A person who wishes to become a shaman may undergo a period of training and may take careful note of how locally established shamans carry out their rituals. But to become a shaman you must have a certain kind of personality and possess distinctive qualities. Charisma is very desirable and an ability to enter into trances usually essential. Necessary also, is the ability to identify psychologically with patients so as to understand where their real problems may lie. Being a clever actor is a useful advantage, and having a talent for mimicry, or ventriloquism, is another big help. In most cases a person desiring to be a shaman must have undergone some psychologically difficult experience or endured some physical hardship that has transformed his or her personality in some radical way. The community, too, must be ready to accept the transformed personality that has emerged. On occasion an individual become a shaman almost without intention.