cmi Keynote Speaking Blog: Leadership, Sales, Marketing & More

The Magic of Confidence by Vinh Giang

Written by Vinh Giang | Sep 23, 2021 8:55:53 PM

Ask yourself right now, which beliefs do you currently carry around with you, that are no longer serving you, that are negative beliefs?

Vinh Giang uses humor and magic to highlight how misdirection is used in his magic tricks and how misdirection also negatively impacts our assumptions/beliefs in our professional and private lives.  

Understanding how misdirection causes negative beliefs and communications to continue in your life, Vinh shares thoughts on how we need to recognize and challenge these negative perceptions in ourselves and transform them into positive beliefs that build us up to our greatest potential. 

VIDEO TRANSLATION

I'd love to show you one of the first pieces of magic that I ever learned as a young magician. Now I want you to watch this coin very closely. If I take this coin here and I squeeze it hard enough, what you will see is the following — if I just snap my fingers, I can make the coin completely vanish and disappear. That’s amazing, right?

The reason you find it amazing is because you've made a false assumption. You've been misdirected. And, the false assumption that you made was that I took the coin and put it into this hand. Whereas in actual reality, what happened was, the coin never left this hand.

So, I'll show you exactly how I did this. What I did was, I pretended to take the coin. But again, the coin stays in this hand. But, the assumption you made was it went into this hand. Again, misdirection has occurred.

When you fall for a magician's misdirection, it's fun, and dare I say, amazing. But, here's the dilemma — misdirection doesn't just happen with magicians. You experience misdirection every day in your personal life and your professional life and it limits your potential.

I want you to think about this, especially in your workplace right now, and in your life personally. How many false assumptions have you made? I mean, I can tell you now in my life, I made the assumptions in the past that I'm not credible enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough. I'm not good looking enough. And, when you start repeating these assumptions to yourself over and over again, they gradually become beliefs.

And that right there, my friends, is when you've misdirected yourself. Every single thing we do in our life is grounded in our past history of assumptions. We need to continually have the courage to question our assumptions, and especially have the courage to challenge our existing negative beliefs.

Ask yourself right now, which beliefs do you currently carry around with you, that are no longer serving you, that are negative beliefs? I challenge you to question those beliefs because they may be standing on some pretty darn weak and silly assumptions.

Look, in closing, allow magicians to continually misdirect you — have fun with magic. We all need a little bit of magic in our lives. We all need a bit of astonishment.

But, stop playing tricks on yourself. Stop fooling yourself into believing that you're not good enough. You're not capable and you're not worthy. These are not real assumptions. These are false. You are good enough. You are capable and you are worthy.

Let me leave you with one last quote by Albert Einstein, who says “assumptions are made and most assumptions are wrong.”