From financial success to attracting our perfect partner, Marisa teaches that nothing is impossible if we have faith that we are ‘enough’
We all need a cheerleader sometimes; a few inspiring words to help motivate us and overcome our doubts. But instead of looking to others for this support, Marisa Peer believes we have to become our own cheerleaders.
Marisa has been coaching the world’s top performers for more than 25 years, and her clientele lists several multi-millionaires who learned how to pass through their fears, all thanks to her. Taking to the stage at this year’s The Best You Expo, Marisa shared her powerful techniques which show that nothing is impossible to achieve if we have faith in ourselves. – and that we can develop this faith on a daily basis. Here Marisa is in her own words:
“I’ll tell you a little bit about my story. I started off being a child psychologist but I wasn’t in love with that. I think I was just too young. I ended up going to work for Jane Fonda, and I noticed that every third girl in her workout studio was bulimic or anorexic or exercise, and I became fascinated as to why. Using my psychology background, I began to see that they all felt that they never felt ‘enough’.
Soon afterwards I became a therapist, and I realised that one of the biggest issues with all my clients was this feeling that they weren’t enough. People came to me with wide-ranging issues – such as eating disorders, alcohol addiction, an out of control shopping habit or marital problems – but they all had the same problem. They would binge eat, or drink alcohol or buy more stuff to try and feel like they were enough. Because when you don’t think you’re enough you need more. But if cakes could really make you feel enough then you wouldn’t constantly need more, if alcohol could make you feel enough then you wouldn’t constantly need more. Their presenting issue was masking the real problem.
So I began this journey working out what it is that makes people not feel enough. When you are not enough you forever need more, you can never get enough. But when you know you’re enough you don’t need more. When you know you’re enough you give the whole world permission to recognise that you’re enough. This is not arrogance and it is not insecurity, it is right in the middle. I know I’m enough, and when you know that about yourself you can never, ever be rejected. People can say horrible things but it just goes over your head you don’t let it in.
People who don’t feel they’re enough often have a drive to be rich and famous so that they think they’re enough. But it doesn’t work if they haven’t dealt with why they feel like that. They always think they need more success and more praise because they feel there is someone younger, taller coming up right behind them. We can look at all the amazing people we’ve lost recently in tragic circumstances; for example Philip Seymour Hoffman, Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse. So many people that make you think ‘wow they had everything’. But take Amy; I spoke to her dad many times and she was treated for bulimia, alcoholism, anorexia and drug addiction. But those were not her real problem. She never, ever believed she was enough. You only have to listen to her song lyrics – I told you I was troubled, you know I’m no good – it broke my heart that she could have been helped, but instead she got the wrong help.
You can put ‘I’m enough’ into your life. If you want to understand how your mind works and how your mind can become your best friend, your most loyal ally, and your cheerleader, then you need the Rules of the Mind. This is 33 years of therapy condensed! But here is my favourite; “Every thought you think and every word you say is a blueprint that your mind and body say ‘I’ve got to make that work’. So, when you walk along thinking ‘no-one is going to like me’, it becomes true. But if your every thought and word is ‘I’m enough. I always have been, I always will be’ then your mind believes it and you become bullet proof to rejection. The strongest force in every human in the world is that we have to act in a way that matches how we think and how we want to feel about ourselves. Babies think they’re wonderful. We are all born knowing we are enough. And all you have to do is reactivate, re-manifest and regenerate what is in you, it has been in you all your life and you’ve just buried it under negative beliefs that aren’t even true.
If you say ‘I’m enough, I’ve lovable, I’m significant and I matter’. If you say that every day it defeats the logic that says ‘I’m not sure about myself or my clothes from Primark or my weight’. When you tell your mind that you’re enough it defeats anything that would tell you otherwise.
Here is one of my favourite Rules of the Mind because it is so easy; Your mind does what it thinks you want it to do. And guess what it bases that on? What you tell it. If you think “I’d die if another relationship goes wrong, if another person tells me that that’s it I’m finished” – then you set yourself up to fail. When you say things like that you’re telling your mind you don’t want love. It is too painful. The amount of people who say to me “I like someone but I never talk to them” or “I have a great idea at work but I never present it”, or even “I’ve written a book, but it is has been in the drawer for 15 years”. They all hold back because they focus on the fact that they could be rejected. Nobody can reject you unless you agree with every single word they say. And you have the choice not too.
Your mind wants to move you from pain to pleasure. It does what it thinks you want and it bases it on what you tell it. And all you have to do to have an amazing life is tell your mind better stuff. Try “I can speak to anyone”, or “I have a great idea” or “I’m completely lovable”.
You mind likes what is familiar to it – so make great stuff familiar. Make self-belief and self-praise familiar. Wake up every day and say “I matter. I’m significant. I’m lovable. I am enough”. If you say it over and over again it becomes so familiar your mind doesn’t stop to think. Your mind responds to the pictures in your head and the words you say to yourself. All you have to do is change the pictures and change the words and it will change you entire life. Not just sometimes, all the time.
You make your beliefs. Your beliefs make you. Make your beliefs amazing. So let’s practice what you’re going to do every day for the rest of your life. I want you to say out loud “I am enough”.
For more information visit marisapeer.com
