You might not believe me.

But I’m not exaggerating (in the “sleightest”) when I tell you that, back when I dabbled in magic lessons, I spent over 100 hours sitting on the sofa practising one, single, card magic sleight.  A technique which is rightly seen as the grand-daddy of the gambling table (and which is one of the most mesmerising sleights in all of card magic) but which, when performed, takes less than 0.5 seconds to execute. 

And which, if executed well, no-one even sees!

The power of the sleight isn’t that it looks flashy or impressive.

The power is that it’s completely invisible. 

Which means that when I used the sleight and baffled onlookers tried to reconstruct the trick or figure out the secret, they’re looking in all the wrong places. 

They didn't look at the sleight of hand they couldn't see (after all, there was nowhere to look).  So they looked at what they could see and riffled through the pack of cards, grabbed my sleeve or turned out my pockets.

Those suckers didn't stand a chance!

And after spending so many hours immersed in card moves, tricks and sleights – and reading about and studying the old school magical masters like Dai Vernon and Ed Marlo, the history of various illusions and how the legends of magic would think about and construct their tricks – it feels natural to me that something can still exist even if I can’t see it.

And, perhaps more to the point, that the answers aren’t always visible.

This goes far beyond the gambling table and pulling playing cards out of people’s ears.

Take our thoughts, for example.  And thinking. 

Both exist, but we can’t see them.

And as I see it (or don’t see it!), our thoughts play a similar trick on us.

They point us in the wrong direction.

Just like invisible sleight of hand is the “solution” to many a magic trick, it’s our invisible thinking which produces our experience of life whilst tricking us into believing that it’s the outside world which causes how we feel.

So we look to what we can see, in the world, for answers.  

We look to our situation and our circumstances as the source of our experience.  And places like our jobs, our bank balances, our partners and our relationships.

If we want to “fix” how we’re feeling, these are the places we usually look to as well.

But we’re looking in the wrong place. 

It’s not our job, our bank balance, our partner or our relationships which shapes our experience of life. 

Instead, it’s what we think about our job, our bank balance, our partner or our relationships.

This might sound like a tiny difference.  But the implications are huge.

And I know this isn’t a common idea.

In fact you can’t get much less common.

But being uncommon doesn’t make something wrong.

To anyone who can sense a grain of truth in all this and wants to “see” more, here’s a top tip:

It’s not “seeing" which will help.  What will help is understanding how it works.

And if that’s what you want, you’re in the right place.

More to come.

That’s all for now.

- Tom