Discipline

By Julian Franklin

I was at a party recently and bumped into Daniel Garcia, a long-time friend of mine. He was demonstrating something quite impressive to a group of fans and they asked him, "How did you get to be that good?" In his usual modest way he said, "You just do it. You just do it over and over."

And it's true. In the ten plus years that I've known Daniel I have never seen him without a deck of cards in his hands or in his back pocket. Daniel is amazingly disciplined in his approach to magic. Of course he loves what he does and that probably makes it easier. But I knew Daniel when his hands got burned.

If you ever get the chance to talk to Daniel, ask him about this. You can still see the scars on his hands. The scabs were so thick he couldn't bend his fingers and when they skin finally grew back it was so tight and stretched over his fingers that his doctors told him he would not be able to manipulate cards again.

But Daniel practiced anyway. He practiced because he loves magic. But he practiced past that. He practiced when it was boring and he practiced even when it was painful. He practiced when every coin palm stretched the skin on his fingers to the point of pain. He practiced when holding a deck of cards caused him to wince. He practiced when he wanted to, and he practiced when he didn't want to. He practiced with discipline. You just do it. You just doo it over and over.

I work out because I've discovered this is what disciplined people do. I've also discovered that disciplined people have other character traits that rise from their discipline. They tend to be wealthier, healthier, and have more manageable lives.

This is not just a guess on my part. Thomas Stanly (author of The Millionaire Next Door) found a similar correlation that he describes in another of his books, The Millionaire Mind. Stanley writes, "The majority of millionaires exercise regularly...those with net worths of $10 million or more had the highest incidence of regular exercise." He goes on to speculate why this might be true but admits that whatever the reason for this correlation, he had met "very few self-made millionaires who are lethargic or even noticeably overweight."

So there is a correlation between fitness and wealth, but I don't that that fitness causes wealth or that being wealthy makes you more likely to work out. Instead, I believe that both of these traits are the result of discipline. Disciplined people love cheesecake just as much as everyone else, but they control their behavior in the face of temptation. Disciplined people love the comfort of a warm bed just as much as everyone else, but they choose to leave the comfort and travel to the gym or the track. Disciplined people have things they want to buy and own just like everyone else, but they limit their spending to less than they earn and they invest a predetermined amount. Disciplined people can be sidetracked and unfocused just like anyone else, but they work to stay on task while they practice, train, study, and learn."

These disciplined actions pay dividends over the long term. They pay dividends of fitness and health. They pay dividends of financial security. They pay dividends of expertise and skill and talent.

These disciplined actions permeate other areas of a person's life. As you become more disciplined in one area, it is much easier, and sometimes almost automatic, that you become more discplined in other areas of your life. When Daniel Garcia and I were recently able to break away from the crowds that seem to gather and follow him, we were able to talk in private for a few minutes. We spoke about how disciplined he has to be in other areas of his life as well.

"Man, I love talking about magic. I could sit here at this party all night long talking magic with these guys. But I have a phone call with a guy in England that's scheduled for eight-thirty tomorrow morning, and I have to be awake and ready to go." And his life is filled with these scheduled calls, lectures, talks, and appearances with greater and greater frequency.

He confided, "I seriously sometimes need to set a timer when I get on MySpace or Facebook because I just love talking to all my peeps. Those sites let me connect with a lot of people really quickly, but I can get sucked into that real fast, too." The more disciplined you are, the more talent you develop, the more fans you generate, the more disciplined you need to be. Your success is only limited by your capacity to be disciplined.

The good news is that discipline is not something you are born with. By nature we all tend to seek the path of least resistance. This is normal and usually a good thing. But we are also forward-looking beings, and by imagining the future we are able to shape it as we want. Discipline is simply a matter of looking forward and thinking about tomorrow and next week and next year.

When I worked as a teacher I systematically saved twenty percent of my income, which was very difficult to do on a teacher's salary. Today, the money that I saved during my eight years as a teacher is less than ten percent of my net worth, but the discipline that I developed in the process of saving that money is what enabled me to accumulate the other ninety percent of what I own. Said another way, the discipline to save and invest was far more valuable than the money earned through the saving and investing.

In fact, I've come to understand that the discipline just might be the most impoirtant character trait I strive to develop since it allows for all the others to shine. A loyal spouse is a disciplined person. A prolific writers is a disciplined writer. A healthy person is a disciplined eater and mover.

And a disciplined person is not one who suffers or deprives himself. Just the opposite is true. A disciplined person knows that the path to wealth is not an overnight journey, but a long, steady progression of steps. The path to excellence is not a week of late night jam sessions, but rather a steady progression of regular practice. The path to fitness is not losing thirty pounds in two weeks, but rather a healthy, steady progression. Slow and steady is how we again weight, and it is how we lose it. Debt creeps up on us, and it takes time to beat it back down. Lethargy steals a night from us as we stare at the television, but the next day we can decide to rehearse instead.

Discipline is like a muscle or a skill. It must be practiced and exercised in order for it to develop and get stronger. The more you work toward your goals, the easier they all become. Work, not just for the goal itself, not just for the immediate benefit that will come from your success, but for who you will become in the process of attaining that goal.

You will become a person of discipline, and it will reflect in all areas of your life.

This article is reprinted from the column "The Business of Magic" in the January 2010 issue of The Linking Ring.

Follow the Fear

By Julian Franklin

[...]

When times get lean, it is easy to get scared. Actually, it's quite okay to be scared. The secret is to use your fear to push you harder, not to allow it to cause you to shrink and cower.

For most of us, it is easy to remember the nervous feelings that often rise before going on stage. For some performer these butterflies never die. For some the fear of public performance is so great that they spend their lives in the audience dreaming of what it would be like to be on stage. For others, we embrace the fear, the nervousness, and the anxiety and push through it. We walk on stage when our knees feel like jelly, and we do our best.

And something amazing happens after just a few minutes. Our bodies relax and give in, and we begin to enjoy what we are doing.

In studying improvisation, you are taught to "follow the fear." By doing the thing that most frightens you, you are most able to grow and develop. Your biggest breakthroughs come from the things that frighten you the most. Your fastest growth comes rom doing that which intimidates you the most.

At the very least, step outside of your comfort zone. If your magazine reading is limited to four or five magic magazines, add a few to the mix that have nothing to do with magic. The truth is that you probably don't need another way to force a card, and you definitely don't need three more clever ways to reveal a forced card. Instead, study what your customers find important. Read what they read. Learn some marketing. Read the works of great advertises like David Ogilvy. Read magazines like Psychology Today.

Take a class on prov, if you've never done so, it will make you uncomfortable It might even frighten you at some point. But it will definitely make you a better performer.

Get back in the gym. It doesn't matter if you are too out of shape and feel embarrassed. Do it anyway.

Write a magazine article and submit it for publication. You will get rejected. There. Now you know. The worst part is already over! So go ahead and do it. Don't worry about success, do it just because it is scary. Do it because you will grow for doing it, regardless of whether it is accepted or not. Then when you get n acceptance letter after you've submitted ten or twelve articles, you'll be surprised and excited, and maybe even a little scared. Good, again!

Eleanor Roosevelt suggested that you should "do something every day that frightens you." Victory goes to the bold. And the truth is that you don't need to do things that are terribly frightening. The simple act of stepping out of your comfort zone can open breakthroughs beyond your dreams.

This article was excerpted from the column "The Business of Magic" in the October 2009 issue of The Linking Ring.

The Quest or Instant Gratification - Your Choice

By Kenton Knepper

The QUEST that goes into finding certain methods is part of the magical JOURNEY.  One cannot grab the Grail without slaying a demon or going through certain portals of passage. While some in a magic club or website may have made their way with some real effort, others have just “found it” by seeming accident, and have little respect for any such things. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen club members pull out a tape measure and write down dimensions of another performer’s prop, or get an email asking for “more details” so they don’t have to pay for the secret.

These days I see people expecting instant results, free if possible and with very little respect given to those who’ve been around for decades.  When I grew up in magic (and I still am…) I did not call the Names in magic on the phone to tell them off or to ask them for free advice or as a way to get what I needed without having to study or read or think for myself.  I didn’t want to make myself a fool in their eyes.  I respected their time and their energy. I didn’t wish to appear arrogant, ignorant or just plain stupid.

Now I see many people who have no awareness of whether or not they are looking as if they are idiots. Lack of respect is expected, as is instant gratification.  Study is close to work and so many want nothing to do with that! “Give me, and now!” is the new demand.

Yet, magical illusion is akin to its esoteric brother.  “Secrets” of what some deem as “Ancient Wisdom” have also been revealed without proper preparation of the reader.  Having these secrets handed to such folks have not increased their understanding.  They have surface education or instruction only.  They KNOW little, if anything.

The difference, I suppose, is that in magical illusion such people try and book themselves as performers when they are not. They hurt others, as well as themselves.

Cynicism has made it appropriate to ignore such things as Quests and Journeys.  I think this is not helpful, nor anywhere near as “rational” as some may purport it to be.

As we give up the magic in magic, we make way for these sort of egoistic pitfalls.  There have always been non-professionals in magic clubs.  That has not been the trouble historically.  Lack of respect for those who have gone before, lack of willingness to work and travel a magical journey to arrive at a peak of new knowledge - that may be the significant difference.  There is knowledge gained by falling off the cliff and knowing for a fact what you should and should not do.  There is seeming knowledge when you have been told there is a ledge and not to walk off it.  This is know-ledge, not knowledge.  You know all right, but you don’t really KNOW.

This is why so much of what is selling these days at magic dealers is about seeming knowledge and not a true journey into awareness.  Dealers tend to sell what will sell and what sells most is not deep thinking, but the appearance of deep thinking.  Rarely do the true insights sell as much as how to more quickly and easily appear to understand the real secrets of magical performance.

Not everyone in a club or buying from a website is a performer and certainly not all professional performers.  They need not be.  But for such fine folks to get more than the basics handed to them on a silver or golden platter (or Youtube) is akin to receiving the Holy Grail without taking on step of the journey themselves.

You can hold the cup friends, and admire its apparent beauty.  But only The Few will comprehend The Glory.  All you have to do to be one of The Few is work at it, and be willing to take the journey it takes to get there. It’s not that some of us are so much more special. It’s simply that we took care to take a real journey, within and without, not merely make demands like a spoiled child.

Being The Few isn’t due to withholding something from others either.  Symbolic tales mean to suggest that preparation must be made before one can receive the greater gift.  Without such preparation, the unwitting often go to their deaths, and take others with them. So the stories go. So may better magic and mentalism go too, under the guise of progress and better teachers.

Perhaps a return to respect for The Quest, and those who take It, might be in order.  Maybe it has gone to a far enough to an extreme now that some will grasp that giving deeper knowledge to anyone who has not proven their ability to handle such secrets, has very real consequences.

For everyone.

But then again, only those who have taken the time to KNOW would know that.

And we are all still learning.

Besides, I first wrote this in 2003. It’s gotten worse, not better, when it comes to those willing to seek the higher work and the pause for deeper thought.

I salute those who take the Journey to magic, and pray there will be more, as a way of Return.  I raise a cup to your own Quest, my friends.

Cheers - To Those Who Journey With True Passion and Honest Study

This article was taken from Kenton Knepper's WonderWords blog at: blog.wonderwizards.com.

Modern Witchery

The Best Day in the Year

By Samuel Patrick Smith

The Best Day in the Year. "One of the illusions of life," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

Perfectionists - and I know one very well - want to to wait until all the lights are green before starting out. The problem is that all of the lights are never green at the same time. Therefore, we can't reach our destination unless we start. We can make course corrections along the way, but there's no substitute for being gripped with the realization that the present hour is the critical, decisive hour.

There's an old story about three frogs who were sitting on a log. Two of them decided to jump off. How many were left? Three! The frogs only decided to jump - they never actually took the leap. I guess they had never read Emerson or heard that the present hour is the critical, decisive hour.

Of course, we don't want to be like the confused cowboy who mounted his horse and rode off in all directions at once. We can't do everything at the same time But we don't have to do everything - we need only to do something, the something that is most important to us to achieve.

But how does one find the time to pursue his goals? After all, there are only one hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week. The answer is simple: know what we want and want it enough to take action. Business philospoher Jim Rohn says, "Reasons come first, answers come later." If we have a strong enough desire to get organized, master the routine, develop the relationship, write the book, or learn the subject, some of the ordinary, everyday time-wasters in our lives will lose their grip on us and start to fall away."

I once heard a story about a famous sculptor who was asked by a gawking admirer, "Is it difficult to sculpt?"

The great man replied, "Not at all, madam. You simply buy a block of marble and chip away what you don't want."

For most of us, there may be as much truth as humor to that statement. Looking at the block of time known as the immediate future, what do we want to chip away? Excess television or Internet time? Feuding with a neighbor or colleague? Procrastination, preoccupation, or a cluttered desk? If we look around we can easily find some time-wasters to chip away, but it's not enough to simply eliminate thing from our lives, master a difficult skill, or do something constructive, new ways to fritter away our time will take the place of the old ones.

When we understand that "getting around to it" is one of the illusions of life, today becomes the ideal time to tackle our goals and objectives.

And if my perfectionistic mind says, "When would be the best time to start cleaning off my desk?" Emerson, in a voice remarkably clear for a 206-year-old, says, "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

The following article was the "From the Editor" column piece of the May 2009 issue of The Linking Ring.

What is Magic?

The experience of the impossible.