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Mentalists Sentenced to Death and Weeing on the Floor

The notion of mentalism is an old one. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of years in the deep, dark past there were men and women practicing mentalism and “magic of the mind”. Of course hundreds of years ago this was a crime, punishable by death.

Many of the witches burnt at the stake are said to have been practicing mentalism. At the time the techniques were associated with devil worshiping and dark forces. Of course today we know this not to be true at all.
Modern day mentalists and “Mind Magicians” are accepted as employing skills of psychology and instinct blended with other techniques that cause them to exhibit traits of psychic entertainers, and often they pose as psychics.

These things go through trends and currently there is a leaning toward Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) as one of the techniques used by mentalists. The skills taught in NLP are vast and include things such as rapport and mirroring. The technique focuses on the way our minds deal with information and how words and thoughts are changed into feelings and action. NLP is said to be the study of the relationship between words and responses. By this it is meant how we take the instructions and act upon them.

A real life example of this, that you will be familiar with is disciplinary action in young children. Over the past three years the campaign against hitting or smacking your kids has spiraled out of control. There are two major reasons for this, the first being the fight against physical abuse which is a fair one, but the other has a sound base in psychological practice. That is to say that negative action is less effective than possitive re-enforcement. Take an example such as this; a child is being potty trained, the mother tries scolding the child every time he fails to use the potty, “Jimmy you must not wee on the floor” she scolds. Regardless of how much she tries and repeats this the young child continues to wet the floor.

Another parent tries an approach in positive re-enforncement. Instead of scolding her son for missing the potty, she waits until he uses it properly and gives him a treat. This is 50% more effective than the negative re-enforcement. The reasons for this are many. First of all, the child will see the negative as a consequence for his action regardless of what he does and become ‘immune’ to it. Where as the positive approach gives the child a desire to do well in order to receive his treat.

Now on a psychological front there is something else going on. Let us look back at what the ‘negative’ parent was saying. Her words are in the vein of “You must not wee on the floor”. There is something huge happening here. Our brains do not understand the word “not”. It is deleted completely and actually creates more desire in our minds to do whatever we have been told not to do. This is because the instruction to “do” that thing is in the phrase itself. Imagine you are unable to see the word “not” and re-read what she is actually saying…”you must (not) wee on the floor”. The actual embedded, subconscious command is to actually undertake the very action she is fighting against.

This is a communication tool that applies to everyone and everything, including animals, individuals and groups of people. Every time you communicate with someone, or something think about what you want them to do and make sure you are positively encouraging them to do it.
Whether or not psychics really exist is not a debate for here. When you see a mentalist, mind magician or psychic entertainer perform he or she may appear to have a “gift”, but in general there is a reasonable explanation for all that is happening.