you're listening to the women will podcast in this series of women in leadership limelight, successful. Women leaders share their stories of leadership growth and self discovery Louise. Hay was very good too, but in the world of therapies, I don't see too many women, they were all men. And so I thought wow, there really is a gap in the market. If you're an ambitious woman who wants to live larger dream, bigger blaze trails and manifest your destiny. These conversations will inspire you with new insights and fresh perspectives and now your host, Laura Queen ba, today's guest is Marissa peer. There are few speakers that matched her wide experience and stellar reputation over three decades. Her client list includes international superstars, ceo? S royalty and olympic athletes and she has helped thousands of people to overcome profound personal issues. Her fundamental rule is that all our emotional and personal problems come from believing that we are not enough.

And when she explains how to overcome this, the results are tremendous and dramatic. The best selling author of five books, Marissa teaches simple steps that produce dramatic and life changing results. Thank you so much for being here and for making the time to come on and share and talk about your journey and your experience is really looking forward to hearing your, one of the most quotable women I know. So I'm very excited to have this conversation with you something in my eye just gone now. Well, I like that the most credible woman, you know, that's definitely take it. Thank you, thank you. Um I think there's just so many just little phrases that you throw out and yeah, so so I love that. I think one of my favorite has been Tell Yourself a better Lie, I really love that and embraced, embraced that and that's made such a huge difference in my life. So I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit more about that.

So I think the first time I saw you was on Youtube and normally I'm waiting to just click out of their, you know, click skip the ad. But there was something about you that was just very engaging, just I think your presence, the way you carried yourself. Um, and I would love to hear a little bit more about that. Like how women show up and how we can have that, that similar presence, but what's that been like for you? Um kind of being so ubiquitous, omnipresent, like influencing millions of people around the world. Well it's been a wonderful thing, you know all my life, my father used to quote me, he loved Shakespeare and he quote a little Shakespeare quote and I've always been, I love quotes too. So when people started to quote my quotes that was like, wow, gosh, imagine that people are actually quoting my original quote. So that was a wonderful thing and people come to industry and go, hey I read your book, I saw you speak, he changed my life. And so it's just such a gift. I get letters from people all over the world and you know, you're the one person who made my kids feel better?

Or me, somebody said you've really helped my mom cope with a lifetime of bulimia. So having that reach where I can help people all over the world that I've never met from people who can't get pregnant to people who are living without love or confidence. It's just, it just was like I just feel so blessed and so immensely fortunate and lucky that I have a job that I love, but I'm most people would love to change the world and you have to change people. That's how you change the world, change yourself and change people. So I feel again, kind of really very lucky indeed that I get the opportunity to do that. It's an honor and a joy to help people the way I can. So tell me a little bit about that, like this idea of wanting to change the world, Was that something that you've always had within you? Where did that come from, do you think? No, I've never wanted to change the world, but I see people that really do and I would say listen, if you want to change the world change people, I haven't wanted to change my father was a very, very eminent head teacher. He was a wonderful head teacher.

He believed passionately you should make every child feel significant, you should make every child feel important. And I was always fascinated in Children's education and why do some kids become bullied? Why do other kids be the bully? Why do some Children shine and others fail? Why do some kids have no confidence? So helping Children do better in school and better in life was a passion, although when I first became a therapist, I was really working with adults, but I became a therapist by mistake because I trained to be a child psychologist and then left that and started teaching aerobics for jane fonda, which I loved. But every third woman there at least. And this was in the eighties was bulimic or anorexic or exercise compulsive. And so I was fascinated in how you could help people with these eating disorders. And of course now the figures are much higher. And then I discovered hypnosis, which is like the magic bullet. And so I became fascinated in helping people because I worked in her studio. So I had, I had a never ending list of clients, but then people would come and say, hey, I just want you to work on my fear of heights or fear of bridges or fear of something.

And so I started to kind of see people in every area of life. And then I was intrigued by how fast people would change if you have the tools to help them change quickly and permanent because that's what everybody wants. Yeah, absolutely. So hypnosis are, it's kind of a taboo word in some circles and what's that been like? It's kind of like mysterious. So, what drew you to hypnosis and to kind of zeroing in on this? Well, I found the therapy model very strange, I have to say. And it's not to beat up any existing therapist because every therapist I've met has a good heart and want to help people. But I just don't understand the model where it says, okay, you've got some emotional pain come every week and we'll talk about, no one said to the dentist. Gosh, I'm in such pain with my gun. Could I discuss that every week? No one goes to the emergency room and says, I think I broke my ankle. I really need to have a discussion or I can't let you until I built up trust. So we have this model that says, you've got to build up trust with your therapist before you can make progress.

And it's a long progress. It involves discussing every week feelings. And I just didn't quite understand that because I thought there's, I mean, having been a therapist for 33 years, all clients want is to get over their pain as fast as they possibly can. If you want to know what the most agonizing migraines, we need to get rid of that. Now. Let me find just the medication or do chiropractor work, but you can't walk, walk around with that physical pain. But we're expected to walk around with emotional pain for months and months and just as clients want to be over there pain really fast. I think a lot of therapists would love to be able to get clients over their pain fast and we live in such a fast world. So, Einstein said, simplify simplify and I thought, you know what, I'm going to simplify therapy and simplify coaching just because I can. And the people that taught me the simple method messages were not my interest in my own patients. Every time I worked with the client, they go, wow, when you did that said, that explained that that to me was a game changer. So, I sort of collated all the feedback from my clients and created a course based on what they told me worked in real time with real clients.

You could get stunning turnaround straightaway. So, so you mentioned like your your dad and like how his profession in education, so, did that influence you in terms of wanting to kind of go into educating and helping people in that way. Like what, what would you say were some of your influences? Well, my dad was my thought, my dad was immensely kind, immensely kind and really believed in making everybody feel important. So, I saw what a good person he was, but also saw the joy he got from doing what he did. He got as much back as he gave away. So, he showed me very early on, you need a job where you make a difference because that's what he had. My mother was very unhappy. My father was blissfully happy and I realized it was his career. It's always wanted a job where you could make a difference. And I was very lucky. So he was my first influence him and my second influence was my own teachers, Gil Boyne, David, Viscardi, Wayne dyer, who were each in their own way, going through the world and contributed to making people feel better about themselves.

Louise Hay was very good too. But in the world of therapies I don't see too many women, they were all men. And so I thought, wow, there really is a gap in the market and I didn't really set out to fill that gap. I set out, I just started off being a therapist. I loved being a therapist that fulfilled all my needs. I was a single parent too. So That was a joy because I could work from home entirely around my babies hours and then my little school aged little girls hours and I would have been content to do that for the rest of my life. I thought I'm never going to retire when I'm 85, maybe I'll just see to clients. And then of course I met my husband who owned a chain of comedy clubs called Jungles and he has always put talent on stage. He said, we know baby, you're wasted doing this one and when you need to take, make this bigger not for you but other people because we would really go, hey, you know, I live in Milwaukee or Sydney Australia and I want to find someone just like you, where do I find them? Or there isn't anyone because this is my method that I developed.

And then I began to think about teaching and of course Wayne Dyer said something very profound just before he died, he said, don't die with your music still inside you. And I thought, wow, that's, that's deep. So I decided, you know, I really should create a legacy, a living legacy in my own school, but I wouldn't have done if I hadn't married my amazing husband who literally said, listen, turn up, I'll do everything, I do the brochure, I'll do that, I'll find the students, all you have to do is show up. And he was very true. As I showed up, we did our first school and we thought, well we'll just see what happens. It was actually five years ago this very week and people came from all over the world from Sydney, from Canada, from Australia, from New Zealand, from Guam everywhere. So the following year, we put on four schools the next year we put on five and then we took it online and created virtual classrooms and my father, my husband and all my mentors, so many people helped shape me to have this job where I see clients teach people how to do what I do, write books and do a lot of speaking and stuff on Youtube, but I love all of it, which is very helpful to Congratulations on the five year anniversary of launching that In five years it's grown.

You know, we've trained 7000 therapists, we've won so many awards, you won 13 awards in one year. We're getting a lot of recognition. We've got schools paying our therapist to work in the school system now, so who knows what will be in the next five years, but it's very exciting. It is and I think you kind of alluded to this question that I've had, which is as you said, like a lot of therapists kind of follow this path that you initially had, which is I'm just going to be working on my own one on one with clients and I'm satisfied with that. And then just this idea of being able to multiply yourself, especially over the last few years as your, you've become almost a global brand, so to speak. So could you, could you speak a little bit about that, it sounds like finding the right partners and even kind of building this, you know, organization that supports you, What has your entrepreneurial journey been like maybe in transitioning from um working one on one to actually supporting other people to do the work as well.

So, you know, I'm not, my husband is an amazing, but I wouldn't say that I am. I was very content being a therapist. And I think for a lot of people, not just therapist, you have an idea. But then to turn it into a brand that the work involved can be very daunting when I was given my first book deal, even though I thought, oh gosh, I got to sit at home now and write a book all on my own. Because being a therapist can be rather isolating. You work from home, you work in an office, you work on zoom. It doesn't actually come with a social, if you don't go to the bar every friday with all your colleagues and then I thought, wow, writing a book is going to be even more isolating. But I think my, my, the way I imagined the workload to go from being a therapist, being a trainer. I just thought I found it not overwhelming but daunting. So you need a good partner that will take on all of this work. I want to put my first school on. I haven't even thought about things like insurance, I knew we had to give out certificates. Didn't know they needed to be numbered. There's so many things to, to factor in.

So if you can have a great partner, especially if you're married to them, then that's ideal. But a business partner, someone who has skills that you do. I think a lot of people partner up with someone who's got the same skills, hey, we're the same, let's have a business, you want to have someone who doesn't have any of the skills you've got that has completely different skills. And then my sister joined our company and she has been extraordinary because she's a great content creator as she really knows her staff. So now we've got a really, I think we must have 75 employers. It's a big company now, but I'm so glad to have my husband myself and other people in the company that I can really, really trust. Well it's a, it's a slightly different perspective that you bring in terms of working with your husband. So I've worked with my husband as well for over a decade. What what has worked for you in terms of making that work because a lot of people do struggle with having their business partner be their life partner or their significant other.

Yeah, I mean we're both very lucky in that we loved the business and our business involves flying all over the world. Like normally we go to Australia, like this time last year we went to Australia went to Singapore, went to Thailand went to Japan, he went to Vancouver went to Miami and so we're putting on these schools were staying in amazing houses. We usually rent two houses and actually one for Our staff and one for us and we have staff stay with us too because they're really like friends and we you know last year I had everyone staying on the canals in venice in L. A. And we were paddleboarding with each other and taking boat trips and it really doesn't feel like work. The travel is great fun. So I think if you're working with your partner you have to love what you do. If you hate it it must be awful. I mean that we have an expression input living over the shop which means you always talk business and we do actually we talk about work all the time occasionally say to my husband you know do you mind it's like 9:00 at night can I just not? He's not averse weighing over five in the morning with the company saying hey babe I've got a great idea, I'm like no I just want to open my eyes and have some tea and not think about it but I think you probably should set boundaries and go to Caleb we start work at eight, we finished at six and then we don't talk about work especially if you have Children.

You know I was at my sister's last christmas and my niece said you and my auntie and you and your husband you're talking about working on christmas day because we love it but I think you must step okay we don't talk about work at weekends. We don't talk about work after tonight. We turn off the phones and I think that's very, very important. Especially if your whole family are in your business because then you will talk about work all the time. So set boundaries. Do what you love if you do what you love. That's the trick when you do what you love. It doesn't feel like work. I don't think I've worked a day in my entire life because I love it. So my husband works much harder than me. But I really don't even feel like a work hard because I love it all. Yeah, I I love what you say about having those boundaries. And I joked that in our household we have we have to differentiate between our bedroom conversations and our boardroom conversations. But because we love what we do. Like you said, it just kind of becomes part of the conversation. You're always having ideas.

You're talking about what's going on at any given time. So with this idea of doing what you love, what what do you think you're really good at? That has kind of helped you get to where you are today. What am I good at? Yeah. I think the qualities that make a great therapist which is certainly not unique to me are you need to have empathy and compassion. You need to be fascinated by your clients. Each client comes along and they kind of explain to you the movie of their entire life and you have the immense Conor and indeed the privilege of me able to make the ending of that movie something quite different just because they came to see you and I think it's always important to see that working with each client is an honor is a privilege. It is a joy. So you have to love people and have people skills, you have to be patient. You have to have empathy, you have to, you have to, you have to think on your feet and you probably need to have a love of language. I have such a love of language because I'm making people recordings and making them scripts. I'm reframing their beliefs and having a love of language really helps to, but each therapist slightly slightly different.

But I think that would probably make people a good therapist. What makes me uniquely good. I have an amazing memory which is really lucky. I can see client 10 years ago and remember everything about that. But that's probably because I find each client faster. They can ring me up and I go, Oh yes, I remember you and I love people, I love it. I love human behavior. I find it fascinating. So I always love watching shows on television, have any any bit of human behavior in them, even if it's watching, I watched that documentary on Fulton in jail and I found it fascinating. I might watch a documentary on a tribe in Africa. I found that fascinating. But I think it's the good memory, the fascination about what makes people tick and a love of language that probably is a good combination. Yeah, it does. I think from some of your other interviews, I've heard you talk about your love of writing as well and how you used to write when you were younger. Yeah. And I'm wondering as well because it also sounds like there's been the ability to adapt and kind of shift with the times because you've, you seem to have, I'm not too sure if the word is reinvented yourself but kind of finding your own path.

So whether it was going from being a child psychologist into the different transitions that you've made, like what what do you think kind of drove you to pursue that and kind of keep reinventing yourself until you created the life that you love? You know, I don't, I don't really think I did reinvent myself. I think for instance Covid came along this year, so we reinvented our business. We started to do something much more than the economics is a virtual classroom. So you joined the classroom and then you go up into groups of three with a teacher and you literally do feel like you're in the classroom. So Covid made us reinvent everything and that's been very useful. I mean I met some people in Japan who said Japanese people who don't want to go to a therapist, but they will do a Skype therapy because there's this shame about going to therapy, I've met many police officers say the same thing, I don't want to be seen going to therapist office, but I do it on Skype, so yeah, that, that, that ability to change everything to have to start doing classes online talks online, You know, I'm a speaker and usually I'm all over the world speaking at different events, but this year we spent all that time filming YouTube material in our film three a week and putting them up free and I really loved doing that, I've quite loved actually being forced to stay put, we're usually spend six months of the year on the road, which I just love, but I really loved just being in one place, being in my house paddleboarding every day, I got some pets that I couldn't have before because I was traveling and it's been really nice, so I think you always need to be able to adapt, adapt to being a single parent at home with a tiny baby and then a gorgeous little squidgy child and then suddenly that child has gone to college and then suddenly they have left home, I was raised to go, wow, I have empty nest syndrome now, but when my daughter went to college, I probably got married and so I guess it is a reinvention, but I think at every stage, I love this quote by go to this as each stage is a dream that is dying or one that's coming to birth and I thought, wow!

So every stage I decided, you know, my daughter went to college the day she left, I sold my big four wheel drive truck and got a convertible Mercedes because it's like, oh, I'd only needed two seats and I couldn't have one before. So it's important to see every stage is a good stage, even at that stage is retiring. I sort of think, wow, I've so loved having cats that I can imagine now and I'm 90 I'm probably gonna have 15 cats and it's important to quite look forward. Then when I got my little kittens, I rescued these seven cats who are being euthanized in covid because the shelter was shut. So I said, well I have them have seven tiny kittens running around my home and they gave me so much, I thought, wow! So when I'm really an old lady, all I have to do is have loads of cats because they gave me so much pleasure and they were so entertaining. So I think it's important to look at every stage and go, yes, each stage is going to be great. I think it's really sad if you fear your kids leaving home, fear your kids growing up, fear getting older, fear losing your looks, fear, you know, one of my friends that I can't bear the idea of never being a baby again, but then you have to think, well I've been a babe and I'm going to be a wise person, something different.

So I think if you can embrace every stage rather than fear it, that helps to reinvent yourself because every stage has something amazing, so I don't want to get old, it's like well what's the alternative? It's better than the alternative and it really is. Yeah, and so speaking of stages, um kind of taking it a little bit, you mentioned like being a speaker and just this idea of like how you've brought your presence to the stage, um what do you think has contributed to kind of the almost the magnetic appeal that you have to people like what's resonating with people about your presence for the first time I gave a talk, I got a standing ovation and nobody was more surprised than me and it's like, wow, oh my God, that talk you gave, it was so amazing, it changed me. And again, it's that thing of simplifying Einstein is simple when I was on stage, I tell people little stories about, look, this is how you can change the mind is not complicated.

Very simple. There's only three things wrong with everyone, once you've got past poverty and having no food or shelter, there's very, there's only three things wrong with you, I used to break down how the mind works and so I think I made human behavior so simple. Listen, you can change in five minutes, this is how you do it And I've seen a lot of speakers and I found that two types speakers are very good and tell you a great story, but then you go and that was a great story, but it was just there for speakers who can change you from the stage and I wanted to be someone who could change the whole audience from the stage, but it has to be very simple and it has to be fun, it has to be funny. You know, when I worked on television, I realized that even when you're working on programs about human psychology, everybody wants to be entertained. So you have to make your talks funny and pithy and interesting, but also not too long and nobody wants to know about the neural psychology of the front, global cortex, people don't want to hear about, they want to hear, listen, you think you're fucked up because you think you're not enough, it's not even true and that's why I came up with tell yourself a better lie.

You know, we all tell ourselves, look, my bum is the size of africa, my bags under the eyes are like suitcases, I'm exhausted, I'm eating like a pig, I'm an out of control trainer, I'm just a mess all of these by the way, I could eat a horse. I mean that's a complete lie, you couldn't even eat an eighth of a horse, even on a bad day when you were starving, which is another lie because most people in the world would have never ever been starving. So if you want to lie to yourself, it's cool. Tell yourself a better lie. So that's what I like. You know, I make little statements like here's one that I get out and look, you make your beliefs and then your beliefs turn around and make you and then the world starts to mirror and match what you have chosen to believe. All dogs are vicious and they bite you. I believe that I now behave in a way that I'm terrified of dogs and dogs pick up my terror and they don't like me. So now the whole thing has become real because of the thought. But if I say well I love dogs, they're man's best friend.

Oh look there's a dog, look at you, aren't you the cutest thing. And they come up and they wag their tail and now the whole thing has become real again because of a thought and we spent so long trying to change our behavior going to the gym to punish our bodies, forcing us to do anything snipped off and injected in and things dyed and waxed and trying to change the outside and all you have to do is change your thinking, that's free, it's easy and it lasts your whole life. When when did when did this message crystallize? So this idea of you know I am enough like it's so simple and yet so powerful. Um at what point did you kind of feel like this is it? Well, you know like everything great about R. T. T. My my therapy rapid calculations that everything great about that came from my patients. My own clients would tell me stuff and I'm enough with the same clients would say, you know, I'm a binger, I'm always empty, I'm never full.

I have this emptiness inside. I can't get enough food and then I go to the next time you go well, you know, I'm a kleptomaniac, I steal stuff. I I don't I've got money but I get a thrill. I somehow need more and I needed to be free because I was never given love and I'd get another one who would say well I'm a hoarder, I seem to need so much stuff because I just don't feel enough. And then I began to realize how my clients were binge eaters, hoarders, Kleptomaniac shopaholics and every addict I ever would all say the same thing. I'm not enough because I'm not enough. I need more. Could be more donuts, more alcohol, more sex, more shopping, more screen time. And I realized that if that was the cause of their problem, the cure would be to say I am enough. I don't need more if all of these shoes made me happy? Why do I need more pairs? If all of these cushions or candles or things made me happy? How come I need more?

If chocolate made me happy, why haven't I had four pieces and stop? How come I'm now on the eighth bar and I'm still feeling terrible. I'm onto my third tub of Ben and jerry's and I'm still feeling wretched. So therefore it can't make me feel enough. And so that was the first thing. And I add to that the fact that there's no baby and I'm not enough, no babies don't look at me, I'm naked. I haven't got any teeth. I've got milk spots, even babies born with a club foot or cleft palate. They think they're gorgeous. So we're not born with a not enough nous. We acquire and if you acquire it, you can absolutely release it. You can reactivate and re manifest the enough nous you were born with and get rid of the not enough nous that you learned as you grew up. So again, it always goes back to my own beautiful teachers, my own clients who I could try things out and we'll come back and go, wow when you did that, That just changed my life. But also it changed my life in five minutes. And the thing I hear the most is the therapist is, wow, I've been in therapy for 10 years or 15 years and no one got there.

How come you worked me out so fast? So I love that. Or people say, Gosh, I didn't realize that everything that was wrong with him was the way I somebody wrote me this week and said, you know, I've been depriving myself of love because the way I talk to myself and I listened to you speak think, wow, my thoughts have denied me love who would have thought it. But now I can go and find love because the person is going to find me doesn't care about my big thighs and I actually love my big thighs might love me the way I am. And so we deny ourselves so much joy and love through this lie, I'm not enough. And its strength is really in its simplicity and it's honesty. So when you say, well I'm a goddess and yeah, but you're not really a goddess because you buy your clothes in target and you live in an apartment with three other girls who are also not goddesses. And if you're a goddess, you wouldn't be wearing that old tracks that you're wearing some gown like J lo So when we come up with these, I'm a rock steiger. Yeah, but you don't even own a car, You don't have a rock star life.

So we kind of argue against these manifestations of these efforts. When you go, I am enough, your mind never goes, no, you're not really because its strength is always its simplicity, but also it's complete honesty because it's true to dive deeper into these conversations with show notes episode transcripts, case studies, topical summaries and community engagement, Join us on Women Will dot World, craft your own path to achieving your destiny through deeper self awareness, clearing self saboteurs, unlocking an empowerment mindset and healthy beliefs, developing individual success skills and building your team or organization so that you can make a bigger impact and leave a powerful legacy. Mhm. Thanks for listening to the woman Will podcast a community where ambitious women support each other to get to the next level. Be sure to visit. Women will dot world to join the conversation, access the show notes and discover our fantastic bonus content.

Subscribe to our podcast for updates and join us to chart the way forward for Women in leadership. If you love the Women Will podcast, we'd love for you to subscribe rate and give us a review on Itunes. It's very much appreciated. Thank you. That's this week's episode of The Women Will podcast with Laura Queen ba, join us again next week for another episode. Thanks for listening.