Shoot fire from your mouth or make them hold something.

I'm only a budding magician, but I do know where you're coming from here. Overcome this the same way as anything else: practice.

First, don't think of it as "staring". You're making solid eye contact. Pick one of their eyes and stick to it. Keep a relaxed facial expression, smiling is always good.

Practice in your daily conversations. You'll find it becomes much more natural and has a definite psychological impact.

That's a good one pglewis. I`ll work on that one

Here is an essay I have written about misdirecting someone.

Everybody knows that tricks need the support of things that the spectator is never aware of, such as the use of patter, maybe dexterity, perhaps a gimmick. Among the most significant of these support structures is misdirection, a concept as old as magic itself. I’m not strictly referring to the bold moves you sometimes have to make and cover up with grandiose distraction. In all tricks, even the simple ones, some degree of misdirection is required to smooth out the trick. I’m going to talk about refining this skill. I’ll give you specific tips that have been effective for me with my magic, and ideas that you can apply anytime you are performing. Finally I’ll talk about the misdirection needed to deceive those who drill your every move.

Good patter is a key to misdirecting someone. The two go hand in hand. (Yes, deja vu, if you read last week’s article you can skip these few sentences and continue with the next paragraph.) Think about the logic for a moment. If you do a trick in complete silence, the spectator is going to be devoting all five senses to the action of the trick. If you are pattering while you’re doing the trick, they have to think about to things at once. You’ve automatically divided their attention in half. You should also make your patter interesting, because if they tune you out, the purpose has been defeated. If you provoke thought, then more of their focus goes to you. Your spectator should be as involved with you as they are with the trick.

Laughter is the strongest medicine. It also can be the strongest misdirection. If you have your audience laughing, not out of pity but genuinely laughing, you can do just about anything. Grab a deck of cards. Start laughing – lol, lmao, rofl, roflmao – and do a nice and sloppy classic pass. Spontaneous laughter can be hard to come by, but even if you can muster a fake laugh this should work. Now stop laughing and do the same classic pass. For those of you who are going along with this experiment, do you see how much harder it is to notice the pass when you’re laughing? Now think how hard it would be for a spectator who is genuinely laughing and doesn’t even know what you’re doing. Get them to laugh and you buy five seconds to do anything you want.

How to make them laugh? The first thing I would recommend is not going to the one-liners section of these forums. Rarely do you find a truly funny one-liner, unless it is said off the top of your head. Good one-liners are rare and usually very specific to the situation. Otherwise they are corny and dumb. If you have a good sense of humor, you will be able to make your spectators laugh by just keeping to the flow of the routine and saying anything that comes to mind. Another way to make someone laugh is by laughing yourself. If you start laughing, they’ll start cracking up 90% of the time.

There are several physical measures you can take to misdirect somebody. Large action covers a small action is a very strong concept. An application of this would be waving the whole deck of cards to cover the small action of catching a break. This works beautifully and can be applied to various situations. You can easily hide a move by putting the focus on something else. For example, let’s say the left hand holds the deck and has to do something sneaky. You can say, "I’m going to put the deck on the table," and knock the your right hand on the table. Done and done. If dire need arises, meaning no other forms of misdirection have availed, fake a cough. More often than not, this will break their focus for just a moment.

When they aren’t looking, they’re not going to see it. So how do you divert the spectator’s gaze when they insist on drilling your hands. There are a few things you can do. First thing to remember is that an average spectator will look where you look. What does this mean? It means you have to learn to do your sleights without staring at your hands. It also means that if you stare at a spectator, the odds are that they are going to give you eye contact. If you sharply change your tone of voice, by putting emphasize on a word, that will usually misdirect their attention. "What JUST happened was. . ." or "The cards have been SHUFFLED." These are examples of things you could say to distract them. You don’t need to startle them, and the emphasis has to be placed in the right spot to sound natural. Almost every time you ask someone a question they will look at you, at which point you can do anything you need to do. "Do you remember your card?" "What would say if. . .?" "Would you be impressed if. . .?" "Was there any reason you chose that card?" "Would you like to change your mind?" Any of these questions will give you a couple seconds of eye contact. You can misdirect someone by asking them to do something else. For example: "Do you want to know where your coin went? Look in your pocket. I’m just kidding, I’m not really that good." You hit two birds with one stone on this one, because they’ll probably laugh as well. Finally, you can subtly ask the person to stop looking at the cards. You can apply it to a mind reading idea, by saying, "Look at me and concentrate on your card." Just be sure not to make it obvious with something like, "Close your eyes and picture you card." That’s no good. Subtly forcing the spectator to look away is probably the best form of misdirection.

Applying the techniques that I have discussed here tonight will allow you to misdirect any audience that you come across. If you stay relaxed, you can get away with any sleight through misdirection and of course the proper skill. It takes practice to perfect, but with experience, you will have no fear performing with the boldest moves.


Good luck.

I like to stare to the people, maybe because is really rude not look in the eyes of someone that is looking in your eyes and talking to you.
There are movements that you can do with the person looking to your hands, Dl, elmsley count, etc. Something like the pass, you must really do well before you try using in your performance, especially the classic pass. But if the person are trying really hard to figure it out, just do something else, like a doublle undercut, in some cases works almost as well.
And is always good have some lines that you can say wherever you and, that works as misdirection.

The best misdirection is when the audience doesn't even realize you misdirected them. If you ask them an odd question and they look up, they will later realize that you did something sneaky at that moment.

I try to organize my sequences with the sneaky moves at natural points where the audience will not be looking where I am working. I don't do a lot of cards, because in Chicago they blow around when you work on the street. However, a good example would be in my cups and balls routine: I look at the ball I am about to vanish, then look up at the audience and say something appropriate while executing either a classic pass or french drop to vanish the ball. 90% of my audience looks up at me during that moment because I looked at them. If they don't, I don't sweat it because I've spent HOURS practicing those moves to perfection.

Berkley, I know where you`re coming from, I came up north from chicago. which is pretty windy too.
but I guess i`ll perform indoor than outdoor due to extreme weather conditions (winter)

I just wanted to say this post has motivated me greatly! I am new to magic but I find great gems of information on topics like this that I thank all of you.

Whether it is winter or summer you could go with a sneeze or a cough. During winter people catch cold and spring-summer time is prime allergy season.

Just do not use it too much or for same audience. Sneezing does not work well for friends as they usually know you healthiness at the moment.

Your point is well taken