Think about your mental state at the time. Were you full of doubt and anxiety about this or was your thought process calm?

Now think about your physiology. Are your muscles tense or relaxed? By that I meant, are the muscles not directly required for the activity relaxed or is there unnecessary physical tension?

I believe confidence is a mixture of mental calmness and physical relaxation. When we are confident about something are body is free from physical tension and our mind is free from stress, doubt and uncertainty.

As children we are born confident. We LEARN irrational fears as we develop. This comes from parental figures as well as, when we get older, our peers.

We learn to associate different feelings with different events and forget that we are in control of these emotions.

Confidence should be the foundation to everything we do so out minds and bodies are able to work at their best, free from resistance (whether physical or mental).

Next time you do something take a moment to create that physical relaxation and mental calmness BEFORE you begin. Allow your mind to be calm and free from doubt. The easiest way is just to imagine it! If you find that hard to start with IMAGINE yourself finding it easy ti do! Now systematically relax all your muscles from head to toe. Create the feeling of confidence and use it as the foundation for all you do.

This way confidence isn’t something you have to wait for and hope it will eventually appear as a result of experience but something that can guide your experiences NOW.

Till next time…

People believe that confidence is something you either have or haven’t got depending on the activity. For example: Someone may be a confident swimmer but feel they have no confidence in public. The feeling that one is dependant on the other creates a belief that confidence is something to be gained. In the 80′s cut and thrust business world this gave rise to the self help industry in which we were taught to whoop in motivational seminars and make human pyramids in team building exercises. While this was indeed successful for many it never really answered the question of what confidence was. The self help industry profess to have the answer.

The problem, as I see it, with the self help industry is this: internalisation

The principle was to ‘look within’ for the answer.

Take a glass and hold it at arms length. Notice how smooth looks. Now begin to move it closer. See how it becomes more smudged. If you bring it close enough to would see imperfections. If you looked close enough, maybe through a magnifying glass, you would see cracks. The closer you get the bigger the cracks become. Soon all you can see is cracks.

At what point did I stop talking about the glass?

A part of confidence is about looking outside yourself more than you look in.

Next time I’ll look at the workings of confidence. Exactly what goes on when we are feeling confident and where it really comes from.

Till then…

I hope this statement goes some way to explaining why I have completely failed in updating this blog web though I have repeatedly promised to! In truth the prospect of blogging while easy for some has proved a bane for me. “What should I write about?”, “what would YOU find interesting to read?”, and “do I really want this to be a constant onslaught of advertising for myself?”

Let’s start with a brief synopsis of some of the things I’ve been up to over the last quarter.

The first 2 pickpocket seminars have come and gone and, according to the feedback, extremely well received. Each has made me re-evaluate the presentation to make the day as beneficial as possible.

The book is in its final stages and should go to print any day now. This project has become my 3rd child over the last few years and I am very excited to finally hold it in my hands.

At the end of February I worked (once again) alongside Imperial College’s Surgical Simulation Programme at the British Science Museum for the Lates event. During the evening some 4000+ people came through and watched 6 pickpocket demonstrations to highlight the use of proximity, confidence and audience management and how it mirrors the skills of a surgeon. An immensely fun packed evening. On the back of which I was invited back to teach the student surgeons some of the thinking behind my work and how it could be of benefit to them.

More recently I performed at the Nottingham University Magicsoc Show alongside contortionist Chris Cross and international illusion act Amethyst. Chris compared the show in his usual macabre way while Amethyst performed some breathtaking illusions. I just stole stuff and begrudgingly gave it back. The highlights of which are here…

The video from my is getting tantalisingly close to 100,000 and with your help I’ll get there. Please click, like and share

Many thanks for an excellent weekend teaching your approach to hypnosis. It was for me very challenging and pushed (and broke) many of my boundaries. I have been on a number of hypnosis courses, but this one has left me with the ability to go and do it rather than thinking “I know I probably could, but what if ……” Your flexible approach to the course was very refreshing, taking account of what students already knew and skipping the Grandma egg sucking stage. Adding the fun (slightly terrifying for me initially) part to the Sunday, really did make me feel that I can now approach anybody and try anything and as I said, has broken down many barriers to my hypnotic adventures. I now look forward to using hypnosis as opposed to looking for the next course which might allow me to.

Thanks again

Simon

While other courses focus on the technical skills of hypnosis, the formula if you like (setup, induction, deepeners, suggestions and wake up), this course was all about the soft skills… Beleif, confidence, audience management and fluidity. Not just what these things are but also how to create and cultivate them.

For many people, confidence is something that (hopefully) comes from years of practical application. It is assumed that confidence will build over time. It is my belief that confidence exists within us all and can be tapped into anytime… as long as you understand WHAT it is and HOW it works. In a nut shell, confidence is what remains when you have removed all the ‘thoughts’ to the contrary. It is the feeling we get when the mind is free from worries, uncluttered by negative thinking and the body not full of tension. In other words, confidence is a mixture of mental calmness and physical relaxation. By physical relaxation I mean that while muscles may well be active they are not TENSE.

Mental anxiety is often due to fear.

If we have a future event, say a hospital appointment or business presentation, rather than waiting for the event and responding to it we CHOOSE the response in advance and work ourselves up to it. Take the example of the hospital appointment. We dont KNOW what the outcome will be, it could be good news or bad. Rather than choosing to feel relaxed and happy for the period of time running up we condition ourselves to expect the worse and spend the time leading uo to he appointment experiencing anxiety every time we think about it. The outcome could be bad new in which case the feeling MAY be accurate… but until you know you would function better in life feeling good. Although this example could be defined as good or bad the real issue is how the feelings affect your life leading up to the appointment. Your negative mood and feelings of anxiety will undoubtadly have an effect on other decisions and interactions unrlated to the appointment itself.

What about experiences which aren’t as clear cut?

What if the event ahead was a business presentation… one where the outcome was almost entirely in your control? Wouldn’t your choice in associated feelings inflence the outcome itself? YES!

The worst influence it often has is when it causes you to avoid doing it altogether!

You can decide to be positive and confident about challenges ahead just as sure as you can decide to be fearful.

Sometimes you just need to prove to yourself that there is no real reason to be fearful. By stepping out of the confines of your own comfort zone you realise what you are really capable of doing. More importantly you begin to understand that fear and tension (a lack of confidence)  is often just a feeling you created.

So, with this in mind I set my delegates a few tasks on Sunday morning in sunny Salisbury…

Hug strangers… lots of them!

Ask for directions and freeze mid sentance and stay frozen

Join a group of people in a cafe… without interaction

Ask someone feeding the ducks for some bread… them stand and eat it!

and many more.

Here is a video of one such FREEZE POINT moment…

FREEZE POINT

ENJOY!

Adam Eason has also confirmed a full house for our next Rapid Induction seminar in December.

After a few weeks of problems with this blasted thing called technology I am once again able to communicate via the wonder of the web.

Life has been wonderfully hectic with numerous gigs, visits and television moments. I thought a quick update was long overdue.

A number of weeks ago I visited Iceland for the the first (and hopefully not the last) time. The magicians of Iceland invited me over for a few days to lecture and perform for their annual event. While the magic was good fun the bit I want to tell you about is the geyser. The geothermal qualities of the island are extraordinary. We passed one hole in the ground where a house had been a year earlier. The owners had gone out one day and returned to find a hot spring had sprung up under their house,  totally destroying it!

The Icelanders take all this in their stride. One Icelander has chosen to build his house in the fallen rocks on the side of a mountain, essentiallysticking two fingers up to the inevitable minor earthquake that will rain down further boulders in his direction. Cavalier indeed.

Gunner (my excellent friend and guide) took me up to one of the main geyser sites near the capital. The air was extremely cold, about 3 degrees C, and the geyser is significantly hotter. I stood about 3 metres away behind the safety wire with the wind blowing the explosions of boiling water and steam away from me with magnificent natural force.

I stood, camera at the ready, to capture the next eruption. Unfortunately, the wind changed at the very moment it blew and I was soaked to the very core by what smelled, and felt like, a hot egg smoothie. While it was wonderfully hot against the 3 degree air for a moment, the temperature dropped almost immediately and I was forced to walk the 15 minutes back to the 4×4 as a human icicle.

Regardless of the outside temperature, Iceland was one of the very warmest countries I have visited.

It’s been a busy old week with lots going on so I thought as my new website is now finally up and running (albeit with a few teething problems) I’d tell you about a few bits I’ve been up to as well as inform you all of what is coming next week.

It began, as it tends to, with a Monday. So far so good! Paperwork and general organisation being the order of the day. The main area or preparation being a lecture/presentation for a group of business men and woman on Tuesday evening. The limited remit being ‘just come along and do what you do’. I pondered what would be suitable for such an occasion and decided that some hypnotic change work would be an excellent way to proceed.

I began by asking if anyone in the audience had any specific fear that was holding them an their business back. One lady tentatively put her hand up and stated that her biggest fear was public speaking. So much so that even being at such an event as this made her extremely nervous.

With a little light persuasion I got her up and to the front. I asked her to think about the feelings she had in this situation and through a process known as Neurohypnotic Repatterning I helped her to change the feeling she associated with this situation much like you might change an attachment to an email. Soon enough she was relaxed and laughing heartily and generally feeling good.

Later that week on the Thursday I performed some more intimate close up magic at Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower for a group of medical professionals. There is now at least one more doctor in the world who isn’t as confident about being able to avoid pick pockets! After relieving him of his phone, car keys, money and such like he told me that before the show he had been warned about the pickpocket entertainer and said ‘nobody would be as bold as to do that to me’.

Finally, I’d like to quickly plug my involvement in a show this coming Monday evening at the Bournemouth Pier Theatre alongside Britain’s leading hypnotist Jonathan Chase. The event is in aid of the Charcot Marie Tooth Disease charity and will feature magic, hypnotism, music and more.

I will be filming behind the scenes at the event and will post that on Tues/Wed of next week.

Please do subscribe to this and tell others about it. Over the next weeks and months I will be discussing various topics as well as keeping you up to date with what I get up to.

All the best

James Brown

Over the next weeks and months I will be posting views comments and video messages about all the weird and wonderful things that pop into my head. I will be discussing all things magic and hypnotic as well as keeping you all up to date with what I’m up to.

My book is in the final stages of writing and I will of course keep you all informed as to its launch. There may even be a sneaky preview uploaded soon…

I, along with my good friend and colleague Adam Eason will be hosting our regular ‘Geek Dinner’ in Bournemouth, where we discuss hot hypnosis topics and generally have a laugh… more details on this coming soon. We are also running a rapid induction seminar in London in December so I will post about that too.

Please tell everyone about this blog, even random strangers you meet whilst out and about.

Goodbye for now,

James Brown