Think Like A Mind Reader with Jonathan Pritchard

Jonathan Pritchard.  Jonathan is the Founder of Hellstrom Group; international consulting agency. Author of "Think Like A Mind Reader." And a Fortune 500 Mentalist.

Inside This Episode:

  • What is Mentalism and Why You Want to Think Like One
  • Understanding Human Wiring Opens Us Up to Better Marketing and Sales
  • Why We Never Experience “Reality”
  • The Reason Our Brains Use Mental Shortcuts
  • How Micro-Predictions Frame Our Experience
  • How the Brain Manages Its Bandwidth and Focuses Its Resources
  • A Live Demo of the Limitation of Our Mental Wiring
  • How Our Values and Beliefs Determine Our Experience
  • The Dual Meaning of “I can’t imagine…”
  • The Importance of Communicating in the Language of The Person You’re Communicating With
  • How to Get “Admin Privileges” of a Person’s Human Software
  • Why You Don’t Want to Compete on Price
  • The Power of Preparation in Negotiation
  • Developing Your Ability to Walk Away in a Negotiation
  • The Power of Time Compression
  • The Value of Staying Present During Dynamic Experiences
  • Setting the Agenda at the Beginning to Avoid Gotchas at the End
  • Creating Win-Win Negotiations
  • Why Decisions Should Be Made Ahead of Time
  • How Structure Actually Creates Flexibility
  • The Importance of Getting Out of the Box You’re Stuck In
  • Why You can Never Relate to Anything outside of Its Context
  • Why You’re Always Stuck In A Box, Even When You Climb Out of One
  • Getting Beyond False Dichotomy Living
  • The Answer to The Existential Nature of Our Reality!!

Links:

Website: www.mindreaderuniversity.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanpritchard/

Twitter: @the_pritchard

Book: Think Like A Mind Reader


John Ryan
You're listening to key conversations for leaders. This is episode number 14. Welcome everybody. In today's episode, we'll be discussing how to think like a mind reader with mentalist Jonathan Pritchard. We'll be covering what is mentalism and why you want to think like a mind reader. We talk about a whole bunch of things including communication, perception, the limitation of a reality. We also get into sales, marketing negotiation, and why you never want to compete on price, as well as the answer to the existential nature of our reality. marketing, sales, negotiation, and leadership are all about having conversations. Our ability to have success in all of these areas is determined by our ability to understand the people we're communicating with their motivation, their beliefs, their values, and really being able to speak their language. That's what this show is about better conversations for better leaders. Hey everybody, and welcome to key conversations. leaders. I'm your host John Ryan and today we have a very special guest Jonathan Pritchard. Jonathan is the founder of the hillstrom group and international consulting agency, author of think like a mind reader, and is a fortune 500 mentalist. Welcome to the show, Jonathan. Hey, good to be here, man. Thank you. And I thought we'd start off just like everyone else probably does in your world by asking, especially for our listeners out there who don't know much about mentalism. Can you share with us just a little bit about what it is that that mentalism is and what do you do?

Jonathan Pritchard
You got it. That is a good place to start. So basically, a mentalist is a magician that has specialized in mind reading tricks, so an illusionist is a magician that specializes in big boxes and making Tigers appear. Card magician has specialized in card tricks and close up magic mentalists are focused solely on making it look Like you can read minds predict the future, all the things that would fall into the ESP bucket. That's that's what I'm fascinated by. Now, it doesn't work off Voodoo. It doesn't work off Mojo. I don't have a gift. I wasn't struck by lightning. My grandma didn't have the gift and passed it on to me method like that. It's all just Applied Psychology, showmanship and having the Moxie to pull it off. So over the years, I've done a lot of thinking about why mentalism works in the first place. Not even just how does this trick work, but what what is it about human wiring, that leaves us open to these experiences because they're just hiccups in our cognitive processes. So that kind of thinking about thinking that metacognition has really opened the door to marketing sales communication, that just As long as there's a human being involved, there's a human mind there. And if you know how that mind works, you can connect with it much more quickly than if you hadn't spent a lifetime thinking about this stuff.

John Ryan
Because you have been spending a lifetime from from reading your biography and your website and watching some of the things you have online. You started when you were very young, like in teenage years, if not before that, getting into magic. What was it is mentalism the main craft that you have? Or do you still do some other things on the side?

Jonathan Pritchard
Now the mentalism I went all in on that when I was about 13 years old. So it's kind of like if if you say I'm a magician, most people go, oh, I've never met a magician, but my uncle did some stupid magic tricks that were really dumb, and I hated it. Therefore, I hate magic. Mm hmm. So sure, so I really like focusing on it's like a mentalist. It's something completely different. So a magician does tricks with objects, a mental List does tricks with information. And my first paid gig was when I was 13. I got hired to do walk around mind reading in in those kinds of tricks at a company's summer picnic for $200. So if you're 13 years old, that was great money, and I was hooked, there was no going back. So I was a professional in the corporate market when I was 13 years old. But really the the interest started when I was five, six years old, basically the standard narrative of Oh, salsa magic and then thought that was interesting. And then went down the rabbit hole and never seen ever again.

John Ryan
That's amazing. I'm so excited to talk to you. I've been looking forward to this for quite a long time because I'm mind is everything you know, I know you do speaking for businesses, customer service, sales, leadership, communication, and you mentioned something a little bit ago that I want to find out more about your perspective. He said, there's a hiccup in the mind. There's a hiccup in the human psychology. That sounds like it creates this window. And now I know no magician never reveals their tricks. I don't know how much you can or will be able to reveal. But can you give us a little bit of insight in in how you find those? Or are there several of them? I'm not sure.

Jonathan Pritchard
Oh, yeah, that there's there's 10,000 years of accrued knowledge that the magic and magician community have had. And that's why a little side tangent, which is why I like what I do better than what most standard psychology research is. Because if you think about kind of scientific research, it's like 100, couple hundred years old, right at most. Well magicians have been kind of actively hacking people's minds since before written history. Right? So so there's a much deeper body of knowledge to draw on there. And basically it boils down to our minds, our brains are working on about as much electricity as your fridge light. That's it all the best, most clever, innovative things you've ever dreamt up. It's about 12 watts. He said there, right? Yes. So if you have that, that little bit of energy to devote to running your body and surviving long enough to propagate your genes to the next generation, you've got to have some shortcuts. So those are the heuristics, the the frameworks for orienting your sensory input into a way that you could make sense of it. So the idea is that reality is awesome. You've just never been there. Because your senses are in direct contact with reality. But it's your mind that aggregates those inputs, then tries to find a narrative that accounts for all that sensory input. And since that is very difficult, it's weird that your non conscious mind the part of you, that is before you're thinking its job is to actually filter out extraneous information.

So you aren't, like consciously aware of almost everything that you could be experiencing. If you were consciously aware of all that stuff. That would be a seizure. Right? You just freeze up. So your your pre cognitive mind is filtering out unimportant. information that the logical next question is okay, what is important information? Well, that is a product of very early experienced childhood, your family the whole nine yards. So, as an example of those hiccups, it's kind of like, four for 37 years, I've been walking around. And for a lot of those, I've been walking around on sidewalks. That's great. Okay. I know from 37 years worth of experience that sidewalks will hold my weight. So I don't expend a lot of cognitive processing power to test every step on a sidewalk. That heuristic works just fine 99.99999% of the time, until there's wet cement and I don't notice it so that that framework is useful and correct. Tell it's not, and you're not aware of it until it's already too late. So there is a constant narrative of what you think is about to happen, that you aren't consciously aware of. So your non conscious mind is constantly micro predicting the next moment based on its previous experience. And usually that maps so you're never aware of, of it going sideways. When there's a noticeable difference, that's the evolutionary process of saying, hey, there's something different. That usually means scary. So, your non conscious mind pings your conscious part of your brain and goes, Hey, attend to this. So you now spend some of your precious energy attending to something that doesn't make sense That doesn't fit the framework, and it's usually a tiger in the grass. So you run away from it. Right? Whether or not it's real. If you behave as though the threat is real, you're going to be much better off at a huge time scale I'm talking about and kind of statistical sample size, right? So that's kind of the those little mental processes that are happening all the time that you are never consciously aware of. So in the framework of a mentalist Show, The Mentalist IE me, I'm doing and saying things in the right way and at the right time for you to come to logical conclusions about that story that aren't actually true. So I'm letting you lie to yourself. Through my actions without an open stated false hood. And since you are the one telling yourself what you believe is happening, you of course are going to believe it. Even though I've I was the one who helped you get there. And then there's no way I could talk you out of it. No, I know. He shuffled that deck. I know it. I watched him do it. Right, right. So if I say we have here a perfectly normal deck of cards, you'd be like, that is the weirdest thing to say, What What in the world? Does a normal deck of cards even mean? Can there even be a non normal deck of cards? Wait a minute, so can cards be tricky? Wait a minute. Let me see those cards. I want to see if they're tricky cards. Right? They might be like, Oh, crap, no, no, no, you can't check about right. Yeah. But if I behave as though they are normal, you don't even know you're telling you yourself. They're normal. Mm hmm. And then when you think back, you're just like, why? No, no, there's no way to explain what just happened.

John Ryan
Yeah, I've definitely seen that. Okay, so that's, that's in the physical realm with the cards. And I think you're saying it's the same kind of thing on the mental. So I appreciate that analogy. So, but it's probably even easier than with the men, maybe it's not easier on the mental side than the physical side, because then it's all perception.

Jonathan Pritchard
Right? It's It's way more difficult for people who don't think this way and really aren't world class experts, experts at this to identify what those thoughts are, that are derailing them, right because actually, here's a an example. It doesn't work so well over here because we got a lot of technology between us but sure, in my in my life presentations. This is One of my favorite examples. So legit you you out in podcast land. Hello, thank you for listening. If you want to follow along, genuinely follow along if you're in a place where it's safe to do so if you're driving just word picture, imagine this. But if if Do you have a cell phone on you right now? I do. Okay, so turn it face down if you would, okay. So some some terminology. So you've got the lock screen. So if you just lit it up, you've got the lock screen, then you scan your thumbprint, or you put in your code, and then that would be your home screen. You might have multiple pages, but there's usually one that's the primary home screen. Yeah, yeah. Alright, so think about your primary home screen. And, oh, are you left to right handed, right handed? Okay, left handed people are just naturally better at this. So good luck. You're gonna fail but it's okay. So think of your home screen and In the upper left hand corner, there might be a widget or a folder or an app icon. I want you to imagine exactly what that is. Okay, you got it.

John Ryan
Alright, so I don't even know if I do I think I do but yes. Okay, right.

Jonathan Pritchard
Because the research says that we look at our phones at least a couple hundred times a day. Mm hmm. And you've seen this a couple hundred times a day For how many days? Have you had this? Oh, yeah,

John Ryan
I got it. I think I got it. Okay, cool. I think I got it. I may not, we'll see. All right.

Jonathan Pritchard
So in just a moment, but not yet. Kinda like when I count to three, but I what I'd like you to do is to turn your phone over, light it up. unlock it. Check your home screen, then put it face down. Got it? Mm hmm. Okay, 123 Go check

and then put it down. Okay. Did Did you get it right or wrong? Totally wrong. All right, so about 60% of the audience's will get it wrong. Right, which to me is absolutely fascinating. Now, imagine if I had said, Oh, $500 if you get it right, right, you still would have gotten it wrong, right? Yeah. Yeah. But here's the actual point. No matter if you have an iPhone or an Android, when you light up your lock screen, you see exactly the same thing, the time. So can you tell me exactly what time you saw on the lock screen? I didn't even look at it. I did not consciously look at it for sure. It's exactly, you know. So the narrative defines your values, the thing you valued the most was what icon is on the home screen. If I had said I'll give you $500 if you could tell me what time it is afterwards, that would have been the most valuable information to you. But your mind actively filtered out that extraneous detail, so that it wasn't even available to you later, even if you realize the value of that information. So your current belief structure, and the structure of values that you have that you are looking for dictates the values that you will find, you will completely ignore anything that you don't personally value. So it's the self reinforcing process. You only find what you find most valuable. And since you find it, that's the thing you value. So you're ignoring all the stuff that could be even more valuable, because your current belief structure doesn't allow for it. You literally are living a self fulfilling prophecy every moment of the day. But that is a rock solid, mental process that is always running. You can't escape it in I just proved it like that. That's exactly what's happening. So that thing alone should be absolutely terrifying to everybody to fully realize that it is an active process that you are ignoring the most powerful elements available to you 24, seven all day, every day, your whole life. The life you're living right now is the result of the highest values you hold right now. And you aren't going to see what you're missing. You just can't.

John Ryan
You say say should be terrifying. For me immediately I'm thinking about and I want to transition to the conversations about like, how does this apply to business and leadership? I think it's exciting. I put me in charge that I can if I consciously unpacked my beliefs and as you say, my values

Jonathan Pritchard
like I can't, I can't that's the terrifying part. You can't consciously unpack your pre conscious processes.

John Ryan
Can't can we not do that through

Jonathan Pritchard
looking at behaviors? Yet can, it's just that you aren't the best qualified to explain your decision making because you've never been aware of the decision making process. You've been aware of the answers that your decision making process has given you. Fair enough, right? We make decisions emotionally and we justify them after the fact of the story, exactly as you're talking and it's pre conscious. It happens before you're even aware of it. The non conscious mind serves up the decision you've made, then your rationalizing mind makes up a narrative to fit the decision you've already made. And frame that as the most logical.

John Ryan
No, see, I'm still like, I get it on the beliefs and values. And then I'll say goals. Okay, surely part we expect Hey, you have a goal to remember what the icon is now go verify that your model was correct. I had a goal in mind. And that caused me to delete everything that was irrelevant to that goal. Is that one of the pathways that you teach to people in your speaking and consulting on how to harness this power that we have?

Jonathan Pritchard
right? Exactly. A big part of it is having people who are outside your frame of reference outside your context, who can identify those beliefs that are in action? By virtue of the decision making in the arguments, you come up with bright light, okay, here's what we're gonna do. Well, that won't work because of this limiting belief, that limiting belief in that limiting belief. And then say, well, that is your reality. And those are your real limits, because that's what you believe is is wrong. But just imagine for a minute that it wasn't that way. What would you be able to do then and then actually be able to do it, you're like, holy crap, I I couldn't even imagine doing that. Right. And that is the magic phrase to me. And in that phrase alone is really what got me into the coaching and sharing and in teaching this stuff, because my background as a performer, I performed that hundreds and hundreds of colleges over the course of 10 years. And after the show, I'd have a line of college students 45 minutes long signing autographs, and signed posters and stuff, right? And then, man, I can't even imagine doing what you do is the most common thing I heard. And I realized that they mean it in two ways. The first one is very direct. I can't even imagine how you do those mind reading tricks. Are you sure you're not psychic? Yes, I'm sure I'm not psychic. The second one is, I can't even imagine being a professional mentalist. Wait a minute, so you just travel around pretending to read people's minds and people pay you for it. Like is that a job? Like, did you Go to college for this. No, there is no college for this I, I dreamt it up I put time into learning this skill and the skill is its certificate, right? So they're going to college. Hell, I went to college, but most often people are going to college to get good grades to get that job to get the paycheck to retire with the gold watch. Right? That's the that's the trajectory of the standard social narrative. here's, here's what I citizen will do for good life. Haha, there we go. Sure. Right. And it's all planned out from the beginning and you know, the day you're going to die from the moment you're born right. Then you are in the middle of the college piece of that puzzle. And then here comes me. Hi, everybody. I'm a professional mind reader. Like Wait, what? There's no way for them to frame who I am in relationship to the Only trajectory they see as a viable thing. So they literally are saying, I can't imagine doing what you do. Like, I don't know the first place to start to even get to where I don't have a boss, right? So I started talking to college kids about that over and over and over again and the same kind of 20 different concerns and questions kept popping up. So that's why I wrote the book. Think Like a mind reader. All right. Here's how I think here's what I believe. Here's how I've gotten to believe it. Here's what it's gotten me. I grew up in a single wide trailer, in a trailer park in the mountains of North Carolina, on a dirt road, like there wasn't even pavement. But like, that's how I grew up. My dad worked 14 hour days at a factory. My mom secretary to lawyer's office, they weren't rich. There's some well as a gas or lunch money day, right? Like, that's, that's my pedigree. And now I travel the world.

And I get paid to think weird stuff. Like, how in the world do you get there? So that's that. I was like, well, I could do one on one coaching, that's going to be really expensive for them because my time is the most valuable thing that I have. Because time is the, the, the lead that your creativity can transmute through alchemy into value. Right? So what's the best way for me to spend my time to help as many people as possible? Okay, I've got to write a book about all this stuff. And then the book comes out and then people go, Hey, would you come speak to our group about all this stuff? This does fascinate. So that was kind of how I made the transition from Vegas performer entertaining the troops. overseas that life into kind of, Okay, here's behind the scenes, here's all the psychology and mindset work that I've gone through myself to go from being a super shy kid who's very intensely introverted, to learning outgoing behaviors, and learning how to connect with strangers, which is the most valuable skill you could ever learn ever. Right? So that was the transition between performer and entertainer to teaching people the kind of meta patterns of thought and behavior behind the skills of the kind of direct one to one. I'm a performer. I say this and this happens. It's more interesting to me to think about the why that's even possible in the first place. Right? So fundamental cognition and orienting to reality and the whole nine yards.

John Ryan
What does it mean to you when you do presentations, These days or work with leadership teams, on getting them to think like a mind reader, and some of them. They don't want us to get up and perform like you do. What does that mean to them on a day to day basis?

Jonathan Pritchard
It means that

I always like to ask people, okay, if you could actually read minds, what part of your life would be better? What What benefit Do you want out of like being able to actually read people's minds, if you could, even though you can't write? That is what learning to think like a mind reader can get you without having to be psychic. Because let's work backwards. Great business is the result of competence and the ability to communicate that value to a marketplace. So it's communication skills, that you're building a relationship with. With your leads with your current customers and clients, and converting them into raving fans, right? So your relationships to your clients, to your leads to your employees, to your resources, to the challenges to yourself, relate relationships are the most powerful force in all of our lives. Communication skills are the upper governor of the quality of those relationships. So if you can't communicate well, you're not going to have that great of relationships, right? communication skills are a function of how well you can deliver information in a way that the hearer will understand what it is that you're saying. So communication is just saying a whole bunch of words. It's being able to understand the person I'm talking with. Here's things this way. So I will put what I'm saying in terms they will understand to be more adept at facilitating that connection that is more effective at building good relationships than demanding other people speak your language. Totally. Right. So it's it's kind of the difference between that American caricature of traveling abroad and be like, you guys should learn to speak English. It's like, well, you're, you're their country now. Right? So yeah, so the more languages I speak, the more people I can connect with, the more valuable my relationships are. So learning to think like a mind reader is to really truly understand how everybody on planet earth thinks, because this is pre cultural. This is fundamental human software. Right. So It's basically giving you admin privileges to the human software, when most people don't even make use of the restricted user space their, their ID. Right. So so that's what it is, is to understand communication more fully, to improve their negotiations to improve their, their coaching and leadership, reducing misunderstandings and wasted time, wasted opportunities. Land more gigs, right, win more business. Yeah, like, often I'm helping people negotiate six figure deals, right. And then the person from across the table is like, Can we really one of my favorites that I heard recently was like, What can we do to sharpen the pencil on this? I was like, that is a fascinating turn of phrase by What do you mean? is like, ya know, get better on the price? And it's like, No, we know what it takes to get you what you're asking to have done. will never ever, ever be The cheapest we don't compete on price, because we will never compromise on quality. So no, I won't let you pay me less, because you will only be stealing from your own results. And that that saves 10 thousands of dollars, by reminding the person across the table that it's in your best interest to pay what you're paying, so that you're not undercutting your value.

John Ryan
And you mentioned that before is that, you know, time is the lead, right? That's the most important thing that we alkalize. If that's the right word, to the value that we put out there, you got to really protect that in own your own value first. Because otherwise, it's a race to the bottom. And that's actually exactly so with negotiation. I imagine a lot of your work is done prior to that meeting, thinking about you know, what are their goals, what are their outcomes, what are their values, so that you can communicate speaking as you You said in their language, is there a process that you do ahead of time a process you do during the negotiation? Like, what's what's some of your favorite negotiation? concepts or strategies?

Jonathan Pritchard
Ooh, oh, this this could be a whole semesters course. itself too. Yeah.

Ideally, you don't want to be incapable of walking away. Right? Ideally, you should have enough negotiations on the table in your pipeline, that you could walk away from any and all of them. Right? Remember that the other person is there because you have something that they value. So you aren't always at their mercy no matter what the situation may look like. Right. Up front. You definitely definitely want to do your homework. And if it's It's adversarial. Or if it's friendly, it doesn't matter, you still need to do your homework. Right? So think of it kind of like you wouldn't go into doing a mind reading show without practicing some mind reading tricks, right? The negotiation should be what the one hour, but you should have at least been doing 40 hours worth of work ahead of time. And to put that in kind of my mentalist terms and framework is there's sometimes I'll work on a skill for three years before it ever makes it to stage. And that three years worth of practice is and can be literally for a single second of a 10 minute routine. Wow, literally, that's not a figure of speech. That is literal. Now how are you The Spectator going to watch this 10 minutes to recognize that one second that I've spent three years perfecting? How are you going to backtrack that? No way. So it's time compression. I spend years so you miss seconds. Right? Same thing from a martial arts angle. I love kung fu and martial arts. I actually wrote a book about kung fu and teach it. Right? Well, so you practice for a decade. For that one instance you'll have in your life, that will be a non issue, because it'll be five seconds of an exchange, and you kept yourself safe. That's why you spent 10 years so in a negotiation. So that's, that's why I like to think of them as a dynamic experience, right? It's not a fight. It's a time Dynamic experience. It's not a performance. It's a dynamic experience where you stay in relationship with the moment. Okay, cool. So negotiation, do your homework, know what it is that they value, know why they want it as best you can and understand what options they have available to them that isn't you. So you kind of know, their likelihood of walking. Right? So, huge, huge thing to do for negotiations, is to set the agenda at the beginning to reduce gotchas at the end, right? There's that war of attrition of being overwhelmed with the details and this that the other thing we just spent three hours hammering this stuff out, and you're you're thinking, Oh, we finally got here. We're good. We're about to sign and then the other guy across the table goes Oh, yeah. And and this one last thing. Which is their their nuclear option that they've been wearing you down to just exhaust you. And then that time they bring up something new. Come on. So don't let them do it from the beginning. set the agenda. Now we're here to talk about this that the other thing by the end of our time together, here's really what I want to have hammered out. And the next steps after that, anything else, we can table that. But really, the important parts are this. And then if they try to expand the scope, you just go Yeah, that's not what we're talking about.

John Ryan
And I I agree, I it seems like that many times in negotiations, people are more pliable in the beginning. What is the experience Have you had people at the end drop that nuclear option and then it breaks the deal because there's you've already kind of given up all your marbles at that point.

Jonathan Pritchard
Kind of but but not really. Most people think negotiation is everybody giving up enough so that we're equally miserable and unsatisfied with the outcome.

John Ryan
Right? lose those. Right? Right. Yeah, right.

Jonathan Pritchard
Negotiations are ideally a win win for everybody. Right? And, and it's it's not always a function of deception, right of that kind of information management. So that by the end, you have played all of your cards, so to speak, and therefore have no wiggle room. Right? It's more of a focus on this is going to be the best thing for you For these reasons, in the thing you just brought up will actually undermine everything we just talked about. So you could be very upset. Front in plain spoken and very direct about no this this isn't the best. Like I won't let you take that deal.

John Ryan
Okay, yeah, yeah. So in a way, when you're being congruent, you're being consistent with where you are your perspective and you have to do the work to understand the other negotiating party what their options are. And also be comfortable enough with your own to take that stand and hold that boundary, especially if it's in the highest and best interest for all parties involved. Right?

Jonathan Pritchard
Be respectful, be gracious, be understanding, but carry a big stick, right? That be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. Be comfortable saying no. Right? Because sometimes people are asking for that discount just to do their due diligence, saying yeah, we're good with the price, but I couldn't not ask because there's so much right So so it's it's kind of like, again martial arts fight, don't take it personally, right? They got their own issues, they got their own reasons, there's no way you're going to browbeat them into thinking the way that you think it's more of a How do you manage the situation to the best outcome of everybody as best you can?

John Ryan
And it's a dynamic experience, as you said, yeah. So in being in that moment, decision making, I imagine is happening on the fly. And of course, it's sometimes easier to sit back in a boardroom and do brainstorming with options and things of that. Can you talk a little bit about the psychology of decision making, and what you would recommend to leaders in terms of bringing some of these concepts into their decision making process, right.

Jonathan Pritchard
Yeah, decisions are made before you're aware of them. If you were making a decision in the moment, you're you're, you've already lost because you are now in a position where you're in the moment The other people have already made the decisions for you. Right? So in in context, it's kind of like for self defense, how far are you willing to go to protect yourself, your family and your property? That is a question you have to answer right now, before the moment comes. Because if the literal do or die moment is facing you, right now, do you think you have the time to make a good decision for the well being of yourself, your family and in your property? Absolutely not. So you should never ever be making a decision in the moment. Make your decisions early. And the way I like to think about this is early on, but I was super shy, right. I had a very difficult time even talking to friends and Like, servers at restaurants, I'd be embarrassed ask for ketchup, right? So, when I was 13, I learned how to juggle for my dad and uncles. And then I went to a summer program the that year. And the guy who was running that summer program was a retired performer. Like he was a street performer and a clown and juggler. So he goes, Oh, you know how to how to juggle tennis balls. Do you want to learn to juggle pins? Like Yeah, sure. So now I could juggle pins and get positive feedback from it. Okay, cool. And then he says, you know, just use my script, right? You've seen me perform for weeks now. Just say exactly what I say. Say it the way I say it. Cool. Well, I started doing that. Well, it wasn't me. I was using his script. And then I was getting the same laughs and then I started getting the same tips, right. So I knew That I have the exact pathway from where I am to where I want to be at the end of the performance, and exactly how I'm going to get there because I have my script planned out to the word down to the inflections of how I'm going to say those things. Now, only, only after I have that nailed down, could I be present in the moment? So that if somebody in the audience says something funny that I've never heard about before, right, like, Oh, that's actually really funny. I can now leave the pathway of the script to engage presently in the moment and have fun there. And the instant that, okay, this is no longer where I should be. I go right back to the script. And I know that we can end where we need to end. So the ability to be present in the moment and deal with unexpected situations can only come from having such a handle on the process, that it's not going to freak you out to step away from that sequence. So in a negotiation, you should already have it planned out. And if there's something new that comes up in the moment, having it planned out, you can be comfortable enough to step away from that plan, address the situation as it is, and say, and that's why we should come right back to the plan. Right. So it's, it's kind of the the deal of anybody saying, you know, I don't I don't want to practice because I don't I don't want to dole my senses. I'm more I'm better if it's fresh. Right? Just like, I don't think so. Like, I don't want to I don't want a surgeon that says, Yeah, I don't practice. I have haven't practiced. I didn't go to college for this because you know, I'm fresher if I just do it in the moment. Yeah. So, so amazing, phenomenal musicians can improvise in the moment only because they are masters at their skill and are competent. Right? So you can't just wing it, you're not going to be better in the moment if I don't prepare for it. But that's all. That's all fundamental misunderstandings of what we're what excellence requires of you. So yeah, absolutely, you know, time compression, spend an inordinate amount of time for that moment, and thank me later, give me 2% of those increases you get in those negotiations.

John Ryan
I love that. I feel the exact same way about conversations in general that if it's a really important one, a key conversation. You got to put in hours and hours and hours of work to make sure that you have all your tracks covered. So it's an if the if this, then that kind of situation, and it's already handled, that allows you to stay present in that dynamic experience, like you said, and incorporate that new information flawlessly many times. Exactly.

Jonathan Pritchard
Exactly. And one of my favorite things is to have somebody that I've met kind of for it for the first time and just getting used to things. And then they come see me do what I do. If it's a mind reading show or whatever. The show looks very casual and spontaneous. And in the moment, you're like, good, Lord, that Jonathan guy is so clever. He's so quick on his feet. Then you watch it a second time you go, that Wait, he says it exactly how in the world does he get the spectator to say that same thing every single time? All of it was planned out? Oh my god, but he's a mastermind. Every single moment was planned down to the enth detail. Almost everything thought was just he was saying it for the first time. He said it 10 years in a row. Oh my god. Right. So that's the only way that it should look natural is because you've unnaturally spent years learning to look natural doing unnatural things. Naturally. Exactly. Perfect. So is

John Ryan
that easy? Probably Yeah. Just just spent a decade I love these, you would spend three years and I totally believe you wouldn't say three years perfecting something that to the spectator. It's a second, but I imagine it makes it that much. It's a critical part. I imagine it's a critical part of that performance that makes or breaks that particular set or that aspect of the set. Sadly, that's amazing. So preparation, recognizing we live in a subjective world we don't see reality as a cool place. I love how you said that. But we've never been there. We've never been there. So So everything that you do in thinking like a mind reader is getting into the other people's realities to understand where they're coming from thinking through as much as I possibly can. So it can be present that dynamic experience, and then adapt on the fly and make it look, as you said, natural, right? It's

Jonathan Pritchard
a good mental exercise to start to appreciate what in the world this weirdo stuff I'm talking about is, is imagine the computers that we are using right now to communicate. Alright, cool. Their world is nothing but ones and zeros. Ultimately, all of the communication that we're having, by way of these computers is ones and zeros. So in the context of being a computer, the present moment is either a one or a zero. Okay, simple is simple logic, literal logic. Okay, cool within the context of a computer, You understand one you understand zero. Great. That's what everything in the world is and can be. Now turn off the computer.

Are those logic gates one or zero?

They're neither. Right, right. So oftentimes when you're faced with, it can only be this or that the context of your belief is too narrow for the scope of the reality.

John Ryan
So you have to get out of that box just like those actually college students who I can't imagine doing what you do, right?

Jonathan Pritchard
But here's the rub. You could never understand or relate to anything outside of its context. So you are never going to be outside of a box. You just can crawl out of your smaller box into a higher dimension box that accounts for a greater percentage of what reality is?

John Ryan
Is there a infinity comes to mind but is there a limit to that? Is there a goal?

Jonathan Pritchard
I have I have Inklings that that is what all the Guru's through time are talking about unity consciousness and universal awareness and in that kind of a thing. I personally haven't had too many of those kinds of experiences, but had hints of kind of beyond logic and reason, experiences. And yeah, it's super weird. There. There are different ways and different tools you can use to engage with reality, logic and reasoning. is phenomenally good if you want to get to the moon or throw a grain of rice into one single stadium seat from five miles away, which is exactly what we do with Mars landers, right? That's, that's basically what we're doing there. So you need logic and reason. But there's a world beyond logic and reason in the magic of having a kid of love, right? Like, there's a whole dimension of human experience that is beyond reason. And it is just as valuable to have a fulfilling life in order to be able to appreciate that you free yourself from the constraint of solely logic, and then you can adopt whatever mental framework is most useful for the current situation at hand. So not only Do you have your belief structure, you have belief structures that you can adopt depending on the situation. And you free yourself from the tyranny of rigid structures.

John Ryan
So the more boxes you climb out of, the more you can look at the past so you can look at the current belief structures that are there. And it sounds like you have more choice instead of just responding to the box that you're currently in.

Jonathan Pritchard
Right most of the time people take progress to mean regression. You know, this whole living in the future thing these cities are awful. You know what, what it was better back in the day, when we were all farmers struggling to earn our keep. Those are the good old days that has no appeal to me. Right. Progress and improvement is a transcending of the current limits. and integrating the useful pieces into a new way of relating to reality. Right. So, so it's not a regressive thing. It's not a going back to a childlike sense of wonder. Like, I don't want to be a kid anymore, right like that. No, I want a fully realized appreciation for the marvel of reality. That is totally different. So it's more of learning to dissolve. If then or Yes, no binary false dichotomy. Option living. Oh, you're not a Democrat. So you're Republican. Right? Okay. There's, there's a lot more options there. Right, like so. So if you live your life solely as a function of false dichotomies, did you wonder why your your existence little Meaning, you're kind of limiting the scope of of the appreciation you could have for the dynamic, messy thing that is the universe that you have grown from and are a part of your whole life. And we'll still be as your life unwinds after your death. You've never not been a part of the universe, but billions of years sure inspired to arrange these particles that I call Jonathan. They were there before I was born. I'm here now and these parts of the mind who knows where the mind came from and goes so I've got sneaking suspicions that mind is the only universal thing but that's wacky, far out there stuff. But

John Ryan
it's meaning I look at all of the Universes like consciousness with A capital C type thing.

Jonathan Pritchard
Yeah. Yeah. Like Yeah, we are pieces of the universe alive to experience the universe. That is such a weird holographic self referential fractal thing. That it that doesn't make sense. So the only cause in the universe is mind. Everything else is a function of mind and the substrate through which mind is realized.

John Ryan
I love it. I love it

Jonathan Pritchard
that doesn't really have that doesn't really help in negotiation. So, you know,

John Ryan
well, I think we could make a case for it all there there is his mind. And so we are two subsets of a larger mind, trying to resolve into a higher level of existence into a bigger box for both of us right,

Jonathan Pritchard
integrate, integrate, integrate, associate, connect, connect, relate Fun.

John Ryan
So fun, Jonathan, at some point, if you love I'd love to have you come back and we can go even deeper into the existential nature of our reality and the perceptions of mine If you want, what's the best? What's the best way for our listeners to get connected with you and to stay in touch?

Jonathan Pritchard
Well, let's see. The best way to stay in touch is actually just follow me on Twitter, the_Prichard. Basically think of that as you and I are locked in a car for 14 hours, and whatever weirdo stuff I think of I'm gonna say it out loud over there. So it ranges from art and painting to crypto stuff to sovereign computing and network systems and freedom and liberty and all sorts of weird stuff. I go all over the place over there. So if you want to peek inside my mind, find me on Twitter. I'm super easy to find there. If you want to dig in and engage with my ideas and training. Go to mind reader university.com enough people were like, wait a minute, did you go to college for this stuff? I was like, you know, there isn't one, but I'm gonna make one. I love it. So so that's where I put my video courses and have links to my books out on Amazon and T shirts that say frickin mind reader on them. Just all I got a full suite of ways that people can give me money. So, go for.

John Ryan
fun. So fun. Awesome. I'll put the information in the show notes as well. And look forward to connecting with you more on Twitter. Thanks again so much for being here that Jonathan. It's been an absolute pleasure. My pleasure. And thank you so much. I'm honored to be able to share my thoughts with your audience. I genuinely appreciate it to connect with Jonathan again. Go ahead and visit mind reader University comm or you can find him on twitter at the underscore Pritchard. Thanks for listening to key conversations for leaders with your host John Ryan, if you enjoyed the show, please let us know. Give us a rating or write a review. If you have a question send me an email at john@keycomvo.com and if you haven't already, you can connect with me on twitter @keyconvo for on LinkedIn under JohnRyanTraining.

John Ryan


Host of Key Conversations for Leaders Podcast, Executive Coach, Consultant, and Trainer

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