Here is an overview of mentalism, one of several psychic reading activities that you can practice, along with a few tips if you want to become a mentalist. This activity became popular through several TV shows and series. This is, indeed, a discipline that can be learned. Mentalism will be useful to understand the psychology of people you meet and interact with, anticipate their behavior, but also to persuade them that your ideas are right, or that they should help you.
Warning: you should only tackle mentalism if you have positive intentions meant to help you improve your living conditions, earn more money, be happier… or help others to that regard, but never to cause harm, exploit, or take advantage of them!
Anyone can become a mentalist
The main advantage of mentalism is that it is quite easy to practice, even for someone who never tried it before and without any awoken gift.
You can do it more or less quickly depending on the strength of your motivation, your personal investment in your training program, and most of all your commitment to the ethical principle of using mentalism as a kind of psychic reading meant to do good within you and all around you!
Your training will trigger your gift!
Mentalism is easy to learn because training triggers your gift. Indeed, if you just put the principles of mentalism into practice, you might obviously become a good technician for the practice, but you will never become a qualified expert or a master in that area!
However, if you put your heart into it, if you genuinely strive to use mentalism to make the world a better place, then you will trigger the essential secret gift that will let you make the most of this wonderful psychic reading technique. While a simple technical and mechanical use of mentalism technique can provide you with a lot of satisfaction, it would be limited to your perception of the material world. Some of them are quite happy with it, such as the protagonist in “The Mentalist” TV series.
Taking mentalism to the next step
Basic and technical mentalism is nice, and can even help you do some good around you, better know people, and provide appropriate help, but it will always be limited. You will know a person’s behavior and character, but never their deep inner self.
This would keep you away from the spiritual dimension in mentalism, which precisely allows you to access information about a person’s past and future through a connection to the invisible worlds where such information can be found. So if you have any interest in this psychic reading practice, you should start training. Only time will tell whether you will manage to reach the next step, which will trigger the extrasensory gift connected to mentalism.
A practice that is both psychological and extrasensory
Mentalism is a psychological discipline using a set of techniques ranging from observation through the senses to hypnosis and suggestion. Intuition, sometimes called “sixth sense”, also has a part to play in mentalism if you want to take it further from the stage of mere psychological practice and into a higher dimension of extrasensory practice used for psychic reading.
Psychological mentalism practice is already fascinating in and of itself, but it is limited to the range of terrestrial and material knowledge, such as unveiling someone’s character and untapped potential. Many people are content with it and can sometimes even draw some comfortable income and an easy life from it.
You could, however, make some giant strides in your spiritual life and reach higher levels of consciousness then most human beings when you move one to the extrasensory practice of mentalism. You will then see the world as it truly is, and not as most people see it! The truth can often be found behind the veil of appearances and only extrasensory perceptions will allow you to see the truth behind the illusion! Mentalism can be used in several domains, from studying behavior patterns to find criminals, to predicting events that might happen in the future!
You could become an experienced mentalist
Most experienced mentalists have undergone a long training program dealing with many techniques (suggestion, hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, cold reading…). Once their gift has been awakened to a simply psychological level, a good mentalist can then acquire extrasensory perceptions that will hone their judgment and the advice they provide, further enhancing the reliability of their predictions too. Even if they stay on a psychological level, a good mentalist will already seem to be gifted with extrasensory perceptions to the naked eye, because their accurate observations will be out of reach for most human beings’ perceptions, so they might seem gifted with extraordinary powers.
Willingly or spontaneously, most mentalists eventually reach the spiritual dimension of psychic reading through mere practice of their craft. The information they can gather makes them a kind of modern Sherlock Holmes, the famous fictional detective born out of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s pen. This fictional character might be the most famous mentalist of all time, even if that specific word was not used at the time.
You can say a lot even when you don’t speak!
One of the secrets behind the effectiveness of mentalists if their knowledge of body language, which is just as important – if not even more – than verbalized communication. This is why for a mentalist you are “speaking” even when you are silent… your own body is talking! Even if you do everything you can to stay still, you cannot fully prevent your body from expressing something!
It is even counterproductive: the more you try to keep your body still, the more obvious any leaked information becomes, and the easier it will be for a mentalist to read them! The way you stand, whether or not you are crossing your legs, having one hand further than the other, a slight tilt of your head on the left or right side… these are but many signs that can let a mentalist read you like an open book.
It is impossible to repress body language
According to several psychological studies, body language represents more than half of the information that a mentalist can use to learn more about anyone, including their character, their past, their hidden intentions, or what they plan to do in the near future!
The more you try to hide your emotions, by refusing to talk for example, the clearer your thoughts will be for a mentalist. Depending on the attitude of the person they are studying, they can know whether or not they are lying, whether they intend to keep a promise, or if they are able to keep going when faced with a setback… A mentalist will discover everything they need about their personality.
Is it cold in here?
One of the other main techniques used by mentalists is called cold reading. This can complement non-verbal communication because this technique lets you deduct someone’s personality, intentions, or actions through a simple analysis of their behavior, the way they dress, stand, speak, or refuse to speak as we have just seen! And so, whether you choose an open or closed approach, your personality cannot escape the mind clutches of an experienced mentalist.
As a consequence: even if you come to a mentalist fully naked, no matter how you behave, how you choose to stand, and whether or not you use verbal communication… they will always manage to learn something about you and about what you have done, no matter how hard you try to hide it. The subtle observation clues used in cold reading is a wide open door leading to a person’s true personality, because everyone is the product of cultural conditioning that shapes you and shares a few codes that you consciously or subconsciously reproduce… and a mentalist knows about them.
Accordingly, the way you speak or refuse to speak, the way you stand, the way you dress, the way you react… everything unveils a little bit more of your personality to an experienced mentalist, much better than telling him about your existence in detail ever could… This is because a lot of your behavior cues are absolutely obvious to an alert and perceptive mentalist, even when you cannot see them yourself!
Here is what you need to know if you want to become a mentalist
Anyone can become a mentalist if they want to, because this psychic reading practice can be assimilated within a few weeks, even if you do not have any declared gift or extrasensory perceptions! Your psychic gift will almost automatically be triggered if you want it to once you practice psychological mentalism, which means when you follow mentalism training programs in specialized centers or learning online with a coach.
Having a mentor would indeed be best to learn alongside an experienced person who can provide certified evidence of their experience in that area. Beware some people who offer online training programs, because some of them are con artists that do not have the mandatory qualifications to do it, except the skill to quickly persuade you to put your trust in them!
Some tips to sniff out would be con artists
They might be gifted in the art of convincing others, or to enroll you into some often pricy training programs, but this does not make them tried and true mentalists. It might even be the opposite. A master in mentalism will not promise you the world, or that you will get rich quickly (even if you can through mentalism). They will not force any enrollment upon you by pressing you with deadlines, limited spots, or some amazing discount if you sign up “right now”.
Case in point, these are the kind of arguments that will let you separate genuine mentalists from the many online crooks who have been drawn to this current trend and decided to capitalize on public interest for psychic reading and mentalism… This current popularity consciously or unconsciously relies on the many tv shows having a mentalist as a main or secondary character. They are also called “profilers” in crime shows.
The true path that can make you a mentalist
Even though having a mentalist coach is best, you can also try to learn on your own, but it will be longer and harder… unless you already have some hidden gift for this psychological practice that can be enhanced through extrasensory perceptions, as already mentioned before! In both cases, here are a few secrets to help you learn mentalism faster.
In order to become a mentalist, you first need to hone your observation skills, since this is the core of any mentalist activity. When you develop your observation skills, you will notice that most of us walk blindly into existence and do not really look closely at people we meet.
1- Master mental manipulation
If you want to be a good mentalist, on top of your observation skills and the study of a few psychological techniques like neurolinguistic programming, cold reading, or hypnosis, it is also important for you to master the techniques of mental manipulation, though a proper definition of that concept is probably best because it can be confusing!
Here, “mental manipulation” does not refer to the assimilation of techniques to abuse or take advantage of others with negative intentions or to harm them. Positive mental manipulation consists in leading people to help you achieve your goals at no personal cost to them. The term of mental persuasion can be used instead, if “mental manipulation” seems too strong.
You first need to learn how to ensure people will follow your lead and act as you want them to, provided you have positive intentions that are turned to the greater Good. This is how you will stay righteous in your mentalism practice.
2- Practice the theory of compliance
If you want people to act as you want them to, you need to practice what mentalists call the theory of compliance. This theory explains that a person will feel a personal commitment to you once you have already asked something of them and they have agreed to it, even if it came as a lower commitment to them that what you are about to ask next.
For instance, if you want someone to agree to an essential decision for you, you should start asking them for something less important! Indeed, according to compliance theory, once someone has agreed to your first request, they feel a subconscious urge to comply with further requests.
Of course you will need a little training before you get people to agree to your every whim. So start small and at a lower scale, then ramp up your requests before tackling on the most serious subjects.
3- Show someone what they have to gain… in complying with your requests
There are several mental manipulation techniques that would take too much time to describe here, but a good introduction to the world of manipulation – or rather, mental persuasion – would be to practice the technique of someone else’s interest! If you truly want someone to do what you want, you should strive to highlight how they will benefit from complying with your request.
As an example, if you want someone to stand by your side for some important endeavor, you should convince them how important this will be for them too, and how useful it will be for them. This calls for some thorough study of that person’s psychology, you need to know what they are interested in and what usually calls them into action. That information will allow you to hit a nerve and lead them to do what you want them to do, or show them how they should act in order to change their opinion and behavior in order to be even more successful!
Conclusion: Everything is mentalized… and extra mentalized!
You will have noticed the “mental” etymological root in “mentalism”, something that deals with the mind, and it is a pretty good summary of what you need to do in order to understand or practice mentalism. You need to control your own mind in order to control that of others if you want to help them. This is the core principle of mentalism!
Even though many people use mentalism techniques to earn a living on stage, keep in mind that the main goal of this discipline is to develop your practice in order to do good. Through study and practice of the first psychological dimension of mentalism, you will hone your own senses and your mind, and you will eventually move on to a higher state of consciousness that will allow you to reach and use the extrasensory dimension of mentalism.