Marisa Peer - Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

Therapist Marisa Peer says by changing critical self-talk to positive praise, we can change the trajectory of our life.

Show Notes

We create beliefs at such a young age, says hypnotherapist Marisa Peer. Those beliefs become part of our identity, and they often impact our entire life, even affecting our physical reality.

When Marisa invented the five steps of Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT®), it was based on her knowledge that the mind does what it believes you want, based on the words you use. That’s why, she says, if you think better words, you have better outcomes. 

In conversation with Omega digital media director Cali Alpert, Marisa shares how our mind tries to recreate what it knows and go toward what is familiar, but we can change that story. Human beings are wired to change, she says.

This episode is part of Season 4 of Omega's award-winning podcast, Dropping In. Join us for intimate conversations with some of Omega's trailblazing spiritual teachers, thought leaders, and social visionaries, to explore the many ways to awaken the best in the human spirit.

Creators & Guests

Guest

Marisa Peer

Celebrity Hypnotherapist, Rapid Transformational Therapy Founder & Trainer, Speaker, Columnist, Bestselling Author #iamenough #RTTworks #hypnotherapy

What is Dropping In (Audio)?

Join Emmy award-winning producer and Omega director of digital media Cali Alpert for Season 4, as she drops in for intimate conversations with some of Omega's trailblazing spiritual teachers, thought leaders, and social visionaries, to explore ways to awaken the best in the human spirit. New episodes will be posted weekly.

Cali Alpert:
Welcome to Dropping In from Omega Institute, a podcast that explores the many ways to awaken the best in the human spirit. I'm Cali Alpert. Dropping in today, Marisa Peer.
Marisa is a world-renowned therapist, Rapid Transformational Therapy trainer, and best-selling author. She has 30 years of experience helping clients, including rock stars, CEOs and Olympic athletes to better their lives, and shed old, inner narratives, using her simple, rapid, and effective techniques. Her latest best-selling book is, Tell Yourself a Better Lie. She also recently launched Dietless Life, a unique weight management program designed to enable people to lose weight while maintaining a healthy relationship with food.
Welcome, Marisa. Thanks so much for dropping in today, so good to see you.

Marisa Peer:
Thank you for inviting me. It's just lovely to be here.

Cali Alpert:
I'm excited to meet you.

Marisa Peer:
Thank you.

Cali Alpert:
Let's start with the overarching theme of your teachings and your expertise is that the stories we tell ourselves inform the experiences, and the circumstances that we create. So, I'm curious where these stories come from and how this actually works? Where does that correlation get formed?

Marisa Peer:
Very, very early on. If you imagine being a little baby, a baby in the womb, where their needs are met. Babies are born expecting you to love them, no different to having a little tiny puppy or kitten, they bound up, and they expect nothing but love. Very early on in our childhood, certainly, by the time we're past one and even before two, a child begins to think, "Oh, my mom isn't paying attention to me." Because children before the age of five have no logic at all, only feeling.
Their narrative goes like this, "My mommy is not being nice, it must be my fault. My daddy isn't here, it must be my fault. My mom is always sad, it must be my fault." And the saddest thing I've ever seen in all my years of practice, is that when a child doesn't feel loved by the caregiver, that could be mom, dad, foster parents, grandparents. When they don't feel love, they never stop loving their caregiver, they immediately stop loving themselves. They believe they're not worthy of love.
Sadly, once they buy into that, they can carry that with them their entire life, because it's almost a tag for a child. I call it tagging a child. "I don't have a dad. My mom is not here. My dad is always shouting. We don't have money." And the tag is, "I can't fix this. It will always be like this." Then they go through life with the same belief. "I'm not lovable. I can't fix it. It'll always be this way." So the stories we tell ourselves at a very early age, are the ones that stay with us long after they cease to be true, if they ever were true.
They may not have been true, they may have been partly true. But true or not, once we've told ourselves that story, "I'm not lovable. I'm not worthy. I'm not enough, I need to earn love, find love, chase love, work for love, I need to be more, I need to be smarter, better, nicer, cuter, more interesting, to get love." Of course, you and I know that isn't true, but for a child, it feels true in their situation, and so it stays with them.

Cali Alpert:
Why are these themes, and these stories, so enduring? How do they penetrate so readily? Because it does seem like it's universal, isn't it?

Marisa Peer:
Well, first we make a belief, and then the belief turns around to make us, but then we have some good confirmation bias. Let's imagine, I have a story, when I was three a dog jumped up and bit me. Now, I believe that dogs are really scary. When I see a dog, I start to panic because I've made a belief, the dog picks up my panic, and the dog doesn't like me either.
It's like if you hold a baby, you don't like babies, they know that. If you get on a horse, you don't like a horse, they know, and they try to get you off. So, you make the belief for all kinds of reasons, but the belief also makes you. People say, "I'm no good with people. I can't do confrontation, I blush when people look at me, I can't have a relationship, I'm not good under pressure." When you believe that belief, you start to make that belief real, even if you don't like it. Then you look for proof.
And I see that very much in the world of eating. "If I look at a cake, I gain a pound, I'm the kind of person I don't know what full is, I need sugar to feel better, I can't imagine..." Then, when you see that's true because, "Look what happened, I had a cake, and then I had five more cakes, that's who I am." It almost becomes an identity belief.
If you look at a vegan, a vegan has a story, "I don't eat meat, I wouldn't care if I was flying to LA on a 15-hour flight, and all they had was beef. I wouldn't eat it because I don't eat meat." That's a good story, and the confirmation bias, they have a lot of proof. "While I was at a dinner party, all they had was beef. I don't eat it, I was very hungry, but I waited until I went home, or I just managed with the vegetables."
So, there are good stories, and bad. It's the bad ones that cause the problem. "I can't keep a relationship no matter what I do. Every job I have, I get fired. Any person I meet is going to ghost me. I get fat just looking at cookery books." And they sound so crazy. But the thing about the mind is, your mind's job is to make your thoughts true, you might go, "Well, that's not true," but it is. If you think an embarrassing thought, you might go bright red, even if you are at home in your kitchen. Think a sad thought, your eyes fill up with tears. Think about food, and your tummy will rumble. Think about sex, you often feel physically very aroused. There's no one in the room to arouse you, but you are getting aroused, or feeling sad, or embarrassed, or hot, or cold, or nervous, or excited by a thought.

Cali Alpert:
Before we get more deeply into the process of what you do with your clients, is anybody immune? Is anybody exempt from inner stories, and the lies that we tell ourselves?

Marisa Peer:
I was talking to Paul yesterday, who said, "I was loved so much. My parents adored me. I was the only son, my sisters loved me, and I was forever disappointed that I didn't find that adoration in the world. I thought, I've got to earn love, I've got to work for it. I thought I could have a girlfriend, and she'd worship me, too." My father was a bit like that, his mother idolized him. And he became a head teacher, and all the students idolized him. My father didn't understand not being idolized, which is very different to someone who has not been loved at all. So it's strange how even an amazing childhood can often not prepare you for real life. It's better to have that, but I don't really think anyone is exempted.

Cali Alpert:
It's interesting what you said about your father being, you used the word, idolized by his mom.

Marisa Peer:
Absolutely.

Cali Alpert:
You've talked very openly about the fact that his work as a headmaster, and the attention that he gave the kids at school precluded him perhaps from coming home, and having the same reserve of love or attention for you. It sounds you're describing the flip side of the same coin. I just find that's interesting. Is that a correlation that's informed the way that you grew up, or the inner stories that you found in yourself?

Marisa Peer:
Yeah. My dad was a wonderful, wonderful man. People thought he was a saint, and in many ways he was a saint. He was really one of those people who was always championing the underdog. He'd look out for the deprived kids, and he'd make sure that they got some secondhand school uniform, he'd make sure they got lunch, he'd always be looking out for those. But we weren't deprived as far as he knew, so he wasn't looking out for us, and he would've said, he gave us everything, except, the thing that mattered, which was his time. He got up early, went to the school, came home late, because he was so good that he did all his paperwork in his own time. He could spend every day at the school helping children.
He did say to me, "You had a charmed life, an amazing life, you had everything." I said, "I didn't. I didn't have your attention, I didn't have your time." And when I grew up, I was always attracted to men who I didn't have their attention either, because of course that's the pattern. The mind is so interesting, and that it tries to recreate what he already knows, and put a happy ending on. I had a cold absent father, I know I'm going to find a cold absent guy, and make him crazy about me. When really the best thing is, "Oh, don't do that. That's what a waste of time. Go and find a guy who is crazy about you up front. Find one who's already warm, and engaged, and present. Don't go and find one like your dad."
But of course I didn't understand then, I understand now, we recreate what we know, and try to change the ending. Many women will say, "My dad is an alcoholic, I date alcoholics. My mom was cold, and mean, I seem to love cold, mean women." Because we're trying to recreate what we know, and change the ending until we learn, "Actually you know what, I can change the beginning, so much easier."

Cali Alpert:
I've heard you say that before, and I love that. It's so concise, and it makes so much sense. It's very powerful.

Marisa Peer:
Yeah. It's like, "Let me go out, and find someone where I can work for their love, and earn their love, and buy their love, and chase their love." It's like, "There's so many people who give you their love like that, go somewhere else." The problem with the mind is that it really not only does it love what is familiar, it is hardwired, and super coded to go back to what it knows. That's why if we have a two-year-old, they go, "I don't want that yogurt, it's not strawberry. I don't want that bowl, it's the wrong. I only want that spoon, that bowl, that type of cereal. I want the same bedtime story every night." Because familiar makes us safe. If we were living in a fort, we wouldn't go, "I think I'll go, and meet some Native American Indian today. I'm a bit bored with these people." Because same, kept us safe.
Children will only eat what they know at two because that's what kept them alive when they could wander around, and pick berries. So, the very thing that kept us safe, is same, same old, is also the thing that we fight against. Because the mind wants to run towards what it knows while running away from what it does know. It wants to go to what's familiar, and resist what is unfamiliar. But all you have to do then is make great stuff familiar, because that's where the mind keeps going back. Because if you have four sugars in your coffee, and you take it out, it tastes horrible. But a few months later you think, "I can't believe if I drank it like that, it's so disgustingly sweet." That's the thing, when you can dial with yourself, and tell your mind what you want. It just makes life so much easier in every possible way.

Cali Alpert:
I've heard different formulas over the years about changing patterns in the mind, and neuroplasticity, and 28 days, and 30 days. How receptive is the mind to changing even with the examples that you just gave in terms of just redirecting your storyline on a particular day?

Marisa Peer:
The mind is very receptive to change because, let's face it, the day we're born, we start changing. We change every day until the day we are not here anymore, but you have to understand a lot of the mind to understand. If you want your mind to change, you got to understand what runs it. The mind only works in the present tense. It really doesn't future pace saying to a bullied kid, "Next year you're going to a different school." Saying to a depressed person, "This will pass, summer is coming, we're going on holiday." It doesn't mean a thing because we can only live in the moment. People under extreme pain often want to take their life, because they can't even imagine the pain, and that can be emotional pain, can be physical pain. So the mind only works in the present, and you've got to really understand that.
When you are talking about change, you have to say things like, "Now, I'm changing now, I'm lovable now, I'm super smart now, I'm attractive now, I'm abundant now." When you learn to talk yourself out of it, "I could get rejected. I could bomb at this presentation, I could go over the interview and mess it up." But also you could be amazing, so never go down that, let me talk myself out of it, let's talk yourself into it. You can be amazing, this could be the day you have a date, and it's your soulmate, and it's going to change everything. So always use your mind to talk yourself into good stuff, and out of bad stuff, and never do it the other way around. That's not even hard because we talk to ourselves every day, "Oh, my god! This is awful. This is horrible. This is going to go wrong." You might as well say, "This is amazing. This is wonderful. This is fantastic."

Cali Alpert:
Do you remember the first time you noticed an inner narrative in your own mind that perhaps worked against you, and how it manifested?

Marisa Peer:
Yeah. Because my father was my head teacher. My father was a lovely man, I'm not having a pity party for myself at all. But I wouldn't change any of my childhood because it gave me such an insight into feeling different. And I felt different all through my school days because my father was my head teacher, which I wouldn't advise that to any kid. I couldn't, not felt different. But then when I left school, I'd bought into this indifferent, and not the same as other kids. My father is the head teacher, all the teachers expect so much of me. And all the kids at school want to come to my house to see what it's like, or they don't want to come because they don't like my dad. So I felt different, and something I noticed was that I took that with me. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I said, "Well, I'm different. I'm different. I can't connect, I'm different. I'm not enjoying this, I'm different." I think I just go back home, and be in the life I knew. I acted in a way that I would exclude myself from so many things because I had told myself I'm different. I made that belief, it actually made me. Then I was always looking for the confirmation, the proof that I was different. One day I thought, "The truth is..." I was studying human behavior by then, "Our greatest fear is to be different. Every person on the planet has that fear. If I have the fear of being different, actually makes me the same as everyone."

Cali Alpert:
It's a powerful idea, the self-fulfilling prophecy piece.

Marisa Peer:
The self-fulfilling prophecy, "That will make me sick. That's going to go wrong. I'm going to mess this up. I'm going to be late, and everything is going to go wrong. I know this relationship is not going to last, they're going to find it who I am. They're bound to dump me." It's so sad that we do that to ourselves.

Cali Alpert:
So, you created the system Rapid Transformational Therapy, also known as RTT. Can you talk about what it is, how it works?

Marisa Peer:
Yeah. RTT, I know that all therapists are great people, and all they care about really is to help people. But I never understood why therapy is the one healing modality is, "Bring me your pain, and it's going to be a long process. You're going to talk about it for weeks and weeks, maybe years and years, and you might get better, you might not. But you're going to learn to have a relationship with me about trust, and that's going to change everything." Because when I broke my arm in the snow in London, I went to the hospital, I have to trust my doctor. He was there, I believed he would help me, he did. And I thought therapy should be the same. Therapy should say, "Hey, bring me your pain, and I'm going to do the very best I can to move you out of that pain as fast as I can. You have irritable bowel? Well, that's a lot to do with your nervous state, and I can help you change that."
When people come to me, and say, "I've got tension headaches." I say, "Well, we can get rid of the tension headaches." Now, obviously, we're going to do some work to have you manage your emotional state better, but we can stop the migraines today. We can stop the irritable bowel. The panic attacks. Because people going to therapy want one thing, "Can you stop my pain? Can you get me out of pain as fast as you can?" And the answer should be, "Yes, actually I can." Because clients want to be removed from their pain. Most therapists would love to remove clients from their pain, so RTT is a fast way of doing therapy. I'll give you an example, I might work with a client who said was working with someone recently, who had all kinds of illnesses. As I was talking to her, she told me a couple of things, and RTT there was a rather like detectors we're poor prime to look for them.
She said, "Well, when I was seven, my dad died. But he was ill from the day I was born, and he died, and my mom was very poor, and she was doing three jobs, and no one could take care of me. Then, when I was 24, I had three children, my husband left, nobody to take care of me. Then my mom got cancer, and I was taking care of everyone." I said, "I want you to say, I needed to be taken care of because..." Because often the therapists used to say, "And what does that mean? And how did that feel? What did that look like?" But you don't need to do any of that. She just suddenly said, "I got ill because I wanted someone to take care of me." I said, "Of course."
And you didn't think, "Hey, I know. I get sick. What a great idea." You say to your mind the genie, "I need someone to take care of me. I must be taken care of. I want who could take care of me." In the genie goes, "You want to be taken care of? Your wish is my command. How about being ill?" She literally had a carer, and I said, "All of this makes perfect sense, but you're an independent strong woman, you do it all yourself." I sunk a visit, the most amazing, is I went into her room, and she said, "Stop fussing. I don't need any of that, I'm absolutely fine." And all her illness has gone away. Now, she didn't create that. But how interesting that she had a longing, a wish to be cared for. And for the mind, that's not a longing, it's an absolute request, it's a command. Be very careful what you wish for because you might just get it.
So, RTT, the line of questioning, shortcuts, all of that. I don't say to a client, "Oh, when you were five, your dad died." I say, "I want you to say I'm five years old, my dad's died, and I feel..." And they say, "I feel abandoned, and I feel abandoned because obviously he didn't love me, or he would've stayed here." It really shortcut the long-drawn-out because there's the most influential word in the English language when you say, "I feel abandoned because..." "I feel angry, because..." "I feel helpless because..." It's an opener, not a closer. When you say, "Why do you eat so much? I don't know. I'm just a pig." I feel I must be because... " Because I'm empty inside. I'm empty inside because my needs weren't met, my needs weren't met."
The emptiness inside all of us is our unmet needs. The needs that were not met as a child, as I said, "Oh, I see, I eat because I couldn't meet my needs." Yes. "I'm disconnected with my body." Yes. "I can fix that?" Absolutely. By saying, "When I was a kid..." and for every person, this is the same. "I needed to be safe, loved, secure, connected, significant." Every baby has those needs. Then, when you get a bit older, still a child, you only have a couple more. "I need to feel seen, and heard, celebrated someone to be proud of me, someone to have my back." And all our life we have those same needs. And what happens is when we don't feel safe, or connected, or loved, or significant, we often give the need away with someone out there. There's going to have to show up in my life, and meet my need to be safe. "Can you make me feel loved. Can you make me feel I'm [inaudible 00:20:37]?"
As long as you go, "Yes, I found someone. Oh, joy! They're doing it." But of course they have issues too, and then they can't do it anymore. We're back to square one, or we do the other thing, which is, "I'm giving that need up, I'm going to live with my cats in my house, get everything delivered, work from home, I'm not asking for anything." But when you realize that actually you can meet your needs yourself, sure you can make yourself feel safe, and loved, and significant. "Well, how does that even happen?" But you start to say the magic words that I recommend, everyone says every day, "I matter, I'm lovable, I'm enough, I'm significant." RTT just cuts to the chase.

Cali Alpert:
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I'd like to talk a little bit further about the difference between RTT, and finding the shortcut versus traditional therapy, based on what you were mentioning earlier. Because I feel some might say that shortcuts don't exist when you have deep-seated wounds that need to be healed. And that, that process takes time, and you have to gut out all the feelings, and you have to embody the shift versus just switch, and think the shift in your mind. Can you speak a little bit to that? And have you ever had to deal with naysayers, or people that might not realize that this works for them?

Marisa Peer:
People say to me, "The words rapid have no business going in front of the words, therapy. Who are you to turn up and off of that? What kind of carnage do you create?" But the truth is, can you change in 21 days? You can change in 21 seconds. One of my clients, for instance, she got some chickens to keep in her garden to lay eggs, and all of a sudden she could never eat chicken again. She just loved these chickens, had a character at her. One of my clients, who's a farmer's daughter, went on a school trip to an avairy, came out, and that was it. She could never eat meat again.
And often, if you ask people, "Is there any food that made you sick?" "Oh, yes, at school, these uncooked eggs. I drank some whiskey, I can't even look at it now." Because in that moment you're over the toilet going, "I'll never eat oysters again as long as I live. I'll never drink rum again." Then the mind gets it. But there are three ways we change. There's instant change, we all want that. I read a book, a hypnotist said I could never eat sugar again, and I'd never eaten sugar since, it's amazing. We love that. But there's also cumulative change where bit by bit we think, "Oh, I'm not shouting at my kids. I'm so much calmer, I'm sleeping better." Then there's rare change, where we don't even know we've changed. We look back and think, "when did I last have a headache? When did I last get enough? I can't even remember." Because there is a lag time.
But human beings are wired to change, change is easy, you want to have a change. In fact, a lot of us fear change, but the only way you can feel great about your life is to control the direction of change in your life, and indeed make it change. But I was talking to my friend this morning about a friend of ours who's very ill. And somebody said to me recently, "What's it like to be a senior?" I said, "Honestly, I haven't got a clue. They would never use that word. But since you ask, it's an immense privilege. Getting older is a privilege that some people never get." My best friend died when I was 19, she never got to get pregnant, or get married, or have a baby. So I can go, "Oh, I'm getting old, everything's changing, the knees, they've gone a bit creepy." Which they have. Or I could say, "Well, what a joy! I'm going to live until I'm 102, and not everyone gets that privilege."
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change. And that it's so important to understand, one of my favorite expressions is, "The feeling that cannot find his expression in tears, will cause other organs to weep." Which means feel your feelings until they no longer require. But my other one is, "When you don't fix your wounds, you bleed on people that never cut you." So therapy is about fixing your wounds, and that's a good thing. But you can do it faster.
I just wonder if that whole '60s psychoanalysis thing, is just stuck in the '60s, because in the '60s they didn't believe you could possibly do Skype therapy because it wasn't Skype. People didn't even have phones, of course you couldn't do Skype therapy, or Zoom therapy, or FaceTime therapy. But of course in lockdown we all learn we can do therapy on the screen, and guess what? It's actually just as good. So it's exciting that, for all the things that are wrong with social media, there's a lot that's really good about it too. Just because something was, just because once doctors were God, and police officers were Gods, and teachers were Gods, we now know actually they're also floor people.
And don't give your power to anyone else. The power for how you feel, is in your hands, and you have tremendous power to change your dialogue, change your narrative. The biggest thing is, do not make someone else's story, your story. "I should have been a girl, I should have been a boy. I should have been in the family law firm. I should have been cuter, better, nicer." Don't make someone else's story, your story. If you're going to tell yourself a lie, when you say things like, "Oh, my head is killing me. I'm eating like an out of control maniac, I'm a train wreck. My legs are the size of a house." Clearly, that's a lie. But if you are prepared to lie, tell yourself a better lie, because your mind doesn't know, or care what you tell it. You really might as well tell it amazing things, because it really can change your life. I certainly did that to me.

Cali Alpert:
I was going to ask you, are you still in the process of telling yourself better lies? Is there one that's particularly persistent?

Marisa Peer:
All the time. Of course, obviously, it was a while ago now when I had a baby, but I was told I could never get pregnant. It just wasn't possible. I didn't even have periods, and I was told that would never work. Even if you did, you have this genetic issue, and your daughter is going to have the same thing, or your baby. I was told I could never get pregnant. Even if I did, my baby would have a genetic defect, and I couldn't carry it to full term. When I got pregnant, and had a perfect baby, I thought, "Isn't that amazing? Thank God, I didn't listen. Thank God, I had a voice when I'm at the doctor, telling me, that saying, don't let that in, don't give them agency." So often, we give well-meaning people the wrong thing.
In fact, one of my clients said to me, "My dad's got cancer, he's been given 10 months to live, and he's just doing that. Nine months left, eight and a half." I said, "It's terrible. He's just waiting to die. He doesn't do anything, he doesn't plan anything." He says, "I'll never see my granddaughters get married, I'll never watch them grow up." So she brought me in to see him, and I was saying to him, "My very first boyfriend died of cancer, what was so sad is that they wouldn't give him chemo. They said there's no point, it's not going to work for you. They sent him straight to hospice. But your doctor is giving you chemo, and he must believe you're going to live, because there's a lot of money." In England, it's $40,000 to have chemo, and it's all on the national health.
And I didn't lie to him, but it was a lie in a way, because I didn't even know if that's true. But I lie for him, telling him the story, which was the true story. "My first boyfriend wasn't allowed to have chemo. They said it wouldn't work in the center hospice, and he died. But your doctor's giving you, he must believe there's a chance." And that man is still alive today, because I told him a better lie. Just telling yourself something better, you have to understand that there is nothing that will boost your self-esteem like praise. But there is nothing that would diminish it like criticism.
One of the things that will change your life so easily is to praise yourself a lot, and criticize yourself really as little as possible. Because praise builds yourselves, and criticism withers it. Is that a lie saying, "I'm great, I'm amazing"? Muhammad Ali said, "I told myself I was the greatest, and I really wasn't. But I said it, I am the greatest, I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Nobody can defeat me." We all believed it, and he believed it, and he wasn't undefeated at all. But we still see him as the greatest, the king.
That was a great thing because he said it, and the world followed him. But when you say, "I'm the most useless, I'm the most hopeless, I'm the most terrible." That thought is radiating out from you, and energy that people pick up, and feedback. So think better thoughts. We have to turn fear into excitement, nervous into excitement, negativity into positivity. Tell yourself a better lie, because it might just change your life.

Cali Alpert:
I'd like to hear from you the three most popular negative issues, or vices, that you work with your clients. And the three most unusual.

Marisa Peer:
"I'm not enough. Love isn't available to me, whatever I want isn't available." I find that all of my clients, only have three things wrong with them. And I say the three is quite interesting because the first one is, "I'm not enough." And if I'm not enough, I need more cake, more alcohol, more shopping, or drugs, more followers, more attention. Because I'm not enough. The second one is, "What I want isn't available." "I can't find love because I was given up for adoption. I didn't go to college. I'm not smart." So, I want something that's not available to me. The third one is, "I'm different." So, I can't connect.
In my 30 plus years as a therapist, I can put all my clients into three categories. This one, isn't enough. This one, feels what they want isn't available. This one, thinks they're different, so they can't connect. Some of them have all of that, so that would be the three things. What was your second question, again?

Cali Alpert:
Can you name the three most unusual narratives, or lies, you've had clients tell themselves?

Marisa Peer:
Well, I've had a few clients. One of my clients came in and said, "I'm an extraterrestrial being, and because I'm an extraterrestrial being, where I am my planet, we make love to people with our mind. And I've met a human woman, and I don't know how to make love to her." I said, "Well, I think your mind would tell you surely if you've got this mind, and you could make love with your mind, and your mind can do it." He said, "Yeah. That's true, isn't it?" My mind could tell me how to make love with my body.
Occasionally, clients will come in and say, "I was Cleopatra, and Mark Anthony betrayed me, and now I can't find love." And they're so into this thing, and I never say, "That's ridiculous." I go, "Well, that's amazing, but you're not Cleopatra today." Or, "If you think you are reincarnated in the world, then maybe you could pick better. Normally, when you have someone that betrays you, you have an antenna that makes you smarter. Often when you have a betrayal of that extent, it makes you actually more aware of what you don't want, so you can use that."
I have had clients tell me all kinds of amazing things. They were reincarnated, they should have been someone else, that their whole life has been ruined because they had an awful mother. I say, "Listen, if your life was a clock, your childhood was the first 10 minutes, you had an awful mother and absent father. That's a great shame, I'd love to change that. I can't, but I can change the next 50 minutes, because It's never too late to have a happy childhood." Some of the happiest people in the world, Oprah Winfrey, have a miserable childhood. Tony Robbins, had about seven fathers before he became an adult.
We meet people who say, "No, I was given up for adoption." Look at Eminem, he was put in lock because his mother gave him Valium, kids used to pee on him. Look at Ed Sheeran, who at 14 was busking, and sleeping on park benches, and yet they don't go, 'Oh Whoa is Me". They go, "No, I was determined." Eminem always says, that anger about his childhood, he put it into rapping, and it made him amazing. Adele didn't have a father, he wasn't around, but you have a choice. Again, rational as, "It was so bad, didn't have a dad. I was really poor." Well, you know what, I'm free. But it's just the ability to see things in a way that no one else would see.
I remember so much meeting a client once who told me that her parents had tried to terminate her, and when she was older they told her because they figured a family member would tell her. She said, "When they told me, they said, you're such a strong girl, we were so stupid, we decided we didn't want you, and we tried to not have you, but you wouldn't go. And we realized later you are meant to be here." She said, "I always believe that." She is an amazing human rights lawyer because of that belief. "I'm meant to be here, there's something amazing for me to do."
But then I had another client who said, "I found out my parents tried to terminate. That was it for me, the end of the world. How could I be anything?" But just because your parents didn't love you, couldn't love you, wouldn't love you. That doesn't mean you're not lovable. Again, it's the first 10 minutes. It's never too late to find people who love you deeply. We love that word, the comfort of strangers. We may have awful parents and our belief is, "I'm broken." You're not broken. You had a broken childhood. "I'm damaged." No, you are not, but your parenting was damaged. You had floored parenting, broken parenting, or damaged. But that doesn't mean you are damaged. It just means that where you were parented was damaged, you're not broken, but your childhood was broken.
So people who do well always go back, and reframe it as well. Can never be that bad again, your childhood is not the best days of your life. The first bit isn't the best bit, it's often the worst bit. But every stage can be amazing if you decide to look at it differently.

Cali Alpert:
The reframe, that really is such a great takeaway. I love the image of the clock, or the pie of life, and minimize... not minimizing, but giving perspective to the parts that have been difficult.

Marisa Peer:
There's another image you might like. I was talking to a client, Lisa, I said, "Darling, why you think of love like an espresso cup? A little tiny? That's the capacity your parents had to love. But you have an Olympic size swimming pool, but maybe even the ocean, and an espresso cup can't fill the ocean, but the ocean can fill the espresso. Your parent had a very limited ability to love. It wasn't their fault. If they could have done better, they would. But you have an ocean capacity of love. So feel sorry for them, and move on, and don't expect them to fill you up." Every day is a little cup, which I had a little cup. A little cup, and my cup every day I tips them out to my husband, my daughter, my son-in-law, my clients, my friends. But they fill me back up, so my cup is always full.
But many of us are tipping that cup out to someone, a married guy, a narcissistic parent, and they can't fill you up, so you always feel empty. When you give, make sure you receive. Give your love to people who are worthy. Don't miss anything that doesn't miss you. I don't love something, or someone, that isn't willing to love you back. Give and receive. Every time you take a breath, you give and receive. You can't give a breath without taking one. You can't take one without... because, that's the balance. I give a breath, I take one, I take one, I give one. But that's the same balance in life. Give and receive, give to your friends, and let them give to you. But if you are just the giver, or even worse, the taker, you have no balance, and nature really likes balance.

Cali Alpert:
I love that. You make it all sound so simple, so it's a great reminder that perhaps it is.

Marisa Peer:
Well, people say to me, "You make it all sound so easy. It's also Pollyanna." It is simple, the mind isn't complicated, all it's very simple. Your mind does what it believes you want based on the words you use. Your mind is always trying to move you towards what is familiar, and away from unfamiliar. The way you feel is down to the pictures you make, and the words you say to yourself. That's really it. That's 30 years of psychology in a few minutes. "Oh, my mind does what I think I want?" Yes. Don't go, "I don't want to be rejected, I don't want to fail." Remember, to do the opposite. If your mind is moving you towards familiar, make good stuff familiar, praise yourself, believe in yourself, be nice to yourself. If the way you feel is down to the pictures you make in your head, and the words you say, then think better words, and use better pictures. And then your life will change.
I've had the joy of putting my program now into several thousand schools, and recently I was teaching my method to schools all over the world. I got a big triangle on the floor, marked out, and tape, and had these children stand at the first place and said, "Okay, I want you to think of a thought. It's got to be a bad thought. Think of a thought, and put it on the board." The thought was, "People don't like me. I'm not cute, I don't have friends, I'm no good at math." Now, I want you to run to the next point, and put a feeling on the board that comes from thinking that thought these kids were seven, and they got it, "I feel sad, I feel frustrated, I feel helpless, I feel angry." Now, run to the next point, and describe a behavior. One of them goes said, "Well, I cry." And the boys, "I get so angry, I shout at people."
And now run back to the thought, "Now, you're seeing it's not a loop, it's a triangle. Thought, feeling, action, thought, feeling, action." They all got it. It's the thought that starts it all of it, it's not the feeling, or the action. Now, let's change the thought, let's write on the board the opposite. "I've got lots of friends, I'm a smart kid." One of them said, "I like what I see when I look in the mirror." Because she said, "I'm not cute." "I like what I see." Then they ran to the feeling. "What's the feeling? I feel cool. I feel powerful. I feel happy."
Now, ran to the behavior. "I ask the teacher to help me because I'm smart. I invite friends to come for because I've got lots of friends." And they all got it at that age that everything starts with a thought. If everything starts with a thought, and we make our thoughts better, then we are starting at the point where it all begins with a thought. Your life is changed dramatically by thinking better thought as often as you can. People say, but that's so simple, so what? It might be simple, it's also incredibly true.

Cali Alpert:
I'm receiving all this. I am. Thank you for it. Finally, I have three rapid fire questions that I like to ask every guest here on Dropping In. The first one is, I'd like to grant you one wish for our listeners, and our viewers. What would it be?

Marisa Peer:
I would wish that everybody would know with unshakable conviction that they're enough.

Cali Alpert:
What is something that you wish for yourself?

Marisa Peer:
I wish for my RTT to be in so many more schools all over the world. I wish for so many children to get this, but I wish to put myself out of business by getting children so young that they don't need therapy.

Cali Alpert:
What is the most important offering you'd like our viewers, and listeners, to take away from our conversation today?

Marisa Peer:
Don't give anyone else agency over your life. The way you feel is down to the thoughts you think, and the pictures you construct, which you can change at any time. And when you do that, you take control of your life, and it lasts forever.

Cali Alpert:
If people would like to find out more about you, and all of the work you're doing, and the books you're writing, where can they find you?

Marisa Peer:
I'm forever pleased that I've got the name Marisa Peer, because there's only one of me. I'm a bit like Tigger, I'm the only one, so go to marisapeer.com, at marisapeer.com, we have a lot of audios. They're all free, we don't ask for a credit card. We have audios on money blocks, and love blocks, and health blocks, and success, you can take them all. At marisapeer.com is where you can get lots of free stuff, and find it when I'm next teaching, what I'm next doing, if you want to find an RTT therapist is amazing. Even better if you think, "Well, I want to do what you do. I'd love to be a therapist." You don't need any background in psychology to train with us. Go to rtt.com, and you can find out how to train with us. Finally, if you want some I Am Enough products, go to iamenough.com, and join the I Am Enough movement.
And if you really want to see how RTT works, and even do a little bit of it for yourself, of course you can't do the whole thing. But my last book, Tell Yourself A Better Lie on Amazon has many RTT techniques in it, and four different RTT recordings on confidence, and self-esteem, and love blocks, and wealth blocks, and shutting down the inner critic. Each of those costs like $35, but the entire book is only 10. You get $140 value for 10, and I'd love you to buy it because it will help you.
Somebody said to me, "I read that. I cried from beginning to end. I don't know what you did. I haven't touched alcohol since I read that book. I read the cases you write about Ryan the Alcoholic and I thought, Oh my God! That's me. I don't know what you did." He said, "But I've never drunk since. You were right, I am lovely, feedback, and successfully just in reading that book." So, if you want help, I promise you it'll help you, and if it doesn't, I'll personally give you your money back.

Cali Alpert:
Thank you so much, Marisa. It's such a pleasure. Thank you for making the time today. So nice to meet you.

Marisa Peer:
Lovely to meet you, too.

Cali Alpert:
Thanks for dropping in with Omega Institute. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps new listeners find us. If you'd like to see what we look like, watch the video version of Dropping In on Omega's YouTube channel. Dropping In is made possible in part by the support of Omega members. Omega members enjoy a host of beneficial experiences when they donate to help sustain Omega's programming. To learn more, visit eomega.org/membership and check out our many online learning opportunities featuring your favorite teachers, and thought leaders at eomega.org/onlinelearning.
I'm Cali Alpert, producer and host of Dropping In. Our video editor is Grannell Knox. The music and mix are by Scott Mueller. Thanks for dropping in.