Why Lying to Yourself Could be a Good Thing – Marisa Peer : 892

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Formerly bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. 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. 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. 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 I actually should have you on the show back when you first came out with RTT in 2015, but I don't know why. I think our paths 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.

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 believed he could sort out 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?

What made you get into this in the very, very early days of your career?

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 believed 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 you'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 an 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 reopening 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 Translational 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 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 anaphylptic 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, 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 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 will 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. I actually think it is. Okay. 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, 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 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 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 hundred years because it isn't working. So I feel like we're doing the same thing too. I'm going to point 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 something 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. So it's just that the face to face in the chair every Thursday at 4 o' clock became the model. And now we have so many models. I work with, for instance, I work 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's so ingrained in people.

Well, you know, everything I do that is good, I learned from my clients I had amazing teachers as 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. So 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 can 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. 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 educated enough. And 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. Emine was told, 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. And 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, 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. 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. That's more delusion. 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 hypnotize. 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 ago. Maybe I could have done that. But. 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 wanted 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.

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. As 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 didn'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 insurer, there's an opportunity, I can be grateful and it lets me help more people. But Jesus Christ, it's A lot of work. So there you go. If your goal is to be well known, it comes with a downside.

So, yeah, and a lot of 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 can get the feeling without the thing, you've already won it. 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. And they go, 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. 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 interest. 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 very quickly, because instead of changing the ending, like people say, you know, 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 unreliable, 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 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've 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 director. I love your movies. 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, when you're 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, that's a shame. Luckily I like myself enough so I'm just gonna let that go. But this ability to not let ourself 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 used to 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 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 trying. And they really had this strange belief that if I diminish you, it'll make you work harder. When that's not true. People who get criticized find they are diminished and people who are praised tend to grow. But it's a whole generational thing. And you know, again, we remember what's familiar. If you were praised a lot, you will remember it. But if you were criticized more, then sadly you're going to remember that I've.

Seen a study somewhere or another, and maybe it was just an anecdote, but it said something like a ratio of 8 to 10. Like for every negative thing that you hear, you need to hear 8 to 10 positive things for it to balance out. Just because the body overweights fear and threats.

Yeah.

Have you heard anything like that? And do you believe there is a ratio?

Yeah, it's like with children, children hear no 10 times more than they hear yes. No, no, no, no, don't do that. You can't do that. And so they grow up with this belief that I can't do stuff. You know, even your relationship with money is influenced by how many times your parents say, we can't find the money. Well, nobody finds money. You monetize a skill. And so parents say really weird things to kids. I can't find the money. I don't know where the money's going. The money is slipping through my fingers. And of course, children like sponges, they believe what you say. And many parents will say, well, you have to earn the money, go out and find cans, go out and do a paper round, empty the trash. And then you're teaching your kid, oh, you can earn money doing what you hate and what's demoralizing. And that's super confusing too. And, you know, you're shaping a person. And you need to say to children very early on, my little girl, you know, I was a single parent, I didn't have any money. And my daughter's go, mummy, we're rich. I go, darling, we are, are so wealthy, we're so abundant, we're so rich. I never talked about money. I say, we're wealthy, we've got everything. Because I never wanted her to feel worried about money. At the time, I was really. I had a mortgage I couldn't pay, but I was determined to bring her up, believing that you can have whatever you want if you believe you're worth it and you're prepared to work hard. But I see this weird generation now who believe I can have whatever I want and I shouldn't have to work hard. Surely the universe is going to provide it. I can manifest it. And they don't quite get it that, yeah, you're going to have to work for it too. But the great thing is, if you do what you love, it never feels like work.

Well, how do we draw the line between narcissism and sociopathy? When you say, tell yourself a better lie, I can't tell you the number of people in my life, and especially in the world of business where, where someone comes in and they told themselves a lie. I don't fail. And then you turn around at the end of the year, like, oh, yeah, I didn't notice I was failing all year long and I gave you the wrong information to make myself right. And, oh, I just lost $10 million. But all along the way, I told you I wasn't losing $10 million because I can't lose $10 million because I told myself a better lie. How do I not cross into the dark side?

You have to really separate delusional from a line.

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You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

I think you have to really separate delusional from a lie. So my house got flooded last year and I had the joy of having contractors in who say things like, oh, this will be ready in December. It still wasn't ready in August. Oh, this is going to be done in two weeks. It'd be amazing. It's like, well, now we're four weeks and you haven't even started. I can get a new kitchen put in here for $20,000. Oh, actually, sorry, it's at least 60,000. But you see, these are not lying. These people are deliberately just saying whatever comes into and they, they're deluding you. When people say, I never fail, I know I'm never wrong. Never, ever, ever wrong. Well, of course that's not true. But lying to yourself is somewhat different to lying to other people, saying, hey, I can take your book and I can have it number one in the New York Times. Someone said, really? It's a book on therapy. I can make it number one. I don't actually think you can because. Because I know my book is amazing, but it's a therapy book. It's not fiction. I'm not convinced that I'm going to give you all the money you want because I know that you're lying to me. But you see, I'm talking about lying to yourself. Your friend who says, I never fail. They're actually lying to you. And people will lie to you every day. And you need to be smart enough. You know, it's like people who say, I don't understand. I found this person in the street selling jewelry, said it was solid gold. It was $4. Well, come on. You knew that you were not buying solid gold jewelry for $4. You knew that you weren't getting Chanel number five for two bucks. You knew. You just taken in because they were. That's what con people do. They're very convincing. They lie to you. But my book is about the lies we tell ourselves, which is different, because when your friend said, I never fail, he already knew that wasn't true. And he was trying to convince you that in order to convince himself as opposed to I'm amazing me. They're trying to convince you because they're not convinced. But when we go to the lies we tell ourselves, these are really not about, I can be an NBA. I can be a baseball player or a soccer player. I make $50 million. It's about, I'm not good enough. I don't have anything to offer the world. Who am I? I really want to start my own business, but I'm sure it would fail. Everyone in my family's failed. I really. I know I'm going to get ghosted. Who's going to take me on with a baby? Who's going to take me on? I don't have a degree. It's like people who tell themselves, I'm a rock star. They sing this song from Shrek, hey, I'm a rock star. And they go, yeah, but I'm not really a rock star. I'm living in an apartment with three other guys. I haven't even got a car. So that's. There's a big difference in a Lie and deluding yourself in order to impress someone out else.

Ah, so the question is whether you're doing it to influence and impress others.

Versus yourself or to get business or to get money.

That's a massive point. I really want listeners to get that one. So if you're lying to yourself to improve the way you show up in the world, that's great. But if you want others to support your lie and look at you and tell you you're a rock star, even though you're living in a house with three other guys who don't have a car and you're tormenting them to make them say that, then you've crossed the line and now you're in narcissism sociopathy land. Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

So Marva Collins, by the way, I love her. When she took on kids, she tell every kid, you're a genius, you're a genius. I'm a genius and I teach kids who are geniuses. And she turned out the most extraordinary kids who are living in the most poverty stricken life in downtown Chicago. And she did tell them a lie. And she told them a lie about their potential and indeed hers. But because those children are like little sponges that you can mold and shape, she did them a great favor in telling them that. Imagine saying, well, you're from the project, you're a write off. One of my clients said his teacher said, if you're a car, I'd send you to the knacker's yard. You're rubbish. Imagine starting a child off with that statement. If you're a car, I just have you crushed because you're useless. And yet some people do, they don't just tell themselves lies, they tell the children under their influence lies. And Marva Collins is a great example of what you can do if you tell someone a good lie. You're amazing, you've got a fantastic brain, you're going to do great things in the world.

A couple people on the Upgrade Collective are live audience. It's my mentorship and membership group. They're asking something that I was also about to ask. And there are studies that show that if you tell kids because they're smart, they're less likely to take risks and push themselves because they might fail and therefore prove that they're not smart, which is that you are not enough that they're worried about. They're not being enough. So too much praise versus praising intelligence versus appraising hard work and action might have a negative side effect. What do you think?

After all the years of experience, well, that's actually happened. There are so many parents. You're amazing. You're a genius. You're fantastic. You're the best kid in the world. You're so smart. And the kid goes, I don't have to try. But you see, that's the wrong way to praise a child. What you say to a child is, I love seeing how much you enjoy working. It really pleases me that you apply yourself. You know, if you work hard at something you love, you can be really good at it. So you have to, again, it's tell your kids a better lie. My daughter said, mom, you know, I'm an artist in my soul. I can never do anything else. I said, darling, that's good. But, you know, to be an artist, you got to be really tough about dealing with rejection. You've got to be able to go into galleries and show your work. If you want to be an artist so much, and you should, because you're really talented, but it's not quite enough. You got to be able to show people your portfolio. You've got to be able to be. It's like saying, I want to be an actress, but I couldn't ever be rejected. So you can tell your kids a lie if it's going to develop them, but saying, oh, everyone's going to love you. You're amazing. You don't have to try anything is a huge mistake. And again, this is a lie the parent is telling the child. When you tell a child you're a genius, think, oh, I better turn into that. Which is not a bad thing. But we have to be aware of how we're shaping others, how we shaping us. I might say I can find love easily because I'm a lovable person. That doesn't mean I don't need to treat the person I love with kindness and respect. It doesn't mean that when my husband gets annoyed, hey, I'm lovable. It's all your fault. I mean, I'm great. There's nothing wrong with me. Even though I had to tell myself I was lovable to find love, that doesn't mean I don't have to work on myself. Understand? My husband's also lovable. So if I'm cranky, I have to go and apologize and say I was having a bad day. So I think the fairy story they looked at each other, fell in love, and lived happily ever after is a very silly lie that Walt Disney told everyone. Because a relationship doesn't end when you get married. You have to do the work. But then on the other hand, when people say marriage is hard work, I think that's a lie. It's much better than being all alone if you don't want to be all alone. So pick your lie and look at your lie and make it work for you. I have never believed that marriage is hard work, that raising kids is a nightmare, that being self employed is precarious. I think marriage is wonderful, raising children is a dream. And being self employed has got so much going for it, but I'm choosing it.

In the Upgrade collective, in the work that I do, we have four weasel words like can't and impossible and should. That always are negative lies to yourself. But you mentioned a couple earlier that I think think almost deserve to be added to the list because they're so powerful. It was at the beginning of the interview you talked about suffering and struggling, like, oh, I struggle with this, I suffer with this. Those are also lies because you could just say I have this or I am recovering from this. But choosing to struggle or choosing to suffer instead of just deal with something is actually a choice. And those little changes, whether they're lies or just reframing, whatever you want to call it, it's really powerful. But people can do that and they can do the write it on the mirror or get a tattoo, whatever. But you have, you've made the claim and I find it credible just given your background and all this, that really about three sessions of RTT permanently gets that in there somehow. How does RTT actually work to get those restatements or to get those lies?

Well, it works on three ways. The first way is someone will turn up and go, you know, I can't find love. I can't be successful. I worked with a very interesting trader in the city who said, I'm terrified of exiting the trade too early, too late and exiting too early. And I'm really scared of making trades. And I always with a client, I find each client is fascinating. They're showing me the movie of their life. And so back we went and had a of lot look at his life and history wasn't particularly traumatic, but his parents had two daughters. And then him. They were saying, what's wrong with you? Look at your daughters. They're just combing their Barbie's hair. And there are you smashing your trucks and breaking things. And he couldn't say it for yet. You know, what's wrong with me? It's actually called testosterone. I got a lot of it and I'm like a little puppy need to jump and break things and climb trees because I'm learning to be a man. But he didn't understand that because they're your sisters, they're so good and they don't make a mess and they don't rip things and they don't spill their food. And he didn't have the voice to say because he didn't know. So he grew up with this belief because what's wrong with you is not a question, it's a statement. And the minute we looked at that, which wasn't a big deal and made sense of it went, oh yeah, my parents just had girls and didn't understand what a boy was. And my mother like order and neatness and all girly things and didn't like anything male, including my dad. So now I can see what happened. So the first thing is the insight. Because with insight you can go, oh, I'm walking around going, I'm just messed up. No, I'm not messed up. I'm not even broken. I had some broken experiences that I couldn't make sense of. So the first thing is get the insight and then look at it again with different eyes. Any kid A4 would feel the way I felt. But I'm not for I don't live with these people who didn't understand me. I'm a grown up man, I'm glad I'm a man. And then the final part is to give the person a recording saying, you know, you love being a guy or a girl and you're confident and you can trade because that little boy is not you. And often I make people go back and say that four year old is not me because I don't live with those people. I don't think combing Barbie's hair and being neat and tidy something I want to aspire to. So it's looking at it with a different lens and having the client verbalize it's not me because. And it will never be me because. And you know, everyone has their story. People will say, well I was a two pound baby. My mother was hysterical when I didn't gain weight. If I brought up the milk, she'd scream and cry. And then when I began to eat she'd go, you're such a good boy because you're getting big. And I didn't realize that all of that stress in my first two years of feeding, weighing, feeding, weighing with a hysterical mother formed a belief, you got to eat to be safe. And now this person weighs 600 pounds and they logically know that being that weight is not safe. But the emotion will always overrule logic. Logic can't defeat emotion. Emotion defeats logic. So it's going back to take a look at what happened, make sense of it, and then change it. But use emotion rather than logic.

You talked about playing a movie. So you're sitting with a client and you tell the client, sort of play a movie of whatever.

Play the movie of their life.

But the biggest challenge I see when people are going through 40 years of Zen is like, I don't know why I feel this way. I have no clue. So how would I know? Precipitating experience. I don't even remember half my childhood or whatever people are likely to say. Same stuff you would hear when you're dealing with a client. How do you know what movie to play when you're doing rtt?

The mind always knows. I mean, I use a lot. I use hypnosis to take people back. I don't say, well, why do you think you drink? Why do you think you take drugs? Why do you keep cheating on the only person you've ever loved? Because they don't know. But if you say to the mind, when I count to three, we will go back to why the subconscious mind is always switched on. It is always on record. It knows everything. And if you ask it a question, take me back. After all, when you hear a song, you go, I remember that song from when I was 15. You smell a smell. Oh, I remember that smell from my grandmother's kitchen. We regress back all the time. Sight, sound. Smells like, if I went to Mykonos, I'd remember the restaurant you and I were in and the little streets we walked by. And if I went back to that hotel in Mykonos, everything would come back to me. Because the mind stores everything so specifically for our benefit. So when I say to a client, you're going back to the time and event when something happened to make you feel not enough or not lovable or a compulsive eater. The mind is so brilliant, it will pick exactly the scene. I usually like to pick four or five scenes, and like a detective, I want to lay them out. Go look at those scenes, and let's understand how those scenes then cause this scene. And, you know, it's very simple. I worked with one of my first ever clients was a girl who would lose weight, feel completely vulnerable, gain it back, lose it, gain it back. And she said, I want to be slim, but I feel very scared when I'm slim. And back. She went to a scene where her father would Push the mother around and shake her. And little girl would try and get in between them, and he'd just push her to one side because she was a tiny thing. But then the brother was also very intimidated by this brute of a father. And at school, he would get bullied, and she was the younger sister, but she'd try and stand in between. They'd just say, you're just a girl. You're just a little thing. And push her to one side and said, you know, I long to be big. I said, think, if I was big, if I was big, I could protect my mum. If I was big, I could protect my. If I was big, I could knock my father out. And that was so amazing that without knowing it, she made a request to be big every day of her life. And then as an author, I want to be slim. So the logic is to be slim, but the emotion is big is safe, slim is light. And you can't fight back. You're just a girl. And that was so amazing. To unpick that and unravel it and then allow her to see that strength is not about being big. You can be someone who does karate. You know, some of the tiniest things. A scorpion are not big. A mosquito isn't big, but it's immensely powerful. So it's teaching them to reframe it. Big isn't. Power is not the size of your body. It's your sense of what's right and wrong. And if your father turned up now and started to push your mother around, you probably would pick up the phone and call the police. You still wouldn't get in between them, but you'd have the power you didn't have as a child. So it's like, I can't leave food. Why not? When I was made to finish everything on my plate, when 50 years ago. But I still feel this fear that I must eat everything on my plate long after the event that caused that has gone. Because we have an appetite. This is. I'm full now. I don't want more. But if our parents train that by making us eat everything, not allowed to leave food, then we continue that behavior for no other reason than we learned it. And you can unlearn it really like that.

I want to get into the specifics. And then there's some questions from the collective about what kinds of trauma you can address. So the first step that I'm getting out of this is somehow, you know, a precipitating event. And by the way, guys, this does match my experience in similar modalities where all of a sudden some weird thing pops into your mind you haven't thought of in a long time. Well, it popped in for a reason. Pay attention. And if that's not it, you'll find. Find it. Okay, so that's step one. But how does the actual RTT process work? Like give me step one, step two, step three. Okay, that's in the book.

So step one is to go over with a client. What do you want? What happened? What do you. I want to be a size eight. I want to be £110. Have you ever been 110? No, never. I've always been £400. I say yes, I was £110 until I was 17. What happened then? Well, my first boyfriend left, broke my heart. Then I dated a narcissist and that was a nightmare. So I'm gather clues by asking them questions.

So questioning. So they tell themselves the story and then you ask questions?

Yeah, yeah. So the first step is what I call being a good detective. Laying out stuff, having an inquisitive mind, looking for ear prick up moments. And then that's the first step to get some information. The second step is to go back and have a look at what happened in this person's life to make sense of how they are the way they are. And that's a very easy step. The third step is to lay it out in front of. There we are. Look at these four scenes with little Janie. Her dad died when she was 2, her mother dated all these crazy people and she had to raise all the mothers, three more children. Now she can't get pregnant. She's got unexplained infertility. But it doesn't seem that unexplained when we remember that at 11 she was raising three other babies. Never got to go to sleepovers. And what do you think you told your mind? I hate looking after kids. It's hell raising. It's ruining my life. Interesting. So let's look at what you told yourself during those scenes and see if what you told yourself then could have any link to what you're telling now. Yeah, I really want a baby, but my body won't let me. Well, your body is designed to move you away from whatever you've linked pain to. So now we've got that all worked out. Janie had to raise three other kids, mother was a barfly. Janie had a miserable life. But now she's married to a great guy, can't get pregnant. Now we're going to lay it out But Janie, this is your baby. You raised other people's babies when you're 11. Now you're 35. And having your own baby is totally different. It's having Janie look at that and see that I may make her have a conversation with her mother and say, you know, I really resent you. You had no right to have all those kids and make me raise them. I didn't to want ask for that. It's dealing a lot with unfinished business, unfinished rage, resentment, injustice.

But some of that comes from being an experienced therapist, though. So when you have 11,000 people you've trained to do this, it is kind of a structured questioning technique so that you can rapidly get to the trauma you see.

But it's not what happens, it's how the client feels. It can be a massive trauma or a slight injury, but often children have learned helplessness. I can't fix this. So the first step is to be an investigator. The second step is to really be an interpreter. And the interpreter is looking for what's happened. And then you become an interrupter and you interrupt the belief and you use insight. And the final step is being a coder by installing a new belief in. So some therapies install a new belief and some try to take out an old belief, but you have to do it instead. Sequence, find the old belief, interrupt it, interpret it, get rid of it, have the client realize why it's so redundant. It's like saying, hey, I've got this old BlackBerry phone. I haven't charged it for 10 years, but I'm still trying to make calls on it. But it's redundant, hasn't worked for years. Nobody says, I've got this old Nokia brick, why won't it dial out? No one says, the batteries in my remote are 20 years old, but I'm still pressing it, expecting it to work. So it's having the client understand this is redundant. It made perfect sense when you were 4. And any kid going through your life would have felt what you felt, but you don't need to feel it again. And the last bit, the installing in hypnosis, a better belief system. You have amazing coping skills. You're deeply lovable. Of course you can find love, have a business, go out in the world and talk to people. You know, I worked with somebody who couldn't sing and he wanted to sing, but he couldn't sing at all. And what was so interesting to him is he went back to these. Every scene was the same. He said, shut your mouth. Nobody wants to hear from you shut it. Zip it. Kids should be seen and not heard. That sounds so silly. But hearing that over and over and over again during his formative years meant that was an imprint. When you have a small child, an authority figure who's scaring you, it's an imprint that goes in and it stays. So when he opened his mouth to sing, he was thinking of that voice, nobody wants to hear from you. Shut your mouth. You're not interesting. And the minute that stopped, it was like someone gave him a voice transplant and he could sing. And I've had a few clients, one of them is now in Hamilton, who really said, I want to act, but I can't act because they stop showing off. Nobody wants to look at you. And we don't really understand the damage that happens, not fleetingly, but when something is repeated over and over again. I worked with a girl who was a fireman who said, you know, I'll never let my husband put up a shelf. I will not shave my legs or wear makeup. I'm a militant feminist. That's fine.

I thought you were talking about the firemen saying that. And I was all confused. Okay.

No, she was a firewoman. She was the head of the. The fire department. An amazing woman, very short hair. But she said, you know, I love my job, but my husband is very upset. I'll never wear a dress. I just can't. And it's causing all kinds of tension because I won't let him fix the. I do everything. But she told me a story that her mother was walking down the street in Ireland. She just was a little girl, and her father. Her father said, your husband's not a man. You've given him five daughters and no son. And this last daughter should have been a boy. And your poor husband, he'll never be a man without a son. And of course, this little girl heard it. I remember when I was talking to you in Canada, we're saying how children pick. This little girl heard someone say to her mother, your husband will never be a man because you give him another girl. And he needed a boy. And of course, what she picked up was, oh, I should have been a boy. My dad isn't a man because I'm not a boy. My mother's a failure because I'm not a boy. And from that moment, she began to act and drop dress like a boy. She didn't want to change gender, but she felt this overwhelming pressure to be a boy. But it was causing her a lot of. It wasn't like she loved, caused her A lot of pain. And even her children would say, mum, why are you like dad? And she didn't have the answers. When she had the answer, she said, oh, I can make sense of that. My dad's friend was an idiot. What kind of friend says that to his best friend's wife? He was an idiot. Probably a drunken idiot. But I don't have to give him the power to color my life ever again. So it's getting the story making, but then it's like someone showing the movie of your life, but you have the honor and indeed the joy of giving that movie a different ending. And that's really what it's all about. That was a lie. You should have been a boy. Because she should have been her. And she was the fifth girl. But she accepted that lie as the truth. I should have been a boy. I've ruined everyone's life by being a girl. So I'd be the closest thing to a boy I can be. When the truth is you should have been who you were. The universe wanted to be the fifth girl. And you have a lot to offer the world. But we really buy into these lies when we're children. We don't understand what that lie was all about.

It sounds like there's a through line of. Of weird stuff we pick up as kids that doesn't make sense when you're an adult. But it did make sense when you were a kid. It was there to protect you or there to solve some problem, and you never reexamine that assumption. And it feels like almost every bad thing we do as a species or as individuals is caused by really bad assumptions that we just never challenge because they've been installed before. We had a brain to challenge assumptions. That's why the church will say, you know, give me a child before they're seven or 12 or whatever, and I've got him for life.

Even five even, and I'll give you back the man. Yeah.

And, you know, installing the operating system. So this is what, going in and editing that. Right.

And that's why all churches do not question the priest or the imam or the rabbi. You don't question them because when you question a belief, you really don't believe it. The minute your kid says, how does Father Christmas get down the chimney? How do the reindeers get down that? We haven't got a chimney. How do they get all around the world? You know, when you question a belief, you're not believing it. The problem is that before the age of five, we don't have logic, just emotion. And when children have parents who mess up, the kids don't stop loving the parent. They immediately stop loving themselves. And that's the big problem where I'm not. Enoughness comes from that we don't think my dad's crazy, My mom's an alcoholic. My dad, dad sad and unfulfilled. My dad came over here from Poland. He was a doctor, and all he could do in this country was be a train driver. And he's frustrated. A kid doesn't have the logic. They don't ever stop loving the parent, but they stop loving themselves. They blame themselves thereby into very quickly, I'm not enough because my mom's sad. My dad left, My dad's always angry, My mom's always crying. And a child is dependent on adults and they have to idolize them. So they always blame themselves. And that's where it all goes wrong. The kid says, this must be my fault. Even when a parent dies, they go, yeah, but if my daddy loved me, wouldn't have died. Why didn't he stay? Why would my parents give me up for adoption if they loved me? It's hard for kids to make sense of it. And the only way they can do it is to say, I'm not enough. And that's why this has happened. But I'm going to try to be better, and then it will get better. But it doesn't get better because it was never their fault. But that's where the not enoughness stems from. The children have to idolize their parents. So the only person they can ever blame for this is themselves.

I'm getting it pretty loud and clear that the you are not enough comes in before you would know whether you are.

Yeah.

And it telling yourself that lie, which actually probably is more truthful than not, but at least it's a useful lie because maybe you aren't really enough, but you're at least better. You're. You're better, you're closer to enough than you actually believe you are. So you might as well just estimate on the side you wanted to make an error on. So, listening to the show, I want you guys to think, what are the things that you believe as foundations of your reality that you've never actually tested and that you do not know whether it's true. And what Marissa is teaching us is the same as the throughline. The stuff you'd hear from Louise Hay, the things you'd hear from Brene Brown. Is it true? Is it real? And the reality is that most of what you see in the news is not real. It might be partially real, but it's highly modified. And most of what you picked up when you were a kid isn't probably real, but it might be worthwhile. And if it doesn't serve you, you can totally do it. Ditch it. And I think RTT is a is a good way to do it. It probably requires reading the book in order to really get to the bottom of it. And more importantly, most of the personal work you can do, you can do some of it by yourself. It requires work, but a lot of it, having another human being or even several involved in your evolution, it's necessary. So that's why you go with someone who's trained in RTT or these other modalities, so that they can use both their expertise, but they can also just sit there and be a foil for you. So, Marissa, thank you for writing your book. I love the title, Tell Yourself a Better Lie. It's creative and it's awesome. And thanks for your contribution on helping all these people get results faster, because that's what it's all about.

And thank you so much for inviting me. It's been such a joy. Thank you so much.

If you like today's episode, well, tell yourself a better lie. Hi. You might want to read Marissa's book. It is worth your time if you're dealing with personal development, evolution, trauma, and what we talked about here. Yes, what happened in the womb matters. Yes, your early childhood experience matters. And it isn't obvious when you think about it. It's only obvious when you feel about it. So part of solving that what you believe is a physical problem may be solving a trauma problem. And that's why I wanted Marissa on the show. That's why she showed up for it. Us. I will see you on the next episode of the Human Upgrade. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

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