Keith Barry with his acts of brain magic completely blew my mind away. From knowing under what cup a spike is under to driving a car while blind folded, Keith Barry's talk gave me a lot to think about. He started by playing a trick on the audience by entangling his arms and then escaping from the knot that he had put his hands in. He then showed a video of himself driving a very long stretch of road blind folded and with a passenger that is scared out of her mind. This alone would have put me over the edge on how amazing this guy was, but he then went on to control people's nervous system, shatter a coke bottle with nothing more than a little shard of glass and risk maiming another man's hand on what seemed like guess work.
I have no idea how he did any of these outrageous acts, and the fact of the matter is his brain was working at a higher level than mine when he performed these acts. These acts in which he seemingly performed some outrageous magic were probably all staged in some way, but his thinking beat mine and he got what he wanted in confusing his audience. This story is true really throughout life, with the fact that whoever is more mentally prepared for a task is probably going to succeed over the person that is not as much mentally prepared. Whether it be trying to get a job in a high paying job, game 7 of the Stanley Cup, or being ranked first in the high school class the better prepared mentally wins. While I have no idea whether or not Keith Barry wanted to get this point across I have no idea, but his TED talk sure did give a lot of examples in which the better mind wins.
I think that there should be more of an emphasis on the mental effort in students rather than how well they perform especially at a young age. Many kids are ruled out of advanced classes or other privileges because they are not able to pick up material as quickly as some other students. The problem with this is if those kids are giving mental effort and do pick up this material they may deserve to be in those advanced classes. This goes back to Keith Barry's demonstration where the person with the harder thinking mind wins. These students may even be better off than some of the kids in those advanced classes where the effort really is not there, and therefore there is a flaw in the system. Many development organizations for sports actually run their selection processes in this way, selecting the kids that give the most effort. They know what they are talking about, but I don't think that the school really do.
Keith Barry's demonstration style was quite fast and entertaining. He got a lot done in less than 20 minutes, seemingly never stopping for a break, and really compelled me with what he was doing. All of the demonstrations that Barry did were very interesting and kept me hooked for the whole entire time. His commentary during these demonstrations was also very impressive because it seemed as though he was speaking exactly what the audience wanted to hear somehow. He also made what he did pretty funny and the humor added just another element to his great presentation.
I think that I need to stay mentally ahead of others in the future in order to succeed because in business and everything it seems like everything is turning into the competition. It seems as though only those that stay mentally in the game are the ones that are going to have a chance at winning in the game of life. Take Charlie Sheen for example. His brain is somewhere in orbit while his next show is in Detroit, and he is obviously not in the greatest place in his life right now. There is just nowhere for people like that to go, but the people that win the mental battle just like Keith Barry did in his TED talk will end up on top.
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