"Tell Me What I'm Thinking"

There seems to be a fear when performing mentalism that you’re going to get called out on the process you’re using to demonstrate this “skill.”

“How do I justify them writing down the word?”

“How do I justify having to put the word back in the wallet?”

“How do I justify them thinking of a word from a book.”

I think performers who are new to mentalism believe people are going to be like, “Okay, well if you can really read minds, then just tell me what I’m thinking. Without me writing anything down or looking at some cards or anything like that.”

Justifying the writing of something down is a subject I’ve broached before, so I’m not going to get into that again.

Instead, I want to talk about how I handle things in the (rare) situation that someone says, “Just tell me what I’m thinking,” or something along those lines.

First, let me say, that this doesn’t happen often. With the concern magicians seem to have, you might think it comes up a lot. It doesn’t. I can’t say why for sure. It’s not just people being nice. That’s not what I hear from laypeople when I break it down with them.

I think it’s just that people are not surprised that the magician or mindreader (or the faux-magician or mindreader) would have some sort of process involved in reading your mind.

Even in fiction, there aren’t many characters who are just able to read minds at any and all times, whenever they want. So there’s no need to fret because you can’t live up to that “pure” standard.

So yeah, it doesn’t come up that much in the first place.

But if it does? Here’s what I say. The conversation goes something like this….

Them: What if I just thought of something. Could you tell me what it is?

Me: Like something at random? Without seeing it in front of you or anything like that?

Them: Yeah, like if I just think of something, would you be able to tell me what I’m thinking of.

Me: Yeah. Maybe. If you think you can do it.

That’s the key phrase. I’m turning this around on them.

I then say something like…

“Most people need the visual cue to focus their mind in order to be able to project a thought. Unless they’re like hyper focused meditators or something. But if you think you can do it… yeah… I definitely want to try it.”

What then?

Well, then I try it with them.

“Okay, think of something. It will probably be easier for you if you go with something that you can picture in your head as an actual object. But do whatever feels right for you.”

Then I just do some cold-reading style best guesses. “It’s alive… or it was alive. No? Weird because I’m sensing some movement to this thing.”

A couple of times I’ve gotten close by just narrowing it down and guessing. But usually I’m just obviously wrong, and I bail on it.

“That’s okay. It can be super difficult, almost impossible, to be able to quiet your mind to project a thought like that.”

Now I’m almost consoling them for their “failure.”

My attitude suggests I don’t care that it didn’t work. I didn’t really expect it to. And it certainly doesn’t reflect poorly on me.

Not acting as if it was my failure is good, whether they’re friendly or hostile.

If the interaction is friendly and good-natured, and they’re really just curious if you can read their mind in this unadulterated way, then by not taking blame for the failure you can say, “That’s okay. You can learn to be a better projector of thoughts, and I can get better at reading you. If we practice, we can improve.” And you have a premise you can use with that person for a long time, where you try different experiments with passing thoughts between each other.

I have a couple of people in my life where this “storyline” has been playing out for years. And so they have maybe a dozen or so interactions to look back on where one or the other of us is trying to transmit a thought. Yes, I’m sure they know that these are tricks on some level. But it’s our own special little series of tricks and interactions that was borne out of their original question to me.

Now, if the person is doing it to challenge me. If they say, “But I thought you could read my mind?” in some sort of antagonistic way. Then I’ll say something like, “Well yeah, in a way. But reading a mind is like reading anything else. To read it, it has to be legible. You just weren’t able to project what you were thinking legibly. But don’t worry. Hardly anyone can do that. That’s why you really never see it done that way.”

But again, I would only push back on them if they’re pushing back towards me—if they’re taking something that is clearly meant to be in fun and trying to “win” the interaction. But that rarely ever happens.

The fact is, if—from the beginning—you can portray your mind reading as something we’re going to accomplish together rather than “Look what I can do,” then you can almost eliminate the issue of people challenging your process in the first place.