So many moons ago, I wrote a two hour talk about motivation, mostly because someone asked nicely.
It was a showpiece, with five simple messages about self motivation, the only worthwhile kind, each framed, or burned into the memory, with a piece of magic, an illusion, a hypnotic sequence, an impossible object anyone can make, and a dangerous looking stunt.
It was called The Magic of Motivation, and I trialled it in schools, on the 6th form speaker programs, and it was a big hit, and I spent a year going all over the UK with it, loving it, taking little bits out and putting little bits in, obsessively determined that it would work, and it did.
The talk became a kind of show, and I tinkered with it again, although the five messages remained the same, and totalled just 21 words, and took it to the business market, and ran it all over town, to all my big international clients, and in the sales and personal development conference markets.
I must have done that show hundreds of times, to thousands of delegates, and I loved it, every single time.
I had it off pat, but it was always challenging, because it depended almost entirely on me being right on my best form, and I learned how to do that, every time out the trap. It felt like good work, and when, after about five years, it had run its course, I missed it for a minute or two, then I was on to the next thing.
I thought, at the time, that one day, instead of a motivation talk, with magic in it, I would flip it into a full on, top notch magic show, with a touch of motivation weaved in.
So, a few months ago, back in the summer, I was having a coffee in a restaurant bar, a fabulous little place, with live music weekly, and from nowhere I heard myself asking the owner, an actual rock legend, and his partner, a truly mythical woman, if they had ever thought of booking a magic act, and it turned into a booking.
I knew what I wanted to do, and started putting a show together, a fun show with great magic and real moments of wonder, and slam dunked a short motivational piece into a theatrical ending, with a secret ancient scroll, containing the secrets of life, disappearing in a flash of fire.
The Secret Magician had its first showing a few weeks ago, to a small and lovely audience, and whilst it went well and I got an immediate booking for New Years Eve, I didn’t quite meet my own expectations and I was up half the night, thinking, making changes, raising the bar I had failed to meet, always a good call.
So my schedule now includes insane amounts of time practicing things like making a card vanish in mid air, having a shot glass of tequila appear from nowhere in my hand, making a card switch with another across the room, and finding the best fake lemon in the world.
So it begins, a new show, a new way to say what I think matters, to entertain, and help, and I don’t remember feeling so excited, and scared, and so wildly hopeful.
What about you, Dear Reader, we make our own exciting times, don’t we, and can you really think of a better time to begin than right now?
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