Problem: Article: This means how a person normally acts in any given circumstance. Since people are different, you'll be a lot more effective in your readings if you have a baseline first. And you'll know how receptive they're feeling toward you! An easy example is think of naturally flirty people. When they're comfortable, they may be touching, laughing, and poking away at someone they find attractive. Other people, while comfortable, might consider that a violation of a person's bubble. Both people are feeling the same way, they just show it in very different ways. . 99% of getting people to believe/agree with you is confidence (statistic yet to be verified). How do politicians get elected? What makes a salesman effective? Who gets the ladies? We may think it has something to do with smarts or with looks (and those definitely don't hurt), but what it really boils down to is confidence. When you're confident enough, it doesn't even occur to other people to question your judgment. If you're nervous about professing your mentalist ways, you gotta kick that nasty habit! What you're really selling here is yourself. People are looking to you to be convinced -- they're not looking for the most accurate or logical information. When you realize it's not what you say, it's how you say it, a lot of the pressure falls away. . The fact of the matter is that people tell us things way more often than we realize. If we were better listeners, a whole new world would open up to us. Our memories would improve and we would make connections we didn't see before. That's what mentalists do! An important part of listening and being an effective mentalist is reading between the lines. Seeing what people really mean when they're talking. If your friend walked up to you and said, "Oh my gosh, I worked out soooooo hard today," they're actually saying, "Please give me a pat on the back. I need to be told I'm fit." It's this underlying text that will clue you in when people don't realize you're any the wiser. What it boils down to is that you're really putting on a show. So instead of pretending to be someone you're not and making this dramatic scene about it, just be yourself! The genuine you is a lot more convincing than anything else. If anything, be slightly amused. Think of those actors giving interviews that constantly have a slight smile on their faces and are prone to little bouts of subdued laughter. They're totally relaxed and they just seem, well, cool. Be that guy! And you thought Inception was just an awesome Leonardo DiCaprio movie. While you can't plant dreams yet, you can plant ideas. Let's say you want to get someone to think of a word and the word you want them to think of is "watch." You would insert that word into your conversation beforehand, glance at yours casually (albeit briefly), and then ask them to think of something like an accessory. Boom. Mind read. Start experimenting with this on small levels, like the example above. Grab a friend or two and see if you can come up with a few scenarios on your own where they don't know they're getting ideas planted in their brains. Once you come up with half a dozen or so words you can easily plant, you can impress anyone at a moment's notice. If you've ever asked a magician to tell you how he does one of his tricks, if he's any good he never spills! He shouldn't even explain a trick that any other magician does (or the union will kick him out). You should be the same! If someone asks you how you do something, simply shrug your shoulders and equate it to your awesomeness. Don't accidentally give it away, either. "Ah, I see you looked up and to the left," gives away that you're monitoring their eyes, even if you don't tell them what it signifies. You want them to think there's something extra-sensory about you, something that other people don't have. So be mysterious. You'll only increase their intrigue.
Summary: Memorize a “baseline” of behavior for the people you're dealing with. Be confident Listen Act natural. Plant ideas. Don't give away your secrets.

Problem: Article: If the guess-word is “book,” you might give clues like “something you use to study in school,” and “a large collection of words that has a main plot.” You score points when your teammates guess the word. You can't use any part of the word or any of the taboo words that are listed.  If you get to a word that you don't know, or your teammates are having a hard time guessing it, you can skip the card. However, if you do skip a card, that point goes to the other team. If the guess-word is cookbook, then you can't use “cook” or “book” within any of your clues. Your teammates must guess the exact word, so if they get it close, or get part of the word, you need to keep giving them clues until they get it exactly right. Each card includes some of the most obvious related words and designates those as taboo words, meaning that you are not allowed to say them. For “book,” the taboo words might be “pages,” “read,” “story,” “paperback,”and “text.” You'll lose a point if you say a taboo word, so it's important to be careful. Each round, one player on the non-guessing team is a watchdog making sure you don't use any of the taboo words. Take turns having each player on each team be the one to hold the buzzer and keep track of taboo word use. When you hear the clue giver say one of the taboo words, you buzz them. Put the card into a discard pile for that round. Put skipped cards into the same discard pile. One pile is for cards that the guessing team got correct. The second pile is for cards that the clue-giver skipped and cards on which the clue-giver accidently said the guess-word or any of the taboo words. Make sure that everyone is clear on which pile is which as they set cards down. It is important to keep the piles separated for accurate scoring. The clue-giving team gets one point for all of the cards that were guessed correctly. The opponents get one point for each card in the discard pile. The discard pile includes skipped cards and any cards the clue-giver got buzzed on.  You can decide to play to a certain score, or for a certain number of rounds, whichever you prefer. Make sure not to score the card that the timer ran out on for anyone. It gets put out of the deck until the end of the game. Take all of the cards used during that round and set them aside. Don't use them again until the entire deck has been used. At that point, if you are still playing, you can shuffle the deck and start using the cards again.
Summary:
Give your teammates clues about the guess-word. Avoid the taboo words. Have an opponent watch and listen for the taboo words. Separate the cards into two piles during each round. Score the round.