Life-Changing Books Podcast Episode 71. Marisa Peer: Author of I Am Enough

Well, Marissa, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. How are you?

Doing very well. Luke and I are excited to interview you today and talk a little bit about I Am Enough. For those in the audience that are not familiar with you or your work, could you introduce yourself to everybody?

Yes, I've been a therapist my entire adult life. And I decided many, many years ago that therapy for many people is just too There isn't any other medical intervention where you turn up at a chiropractor or a doctor or even a dentist and say, I'm in a lot of pain and I need to have an extended discussion about it with some kind of hope of getting better. I think emotional pain, whether you've got fears or phobias or you just lack confidence, is just as intense as physical pain. And just as you turn up in the ER with a broken leg or a falling-out tooth and you get immediate pain relief. I think therapy should also offer immediate pain relief. So I'm Enough was almost like what I learned on my 30-year journey being a therapist, how I realized that all my clients, whether they ran a nursery school or had a bakery or were indeed billionaires, actually had the same problems. And when you understand we all have the same problems, then you understand, well, we must all have the same solutions. I wanted to give a book that was simple, easy to read, but had really powerful results. Because I'm a big fan of little tiny things that have a massive impact. I think we often think, well, if I've got a big problem like I'm depressed, I need a big response. Sometimes it's the simplest little things that make us feel better. So I've been a therapist all my life. I've trained 11,000 people to do what I do. I've written I'm on my 7th book now. And, um, yeah, I'm very lucky because I do what I love and I definitely love what I do.

Well, for everybody listening, uh, both Luke and I had a chance to see Marisa speak at an event in San Diego a couple of months ago, and we were both sort of blown away. And that's how we got introduced to Marisa. And, um, Marisa, you're known as the therapist's therapist. Can you tell everybody what that means?

Yeah, because a lot of therapists would send me their clients and go, look, I, I just can't get any progress with this client. I can't get anywhere. I'm sort of stuck. And I became the therapist's therapist that could fix the clients that no one else could fix because I never would quit on a client. I never said, what's wrong with you? I would say, you know, what happened to you? I worked with so many angry kids. And the worst thing you can say is, what's wrong with you? You want to go, what happened to you? What's going on with you? You're an angry kid. But an angry kid is nothing more than a hurt kid. So let's cut to the chase and talk about what hurt you. And I think when you're very direct with clients, they're very direct with you. So I never ever ask the client ever, how do you feel? I know how they feel. They feel sad. They feel broken. They feel frustrated. Why ask every— how do you feel this week? Well, the same as I felt last week. So when I'm teaching my therapists, we never ever ask traditional therapy questions. questions because, you know, the world is changing so fast. I haven't even got time. When that little thing goes around on my laptop, I move to my iPod or I move to my phone. I can't even wait for it to resolve itself. And I think the world is fast. We want fast therapy and why shouldn't we? People say, you know, the words rapid and therapy shouldn't go together. I think they should go together. And I think everyone in pain should be able to get out of pain as fast as possible. fast as they possibly can. So I created RTT because it's a therapy that's much more about the client than the therapist. You know, it's not about the therapist saying, can I have this client for 30 months or 2 years? It's about how quickly can I fix this client and let them go and live their happy life.

Well, I know Luke has a question about how you started with RTT. But before I have him ask that, in the beginning of the book, when you're talking about how you simplified therapy. It used to be years. Now you can get what was previously done in years done in just 2 sessions. It all starts with these 2 basic human needs. That's kind of how you classify people when they first sit down with you. So what are these 2 human basic needs, or basic human needs, and when did you become aware of them?

Almost straight away. From the minute we're born, we are wired to survive. And to survive on the planet, you need 2 things. You need to find connection And avoid rejection. You know, I took in 7 abandoned kittens last year in lockdown. And every time I walked in my garage, they'd like mountaineer up my leg because they thought, that's the girl with food. If I connect to her, I'm going to make it. And wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever you are, we understand something innately. If I connect to you, I will survive it. If you reject me, I might die. And years ago, we used to Maroon sailors and banished people that were difficult. And even in Romeo and Juliet, he said, well, I'd rather be killed than banished. There's nothing out there but purgatory. So we understand at some level that connection is a driving need and reject— being not being rejected is a driving need. Many of our modern issues like I'm scared of public speaking, I'm a huge procrastinator, I'm a massive self-sabotage. No, you're not. You're not any of those things. You're just scared of being rejected. After all, if you're scared of being rejected, how can you speak in public? If you procrastinate, you'll never fail because you never do it. So you can't be rejected. If you sabotage yourself, it's— they're all ways of avoiding rejection. And I'm a great believer in shortcutting. So here's the thing. If our greatest fear is to avoid rejection and we We pick that apart. Nobody can reject you without your permission. Yes, 500 years ago, if you watch Game of Thrones, you see it. You could die from being rejected or cast out. But today, you can live in an apartment till you're 108 with 6 cats. Amazon will deliver everything you need for the rest of your life. We do not die from rejection, but we feel like we might. And we hear all these songs. I'll die if you leave me. I can't live without you. My life is empty without you. And we're taught that we are very fragile and rejection will kill us. The truth is we're not. We're incredibly strong. And rejection doesn't kill you. In fact, it makes you stronger. I'm so glad that my first boyfriend rejected me. I'm actually thrilled. He did me a massive favor because he wasn't right for me and I wasn't right for him. And sometimes you look back and think, wow, if I hadn't got fired from that job, would I have started my own business? For me, if I'd been the favorite kid, I would never have been a therapist. It was feeling so different and disconnected that made me understand how that's everyone's problem. And that it's once you identify it, it's actually really, really easy to fix it.

Well, I have so many follow-up questions and things that I want to unpack from what you just said. But I want to make sure that Luke has a chance to ask his question because it's kind of like before we get into rest of the book type of question. So Luke, I'll kick it over.

Oh, no worries. I'm, I'm very much enjoying listening to Marissa talk. You're one of my favorite people. And actually, before I went to Secret Knock, I had already watched like pretty much all your YouTube videos. So it was a very happy time that I got to be there and watch you speak. That was very cool. Uh, yeah, so I had a question like before we dove into the book and, um, into all those questions about the book. I was wondering how you found hypnotherapy. Like what was the process of that? And if you had any idea that it would become such a huge part of your life?

So I was always going to be, I wanted to be a child psychologist, but I ended up working for Jane Fonda in West Hollywood, which I have to say was much more fun. I was only in my early 20s, but when I was working for Jane, I think every third girl in her Jane Roberts, Jane Fonda's exercise studio on Robertson Boulevard. They were bulimic or anorexic or body dysmorphic or exercise compulsive or orthorexic. And it's become much worse now than it was then. And I looked at all these people trying to fix an emotional illness with logic. I must need a cake and I'm really bad because I ate a cookie and I've got to punish myself. And I noticed in the self-hatred. Hate your body so much that you force it to go running in the rain. Deny your body the food that you like and eat salad and water. Nothing wrong with salad and water, but you can't make someone better by self-hatred. You can only make them better by going, hey, this is your body. And if you love it, really love it, you'll actually feed it better food and exercise it better. exercise it because you love it, not because you hate it. But getting that message across in a world where it's all about deny yourself stuff, punish those pounds, I realized that hypnotherapy was the fastest way to fix people. And so I trained with a genius called Gil Boyne, and I loved him. And luckily he loved me too. We became immense friends. And he taught me about the power of the mind and the power of hypnosis. And— Though I only ever planned to work with people with eating disorders, I actually ended up working hypnotizing actors into picking up a voice that wasn't their natural accent, playing a psychopath or someone terrifying. And it was actually just been the most incredible career because I've been everywhere, seen everyone. But you see, here's, you know, you only have to understand the rules of the mind. And here's one that we all know. In a battle between emotion and logic. In a battle between emotion and logic. Logic never wins. Emotion always wins. And so, so much therapy is logical. It's like saying to an alcoholic, now come on, drinking is ruining your life. Just stop. Well, that's logical. My emotion says I need a drink. Drink is my friend. It makes things better. It lets me escape. So if our problems are emotional, We can't fix them with logic. We can fix them by a different emotion, and that's what hypnosis taps into.

Marissa, can you just— can you define just quickly hypnosis and how it's safe and used in your methods? Because I'm sure that there are a lot of people listening that are just— they're unfamiliar with the term, or they have sort of like a bad idea of what the term actually means.

Yeah, people think hypnosis means going to sleep. You don't go to sleep. You wake up. You wake up to your incredible potential. So hypnosis is actually a sleep of the nervous system. You see, in your mind, you have what's called a critical factor. And the critical factor— so you go, hey, I'm going to go now. There's an amazing hot girl. I'm going to ask her out. But your mind goes, no, she's out of your league. That won't work. You'll just embarrass yourself. Hey, I'm going to go and ask my boss for a pay rise. The critical factor says, I wouldn't if I was you. You haven't got a college degree. There's other people smarter than you. So the critical factor allows us to hold back. Holds back again because of that old bugbear, you might reject me and that might kill me. And in hypnosis, the critical factor shuts down. And so you can say to them, you know, you love not drinking. It thrills you to not drink. Not smoking gives you more joy and pleasure than smoking ever could. It absolutely elates you. To say no to cake. There's no one in the world better than you. You're deeply, powerfully, magnetically lovable. And that girl will be lucky to have you and is going to fall in love with your soul. And the mind doesn't go, no, come on. It goes, yeah, yeah. That's why when I hypnotize athletes and make them believe they can run faster, jump higher, they believe it.

Yeah.

And if you ever see a small child who believes that mommy is going to kiss the pain better or rub the pain away, they haven't yet developed that critical thinking. And so it doesn't send you to sleep, but it really wakes up your potential. And you have no idea what your potential is because as you move towards your potential, it expands and expands again and again and again. And you couldn't ever know what your potential is. But you can know that when your mind moves to a new dimension, it never ever goes back again. And hypnosis is working with expanding your potential, moving you to another dimension, making you believe that you can be the very best version of you. And it isn't even hard work.

Well, the title of the book, I Am Enough, really moved Luke, uh, while we were actually at the Secret Knock event. Do you want to tell Marissa that story?

Yes, I would love to. Yeah, so, um, as we've already said, you know, I had the pleasure of being at Secret Knock, um, to kind of walk through some of the basic hypnotherapy with you. And it was— I was literally just blown away by the incredible power of our mind. And like, seeing that live and in action was just incredible. I mean, you did the— I believe it was the lemon, and like, we closed our eyes. Oh, I was just— I was blown away. We actually tasted the lemon. Like, you could all— you made our mouths salivate. It was, it was great. And I remember we stood up and I said those words, I am enough. And even now, it still, it still kind of brings a little bit of tears to my eyes.

Yeah.

I know, like, so many of us, including myself, have this deep-held belief that we aren't enough. And I'm just, I'm wondering, like, how you came to find these words to be so powerful and How do we start creating this new dialogue with ourselves on a daily basis in order to just to really believe that we are enough?

You know, of course, everything that's great in my life came from 30 years of my own incredible clients who taught me everything. And I would work with people who said, you know, I'm not good enough because I haven't been to college. I'm not beautiful enough because I'm not a perfect size 4. I'm not interesting enough. I can't be loved enough because my dad left before I was born. And then I started to work with billionaires who go, I'm not really good enough, you know. Movie stars going, no, this is just a fluke. I don't know how I got the Oscar. I don't know how I got listed as the hottest woman in FHM, but I'm now really nervous that what if I'm not in that list next year? And I began to see, oh, I see. All of my clients have a degree of not enoughness. And of course, I've worked with thousands and thousands of addicts, drug addicts, alcohol addicts. And I haven't met one in my entire career who ever, ever thought they're enough.

Hmm.

And then I began to really look at this not enoughness and understood that, okay, so if you think you're not enough, you need more. More alcohol, more drugs, more sex, more stuff, more praise, more followers on social media. Because when we feel we're not enough, we need more. But when you know you are enough, you don't need more, but you have a desire to go out and get more. If I'm enough, I can get a promotion, I can get a pay rise, I can make my relationship better because I'm worth it. And it was actually working with a Hollywood actor. I went to see him and he had an amazing house, Ferraris on the drive. And when I went in, he went, I hate this house. I hate my neighbors. He'd already warned me in advance I could not put my car on his drive because it wasn't a Ferrari. It had to be hidden away because it was just a— I've forgotten what it was. But I loved this car. And when he went in and I was saying to him, wow, this house, you're going to hate the house. And then he had an Oscar. He said, oh, I don't know how I got that. That was a fluke. And I said, well, I know what's wrong with you. He said, how can you know? I said, you just— a Mustang, my car was a Mustang.

A Mustang.

He said, you just don't think you're enough, do you? And big tears leaked. Is that it? And I said, well, of course it's it. You hate this house. You don't like— you can't have any car on your drive that isn't a Ferrari. You've had 4 wives. You're overweight. You don't feel enough and you need more. But when you know you're enough— and he was really receptive. Later he called me and said, hey, you'll never believe this, but I've gone fishing. I've never been happier. I'm dating a hairdresser. I've sold the Porsche and I've got a Mini and I've lost 30 pounds. All because of those words, I am enough. Because if we look into that, what does that mean? Every day you wake up and I'm not enough. My girlfriend's not hot enough. My car. I'm overweight. I might not get an Oscar next year. And so he was every day telling himself a lie. I'm not enough. And we just took away the not and said, I am enough. For him, it was revolutionary. But it shouldn't be because here's how it works. You think a thought and your thought creates the feeling. And the feeling in turn creates an action and a behavior which you justify by going back to the thoughts. If I wake up and go, I'm not enough, I feel sad, might feel pissed off, I feel hopeless, I feel defeated. They're all feelings. And the feelings cause the behavior, which is I'm not going to take any, I'm not asking anyone out. I would never go for a pay rise. Because I'm not enough. And if you change that, okay, I'm going to say I'm enough. I don't believe it. I'm going to say it anyway because the mind doesn't know. And believe me, it doesn't care what you tell it is right or wrong. But if you say I'm enough, you think a different feeling, even if you're faking it. Well, if I am enough, I can take a risk. I feel safe. I feel willing to put myself out there. And the behaviors— I can ask someone out. I can ask for a pay rise. I can ask for a promotion. I can ask for funding because I'm enough.

Hmm.

So everything changes when we change the thought. Well, we're taught, let's change the behavior. Let's change the feeling. But the thought comes first. And if you change your thinking, it changes your life. And by the way, in a world where we're trying to control everything, our bodies, our weight, the only thing you can ever control are your thoughts. When you change them, It changes your life and it's so free and it's so easy. I've now got my program in thousands of schools and they're all reporting back that it's extraordinary that just having kids join the I Am Enough is stopping bullying.

Hmm.

One of my schools in Spain said, you know, we took all the kids that were the bullies and had them say I Am Enough. One said, I don't even know why I'm crying, but this is really doing something. And they said the whole bullying epidemic just stopped. Because they didn't just work with the bullied kids who of course feel they're not enough. But they worked with the bullies. No bully says, my life is so great. Who can I diminish today? Of course bullies don't feel enough. And it's really incredible how you can change everything when you change your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, your behaviors by saying, I'm enough. And its strength is in its simplicity. But also its honesty. Because you know what? It's true. How could you not be enough? You are enough. You always have been. You always will be. When you know it, give everyone else permission to know it too.

While listening to you, to you talk right there, Marisa, I have like a 10-part question. So I'll try to simplify this. Okay. I was thinking about the part in the book where you said that, you know, as humans, our brains have not developed as fast as civilizations. You talked about Game of Thrones earlier. If you got exiled in the past, you could actually get killed, whereas today, if you're late for work, you're not actually going to get killed, using the example from the book. And I was thinking, how do we stop that social programming from being so negative? And I think you, you sort of answered the question. We need to start with the, the school system. The traditional school system creates a fear of failure, whereas what you're teaching is let's, let's flip that paradigm on its head and teach something in a different way. So is that, is that the focus of your work now, is to kind of get earlier in the developmental process instead of helping people by the time they're adults?

Well, we're working in the prison system quite a lot. We're working in the mental health field quite a lot. But my big thing has always been working with children. We had in England this thing called a 5-day challenge going from I can't to I can. And we had 500 schools pick that up all in one day. And schools are reporting back. They love that. We also have an anti-bullying program. But of course, my idea is to put myself out of business. By having no clients, by working with children. And you know, kids have such a rough time. We're so busy now trying to give them organic broccoli and teach them Mandarin, and we forget that your success as a parent comes down to really one thing: how high is the self-esteem of your kids? And if it isn't high, sadly, with the best of intentions, you haven't done a great job. But no one shows you how to do that great job. How do you raise kids with high self-esteem? We're so busy sending them to school, trying to get them to have high grades, trying to get them to be good at sport. And I worked with a school in San Francisco that had 14 suicides in one year. And these were not kids from parents who neglected them. They were kids from parents who were pushing them to do a lot. And recently when I was in Spain, I was working with 14 suicidal teenagers. And I asked them all to write on a piece of paper one thing that I could help them with. And they almost all wrote the same thing, which is kind of heartbreaking. But they all wrote on this bit of paper because I had them in hypnosis and I had them hold it on their chest as I walked around. I could work with each one. They all wrote the same thing. I need to belong to somebody. And that's what Marilyn Monroe said. I've never belonged to anyone in my entire life. And I guess I never will. And so we've disconnected people massively. You know, social media has a lot of advantages, but we have people who have got 500 friends. No one's going to turn up when you're sick. We've got people who only have relationships on FaceTime, who never pick up the phone but text. And I think we're making a whole generation of kids really sick because they're connecting to Social media. In Japan, you can rent a robot to babysit your kids. You can rent a robot to walk your dog. I mean, my dog wouldn't want to be walked by a robot. Where's the interaction in that? And we've really forgotten that human beings are hardwired for connection. And how can you connect with a computer? But the sad thing is that when you cannot connect to a person, you'll connect to a needle. a gaming table, a cake, a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Because if you disconnect people, they start to connect to stuff. They start to connect to drugs and booze. And, you know, the answer is not to get people into AA. The answer is to find out why we're all so disconnected. What are we doing going online and seeing how many followers we've got? We should be going, well, who in my area wants to hang out with me. Who, you know, that we've created a whole epidemic of people who are so lonely because we've made them connect to FaceTime and Instagram. And, you know, like my mom was saying once, it's so sad this Christmas because every niece and nephew is on their screen, but I don't have one. And I'm just sitting here on my own. No one's talking to me. People are so busy taking pictures of their dinner. and posting it that they forget to even eat it. I went to one of my clients who's quite a famous rock star and I went to his concert. And every person was filming it. And I said, I bet none of them ever watched that film back ever. But they're not even engaging. They're looking at their screen.

So—

And then when I was in Dubai, I saw something that I thought was awful. Strollers with an iPad in it so the baby can stroll. Do that, but they're, they're not even facing the mother. They're facing away. They're connecting to the iPad. And, um, I think we'll look back one day and think, what kind of crazy was that?

Yeah, there are so many things, uh, today we look back at things like cigarettes as an example and say, what were we thinking? And, and I'm sure we'll think the same thing about technology.

I'm sure we will.

How does that change? I mean, while you're saying that, I've never watched any concert footage back, but I'm sure I have an hour's worth of it in my cell phone. So how do we start to change that paradigm and shift in the other direction again? Like—

I think you just have to limit, like, you know, my husband and I don't have our phones in the bedroom because I'd wake up and reach for my phone instead of him. Oh, what's happened overnight? You know, everyone in England, it's now already 3 o'clock there. And, you know, when I'm out with him, we have to say, put your phone down. Let's have dinner without the phone. He always says to me, can we watch a movie? And I'm notorious as I'm watching it looking at my iPad. And he always says, please don't do that. I want you to engage with me. So I think you have to tell people. I say to my husband, you know, when are you having that surgery to have that thing extracted from your palm? And it's a joke, but you have to say to someone, hey, I really need you to connect to me. So maybe if your husband's on text, you send him a text going, hey, you've got a lovely wife here. Put the phone down and come next door and connect with me. We just have to ask, or we have to say to people, I need you to pay me attention. I'd like you to get off the screen. You have to kind of have rules. No, no screen time over dinner or breakfast, or no screen time in the bedroom, or when we're on holiday. We're only going to have an hour a day. Sure, you can check everything, but we're not having these screens. And then we need to— with kids, when they love screen time, the best thing you can do is say, okay, you've got to earn a token. If you spend an hour of football or bike riding, you can have an hour on the screen. Because then they learn actually that they connect more playing football or doing stuff. But it just takes a while for people to get it that The screen isn't connecting you, it's actually disconnecting you. I mean, I don't understand myself. I've been dating someone for 2 years. I never met them, but we FaceTime. It's like, well, but that— how can that possibly be the same as wrapping your arms around someone, having someone to cuddle you in the morning and in the evening? And I've met many parents, especially fathers, who say, oh yeah, you know, I FaceTime my kid, I read them a story, it's just as good. good. It's not. It is absolutely not ever as good as tucking your kid in at night, kissing their forehead, holding their hand. And, and we've allowed ourselves to believe it's as good. It's not as good, and it will never be as good. And we should stop lying to ourselves.

Yeah, those are some great suggestions. Well, I want to volley it back over to Luke. I know he has a couple more questions for you before I ask my final couple.

Well, I really appreciate this. Um, I have a couple kids of my own and we are continuing to do that I am enough with them. And it's, it's amazing. I'm gonna get all teary-eyed here, but it's amazing just to see the, the change, um, in them on just on a daily basis. Like, they actually believe in themselves and I love seeing it.

Yeah.

I love seeing it because it's so different than the way I grew up. So it's very powerful and I'm grateful for that. I have another question. I'm wondering about beliefs that we have. You talk about in the book how we have all these beliefs that we hold on to and that we need to replace those old beliefs with new ones. I'm really curious to know if we have to just tackle one at a time or if we can— we have these beliefs that we can tackle at once if we have a bunch of them, or if it just has to be a single one and then on to the next one. Or how we can progress through each of those old negative beliefs to better ones?

I think you can take several because if you, if you understand that all of your beliefs stem from one belief, I'm not enough, or there's really 3, I'm not enough, I'm different so I can't connect, I want something like love or success or wealth that's not available to me. Really, there's no other problem in the Western world. As long as you have food and shelter, they can only be your 3 problems. I'm not enough. I'm different so I can't connect. What I want is not available. So if you look at that as a source of all your issues and just take those 3 and start to go, I'm enough, I'm enough, I'm enough. You go, no, I'm not. I don't have a fancy car. I live in an apartment with 2 other guys. But if you keep saying it, you run out of objections because you're the objector.

Hmm.

And then your mind goes, you know what? You say this all the time. It must be true. So you're teaching your mind to let it in. So take those 3 things. And if you just say every day, I'm enough, I matter, I'm significant, I'm the same as everyone. I'm super able to connect and whatever I want is available with bells on. Start from that and repeat that over and over again. You know, the schools I'm working with have every kid every day go, I'm enough. I matter. I'm significant. I'm lovable just the way I am. And they say it's extraordinary because it's kind of covering all the bases. But you can add in other stuff like I can talk to girls. I'm a great parent. I'm an amazing dad. I'm really good at my job. I've got a gift for IT or public speaking and I'm extraordinary at it. Because your mind never says, is that true or false? Often when you say, I'm just the biggest loser in the world, your mind is going to, come on, you know that isn't true. You've got a brother that adores you. Your kids think you're amazing and you're really good at plumbing. It just goes, yeah, I'm just— I'm just a loser. So the mind will let in whatever you tell it. And your words shape your reality. And if you don't like your reality, change your words. Look at what you're saying. I'm an idiot. I got rocks for brains. If I look at— if I have one beer, I need 10. If I look at a pizza, I gain weight. And say, well, that's not even true. Why don't I say one beer is all I need? I really enjoy it. And then I'm done. I look at a pizza, I have one piece and that's enough. I'm a great dad because I'm tuning into my kids' needs and my job is to raise their confidence and I can see how I'm doing it, which is what you're doing. People love me. How could they not? I'm lovable. You might go, well, that's a lie. But so is saying I'm an idiot. I got rocks in my head. And if you are prepared to lie to yourself, I'm exhausted. I'm I'm falling apart. I'm chronically tired. None of this is true. But if you want to lie, tell yourself a better lie because your mind doesn't know or care if what you're telling is true or false. You know, we make our beliefs. And then our beliefs make us. And then our confirmation bias makes what we have decided to believe real. So if we make our beliefs and our beliefs make us, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making your beliefs better. amazing because the confirmation bias will make them real.

One of the, one of the best examples of being able to control your internal dialogue and then see a very clear outcome is tattoos, of which I have a lot. So in the book, in the book, you say that you can tell your mind that there's this great outcome on the other side of the pain, and you can sit in the chair for 5 hours, whereas your body's natural response would be to get up and flee, but you can kind of like overcome that. So that was really cool. I've been, I've been telling a lot I've heard a lot of people about that metaphor from the book.

Yeah.

No one says, hey, I'm going to have a whole sleeve on my arm. Does it hurt? Of course it hurts. But how much do you want the sleeve? Because when you want something enough, you focus on the pleasure, not the pain. So a marathon runner doesn't go, oh my God, the first mile and my feet already hurt. As someone who's doing the plank won't say, ooh, it hurts. You have to focus on the pleasure and not the pain. So if you want to write a book, you have to— can't go, oh my God, it's so isolating. It's really lonely. You have to go, I love writing. It's compelling. Whatever you want to do, the magic words are, I've chosen this. And I've chosen to feel great about it. Whether that's getting a piercing or a tattoo or writing a book or giving a TED Talk. And then to go, you know, I want this so much. I'll do whatever it takes. And I love every minute. Because after all, Marathon runners and people are doing endurance training and Ironman, they kind of seem to enjoy it. But they don't go, oh, I hate this. My legs are killing me. They go, wow. I'm just, I've just cycled for 20 miles and I feel amazing. And I know for me, even when I was giving birth, I kept saying, wow, this is so exciting. What a gift this is. There are people who'd swap places with me tomorrow and I'm about to push out a person and— It's really exciting. And that may sound really strange. But you see, you can choose the language you use. But you can't choose how you react. So a junkie never goes, I'm going to put a needle in my arm. Oh my God, it's going to pierce my skin. They go, I'm going to get high. Give me that needle. And the fact that they link pleasure to it is interesting because it shows, oh, it's a choice. I can choose this. I can choose to go, you know what, I'm choosing to live a life without sugar and I'm choosing to love it. Or I could go, oh, I couldn't, could you? I couldn't even imagine a life without sugar. What's a life without cake and chocolate? That sounds really boring. But here's the thing. You have a choice. You can choose to be negative or positive. You can't choose what you do to your body when you're negative. And if you could see what negative thoughts do— oh, it's flu season, I'm bound to get sick, I always get ill when the heating comes on, whenever I get on the plane I get an infection— oh, sorry, light's just fallen over. You can't, you, you can't choose what you do to your body. So we've got to make better choices.

Yeah. And we, we can choose to create these false realities. That also shows us that we can choose to create these great realities. Like you say that babies in the airport aren't crying about getting on, you know, this aluminum tube that's going to fly up into the sky, but adults are shaking. Well, you can change the reality. We're adults, we have control over that.

And babies never think, I really mustn't wake up my mom, she's exhausted. They think, I'm bored, I think I'll wake up the whole house. They don't have the concept of is this good or bad? They don't think, wow, you're giving me pudding that's full of sugar and really naughty. They just think, oh, I like this.

Yeah. Luke, any final words for Marissa before we sign off?

Oh, I feel like we've taken up enough of her time. Um, so I just wanted to say thank you so much. I love your book. I enjoyed it very, very much, and I can't wait to give it to more people and to read your newest book, um, which you have a copy of, right?

Yeah, this is my newest book, and it's got a very interesting cover. It says, tell yourself a Better Lie, How to Edit Your Story, Rewrite Your Life, and Change Your Entire Future. Sorry, How to Edit Your Story, Rewrite It. You know, we all have a story. I wasn't loved. I wasn't wanted. I should have been a girl. I should have been a boy. I should have been a musician or I should have been academic. Don't make your parents' story your story.

Right.

You're meant to be here. You're meant to be you. And when you edit your story and rewrite your life, you can be anything. You can do anything. You know, Meryl Streep years ago went up for the part in King Kong. The director says, Meryl, I'm going to tell you the truth. You're not beautiful. You're never going to make it as an actress. You need to go and find another career. And she said, that's one opinion in a sea of opinions. I'm actually going to go and find another opinion. And I love that about her, that she didn't allow his story to be hers. When someone said to Naomi Campbell, Naomi, you know, Black girls don't get on the COVID of Vogue, that door is shut. She said, shut? I'm going to kick it open. You watch me. And I love that about her because she said, that's your story, is Black girls are not on the COVID of Vogue. Of course, my great friend Edward Enninfield is now the editor of Vogue in the UK. And that's no longer true. When she said, It's not my story. My story is, where's that shut door? Let me kick it open for me and everyone coming after me. I love that, that we have a choice. Someone said to me, you know, my mom's story was never trust anyone. Someone said to me, my dad said jump off the table and I'll catch you. And as I jumped, he turned away and said, never trust anyone in your whole life, not even your own shadow. But that was his dad's story. Doesn't have to be his story. We can all have a story. But you have a chance to rewrite your story. You know, Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, Ed Sheeran. His story should be a white guy with red hair and big thick glasses. How can that be a rock star? Eminem could have said, well, my story, I'm a white guy with blue eyes and blonde hair, can't be a rapper. But they basically said, no, this is my story. I'm going to write the beginning and the middle and the end. And we're so busy looking at our story and trying to change the ending. You can change the beginning by saying, my life on my terms. Rewrite your story. The book shows you how to do it. And it's extraordinary.

Amazing. Well, thank you. Like Luke said, thank you. Uh, for jumping on and, and, uh, chatting with us today. So for those that want to learn a little bit more about you or purchase a copy of your books, where should they go? What should they do?

So if you go to RTT.com, you can find out how to find a therapist that I trained. You can find out how to become a therapist. If you want a lot of free stuff, go to, uh, MarisaPeer.com. We've got audios on wealth blocks, love blocks, health blocks, money blocks, and we fix them all for you. It's totally free. And if you want to join the I'm Enough movement, go to imenough.com. marissapier.com will tell you when this is being released, but I think itt.com does as well. And join the I'm Enough movement. You might notice I've got all these little bracelets that say I'm Enough. I have it all over my house, on my fridge, on my cushions, on my pillows, because, you know, if you have dry skin and you put on a bit of balm, that balm goes in and nourishes your skin. skin. Sometimes we have a dry soul that's all chapped and we've got to put balm on. And I'm Enough is balm for your soul, balm for your heart, balm for your life. So put it in there and it will change your life forever.

It's amazing. And you're amazing. Thank you for coming on the show. We both really enjoyed learning from you today.

Well, I've loved being here and I'm honored that you invited me. Thank you so much.