Has this ever happened to you? You are out on the street, you walk up to someone and offer to show them a magic trick. They agree, but as soon as you start to perform your hands start to shake. You can be completely calm in your voice and manorisms, but your hands tell a different story. This was so bad one time that I literally couldn't hold onto the cards and dropped the whole deck. So, how do you overcome this?

The first thing that you have to realize is that nerves will never go away completely. Even after I learned what I am about to tell you, I still get nervous. This is especially true if I am performing for a really cute girl. The good news is that there are several things that you can do to reduce the severity of nerves and even stop them from happening at all sometimes.

First up is breathing, you must be able to control your breathing. It does nobody any good if you can't breathe slow, deep, and controlled. Just before you go out to perform take a few minutes and just take deep breaths. This will calm you down and get a lot more oxygen into your system. Slow, deep, quiet breaths are best. Keep doing this throughout your performance and you will be amazed at how well it can work.

Next, just think about what you need to do to get through your performance. Think about the cards, your moves, what comes next, focus on the performance. DO NOT be worrying about what the spectator thinks of you. DO NOT worry about if they like your material or not, DO NOT worry about them finding out how a trick works (see my skeptics post.) Just go out and perform your magic - everything will be fine.

These are the two things that work the best for me. If you have some more tips on how to get the nerves to quiet down while you are performing, by all means let me know.

For more articles like this go to Magic Made Easy. http://magicmadeeasy.blogspot.com/

Christopher Shireman has been performing street magic for the last two years in San Luis Obispo, Ca.