EPISODE #892 Why Lying to Yourself Could be a Good Thing Marisa Peer

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today is going to be interesting because you're going to learn how to tell yourself a better lie. And on its face, that probably triggers a good number of people. In fact, as a good human being who honors everyone's cowardice, I probably should have put a trigger warning on that ahead of time in case hearing about that made you feel unsafe and that you needed to go get a hug somewhere. I honor your trauma. However, it does not run everyone else's life. So maybe you'll learn something on the show today about how to deal with that so you can interact with the world in a healthier way. Our guest is Marissa Peer, who is well known for her Rapid Transformational Therapy. And Tell Yourself a Better Lie is the name of her new book. And it's based on years as a clinical psychologist and human behavior expert who looked at mental health and created this rtt, or Rapid Transformational Therapy. And what we've all been seeking in the realm of personal development is specifically dealing with trauma, which happens to all of us when we're kids. Traumas can be as little as. I wanted macaroni and I didn't get it. And for some reason that stuck with you. And years later, you have a macaroni fetish. Our bodies and our brains don't always make sense. So we all want to figure out how to deal with whatever the heck is in there, which probably isn't really macaroni, but how do you deal with it so it goes away instead of constantly playing ping pong with it? And it's always coming back. It's always coming back. Well, Marissa knows how to do that. She's treated thousands of patients with really good results in a tiny amount of the time of traditional therapy. We're going to learn about how she does it, what makes it effective, and the science behind it. Because here's the deal. I don't want you to waste your time on anything you do for the rest of your life. And if you're spending 500 hours to deal with the trauma you could have done in five hours, well, the bottom line is you're doing it wrong. So let's minimize suffering and maximize progress while you're sticking around. I'm here to help you with that. And so is Marissa. Marissa, welcome. Good to see you, my friend.

Oh, so nice to see you again too. Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Now, we, I think, first met through the. Through Jack Canfield's group, the Transformational Leadership Council. So we've known each other for quite a while and. And I actually should have had you on the show back when you first came out with RTT in 2015, but I don't know why. I think our past kept crossing, but we never recorded it. So this has been overdue, because you talk with CEOs and superstars and royalty and Olympic athletes, you're kind of dealing at the highest level. What made you get into this in the very, very early days of your career? I mean, you're a master of this, but all masters have to start somewhere.

Yeah, I think my father, actually, my father was a very eminent. You call it a principal, we call it a head teacher. And he always. He could sort out any child super fast by cutting through to what, you know, he never said to a kid, what's wrong with you? He said, what happened to you? So he'd ask very interesting questions of children that were acting out, and he could sort any kid out in no time at all. And he was really quite a guy. And I always wanted to go in the business of helping people, but I was. When I began to train as a therapist, I wasn't actually a clinical psychologist. I'm a psychotherapist, hypnotherapist. But when I became a therapist, I was rather alarmed at the message, because if you turn up at the doctor, or indeed the dentist or at er, they fix you pretty quickly. If you go to the dentist, hey, my tooth's fallen out, go to the chiropractor, my back's out. Go to E and R and say, I've damaged my knee. They tend to offer you some respite immediately. And I didn't understand why therapy, which is also dealing with pain, had to be so long. I never got that. Turn up with your pain every week. We'll keep reacting, opening the wound, and one day you might get better. And that doesn't mean therapists are bad people. They're great people, they want to help. But I thought the method was a little strange, so I just set about speeding it up. Because, after all, whether you've got a chronic headache or a chronic emotional problem, you want to be out of pain as fast as you possibly can. So I began to look at things that really worked with clients in real time and created rtt, Rapid Transformational Therapy. Many therapists said, that's wrong. You shouldn't put the words rapid in front of therapy. I've never understood why not. That's like saying you can't do 10xing your workout we know now that you can work smarter in less time. And so I just wanted to create something that was client based where they could turn up with any pain that might be. I'm in pain because I can't find love. I'm in pain because I've got a phobia of going in an elevator, on an airplane. I'm in pain because I can't merge on the freeway. I got a fear of birds and it's ruining my entire life. I can't stop drinking, smoking, eating donuts and whatever the pain was, I really wanted to fix it fast. And so I created a method that really does that. And I've now trained 11,000 people who are getting amazing results all over the world. So I'm very proud of it.

So 11,000 people in about six years, that's pretty impressive. So it's caught on. Now I'm going to ask something that is really bad. You and I both have lots of people who are therapists as friends and I really value the experience and the knowledge and wisdom and the helping that goes into that. But like you like hurry, can we do this faster? Can we do with magnets or neurofeedback or hypnosis or just anything to not spend an hour plus time to park every single week to work on something that might get better, better in 20 years? Is what you're doing disruptive to the traditional therapy business? I mean, if this is so much faster, are there going to be less therapists? Are they going to have to learn new techniques? What's going to happen?

I don't think it's disruptive. I think there'll always be people who say I want to develop a relationship that people, people do say you have to build up trust with your therapist to get better. I'm not sure that's true. When I was in New York, I went into anaphylactic shock out of the blue, ate some dodgy fish and I was this ambulance turned up, shoved an epipen in my leg and I came to in hospital and then got up and went home. And I never met the person that did that because I was unconscious. I didn't need to have trust with him. So I think when people help us this belief that I need to have years of building up trust in order to express my innermost pain. I can see how some people love that. But I think if someone is good and has credibility, you can trust them straight away. I think when. Why do you have to wait years to trust someone, to open up your heart to Them. It's a bit like, I could say I met someone. We became friends like that, and we shared everything because I just felt a rapport. But I don't think we're going. I think the traditional therapist will stay around. Some people like that, they feel very supported. But other people feel deeply frustrated that four years later. How are you feeling today? Well, the same as I felt last week and indeed last year. And when am I going to get better? I just think, you know, I work with a lot of suicidal teenagers, a lot of lost kids. I call them the lost boys more than girls. And they're in so much pain. They don't have time to wait to get better. They haven't got another day, another week. They certainly haven't got three years to wait to stop wanting to end their life. They need real help straight away. And then I work with people who are so sad and lonely and have a great idea for a business, but haven't got the confidence to pull it off. And, you know, he who hesitates is lost. While you're waiting to write your book or start your company, someone else is going to come along and write that book and start that company. So time is the one thing we don't have excess of. And so I just. I think there'll always be people who like that long method and there'll be people who don't like it. And I think we can definitely accommodate both.

I. I hear you. So there's room for both. You don't think it's disruptive? I actually think it is. I think that the world of talk therapy is dying and it's protected by the idea that it's covered by insurance for some people. But the more rapid forms aren't always covered, but they will be. And I've seen hypnosis, I've seen emdr, I've seen. We've seen rtt, which you've created. We've seen neurofeedback, sometimes electrical stimulation of the brain. All of those appear to work really, really well. Oh, and holotropic breathing and psychedelic therapy. And like all of these things, they're better, but they aren't necessarily the standard. And it's the role of innovators like you and like me and like a lot of the guests on the show, to go out there and wave a flag and say, we can do better for ourselves as a species to do this. But by, by necessity, it does mean that the old way of doing things has less power and influence. By the way, we're seeing the last Vestiges of the pharmaceutical industry. Do it right now in the public, in case you guys are thinking about that side of things. Sorry, we have a better way. And you're not going to be able to do what you've done over the last 100 years because it isn't working. So I feel like we're doing the same thing too. I'm going to coin this term big therapy. Is that too mean?

I don't think so. You know that whole thing about people say, well, face to face therapy is the best way. The only reason we believe that is because when therapy was invented in the 50s, you couldn't do zoom therapy or Skype therapy or face. And because you didn't have the ability, you couldn't even really do therapy down the phone because a lot of people didn't have a phone. And so it's just that the face to face in the chair every Thursday at 4 o' clock became the model. And. And now we have so many models I work with. For instance, I've worked with a lot of police officers. I would never go to a therapist because I don't want to be seen going to a therapist. But I'll turn up in my kitchen on a zoom call and have therapy with you because I feel safe, I feel anonymous. So I think we have to understand that a lot of the stuff we do, we just did it because that's how it originated. It doesn't mean it's the only way, and it doesn't mean it's the only way it works. It means it was the only way when it came into being and now we have better ways.

Well, I'm hopeful that we're going to see a lot of therapists and others who are just in the business of helping people. Study your work and figure out, here's how to do it better. One of the things that runs through your body of knowledge is the idea that emotional and personal problems come from believing that you're not enough. Talk to me about that belief, about why you believe it. It's so ingrained in people.

Well, you know, everything I do that is good, I learned from my clients. I had amazing teachers that I went through training to be a therapist. But my best teachers, by far, my own clients who would turn up and say, well, you know, I eat all these cakes because I feel empty inside. I get all these takeouts to fill the void inside of me. I drink because I'm not enough. I use drugs because I'm not enough. I live in fear of being dumped because I'm not enough. And I noticed that all of my clients would begin to go back to this not enoughness. They never felt good enough, worthy enough, smart enough, interesting enough. And that was okay when I was working. So maybe a school teacher or a baker. But then I started to work with movie stars and billionaires who said, well, you see, I'm not enough. I keep doing more because of this not enough. Then I realized it was an epidemic and I must have worked with hundreds of thousands of addicts. I've never met one in my entire life who ever believed they were enough. And when you think you're not enough, you need more. That could obviously be more alcohol, more drugs, but also more followers on Facebook, more screen time, more shopping, more hoarding. And so many modern day problems, including OCD and hoarding, stem from this feeling. I'm not enough. And I've always wanted to shortcut making people better. So I began to treat the not enoughness. I created all these bracelets, you see them that say I'm not enough. And pens and mugs and T shirts. And I worked with all the suicidal children. And at one time I was working with 15 suicidal children. I asked them all to say I was working with them as a group, you know, if I could do one thing, what would it be? And they all said the same thing, which was kind of heartbreaking. They all said, I just want to belong to someone or something, but I don't feel good enough to have friends. I feel I'm not good enough for my parents. I'm dating this boy who's bound to leave me because I'm not enough. And I was actually fascinated, intrigued, but also horrified that each of these beautiful kids felt not enough. And so I was looking further into that. And I would say every other client I saw would at some degree open up and say, but I'm just not enough. I know my relationship will go wrong. I know nobody will buy my. I know my business will fail. And they had all kinds of reasons, but it all stemmed back to this. I'm not enough. Then I was thinking, but where does this come from? Because very few babies are born not feeling enough. And so I created the I'm enough movement. And people would write to me and say, wow, you know, that's amazing. I've been searching my entire life for what's wrong with me. When you laid it out, I thought, yeah, that's it. Then you think, well, I can change it, because it's not even true. Nobody is not enough. And that's why My new book is called Tell yourself a better Lie. Because our greatest pain is caused by the lies we tell ourselves. I'm not good enough. I'm not interested. I'm not educated enough. And like, we can look at people like, Tony Robbins. Didn't go to university, didn't hold him back. Ed Sheeran was told, ed, come on, you can't be a rock star. You got white skin and red hair and big glasses. Eminem was, you can't be a rapper. You're a white guy with blue eyes. They were all told, no, you're not enough. And I love the ones who fought back. Someone said to my name, Naomi Campbell. Naomi. Black girls don't get on the COVID of Vogue. The door shut, she went shut. I'll kick it open. And I love that about her because she would too. So there are people who took the not enough and said, I'm not letting that in. And they teach us that we have chosen to buy into a lie. And like all lies, you have to uncover. Where did you get this from? Who told it to you? Why are you still believing it? And if you're prepared to tell yourself a lie, I'm not enough, why not tell yourself a better lie? I'm amazingly enough. Because the mind doesn't know or indeed care, but what you tell it, whether it's true or false or good or bad. Like if you say, I always get sinus headaches, I gain weight looking at food, my kid is driving me crazy, that the commute will be the death of me. These are clearly not true. And yet we talk in this kind of language every day. So why not flip it and say I use the commute to listen to great educational audios? My kids are a challenge, but every kid is. In 15 years, I'll miss them terribly. So if you're going to tell yourself a lie, tell yourself a better I'm not enough. I am enough. No one loves me. I'm magnetically lovable. You might say it's not true, but neither is the first statement. So we make our beliefs. They make us. Then we have confirmation bias. We're looking to prove what we believe to be true is true. And you might as well start with something amazing. If that is true, then make better beliefs that will change your life.

It's funny, this idea has been around for a while. You go back to Napoleon Hill, of course, and he would tell you, write your intention, but write it in the present tense as if it's already happened. And look at it three times a day and do that, and I did that when I was 16 and first read the book. And I think it does work. So there is definitely some unconscious self deception going, I am not enough. What about the 4 foot 9 guy with one leg who wants to be an NBA star? He's not enough to be an NBA star physically.

Yeah.

So how do you handle it when it's true?

Well, yes, that is true. It's like saying, can you hypnotize me to be a brain surgeon or to be a 6 foot 2 supermodel? No, but you see, that's more delusion. You know, I wouldn't say, someone, hey, I can hyp. Somebody said to me, can you hypnotize me? A world famous actor at 72? And I said, no, should have come to me 40 years years ago. Maybe I could have done that. But who do you know that's made it at 72? He couldn't think of anyone. So clients will. Somebody said to me once, can you hypnotize me to just live on cucumber for two weeks? I said, of course not. I wouldn't do that if I could because that's so bad for your body. So if someone said, I have one leg and I want to be a basketball, I'd say, let's dream another dream. Maybe you could do something else. And many clients do turn up and say, you know, I'm 55 years old, I want to have a baby. And really, it's time to dream a different dream. Why do you want a baby? I want to make a difference in a child's life. Okay, well, you could sponsor a baby. You could mentor a child. You could. I have an orphanage in Zimbabwe. I fund so many of the children there. It's not the same. I want to be a famous actor. Well, maybe at 72 you could write a script instead. So it isn't that. I tell people, oh, you can't have your dream. I ask them, why do you want the dream? I recently had a girl of 58 said, I want to date a movie star of 25. Why? Then I'll feel worthy. Well, could you feel worthy without dating a Movie star for 68, 25? Aren't you setting yourself up for disappointment? So really, everything we want is because of how it's going to make us feel. And when you can get the feeling, why do you want to be a basketball player with one leg? Because I want the crowd to love me. I want to feel important. I want to feel significant. Okay, I think we could get that somewhere else because everything we Want is to do with. I want to feel significant, I want to feel worthy. I want to feel loved, I want to feel important. And you have every reason to want those things. But there are other ways to get them. So many of my clients were rich and famous, especially the movies. I said if I could have my life again, I take the money, I don't even want the fame. And many of my clients were rock stars. I never want my kid in that business. Are you kidding? I'd like my daughter to be a nurse. I don't want them anywhere near rock and roll. So it's interesting what we think we want. People who've got it say, I don't even want it.

You're making me laugh because when I was maybe 23, I sold the first thing ever sold over the Internet. And no one knew what the Internet was. It was not a thing. Maybe a few people had aol and I was in an entrepreneur magazine as this kid selling this things over this inner whatever. And maybe you could too. And so I had my 15 minutes of fame and it totally didn't make me happy at all. And I just realized it doesn't do anything for me. Like I felt good for a day and then I managed to be as a computer hacker, anonymous. Like I kind of erased my digital identity. And when I started doing what I'm doing now with, you know, influencing future of health and all that kind of stuff, I just realized I had to be a public person. But I never wanted to be a public person. And just like you're saying is a shit show. Like the last thing I would ever wish on someone I liked is all of that. Because it just comes with a huge downside. And if you don't feel good without it, you won't feel good with it anyway. So there's a cost. And sure there's an opportunity. I can be grateful and it lets me help more people. But Jesus Christ, it's a lot of work you go. If your goal is to be well known, it comes with a downside.

So yeah, that's why you have to really, really know what you want. And why do you want it? What do you want? Why do you want it? Everything we want is because of how it's going to make us feel. And if you get the feeling without the thing, you've already won. I want to be a multimillionaire. Why? Well, I could have free time and buy whatever I want. You could probably do that without being a billionaire. And a lot of billionaires I know say their whole Time is running all these different houses and organizations and companies, and then they go, never. I never saw my kids grow up. My wife has left me. I'm onto my fifth wife because I'm never there. So you've got to really think about what you want. And then if you know what you want and you're very clear and you believe you're worth it, it's very likely you can have it.

When did you realize that you were enough?

Oh, not for a long time. You know, I had a father who was a head teacher, so he was always interested in other people's children. After all, he was paid to be, but he wasn't interested in us. And because I had a father whose attention was on everyone else's kids, I never felt worthy enough. I worked very hard to get his attention. But then I learned something. You got to earn love. You got to work for love. You got to run after love and chase love. And that's a very bad idea. So, of course, I became a young girl who felt not enough. I had to find men just like my dad, busy with something else, and try and make them like me. And I realized one day that I was trying to change the ending. I was studying human behavior. One of the things I saw that fascinated me is how our mind is hardwired to return to what it knows over and over again, while avoiding as much as it can what it doesn't know. And it was when I was dating a guy and he was trying to tell me what to eat. And I said, oh, you're like a head teacher. I thought, oh, my God, that's a penny drop. Because my dad was a head teacher, and I'm dating someone like my dad to try and make him give me all the attention my father didn't. And in that moment, it was life changing because I suddenly thought, gosh, I'm trying to change the ending here. Why don't I change the beginning and find someone who's nothing like my dad? And I broke up with him literally overnight. He was very puzzled and then decided, you know what? If my mind. If the mind likes what's familiar, which it does, I can make anything familiar. So I set about deciding I was worthy of love and attention. And I got it very quickly because instead of changing the ending, like people say, you know, my. My dad was absent. I'm going to find an absent guy and make him present. My mom was cold. I'm going to find a cold woman and make her warm. We haven't got time for that. Find someone Warm in the beginning, Find someone available at the start. And when I did that for myself and it was so profound, I thought, wow, I'm really onto something here. This how, you know, how we go back to what's familiar and avoid what is un. Even if it's very bad for us. Everyone in my family drank, so I'm drinking. Everyone in my family never amounts to anything. And it's really important to understand it's just your wiring which you can change at any time at all. You know, if you've had a two year old, as you and I have, you understand they won't eat what they don't know because it's not familiar. And they go, oh, you don't know this food. But they'll have a few bites and we'll make it familiar. And then they like it. So it's a choice. Let's look at your life. If you haven't got what you want, it's because somewhere it's unfamiliar. If you got a lot of what you don't want, that's because that's too familiar. So a lot of people, I find it shows up in the strangest way. People who've never been praised. When you say, I love your book, that goes terrible. Didn't you see the first chapter, all the errors? No, I loved your talk. Oh, I fluffed it. I worked with a very famous movie directors, I love your movies and it was awful. But it won an Oscar. He said, yeah, there were no good nominations that year. Oh, what about the second one? That was even worse. But that got even worse nominations. I said, oh, I understand you, you can't accept praise. And he said, yeah, my whole life I said to my dad, are you proud of me? But for what? For what? Why would I be proud of you? Poncing around, writing movies, that's not work. I work with my hands. I'm a constructor. That's work. He said, my dad withheld praise. I said, that's terr and very sad. You know what's even sadder? You're still doing it and he's dead. So you've just made that. When someone praises you, not only do you reject it because it's unfamiliar, you add in criticism because that's very familiar. And if you could just do one thing to change your life, praise yourself a lot, let praise in, but don't let in criticism unless it's constructive. When someone says I don't like you, just go, oh, that's a shame. Luckily I like myself enough so I'm Just letting that go. But this ability to not let ourselves be praised is terribly sad because nothing boosts your self esteem like praise. And now so many of us work for ourselves, we don't have a boss going, hey, well done, you did a good job. And our praise muscle is atrophying because we don't know how to build it up. You know, I say to my little girl when she said, mummy, do I look nice? What do you think? I think I look wonderful. That's the most important thing, not what I think. I've got a bias. What do you think? So she'd turn up in a dress with ski boots, or she'd turn up with summer shoes and a winter coat. I'd always say, what do you think? I think I look wonderful. I said, well, that's it. And I was always trying to teach her. And it's not easy with kids nowadays because they're so up against social media where they all compare themselves that the most important opinion is your opinion and the most important words are the words you say to yourself, which you're free to change and upgrade at any time.

Why do people forget all the times that their parents said they're proud of them? It's like it just gets erased from their memory.

I think sometimes it's a confirmation bias. If your parents, whatever you hear the most and we forget that our grandparents were had this rule, spare the rod, spoil the child. If you praise, will they get big headed? If I tell you you're good, you might stop.