This KEEPS 90% Of People From FINDING LOVE (Fix This Today!) | Marisa Peer & Lewis Howes

Love's available to everybody.

What do you think keeps us from finding and creating lasting love then?

The greatest problem in finding and creating lasting love is the obvious one.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes. What was the biggest lie you told yourself in relationships until you found a healthy partnership?

I'm not lovable, so I better work for love. I better pretend I'm amazing or always be at the gym or look a certain way. a certain way, so I can convince everyone that I'm lovable. But in convincing them, it didn't work because I could convince them, but I hadn't convinced myself. So I convinced someone else, I'm so great. But I didn't believe it, which made me act out. And so that's really the oldest trick in the book. The lie is, I am not worthy of love. One day you'll be disappointed. One day you'll be if I don't always look amazing. or be an amazing mom or keep an amazing house. If I don't always earn enough money, you might find someone better, you know, the bigger, better deal. And so that first lie, I'm not lovable, causes so many others. I've got to work for love. I've got to earn, I've got to go through your phone every night to make sure. I've got to keep saying, are you sure you love me? Prove it. I don't think you're going to leave me one day. The first thought creates a catastrophic waterfall of other thoughts and it becomes- It.

Turns into actions that are not helpful.

Yeah, so if I don't think I'm lovable, I'm gonna check your phone and go, why are you looking at her? I saw you looking at him. You like them more than me. You forgot my birthday, therefore you don't love me. I've now got my confirmation bias. It's gone crazy. But it's all come from one thought, but that one thought has created a waterfall of so many other thoughts until it becomes out of control. And so you've got to peel it back like an onion to the middle thought, I'm not lovable. And go, well, who told me that? And let's do that now. Who told me I'm not lovable? What did they know? What were they basing that on? Where did that come from? It's not even my belief, it's theirs. How do I... Is that true? Is that really true that you're not lovable? How could you possibly, have you asked every person in the whole world? You've asked a few people in your community and often they believed you were very lovable. They just didn't tell you for all kinds of reasons. You know, I remember many, many, many years ago I dated someone that I really loved and I left him and he was in Washington, I was in LA and I called him and I asked him a question, do you miss me? He went, no, no, I don't miss you. I thought, oh, he doesn't love me. Much later, he said, I missed you so much, but I couldn't tell you because I was doing my law degree. And I thought, if you knew, you'd come back and I needed you to stay over there because it was so important to be a lawyer. And that whole relationship fell apart because when you said, I don't miss you, I thought you didn't love me. And I probably went off and found someone else. And you said later that almost killed me when you did that. But everything, it's like when people, I don't miss you. I don't think about you. fine. One of my clients said that his wife left him and he cried every day for six months, just would come in, switch off, sit on the sofa and cry and after six months he called her and she said, well, I'm with someone else. You never even called me. He said, I couldn't call you because I was a mess. I just had to get myself together. But it's so weird that we don't tell people the truth or we say, I don't care. You know, that's like sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Words can destroy you and eat you up. So the lie is, I'm not lovable. I'm not worthy. I don't deserve your love. Or here's another one, you'll get disappointed in me. If I show you who I really am, you might leave me. So now I've got to play this part. I've got to earn your love, work for your love.

What happens when we don't show our 100% authentic self to someone in the beginning? And we revealed that six, 12 months later.

Yeah. What happens? They're really shocked. I didn't know you were like that. I had no idea because they've fallen in love with a version that you showed them that isn't even you. And we forget the truth. Vulnerability is the basis of friendships and indeed relationships. When you're vulnerable, you know, people love you for you. When you're sick, when you have a bad day, they will say, Then you know who your friends are. But if you pretend you're okay, I see that a lot with people who run a business, always pretend everything's fine. They never tell anyone they're lonely. And then we realize, like that great DJ who killed himself. Was it Avicii?

Avicii, yeah.

Who never told anyone, I'm falling apart here. Was it not Bon Jovi? Who was it? Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen. There's so many people in the media who I've got to pretend I'm gray. I can't say I'm lonely, I'm sad, I'm lost. They often let you know through their songs. Look at Prince. I mean, that's so sad that he was so lonely. But they feel that if they tell us, we'll see them as weak and needy, when in fact the basis of friendship is if you're vulnerable and I am, I like you because you're showing me who you really are. And I can love your very soul because I know you. But if I'm, in love with an illusion, then it can't work because I don't even know who you are.

Wow. How old were you when you started to realize that, that you were lovable?

I think in my 20s, a long time, maybe. I remember when I was 18, I had this really lovely boyfriend. We'd always say, you know, I love the way you look. And I was saying to my mom, I haven't got a personality. I really believed I had no personality. He said, I love your hair. I love your body, but I heard that I didn't have any character whatsoever and that really bothered me. So I think, you know, it's so weird because when you change so much, you can hardly recognize the person you were. I'd looking back, I'd say really my 20s, maybe even later than my mid 20s. It was only working with my clients over and over again and seeing what was wrong with them that I began to realize, oh, That's what's wrong with everyone.

Interesting.

Yeah. And I began to see all of my clients, they could only ever have one of three things wrong with them.

What's that?

Well, the first one was, I'm not enough. That was the biggie. Every client I saw, whether they were a nursery school teacher or they worked in a store or they were a billionaire CEO or a movie star, they all had the same thing. I'm not enough. And so I've got to earn love or buy love or keep being a bigger, better deal to get love. And that's so easy to fix. You just go, you just take the I'm not out, I am enough. I always have been, I always will be, and you have, you see, the lie is every day you tell yourself, I'm not enough. You don't know you're doing it. You get up and go, look at me, I don't look right. I messed that up. I didn't leave enough time to get here. My kids aren't perfect. My client is annoyed. So every day over and over again, you're telling yourself you're not enough. And you just have to take out the knot and go, I'm enough. If I'm prepared to lie to myself every single day over and over again, why not have a better lie? I'm enough. It doesn't have to be true. People say, you know, my legs are the size of tree trunks. Well, clearly that can't be true. This is killing me. This is making me crazy. This is driving me and saying, none of these things are true, but if you're prepared to lie, at least have a better lie. I have great coping skills. This is a challenge, but I've got it. I can rest at the weekend. I've got this. I've got great coping skills is a great lie, because if you say it enough, it actually becomes true. Really? Yeah. Something I say a lot, you're never given anything that you can't cope with. Or if I got a lot on, Well, I'll rest at the weekend. I can deal with this. I've got this. This is fine. This is okay. So the first thing wrong with people is always I'm not enough. And if you feel like that, remember, you weren't born with it. You're in great company and just let it go because it's not true. The second thing wrong is this belief that I'm different, so I can't connect. And that's kind of a modern day illness. You know, if you're in a tribe, you would connect because you'd know that you're all interrelated, you look the same. But this belief I'm different so I can't connect is... Is it I can't.

Connect or people don't understand me?

No, you connect by being the same. You know, we're primitive people, we connect by being the same. So if you're different it's very hard to connect because you feel different. And when you feel different you can't connect but then you have to remember the truth. If that's your greatest fear, it's most people's greatest fear. So if you look at ET, he connected to Elliot, but he couldn't connect and he had to go home because he had to be with his people.

So why is that such a big fear for people?

Of connecting.

Yeah, I'm different, so I can't connect. Isn't different good in a lot of ways? Like being unique and being different?

Unique? Well, the answer is yes and no. When you're a little kid, you go, I like SpongeBob SquarePants. I like green pasta. I like Dr. Seuss. And we connect by being, I got a friend and they like what I like. So when we're little, we connect by being the same. And our DNA understands or we are hardwired to find connection and avoid rejection because that's how you make it as a child. You find connection, whether it's your little kitten clinging onto your leg, your dog wanting you not to leave the house, a baby holding on so tightly to mum, you understand the truth. If I'm connected, I will survive. And if I'm disconnected, I will die. Because imagine 100 years ago you couldn't produce milk for your baby or 500 years ago, we understood that connection is what made us live and disconnection killed us. Why every culture practiced banishment or isolation or marooning or casting out. So connection makes us survive.

Especially as adults.

Yeah.

Okay. So we need to feel connected.

Yeah. And if you listen to all those songs, I'll die if you leave me. My world is empty without you. I can't live with it. I can't breathe without you.

Okay.

And to this day, you know, schools understand that someone trolls you, someone ostracizes you, kids, you know, cut you out of the group. They don't speak to you. So. Our greatest fear is if I'm different, I can't connect. But if you go back to that, everyone's fear is being different. So if you have that fear, it actually means you're the same. And connection is a choice. You can connect to anyone all over the world, whatever their race, religion, creed is. The problem is that we don't see that. We still disconnect people. You know, we saw that a lot with the Boston bombers. They were so disconnected from society that that turned into hatred. And it's really important at schools to look at these disconnected kids and to bring them back. You know, if you look at the whole jail system in Finland, it's all about reconnect. We don't put them in isolation and then send them back out into the world crazy and full of anger. We reconnect. And so our greatest fear as humans is to be disconnected.

So how do we reconnect if we feel like our friend group has pushed us away, our family has sent us away, how do we feel connected.

Well, sometimes you've got to find a new group. I mean, you know, your family are just what I call your original family. You can have an, you know, first of all, you have your nuclear family, mom, dad, brother, sister, auntie, uncle, grandma. But then when you get married, they become your extended family. And so you can always create a family. So don't go back to the old tribe that hurt you and expect them to get better. I think a lot of our problems is I expect my mom suddenly become wonderful. She was always mean and hostile, but I expect her to be kind and lovely. She's got old now. Aren't old ladies sweet? No. Sometimes they're still cranky. A bitter cranky person doesn't become sweet when they're 80. And often the belief is I've got to go back to my family and make them love me when there's a whole world out there to love you. And if people hurt you, not always intending to, And you keep going back to them, except they can't always make it better. It's like, you know, if your family had that capacity to love you a cup, but my capacity is an Olympic swimming pool, I can't expect that to fill me up. I can fill them up, they can't fill up me. If I have a little, if my parents have a shot glass capacity to give me love, and I've got the ocean capacity, how can a shot glass fill up the ocean? Stop going back to people that hurt you and find, there are people all over the world that will love you and fill you up. we keep going back to the hurt is expecting them to make it better. They're often so hurt they can't. And they often do things like, well, you know, people like us, we don't have that. And look at those people, we're not like that. So it's, I feel different. You know, if your dad was the town drunk, if you didn't have a dad and everyone else did, if you had money and everyone else didn't, or vice versa, we buy in very early to this I'm different and you're not different, you're the same. So you have to stop looking for what makes you different because that's the confirmation bias. Whatever you look for, you're going to find it. I mean, I was a principal's daughter. I felt different the day I went to school and my whole childhood because my dad was the headmaster. And that was actually horrible, I realize now, that was not a good thing. But I was always looking for what made me different and then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I kept looking for Plus, you know, I could hypnotize people and that made me feel even more different. And I had this kind of ability to work out what was wrong with someone really quickly. And that's both good and bad. It's actually good. But whatever you look for, you will find whatever you are moving towards, you'll get more of. If you look for why your head is killing you or say, I'm a bit dehydrated, I'm going to drink some water. rub some lavender on my head, I'll be fine in 20 minutes. You've got to decide where you're going and if you look for what makes you different, you will find it over and over again. But if you say, well, why don't I look for what makes me the same? We're all the same somewhere, then you'll find that too. And it can be very hard if you're dealing with someone who's violent or aggressive or acting out. But if you can look for what makes you the same, and not different, it really changes your life. Because then you can't be disconnected. And you can go all over the world. You can hang out with tribes. My friend was in Rwanda with the gorillas and actually if you think you're like them, I did this thing of walking with wolves and the first thing you must do is you have to crouch down, you mustn't bare your teeth, you can't wear wool. And the wolf comes up and decides that you're a wolf and then you go for a walk and it keeps rounding you back up. If you walk away, takes you back into the wolf pack, 'cause it thinks you're one of them. And if you can make a wolf think you're one of them, or a gorilla, then of course you can do it with people, but you have to start from, I'm like you, you're like me, I'm the same as you, and I can connect with you somewhere, somehow. Stop looking for what makes you different, and look for what makes you the same, 'cause it really is life changing. The third thing that's wrong is such a sad belief. It's what I want isn't available. I want love, but I was abandoned when I was a baby. I want wealth, but I come from a family that never had wealth, so I can't have that. I want health, my whole family are overweight, diabetic, so that's not going to happen. And if you want it, or believing it's not available, that will Block you. And so you have to decide it is available. It's available with bells on. Whatever you want is available. But we have blocking thoughts and limiting beliefs that really get in the way. And you have to go back again to the thought and change it.

I love that. So when we realize these three problems that we all have or ask ourselves, do I believe I'm not enough? Do I believe I'm different? And I'm not the same, you know, have similarities as others. and do I believe what I want isn't available? If we can flip that and make them all positive, I am enough, I have a lot of similarities as other people, I'm connected, and I believe what I want is available, then we can start taking different actions.

Yeah, especially with love. The first thing is to go, you know, I'm enough. There's someone somewhere that will benefit from being in love with me, and I'll benefit from being in love with them. So look at what you've got to give. There's that kindness, warmth, 'Cause all people want is someone to get up with, go home to that's warm and kind. So if you want love, you have to believe you're worthy of it, you're enough. Then you have to believe that you can connect with anyone because love isn't about, you know, often the people we fall in love with are nothing like us. I'm tidy, my husband's messy. You might say, I'm logical, my husband's emotional, I'm calm. They're like a Porsche, they go from nought to fifth gear in a nanosecond. you have to look for, also keep looking back to what have you got in common? Do you dream the same dream? Do you like the same things?

Yes.

I'm the same, so I can connect and love is available to me. You know, love is available to everybody. You know, we find love in the strangest places, but we look for it in the strangest places too. But love's available to everybody.

What do you think keeps us from finding and creating lasting love then?

The greatest problem in finding and creating lasting love is the obvious one, I'm not worth it. And the biggest problem is people stay with the wrong person because they fear they won't ever get any better. Well, it's not really working. I invested 10 years, might as well invest another 10. It's having such low expectations that will settle for anyone. And the fear of being alone makes us hook up with the wrong person. But being alone is better to say, you know, I'd rather be alone for the rest of my life than be with the wrong person. If I decide, and I did that, I was in Africa, I was in Zimbabwe and I was staying in this honeymoon suite. I was thinking, oh, that's so sad. I said, oh, I'm having a great time. I love it in here. I've got a bath, a shower, it's so romantic. And I remember thinking, you know, if this is as good as it gets, it's okay. When I decided if I'm alone for the rest of my life, it's okay. I've got people I love and I had a lot of love. And then the minute I made that decision, I was married 10 months later.

I hadn't even met my husband then. Is that like an internal switch where you're just like, I'm lovable no matter.

What, but I'm not gonna settle? No, I'm not gonna settle, and I'm very happy. And last year when I was in lockdown, someone bought these seven feral cats that lived in my garage. And I got so much love from those cats. I was thinking, wow, when I'm 95, it's okay, I'm gonna have loads and loads of little wild cats and convert them. And that's the same thing with the cats. I would pick them up and go, I'm gonna make this familiar. Every day I'd hold them for a minute and then two and then and I put their cat food in my hat and I was thinking they were making being touched familiar. And after a while they just got so used to it because you have to make what's unfamiliar being held familiar. And I think it's always good to say, you know, there's all kinds of love. I can have love of animals, people, maybe my church, friends. There's always someone you can connect to, but you've got to look for connection, not disconnection. When you get to that level of Wow, there's a lot of love in the world. Of course you can find love and keep it forever, but you have to believe you're worth it and you have to believe it's available. Because love is everywhere, it's all around you, but you've decided it's not for you. Nature's not going to let you have it. And there's never one person. I don't like that expression twin flame or trauma bonding, because I think it sends you in the wrong direction. There's only one person And trauma doesn't bond. Many people say, you know, we lost our child, it was so traumatic we broke up or our kid was sick and we broke up or, you know, I got attacked or the house got burgled and the trauma ended the relationship. So the belief that trauma bonds you together forever, I'm not sure that's a good idea. I think it might work for some people. But you just have to think a better belief. Just decide I'm lovable, You know, my grand used to say, Every pan has its lid. So you're someone's lid, and someone is your pan. You're someone's fantasy dream come true. Someone will find you deeply lovable just the way you are. But you can't make them believe it if you don't believe it. You can't make someone believe you're worthy of love if you think, I'm not really worthy of love. One day you're going to be disappointed. When you know you're worth it, Everyone else will know it too. So we do the wrong things to get love. We try to work on our body, our education, our home. We go to the gym. We try to have stuff snipped off or injected in or waxed off. We're so busy adding stuff and getting rid of stuff to find love.

What should we be doing instead?

Telling ourselves we're lovable. The only thing you ever need to do to find love is only one thing. Convince yourself you're worthy of it until it is because a conviction is a conviction. I'm now convinced. It's not a fleeting thought. It's an absolute conviction. And convictions come over time. So tell yourself, I am lovable and I'm worthy of until it is an unshakable belief.

What if we're out of integrity with our conviction? Like, I'm lovable. But we eat poor foods consistently. We're alcoholic, we don't sleep well, we're going on bad dates and letting people abuse us. So how much of the actions and being in integrity with our word to ourselves is necessary as well?

So you're starting from I'm lovable, and I'm gonna go on dates, and I want this person to say I'm lovable. But if you're eating burgers and fries and staying up all night and turning up with chipped nail varnish and dirty hair and a stained t-shirt. You're not really saying I'm lovable. You're not really saying I'm a catch. You know, if some guy turned up with a beer all over his t-shirt and an egg in his beard, you wouldn't think, oh, he's a catch. Any more than a guy would think you've turned up in dirty old leggings with chipped nail varnish. So, again, that's abusive behavior. If you want someone to believe you're lovable, you have to believe you're lovable. First you believe it, then you start to act in a way that says, yeah, if I'm lovable, I should take myself to bed now. I don't really need to watch any more episodes of Catherine the Great tonight. I can do it over the weekend. I don't need eight slices of pizza. I can have one. So it goes back into the message you're sending out. When you know your lover, when you resonate it, you act in a different way. You're not a people pleaser. You help, you're nice. You wouldn't go, well, I have what you're having. I do what you want. I don't care. I'll go wherever you want to go. You have an opinion and you'll say, oh, no, that's not my thing. I don't really like that. I don't want to do that. I'm not going to drive for three hours to see you. If you're not prepared to meet me halfway, then it's not a good place to start. If I've got to pay the bill all the time, if you never ask me, how is the conversation going back and forth? is someone listening to you? Are they transmitting or receiving? Some people just transmit. They go like a hairdryer, they go, and the whole day is them talking to you and they never ask you how you are. And that's not respectful. Respectful is saying, oh, did you, you keep interrupting me, you're not asking me anything about me. I've been on a date, there's only one thing about me, and I realized I don't need to put myself through that. And if you have enough respect, you'll say, you know, we've been talking for an hour. This is actually not a match. I wish you great success in finding love, but you're not for me and I'm not for you. And you have that sense of rather than dragging out another six hours.

Just about being nice.

I don't. I deserve better. And, you know, again, it comes back to your needs. And in the beginning, when I was all my clients have what I call unmet needs. They come in like I wasn't loved. I wasn't nurtured. I wasn't praised. I wasn't supported. I didn't feel safe. And when a child has an unmet need, and a baby's need is very simple, the children need to feel safe, secure, loved, connected, significant. And as we get, oh, we need all of those. We also need you to feel proud of us, and we need to feel interesting and worthy. And if our needs aren't met at an early age, we give up the need or we give it away. And you see that in relationships so much. I've given up the need that you care about me, but I'll care about you. Or I'm giving it away. It's your job now. You're going to have to make me feel attractive, interesting, sexy, worth being with. So I'm giving my need to you.

A lot of work.

Yeah, a huge work, because now you're still needy, but someone else's job is to meet your needs, and they can do it very well for a while, but then they get bored, they have their own needs. So if you give the need up, no one's going to love me. I expect all relationships, if I always get ghosted, I've now given the need up. I've got my cats, I've got my Ben and Jerry's in the freezer, my Netflix and I'm just not going to even bother. I'm going to, I just know it's not going to work. I've even stopped dating. So I've given the need up. I might, I've even given the need up to have a great job and I'm living a life that's not very satisfying but I've given the need up. Or I've given it away. Someone out there is going to have to turn up and meet my need. I need to feel The same thing, significant, connected, loved, safe. You've got to do that for me. But there's a third way which is meet the need yourself. As weird as that sounds. If I need to feel safe, my husband's out of town, I go, hey, how can I feel safe you've left town? I lock the doors, have a little alarm thing that I never use, but when he's out of town, I know where it is in the bedroom. One of my clients said, when my husband goes away, I have to go and stay with my mother of 85 to feel safe. I'm like, what's she going to do? 85 years old. How can that be that you've given your need to be safe to someone of 85? Every time your husband leaves town, you take your kids to your 85 year old mother. So she's given the need away. But the idea is, okay, I got a phone, I got an alarm, I got a great system, I know all just to believe you're safe. So if you look right now at your unmet needs, they're always going to be the same. Connected, safe, secure, significant, valid, worthwhile. You're someone to be proud of me. I need to feel I matter. And it may sound kind of weird to go, okay, I'm going to do it. I matter. I'm significant. I'm secure within myself. I'm proud of who I am. If you decide to meet your unmet needs, you feel so complete that then you'll meet other people who can also meet them. But it's the opposite of needy. And that's if I'm in a relationship, like, okay, I've got a list here, and someone's going to have to tick all these boxes. And the second thing with needs is when you find someone to have a relationship with, you've got to put your needs in three piles. So, going to use all these cups. So you have to say, okay, this need is non-negotiable. You're going to have to meet that need. I need to always know where you are at 2 in the morning. I need to know where you are, I need you to call me, I need you to be home in time for dinner, I need you to put your underpants in the laundry basket. That is a need I'm not prepared to sacrifice. That's okay, but then you might go, you know what? I can put the underpants in the laundry basket. Is it really worth all the arguments? So the second thing, you know what? I can meet this need. I need a clean, tidy house. My husband doesn't even see mess, but I'm just going to do it myself. Or maybe we can get someone to come in. But the second need you meet it, and the third need, just give it up. It's almost it's just not worth it. If I said I need my husband to make a huge deal about my birthday, hey this is a need, birthdays are huge, I want a gift, I want it wrapped, I want ribbons, I can say meet that, I can say you know what, I can buy myself a great gift. I can do that myself if it's not that important or I can go is it really important? I've got every, do I need all these gifts? actually. It doesn't matter which one it is, but no one can meet all your needs. You've got to have that need as non-negotiable. That need, I can meet it, and that need, I'm going to give it up. So my daughter is an artist, and I realized immediately the need for tidiness, there's just no way, because people who are messy don't see mess. They can't meet you go, yes, I'm so, they don't see it. So I couldn't say to her, hey, you need a tidy room all the time.

Right.

I could go in and tidy her room every single day, but you know what? I just learned to shut the door. I gave up that need and it made our family so much happier because she lives in chaos and I don't. And she's a painter. And one day when I stapled plastic all over her walls and her carpet, and that was great. I never worried about it again. So look at you and you put them in three piles. I have to have that need met. That's okay. And I'm gonna meet that need and I'm giving that one up and allow your partner too to realize that they can't meet all of your needs. You can't meet all of those and some needs just aren't important enough.

Right, right.

And others are very important. Depends what they are.

What do you think is more important in a relationship to make sure your values are in alignment, to make sure your shared vision is in alignment or your lifestyle? the way you want to live your life. Like one wants to travel more and the other wants to stay home.

I think lifestyle, you know, is most, the thing people fight about more than anything is money. Even people with lots of money, the number one thing we fight about is money. And the second is choice, even if they have a housekeeper.

Really?

Yeah. So that must tell you that lifestyle is everything. You see, you don't have to have the same values. You know, you could be of a different religion. You could be Muslim, I could be Hindu, we can actually get on. We could come from a different culture and we can work that out. I come from a family where everybody was divorced and my husband doesn't, but we get on really well. So I think values are nice, but that's, you know, we've got to have exactly the same values. We don't always have the same values. Some people value things more. I mean, some of the things my husband likes to watch on television, I find the, you, don't value it. Oh, that's a chick thing. I was watching the new episode of Sex and the City. I hate this. I actually didn't love it either. I said, no, I've got to watch it. I'm invested in it now. So sometimes they'll go and do something else. It's like if you're with someone who loves sport and you don't, you don't have to love sport. My husband loves cooking. He's always cooking. I don't really love that. I don't mind, but it's all the shopping and then the chopping and then the cooking and then the cleaning. Let's just grill some fish, but he likes. So that, but we don't have the same thing because I don't value cooking at all the way he does. But lifestyle, if you're up all night and your partner goes to bed early, if you're an outdoor person, you know, you love to travel, they love to stay home, you love family and they don't. I think lifestyle is what you're going to spend the rest of your life with one person. So I think you should look, I mean so many issues about our kids are going to private school, no they're not. I believe in punishment, I don't believe in that. It makes a very unhappy home. So lifestyle is important, values are important too, and goals and dreams are important, but you can have different goals. Like my husband has no desire to write best selling books, you could say, but imagine if he did, we'd be competing. But when I'm writing, he cooks me lovely food, he brings me tea and coffee, he knows I have to be left alone because I'm in a writing mode. So we're not the same because he has no interest. He tried once to write a book, he absolutely hated it. He threw the whole thing away. But I couldn't do what he does. So are our values the same? Yeah. Are our goals and dreams the same? No. But is our lifestyle the same? Yeah, we like the same thing. We tend to go to bed together, get up together, we like to travel to the same places. You know, if I was with someone who wanted to go out all night until 2:00 a.m. Be hard. That would be really hard because if I was with someone who wanted to bring people home every night and have a party, that wouldn't work. So I think we really forget that having the same lifestyle is really important because that's what people fight about the most.

I got a couple of final questions here. What do you think we should feel when we start dating someone and we've been dating them for a while, what do you think we need to think or feel or know internally that we can move forward towards a commitment?

Your feelings are the most real thing you have. I always think you should feel your feelings until they no longer require to be felt. I say, you know, I met this person. I didn't really like them, but oh my God, the sex. It was amazing. So I overlooked all these things. I met this person who was mean, rude to waiters, dismissive, rude to my family, but they were just so compelling and so gorgeous and so out of my league that I tolerated it, tuned into your feelings. They will tell you very quickly, you know, our gut is our gut instinct. Our gut is the second brain. Someone doesn't seem nice and doesn't seem kind and is treating you badly. Why stay? Why wait for that to get better? If you feel that they're not really a nice person, then why hang around? If you notice behavior that's a red flag, they always forget their credit card. They seem to diminish. You know, I don't know how I ended up with a narcissist, but often we do. We go, yeah, I just I ever looked that.

There was something else that was more compelling.

They were so good looking or so nice or they were very generous. They took me to great places and I overlooked the fact that either they were annoying or mean or even boring. I just thought I'll stick this out. You know, your feelings are the most real thing you have and you've got to feel your feelings until you get the message and then they go away and often we just ignore feelings.

Can your feelings ever lie to you?

No, I don't think so. I met many of us out on my wedding day. I knew it. And one of my friends said, I knew I was marrying the wrong person on my wedding day. I waited for my wife to come there, and I knew I was making a mistake, but I couldn't let people down. You know, Charles and Diana both tried to call off their wedding. Both of them knew it was wrong, but they felt, well, you've got to.

Go ahead with it.

Right. if your feelings are saying no that early then at least go hey there's no rush to get married, there's no rush to move in, there's no rush. I mean there maybe is a rush to have children but more problems occur from picking the wrong person or staying with the wrong person because you're not tuning into your feelings. When you tune into your feelings you know because the feeling is I feel a feeling of rightness with this person person. I love waking up to this person. I love coming home to this person. Even on my worst day when they annoy me, I imagine my life without them and think, oh no, my life's so much better with them. So I don't think your feelings can ever lie because they come from the gut, which is the seat of your emotion. I think we lie to ourselves, but our feelings don't lie. And you know, the 10 people in that book, every single one of them had lied to themselves that there's a girl in there who wanted to kill herself and her lie was I've got to be good. I need to be good. And I said, but being good makes you want to die? She goes, I know. I said, I think it's time to stop being good. She said, you, know, I'm going straight to Victoria's Secret now. I said, yeah, I think you need to be bad. You need to be naughty. If being good makes you want to die, what's the point? And then the girl in there with OCD and OCD is nothing more than I can't control what's going on in here. But all the cups are gonna be just right and everything. Now I can control out there because I can't control in here. And for her, it was just a question of look, control in here. Look at the thoughts and change them. And so many of us are so busy not really feeling what we feel. We think we can Netflix our feelings or Crisco cream doughnut our feelings or nice bottle of wine our feelings or, you know, even Amazon or eBay. our feelings, but you can't, you have to feel your feelings. They're the most real thing you have. When you feel your feelings, go, what am I feeling? I don't know, but I'm not gonna eat it or drink it or shop it. I'm gonna sit with it.

Until it no longer needs to be stopped.

And then it goes away and it goes away really quickly and it stops coming back. Yeah.

This is powerful stuff. We'll have to do another, we'll have to do a whole other episode on relationships another time, but this book is going to help a lot of people. Tell yourself about a lie. Use the power of rapid transformational therapy to edit your story and rewrite your life by Marissa Peer. Make sure you guys get a few copies of this. It's going to be really inspiring. Some incredible stories that there will be at least one or two examples in here that'll resonate with you and your friends, I guarantee it, and will be.

Helpful action steps on how to overcome these different challenges. Can I just add one thing? Because one chapter is called RTT for me. and as it shows you what I do with each person, here's Ryan's story, here's Tara's story, it shows you what worked at the end. It shows you, look, it's not that you don't need therapy, but there are certain things you can do, certain things you can do yourself, like upgrading the child, that are a great part of what I do with clients, but it shows you in the RTD what you can do at home. Upgrading the child, your inner child? Yeah, upgrading the child, dialogue with a herter, praise you've always wanted the missing bit of you and installing the cheerleader. They're not a replacement for therapy, but you may not need therapy. You may need to fix a few little things like the lie you're telling yourself.

Yes, I love this. You've got an amazing YouTube channel, Marissa Peer, podcast, social media, Marissa Peer everywhere. Where else can we go to support you and learn more about what you're up to?

I'm on Instagram, I'm on YouTube, but if you go to marissapier.com we have a ton of free audios, we have audios on love blocks, money blocks, success blocks, we don't ask for a credit card, they're all free. So marissapier.com will give you a lot of free resources. RTT.com is should you want to do what I do because we've now trained 13,000 people in RTT. It's amazing, in fact a lot of their stories are in there too, if you want to find someone to do RTT and train in it, go to RTT.com if you want to get all these I'm Enough bracelets and join the I'm Enough movement, go to I'mEnough.com. I love it. They're on my website.

I think a lot of people have signed up to be in the RTT, the therapy community from our interviews. A lot of people have messaged me, said I signed up for the course and the workshop and they say amazing things, so I highly recommend it. check out MarissaPier.com for more. Marissa, you're always an inspiration. I'm so glad we get to, I'm so glad we're friends. I'm so glad I get to connect with you and I learn so much every time I have you on. So I'm excited to do more in the future and I just appreciate you for constantly showing up.

You're an amazing gift to the world. Thank you and I did forget to say if anyone wants to have that program for their children, the cheerleader for children, write to me because we give that away, we're giving that to schools.

All over the world now. Okay, is that online somewhere or are they just...

If you just go to marissapeir.com and say you want the I can't or I can challenge for schools, we send it, but we also send it to scouts and anyone who's working with children. It isn't just for schools. Awesome. If you've got lots of kids, you can have it in your house or even one. Amazing.

Marissa, your gift, I appreciate it.

Thanks so much for being here. Thank you, it's been such fun.

Thank you. Thank you. If you enjoyed that interview, then I know you'll love what we have coming up right now.

So let's imagine you and your ex-wife are not getting on and you have a feeling of rage about the fact that she's trying to get your kid to call a new guy daddy and she's blocking you out and you feel so angry. You think, well, I mustn't feel angry. You know, she's doing it for the interest of my kid or and so I just drink the anger and I drink the the anger and you see with a feeling, it's the most real thing you have. A feeling is like a little kid in a class going, notice me, I'm over here. And if you don't, they get more and more out of control. And so when you don't acknowledge your things, they regroup and they regroup until they become outrage, rage coming out. And then suddenly they go a bit crazy in the car park of a store or the line of a store because the mind says, I've got all this rage wants to come out, someone just cut into the line, take it out on them and it's so ineffective because I have something I call AAA which is be aware of your feeling. Most people have no idea what they feel. They go, I shouldn't feel jealous, I shouldn't feel envious, I shouldn't be furious with this kid who's keeping me up all night so they're not aware of it, they certainly can't accept and they never get to articulate. If you can say, you know, my wife's a good person, but actually I'm furious with what she's doing. It really hurts my feelings. That's why group therapy in places like AA, the good thing is you get to say, sometimes I could quite cheerfully hurt my wife. I'm not going to, but I feel like oh yeah, I feel like that too. Because when you can express your feeling, it goes away. It goes away immediately. But when you communicate it, yeah. Even to yourself. So if your mother-in-law is the absolute bitch from hell and you can't say, by the way, Dorothy, you are the most horrible mother-in-law in the world, but you just go and shut yourself in the bathroom, turn on the taps, flustered about it and say, Dorothy is a really unpleasant mother-in-law. And one of my, yeah, you feel so much better because you're not saying it to them. feelings are like gas. They're in or they're out and they hurt much more when you keep them in and you want to let them out. Gas, I mean, obviously right in the middle of a meeting, but when you keep stuff in it causes you pain. And one of my amazing therapists said, my mother-in-law really was the mother-in-law from hell. And I could never say anything because my husband was the golden boy. But after I trained with her, I started to say, you know, Brenda, you're a really unhappy person and. I know you're trying to hurt my feelings, but I just feel so bad. And Brenda finally said, you know, I've been bulimic for 32 years. Nobody knows. Could you help me? She completely transformed that woman in two sessions. Never been bulimic since. And I said, she likes me more than her son now. I'm now the daughter-in-law from Heaven. I've got a big Halo. But when we keep everything in, it does so much damage. It's like little kids, they get angry and we shout at them. They go, oh. My anger makes you angry, and I'm not allowed to be angry. I'm not allowed to say something hurt me. Express myself. And all psychiatrists will tell you that if you want to be sorted out, here's something you must do. Express your hurt as close to the event that hurt you happening as possible. You can't say to your dad, you know, 20 years I asked for a bike and you got me a skateboard. I didn't want that. What? I worked nights to buy you that bike. you can't get any resolution after 10 years or 20 years. But when you can say to your friend, Look, I love you, you're my friend, but it really hurt me when you didn't even turn up to my wedding. And I still had to pay for all of that. You didn't call and it hurt me. I still loved you, but you hurt my feelings. Then it's gone. But when you keep it in, it doesn't... When you say to the friend, you, make me feel so angry. Well, you make me feel angry. I didn't come to your wedding your guest list that was extortion asking for all this stuff. I mean, I'm not Bank of America and I don't want to buy that stuff. But you can't get resolution. But when you say, I was hurt when, or I felt hurt by, and you can say it to a wall, you can say it to a force, you can say it to a mirror. It's not for the other person. It's good to say it because it's out then. And then it goes away. It's the most wonderful thing. It goes away. and then everything is so different.

Yeah, it's interesting because the last two years specifically it's been magnified with men in the media who have created all these, you know, killings, shootings, racial marches, political distress, you know, domestic violence, all these things have been happening and it's been magnified over the last couple years, right? With MeToo and Times Up and everything and As a society, when men are unable to express or communicate themselves or they're gonna be known as weak or soft or whatever the word is, it's hard for them to express themselves in any other way except for this blow up. Yeah, especially when you say this like stop acting like a girl.

You're running like a girl. Exactly. You're acting like a girl. Don't be a wuss, don't be this, don't be...

It's like less than their manhood or something.

Yeah, of course.

There's no wonder why if it's not acceptable for men to express themselves in this way. It's hard for them to just be stoic constantly. I'm not saying it's okay what they've done to act out, but I think society in general needs to have a big group hug.

Sure.

Let it out in a way where it's more acceptable to express ourselves.

And also, whenever anyone does anything wrong, we go, what's wrong with you? We should say, what happened to you? What happened to you? And they'll go, well, you know, my mom always said, you she didn't want a girl, boy, she wanted a girl and I was being brought up. I'll give you an example, I had a city trader as a client who really had problems trading and his boss said, you know, he's the best trader but he's so nervous. And when I worked with him, when he was a kid, his parents had two girls and then him and he would smash his Tonka toys and they'd go, what's wrong with you? Look at your sisters just combing their doll's hair and they're so good. Why are you so aggressive? And a four-year-old can't go, well, because I have something called testosterone. And they don't. And I'm designed to run and jump and hunt and fish. And I've got to learn what to do with aggression. Smashing my cars together is good for me. A four-year-old doesn't have anything because they live in the world. They just live in a world of feeling, not logic. And he said, I never realized I spent my whole life thinking something is wrong with me. my parents would say, everything comes to you. What's wrong with you? Look how neat you are. They don't get peas on the floor when they eat. And he said, I heard it every day until I formed a belief something's wrong with me. He didn't date women because he thought, well, I should be like one, but I want to be like a man. And that session totally turned him around. He said it was like someone had sprayed him with pheromones because he went out that night and women were attaching themselves to him like a magnet. But he just got rid of the feeling of something's wrong with me. Because most people do walk around going, Something's wrong with me. I'm just majorly messed up. And you can't heal.

And no one understands me. No one gets me.

Yeah, and I don't understand me. And if I don't understand me, how can you?

And why should I even be here?

Yeah, because you can't heal what you can't understand. And so all the treating the symptom is like putting a band-aid on an infection. It doesn't, when you understand it, you can totally change your perception of what it is because events actually don't affect you but the meaning you attach doesn't. The story we tell ourselves about the story. And that's, I love that because when I just got all my Stevie Awards it's like, oh, I feel like I've got an Oscar. And that's good because I take clients' stories and I give them a happy ending. Always give them a happy ending. but then you have to understand a bit more of psychology because humans are hardwired to recreate what they know. We like what's familiar, even if that's very bad. If I've never had money and I win the lottery, I'm going to get rid of it. Or if I've never had love and you love me, I'm going to reject you because it's so unfamiliar. If I've had a dad who calls me an idiot and worthless, Guess what kind of guy I like? That's it. Because when I meet them, I go, oh, I feel like I've known this guy my whole life. We just clicked. And they think, oh my god, it's because he's my dad. But now I've been sleeping with him for six months. I don't know what to do with that now. Because we are wired to like what is familiar and to resist what's unfamiliar. And that's what kept us alive when we lived in Ward City. We didn't go, I'm a bit bored with this group. I think I'll go outside the walls city and find another tribe because they might have killed you. So we have this wiring that says, Run towards what's familiar and run away from what's unfamiliar. But the very good news is you can make anything familiar. And the most important thing to make familiar is praising yourself. If you could just do that, that in itself would change your entire life.

How do you praise yourself?

Well, you get up in the morning and go, I'm a good person. I have a skill. I have a talent. I have something to offer the world. I'm here for a reason. You look in the mirror and go, oh, there you are. You're a good person. You've got a good heart. You know, the most important way to answer that question is this: what did you always want your dad to tell you? Even if you never had a dad. If you had a dad, a good dad, what would he have said? What would your mom have said? What would a nice teacher have said to you? And it would be something like this, I'm proud of you. You're a good son. I'm so glad I'm your dad. How lucky I got to have you. And a teacher would say, you,'re such a smart kid. What a joy it is to teach you because you're smart. And we all want to hear the same stuff. I love you. I'm proud of you. You're interesting. your great company. Nobody needs to hear I'm the best dentist in Beverly Hills because that doesn't work. It's emotions and many of my clients, their mother might be dead but they're still trying to get her to approve of them. Dad's living in another country but they're still working to make him like them. And you know the most important thing is you like you. So whatever you wanted to hear, say it to yourself. yourself, because your mind doesn't even know that it's coming. And also it doesn't care. Your mind doesn't care if what you tell it is right or wrong, or true or false, or even if it's good or bad, it lets it in like chapstick on your lips. Your lips don't go, is this organic? Fair trade? Just lets it in. It needs a bit of nourishment. And we need some nourishment, and words are very nourishing. And there is actually nothing on the planet that will raise self-esteem like praise. But self-praise is better. I said to you, I just adore you. You're amazing. By the way, you know, can you do this and this and this? I've manipulated you. But if I say it to myself, my mind knows there's no manipulation and the mind likes repetition. And when you say it every day, your mind kind of goes, oh yeah, here you go again with that praise. You say it every day, must be true. And now it sinks in. Problem is if you criticize yourself every day, it says the same thing as well.

And that hurts you. It's interesting because you know the big talents that commit suicide or die, you know, the, who's the comedian? Robin Williams. Robin Williams, Amy Winehouse, all these individuals who had the world praising them, they weren't able to praise themselves.

Yeah, and they don't let it in.

It doesn't matter if everyone else acknowledges you.

It does matter, but you have to.

Be willing to acknowledge yourself as well, right?

And the familiar, unfamiliar. If praise is unfamiliar, but criticism is familiar, and you say to someone like Robin Williams, oh my god, that last show was funny. Didn't you notice? I left out the best. I fluffed a word. It wasn't as good as the one before. So if you're not used to praise, you'll reject it. And if you're used to criticism, you'll add it in. because we do what's familiar. So if we say to someone, I love your book, they go, oh, actually it's not that good. The other one is much, I love your talk. Oh, I got it in a car boot sale. It's five years old, I've got a hole in it. So if we haven't got praise, we actually reject it. And you just have to say to yourself, I'm going to make this familiar. I'm going to praise myself for every day. It might feel weird, but I'll keep doing it. It's a bit like running. You know, running isn't familiar, especially around Beverly Hills. But if you put your shoes on and go for a run on concrete, eventually it becomes familiar and then you like it. I mean sticking a lens in your eye, that's the weirdest thing.

Very unfamiliar.

The first few times, oh my god, I'm coming at my eye like that. And then after a while you can do it almost without thinking because you get used to it. You can make anything familiar or unfamiliar. And my advice to everyone is look at your bad habits, and make them unfamiliar. And look at what you want, especially praise and make it familiar more so because if you've got a startup or you're working for yourself, the days of a boss going well done, good job, pat on the back are over. And you have a praise muscle and no one's going to build it up except for you. But if you build it up, it makes you bulletproof.

Yeah, it's fascinating. I'm so glad you're talking about this because we have a similar philosophy and a lot of people that come to me are afraid of certain things. And at an early age, I was afraid of a lot of things. I was afraid to talk to girls. As a 12-year-old, I was afraid of speaking in public. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of all these things, right? And I got so sick and tired of being afraid that I just said, I'm going to give myself a challenge every day. You know, when I was afraid of girls, I was like, every time I see a girl that gives me butterflies, I'm gonna go up to them and start a conversation. And it's terrifying and I'm sweating and I'm stumbling over my words and people rejected me the first few times but I just kept doing it until the girl said, hi, nice to see you. And you give a little confidence until you know, by the end of the summer when I was a teenager, it was like every girl was talking to me.

-Of course.

-And I tell people, you gotta embrace the fear. fear until the fear disappears. It's similar with the feelings. You've got to live in the feelings until, what would you say?

Feel the feelings. It's no longer requires to be felt. That's right. Because what you're really describing so eloquently is you had a massive fear of rejection, talking to girls, speaking in public, asking, Feeling enough. Yes, someone asking to employ you or pay you. So we have a great fear of rejection, which is not surprising because when we're born, we have two drivers find connection, avoid rejection. After all, if a mother rejects a child, if a lion rejects the cub, it's not going to be adopted. It will die. Or it just starves to death. And so we know innately that our survival on the planet is linked to not being rejected. And not that long ago, you would have died from rejection. You know, in a thousand years ago, when they banished you outside the walls of the city or you marooned a difficult sailor or you cast someone out of the community, you pretty much died. There was nothing out there but purgatory. So we have a wiring that says rejection will kill me and that's why you had the fear. But when you can dialogue with the other, you go, no, it feels like it will kill me. It can't kill me because no girl can reject me unless I give her my permission. You can't reject me unless I agree I don't like you because you've got short hair. I don't like your shirt. I don't like you because you're white, not white tall, short glasses, not. But when you say you can't reject me, I can't be rejected because the only person you can reject me is me. You can talk to girls realizing even if they say no, you're not my type, I'm with someone, no thanks, or even Ooh, no, they can only reject you if you let that in. and we look at someone like James Corden who's certainly not gorgeous but women love him because he's funny. So funny. And you know we like warm people, you know the packaging is all very nice but lots of us will have a great packaging, a great rapper, but they're unhappy and so our greatest fear is to be rejected. But the truth is in 2018 you could live in this the have Amazon deliver your groceries, never see a soul, and you probably live until you're 106. Wouldn't advise it, but we don't die of rejection anymore, but we still feel like we will. And all schools should be teaching kids you cannot be rejected, you can ask for a pay rise, you can ask for crowdfunding, you can go to someone and go, Here's my idea, you can write a book, speak in public. Because I work with a lot of actors who say, I'm so scared of rejection. I'm like, well, how are you going to be an actor then? -Because you're supposed to be rejected. -So, what you and I write books for everyone who loves it. There's going to be the odd person who goes, I hate this book and.

I hate that writer too. But we don't let it in. We have to laugh about it. -If you got value from that, then go ahead and stick around for more coming up right now. -I think people could use your wisdom and your healing ways more than ever right now. Because I think a lot of people's thoughts are sick and they don't know how to change their thoughts, heal their thoughts. If we're so focused on negative thoughts, how do we even get to the place of stopping those thoughts and starting to heal from years or decades of thinking negatively?

And I guess that's a great question because most people don't even get there. You have to understand thoughts are things. When you you think a thought, you have an immediate reaction. That's why if you think about eating, your stomach rumbles. You think about sex, you get aroused. People say, I don't believe that. So what do you think an erection is? You think a thought, you get a physical reaction. That's not a one-off. If you think a thought, a thought has a physical reaction in your body immediately and an emotional response. If I think I'm embarrassed, I might blush. if you say something moving, my eyes might fill up with tears because my body is reacting to thoughts. And if you could all be taught that early on, you react to thoughts, that's a fact. Here's another great fact. You can change your thoughts anytime you like. And if you change your thinking, it changes your entire life. So for instance, we're all saying, I'm stuck at home. I'm going to, I'm safe at home. Stuck safe. You change one little word, it changes everything. So we say, I'm trapped. I'm in a lockdown. You know, we're not actually trapped. They're not sealing up the doors like they did in the plague. In the plague, they sealed your doors and you couldn't physically get out. But we are asked to stay indoors. We still go out for walks. We go out to the store. We go to the pharmacy. We're not stuck. We're not locked in. We're not trapped. We're not in prison. It's not an apocalypse. It's not Armageddon, but if you start to use those words, it begins to feel exactly as if it is that case. So it's really important that you change your words. And I learned that when I was helping a hospital who had people who couldn't go in the scanning machine. And they'd all say things like, well, I feel like I'm in a coffin. You know, when I get in that scanner and I can't move, I'm so trapped. I'm like, look, come on. you lie in bed for eight hours every night and don't move. Why don't you just say I'm in my bed, I'm super chilled and I feel so relaxed. What will happen is your mind will react to your thinking. And so I had many people do that and I was teaching nurses how to get people to do that, especially little kids of six going into the scanner. They said, you know, when we tell them they're in their bed, they actually fall asleep in there. say we're going to play a game now, statues. How long can you keep still for? So when I actually, a few years ago, was in a scanner, which I didn't ever plan to be, and I thought, let me play a game. So I lay in there and I went, I'm in my bed. I'm so chilled. This is so great. I've got half an hour to just lie here. And then I decided to go, I'm in my coffin now. And they start to talk to me, Marissa, you're moving all the time. I had no idea, because I was so saying, I'm stuck, I'm trapped, I'm claustrophobic. My body was like, Get out! And it starts to do things to make you want to leave. And so if you just understand how you are, everything changes. So our ancestral brain is like, Flee, fight, freeze. I can fight, I can flee, I can freeze. So I'm in a scanner and it's like, well, I need to flee this. I need to fight it. And I'm like, no, if you can't fight and you can't flee, don't freeze flow. I can't fight. I can't flee, but I can flow. I mean, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in solitary confinement. We can't even do three weeks. We're going, oh, it's hell. It's a nightmare. I'm cooped up. My kids are driving me mad. I want to get a divorce. I can't stand it. But he did 27 years. You know how he did it? Because he said, Everyone in my country is in prison. I'm just in a different prison to them. If they can do it, I can do it. And I'm going to come out here the leader of my country. And he did. So, you know, we have this belief that events affect us. They don't. The meaning you attach event affects you. The interpretation you choose about an event is what affects you. So I'm looking, I love it, it's great, you know, so much time, I'm having the best time. I'm having the best time. I hate it, I can't stand it, I'm climbing the walls, I'm going cray, I'm ripping my hair out, none of which we're not actually ripping out our hair or climbing the walls or going insane. We shouldn't use that. But clearly it must be the interpretation. because we're all reacting differently. So this won't affect you, but what you make of it will. And it's your job to change the interpretation. And if you can change the interpretation, it will change your entire life.

How do we change the interpretation to go from flee or fight to freeze to flow?

Well, you first of all think, what does this mean? What does this mean? You know, I've had a couple of clients who who went to jail and they were active in, one of them was a very rich woman who went to jail for tax evasion and she said actually she ended up really liking it. Being in jail. Well she was a typical rich one, she had a beautiful house, lots of staff, she didn't really go anywhere, everyone did everything for her, she didn't really have any friends, she had the ladies who lunch and when she was there she trained to be an aerobic teacher, she trained to be a yoga teacher, nothing else to do. She really bonded with the other women and when she got out she went back every week to visit them because she said, you know, it was different in there. It was like girls' boarding school. I didn't realize I was isolated at home and more connected in jail, which is an interesting way to think about it. And people who, often people who've been in jail or been trapped in their house, been in lockdown. So Isaac Newton, I believe, 1665 he developed the theory of gravity while London was locked down because of the plague sealed in their house and so he used that time. So I guess you have to think, well, you know, I can't change this but I can change what it means. One day I look back and go, well, actually there was a lot of good stuff. What can I do about it? I mean, we all go, I just haven't got enough time. I'd love more time. If I only had time to myself, well here it is. What could you do or learn or achieve? And I'm not saying it's easy because I'm also safe at home and I really miss going out and meeting people. But I'm also doing things I've wanted to do for years that I couldn't do because of time. So silly things like cook with your kids and make that a math lesson. How much does that weigh? How much Vitamin C is in the skin of a potato. Do the laundry, you know, why do you think detergents are called biological? You can make it interesting. You just have to really decide, okay, what does this mean to me? And can I change the meaning? When I can change the meaning, it will change my life because the meaning is yours to change and the interpretation is yours to church. But the fastest way is look at words. Am I saying apocalypse, Armageddon, trapped, stuck, someone said to me they've taken away my freedom. Who? The government. Government forces have taken away my freedom. Maybe. But how about they want me to live, they want me to be safe. The government has put this in place to keep me safe. So I'm safe at home or they've taken away my freedom.

Why looking at your words first? Why is that so important?

Because the way you feel about everything is down to two things. The pictures you make in your head and the words. The way you feel about everything, every minute of every day, is only down to two things. The pictures you make in your head and the words you say. But you could make that even simpler and say, forget about the pictures, because the words make the picture. You know, I'm not visual and I can't see stuff, but if I said to you, Louis, think of anything, but you may not think of an orange snowman, especially one whose snow is the same color as the carrot in his nose. You've got to think of an orange snowman. And so when you hear words, they make pictures. When you say, don't think about blushing, don't think about falling, you know, I paddleboard every day and I notice if you go, I'm wobbling here and I'm going to fall, I've never ever, ever fallen off because I don't think about falling. I think about balance and how much I like it. But when you say a word, you make a picture. And even the words you use in front of words, make a picture, you can say, this is driving me crazy. I'm going insane. there's a picture. Or you can say, it's a challenge, it's interesting, it's an opportunity, because they don't make a picture. So when you say, I've got this cracking headache, oh my god, it's killing me, I'm in agony, my head is killing me.

It's swelling, it's throbbing, yeah.

Or you say, I've got a little niggle here. A little niggle, not great, but so what? When you say, I'm starving, this is what people do, come in now, I'm starving. I could eat a horse. I'm dying of hunger. See what you're doing, which most people don't know, is that 500 years ago the thing that killed us more than anything else was not disease and it wasn't war, it was hunger. And we're wired to be scared of hunger. So when you say to your body, I'm starving, I'm dying of hunger, I could eat a horse, your mind goes, Oh, that's that dangerous thing that could kill you. You have an aposat here that regulates what you eat. But if you say you're starving, I'll put that on hold. So you can eat, you can stand in front of the fridge and eat so much stuff. And then when you've eaten, you still feel hungry, because you just told me you were starving.

So you're saying that using the words I'm starving or I'm okay, I don't need food, whatever you say is going to manifest in and you just have.

To think, how could I change? Am I really starving? I don't think I've ever been starving. I've been hungry, but I've never been starving. Could I really eat a horse? No, not even a horse's leg. Of course you couldn't. Am I really dying of hunger? That takes at least 12 days, probably even longer. So then you think, why would I lie to myself and delude myself? How about saying the truth? I need to eat. I'm ready to eat. And so what happens is maybe you're driving home or maybe you're on the train station and you say, I'm starving. Now your mind goes, there's a KitKat machine right there. You should eat three of those and maybe some jelly beans and taco chips as well because you're starving and I'm your mind and my job is to keep you alive and you just said you're starving. Because your mind's job is to listen to your words and your job and it's a great job is to tell it better stuff. So then instead you go, you know, I am hungry, I need to eat, but I've got some chicken in my house, I've got some vegetables, I've got a casserole, I cooked it yesterday, I can wait an hour and eat better food. And we all have to say that, I am hungry, but I'm choosing to wait 30 minutes for better food. You know, it's the same thing in a restaurant. When I go to a restaurant, I'm not hungry, the minute I sit down, they bring that bread, bread baskets. I think, oh, oh, I need that. And I could have eaten all of those at one time until I learned to say, I'm choosing to wait half an hour to eat this really nice food I've ordered. Yeah. But you have to talk to yourself. You know, we're all taught, if you can talk to your customers, you'll have a great business. If you can talk to your kids, you'll be a great parent. But no one says, but you need to talk to yourself. That is the most important conversation you'll ever have, the one you have with yourself. This relationship is killing me. This kid is killing me. I'm dying under my workload. This free weight makes me want to die. It's not true. Why don't you say the truth? This community is a challenge. It's a challenge. I've got all these audio books, isn't it? I've got some snacks in my car. I'm prepared for the challenge. rather than it's killing me.

So what happens when we say this is killing me over and over again? What happens? How do we manifest that?

If you say that your mind, your mind's job is to keep you alive on the planet. It doesn't actually care if you're happy. You know, people think my mind's job is to make me happy. No, it's not. It's to make you live long enough to reproduce yourself. And actually, that takes the first 30. So we've got another 70 left. So our mind's job is a little confused. to our minds.

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But, you know, we are ancestral people in very modern bodies and when you say my job is killing me, it goes, don't go to that place called job. And if you keep going to that place called job and keep saying it's killing you, I'll just give you a nice ulcer. I'll keep you at home now. I'll make you sick. I'll give you a disease. And we see that people say, oh, I need a week in bed and then they get flu. Now they've got their week in bed. I need to get out of that meeting and now they get chronic diarrhea. So it happens all the time anyway. And because your mind is designed to keep you alive and so if you you hate something? We will say, you know, this guy, oh, he ripped out my heart, stamped all over it and threw it in the trash. Really? I think he got bored with you, darling. And you know what? If he stuck around, you probably would have got bored with him. He was just your starter relationship. He taught you a lot and you learned a lot and everything he loved in you, but he didn't take it when he packed his wash bag and left. He didn't put in it all the things that made him like you. they're still in you. He couldn't take them home and everything he liked in you is still there and you can find a way better person that loves you more.

Let me know some of your biggest takeaways in the comments below and make sure to share this with someone you think needs to hear it and stick around for more inspiring content coming up right now.

Many years ago there was a wonderful psychiatrist in London called Dr. Maudsley and he had a great expression towards my favorite and it says, the feeling that cannot find its expression in tears may cause other organs to weep. So he knew 100 years ago.

That's beautiful.

So beautiful and so true. The feeling that cannot find its expression in tears will cause other organs to weep. So he's sort of saying if you don't feel the feeling, your body's gonna feel it. If you don't open your mouth and say you hurt me, Don't be surprised if you get a screaming everywhere. I've got this screaming headache. I've got this angry red rash. I've got this thumping pain and by the words they're using angry screaming they're saying I have rage that can't come out.

I'm not expressing it but it's coming out.

Yeah, because the body is very clever at finding something. I worked with someone who couldn't walk and all she said was I can't stand there. I can't stand my ex. I can't stand my life, I can't stand my kisses and you can't stand up. Isn't that interesting? She had sort of phantom leg pains because she couldn't stand anything. Bulimics also say, well what makes me sick is my sister-in-law. Oh, I'm so sick of her. She just makes me sick. I vomit in my mouth every time I hear her voice and then they wonder why they're bulimic. Right. Because our words really affect our reality partly because and it's such an easy thing to say. Every word you say is a blueprint that your mind, body and psyche are working to make your reality. So we make our thoughts and our thoughts make us, then we go out into the world and we justify our thoughts every day. But our words are a blueprint and when you know that you think, well I better pay attention to that blueprint. I better not say this kid is killing me. My job is making me want to die. I'm so stressed out by what? The queue in Hughes Market. Well go to Zimbabwe where there is no Hughes Market and there is no queue and there's no money to buy food anyway. Then you can say you're stressed because your problem, the queue in error one and the bill is someone else's fantasy dream come true. This freeway is killing you. You have a car. Look at people on four buses. I used to take my daughter to school and I remember one day thinking that, oh my God, this commute is hell. And I saw someone at a bus and thought, how lucky I'm in my car. I've got the heating, I've got a cup of tea, I've got an hour to listen to something. I can talk to my kid. I keep saying, I want an hour to myself. Well, here it is. And I learned to stop doing that. But when you said, how are you? Nightmare. It is torture. What? The traffic. Yeah, the traffic, the queue. People keep ringing me, the phone ringing, it's torture. Well, maybe if it didn't ring, that might be worse. Some of my clients who are models will say, My life is hell, because people look at me. It's like, Really? Well, one day they won't, and then you might miss it. Yeah, but I get on a plane and guys hit on me, it's a nightmare. Well, put on a baseball hat and glasses, read a book.

Yourself.

Then they leave you alone. But that's not a nightmare. It's just mildly inconvenient. It's not hell, it's not killing you. But we use these incredible words. This is torture, this is killing me, this is a disaster. What is? Well, I went to the bathroom and I forgot to pause my movie. That's not a disaster. But when you use those words, because your mind can't differentiate to feel like it really is a disaster. Disaster.

The flip side of this, the beautiful part, when we understand and appreciate that our thoughts become reality, we can create the life of our dreams as well. We can start to manifest our thoughts by visualizing, by telling ourselves what we want, who we want to become, and taking those actions toward it. We can manifest our dreams.

You really can. You can stop being ill. You can change the shape of your body, you can change your digestion, you can have physical things, you can change the way you interact with your kids, the way they... So here's a good example, my kid is a nightmare, change that to my child is age appropriate.

There you go.

That's it. This builder's gonna go, oh my god, that's a disaster. But a good builder will go, it's a challenge. When you said talking to girls is terrifying, you just changed that to it's challenging. But hey, There's hundreds of girls out there. It's a numbers game. One will say yes.

Some will say hi.

And even if they say no, the only risk in life is not to take the risk. That's the risk. If you don't take, when you take the risk and it goes wrong, you learn something.

It gives you feedback for how to show up differently the next time. My girlfriend's a doctor of physical therapy and when she works on people, she would agree with everything you're saying because people's bodies are so tight, not because of something they tore or something sore, but it's because they're holding on to something emotionally. And she says once they start to talk, their bodies relax and the pain goes away.

All the pain where they can't lift.

Their shoulder, they can't turn their neck, once they let it out their feelings about their relationship or their insecurities or whatever it may be, that's when they have a pain-free body.

Because the body keeps score. The body holds on to pain and and tension and grief and we carry around all this stuff and yet we really don't have to if just more people knew even to say I'm enough every day. And to say another of my favorite things is I'm choosing this and I'm choosing to feel great. I'm choosing to work on my website all week and I'm choosing to go to the gym. I don't love it but I love having a six-pack. I'm choosing to say no to Krispy Kreme donuts and yes to apples.

Love Krispy Kreme's.

Do you?

I could eat 12 of them right now. Oh, so good. But I choose to eat empty.

Yeah, yeah, and if you say, I'm choosing to do this and choosing to feel great about it, your mind has a very clear image. The way you feel about everything is down to two things: the pictures you make in your head and the words you say to yourself. There's nothing else. So if you choose to run, going, I'm running, so I'm raising money for charity, so I'm going to complete this run even though my feet hurt, my knee hurts because I'm going to raise money. But you could run going, oh I hate this. I could be at home watching Netflix, I haven't eaten and then my knee hurts and then you'll have to stop. So when you keep saying I'm choosing it. Yeah. So if you're an Olympic athlete you would choose to get up at 4am and train. If you are a diabetic you choose to put a needle in your arm. If you wear lenses you choose to jab your finger in your eye, but you don't go, oh, I hate it. I can't accept it and I can't change it. And when you say, I'm choosing to study, to work, I want to go and talk to this girl I really like, or to put good food in my body, and I'm choosing to feel great about that too. There is no resistance. When you go, I want donuts and I can't have them. I've got to eat this freaking rabbit food. What your mind does is it creases are for donuts because you said I want donuts but I can't have them. I want pizza, I'm eating kale.

I can't have these but I choose.

To have this pizza. I can eat pizza every day. When I'm 95 I'm going to knock myself out with pizza. But right now I actually want to look really good in my clothes, maybe out of them too. So I'll save the pizza when I'm 80 because that door is probably shut then anyway. Then you can have loads of pizza every day. But you have to reason with your mind and negotiate and your mind will always Just do what it thinks you want, that's its job. And if you could only tell your mind what you want using relevant up to the minute words, you'll get exactly what you want.

What do you struggle with telling your mind? Is there anything that you...

It took me a long time to tell my mind not to eat sugar. I still look at it and go, it looks so nice.

That's me.

But I still look at candy. The other day I was really tired and so I went into a shop to get a coffee and they had jars of jellies and I thought I could eat all of those.

All of it.

But I'm choosing not to and I just had the coffee. So working out, you know, and we're on a schedule, sometimes just finding the time to go to the gym or do yoga or making the time. Yeah, that's probably the only two really eating healthy food all the time. Even on a plane, even sometimes where there is no healthy food, then you've got to wait and choosing to make myself exalt when I don't want to. But other than that, nothing really, because I'm, I couldn't do what I do unless I was really good at dialogue. My mind is my best friend. It's my, the best PA I've ever had. And it does what I want because I give it clear instructions.

What do you say to yourself on a daily basis? Is there like a process in the morning, afternoon, night or. what would it be like?

Actually when I wake up the first thing I would say is I love my life. I love my linen, I love my cup of tea, I always wake up going I love my life and then when I make my coffee I love this tea, I love the coffee, I love the shower gel in my shower because I really believe that if you can make your mind get excited by little things then big things every day is like Christmas and I think when you wake up you should go oh what have I got today? Oh a world of stress. I've got this, this, this, this, this. So you should always wake up and go I love my life. I'm alive in a free country. I've got all this stuff to make tea and life is great. So I do that. The second thing I do is I tend to stay in bed and do all my emails because then I feel like I'm not working because I'm in bed propped up drinking my my tea and I get all of that out of the way. Yes, very relaxed. Not stressed. Not stressed. I try not to have to rush to go to base, but sometimes I do. And I mean, I'm very lucky because I love what I do and I do what I love. People say, you, work really hard. I go, I've never worked a day in my life. I don't know what that is. I don't have to go where's my life is a weekend. People say, oh, the weekend, I go, what's a weekend?

I can take time off.

I mean I love my job because I get to make such a difference. So I don't really have much to moan about. Maybe communicating with my daughter is sometimes a challenge because I'm so positive that she occasionally wants me to be super negative.

Why is that?

Well I guess because you have to be the opposite of your parents. So I do all these positive she's an artist and she does lots of negative statements on her paintings on her t-shirts because because that's the deal. You've got to be the opposite of your parents. But I understand that. But she's great. But really, I don't have much to complain about.

You have a positive conversation with yourself pretty much 24/7.

Yeah.

What about a nightly routine? Do you have a boss that you say to yourself?

Well, you see, for me, I really believe that first it's what you do, and then it's who you are. So first you're doing it, and then it's who who you are and it's so who you are that it wouldn't occur to you to have to make yourself do it. See, I would never sit on the couch like, my case is lost, I just know it, it's all going to go wrong, there's no cabs out there, this is a horrible flight. I now have a belief and it really, it should me that there's no such thing as being bored if my flight is late. I mean, I just get on my laptop, on my phone, I mean, it's, I have 24 hour entertainment empty out my emails, look at something, the days of having to wait and being bored, even waiting in the car, my little phone is like everything, books, messages, videos. And so I love that. I don't really mind about missing stuff and being late anymore. In fact, when I was last landing here two weeks ago, I was hoping the memory because I was so into this movie. Hopefully it's delayed. Yeah, it's delayed. When the pilot said, we've got to go around, we were like, oh, that's so that's exactly how long is left of this movie. But I think it's important for people to understand that it isn't what you do. It's a bit like people who say I've done yoga every day and now it's just my soul. Like Meghan Markle said that yoga is in my soul. I don't do yoga. Yoga is part of my life. It's like you don't say I walk my dog. If you've had a dog for 20 years, just get up, pick up the lead and it's It's who you are not what you do. And so for me, it really isn't what I do because it's so a part of me and I like it. And so, I'm quite lucky that I'm pretty happy and positive. But I really do love my life and that's a good thing.

Was there ever something in the last 10 years that questioned everything that you've done or that questioned your ability to say, I love my life.

I did get very sick like a year ago and I thought, wow, how could that happen? You know, I'm so happy and positive and eat well, so I was a bit surprised when I got sick.

But then I thought, how did you get through that?

The same thing, the thinking, the belief. I decided I'd focus on massive healing. I kept telling my body that it was a cancer fighting machine. I was making all these NK killer cells, and I did actually go home. the next day I was on stage a week later and my doctor was like, wow, you become the poster girl for just going on with your life. And now I look at one particular YouTube and think that's so bizarre. I had like major surgery just a week before that and you'd never know. But again, it's a belief I decided I do wellness. I said to the husband, I need to go home. I want and I went and I got into my own bed. I watched Ray Donovan, I thought, this is it. I'm doing wellness here. I'm not going to lie in that bed where they keep trying to give you pills. And I didn't feel any pain at all because I just kept telling my body to heal itself. And then later I thought, maybe it's good I got that because I can help other people. And I go, look, you know, life throws stuff at you, but you get to choose how to deal with it. And even then I noticed that I was very positive. because I had actually got womb cancer. I thought, stroke of luck to get womb cancer, I don't need a womb, it's done its job. I've had a great kid, I talked to my womb and said thanks for giving me this great kid, but now I've got to get rid of you because I've got to stay here and raise this great kid. And I thought, that's good, I mean imagine if you get brain cancer or bone cancer, I felt very lucky it was a disposable organ that had done a great job, I didn't need it. And so I think once you become like that, It's just who you are. So I never had, oh my god, I'm gonna die. Because I thought, no, I'm not going anywhere.

All perspective, yeah.

It is all perspective. I mean, I still, you know, people would say to me, But I thought you were so healthy. How could you get that? As it turns out, I have that same gene that Angelina Jolie has. But then, of course, Bruce Lipton will tell you, you can turn off a gene. You can mentally remove that gene. So even with adversity, because it's quite good in a way, because people think, oh, your life's just, you're like Pollyanna just tripping along, having a wonderful life. That's not true. I've still had adversity. But your mind will always kick in when it's well trained. You go, this is a blip. Just a blip, just carry on. And so you've got to train your mind like you train a horse. You know, I say, your mind's like a Ferrari. and if you've never driven a Ferrari, it's going to go all over the place. But if you have Ferrari driving lessons, you're going to run that Ferrari. The Ferrari should not be running you. If you get on a horse, you've never ridden, it's going to go everywhere. But if you have some horse riding skills that you say go there and it goes. So I see my mind like a horse, and I am the rider, but I'm gonna tell my mind where to go and it's going to do it. The Narrative of I have a chemical imbalance and my depression is from chemical imbalance is a narrative that is the only explanation that people are being given. They're not given an alternative reaction, I mean an alternative narrative. So the most important thing is that anyone listening to this podcast, I want to validate your depression, your.