Irrational Logic and Mentalism | Daniel Harel | TEDxWhiteCity

hi starts off I'm going to need someone to help me can you the blonde lady here in first row can you please join me up on stage everybody give her a big hand hi can you join me up here yes a lot of people grab the mic for me please tell everyone your name okay my name is eely eely okay Healing into the mic I need you to reassure everyone that you did not tell me any specific details about yourself in advance okay okay I didn't okay healing I want you to think of something very secretive I want you to think of your secret pin number for the ATM okay your secret code that you type in when you go to the ATM to take money out do you remember the number yes yes did you tell me the number in advance okay really I want you to think of the first digit the first number you tap and I want you to count out loud into the mic from zero to nine out loud slowly so everyone can hear you okay and zero one two three four five six seven eight nine okay I don't know if you've seen this I don't know if you know this this is was very very small but healy she's a bit scared right now and she was standing like this she was a little petrified she counted zero and then she said the 1 and she looked at me and then she started getting more relaxed and more relaxed she was 1 2 3 4 5 6 getting more and more relaxed every time into the mic out loud is the first digit 1 yes yes you won't tell all of it right I won't tell all of it I want out of it we'll do the second digit though second times a bit trickier because now Healey knows what I'm looking for she's trying to trick me okay so second digit just think of it out loud from 0 to 9 okay 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 say 7 again just into the mic 7 7 say 3 again 3 is it 3 yes I won't tell everyone your secret pin number everybody give really a big hand thank you very much really what I've just showed you is called mentalism it is the secret art of seemingly being able to read minds now in the next few minutes I want you to do the impossible I want you to stop trying to figure this out okay mentalism is all about solutions these solutions are answers to questions I have no way only knowing the answer to questions like how can I know your secret pin number how can I guess the name of your first childhood crush how can I make you choose a specific color what nobody knows is that mentalism uses a set of tools to create these solutions and it uses them repetitively awhile back I realize that these tools limit my ability to create new mentalism what I'd like to do today is to share with you my creative process as a Mentalist that enables me to create solutions and can be applied to most fields in life I call it irrational logic and what it basically means is this you have three guiding questions first question of irrational logic what are the solutions used by everyone else so if we would take a basic tasks like cleaning our home the solutions used by everyone else are to make it more efficient multitasking doing several stuff at once maybe scheduling it to the best time or maybe even buying the latest cleaning products that's the first question second question of irrational logic is this what is the most absurd solution no one else is using no one is using it for me it would be my home cleaning itself without me doing anything the home cleaning itself by itself third question of irrational logic is this what is the craziest most absurd way you can get that solution to work for example taking your vacuum cleaner taking a little remote-controlled car attaching them both and having it drive around the house cleaning it for you sounds crazy five years ago these days most of us or a lot of us have this little robot thing is a drive around the house cleaning it for us irrational logic has been with me all the way from getting into the mentalism community and creating my own unique method but I'm getting ahead of myself let's take it back a bit twelve years ago at the age of fourteen I infiltrated the secret gathering of mentalists I was just hard ly a beginner Mentalist at that time my knowledge was mostly made out of stuff I found online and one day I stumbled on an open online forum where beginner mentalists were talking not anything secret mostly just sharing experiences from their first shows I quickly learned that they were playing a first-of-its-kind real-life meeting I knew I had to get in on that I knew I had to get an invite so ask yourself this not being a Mentalist yet how do you get an invitation to something like that well the rational logic would be to introduce yourself hi my name is Daniel can I please join but it wouldn't have worked you see this is a community that closely guards its secrets so instead of using regular logic I use the rational logic what is the most absurd solution no one else will dare trying that is you don't need an invitation you see this is was an open online forum this was their first of its kind real life meeting nobody knew what the rest looked like I could just walk right in act as if I was one of them and so I did and it worked it was at that meeting where I first got a few recommendations for beginner mentalism material I was eager to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible and bent on developing my own materials for the next two months all I did was obsess over inventing something new I hardly slept because I was thinking about 24/7 to remind you I was 14 at the time so my school grades plummeted and my friends and family actually started getting worried about me but after eight weeks I struggled I knew I had a superb routine in my hands and I went and showed it to one of my newly-acquired Mentalist friends and he loved it and he said Daniel that's really nice I really like it but you know there's this American Mentalist he's been doing the exact same thing for two years now bummers this went on for a few very long years every time I thought I came up with something new it turned out that someone already thought it up before me the future seemed hopeless at that point it seemed like everything that can be made has already been done and I was just about to give up but then it struck me you see all this time I was using pre-existing techniques I was using stuff other people were also using so obviously I came up with the same solutions I need to break the cycle somehow so again I turn to irrational logic I stop trying to reinvent the wheel for mentalism and instead started trying to invent something new so again with our three questions of irrational logic what are the solutions used by everyone else that was the first question well in mentalism the two most common themes are influencing people and reading their body language just like I showed you before with the numbers I decided to stop using those themes as much as possible tying my hands behind my back if needed stop using them second question what is the most absurd solution I can think of at that time the media was obsessed with bringing one of my childhood heroes Sherlock Holmes to the movie screen so to me the craziest solution was that if everyone were trying to make Sherlock into a TV character I must become a real-life Sherlock Holmes you see Sherlock was able to extract information from the most subtle clues people gave off so I decided to create mentalism that wasn't using people as an object to not just stand up here count here's your number I decided to create mentalism it was about the people themselves thus creating a unique experience for the third question getting it to work well it looks something like this and can you help me with uh you have something yes can you please join me up on stage again give her a big hand hi can you stand next to me here okay now into the mic so everyone can hear your name Sharon Sharon a high are you right handed or left hand right handed okay so here's what we're gonna do I want you to imagine holding a pencil with your item hold the mic in your left hand imagine holding a pencil with your right hand and place the tip of that pencil on my hand okay yes on my head oh my on your hand okay these are mine okay okay and in a second I want you to think back to the name of let's say the first guy you've ever been in love with or sing or girl you can do whatever you okay just to buy you that think back to that name okay and you're going to imagine writing that name on my hand with your imaginary pencil don't actually move your hand just imagine writing the name okay and when you do that when you finish just start over so again and again and again and again okay and look at me while you're doing it and by the way Sharon do you own Pitts yes yes oh God Kat yes did you did you name it yes yes how many years ago was it oh one year ago one year ago okay would you say it's a common name that's a lot of you've encountered other cats with that name um not in Israel not in Israel by the way first letter of the name of the name of your first uh the first person you loved is it a first letter yes okay and wait wait up so uncommon cat names you specifically said not in Israel you named it about one year ago yes starts with a team a team yes yes yes okay okay okay if I'm not correct tell me is the name to lose yeah and thank you okay and second letter second letter and L writes like a letter I know yes and I look at your hand oh it's okay okay do you remember what you had for lunch today yes yes I need to keep my hands warm was it pasta yes beauty with red sauce right yes okay okay okay I'll pull it back back writing keeping matching and writing the name um third letter and oh by the way can I see the bottom part of your shoe you see the bottom part not worn out good something that means and you're here on the daytime so that means you did not come from work are you a student right now yes okay is the name you're thinking of the name of the first guy who you've ever been in love with out loud into the mic is it alone yes thank you very much for a big and as you can see this is very different than most mentalism out there this is very unique this is very specific to the person standing in front of me but what I'd like you all to take from my talk here today is this you too can apply irrational logic to your life whether it may be to recreate mentalism or even just to clean your house all you have to do is ask yourselves three questions what are everyone else doing what is the most absurd solution no one is using and what is the craziest most absurd way I can get that solution to work or in other words think irrationally thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 192,684

Rating: 4.5852842 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, Hebrew, Israel, Entertainment, Behavior, Body language, Curiosity, Mindfulness

Id: vhYDpC2uP9s

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2015