make a to do list every day, and then prioritize it…what are the one or two things you really want to avoid doing on that list? Too often, we put those things off until the end of the day. Don’t. Do the toughest, scariest thing FIRST. Then the rest of the day just gets easier. You might even find yourself enjoying the tough parts, and looking for more challenges like them each day–which is great, because the tough parts are probably the things most likely to really move your business–or relationship–forward.
I had difficulty a few years back with a client who got ripped off by a consultant, who promised him he was buying an “exclusive” on a magic piece he was performing on a TV show. Later we found the piece had been sold many times, to many others, always with a promise that it was “exclusive.” We broke our agreement with the seller, and he wanted to bring a lawsuit against us in response. Fortunately, we had the better lawyer, who put the whole thing to rest with a single threatening phone call. I’ve heard many similar cases, with the – lets just call him a scammer – winning. Because THEY had the better lawyer. Justice isn’t always served in these cases. But…it’s an example of just how important it is to build a team with the best people you can possibly find, surrounding and supporting you.
Leverage is one of the great keys to success…and a great supporting team gives you a lot of leverage. Wizards seek out leverage wherever they can find it! So, find people better and smarter than you are, inspire them with your cause, and you’ll greatly increase your chances of winning!
