As a magician I must be utterly familiar with each routine so that the audience is thoroughly entertained and mystified and no-one can see how it is done.
I will need to have been taught how to perform the trick from a lecture, one-to-one coaching, a book and/ or a video. Then I need to practise.
As with magic, so with all work and life.
Just like a magician needs training and rehearsal, so do you.
Stuff in equals stuff out.
Invest in yourself. Invest in training courses. These could be online but are even better face-to-face. You will build a larger reservoir of skills and knowledge, making your more versatile and resilient, making you more saleable. You will build competency and self-confidence.
If you are in any way creative – writing, presenting, giving speeches, performing – then you need to feed your mind and spirit in order to have the resources you need.
Face-to-face training courses and organisations enable you to meet like-minded people from different fields. They are hugely valuable places for cross-fertilisation of ideas and for networking in general.
Resilience Brilliance
Training will build resilience. In the army they say that it is in the heat of battle that the training kicks in. If you have trained for something then you are able to do it without thinking when it is needed.
A great example of this is the impromptu speaking training at Toastmasters. If you have never been to a Toastmasters meeting then I wholeheartedly recommend that you pay a visit to your nearest branch.
Speak Easy
The impromptu speaking part of each meeting is know as “Table Topics”. The evening’s Topicsmaster will call you up and give you a subject as you stand up. You have the time it takes to walk to the front to gather your thoughts and then deliver a one to two minute speech on that topic. It is terrifying the first time you try it and always remains a little nerve-wracking, but you definitely get better at it and learn techniques to make it easier.
As a result, when it happens in the real world, when you are asked to say something on the spur of the moment, the training kicks in. You don’t panic, you know what to do and you can deliver a structured speech off-the-cuff.
Get a training mindset – invest in training yourself.
You are worth it.