I was speaking to an accountant the other day. He said he was going to have to fire an employee because the employee could only do a job. I asked him why this was a problem. He replied:

“If someone just does a task, a job, that’s good, but what then? They are given a new task and don’t know how to apply the principle from the job they just did to the new job. They can do the same thing, exactly, but they don’t understand the principle. They can’t take the principle they learned and apply it to new things. When you can’t learn principles, then you are not flexible enough. You are worthless to me if you can’t understand the principles behind what you do. I have to fire someone who cannot learn principles, who thinks that learning how to do the same thing over and over is enough.”

I understood exactly what he meant, but perhaps you don’t.

I will try to explain to you the importance of this employer’s experience. For years I have had this struggle with magicians and mentalists.

You see, you can buy, or see a trick, and do the trick. That’s like the employee doing the exact job he was told to do. But if you learn the principle behind the trick that you do, you can make countless tricks from that single principle.

People who refuse to learn principles are of little worth in the long run to employers and audiences. People want to see exciting, different things. They want people they hire to please them. They want people they pay to be able to adjust in a way that fits their needs and desires. Understanding principles allows you to do all of that, and then some.

If you only know how to do your tricks, you’ll never be able to adjust enough to please people in the long haul. You will be like the employee who knows how to do what he is told to do, but never really understands the main principles at work, so he cannot apply those principles in new ways, for all of the clients he has to try to please.

Today magicians and mentalists think that the trick is the thing. It is not.

Let’s make this easy.

If you learn to force a card, or a word in a book, then you can come up with all sorts of ways to reveal what you secretly forced on someone. When you learn the principle of forcing, then you realize how you can come up with many tricks, in many situations, and all you have to do is use a force to create a miracle.

This should be very obvious. It should be, but today, no one is looking. Today, new people don’t learn or look for principles. They were trained to buy tricks, get things from Youtube or share the theft of material on a torrent site.

What’s wrong with that? People have been trained to be taught only what to do. They are not trained in principles. Knowing principles is what will save you from being like the fired employee.

Magicians and mentalists have been fooled into constantly buying another new prop or video, so that they can do something new. What magicians and mentalists really need though, to be successful and do miracles anywhere, is to learn powerful principles, not more individual tricks.

By learning principles, performers can create unusual illusions not everyone else is already doing.

By knowing secret principles, even performers who think they are not very creative can create tricks unique to themselves.

By learning secret principles, the number of tricks that can be accomplished is truly astonishing. A single principle can allow for hundreds of possible effects or tricks.

Obviously, only the wiser sort of people learn actual principles, and they don’t want their lazy trick-oriented peers to know this is their secret.

Those who learn principles want to keep these secret principles to themselves. It puts them far ahead of the trick-buyers and freebie-seekers.

What I was surprised by is the fact that this is becoming an issue in real life employment too. People are getting fired because they cannot think for themselves. They cannot grasp principles. Employers don’t like that.

Maybe it is time more of us learn principles, rather than the next thing to do.

I have always taught students principles as well as effects. It’s what my teaching work is all about.

From Wonder Words, to Mind Reading, to Genuine Amazement, Mystery By Association, Indirection, Anti-Tada or The Secret, and most of my works overall, you will learn principles to apply in countless ways, as well as getting entertaining, unique effects, you cannot find elsewhere.

Those who imitate and expose don’t understand principles.

Be wary of being trained to be like the bad employee about to be fired for not knowing better.

It’s time to learn what counts. Learn principles.

Kenton