There are so many aspects of ourselves. The good parts and the bad. The successes and the failures.

Here’s an interesting question:

How do you make people see ONLY the parts of you that you WANT them to see? How do you make them see you as a winner?

The answer given by the social magician is… social misdirection.

Misdirection

Magicians use misdirection.

There’s a classic trick (I’m revealing secrets here!!) where a magician throws a bright red ball into the air and catches it. While doing this, his eyes and your eyes naturally follow the ball all the way up and back down. Then he does it again. Up and down. And again. And again.

Then as he throws it up the next time, his gaze and your gaze move up following the… Hey wait, why isn’t the ball coming down? As you frantically search the air for the bright red ball, you realize it’s gone. You look back down to the magician’s hands, and they’re empty too. What happened?

On that last “throw”, the magician only pretends to throw the ball up while he actually still keeps it in his hand. As we look up (and we’re not looking at his hand), he takes advantage of that moment and hides the ball elsewhere. But if he didn’t throw the ball, why did we look up? Misdirection.

Misdirection is all about expectations. When we have expectations of what we’re going to see, our minds indulge us and let us see only what we want to. When this magic trick was done as a study, scientists found out that the people who watched the trick said that they actually saw the ball leaving the hand of the magician! What’s more, they even came forward and pointed how high they saw the ball go before it vanished into thin air. Our minds are easily tricked into focusing on and believing something.

The magician here planted a few expectations into our brain to make sure that most of us are tricked:

  • Throwing the ball up multiple times allows us to expect the path of the ball in the air. We know where it will go so we look there on the last throw.

  • His gaze following the ball means that our eyes look in that direction too. Visual cues are strong ways to tell someone what is important to look at. We always look at what’s important.

With all those expectations running through our minds (subconsciously), we just have to look up.

Here are two  magician’s rules:

  • Never show a trick until you’ve mastered it.

  • Never repeat the same trick.

When you haven’t mastered the trick, you won’t be fluent with it, and your eyes will naturally slide over to where the action is happening. This means that you’ll look to the ball in your hand instead of the imaginary ball that’s supposed to be moving upwards. Guess what happens then? Your audience looks there too.

And kablam! The jig is up. They’ve seen your trick.

So how does this apply to social situations?

Social Misdirection

When people look at your personality, they follow your “visual cues” or in this case, they follow your social cues. What you think is important is what people will focus on. Do you make a big deal about your hair? Then even someone who didn’t even notice anything wrong with it will start to wonder. Do you focus on the pimples on your face every time? Then other people will too.

Ok, let’s bring this to the next level. Do you always focus on the problems in yourself, or the good things? Whichever you focus on, you can bet that the people around you will pick it up from what you do and say. If you focus on problems, they will also focus on the flaws and problems you have. They will always see you for the person you are. A person full of problems. A person who complains day in and day out about how life is not fair. And the most they can do is to *pity *you.

On the other hand, I’m sure you’ve heard of inspiring stories like Hellen Keller, (who was blind, deaf AND mute) but still went on to live their lives well. When you see these people who don’t focus on their problems, but rather on how life could be amazing, it naturally shines through from what they do and say.

It’s not like they don’t have problems. They have more than their share. But the fact that they don’t focus on them makes it hard for us to focus on them too. They seem to breeze through life, overcoming one obstacle after another. We don’t pity them, we admire them. There’s a huge difference there.

When you repress yourself and refuse to see how awesome you are, at the same time you’re usually focusing on how *un-*awesome you are. That is, all the flaws that you have and how they’re “holding you back”. And if you’re focusing there, and putting all your effort into noticing those parts of yourself, how do you think others will notice you? Exactly, they’ll notice you the same way.

When you have a “victim mentality” and always act like a victim, others will treat you like a victim too. A person who complains tirelessly, even when it’s just a tiny problem.

Or to put it another way:

It IS a big deal if you MAKE it a big deal.

They’ll look at you and notice where your “eyes” are looking. Are you always complaining about your looks? Your money? Your laziness? If that’s the only thing you notice about yourself, you can bet that it’s the only thing that others notice about you too.

This is what I call social misdirection. You set up expectations for your audience; expectations for how to feel, how to react, and what to focus on. And your audience follows that expectation. They see what you want them to see.

This means that no matter how many flaws you have, you can always minimize its impact by not focusing on them.

But like in normal magic tricks, social misdirection also needs you to be “fluent” in feeling good about yourself. It’s something that needs to always be “on”. It’s something that you have to believe yourself. But how?!!

The answer lies in magic once again. To perfect a trick, practice it. Practice a hundred times. Practice a thousand times. Practice 3 hours a day for 6 months. Practice looking at yourself and remembering times and ways that you’ve succeeded and done well. Practice it until you do it unconsciously in your sleep.

And then you’ll be ready.

But there’s more that the social magician can do. If he does it right, he won’t just make others see him as a winner, people will also treat him like a winner. I’m going to call this social leading.

Social Leading

We influence how people feel about us and treat us.

Have you ever adjusted yourself to somebody else during a conversation? Of course you have. Sometimes it’s just about adjusting the speed that you talk. They talk slower, you’ll go slower too. They talk faster? You too.

At other times, it’s also about the mood they carry. Meeting up with a person who’s all smiles? You’ll naturally make your conversation all happy too. Don’t want to ruin his day, right? And if the person you meet is all sad? The way you speak starts to reflect that too.

Now, if others can affect us in that way, isn’t it only logical to think that we affect others in the same way too?

We DO affect others. So if the people around you aren’t treating you the way you like, check your own attitude first. Are people bossing you around? Maybe you’re letting them. Do they always make jokes at your expense? You probably have strong reactions to the joke. Does no one compliment you? Perhaps you’re bad at accepting compliments.

So this begs the question, what happens when 2 opposites meet who then try to affect each other? Who wins when a sad person and a happy person meet?

The simple answer is: the one whose reality is stronger.

When you have the stronger “reality“, you don’t back off. You force people to adapt to your style rather than adapting yourself to them. It can also be considered a form of assertiveness. “This is how I feel and I refuse to change it or feel guilty for it. If others want to feel differently that’s fine and it’s up to them.”

The person with the stronger reality stays in his reality. If he’s optimistic, he doesn’t adapt to the pessimistic person he just met. He’ll go on having that optimistic, winning tone in his voice and in his actions.

Again, you can only have this strong reality when you’re “fluent” with feeling good about yourself. And again, it only comes with practice.

The social magician

So, the social magician is the person who plays with how people see him, changing their perceptions and their realities, casting magic on their senses. He practices being the person that he wants others to see him as, and he practices until he is fluent with the character. Then he uses social misdirection to make people look where he wants them to look, only at the parts of himself that he is proud of. With that, he gets people to follow his lead and treat him how he wants to be treated.

This… is the social magician.