But first watch this, see most magicians pretend in some way or another to have superpowers, but I don't, I acknowledge right up front that magic is tricks.

How did I bend the spoon?

Well, first you need to understand that your brain is a liar, there's so much information in the world, your brain cannot handle it all.

So in order to function, it takes shortcuts, it makes assumptions like this spoon is one piece, it's actually two, your brain sees Point A and point B and concludes that a single spoon is running through it, neuroscientists call this a model completion between what you see and what you believe is a gap, which is how we get our first principle.

Mind the gap magicians like to play around in this gap, I'd like to teach you a trick that you can try on your friends and I'll demonstrate it for you first, it involves the selection of playing cards, I'll dribble them down like this and you would just tell me when to stop.

So let's say you say stop right here, and you would remember this card a little bit of a shuffle and I should be able to get your card to rise out of the middle of the deck, just like this.

So how did this work?

Well, it starts with another principle, which is write the script because I wanted you to believe that your card came out of the middle of the deck.

I use specific language to convey that.

And then I showed you this image of the card in the middle, magicians manipulate your memory of what happened because your card did not come out of the middle of the deck.

It came from the top of the deck.

But how was I able to secretly get your card to the top of the deck?

I loaded up load up is a magician's term for doing all the prep work ahead of time.

What was the heavy lifting that I used in this magic trick?

I took 52 decks and removed the four of clubs from each of them and loaded them into this deck?

Then there's the illusion of free choice, which we are able to design Even though you think you picked the four clubs freely?

It was your only choice.

If you as the audience member, believe that you are in control that you are dictating how the trick goes, You will buy into the illusion more.

Even though I had this stacked deck of four of clubs, how was I able to convince you that it was a normal deck?

Well, I played into your brains need to respond to patterns.

We employ the familiar.

I showed you the first few cards and from there you extrapolated that the deck was normal.

But what do you do when everything goes wrong?

What do you do if perhaps your volunteer chooses one of these three cards instead?

Well, magicians always have a backup plan and we call that having an out.

If you were to choose the seven of diamonds or the queen of spades or the six of hearts, you have to have those out ready to go.

And I have the seven of diamonds here in my pocket, the queen of spades in my back and the six of hearts is just hanging out back here behind the easel.

Magicians have for every trick, three or four backup plans ready to go.

And there's one more principle of illusion, a magician's best friend.

Misdirection.

We call it control the frame.

It's like a film directors frame.

This is the center of your attention and we can move the frame like if I wanted to steal something out of my left pocket, I might move the frame over here as I pick up a pen out of the cup.

These are the seven principles of illusion and you can try to use them in your own life.

One more thing.

Did you notice how I was able to control the frame during this video?