Whoops! Hehehe
/GT writes:
Over the last several years or so I've noticed I'm not performing as much due to concerns about failing. Not sure why exactly, but it's probably at least in part related to taking a break from magic before that and having limited rehearsal time. Given the amount of performances you go through in your daily life, I thought I would ask you how you deal with failing and the fear of failing.
Here is how I handle messing up a magic trick. But it’s really the secret to handling failure in general. It’s the secret to life and confidence and it’s in this video…
If you react as if the baby was hurt, the baby feels hurt.
If you react as if it’s no big deal, the baby laughs it off.
You can do this with grown-ups too. You can define what happened by how you react to it.
But more importantly, you can do this with yourself. You have a baby inside of you. What is your parenting style for that baby? Are you going to be overprotective and overreact to every negative thing? Or are you going to teach it to brush off mistakes and missteps, so long as there’s no significant damage?
Screwing up a magic trick is inconsequential. Tell yourself in advance that you’ll smile and shrug it off if it happens. “Oh no. I fucked this up. Whoops! Hehehe.” Build that reaction into your identity.
“But I can’t control my emotional reaction.”
Look, for better or for worse, that’s all you can control.
I get it. That answer can feel kind of frustrating. “How do I deal with failure?” You just... choose not to care about failure.
But once you get in the habit of laughing it off—even if you’re faking it at first—you will eventually just become that person. Because in the process of pretending it’s not a big deal, you’ll realize… it really isn’t.