Marisa Peer - Changing Lives Through Rapid Transformational Therapy

Full transcript: Marisa Peer on London Real

4:44 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Marisa Peer, the international best-selling author, motivational speaker and personal development expert. You spent three decades treating the client list of international superstars, CEOs, royalty and Olympic athletes. You’re the best-selling author of five books, including You Can Be Younger, Trying to Get Pregnant, and your most recent, I Am Enough, and you’ve helped thousands of people with your Rapid Transformational Therapy, RTT, a solution-based approach that is fast and effective.

5:23 Marisa, welcome to London Real. Thank you for having me, I’m thrilled to be here. It’s nice to have you here, and I have to confess up front that this morning I said I am enough, and I think I’ve actually been saying it in my morning affirmations for a couple years now, because I think I saw a talk you did a couple years ago, but I don’t know if I’m saying it, uh, enough. And I’ve got more questions about this, so I want to get to that later. Yeah.

5:49 But I find one of the most fascinating things about your journey is that you went to California kind of early in your career, and I think some of your career kind of came out of that, and I was wondering if you could just tell us a bit about that. I guess you’re from London originally? From, well, from Cambridge actually, but my career definitely started in LA. So I was always going to be a child psychologist. My father was quite an eminent headmaster, and it was very important for him that I went into education too, and so I did all the training and then found myself working with children whose parents were almost always divorced, hated each other, and it was really interesting because I always had three clients: mom, dad, child.

6:28 They were never on the same page, and I was just too young to deal with that level of tension and animosity, and I just found myself, almost by a fluke, leaving that and going to LA and working for Jane Fonda, teaching aerobics on Robertson Boulevard, which was so much more fun. It was amazing in the 80s. I mean, everyone used to drive to work in their little leotards, and that was such fun. I mean, she was great, she was like right at the front of a movement, a bit like my I’m Enough movement, and she had the aerobic movement.

7:03 I have to say it was amazing every day, but so many of the people that turned up to do my classes or hers were bulimic or anorexic or had body dysmorphia or exercise compulsion. I remember looking at this with my psychologist’s brain thinking, wow, all these people are working out to cure a mental illness, and you can’t cure a mental illness with aerobics. And so that set me back on to thinking, well, I should use the psychology background I have and mix it into this huge epidemic of anorexia, bulimia.

7:39 And if you live in LA and throw a stick, a bunch of women, every third one would have an eating disorder today, at least. Oh, probably more. Probably every other, every other one. Okay. And the same back then as well.

7:52 Then it was, I mean, I had, I lived in West Hollywood and my first roommate was bulimic, the second was anorexic. One would eat frozen grapes, the other would defrost a cheesecake and eat the whole thing while crying hysterically, and it seemed kind of normal, because when you live in that stuff it’s normal. It’s like living in chaos, you just don’t see it. And all the girls at Jane’s workout had the same diet. It was like Diet Coke, diet yoga, diet hot chocolate and oatmeal, and that just seemed normal.

8:24 But I remember thinking, it’s not really normal, is it, to live like this, to get weighed all the time, to take your scales on holiday, to come in and go, how many calories are in cough medicine? Because you know, I’ve got a calf and I’ve got to go on the Stairmaster and work it off. It didn’t seem that normal, so it set me on a path to look for what runs eating disorders, which I realized particularly was not-enoughness. And so it was the beginning of my 30 years of working out, okay, what is causing this and how can I help people fix it forever?

9:00 What did they make of you, a Brit in their midst? What did they think of you? When I used to teach, they’d always say, could you say that again? Could you say that again? And I realized it’s because they liked my accent.

9:12 So yeah, I loved it there, it was great. I mean, Brits and Americans get on really well, because Americans tend to love Brits on the whole, and Brits love Americans. I think we have a great love affair. Yeah, I know. My house in LA, I have Union Jack flags and cushions and doormats, because I like to keep the Brit going.

9:30 But then here I sort of love the LA part. I’m always watching Ray Donovan and House of Cards, so I have a big love affair with America, and I think they dig the UK. So I like it. Yeah, it’s a weird relationship. We kind of, we like to poke fun at each other, but we love each other.

9:48 And I always say the Americans always look to Britain, it’s like the Downton Abbey effect. I always say, oh yes, the Americans, they, we have no class. No. And so, especially California, and we have no history, so we look to Britain, it’s like, wow, what’s going on here? And they came up and said, do you have dry cleaners in the UK?

10:05 Can you eat the food? Do you know my aunt who lives in Leicester? Have you met the Queen? Does everyone go to work with a bowler hat and brolly? I’m like, no, no.

10:17 So you jump into this practice and start talking to some of these women and treating some of these women, and what’s fascinating about you is that your approach is very different than most of the world of psychotherapy and psychology, which basically says we’re going to talk about these problems for the next 10 years, we’re going to hash them out, we’re going to go to all the uncomfortable places and kind of talk this stuff out. I mean, maybe I’m generalizing the industry. No, that’s true, and it’s the worst thing you can do.

10:44 There’s something called HEWBS now, H-E-W-B-S, that’s not studied the detrimental effect of talking about something every week for years. It’s like opening a wound over and over again until it gets septicemia. You know, when you keep discussing your problem, you keep it alive, you keep reliving it, you just never get better. It’s like if you went bankrupt and every week went to talk about what it felt like to be bankrupt and to lose everyone’s money who invested in you.

11:14 That sense of shame never goes away. I mean, you should talk about it, but then you should get over it and then you should move on. And I find many people will say, like, well, you know, when I was a baby I was a preemie, and my mom had to feed me through the dropper of a pen, and if I didn’t gain weight I would have died, and that’s why I’m obese. I’m like, well, that was 45 years ago. I know, but do you see that by telling this story you’re justifying every day why you eat too much?

11:44 Sometimes you have to just put that away now and say, that was then, this is now, and stop living in the past because it’s gone. How do you have the confidence to trust your instincts on this, because everyone else is telling you the opposite? Yeah. There’s no internet back then. Yeah, like a lot of these new liberal ideas being bounced around, and it’s hard.

12:03 I think you do have to have a level of confidence, but I think having been a therapist for 30 years, you know, I would always look at what worked. What did my clients love? What worked? And then I would take that to the next client, the next client. And I took on a lot of therapists who’d say, I mean, you know, I’m not here to knock any therapists, all therapists have a good heart and they go into that business wanting to help, but if you’re trained to just discuss pain every week…

12:31 I mean, no one says to the dentist, oh hey, I’ve got this terrible infection, can I come and discuss it every week? They go, you mad, the infection will spread, we’ve got to get it out of there. No one says to their doctor, I’ve broken my arm, I’d like to come in and talk about it. They go, well, then it’s going to set like that, you have to get it fixed. So the whole premise that we just discuss the pain over and over again, with the belief that in 10 years or less you’ll get used to living with yourself the way you are, and you may get better but you may not, it’s always, I thought, bizarre.

13:08 And I’ve met some amazing psychotherapists, and others who say, you know, the words rapid and transformational should not go together, because my method is called Rapid Transformational Therapy. There have been many of them say to me, well, there’s no such thing as rapid, though, it should be long. In fact, one actually told me, therapy is a world of pain that you have to crawl out of every day, and you don’t get better, you get used to it. I’m like, wow, I’m glad I’m not your patient.

13:36 I mean, my clients, we offer them freedom. We go, we can make you better, you don’t have to be like this, you can get over this really fast because we have the tools and the skills to make you better or to make yourself better. And it’s the only, um, form of health care where they say, let’s have a long protracted discussion but no cure. I mean, no one goes to an osteopath and says, just talk about the back pain. They go, no, I’m going to manipulate you and do this and you’re going to get better.

14:07 So I’ve always thought that was a little odd, and I think now people have really sort of lost patience with 10 years of therapy. Life’s so fast now, no one’s got the time for that. Those three words, I am enough, when you try to explain the thinking behind that, how do you usually begin with people? How can you describe what this is? Well, the common denominator of all of our emotional issues in the modern world are not feeling enough, and I started to see that working with Jane, with all the bulimics and anorexics, and I realized that when you don’t feel enough, you can’t get enough.

14:46 So you’ll binge on cakes and then throw up and then have more cakes, or maybe they’re bingeing on popcorn and then vomiting and then having more, and I realize that it’s the not-enoughness you have to treat. I mean, I’ve worked with thousands and thousands of addicts, I’ve never worked, I’ve never… I’ll say that again. I’ve worked with thousands and thousands of addicts. I’ve never met one in my entire life who said, I feel enough, but many who said, I don’t feel enough.

15:16 You know, I’m trying to fill this emptiness inside. Just like anorexics, just like drug addicts, there’s a big gap, and we are taught to fill that up with food or alcohol or movies or shopping or sex or gambling, but you can’t fix an emotional pain with stuff. I mean, obviously we think we can, we shop and buy stuff to fill up this pain, but it doesn’t work. You have to recognize that what lies beneath gambling, drinking, smoking, bingeing, self-hatred, self-sabotage, procrastination and so many more things, there’s this inner feeling: I’m not enough.

16:00 I’m not smart enough, interesting enough, pretty enough, good enough. And when you realize that that’s the root, you can remove that root, because it’s not real. No baby ever says, I’m not enough, don’t look at me. No baby says, I really shouldn’t cry at five in the morning because my dad’s working nights, my mum’s exhausted. No baby says, my mom went to Whole Foods but organic broccoli, I shouldn’t spit the whole lot out over this white top that she just bleached.

16:31 They just don’t like it, they bring it up. So we’re all born knowing we’re enough, and that’s very good news, because you can reactivate it really fast if you know how. Is this born out of our relationship with our parents? Oh yeah, well, it’s, you know, our whole character set before we’re five. And you know, you little children know they’re enough.

16:55 You know, you, I should say to my little, what do you want for Christmas? You go, um, a swimming pool, a horse. And I never went, who do you think you are? Look at you, you’re so greedy. How, who’s going to get money for a horse?

17:07 We can’t afford a horse. I’d say, Tori darling, you know, horse is very expensive, and then she’d look at me and go, Mummy, Father Christmas doesn’t buy them, the elves make them. Because they have this belief that everything’s available. You know, in the womb it’s like being in Hawaii, it’s 75 degrees, you have 24-hour room service, you’re always connected to a person. So we come onto the planet certain, first of all, all our needs will be met, that everything we want is available, that we’re deeply connected, and we’re enough.

17:40 And you can get rid of that belief so fast by saying to children, but why aren’t you like your sister? She could do maths. What’s wrong with your brother? Doesn’t spill food all over the floor. Or maybe you’ll see a mother crying a lot because she’s unhappy, and a child must idealize their parents.

18:01 If you work out at three that your dad’s crazy, your mom is an alcoholic, your parents should never have got married, that threatened your very survival, and so what you do instead, you think, my mum is unhappy, it’s my fault, but I can be better and then she’ll be happy. I’ll just be nicer, better, good, smarter, kinder, I’ll be a good kid. We’re trying to fill the gaps in their personalities. We believe it’s our fault, but then of course no matter how you try, Mum is still unhappy, because it was never your fault, and now you’ve picked up something else: oh, I can’t fix her because I’m not enough.

18:40 And now you’ve got a limiting belief that’s become a fixed belief. And you know, if you look at Marilyn Monroe and Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse, and you can see over and over again that belief that so many beautiful, famous people have: I’m not enough. You know, Kate Spade, that amazing designer, why would somebody that talented take their own life when they’ve got everything: money, fame, adulation, success? Because they haven’t got the thing you need more than all of that put together, which is knowing you’re enough.

19:16 I had Chef Gordon in here, he was a kind of the talent agent for, you know, Mike Myers, a lot of these people, and, uh, you know, he knew a lot of stars back in the day, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Yeah. He said, Brian, the thing that got them to the very top was something, some hole inside them. Oh yeah, making them show the world they were the best, and he said it doesn’t go away when they’re at the top of them. No, you see, somebody will think, look out the world and think, I don’t feel enough and the world isn’t fair, but if I become famous or rich or gorgeous, then the world will seem enough.

19:51 And that gives them phenomenal drive to become famous at acting or singing or even sport, but when they get there, because they really will get there, then they think, oh right, now you love this body, this part I’m playing, you’re not really falling in love with me. And now it’s actually worse, because they had a dream: I’m not enough, but I’m gonna go over there, become famous and rich and now be enough. And then they go over there and then they think, yeah, but I fooled you all, and then they’d still feel not enough, in fact they feel worse because the goal they were going to just didn’t work, and now they feel even worse than they felt before because there’s nowhere to hide, and they don’t respect the fans for loving them because they don’t love themselves and they think they’re deluded.

20:40 It’s like that guy said, I’d never join a club that would have me as a member. So they think the fans have fallen in love with a myth, and they have a huge feeling of, I don’t deserve this. The self-destructiveness of talent is, I didn’t deserve this, so I’m gonna have to get rid of it super fast, and that’s what they start doing with their subconscious. Yeah, I want to get into some of that self-talk. Sure.

21:04 Let me ask you, do you think though that some of the great art, back to like a Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix, could be created without this hole inside them? And like sometimes I look at what I’m doing and I’m like, okay, I’m really driven, I must have some piece of I’m not enough inside me, but then I also, I’m like, but I feel like I’m creating things that are important, and I don’t know if I felt like I was enough, maybe there would be no London Real. What do you think about it?

21:31 I think we all have, we’re not enough to a degree, it depends how much it’s hurting you. I mean, I grew up thinking I wasn’t enough for years and years and years, and it’s probably why it was so important for me to identify in everyone and show them you can get better. You know, Shakespeare said from pain comes art, and it is true that people who’ve had a blissful life can’t write about pain, can’t write about, you know, as soon as you, you know, I was listening to one of my daughter’s songs, girls don’t like boys, girls like cars, and when you think, what did that poor boy go through to write that song?

22:07 When you listen to lyrics, or you, Amy Winehouse is out. Yeah. Yeah, I mean her lyrics, I mean so self-explanatory. I told you I was trouble, you know I’m no good. You go back to her, and I go back to black, love is a losing game.

22:22 I mean, her lyrics would just break you. I remember talking to her father, I can’t listen to any of her songs because the pain of her not feeling she was enough is like in every song you hear. Yeah, those songs were her autobiography, and so art is created from pain, but almost always, almost always. But we should still learn how to then love ourselves and agree we’re enough, and maybe we can, they both can exist. Well, I think you get the thing with the pain is you’re supposed to get over it.

22:54 You have surgery, you’re in pain, but no one says, are you still in pain 20 years later? And if you were, the surgeon’s done a very bad job. So we all have degrees of pain, we get rejected, we get dumped, we get hurt, but you’re supposed to get over the pain. Human beings are incredibly resilient and we are wired to recover from pain, but we kind of hold on to it and then we use it as, oh, I could never date again, they might dump me, and that last guy just walked all over me and broke my heart in a million pieces, when really he just got bored, and you might have got bored with him if you’d stayed together.

23:33 But we frame everything as such a tragedy, and when you frame it, I could never go through that again, it would kill me if I did that, oh, I couldn’t take the pain, and then the brain believes us, our mind believes what we tell it, always. When you say, could never do that again, it would kill me to do that again, I’d rather die than do that again, now our mind is very certain we must not go through that again, and it allows us to hold back and live a very limiting life because we told it something utterly untrue. You can go through anything if it doesn’t kill you or make you stronger.

24:08 Rejection can be the best thing that ever happened to you, but no one tells you that. Is it possible to raise children without some of these traumas, or will they find something that will affect them? I think it was like Viktor Frankl that said that, um, a person’s problems are like gas in a gas chamber. Yeah. They’ll fill up the room.

24:28 Yeah, they’re small or big. And yeah, like I, for me, I always go back to my parents being divorced when I was seven. Yeah. Go on my plant medicine ceremonies, it’s right in my face, but when I look at it, there was no yelling and beating and bottles being thrown, but for me it was a big event. I’m wondering, do we just bring those things bigger when they’re children?

24:46 Well, what you said was so fascinating, because events don’t affect you, but the meaning you attach to the event will affect you. So your parents getting divorced, of course that affects a child, but the meaning you attach, which is, I wasn’t good enough for them to stay together, they didn’t love me enough, they’re unhappy, I should have made them happy, I failed to make them happy, so I’m a failure, I’m not enough. So it’s always the meaning you attach to an event, or the interpretation that will get you every time.

25:19 And the good news is that the generation of parents now have more manuals and more videos and more experts who do know what they’re talking about, unlike Dr. Spock, who said if you pick up a child you ruin it. You know, babies are very selfish, don’t go to them when they cry, and don’t understand that baby is a pure sensation. Oh, that baby’s manipulating you. They wouldn’t know how to manipulate if they tried. And so we do have a better generation now that understand that.

25:51 What a child feels is everything, and you just have to talk to them and say things like, you know, darling, Mummy was very cranky today, but that wasn’t your fault, it was me. Or, you know, um, Daddy is living in a different house, but he loves you as much as he ever did, and he’ll always love you, and he’s still going to see you. And Mommy and Daddy not loving each other the way they did is not that we don’t love you. You have to do a lot of explaining to children.

26:18 As long as you explain and get them to see it’s not your fault, they’re fine. And when they mess up, you don’t go, you’re a bad kid, you’re so bad, you’re just, I wish I’d never had you. Say, this is not really you, you’re a good kid, but good kids do bad things, and today you did something that wasn’t great, but that’s not you. You still have to rein them in and tell them off, but you don’t say you are bad, you are naughty, you are disgusting. You say, you did something bad, but you’re a good kid.

26:50 And if you can just dialogue with your children just a little differently, they will be different kids. Well, this is on my mind, I have boys that are one and two years old. Yeah. And first of all, I can agree right now they definitely are enough. Like they’re not walking around not enough.

27:04 They’re also, Marisa, they’re just so happy to be here. Yeah, they’re like puppies, they’re just, they’re happy to be here, and it reminds me as adults that we forgot sometimes that we’re just happy to be here. Yeah, and they love everything. They love snow, rain, spiders, you know, at that age everything is an adventure. Puddles, they don’t go, oh look at the weather, everything’s ruined.

27:25 They can get so much joy from anything, but then when you have a parent that goes, if that’s all going to go wrong, it’s all going to end in tears, that will never work out, look at the traffic, this is a nightmare, this is a disaster, those small children learn to think the way you think, they see the world through your lens. So mothers who are hypochondriacs or tend to have children who expect pain, mothers or pessimistic often have pessimistic children. Parents who say, don’t come home without a straight A, or if you ever get pregnant you’re out of the house, now believe, well, that’s not unconditional love, and of course if you expect the worst from your kid, you normally get it.

28:09 I had a guest on recently, Dr. Gabor Maté, who said something similar to what you said. He said the trauma that people have isn’t the event, it’s the processing of the event, or lack of talking about the event, or the story they tell themselves. And so two things could happen, one thing could happen to two different people and one could be traumatized and one not. So that has to do with kind of that self-re-creation of that event and then that constant self-talk.

28:34 Yeah. And you say that we’ve got two ways to control our mind: the words that we put in it and the pictures. Pictures, yeah. And that’s it, that’s it. And even the pictures don’t matter, because when you make a word, you make, like I said, you think of a lemon, you’ve already made a picture.

28:49 Think of a racehorse. If you say the word, you get the picture. But the way you feel is down to just two things: the pictures you make in your head and the words you say to yourself, and you can actually just say the words because the words you say create a picture. But the very good news is you can change those words at any time, at all time you can change the words, and most people are thinking, Marisa, that’s crazy, like my life is a mess and look at my eyes, those words, so if you lived my life, or you’ve had such a simple life, you have no idea what it’s like.

29:24 But I do have an idea what it’s like, and I know that the thing that’s made my life so amazing, because it wasn’t always like that, is the words. I would never go, this is a nightmare, oh my god, what a disaster, this is hell. And what are you talking about? They haven’t got enough, you’ve run out of milk, or you went to the store to get your favorite bagels and they haven’t gone, they’ve got so, hell, it’s a nightmare. You know, we use these really profound words to describe such silly little events, and it’s really important not to do that, and that’s really toxic to put those words into our brain.

29:58 And you’ve also said the brain, it doesn’t have a sense of humor, and it doesn’t, it just, it actually just believes everything that you tell it as far as the world, everything. Your mind really does not care if what you tell it is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, true or false, it will let it all in. I mean, if you took your little baby and said every day, you’ve got the worst memory in the world and you’re the stupidest kid I’ve ever met, you can guarantee they will start to react to what you tell them.

30:26 You know, my little girl used to go to school and like all children, um, she’d get to the gate and she’d come back and the lunch, the swimming, and I’d always say, what have you remembered? And she said, I remembered my swimming kit, I remembered my sports, because I remembered my lunch, because I never said what have you forgotten, because that would wire her to think, oh god, I’ve forgotten again. She actually stopped coming back at the gate because I kept saying, what did you remember?

30:50 See how clever your mind is, you always remember what you need. Because my, I would put stuff I need at the front door, but she didn’t want to do that, and then she stopped forgetting because I kept telling her, what have you remembered? And there’s so many simple little techniques you can use with children to make them smarter, happier, more confident. You know, if every child sat around the breakfast table and had parents that said, repeat after me, I’m enough, I matter, I’m significant, I have a gift and I’m here for a reason, bullying would practically not exist.

31:26 But we don’t do that, and it’s such an easy thing to have your kids going, enough, I matter, I’m significant, I’m lovable. That phrase, I am enough, you’ve had a lot of success with celebrities and CEOs. Yeah. And I’ve heard some of the stories you tell that just engineering that phrase into their mind, does it, how does that work, and how can you get these people with these kind of negative thoughts that they’ve had for 10, 20 years to just start transforming?

31:55 Well, you see, when you question a belief, you no longer believe it. The minute you question a belief, you know, you’ll find with your children when they start to go, but Daddy, how come Father Christmas had a suit on under his outfit, or he had black beard under the white beard, or how can you get around the world, how can someone that big get down a chimney that big, and how do the reindeer get down? When you question a belief, you don’t believe it, which is why all religions go, never question the imam or the priest or the rabbi.

32:26 I remember years ago my lawyer saying he asked his imam if he could watch Fatal Attraction, and he went, absolutely not, no, no, no, you can’t watch that, and he didn’t go because he told him he couldn’t go. So when you question a belief, you don’t believe it anymore. And the thing with I’m enough is it makes you stop questioning yourself. You go, yeah, I’ve got cellulite, I’m still enough. I’m driving around in an old car, I’m still enough.

32:52 I’ve got some wrinkles, I’m still enough. And I’m enough, it’s a bit like if you put moisture on very dry skin, your skin doesn’t go, is that fair trade? Is it organic? It lets it in and it nourishes you. And I’m enough will also go in and nourish you from the inside out, because your mind will believe whatever you tell it.

33:15 Anything you tell it, it believes. You might as well tell it amazing stuff, because it doesn’t stop to go, is that true? You know, if you walk down the road and late at night go, that person is going to attack me and kill me, you’ll start to feel as if they really are. If you sit on a plane and go, that person looks like a member of ISIS, I think they’re going to blow up the plane, even if you play a game with yourself, you start to feel as if they really are going to do that, even though it’s not true.

33:44 And, um, you know, I have many clients who come in, I’ve had several who’ve had cancers, I cannot go in that MRI scanner, when it goes in I feel like I’m in my coffin going in to be cremated. And because they put those words in, that I’ve got cancer, I’m having a scan, and now I feel like I’m in the coffin being cremated, of course they have a bad time. And so I always say to them, look, when you go in the scanner, you have to say, this is so great, I’m so chilled, how much do I want an hour to myself?

34:13 I’m going to lie here and have an hour to myself. And then I had an experience of that, having to go into the same MRI, and I was just playing a game going, I’m so chill, this is amazing. I thought, oh, I’m in my coffin, and when I said I’m in my coffin, my whole body had a totally different reaction. And I knew I was lying to myself, but you can play games and drive on the, through going, I’m going to get hit in a minute, I’m going to die, I’m going to skid off the road, and your mind doesn’t say, now stop this, that’s all nonsense.

34:45 It starts to make you feel as if that’s really going to happen. And you always have a choice when you’re going into negative, um, expressions, talk yourself out of it rather than rationalize why you feel like you can lie in bed at night and go, oh my god, someone’s rattling the door, they’re going to break in, they’re going to kill me, I’m on my own in the house here, and then you can go, it’s the wind. You get a choice, but if you don’t choose to change the words, then you can have a very bad reaction, because your words form your reality.

35:21 Words shape your reality, and if you pick better words, you have a better reality, and that is an absolute fact. Change your words and they change your reality, and it’s so easy, it’s easy, it’s free, it’s fast. So for anyone listening, they should be proactive in the stories they’re telling themselves. Yeah. And try to catch themselves with the negative stories.

35:43 Is that hard for some people? I think when they start it, they realize it’s very interesting. You know, or one of my clients who was a very famous model, I noticed that her word was always terrifying. I got this job, terrifying. I went on a plane and these four guys hit on me, terrifying.

36:00 And I’m like, actually, let’s look at how terrifying it really is to be hit on a plane because you’re gorgeous. I mean, you can stick on a baseball hat, wash off your makeup, sit at the back with a book, and they might leave you alone, but even if they don’t, where’s the terror in that? So people use these really incredibly descriptive words. Is hell going to the store? Is hell driving on the freeway?

36:28 Is hell actually not having a car, no matter what gas in it? Is how it’s annoying to be on the freeway, it takes a lot of time, it’s frustrating, but we all want time, and you have to stop using these words. This is a disaster. And so I think when people begin to think, oh yeah, I asked my friends and they said the word you use all the time is nightmare. This is a nightmare, this is a nightmare, this is killing me.

36:55 You know, I had an American PA and she’d go, I’m killing it, which because I, this guy asked me out and I died, or when I got the job I wanted to die. And I’m like, I didn’t really want to die, did you, darling? I mean, you didn’t really think what that job was, I want to die, this guy has asked me, I want to die. Don’t keep saying I want to die, or I could have killed myself when I messed up that speech, I could have just died of shame, or I just wanted to kill myself when I did something so stupid, because it’s not true.

37:29 So you’ve got to tell your minds, don’t. I messed up, who? Nobody even noticed, and if they did they don’t care. You don’t really want to die when a great guy asks you out, and if a great guy dumps you, you also don’t want to die, you want to get over it and find someone even better. So I think people don’t find it hard, they find it immensely easy, because they go, really, if changing my words will change my life?

37:55 Oh yes. So most of them find it quite exciting, because they’re prepared to take medication, to go to therapy, to go and do sit-ups, to do anything to change their reality, when all you have to do is change how you talk to yourself, and it’s a lot easier than all the other stuff. It’s that simple. Yeah, yeah. And these people can also manifest ailments by this as well, they can literally cause themselves to die or cause themselves to be taken out of these situations that are hell, right?

38:26 I mean, so many of the, all the autoimmune illnesses that we see going on now, I mean, most doctors say we have no idea what causes that or even how to treat it, because it’s not disease, and 70 percent of your going to ER or A&E, whatever you want to call it, whichever country, will have illnesses that doctors know immediately are not caused by disease, they’re caused by thinking, but they just don’t know how to treat that because they don’t have the time or the training to go, look, let’s do a little funny thing, let’s ask for this illness what its role is, what its purpose is, what is its function, why is it here? You know, I worked with someone who is morbidly obese, and I asked her in hypnosis to tell me what the job was, and she said, oh, when I was five or four, I was in the park and my dad took me to the bathroom and left my sister in the park and she drowned in the lake, and you always said that was your fault if you hadn’t been so selfish, if you hadn’t asked to go to the toilet.

39:29 When in fact he should have taken both of them, didn’t leave a five-year-old kid in a park with or without an ornamental lake, because they’re at risk. And she said, my whole life I had to punish myself, I killed my sister. Then I thought I had to be my sister, so I became the size of two people. And it was so interesting when I asked her why she was a beast, she said, I need to be the size of two people. Wow.

39:51 And the minute she got that, she’s lost 80 kilos since we did that session, and she came on and was talking about at one of my master classes how I’ve tried everything: diet pills, stomach stapling, exercising, juicing, but what worked was understanding that that obesity had a role. And then it doesn’t. What’s it like to treat the kind of ultra famous and the ultra rich? Do you have to treat them kind of differently, because they’re kind of in, I mean, a special bubble, a bubble within a bubble sometimes?

40:21 You know, it is weird because I still think, you know, who am I? I go to see, I mean, last year this massively famous celebrity sent his driver to get me and to, I went out to his estate and he was standing in the garden waiting to greet me, going, I’m so honored that you’re here. Like, really me? You’re honored that I’m here? But of course when you talk to actors, you’ll see that they have exactly the same fears: I’m not enough.

40:48 I faked all that. I mean, I’ve got Oscars and BAFTAs and Brit Awards, but, and I say this, I don’t know how I got that. I think there were not many good, um, people that year, there weren’t so many good submissions, like that was a fluke. And they find it very hard to say, I have a great talent, I earn now, I’m worth it, or they say it but they don’t believe it for a minute. And it can be a little daunting to see these mega stars, but when you talk to them they’re just like everyone else.

41:19 They have the same fears, often more fears. They always have this fear that, I don’t know where this talent came from and it could be taken away. There’s a wonderful story about Laurence Olivier playing Hamlet, and apparently it was so amazing he got 11 standing ovations, and when the curtain finally came down, journalists ran to the room and banged on the door, and he said, go away, don’t write that, I don’t know where that came from. If you write about how good it was and people come back tomorrow and I can’t pull it off, I will feel terrible.

41:55 So a therapist said, come on, Laurence, it came from you, you have that gift, it’s you and you can produce it every night just by stepping on stage going, wow, this is my gift. Someone else can sing or perform or paint, I happen to act. But he had that belief that, I don’t know where it came from, so he was always scared he wouldn’t be enough. And there’s that again, not-enoughness. I don’t know where this came from, I wrote one book but I don’t know if I can write another, or that was just lucky, fluke, it was a lucky break, when you should really own your talent and go, yeah, I’m really good at this, that’s my gift, it’s what I do.

42:36 You only have to be good at one thing, but so many actors and so many creatives feel that it’s some weird talent that comes through them and it can be switched off but not on again, whereas I think, well, if you can switch it off, you can switch it on and you can keep it on. So those of us with talent, yeah, you have to have a good relationship with your talent, but what do you have to say, that this is my talent? You know, very gifted people will say, I happen to be the best doctor or the best teacher, my gift is to do that.

43:08 You know, I understand my gift is to help people, I understand my gift is to really, um, break down therapy and make it simple, but that’s my gift, I don’t have other gifts. I’m not an amazing cook, I’m not a phenomenal decorator, I’m not an incredible gardener, there’s lots of things I’m not good at, but when you have a gift, you should own it, and don’t try to be good at anything else, just be good at what you’re good at. You know, I see so many children who come in and go, I’m not any good at math, or I can’t be good at science.

43:43 I go, darling, imagine if everyone was good at the same thing. If we all were good at everything, that wouldn’t be fair, we’d never employ cooks or gardeners. Your gift is to be good at IT or computers, you know, if you’re good at anything else, just be good at that one thing, because teachers, I never mind little girls, teachers saying, she’s so good at English but not maths and she’s never going to get into the school of her choice, because she is a gifted, gifted English person but terrible at math.

44:12 I’m like, well, she doesn’t need math, and I’d always say to darling, don’t listen to those teachers, it’s so unimportant, you’re not supposed to be good at both, and she’s very talented and very creative. But I see so many schools cause so much damage by trying to make kids good at everything, or parents saying, well, if you could get an A in science, why couldn’t you get an A in creative writing? Well, you know, we have different brains, a scientific brain is not the same as a creative brain, so we would make the world a better place if we could own our gift, be really, let other people be gifted at their gifts and just own what we’re good at, and have the belief that we’re good, the talent and the drive and the ambition to go after it.

44:57 But that fear of, oh, I’ll seem big-headed and people won’t like me, or it’s not enough to be good, I’ve got to be good at everything, comes from school and it’s not true. Yeah, I’ve had a few experiences with some kind of ultra talented, ultra famous people that have been on the show, and we revere them for their talent. Yeah. But then when I spend a couple hours with them, I remember I came to one conclusion, I was like, sometimes these people need, need our love more than everyone else.

45:25 Yeah. I had Eddie Izzard here, and he’s incredible talent. Yeah. I felt like he needed a bunch of hugs and very fragile. Yeah.

45:32 And I felt like it was hard being him, and yet most of us look at these people and make these assumptions: oh, it’s easy, they’ve got it all. Um, but they’re still dealing with that thing. Yeah, and that’s the biggest problem, you see, when you’re creative you are by nature suggestible. If you said to Anthony Hopkins, Anthony, play a psychopath, he can wrap that up in minutes because he can see it in his mind. If you said to Amy, Amy, write a song about pain, she could sit down and knock that out in moments, but that’s the problem, because they can do it so easily they feel, I didn’t earn this, I didn’t work hard enough, this has no value, and then they devalue it.

46:08 So someone who’s creative is highly suggestible and they respond to all suggestions, if they say, well, you know, you’re good but someone else is better. I always remember Michael Hutchence picking up an award from, I think it was Noel Gallagher, and they said something really mean, like, a has-been should not be giving an award to someone like me. And I thought that was so mean, because Michael, his star had risen and gone, and that often happens, it’s like the five steps of success: who’s Michael Hutchence?

46:42 Find me Michael Hutchence. Find me a Michael Hutchence type. Find me a younger Michael Hutchence. Who’s Michael Hutchence? The smart ones recognize it will rise but it will fall, you can’t stay that way forever.

46:59 You know, you can be Lenny Kravitz, who’s amazing and talented, but one day there’s a younger version of Lenny Kravitz and you have to understand that and accept it. But the suggestibility of talent that goes, oh, they’re better than me, they don’t want me anymore, I’m no longer wanted, I’m past my sell-by date, where I see so many models that are so damaged with the beauty and the looks and the money, but they’re always waiting for someone younger and taller to come up right behind them, and thinner too, because they all have a sell-by date, but then they tell themselves all this terrible stuff, um, oh, this won’t last long, they’re better, they want me less. And you know, I’ve worked with actresses who said, you know, I went for the part, I didn’t get it, they didn’t want me, when often the truth is they sometimes are too good to be.

47:50 My little girl, when she was tiny, she had amazing hair and she was stopped in the street and someone asked me if she could do a modeling campaign, and I said sure, and she did, and I took her to one casting. They went, she can’t have the job, she’s so pretty that they will look at her and not the clothes, and for baby models we want kind of normal ones, but she’s too pretty. And I thought that was so cool, she got rejected for being too pretty. But you see, a lot of actresses don’t get, hear the director say, darling, you would outshine the main part, or you’re just so stunning, or too tall.

48:24 All they hear is, they didn’t want me. I walked in, they went, no, you’re not right, you’re not what we’re looking for, because we don’t stop to explain, you’re amazing and wonderful and talented, but maybe too talented, maybe you’ll outshine someone, or maybe you’re just not right for this part, and People take rejection so personally because it used to kill us. We used to die of rejection. Now we can’t die, now we can’t die of rejection, but we always feel like we could, because back in the day we actually could die of rejection.

48:55 Sure. I mean, you know, women, I mean, will always say, I’ll die if that guy leaves. You, sorry, I’ll say that again, because not all women, some women will say, you know, I’ll die if my relationship fails, I’ll die if this guy leaves me. And actually if you went back several hundred years and your guy was a hunter-gatherer and he went out to spear the wildly beast and they trampled him, you would die. You know, you would die.

49:20 I mean, I love Game of Thrones, and there’s one scene where Irea and the beast come across this guy and his daughter, and he goes back and kills me, how could you do that? He went, would they die anyway? They couldn’t live, just the two of them out here, and that was true. We used to need a whole tribe in a walled city, and we shut the gates at night because safety was a numbers game. And if your partner died, if the person that provided food for you and your kids died, you would die.

49:49 It’s why women like to gossip, because it connects you to other women, and in gossiping we made friends who would then probably give us some food or share their guys’ hunt, and that’s how we lived. To this day women have a fear they’ll die if you leave them. I mean, actually we died of hunger more than disease, and we still have this thing: I’m dying of hunger, oh my god, if I don’t eat something I’m gonna starve. And our mind still has an intense fear of being hungry because it used to kill us, and the logical brain that goes, look, you have some cold chicken and salad in the fridge and it’s an hour’s commute, is overridden by a dive for hunger.

50:27 Give me those jelly beans, give me those taco chips, I need, anything rather than feel hunger. So we are modern-day people but we have caveman reactions, and the fear of being rejected is the worst one because it used to kill us, we used to die. I mean, we used to maroon sailors. They didn’t have a great life, marooned on an island, put people in solitary, cast people out. There are some religions that still do that, but being cast out would, could make you die, because our DNA insists that we connect to people, because you survive if you’re connected and you die if you’re rejected, and so many things just go back to that.

51:14 You are hardwired to find connection and avoid rejection. And you know, we see all these kids who are rejected for what they look like, for, and now it’s a million times worse, you get rejected online. You know, when I was at school and you got bullied, four o’clock was your go home, shut the door, I’m okay until nine o’clock. But now it’s in you, it’s on your laptop, it’s on your phone, and we’re seeing the huge problem of generations of kids who are rejected through their social media and kill themselves.

51:49 It’s a terrible thing. How do you deal with the type of celebrity that’s royalty, where they’re sometimes born into it? I mean, I know you knew Princess Diana. I mean, is that a, how do you deal with that type of but, you know, they have a really, I mean, you wouldn’t want to be a royal. I mean, I’ve met many royals and they’re lovely, and I think being born into it, like for Meghan Markle, I think it’s much harder.

52:14 You know, if you watch The Crown, you see the Queen, born into it, born, you know, to serve, and has done an amazing job because she’s never ever put herself first, and she was trained at an early age, and she saw that. I’m watching The Crown right now and gaining respect for her every single episode. And you know, they always said that Harry was luckier than William because he didn’t have to take that job. I mean, I have the greatest respect for them, but you know, again, that if they’re on stage all the time, they can never, it’s, it’s be themse, and it’s good when the show ends, when you can step off stage, take off your makeup, put on your leggings, lie on the sofa and watch Game of Thrones, but they can’t ever really do that because they live in a world of staff that are always there.

53:02 And I think it’s very hard to be a royal, it’s hard to be famous. I mean, almost all of my clients are rich and famous, all say the same thing: I want my kids to be rich but not famous. If I could have my life again, I’d have the money and not the fame. Very few of them go, I love the fame, isn’t it amazing? They go, actually, I kind of got bored with it, I don’t like it anymore.

53:24 You know, so many people like Daryl Hannah, they just retire, um, who’s the one who’s done that recently? Just Bridget Jones, Renee’s, they, they, they disappear. I’m done acting, because they go, I’ve had enough of being judged. You know, you turn up without your makeup, oh my god, look at her, she looks awful. If you say, when I go, look at her even in the gym, she’s fully made up.

53:46 You know, they can’t win, whatever they do they get criticized and rejected. I remember Madonna wearing a little leopard skin top when she was pregnant, they went, oh my god, her, pathetic Madonna, even when she’s pregnant is wearing leopard skin. But if she turned up in some sort of, they go, look at Madonna now she’s pregnant, she’s lost all the glamour. So whatever you do, same thing with royals, you know, they slate them for spending a lot of money on clothes, some of them do spend too much, but if they turned up in H&M they’d go, oh, that’s not good, she should be wearing better stuff, you know, she’s an ambassador.

54:20 So they really have a hard time, and when you marry in it’s harder, to a certain extent. Well, very hard, I mean, some people do it better than others because they understand, you’ve got to understand the role, and if you understand the role and you understand that you work for the Queen, she’s very hard-working and should be admired, but she’s your role model. But if you believe you can go into thousands of years of monarchy and change it, then you can’t change the monarchy, and they’ll have more chance changing you than you’ll have changing them.

54:54 We love the, you know, when Fergie came along she was a breath of fresh air, but she didn’t last too long, right? Because they all go, we love this, it’s like school’s going, you know, we love individual kids really, but the day they turn up without their uniform you send them home and go, don’t come into school like that, you’ve got to wear the same uniform as everyone else. So we pretend we like it, but we don’t really. Do you think Diana knew what she was getting into?

55:18 No, I think she had not a clue. You know, she was an amazing person, but I mean, Diana would have been I’m Not Enough with a capital I. I mean, if you were studying beautiful women who thought they were not enough, Diana and Marilyn Monroe, there they were. And I always remember reading an interview with Marilyn, and, um, her own therapist said, Marilyn, you know what, what is this, you know, being sewn into those dresses, no underwear, kind of swaying around in front of all these GIs, I don’t know if you saw that footage, when she was, or when she was singing Happy Birthday to the President, and JFK had his mouth open because she had no underwear on and a skin-tight dress and very curvy, and she said, almost word for word, I must belong to the whole world because I have never belonged to anything or anyone in my whole life and I probably never will.

56:15 And there’s not-enoughness, and of course very easy to understand, Marilyn, her father rejected her at birth, she found him late, he didn’t want to know, her mother was mentally ill and gave her up, and she went to a foster family, and little foster boy would say mama, mama, and Marilyn started to go mama, and they went, oh no, no, no, I’m not Mama, you have to call me Auntie. And she was only two, and every time they went out she’d go, there’s a mama, there’s a mama, there’s a mama. And she was looking for what she didn’t have, she knew she didn’t have a mama but everyone else did, and that would make you feel different, and when you’re different you can’t connect.

56:55 When you connect you’re safe, and so that belief that I’m different to other people, I haven’t got what they’ve got. You know, when she married Joe DiMaggio, she was planning her divorce already, and she always expected to get bored with her, to leave her, to be disappointed. One of my other clients who’d been in immense beauty and lost the looks, of course, and became overweight, so people come to see how fat and ugly I’ve got, and guess what, I never disappoint them anymore.

57:25 I thought, that’s a shame. And Sharon Stone said, every man I date thinks they’re dating the girl from Basic Instinct and they can never quite hide the disappointment. And Rita Hayworth said, every man would, they go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me, and they just don’t hide the disappointment quick enough. And then you see why celebrities are so damaged, because you think you’re hanging out with a goddess, but they’re not goddesses, they’re real people with flaws, but they’re told, hide that, pretend, lie, fake it, and they can never be themselves, and so they expect you to be disappointed with the reality.

58:03 You mean, I’ve seen goddesses turn up at my house and they’re kind of tiny little things in tracksuits, they don’t look like goddesses. But can you imagine if every time someone opens the door they go, oh, oh, I thought you were prettier, taller, more radiant, more luminous? It’s kind of hard to live that life when people are actually disappointed in you rather than amazed with you. Yeah. Do you think Diana had that, I’m not enough, before she married, or was it magnified?

58:31 She had it by the time she was five, you know, not just out of any child whose mother leaves and doesn’t come back and marries someone else. And of course her mother always planned to come back, she didn’t abandon her children, but she couldn’t get them back. But unless you sit with your, try and go, look, here’s the truth, darling, Mommy loves you so much, but she’s gone to be with someone else, but she’s coming back for you, but the child will always hear, but there’s someone else they love more than me.

59:01 You know, you can’t cut it any other way for a child. If your mother leaves you behind for someone else and doesn’t come back, here’s a fixed belief: she loves him more than me, she left me for him. Why is that? Well, because she loves him more than me, she left me for someone else because I’m not as lovable as they are. So she had that very, very, very, very early on, as so many celebrities do.

59:30 And it doesn’t mean you should stay in a terrible marriage, but if you’re leaving your kid, you have to really explain to them why. I remember one of my clients saying, oh, you know, I’ve got to move to Spain, I really need to live in Spain, and my daughter’s so cool about it, she doesn’t mind. I’ve got to go back, I come from Spain, I must go back to Spain. I think the daughter was nine, and I didn’t believe him. But you know, when you say to an eight-year-old, darling, do you mind if Daddy goes to live in Spain, they’re not going to go, yeah, actually that’s outrageous, you owe me, I need you, it’s grossly inappropriate, maybe when I’m 18 but right now no.

1:00:08 They go, oh, it’s okay, I don’t mind. The day he left, she got meningitis, and of course his belief, I could be back in an hour. When he got the call at 2 a.m., he couldn’t be back in an hour, he had to go to the airport, wait, it was touch and go, he finally got back. When he got back, the fever had broken, she was okay, but I always thought she got that on purpose. She didn’t plan it, but you know, I love this expression: the feeling that cannot find its expression in tears will cause other organs to weep.

1:00:40 And when a child can’t say to the father, please don’t leave me, please come back, don’t go, you can bet your bottom dollar the body is going to do it instead. And so many children who get left get all kinds of illnesses, because the body is saying what the voice can’t say: this isn’t right for me, I need you here. And so what do we do when we get that anger or that sadness, or what’s the best thing to do with those emotions? I mean, with anger it’s very simple.

1:01:08 I mean, all these things, I know, sound almost too simple to be true, but that’s because they are. There is always, always, always a hurt behind anger, and the trick is when you’re angry to say, I’m hurt, I’m hurt because, or I got hurt when, or that hurt. So your ex-husband doesn’t turn up to your child’s nativity play and you sit there fuming. I mean, I’ve done that, and then you get, say, no, actually it’s really hurt my feelings, you know, I’m hurt by this, and that hurt me, but then it goes away, because your feelings are like children in a classroom going, notice me, here I am, and if you ignore them they regroup and become stronger and stronger and stronger.

1:01:49 And if you accept them and go, you know, right now I feel so jealous of my sister-in-law, I feel so angry that my friend got promoted, I feel so bitter that my friends got a better life than me, when you say it, it goes away, but when you keep it inside it becomes stronger and stronger, then it erupts, it becomes outrage, rage is just outrageous rage that’s coming out. And your feelings are the most real thing you have, and really you have to feel your feelings until they no longer require to be found. One of the best things you can do is to say, I feel jealous, I feel envious, I feel resentment towards my sister, my brother, I resent this kid that I spent 50 grand on having IVF depriving me of sleep, because if you say it, it goes away, and then you go, well, that was temporary, but if you keep it in, it just becomes so strong that it erupts.

1:02:47 So for all of your audience, start to say, not you made me so angry when you didn’t turn up to my party, or I waited outside the store for half an hour and you were late because you don’t respect me, just say, it hurt my feelings when you weren’t there on time, I was hurt when you missed my birthday. Because when you say you made me so angry, they go, well, you made me angry, what about the time when you, and you never get resolution. When you say, I was hurt, when you’re describing your feeling, not what they did, and people accept that.

1:03:21 And it’s, you know, we should teach that in schools, and I mean, I have a program in schools now, my school version of I Am Enough, an anti-bullying program. One thing we teach kids is to say, I was hurt when, I got hurt by, because. The secret of inner peace is expressing hurt as close to it happening as you can. Actually, one of the ways you define madness is how long it takes to express a hurt. So someone will say, you know, 30 years ago, went out to lunch, it was your turn to pay, you didn’t pay.

1:03:51 They go, 30 years, I didn’t remember. Well, I do, and that was really disrespectful. You can’t get resolution when you keep it in, and then 20 years later, so I always wanted a bike for Christmas, you brought me a skateboard. What are you talking about, how hard I worked for that skateboard. It doesn’t, when you go, it hurt me that you didn’t listen to me, I told you I wanted a skateboard, I know you bought me this bike out of love but I need to take it back and get the skateboard.

1:04:18 You can do it at the time, but you can never resolve things years down the line. How do you deal, or how should people deal, with critics these days, especially with social media? Oh yeah, everyone’s putting pictures here and there, and there’s always someone that has something bad to say. Oh yeah, I mean, I’ve got someone recently goes on all my posts and says, Marisa Peer is a transgender, don’t listen to her. And I’m like, oh well, I know I’m not transgender, I don’t actually really feel any need to comment, and if I was, would that mean that I shouldn’t have an opinion then, even if it was true?

1:04:49 Are you saying that because you think I’m transgender I shouldn’t speak? But I conceived a baby and had her and did lots of things I couldn’t do if I was transgender, but when you look at people doing that you have to take it back. So you think, who would sit at home thinking, let me get out my laptop, who can I hurt today, who can I wound and diminish and criticize? And you have to take a back seat and remember the great truth: critical people always, always, always have the most criticism reserved for themselves.

1:05:20 They express outwards their intense dissatisfaction, and they have a belief, I’m miserable, and if I can make you miserable we’ll be equal in misery, but if you’re happy, I feel so unequal to you. So it’s a bit like a seesaw. So if this was like a seesaw and I’m on the seesaw and you’re on the seesaw, but you think that I’m happy and you’re not and I’m up here, you only have two choices: either diminish me or embellish yourself. And then that might happen, but you see, people who don’t like themselves can’t embellish themselves, they can’t go, yeah, I’m so great, and I’ve got this great job and I’ve got this great body and everyone loves me.

1:05:59 They can’t really do the embellishment, they can only do the diminishing. Everyone hates you, who do you think you are, you’re transgender, you’re weird, you don’t know what you’re talking about. And the only thing to do with criticism is not let it in. You have a choice, don’t let it in. When people say things like, oh, thanks for sharing, thank you, thanks for sharing that, or, what an interesting opinion.

1:06:22 You know, occasionally I have gone back to people and, you know, psychotherapists especially, somebody recently said, your post is ridiculous and you say that we’re born with just fears of loud noises and falling and rejection, but that’s not true, babies are born with fears and morals. And I said, babies aren’t born with morals. Oh yes they are. I’m like, where did you get that from? And then she got very, very angry.

1:06:48 I said, look, let’s just agree to, no, I don’t want to agree to differ, I want you to apologize. So I just said, I’m just deleting all these posts because it’s a bit pointless going head-to-head with someone who doesn’t want to listen, just wants to diminish you, but they can only diminish you if you let them, and I would never let that happen. I mean, you can dislike me, you cannot agree with me, but you can’t make me just like myself because you’re enough.

1:07:13 Yeah, because I’m enough. Some people say, oh, they didn’t like me, I must have done something wrong. Well, not everybody can like you, but if you like you, you liking you is way more important than someone else liking you. And I do wish in schools they would say to kids, you know what, whatever you say to your mind, it believes. You know, I work with so many kids, without a doubt, like, okay, darling, this is the only thing we can ever do.

1:07:38 If you had an amazing dad, what would he say? And they all know, because it’s their wound, he would say, I love you, what a great kid, how lucky I am to have you as a kid. Again, I want you to say that every day. I know it sounds mad, but say it, because your mind doesn’t go, who’s saying this? It just lets it in.

1:07:57 And I’ve seen so many really damaged kids, especially young boys who’ve never had a dad, transform dramatically by just saying it like what a good dad would say, because the mind doesn’t stop to say, who’s saying that? It lets it in. But that’s not an affirmation, is that something different? You don’t call it that, no, I don’t call them affirmations because they’re very abstract. Like an affirmation is, life is a walk through the park and the sun’s always shining.

1:08:23 Well, not in London, it rains, you tread in dog poo, it’s not always a walk in the park. And if you have an affirmation, life is beautiful and wonderful every minute of every day, you don’t believe it. But if you say, I have extraordinary coping skills, whatever goes on in life I make the best of it and I find happiness everywhere I go, that is what I call a statement of truth. Life is wonderful is not true, but I see the wonder in life can be true. So I prefer statements of truth to affirmations, because you can make them amazing.

1:09:03 Right. You have another term when you say I want to make the familiar unfamiliar. Yeah. And the unfamiliar familiar. What do you mean by that, and the patterns that our brains are in?

1:09:11 Yeah, so I spent 30 years studying human behavior and realized, you know, I know when I was training to be a psychotherapist my very eminent teacher was very serious and said, you know, the mind is very, very complex and takes a lifetime to understand and a second lifetime to fix. I’m thinking, well, how could that be? Would nature go, let me give you an amazing mind and on your deathbed you’ll understand it, but you need another lifetime to come back and put them into practice?

1:09:40 You know, we tell ourselves dumb things. Your school days are the best days of your life. Really? So then everything else is downhill? That couldn’t be so.

1:09:50 And so I’ve always questioned this stuff that we hear, and I realized that you need to know three things about your mind only to make your life a masterpiece. One is that your mind does what it thinks you want, and it bases it entirely on the words you say. When you say that’s killing me, it will say, let me give you a lovely ulcer so you don’t go to that job that’s killing you. The second is that it responds entirely to the pictures and words, and the third is we are wired, hardwired, to keep going to what’s familiar and running away from what’s unfamiliar.

1:10:24 And you have a two-year-old and you’ll know, it’s, I mean, nature’s so clever, at two that’s the age when a kid could walk out from the tribe and pick their own berries and put poisonous stuff in their mouth, that two, they only want what’s familiar. I want that cereal in that bowl with that spoon and nothing else will do. And so only wanting what’s familiar kept us alive. We didn’t live in a walled village and wander off to another one and go, hey, I need some variety in my life, because they might eat you.

1:10:56 So we are hardwired to stay with what’s familiar and to resist what’s unfamiliar. That’s a fact, but you can make anything you like familiar or unfamiliar. And the saddest thing I ever see is people who haven’t had praise and have told stuff like, oh, you’ll never amount to anything, you’re stupid, you’re an idiot, you’re just like your mother, I don’t even know why I had you, I can’t believe you’re mine. And if you always criticize your children, what is so sad is that they start to criticize themselves too, and if you praise them they reject it, and adding criticism, that was a beautiful story, it wasn’t very good, I copied it from another kid.

1:11:36 And then my father was an amazing, amazing teacher, and he had this little boy who was diagnosed as being educationally subnormal, and he was sitting with him and he’s saying, you know, I can’t do anything, I’m just stupid. He went, no, no, you’re not stupid at all. My father was looking at his book, and he’d written something like, today, today sad, tomorrow, tomorrow better, happy, happy. Said, look at that, that’s wonderful. He said, that’s my spelling, I can’t even spell.

1:12:03 And he was so invested in being stupid, and my father was trying to show him he was gifted, and every time he praised him he rejected it. And I see that with clients, I say, oh gosh, I loved that movie. They went, oh, it was terrible, didn’t you notice the leading lady was misguided? Like, no. Didn’t you notice that it was filmed in Normandy and it was supposed to be Dorset?

1:12:24 No. I was dreadful, I don’t know how I got an Oscar for that, I think they had very poor submissions that year. And they’re always depressed because they let in criticism and they reject praise, and I have to make them go, okay, this is really easy, you’re going to let in praise and reject criticism. You’re going to, when I say love your movie, you’re going to go, thank you, I loved making it, wasn’t it amazing? I couldn’t say that.

1:12:48 Of course you could, it’s just repetition, the mind learns by repetition, and they always go, wow, I wish someone told me 30 years ago all I had to say was, I love my job, I make great movies, aren’t they amazing, instead of saying, well, I’m not as good as that director, or, oh, he’s so much better than me. And you can’t compare yourself because you’re unique, but so many people in that business are in the constant comparing, always diminishing themselves and reflecting praise. So if you want to be happy, it’s very simple: praise yourself a lot, don’t let in criticism unless it’s super constructive, because that will change your life forever, and it really is that simple.

1:13:33 And does that carry over to your relationship with pleasure and pain? Is it a similar thing, that we kind of are always seeking the pleasure and avoiding the pain? I mean, actually we’re not, we’re hardwired to look for the pain. So if you were a caveman and you wandered out of your heart, you know, I’ve been to Africa and wandered along and you’re trained to look for snakes. You know, when I was in Australia and I would walk from my house to the pool, you have to walk like that so the snakes hear you and scuttle, or you don’t run out in your bare feet at night go, I think I’ll go and have a midnight swim.

1:14:05 You look out for snakes. You know, if I was walking home late at night, I walk on the other side of the traffic and I’m very alert, was there some loony walking behind me? Because looking for the danger actually keeps you safe, so we are wired actually to look for what could go wrong. That’s why we put on seat belts, it’s why we put on a seat belt in the aeroplane. I mean, I was sleeping and playing, then I thought, oh, I should really wake up, put my seatbelt on because I could hit turbulence, and I was half asleep, I couldn’t be bothered, I thought, no, don’t you see, you have to do this because you’ve got to be safe.

1:14:39 But that doesn’t mean that you should be negative all the time, but weirdly, being negative is how we survive. So when I’m in Africa you look for lion tracks, you look for lion droppings, the tracker will tell you how fresh they are, then you know how near the lion is, and then you’re safe. So it’s wired into our DNA to be more negative than positive, but you should only be negative for a little while and then you should be positive. Yet there’s a lion track, but it’s an old one and I’m making lots of noise and I’m with people.

1:15:10 So we think we should be positive and beat ourselves up for not being positive, when the truth is you survive by being negative, but now you don’t need that. You know, life is easy, we don’t die of the stuff we used to die of, we live in a wonderful world, but seminars are negative. I’m also wired to run away from anything unfamiliar, run away from a sight, a sound, and now we run away from our inbox, we run away from our emails, we run away from chores, when actually if you could just stay and do it, you would feel extraordinary.

1:15:44 And this same self-talk can also make us younger as well? Absolutely. Young, you know, aging is very much an expectation you turn into. And if you go to countries like Japan and see people of 90 doing tai chi on the streets, I was in the Blue Zone of Sardinia where all the people there walk up hills every day, cook their own food, are very involved in their community, still have active sex life, and there are certain Blue Zones where people age incredibly well, they’re still working at 90, still cooking their own meals, and people who age well leave clues.

1:16:21 And then you go to the others, and someone in an old people’s home in front of the TV with no family, just waiting to die and flicking through the channels. So if you want to age well, you must never go, I’m too old for that, at my time of life I shouldn’t be doing that anymore. And you know, I would never, you know, as a parent you would never go, oh, my kid’s cranky because they’re getting older, they’re cranky, they haven’t had enough sleep. With ourselves, you start to go, I’m tired, I’m getting old now, or, at my time of life, and if you start to describe that, you become it, because the rule of the mind is you turn into your expectations.

1:17:02 And so someone like Goldie Hawn, you could put money on her daughter aging amazingly well, because that’s her template, a young, youthful, giggly, girly mother who’s still like that at 70. If you have a mother who starts to say, oh, it’s all downhill now, and I’m old now, and I’ve got gray hairs, and I can’t possibly go out in that because I’m, I look ridiculous. You know, if you roll a skate with your kids at 40 or 50 and still do girly things, that will keep you girly, and actually very girly people like Sally Field and Goldie Hawn, who have the giggle, and someone like George Burns, I know he’s been dead a long time, but when they have comedians, for instance, on the whole the funny ones like Norman Wisdom, if they have that youthful persona they will live a long time.

1:17:52 But a lot of them, actually it’s an act, when they go home they’re very, very cranky. I find a lot of comedians very cranky. Yeah. But if you play a young part, I mean, if you look at Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who still are on stage doing something very youthful, I mean, they don’t look young in the face, but they’re young. I mean, they were still performing at 75, because when you do something young, your mind believes you’re young.

1:18:19 And if you want to age well, keep having sex a lot, because that’s a young person’s, um, recreation, it’s there to procreate, and your mind will believe you must be young if you’re still doing that. And jump on a trampoline, play young music, do young stuff, because you have the age on your birth certificate, which is so irrelevant, then you have the age of your organs, which changes on your chronological age, and you have the age that you feel, and the age you feel will affect the age of your organs. So people who like people who are musicians who compose, or painters, will actually live a lot longer, but you can actually slow down aging just by thinking young thoughts, and people who age well do that quite naturally all the time.

1:19:11 Yeah, I’ve met people with, uh, varying, uh, technical agents. Yeah. You know, 30-year-olds that act like 60-year-olds and vice versa, and 90-year-olds like the Queen who act like 20-year-olds. And, yeah, it’s like June Whitfield who died recently, he was the mother in Ab Fab who was always laughing and very girly and, well, you don’t have to be a girl, you can be youthful. But if you want to age well, think young thoughts and do something called neurobics, which means the mind loves new.

1:19:40 You know, I’ve read an expression, so when hope dies, old age runs to meet you, and many people when they retire they just give up, but the mind loves newness. Neuroplasticity means that you can get the mind to change. So when you clean your teeth, use the other hand, and just lift your foot off the floor for a moment, because it forces your brain neurons to re-fire. You know, you’ll find that you always, if reach for something with this hand, and always lead to go upstairs with this leg, unless you’re left-handed, and switch legs, just do something different, because it’s so good for the brain.

1:20:18 I mean, when my mother used to love doing crosswords, and I’ve got to do them on the iPad, and that was a whole new thing for her brain, I got her on Skype and talking to her grandchildren on Zoom, and that was really good for the brain. If you keep doing the same old same old, the brain doesn’t like that, but it does love newness, and it’s kind of easy in our world of constant newness to do that. And what’s a day in your life like? What is that, what is it, a daily practice for Marisa?

1:20:48 What’s something that’s kind of non-negotiable for you? I would say actually being grateful. It sounds very Pollyanna, but I believe that being grateful sets you up all the time for an amazing day, and occasionally my husband will say, I go, look, you know, we have a life that other people would just dream of, we’re complaining because the airline food, they’ve missed your vegetarian meal, or the stewardess isn’t very, um, hospitable. But I think it’s, I wake up every day and the first thing I can do is, I love my life, I love my sheets, I love my shower gel, I love my husband, I love my daughter, I love my career.

1:21:28 And if you start your day like that, being real, you know, the first cup of tea or coffee, don’t just drink it, oh my god, this is sensational. And if you say that, you actually hardwire your mind to always find pleasure and magnify it. This coffee is sensational. You know, I love having really nice shower gels, like, oh god, I love the smell of grapefruit, it’s amazing. And then if little things can make you happy, then big things, it’s like, amazing.

1:21:58 And even when something goes wrong, it’s good to think, what would I have given 10 years ago for this problem? My publisher was writing a book and they said, actually, we’re going to bring the publishing date forward by a whole month. I’m like, a whole month? I’m already doing 12-hour days to get this finished. He used to go, oh my god, this is hell, or to think, wow, what would I have given 10 years ago to have someone say, we’re publishing your book, it’s a huge advance, we’re so excited, we want to bring it forward?

1:22:24 So it’s good to stop and think, what would I have given for this problem? And who would love to have this problem? My kids keeping me up all night, people would love to have your problem. My husband leaves his underpants on the floor, and you know, I was just on a boat with my husband and he always left the top of the toothpaste open, it was always drip into my makeup bag, and I could complain or just put the lid back on. Yeah, but I’m so lucky to have a great husband who’s taking me on this cruise, who else would love the problem of their husband leaving the tube of their toothpaste off?

1:22:57 And when you teach yourself to do that, you always look at what’s good in your life, and then the great thing is your life always feels good. Just a little tiny bit of training. See, my favorite thing is little teeny weeny things that have massive, massive effects. So I don’t like the, you know, let’s write out a hundred goals, read five books a week. If you’ve got a job and a child or a homeowner, you’ve got enough to do.

1:23:24 So I always want to show people little things that make your life a masterpiece, and being grateful really works, looking at what you’re given for that problem really works, realizing who else would like that problem really works, and making sure the words and the pictures are positive really, really works. That’s very powerful stuff. Yeah, very powerful. It’s so easy too, and we just spent a long time talking about people that chase the celebrity and the money.

1:23:54 Yeah. Still have a hard time being happy. Yeah. Now we’re saying that anybody can be happy at any point in time with what they have, and they can be happy now. I mean, happiness is an inside job.

1:24:05 You know, we have this belief in the West that one day your happiness is over there and one day you’ll get there, and there’s no destination called happiness, it’s where you are now. And I see people who spent their kid’s life going, I’ll be happy when he’s out of diapers, I’ll be happy when he can feed himself, he’s so happy when they can walk, talk, go to school, and then all of a sudden that little cute, gorgeous, squidgy thing is 18, or, and you realize you wished away their life. I’ll be happy when I finish this book, I’ll be happy when I’ve gone, and I’ll be happy when I’ve lost five pounds.

1:24:37 And I see so many women who spend all of their beautiful years fretting about five pounds, just make the slightest of your five pounds or 15 pounds overweight. You know, you have to be happy now, because if you wait to go to happiness, you can’t go there, because there is nowhere to go called happiness, it’s where, it’s the journey you’re on. Yeah. What was the best day of your life and the worst day? Okay, so the best day of my life I think was when I had my baby, because I was told I could never have children.

1:25:11 You manifested that with your mouth. Yeah, I did. I remember my doctor telling me, you know, you’ll never be able to have children. I remember saying, um, you have to stop, I’m not going to let this in. I actually said to him, don’t say another word, because I’m not even going to let that permeate my brain, I know I’ll have children.

1:25:27 And then when I was having my baby they told me everything would be wrong with her, and they got me so freaked out with all the, I remember, I remember coming home and my builder Big, he called me and I sat herself and he came over in his van, said, are you okay? And I told my doctors, and he said, oh, don’t believe all that, that’s not true. And actually I had a perfect baby. And then I realized then how damaging it is to let someone else take control of your health.

1:25:53 You know, you have to take control of your health, it’s really up to you, you have to participate in it. If someone says you’re going to lose that baby, or, you know, I always remember one of my clients calling me, I’d, she had IVF and I was in Ireland, she called me and she said, they’ve told me the embryo is no good and I shouldn’t have it put in. And what do you think I said? You have the embryo put in, and you talk and you tell it to stay. And I still see her, she’s now got four sons.

1:26:19 Excuse me, I just need to, um, do that, perhaps. So you have to play an active role in your own health and recovery. Yeah. So my client who was told not that it was a waste of her money to have this embryo put in, and called me and said, what do you think I said? You have the embryo, and you, it’s a, it’s a person, you talk to and tell it to grow.

1:26:40 And that was the first of her four IVF sons, and he’s so gorgeous, and I often say, isn’t that funny, the one they told you not to put in is this smart, gorgeous, amazing boy. And she went on to have three more. And so the best day of my life was when I had my baby, but second best is when other people sent me pictures, here’s the baby I was told I could never have. The worst day of my life, you know, it’s really weird, because when you are happy it’s very hard to think about what was worse, because you can always put a spin on it.

1:27:12 I mean, my mother dying unexpectedly, it was terrible because I really wished I’d had longer to talk to, when my father died not long afterwards, but I got to spend time with him and I knew he was going and got to talk, and it’s a completely different experience. I mean, I was diagnosed with cancer twice, that was pretty, wow, a bad day, but the weird thing is that when you make yourself positive, first is what you do and then it becomes who you are. My first thought was, oh my god, I’ve got cancer, and then my husband and I holding hands all night thinking, oh my god, this is like awful, because I just was so sure that would never happen to me, and I really felt bulletproof.

1:27:54 But then within 48 hours I found myself singing this little song, you know that song, I Feel Pretty and Witty, again, I was singing, the cancer it’s going away and I feel healthy and happy and great. So I was using the songs, and I didn’t do that, it kind of just came out to me, because if you spend long enough making yourself positive, it just bounces back, and it was fine actually, it was just a blip. And I remember thinking, well, actually, what stroke of luck that is to have womb cancer, because I don’t need a womb.

1:28:24 So even then it’s everything, oh my god, I got cancer, I thought, oh well, I don’t need a womb, it’s done a great job, and I could let that go. So probably sounds a bit glib and a bit nauseating, but once you first it’s what you do, then it’s who you are, then even in adversity you always bounce back, you always come back. And people think that positive people never have anything bad happen, they do. I mean, I know Sheryl Crow had cancer, Kylie Minogue had cancer, um, but if you have cancer you must participate, you can’t say to the doctor, here’s my sick body, what are you going to do?

1:29:03 You have to turn up and go, here’s my body, a little bit of it is sick, I’m going to get better. But for me the hardest part of that was people would say to me, but I thought you were so healthy, how could you get that? Like that was my fault, and they go, you, but you, you eat healthy food, you’re this therapist, and weirdly enough I began to feel this sense of shame that I had it, because I shouldn’t have got it because I was so healthy. And I had to turn there and think, well, you know what, maybe I can help lots of other people, because when I had it my daughter said, wow, you know, you’ve become the poster girl in this hospital because you just got out of bed and went home the very same day and went off on stage a week later and was in Costa Rica a month later, I just carried on.

1:29:48 And so I liked that I could actually help people, but I think the worst day is always when you blame yourself and think, oh my god, I did this to me. And I think if you have any illness, it’s very good if a therapist goes back and looks at the role, function, purpose, when they say, well, you gave that to yourself, I don’t think that helps people who are, you know, trying to get better to feel blame, that’s, there’s no point in that. It all comes back to the words you put in your head.

1:30:20 Yeah, all comes back to the words. I remember thinking, well, I could live without cancer but cancer couldn’t live without me, so I’ve already won, because I can live without it but if I’m not here it’s not here. So I figured that that was a good, um, the odds were good, because I could survive without it but it couldn’t survive without me, so I decided I already won, and then I put that into practice. What would we be surprised to learn about Marisa Peer, something you do that we wouldn’t expect?

1:30:51 People always think I’ve always been confident and positive. I thought I was the most hideously ugly kid, I thought I was an absolute freak, I thought I was ugly, I thought I was stupid. I was going to be a nanny because I thought that’s all I could ever offer the world, and not even another, oh my god, you’re so different, what have you done? I’m like, well, it’s not what you do, it’s who you are. I met my very first boyfriend some years ago, he went, you’re not the same, what did you do?

1:31:17 I said, well, it’s who you become. You have to believe in yourself and be your own cheerleader, and you have to think of what would I want other people to tell me and tell myself. When I wrote my first book with no experience, I’d always say, this book is amazing and this book is so great and everyone’s going to love this book. And that sounds very arrogant, but I had to do that in order to send it to a publisher who did love it, and when I got it back, a reading, I was thinking, oh, actually it’s not as good as I thought it was, you can definitely see in the first three chapters I’ve never written before.

1:31:51 But if I’d spent that time writing, oh my god, it’s terrible, in sandwich, I couldn’t have sent it out. So I’m a great believer that you should lie, cheat and steal: lie to your mind, cheat fear, and steal back the amazing confidence you were born with. When I wrote my first book, I lied to my mind every day, I cheated the fear of, oh my god, what if nobody likes it, and I stole back the confidence I came onto the planet with and got a great book deal. But some people are surprised that I was so insecure as a kid, thought I was so ugly and gawky.

1:32:26 But I’m glad now, because you know, I can relate to other people who feel like that and say, but you know, your life’s like a clock, that was the first 10 minutes of my clock. I thought it was hideous, freaky, because I was so tall, I had the thinnest legs, my dad was my teacher, boys, are your dads, and they’d say some swear word, and I was 11 and they were 18, and that was really hard to be at the school where your dad is your principal and the cool boys hate him and then they say awful things about him to you. But I realized later that you can’t make the first 10 minutes of your life your life, that was my clock, and there were 50 more minutes to go that didn’t have to be affected by that first 10.

1:33:12 What scares you? Not a great deal. I think all of my clients, their greatest fear is not dying, their fear is dying having not made an impact, having dying not left a legacy, and because I once thought I might, and thought, oh well, I better crack on and get I Am Enough out just in case. So when I had that diagnosis, and I didn’t even say the word anymore because it’s good not to keep going there, it made me think, don’t die with your music inside you, Wayne Dyer said that, do not die with your music inside you.

1:33:48 I thought, I must get out my book and my program, I must get I Am Enough, I must know the one, I’m not here, but also say, oh, I’m enough. You know, you don’t need antidepressants, you don’t need asthma medication, you need I Am Enough. One of my, you know, I teach, I do one of my grads this week, so I’ve just had this most amazing session, and came this 11-year-old kid with chronic asthma using that inhaler every hour, and in the RTT he remember being in his mother’s womb, standing outside the store as the father got held up at gunpoint, and he picked up the mother’s fear, and in the session he cried and cried and cried, but he’s never had asthma since.

1:34:30 And so I loved that she did that, I didn’t, I taught her the technique, and my technique is something you can replicate, and we now teach people all over the world how to do RTT: you investigate what happened, you interrupt the beliefs, and then you reinstall and recode, like software, new beliefs. So because I know that when I’m not here my work will always be here, it’s a bit like, you know, when you hear Frank Sinatra, his energy will always be in those songs. Not comparing myself to Frank, but I mean, I want to live for a long time, I want to live into my hundreds, so I suppose it would scare me not to do that, but I’d always know that my life had a purpose and meaning, and I could know that that would go on, and that’s very reassuring.

1:35:19 I think Frank didn’t think he was enough, that’s what I heard by his agents, he was always unhappy. Yeah. And he picked, you know, Rita Hayworth, and he and she said this great quote, Frank, Frank and I are great in bed, it all goes wrong on the walk to the, B day afterwards, but he never felt enough, he always felt short. And you know, it is so many stars, have you had any idea how these big, huge movie stars with talent and beauty and a gift feel inadequate?

1:35:50 You would be shocked, or maybe you wouldn’t be shocked, because Amy based, or I mean her album was called Frank. You know, her dad wasn’t really around, so she went in his cab with him and listened to his music and wrote that kind of music to please him, not to please her. She wanted her dad’s approval. You know, Roald Dahl’s daughters are exactly so, I’m always wanting his approval. Enid Blyton’s kids said she was so busy doing work for other people’s kids she never had time for them.

1:36:22 What keeps you awake at night? And nothing keeps me awake, because I’m very good at hypnosis and I can send myself to sleep like that, so I can always go to sleep no matter where I am. I just roll up my eyes, go into the alpha brain wave, and sleep comes to me. Really? How do you do that?

1:36:41 Well, here’s a mistake, when they say, I need to go to sleep, I’ve got to go to sleep. It’s like, where are you going? I’ve got to go to sleep, I must fall asleep. Where are you falling? And, um, I was with my husband in San Diego, actually at the TNC conference, a couple of years ago, and his business partner said, oh god, I’m flying back to LA dreading it, I can never go to sleep on a plane.

1:37:05 I’m like, that’s why no one goes anywhere. I said, get in your seat, roll up your eyes like that, keep them up, close the lids, because that’s the eye position when you sleep, your eyeballs roll up. And you’ll see with your little youngest little baby, when they’re about to go to sleep they start to think, oh thank god, you know, they’re going to sleep. So if you want sleep to descend upon you, roll up your eyes, keep them up, close on the lids, and then say, sleep is coming to me, it’s descending upon me, it’s dropping down on me like a mist.

1:37:37 You see, you cannot be watching TV and suddenly you’re asleep. You think, oh god, I don’t know how that happened, I just fell asleep, but you didn’t fall asleep, sleep came upon you even though you wanted to stay awake and watch that movie. So if you say, sleep is coming to me, it’s descending, when you’re staying with me for eight hours or seven hours, and if you say to your mind, right, mind, let’s be very clear, I insist on sleeping, because your mind thinks, are you going to bed now?

1:38:10 What a great time to go through everything you did wrong in the day, what a great time to dissect all the stuff you could or would or should have did, and your mind thinks it’s doing you a favor, processing stuff. But if you say, your mind’s job is to do what it thinks you want, and your job, very important job, is to make sure there’s no room at all for misunderstanding or misinterpretation, if you say to your mind, night time is for sleeping, I’ll process in the morning, as I said to my little girl when she was a baby, tiny, I’d stroke her head and go, night time is for sleeping, when it’s dark we sleep, and she slept through the night like a dream because I never stressed, I just kept telling her, even in the womb, you sleep at night when it’s dark, and she did, she loved it.

1:38:58 But if you give yourself these crazy suggestions, I need to go to sleep, I can’t find the money, I mean, I have so many clients with money blocks, I can’t find the money, I don’t know where to get, like, nobody finds money, you monetize a skill. If you have a skill you can monetize it, whatever that skill is. But if you keep saying, I don’t know where to find the money, I don’t know where the money’s coming from, I can’t get the money, I can’t keep the money, you’re giving your mind a money block.

1:39:28 I can’t find money. Well, very few of us are successful by finding money, people who are successful have a skill that they monetize, sometimes they monetize insane skills, but you know, who’d have thought you’d buy, pay for ringtones or water years ago, that would have seemed, it’s just the craziest thing, but you can monetize any skill, because people will buy something that they think they want, and we want stuff that makes us feel good, and if you can feel good without the stuff, you’ve absolutely cracked it. But even the way you talk to yourself, I can’t find the money, and good people shouldn’t chase money, it’s greedy to ask for money, and if I have more someone else will have less, and that’s not true, there’s enough money in the world for everyone, it’s not very fairly distributed, but you having more doesn’t mean someone will have less, and if you have a lot more, then you’ll be able to share that with people like, you know, we, I have a great career and we give tons of stuff away on my website, marisapeer.com.

1:40:34 We’re always giving away at least five programs: wealth, health, love. And of course we pay for those, we pay for them, we made, and we give them away, but if I wasn’t successful I couldn’t give stuff away. So the belief that spiritual people shouldn’t charge, you know, good people, you know, you sell your soul to the devil, and that’s not true, and people say the Bible said the pursuit of money is evil. It didn’t say that at all, because pursuing money, if you can do good stuff with it, is actually very good.

1:41:07 It all comes down to language, everything comes down to lessons. I love that. So sleep is coming upon me, sleep is descending upon me like a blanket, like a mist, like a blanket, like a mist, and it’s going to stay with me. But even that word, don’t try it, because the word trying implies failure, just I’m doing that every night, and it will only work, right, it’s going to descend upon me. I love that.

1:41:30 Uh, Marisa, I always ask a few questions at the end. I want to ask you, if you could pick up the phone right now and call up the 20-year-old Marisa, give that young woman a bit of advice after everything you know now, what would you tell her? I would say to her, your life’s going to be amazing, and you couldn’t even imagine the success, and not being the favorite kid is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you, because it will make you ambitious and determined to show the world that you’re something.

1:41:58 You know, sometimes when you have a really blessed childhood, I remember Nigella Lawson saying, I’ve seen people ruined by a perfect childhood because nothing is ever as good again, whereas when it’s not good, you have that drive to go out and show the world that you’re something. So I say to that 20-year-old, you can’t even imagine the success in front of you. I’d definitely tell her she was enough, I’d definitely tell her she was lovable. I’d say, you’re lovable, you’re gorgeous, and what your grandmother saw in you is real.

1:42:28 On that same note, best advice you’ve ever received, could be from a parent or a colleague or, I don’t know, a client or Jane Fonda, I’ve ever received. Don’t let in destructive criticism, maybe. Or no, actually my best advice, I think, would be my own advice actually, which is, do not give someone else your happiness, don’t farm out, you know, I need to be happy, you need to be wealthy, you need to be loved, do it yourself. If you can do it yourself, you see, if I said to you, look, oh, can I have these needs, can you make them better, could you make me feel good enough, or could you make me feel interesting or lovable or attractive?

1:43:09 You go, sure. But then you go, actually, I don’t want to do that anymore, I found someone better than you. So if you give someone your needs, because we all have unmet needs as children, but if you give them to someone else they can fix them, but they can also start, because, oh, my husband made me feel so lovable and then he dumped me because I’m 20 years younger, and now I feel old and unattractive, or my wife made me feel so amazing, then she left me and now I feel worthless.

1:43:33 But when you can meet your need, it’s an amazing thing. It’s when you can fall in love with yourself and be your own cheerleader and think, what do I most need to hear? I need to hear, I’m proud of myself, I need to hear, I’m smart, or, I’m interesting. Then that never goes away, because you’re meeting your own needs. So don’t give other people your needs, some, but meet your owners, like my husband meets my need to feel safe because he goes around and locks the doors, and I like that, I could do it, but if he wasn’t in the house, oh my god, I’m not safe now because he’s not here.

1:44:10 I have locks and alarms, but also a belief that I’m safe. So the minute you give someone else a need, like, you know, one of my clients was saying that she couldn’t be in the house on her own, so when her husband was away she’s going to stay with her mother, who was 80. It’s like, well, how can she make you safe, she’s 80 years old? I mean, it’s the belief that in the house or another person you’re safer, but we’re all a victim of our beliefs. You’re going to have better beliefs, then you’ll have a better life.

1:44:39 I like how you shut down negative conversations even before they start, and then you don’t even use negative words, and you don’t just never, because why would you, right? I mean, negativity is a luxury that you cannot afford, none of us can afford. The price you pay for negativity is, if you knew. Last part of that question to that 20-year-old that’s, uh, watching and listening to us right now, what advice do you give to them?

1:45:32 What’s the one thing they can do? To 20-year- olds now, whatever you most want to hear, don’t give that responsibility for someone else to tell you those words, tell yourself. Say, I’m beautiful, even if you’re a guy, I matter, I’m worth it, I have a gift to share, the word, I’m here for a reason, I’m enough. And maybe there are other words you want to hear, but whatever you want Mom, Dad, grandparents, siblings, some guy, some girl to tell you, tell yourself.

1:46:05 It will actually have way more power, because if someone else goes, oh, you’re so great, I love you, they’ve probably got an agenda, they’re going to ask you for something. You know, like when I’m in LA I noticed this guy came and went, hey, I love what you’re wearing, you just, I think you said, could you give me five closes, and then he came out, so can you buy me a Starbucks? I’m like, oh, this is never-ending now. But he was very clever, he first of all gave me something, a compliment, then he asked me for something and I felt obliged, and he asked me for something else because he realized I would give him the money.

1:46:35 Well, you should give homeless people money up to a point. But when other people tell you stuff there is often an agenda, but when you tell yourself, your mind doesn’t go, what’s your agenda? Because if you say this every day it must be true. So for anyone out there who’s in pain, what is it you most want to hear? What’s the missing bit, the missing words you’ve never got?

1:46:58 Think of what they are and say them every day, and they will sink in like, like, um, Vaseline on chapped lips, they’ll sink in and they’ll heal you. So don’t wait for someone else, do it yourself. So powerful. You know, I know so many people, including myself at certain times and maybe now, that are waiting for that person that to fill that hole and blaming the person that took it away from them, yet they have it at their fingertips, and then they can tell it to themselves and there’s no filter.

1:47:27 And yeah, um, the power of language, I mean, listening to you now, it just reminds me even more how powerful it is that I thought, um, and I’m someone who tries to practice a lot of this self-talk and it works a lot of times, but I still have negative loops going on. But if you do it all the time, I mean, I waited my whole, I always wanted my dad to say he was proud of me, who was a headmaster, and like most headmasters he was so busy with other people’s children he wasn’t really focused on us at all, he was a great guy. And eventually I stopped doing that and I kept saying, I am proud of myself, I am so proud of what I’ve done, and much, much later he wrote me this lovely letter saying, oh my goodness, you know, I keep seeing you on television and have I told you how proud I am?

1:48:14 Have I told you that? I’m telling you now. I mean, I think that’s very lovely, I needed that 30 years ago, don’t even actually need it now because I’ve done it myself, which is not to say I didn’t love that letter, but what was so nice is that the need for him to be proud of me had gone away years ago because I kept saying, I’m proud of me, and then when he said it, it was nice, but I already knew it was true. Yeah, yeah. The book is I’m Enough.

1:48:42 I’m guessing they can get that or find out about it on your website, immersivehere.com, and also find out about RTT. Yeah, well, we have, there’s a website called I’m enough dot com, because as well as that book we have an online program called I’m Enough, it’s an eight-week program. People say, oh my god, that’s changed my entire life. So you can go to I’m enough.com, you can buy the program, or, I think we give the first module away completely free. You can go to rapidtransformationaltherapy.com to find out if you’d like to be a therapist, it’s really an amazing, what if you want to find one in your area, and go to marisapeer.com, and we give away lots and lots of personal development stuff.

1:49:22 Well, thank you for doing what you do, and like I said, I’ve been saying your words to myself for at least a couple years now from when I saw one of your talks on Mindvalley, and so you’re doing incredible work, but now when I say it, it’s going to mean a little more to me, I think, because I’ve seen you, and I hope, I hope everyone that watches this can really take something away and really change that self-talk, because like you said, it would just eliminate so much, so much negativity in the world. Yeah. To kind of propel everybody forward.

1:49:49 Yeah. Um, so thank you so much for your ideas. Do it with your 14-year-old girl because it will really help her be bulletproof. Yeah, I’m in the center. Yeah, and I’m going to really, I’m really watching myself around my sons, like I’m just really being careful to just understand my reactions and not react and empower them, because like you said, by five it’s kind of a lot of it’s set in stone.

1:50:13 Well, when you do it just, don’t, it just say, Daddy was really cranky today and it wasn’t about you, because they understand cranky and mean and falling out with friends because that’s their world, and as long as you own it and they don’t believe it’s their fault, they can, they totally get it, you’ve had a bad day. They don’t get it when they think it’s their fault, so as long as you own it they’ll be fine. Right, okay. Well, to be continued, I’ll let you know how it goes out with the parenting, uh, and I’m excited to hear that you’re, uh, spending more time in LA, so, uh, so um, keep us posted on what you’re doing and I hope you see us again sometime.

1:50:48 I hope so too. Thank you. Thank you so much.