Marisa Peer explains how your brain moves you toward pleasure and away from pain, responds to mental pictures and words, and prefers what's familiar. Change your internal language, visualize what you want, and praise yourself to make good habits stick.
Chapters
Hey, you know, we're always trying to collaborate with other people and go into business with people and form partnerships. But here's something really smart you should do. Form a partnership with your brain. Communicate with it better. You see, the brain does four things that are very interesting. First of all, it always does what it really thinks you want it to do. Secondly, it tries to move you away from pain and towards pleasure. Thirdly, it only responds to the pictures and words in your head. And fourthly, it really likes to stay in what is familiar. So if you say things like, I'd give anything not to have to go to that meeting, oh, I dreaded going to that party on Sunday. I wish I hadn't volunteered to speak up at work or to deal with that really difficult client. You've told your brain you don't want to do it and your brain's like, I'll just give you the flu. Then you don't want to deal with that difficult client. You're dreading that meeting. I'll give you an upset stomach because you've told your mind the wrong thing. You're not dialoguing properly. You say, that client is difficult, but I'm going to deal with it. I'm going to practice and be great. And I want to do this. It's a bit like when you go to the gym and go, I hate the gym. I hate sit ups. You're not going to have any success at going to the gym. You have to go, I love the gym. My body loves it. I want to do this. Your mind's job is to come up with resistance for anything you tell it you hate. I hate my commute, I hate food shop. My kids are driving me crazy. I'm going up the wall with stress. Your mind's like, well, I better get you away from those kids or their job. And the only way it can do that, really, is to make you sick when you go, yeah, my kids are a challenge. That's what kids are like. I love my kids. My job is difficult sometimes, but I love having a job. Now, your brain has no resistance to come up with. Secondly, we have this belief that our brain's job is to make us happy. Oh, no, your brain's job is to make you survive. It doesn't care if you're happy, it cares if you survive. So when you say, my job is killing me, this commute is stressing me out. I'm dying under the paperwork. It wants you to stop, stop. And so, because your brain's job is to move you towards Pleasure. You've got to say, I love working weekends, even if it's not true. I love going to the gym. I'm so lucky I've got a baby that wakes me up at three in the morning. I know it sounds really Pollyanna, but you can trick your mind all the time going, I love it, I want it, I like it. And that's what Olympic athletes do when they're training. When they're getting up at 3am to run, they don't go, oh, this is great. But they also don't go, oh my God, I hate it. They go, yeah, this is going to make me an Olympic athlete. Because they understand the mind's need to move you towards pleasure and away from pain. And if you link pain to something, your mind will make you give it up really quickly. And people who fail give up their dreams because they link pain to them. But people who succeed meet their dreams. They go, yeah, I want to work all weekend. I'm building a business, I want to work nights writing this book because I'm going to write a book. You can choose what to link pain and pleasure to. In fact, you can choose anything you like. But you know what you can't choose what happens when you say things like, I hate my job, I hate my boss, my in laws are killing me, this kid is driving me crazy. Sure, you can choose to say that, but you can't choose what happens when you are very negative. Third thing about the brain, really simple. It likes and responds to images that make a picture. The way you feel about everything is down to the pictures you make in your head and the words you say to yourself. You could have a little ladybug on your hand or a butterfly, but you, you're not going to have a cockroach on your hand because the picture of a cockroach is a dirty bug. But a lady bird is pretty. It's just a fly with a different coating, but the picture is different, the words are different. You can have a butterfly on your shoulder, even on your face, but not a moth. Because 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. When you make the pictures good, when you make the words good, it changes your life. And the final way of collaborating with yourself is that the brain loves what is familiar. It doesn't really like what is unfamiliar. Because in our bodies we're still tribespeople and it was dangerous to go out to unfamiliar territory. But we don't live in tribes now. So you gotta make anything unfamiliar familiar. Getting up and going to the gym, running, taking sugar out of your tea, not eating candy after every meal. If you stop doing that, what was familiar becomes unfamiliar. And there are other things that you really need to make familiar. Here's something that will change your life if you make it. Praise yourself. Say, I did a great job. I did a good job. In the days of startup where you're running your own business, it may take two years before you see a profit. The only person who's going to praise you the end of every day is you. So say, I did a great job, did a really good job today. I love what I'm doing. I'm good at it. Make praise familiar. Make criticism unfamiliar. So just to quickly recap, tell your mind what you want. Use very specific, detailed, positive words and take out all of that stuff. This is killing me. I'm dying here. I can't stand it, I can't take it. I'm stressed out. I'm at my maximum bandwidth. Give up all of that and instead go, I've got amazing coping skills. Love what I'm doing. Keep linking pleasure to what you're doing and not pain. You can link pain to not doing it. Remember, you only respond to the words and pictures. Make them amazing. Remember to make what is negative and familiar unfamiliar, and what is positive and unfamiliar familiar. Remember, you can choose to use any words you like. You can say, my wife is driving me crazy if you want, or my husband is killing me with his difficulty. But what you can't choose is what you do to yourself when you use words like that. So choose not to use those words. Collaborate with yourself better. You'll have an amazing life. Thank you.
