Marisa Peer Shows You How To Tell A Better Story

Welcome to Let It Be Easy with Susie Moore.

Susie Moore:

I loved every second of this conversation with Marisa Peer. Now if you don't know Marissa, she is a world renowned speaker, a rapid transformational therapy trainer, something that she created herself, RTT, and a bestselling author, and I absolutely adored her most book. Tell Yourself a Better Lie, speaking with Marisa, I just have so many commonalities with her in terms of how we look at the world and how we coach and how we look at problems. And instead of even addressing the exact experience that cause us to experience stress and suffering, looking at the story attached and what we're saying in the present day, Marissa is a real master of understanding the mind, reprogramming the mind, and really setting up your beliefs and thought systems to support you, to allow you to be, do and have what it is that you want. And to stop being held back by old stories, old memories, and dare I say, lies, that could be having you believe that you're inadequate, that you're not enough, that what you want isn't available to you. And in this interview, we break down a whole lot, big and small, big traumas that show up in our lives, even small daily occurrences that trigger us. We discuss it all. Marissa is a truly special human with an incredible gift, and I'm delighted to share her with you. So here is me and the lovely Marisa,

Marisa Pier. What a joy, joy, joy, having consumed your work for years to have you on the Let It Be Easy podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Marisa Peer:

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's always an honor and a joy to be here too.

Susie Moore:

Oh, so two English ladies. You are currently in the UK. I'm currently in Miami. I have so many questions for you, Marisa, especially after reading your most recent book, which I love so much. Tell yourself a better lie. Oh my, Marissa, you and I spend a lot of time together at the beach in the pool as I delved into this book highlighting, taking notes. And one thing that you talk about so much in this book is the importance of the stories that we tell ourselves. And one of the stories that I tell myself is I always meet great people and great people just come into my life and good things always happen to me. And that happened to us a few months ago when I bumped into you in the street in Miami. I actually recognize your hat and I think you're in Miami teaching your RTT method, is that correct? Yeah,

Marisa Peer:

Yeah. No, I just came out of my school and I was on the corner of avenue. You came up and went, oh, you Marisa Peer. And I said, yes, I can't believe I'm here. And my school just ended because you could have come to it, but another one.

Susie Moore:

Well, Marisa, here we are. And I of course loved bumping into you that day. And speaking of stories like the subtitle of this book and the premise of this book is essentially the question, is it possible that our deepest pain stems from the lies we tell ourselves? Could you speak to us a little bit about that please? Because I think no one thinks that they're lying to themselves, or no one even thinks a lot of people don't even think they have a story. There's just reality. So could you speak to just about that for a moment?

Marisa Peer:

Having been a therapist my entire adult life, I kind of over a process realized that all my clients' problems came from just a few key things. The big one was the lies they tell themselves, what does that mean? Well, it means if my ex is was so boring and I found someone much more fun than you, that might hurt me. If my dad says your brother is smarter, that might hurt me. But I can rash as my dad's having a bad day, my ex is having a bad week. So when other people say mean things, we can go, they're having a bad day, they're an unhappy person. But it's the lies we tell ourselves, I'm no good. I'm an idiot. I'm a waste of space. Everything I touch falls apart, and the everyday lies. The line in this queue is killing me. This commute is driving me insane.

My kid is making me lose my mind. And you see, if we only understood that every word we speak is not a word, it's a blueprint that the mind is going to make real every word you speak and every thought you think your mind is working to make it real. In a nutshell, your mind's job is to start making your thoughts real. So imagine if you say, I'm dreading that meeting next week. I don't want to give that presentation. I'm dreading it. Mind is thinking, you're dreading it. I've got to get you out of it. Let me wake you up next week with a flu or chronic diarrhea or a raging brain because I must make your thoughts real. So if our mind's job is to make our thought's real, what's our job? Well, our job is pretty cool. Think better thoughts, make your mind's job easier.

But no one teaches us stuff. So the lies we tell ourselves, and the biggest one is, I'm not enough. I'm not lovable enough, interesting enough, worthy enough, tall enough, been enough, educated enough. And the problem is that we don't know that we're telling ourselves lies when we say things. Oh my God, I look ancient today. Or everything I touch for is a par or I could eat a horse. My legs are the size of tree drums. We know that's not real. But what we don't know is that while we can choose to be negative or positive, our poor body has no choice but to react to our thoughts. So when we think negative thoughts, there's so much more than that. They are direct instructions and commands to the mind. So here's a simple one. If you say, I'll die, if I get ghost again, if one more relationship goes wrong, that's it.

I'm going to jump under a train. I'd rather stick a needle in my eye than put up with rejection again. And we say these throwaway things all the time, but for the mind they are real. And your mind is, oh my God, you would die if somebody dumped you. Well, my job is to keep you alive so I better turn you into somebody really cold and aloof and removed, or then you'll never meet anyone and then they'll never dump you. And then I've done my job. So that's your mind's job. And your job is rather than saying, I would die if someone dumped me is to say, Hey, I've got something amazing to offer someone. I'm so magnetically lovable whenever I meet will fall in love with me and will make it last forever. I'm worthy of that.

Susie Moore:

Oh my gosh, Marisa, that I almost want to do a rewind on this because I hope you can listen to this twice. The things that we tell ourselves, the horror stories, the way that the brain, the brains job is to keep us alive, to keep us safe. When we say such dramatic things that aren't true, we actually just end up living that story. And like you said, Marisa, no one teaches us this, right? It's not as if we're like, okay, sit down. It's really powerful what's going on in your brain right now, the thoughts that you're thinking, we just simply don't know. Right? And reading this book, I understand that the three biggest beliefs that underpin a lot of our suffering is, as you said, I'm not enough. I am different. Or that something is unavailable to me and I would love to dive in because I'm not enough. I think this underpins underpins our worst is I'm different. I know someone else is more educated, someone else is more normal, they have a different family. What is this? Could we dive into something is unavailable to me? I find this one really curious.

Marisa Peer:

So let's imagine if you look at someone like Marilyn Monroe, Amy White House, Michael Jackson, George Michael. We see people who have everything except this one thing. And it's a big issue with love isn't available nowadays where so many of us don't see one parent, our parents are divorced, maybe we never our dad, or maybe we have two parents, but they're always at work. They're always working to try and produce stuff. But for a child, a child looks at the world in a very simple way. My parents aren't here, they're always at work. I guess they like work more than me. My mom's always sad. I must make her unhappy. My dad's always drinking. I guess I'm not enough. Otherwise he wouldn't do that. And so the problem is that children must idealize their parents when they live in a world where their needs aren't met. They can't say, my mom can't meet my needs because she's clinically depressed.

My dad can't meet my needs because he's an alcoholic or a workaholic or always in the army. All they can say is they can't meet my needs. I'm not enough. And of course, when a child's needs aren't met, they never stop loving the caregiver because they have to idealize. They immediately and often permanently stop loving themselves. They believe they're not enough and they go out into the world with this belief that I'm not worthy, I'm not enough. And although they may attract love, and indeed adulation kind of goes over their head because they still have this feeling, I'm not worth it. So it comes from a child who needs aren't met, and we really have an epidemic of that now, kids whose parents are working all hours are always on their phones, always on the computer, who are always doing something, and it makes the child feel not enough.

Children can't look out there and work out why their needs aren't met. They have to go in here and say, well, guess I'm not worthy of him there. If you talk to a child, I worked with a little girl of six whose father had died, and she said, what I knew she would say, but if my daddy loved me, why did he go? Why didn't he say? Then she said, why didn't he take me with him? Because her mother had already died. And when he died, everyone said, well, dad has gone to visit mommy, but this is a child's mind. But why didn't he take me to see mommy? I would've liked to have met my mommy. He left me behind because he wanted to see my mommy more than he wanted to see me because, and there's only one auntie because, because I'm not worth staying for.

And so we forget that little children don't have any logic until five. There's no logic, only feeling. And a child is like, well, I'm nice to you, but you're horrible to me. I guess that's all I deserve. They can't work out. You've had a bad day. They don't live in that. They live in a world of feeling and their feeling is, you don't turn up at sports day. You don't tell me you love me, you don't hug me because I am not enough. And once you buy into that, the tragedy is that some people keep that their entire life. You saw that with Michael Jackson. When you're not enough, when you feel not enough, it becomes very obvious in certain things being a shopaholic like Michael Jackson, because if you're not enough, guess what? You need more, more, more food, more cake, more sex, more relationships, more praise, more followers. So you can look at someone who always needs more of something and you need more of something because of the emptiness inside of you. And the emptiness inside of you is from the needs that were not met when you were a child. But that's a very good place to start because it's never too late for you to start working out, well, can I meet those needs? The answer is, yes, you can. And by the way, better than anyone else ever could too.

Susie Moore:

Oh my gosh. And Marisa, the stories that you break down in the dialogue in this book, when you do your rapid transformation therapy, I love seeing exactly how you do it and how you actually go back to the age of the child in a situation and you talk them through it, and then you have a whole exercise that they do in the here and now as an adult who can meet their own needs. And one thing you say in the book and in your work, which I find so fascinating and empowering, is that RTT addresses root causes not symptoms. And you speak about not necessarily the event and the 100% perfect memory and the truth around the event in the past, but the story attached to the event.

So could you explain a little bit more about that? Because I think so often we think, well, this thing happened and it's true and it's a fact, and therefore I'm damaged or therefore I can never trust people or therefore I'll never be happy. So yeah, the story

Marisa Peer:

So yeah, the story to a child seems very real. My mom's put me in daycare because she'd rather be at work. My mom's got a sitter and she's not here. She doesn't want to be with me. My parents sent me to boarding school because they don't want me at home. And actually when you go back and talk about it, you realize that they spent a long time making decisions for a child, but it doesn't matter. It matters what you feel. I always felt completely insignificant as my father who was a head teacher, what you call a principal, was paid to be really involved in other people's kids, but he wasn't paid to be involved in his own. And he all know that expression, that cobbler's children have got the worst short shoes. And in my case, that was kind of true because my father was really interested in other people's kids.

It was his joy. And of course they responded to him. They were very polite, they were very easy, but he couldn't understand at home why we didn't jump to attention and call him sir. And I saw my father being really invested in other people's kids. And I remember thinking He likes them more than me. That's the thing more, they're more interesting than me. They're worth more than me. And I felt really worthless, if you like. But now I can look back and see that my father took great pride in his job. He loved being a head teacher. He was so good at his job. I didn't even notice that he wasn't good at his job at home. And that doesn't mean he was a bad person. He just was oblivious because everybody would say, oh my God, you're amazing. Look how you've turned this kid around.

You are incredible. So he just didn't tune into us. And that doesn't mean he was bad, and it doesn't mean he didn't love us. And of course as an adult, my father told me how much he loved me, how he was proud of me. But the problem is I didn't need it then. I needed it when I was six or seven or eight, and I didn't get it. I had unmet needs. And when you have unmet needs, especially for women, you do an interesting, you go in the world and you go, well, I've got to find someone out there to make me feel I'm mad. I'm going to find some guy. Someone is going to turn up and say, no, but you are great. You are amazing. I ring your phone just to hear your voice. You're the most amazing thing on the I got it.

Now the problem is when you give someone the job of making you feel good, you also give 'em the job of making you feel bad. Then it becomes, oh. Because even if someone turns up and goes, Hey, let me turn up and tell you every day that you're amazing, they have issues going on with their life. They get sick, something happens, maybe they die. And now you're right back to square one. Oh, I'm back again with nobody meeting my needs. Do not give someone agency ever to meet your needs. You have to meet them yourself. People say, I need my other half, but you are not half. You're a whole, I need someone to completely. No, you don't. You need to believe you're so complete and so amazing just the way you are. And if you can do that, people will queue up to be your other half, even though you don't need another half.

Because confidence and self assuredness self is so sexy. It doesn't matter if you've got a perfect body and you look amazing. There are plenty of women and men out there who look amazing and we can see that they're not having a good time. It's the self-belief that makes you good. When you're looking for yourself in any place outside of you, you're going to be in trouble because it doesn't come from out there. It's only in here. And the great news is that in here you can find incredible self-esteem. You can tell yourself a better life. You can meet all your unmet needs. They're not that many. You need to feel safe, loved, secure, connected, celebrated, seen and heard. How do you do that when you say, I'm worthy of love, I'm worthy of connection, I believe I'm worth it. And then that belief will motivate you to go out and take different actions and behave differently. So just do those few things. You can change your life on a dime and forever too.

Susie Moore:

Well, how about that? How about that being your most important work essentially? Because doesn't everything begin to unfold differently in your life when you go, actually good things happen to me and I am worthy of good experiences. And when we speak about something being unavailable to me, I feel as if we're saying, oh, someone else is more special or someone else is deserving of good things. Marissa, is it as simple? I mean, one thing I love about your work is the R in RTT being so rapid. And look, I agree. I've had therapy before and I don't want to be there for two years talking about old problems. And you've said that in two, three, in a short amount of sessions, you can get to the root cause of an issue. And I think there's some people will be like, but can you, I've been in therapy for five years and I still have this issue. Could you speak to the power of being able to unlock something, the lie that isn't true and replacing it with something that is more true and accurate.

Marisa Peer:

So if I went back to our big thing, what I want isn't available. That's always going to be just a couple of things. Love isn't available. Success isn't available. Wealth isn't available. Health, I come from a family of depressive. I've got the depressed gene. Well, we know now that doesn't exist. I got a family where everybody works in construction, and I didn't go to college, I never had a dad, therefore love isn't available. And I know you read the story of Ryan, the second case history, my book and chronic alcoholic who also attracted very abusive relationships. And Ryan had a belief that I picked up really quickly and it was Love isn't available. And I said to him, Ryan, you think you are broken, but you are not broken. You had a broken childhood. There's a huge difference. You think you are flawed, but actually the truth is you were subjected to flawed parenting.

So if you can just reframe something, I'm flawed, I'm broken, I'm second best, I'm damaged. But no, your parenting was flawed. Your parents raised you with some broken techniques, but it doesn't matter. That's not who you are. Maybe we all can say, oh, I thought I was broken, but I'm not. I thought I was flawed. But now I realize everyone is flawed. I'm flawed. You are flawed. And the best we can ever have is an amazing, flawed relationship. I call it being flawsome. Be thrilled about being flawed because that's what makes people like you. Perfect people or people who try to be perfect, the unhappiest and the loneliest too. So it's often just a reframe. I was working with a girl the other day and we went back to some scenes and every scene was just the most chaotic life and mentally, very mentally ill father, very depressed mother.

And what I saw in every scene was her life was so unpredictable. And because it was unpredictable, she craved predictability. So she'd say to her partner, where are you going to be? What time are you coming home? Tell me where you are. And he found that very hard. And he started to lie to her and she's like, now look where I'm now. And I said, look, we can't change him. You have to be so strong that he doesn't think, oh my God, I'm scared of telling her that I'm meeting my ex and the kids because she'll flip out. And so I said, you think you are very weak, but you are actually. So look what you've been through a crazy dad, a checked tap mom, your husband meeting the ex and the kids. It's nothing you can deal with without standing on your head because you're strong, you are resilient, you're a survivor.

But this unpredictability was such a trigger for her because of the belief, I can't cope with it. And you go, but you can cope with it and go, it's nothing. I don't care if he has lunch with his ex. That's actually a beautiful thing. He's a great dad. How lucky am I to have a nice, reliable, conscientious husband to do the same thing for me? So for many clients, it's showing them when you are looking at this through the lens of a 5-year-old, when I was five, I was not allowed to eat cakes. So now every time I see, well, that's forbidden. And I cram it all in when the truth is you can eat cake every day for the rest of life. When I was seven, we didn't have money, and now I'm hoarding. I can't throw anything away. I wasn't allowed to leave foods.

Now I eat everything on my plate. But you have to see, that was what happened as a child and a child who had no power, no voice, no one had your back, but it isn't you. So I think having the client see, oh, that's not me. And I make them say that a lot. That's not me because I could look at my life, this kid who thought she was a freak, whose father was not really tuned in, whose mother was desperately unhappy. My brother and sister both went to private school and I didn't. I wasn't the smart one. And I can look at that and think, but that isn't me. I'm smart. I'm much wealth than anyone else in my family and I have an amazing life because I had to separate myself from what I was and realize that I can be anything I like.

And I think that's the problem people, I made up this expression, which I love, and it says, we play the only part we've ever known until we make that part our own. But often we need someone to say, Hey, you can have a new part. You are not the kid that was giving up for adoption. The boy that should have been a girl, A girl that should have been a boy, the kid that should have gone to college and joined the family law firm. That's your parents' story. Do not make someone else's story. Your story. I shoulda been a doctor. My parents wanted lawyer. I should have would've given my mom lots of grandchildren, but I'm gay. And it doesn't matter, your parents had a story, but you get to edit and rewrite yourself. And often parents say things say, don't trust anyone. All men let you down.

They don't want a woman with money. They all cheat. Whatever it is your parents tell you, that's not your story. My long story was I get sick when the heating comes on. I get allergies in the summer, sinus infections in the winter. Everything I eat makes me sick. And that was my mother's story, but it wasn't my story. I decided to never get sick. In fact, I hate being here. My mother absolutely loved it. It was how she got so much attention. You get the chance to change twice every single day. The first in how you think and the second in how you act. So my mother would think, oh, your niece came around with a cold. I'm going to get sick now. And that was her choice. And my choice is to say, my niece came around with a cold and I have an amazing immune system that knows how to ignore viruses.

And I'm always, well, my body is a wellness making machine. I have a choice, but my body doesn't have a choice. So I'm very tuned in to not saying a chronic headache. I'm exhausted, I'm starving. And to say I'm a little bit tired and dehydrated, actually I do need to eat and I've got a lot going on, but hey, I've got a whole weekend coming up. Or to say, I've got great coping, you have a choice, you have a brilliant brain. And here's the choice, rationalize why you feel so bad, talk yourself into it or talk yourself out of it. I cannot recommend enough talking yourself out of it.

Susie Moore:

Oh my gosh, Marisa, I completely agree with you. And one thing that you share in this book, which I love, is you are surprised doing your work at the simplicity of how the mind works. And even just in those examples that you shared, like a kid comes over, they're sick. Oh, I guess I'm doomed. Versus, oh, this kid came over, but hey, luckily for me, that doesn't really happen to me. I'm just one of the healthy ones, I guess. I mean, if someone was listening to this going, but if I start telling myself those things, they don't feel real. It feels like I'm telling myself, okay, here's an example. Someone might say, well, you say that things are available to me, but other people, they are just charismatic and they have a flair for something gorgeous and that's why they make money. And maybe I'm ordinary and I can say I'm special, I'm unique and repeat the affirmations. But what if they don't feel real? What if it feels like I'm just saying stuff and I'm not really connecting with it?

Marisa Peer:

But when you say, I can eat my butts size of the continent, my kid is making me want to jump under a train that clearly can't be, but I'm stressed out my mind and I've eaten like a maniac all weekend. All weekend. Did you pee? Did you eat in the toilet? No. Did you sleep eat all weekend? Really? If you had a bar the size of the continent, you couldn't get in my office. So we were lying to ourselves. My husband was driving me absolutely mental. He leaves his pants on the floor every day and I could scream, but someone in the world would go, I love a husband to leave his pants on the floor. I would put up, that's my fantasy dream come true. So the first thing is to understand whatever your problem is, someone else go, Hey, can I have that?

I've spent all my money on IVF. If I had a baby that kept me up all night, threw up on my carpet, got peanut butter smears all over the fridge, I would be in heaven. So the first thing is to say, is there somebody who'd say your problem? I'd love that problem. What would you have given 20 years ago for that problem? Because you don't have to believe it. So last week I was teaching in Estonia to these tiny kids. I'm going to show a little triangle. And I made thought and the thought was, and one of the little kids thought was, I'm not pretty and I can't make friends. And another kid said, I don't understand math. I'm really stupid. So they had to think of it. Then they had to run this triangle, taped out on the floor, massive size, let to a board and write a feeling.

When you think a thought, I can't do maths, what's the feeling? And the feeling is I feel so stupid and so frustrated and so angry. The girl who said, I'm not pretty and I don't make friends, her feeling was, well, I just feel hopeless. Now let's run to a behavior. The girls that I want to cry, I actually do cry. I can't make any friends. That's the thought. It makes me feel so sad. And the way I act is I cry the boys that I can't do math. I feel super frustrated and I act out. I get very angry and defensive. And now we've got to run back to the thought. So we are running a tribe, I think a thought feel, a feeling, behavior, behavior. Because I think thought and after about 400, I like, okay, now let's change it. I want you to go, I'm so smart at math and I want the other kid and go, I think I look amazing.

I I'm really cute and people love me. Now run to a feeling because of course I told them, when you think a negative thought, the only feeling you can think is negative, and the only behavior you can behave is negative. When you think a good thought, hey, I'm good at maths. Run to it. I feel confident, I feel brave. What's the behavior I can say to the teacher, could you explain that more because I'm really smart. I just want to hear it again. The kid who said, I don't have any friends. What's the feeling? I feel confident. What's the behavior? I'm going to invite some people to a play date because I'm thinking a better thought. It doesn't matter if it's true or false when you say, I'm just an idiot, I've got rocks for brains. I'd lose the eyes in my head if they weren't screwed.

And is any of that real? Of course not. But it's a thought you think, which makes you feel a feeling, which makes you act in a certain way because you go back to the thought. And if we only knew, Hey, your thoughts are yours to change. When you change your thoughts, it changes your life. Something very easy. Here's a thought, I'm scared. I'm using one of my husband's parking tickets to do this, and I'm nervous and I feel a bit sick, and I'm now trying to avoid going to that meeting because I'm scared and nervous. What about saying I'm actually excited? That feeling in my stomach, it's excitement. So if I decide, well, I've got butterflies or my stomach's going a bit weird, but I get to choose that nervousness or anxiety. If it's nervousness, I feel scared, I feel anxious, I feel physically sick and the behaviors, I cancel the event.

But if I say I'm excited, I feel excited, I'm excited about speaking on stage and I'm going to do it and I'm going to sing a song. I mean, I was speaking in Cologne on Sunday to 10,000 people. I always remember Eric Clapton saying to me, no, when you stand on stage, you can only see the people in the front. I just sing to them. So when I went on stage with 10,000 people, I really couldn't see them because of the lights. I could only see the front people. And I was talking to them and engaging with them, and it felt really easy. I thought, oh my God, 10,000 people have so many. Or I'm just talking to these people that I can see and they're smiling and they appear to like it. So my job is to think better thoughts because I know that saying excited instead of nervous makes me feel excited instead of nervous and makes me act excited.

And actually while I was getting my head on, like I said, are you nervous? I'm like, no. Of course I'm not nervous. I'm excited. It's a choice. I have a choice. Oh my God, I'm so nervous. My mouth's dry. My makeup's coming off in a puddle. Look, I'm sweating and I've gone completely blank. Or to go, this is so exciting. And also in 20 minutes it will all be over. And it doesn't matter. The people that matter about silly stuff don't care. The people that care, the people that make silly stuff important don't matter to you and the people that care do. But we give so much power to what other people think of us When it's down to you, yes, we can always do a bit better, but you come with, I did a good job. It was great and I enjoyed it. We're so busy being taught, let's change the behavior.

Stop eating cake. Stop picking your skin. Stop fiddling with your eyelashes. Stop stuttering. But you have to stop changing the behavior. Go back to the thing, go back to the thought. And if you could only just change, the thought changes forever. Plus it's really easy and it's free. And I know in the book I talk about a girl called Carrie who had OCD and find so many things to change, but Carrie, again was trying to control in here by washing teeth, cleaning so many times in a ritual that said, if I control out there with all these rituals, I'm going to feel okay. But the truth is controlling here. You don't need to worry about cracks or teeth cleaning. You just have to say, I'm good. If everyone would just say every day I matter. I'm the way, I'm significant and I'm enough. I promise you that would change.

And in fact, I could guarantee it because I've got RTT in so many schools now who say, we make all the kids say, I'm enough. I matter. I'm lovable, and I've got so. And they said in these schools, bullying has just disappeared because of course the bullies didn't ever feel they mattered or enough. And we made them say it. We made them find connection. It's ended bullying, but it's also helped all the children do better academically, but just as important to better emotionally. Find friends, get on with each other, stop feeling they have to compete to be something that they don't need to be.

Susie Moore:

Marisa with the average person having apparently 60,000 thoughts a day, right? Someone might go, oh, well, how am I supposed to monitor every thought and make it a good one? What if I feel like, like you said with the public speaking example, it'd be easy to go, well, I'm scared. What if I make a mistake? This could be career ending. What if someone laughs at me? What if someone takes a video and I say something weird? All these many, many, many, many thoughts that just fire at us. Do you need to calm your mind in order to be able to welcome better thoughts in a active with a constantly active mind? How do you monitor and replace and upgrade those thoughts consistently so that the feelings and behaviors are better?

Marisa Peer:

The first step is it's what I call aaa. You've got to be aware of what you are feeling. Then you've got to understand or accept it, and then you can change it. So ask other people, what do I say a lot? I worked with someone and everywhere terrified. She said, oh, I've got on a plane and these guys hit me terrifying. I've got a job for a massive or terrifying. I've now got a part in a movie and I'm a model that's terrifying. And I said, why do you keep saying terrify? It's not terrifying. It might be challenging. It might be a big challenge to learn to be an actress, not a model. Yeah, I can see it's a challenge to be the head of a makeup brand. I can see it's a challenge to have lots of guys hidden because you are beautiful. Put on a baseball cap, put on some glasses, put on a mask, read a book.

Look at how you can fix that. Tell yourself, Hey, I'm going to be great as this model for the makeup brand, and I can learn to act. And these people wouldn't have given me this job if they didn't think I could do it. And so it is terrifying. I'm terrified. And somebody said to me, reason one of my clients, I've got a job and I'm the only woman and I've got all these men and I don't have balls. And I said, well, yeah, neither do I. But clearly your boss knows that, but it wouldn't. He gave you the job knowing that you do have what it takes, and it's not about some little balls of testosterone that make you good. It's your intellect, it's your people skills, it's your leadership. And why do you think having two of those would make anything better? But again, it's the lies.

I'm terrified. I don't have balls. I haven't gone to college. You talk yourself out of that instead of into it. We all tend to use these words. It's a nightmare. It's a disaster. It's hell. What are you talking about? I'm talking about the 4 0 5 freeway, the line in the store, my kids. And it's not hell, it's just normal stuff. But since your words shape your reality, you don't like your reality. You really need to take a look at your language. I was talking to somebody the other day who said, I've got social anxiety. No, you haven't. You're an antisocial person, which is completely fine. But you see, if you say, I've got social anxiety, that's something that's come upon you that you change. If you're going, I'm kind of antisocial, but today I'm going to go out and meet. I'm in the mood of going out tonight.

It's very different. So you keep relabeling stuff because this person didn't have social anxiety. They don't really like people. They weren't much into socializing. And it's fine to say, no, I don't love red carpet events. I love being at home with my dogs. I like reading books. One of my friends says, I'm really bookish. I love my pet. Not really into people, but that's fine. But don't now say, oh, I've got social anxiety because only true you are choosing not to socialize. And I think sometimes I think that I was invited to walk the red carpet just at the Super Bowl, and I thought, do I really want to go? I really don't. I didn't have fomo. I had actually Domo the delight of missing out, staying home with my pets and get dressed up and walk that red carpet and be judged for what I'm wearing. So unimportant to me.

Actually start being your own best friend. Your resident go, my God, you're awful in that. Oh my God, that's going to be, you'll never do that. You're going to be terrible. They go, come on, you can do this. You've got some good qualities. I've seen you speak and you're amazing. And what you have to do is shut down that inner critic and put in a cheerleader that bangs the symbols and says, this has got your name all over it. You're going to be amazing. Because again, the mind doesn't care what you tell. It is true of all. You might say that's a lie, but your mind doesn't know. If I had very dry skin, probably imagine I had really super dry skin and I rubbed this balm on it, and nobody says, well, is that proud of? And I've got this free on an airplane.

Actually, I got it free last week. It's not nourishing my skin even though it's some freebie. But you see words have the same effect. They can nourish you or they can really sap you. And it doesn't matter where you come from as long as you say the things you want to hear and the missing bit of you, the emptiness inside of the words you never heard. But don't walk around saying, who's going to fill me up? Who's going to nourish me? Who's going to bomb me with words? The answer is you. No one can do a better job of nourishing your soul with the right words than you. So I took a while and started to say, I'm the favorite kid. My parents, I'm amazing. And it was so almost freaky because so quickly I was saying it just for me. So I'd stopped thinking, I'm a freak and I'm the least wanted kid.

And my brother is forever the first child and the son and my sister is this cute little baby, and I'm just this freak in the middle When I began say, I'm the favorite child, my parents love me. They're so proud of me. They both all of a sudden turned up and began to say to me, we're so proud of you. And it was really fascinating how fast that happened when I stopped giving them the job of making me feel worth it and gave it to myself. I could do it so much better than them. And you can do it better than anyone else.

Susie Moore:

Isn't it fascinating that when we start thinking differently, I mean, so for example, I grew up on welfare. We lived in domestic violence shelters. We had very, very little, and it was very unconventional. There was addiction, abuse, a lot of chaos. And I always look back, Marisa with this appreciation for this strength that I had to learn, this self-reliance that I had to allow in. And then it's given me a lot of compassion for other people and the ability to, I think, be less judgmental, to look at the world in a certain way. And I'm like, wow, that allows me to do my work. And isn't that something? And I know that it could be a very different perspective. It could be that was so awful and I suffer from all these scary feelings and I'm resentful and I don't have that. And it has been conscious.

And now at this stage, it's been so many years now, but I remember in the beginning as I was kind of learning about the power of the mind, even as a teenager going, oh, I'll start to address the scary feelings that I have all these feelings of unworthiness as consistently as I can. And now it's just my reality. I mean, if someone's stuck with a thought right now or something holding them back, you've mentioned so many helpful things. Let's use eating one for example, because that's common. If someone's like, I never had enough food, or My mom maybe had weird food issues and I adopted those and this is unsafe food and therefore I stuff myself. I mean, is it something that we can change rapidly or do you think it takes a bit of, it does take some practice, some going into the mind, understanding their thoughts and replacing them.

Marisa Peer:

Well, we all change in three ways. There's immediate change. We all want to be that the person who says, that's it, I'm not drinking anymore. And from that, they stop. And other people are cumulative changes. And a bit by bit they noticed they changed. And the third group of retroactive changes, they don't notice. So my mother was like that. We were never allowed fizzy drinks. She didn't really have sugar in the house. And actually my sister and I both became obsessed with it, of course, because my mother was so difficult. I mean, she would hide it. We didn't have it. And so when I grew up, I became a bit obsessed with having sugar and having staff. And then I had to really remember to, Hey, I have a choice. I can eat sugar every day. It's not forbidden. I live on my own. I can have three Mars bars for breakfast if I want to, but that little kid who wasn't allowed, it isn't me.

And so you have to take a little look. It's not a big deal. Where did I get this belief from? Because unless you are born with it and no one's born going, oh my God, I feel so guilty, cookie, I can't find love. I'll never be anything. Babies are actually really driven. You learn half what you've learned in your whole life before you're five. You learn to walk and talk and pee in the toilet and all kind. You get clapped when you're a kid. Just the peeing in the toilet like, well, this is all I got, getting a banana in my mouth. So when you're a kid, you actually always feeling that you're achieving something and then it kind of gets chipped away with being compared to other people. But it's not your parents' children. I go, Hey, I'm so sorry. I was a terrible parent.

I wasn't present. Let me make it. That's lovely. But the belief that cranky withholding parents going to become a lovely, sweet, little old, lovely parent, they often become just as cranky when they're older, sometimes even worse because they lose all that power. But it's your job. It's your job to be happy. It's your job to feel sexy. It's your job. It's your job to be orgasmic. It's not someone else's job. And your job is to go, well, how can I feel the way I want to feel? Should I give that to someone else? Hey, could you make me feel that? But I give it to myself. And so just tune into the words you're using. I'm an idiot. Everything I touch falls apart. I'm losing my mind. I'm overwhelmed with the stress. And just say, what's the opposite? That I'm smart. I've got amazing. There's a lot of work going on, but I can do it. And I've got the weekend to relax and just keep flipping your negative thought. Who's going to love me? Who couldn't love me? I didn't go to college. Neither did Oprah Winfrey or Tony Robbins.

I'm not gorgeous. Well, there's lots of people who are alone and unhappy. So your job is to really tune in because most of us use the same 12 expressions all the time. Tune into them and then just change them. It sounds hard. It's really, really easy. So if you notice you saying, I've got a chronic headache. I'm overwhelmed. I'm a maximum amount. I'm running out of road, just saying, what's the opposite of that? I've got this. I can deal with this. I've got great coping skills. In fact, one of the phrases that will change your entire life that you choose to lose it is, I have phenomenal coping skills, or I have incredible coping skills. And another one is I'm choosing this. I'm choosing to go to the gym and I'm choosing to feel, but I'm choosing to take sugar out my coffee. I'm choosing to love it.

It tells your mind you have a choice and you are making a choice and you like the choice. And the other one is to say whatever it is you want using, I want it, I require it. I'm excited about it. And then you're moving away from pain towards pleasure. I mean, if you think of someone going to get a tattoo and do you think they go, oh my God, they're going to put a needle in my skin that's going to really hurt. They go, I'm having a whole sleeve of something. And they get very excited about a tattoo. Someone having Botox is probably very excited if you go along to have a tattoo but them, it's going to be so painful and I hate needles and I've got a really low pain threshold, then you'll have a miserable time. But people who go for tattoos are excited about the tattoo.

They don't think about the needle. They think about the end result because you can only be in one lane. Here's the choice. Here's one lane I'm having amazing tattoo to look. So cool. Here's another lane. Oh my God, I don't like paint. But you can't be in both lanes. You've got to go into that lane or that lane, and you get to choose every day which lane to go into. Go in the lane where you use very little negative language and go in the lane where you praise yourself a lot and criticize yourself a little, because that too can change your entire life permanently.

Susie Moore:

And isn't it incredible, Marisa, that we have this built-in system that's like our emotion. So if we feel heavy, dread, resentment, anger, jealousy, and jealousy is a big one that I've been hearing a lot about lately. We're like, ah, this is my real time feedback system that there's a thought that needs to be changed. Isn't that how you respond? It's like, ah, I don't feel good. Something feels really off today. That's where the identifying of the thought has to come in, right? Because otherwise we're not really conscious of our thoughts unless we choose to be. And a lot of the time it just feels like they're happening or it's reality. It's just what's going on in the world versus really knowing that the feelings that we're experiencing are driven by us.

Marisa Peer:

Yeah, our feeling. People think feelings come before thoughts, but apart from the feeling of falling backwards, thoughts before feelings, you can't feel scared of a dog unless you have a thought. I'm scared of a dog. You can't think, oh my God, if I look at food, I'm going to get fat. You have to think that to feel it, because it's always the thought that comes first. And what's so great about humans is that we begin to understand, but I have the power to change my thoughts and to understand something else is really helpful. Everything nature is doing to keep you alive are the things that are hurting in you. So 500 years ago, if we left the fore and wandered off to meet some native Indians, we might get killed. So we learned to stay put to not take risk. If we left the community we lived in, we might not able to come back.

If we acted out, we might be banished like in Romeo and Juliet. So we learned something only 500 years ago. Rejection could kill you. Being banished, being caught up, being marooned, being isolated, could kill you, certainly physically and definitely emotionally. But nowadays, you can live in an apartment with your cats and have everything delivered on Amazon and not saying you can live until your 110. So you have to remember, just because I feel like it would kill me, it won't. But you see, your primitive brain makes you scared of rejection because conforming and staying part of the tribe kept you alive. Your primitive brain has made you terrified of hunger because it was the biggest killer of people, more than disease, more than war was famine. And so to this day, when we feel hungry, we get so panicky, we think, oh, I no Kit Kat.

I need those ackers. I'll eat anything. And again, your body is trying to keep you alive by making you scared of hunger, scared of rejection, unable to resist food when it's in front of you, knowing where sugar is and constantly going backward. But these, in terms of evolution, were very smart. They kept you alive. And so you have to have a dialogue. I do feel hungry, but that's not really panic because in an hour I'll be at home eating some amazing food that I made yesterday. I do think, oh my God, I'll die at that front, but I won't die. I find someone else and stop playing those songs. I'll die if you leave me. I can't live with it. You're the only one that's rubbish. There's so many people you could have an amazing relationship with, but it really helps to think, oh, my brain is trying to pick me and keep me alive by giving me these primitive fears.

And I can say, well, thanks mine. Thanks for making me think I need to eat now. I might die. I'm just going to wait now. Thanks for making me think, oh my God, if that person dumps you would kill me. But it wouldn't because there's hundreds of others that could take their place. So a little bit of dialoguing with yourself, shutting down the critic and really amping up your cheerleader. Such an easy thing to do, but never question the fact that it might be easy. But the results are profound and astonishing and out of all proportion to the effort required to use them.

Susie Moore:

Marisa, do you believe that influence is really critical? So people say this a lot, you hear this a lot. It's like you become who you surround yourself with and you've got to get around the right people. And I'd love to just hear your point on that. Do you think, oh yeah, absolutely, that's true. Or, well, other people are other people, but the control is always going to be within you.

Marisa Peer:

I think we are very, very influenced by the company we keep. We know that kids that go to school that have a really kind teacher that nurtures them and says, Hey, I see something in you. You're amazing. Develop someone that has a teacher that says, well, I dunno what happened to you. Your brother and sister are smart. I guess the brains ran out. So if you are around a kind teacher, a loving parent, a nurturing grandparent, if you're around people who are nice and kind and open, it affects you. And so we're very influenced by the company we keep. And if you hang out people that are negative and critical and mean, then you probably need to just take the energy out of that fringe. You don't do anything, just reply later. Invitations, just see them less and just, you see, if I was sitting next to a heater here that was belching out toxic fuse, I'd have to leave the room because it'd be poisoning me.

But toxic people are the same. I meet people who spend 90% of their energy trying to change a narcissistic partner. And it's like, no, change yourself. Don't change them. And so, yes, we are influenced by the company we keep, and if you hang around with better people, you'll feel, I mean, I go to Mindvalley a fest every year because the people are amazing. They're successful, they're spiritual, they're happy, and it's a really good idea to hang out with people like that. If you go to yoga, no one goes, oh my God, did you see how your thighs up when you did the tree? They look really fat. They go, you did really well and you held it. By the way, don't even look in the mirror in yoga. That's not what it's about. So definitely be around better people. They make you better, and sometimes you have to be around people because married to them or they're your parents, but you still don't have to let letting in. Negativity is a choice. You can choose that. I'm not letting that in. I had a very positive father and a very negative mother, and they were both my teachers and my poor mother. She was just totally unfulfilled by motherhood, and I sound like I'm giving her a hard time, but she was probably one of the best teachers ever had because she taught me what it's like to be stuck in this negative loop. But my father also taught me what it's like to have a job that is so fulfilling and rewarding that you'll never see.

Susie Moore:

Isn't it so fascinating? The influences we have, what we take from them if we make it work for us, versus letting it maybe keep us stuck or feeling small, incapable the reframes that you constantly introduce and make so easy in this book, Marissa, I think are just so genius and it's so incredible the power that we have that we're so ready to abdicate. We don't even realize that we're doing it all the time. It's like waking up going, I wonder what kind of day I'm going to have based on someone else's mood or based on the traffic, or based on if that client came through or whatever it may be, versus being able to constantly monitor our thinking and then tell ourselves this other lie or something else that could also be true that uplifts us and makes us create a far better behavior. And then it becomes this cycle, right? Consistently. It just keeps,

Marisa Peer:

You can always go into a vicious cycle or a virtuous cycle. One of the reasons I put in the book for downloads, one of them is the cheerleading. You listen to this recording and you literally install in your head a cheerleader. You learn how to be super confident. There's something called vortex that rebalances your thoughts and feelings. And it's really nice to know that some tiny little things can be life changing. If you want a six pack, you've got to go to the gym, do the plank, stop eating carbs, a lot of work. But if you want to be happy. You just have to make some really quite small adjustments over time, and you don't have to do it all the time. If you do it 80% of the time, that's more than enough. So there are ways to be happy, to be positive, to have a great immune system, to have great mental and emotional health. And none of them come from anyone else. They come from you learning what to do and doing it.

Susie Moore:

And even if someone introduces this 10% more, 20% more, is there a shift?

Marisa Peer:

Yeah. If you decide to drink 10% more water every day, if you decide to wake up and go, I love my life. Wow, every day is amazing, then that's the shift. So if you just did one little, actually, if you every day woke up and said, out loud or to the mirror, I'm enough. I matter. I'm lovable just the way I am. That would have a profound effect, a massive shift. And what is it you are saying? A couple of phrases to yourself, and we'll talk to ourselves every day. Not if you do anything different. You just do what you do anyway, but better. If every time you went somewhere that was a challenge, you went, I'm excited, I've got this. You would feel different. So if you woke up and said, gosh, what do I love about my life? So you go into being grateful and not, oh my God, what's happening today?

You look at, I've got so much on, this is driving me crazy. You choose to dialogue better with yourself because it's easy. And yes, 10% more. If you spend five minutes a day doing little things like that, you'll get massive changes. I mean, again, I know that because all the schools I'm working with say, gosh, these kids, they're so different. And we're really only spending minutes a day doing the I'm enough doing the anti-bullying, looking at the cheerleader in them, having them say, I can do this. And yet the results are astounding. We're up for prize this year. One of the most breakthroughs in education came second, but we already won a prize because, I dunno, 1600 schools, I don't even know how many kids that is, 1600 schools. But the fact that all those children are influenced by knowing they're enough, that is a prize. So

Susie Moore:

Oh yeah, that's the reward. Absolutely. Right there. And may I ask Marisa, as we wrap through, I could certainly keep you for hours. Is this still a practice that you employ day to day? I could imagine someone would look at you and go, Marisa's good, she's fine. She's got it all drilled in. Or is this something that you still practice too when you experience different things in your life?

Marisa Peer:

We have challenges. I have challenges. We run a business, we've been through Covid in the last six months I think. I've flown from LA to London to Amsterdam, to Jordan, to Georgia, to LA back to London, and then I went to Estonia and Germany, and it is a whole different world now. You go to the airport and flights are getting, I was coming back from Amsterdam, Eurostar was canceled. I'd have to go to the airport and wait three hours for a flight. It was absolutely packed. But then I can say, well, look, this is just like being on a bus. It's an hour and a half. It's very clever. I've got something to read, got something to eat. Just going to tell myself I'm on a bus journey going through India or something. Because again, what happens with all of us is that when this is what you do, but it starts to become a buyer feedback and it starts to come back.

So although people think I probably have a charmed life, and I certainly do, I've had challenges. I got cancer twice last year, two years ago, my house got completely flooded from top to bottom and we were locked out of America, so we couldn't get back in. And it was definitely a challenge, but it wasn't a disaster or a nightmare. And eventually we got back in and my insurance were amazing, and I got my lovely house back a year later because they said three months now it's a year and three months. But again, every time I walked to that building site, I had a choice. I could go, this is hell on wheels. This contractor doesn't even know what the truth is. Or I could say, you know what? It's great. I'm getting a new kitchen, like the old kitchen. Anyway, every redoing my house and every time I went, I knew I had a choice.

So I'd sing that song by Bob Marley, don't worry about everything was going to be alright followed by E 17, that song, all right or right, it's really all right choice. And my choice wasn't just, oh my God, this is how my choices think. Wow, I've had cancer. I cannot have all that cortisol flooding through my body. I can't make stress hormones and inflammation. I'm choosing to be well, so I got to choose to be super children. My husband said to me, once, I really marvel at your ability to not let in interested, but it's not an ability, it's a choice. It's not. I could choose to go, oh my God, this is just a disaster. Or to go, well, you're not really a disaster. It's an issue. My house has been flooded. That's a shame. But in another year it'll be back nicer than it ever was.

I get my stuff back. If something gets broken, does it really matter? And so I certainly have in the last year had a lot of challenges, but I know that my job is to talk myself out of them, not into, yeah, it's a long wait at the airport, but I've got a computer. I've got a phone. I never get bored anymore. I can buy something to eat. I can take stuff with me. I can do something. I can download a movie. I think if you have a phone you could ever in your life, there's so much you can do or watch and learn. And we always saying, God, I'd love five hours to myself.

I think in April, I went to check into my flight from London to LA and I've gotten, they said the flight's delayed by seven hours. I had seven hours went, oh well. So my husband went to sleep, I did masses, everything done. And I got on the plane and went to sleep and it was actually fine. Sometimes it's less fine, but I think if you believe that you need to have a charmed life to be happy, then you're going to be disappointed because when can make yourself happy, you have a charm life. So it's the opposite if you believe that everything's got to be okay to be good. Then my daughter got married exactly five weeks ago, and she planned this amazing wedding on the day before her wedding. It was predicted to rain all day, and there was a train cancellation, and she was getting married in the middle of nowhere.

And she's like, mom, none of my friends can get us at, darling. Don't worry about it. They can rent cars. Then on the day of her wedding, her makeup, I said, I can't get there. The train's being canceled. I said, darling, it's okay. This is not, if I'm throw money at, I say, get a taxi. I don't care what it costs. Just find a cab and get here and we'll pay it. And she went, oh mom, it's fine. She's had a taxi. It was like a hundred pounds. But that's hard if you don't have a hundred pounds. But it was my hundred pounds, not hers. But again, it was like, look, darling, if it rains on your wedding day, you're going to have the most amazing wedding ever. If your makeup artist will do your makeup, you're naturally beautiful. But do not spoil your wedding going, oh my God, everything's gone wrong.

A train strike, it's going to rain. It's like, it doesn't matter. You're going to have to have an amazing time no matter what. And that's the difference that instead of saying, I'll be happy when it's all perfect, you have to say, I'll be happy when it's not perfect, when it's raining on my wedding day, when there's a train strike or something's gone wrong and I'm locked out of my home in London. I've left my pets behind and now they've shut. They've gone into complete lockdown. But it all worked itself out. It always does. We get really stressed about things and most of the things we worry about, statistically, only 4% of 'em will ever happen. And we spend so much time worrying about what may never happen. And if it does happen, it just gives you even more coping skills.

Susie Moore:

And we have wonderful coping skills, right. Marisa,

Marisa Peer:

Phenomenal coping skills.

Susie Moore:

Marisa, thank you so much for being here on The Better Easy podcast. Truly, I feel better. I felt good this morning and I feel even better after this conversation with you. So where do people go to find out more about you to work with you, et cetera? Of course, tell yourself a better life. Highly, highly, highly, highly love and recommend, but I know you have courses, you have an incredible suite of where should people go.

Marisa Peer:

So if you want to train with me or find someone that can go to rtt.com and you can do what I do, which is the best job in the whole world. If you'd like some free downloads on love blocks or money blocks or success blocks, go to marisapeer.com. And if you want some of these great bracelets that sound enough goes, run enough.com and that book, tell Yourself a better lie, I think it's like $10, but it has, in it four downloads are $35 each, and so you've got $140 worth of downloads for 10 pounds. It's actually really nice. I've been reading the reviews and people have said, oh my God, somebody said to me, I read that book. I cried from beginning to end, and I've never had a drink since I read that book. I so related to Ryan, someone else said, this book changed my life. And so going by that book, because it explains how you can do certain therapeutic practices on yourself that really, really work on a rapid, but marisapeer.com, enough.com and rtp.com, and then there's lots of free stuff on it. YouTube as

Susie Moore:

Well. Yeah, YouTube videos too. I love watching yours. I mean, it's a candy store, friends. Okay, go check out everything. Marisa Peer, there is something for you. Don't wait. Your life is too important to delay your happiness, joy, allowing so much more in Marisa Peere, thank you so much. I do hope that you'll come back on the podcast again one day. I'd

Marisa Peer:

Love to come back and do take some of those free downloads. They're totally free. We don't ask for a card, just give them to other people too. And thanks for having me. I've loved every minute of it.

Susie Moore:

Thank you so much, Marisa. Until next time, so much love to you.