[N]amed Britain’s top therapist, Marisa Peer has been coaching the top performers of the world for more than 25 years. Marisa has spent nearly three decades treating a client list that includes international superstars, CEOs, Royalty, and Olympic athletes. She has helped thousands of people to overcome profound personal issues.
Marisa’s USP is that she teaches “simple steps that produce dramatic and life-changing results”. Her acclaimed “Mastermind Your Life” series focuses on the thought patterns and mental habits that can be detrimental or beneficial to our success, depending on how we use them. When she reveals her fundamental rule – that all our emotional and personal problems come from us believing that we’re not ‘enough’ – and explains how to overcome it, the results are tremendous and dramatic.
Throughout her career, she’s learned there’s just 4 things you need to know about your mind. If you can understand your mind, you can collaborate with it better. “When you collaborate with your mind and tell it what you want, you’ll get what you want.”
The four things you need to know about your mind:
1. Your mind does exactly what it thinks you want it to do.
2. Your mind is hardwired to move you towards pleasure and away from pain.
3. The way you feel about everything, all the time, is only down to two things. The pictures you make in your head. The words you say to yourself.
4. Your mind LOVES what is familiar.
1. Your mind does exactly what it thinks you want it to do.
When you say “I’m dying under the pressure. This workload is killing me” you’re telling your mind you don’t want to do it. And if your mind thinks you don’t want to do it, it will encourage you to procrastinate, bunk of and not apply yourself.
If you say, “I’m dreading having to give that presentation next Wednesday. I’d do anything to get out of it. Your mind’s like “Ok, why don’t I wake you up with a migraine or an upset stomach? There’s your get-out-of-the-presentation behavior. That is how your mind works. It does what it thinks you want.
If you haven’t got what you want it’s because you use words like: this is too hard; it’s too difficult, it takes all my time.
Words you should be saying: I want to do this. I’ve chosen to do this. I’ve chosen to feel great about it.
And those words will change your life. This is way more than positive thinking. It is collaborating with your mind. So look at your behavior, and if you haven’t got what you want, you’re not communicating properly with your mind.
You must tell it, using very specific, very detailed, very precise words, what you want.
2.Your mind is hardwired to move you towards pleasure and away from pain.
You can choose every day what is pain and what is pleasure.
You have got to tell your mind exactly what you want and you’ve got to link pleasure, not pain, to doing things that are hard. When you shift the things you find painful to imagining them as pleasurable, your brain will be more apt to help you get the job done.
For example, next time you have a big presentation tell yourself that you’re excited to present. Tell yourself that it’s pleasurable to talk in front of people. It’s fun to be acknowledged. It’s exciting to stand up in front of people.
3.The way you feel about everything, all the time, is only down to two things. The pictures you make in your head. The words you say to yourself.
This is the most simple one. What you see as real, your mind makes real. Marisa uses the example of pretending to eat a lemon.
If you believe you’re holding a lemon in your hand and you visualize that lemon and then visualize taking a bite, your brain will send signals to your mouth and you will begin to salivate the way we do when we eat sour things. It just proves that your brain is completely reliant on your thoughts.
4. Your mind LOVES what is familiar.
If you want to succeed at any level, you’ve got to make what is familiar, unfamiliar. And what is unfamiliar, familiar.
If what is familiar is procrastinating, messing about, not believing in yourself. You’ve got to make that completely unfamiliar. What you have to make that is unfamiliar, familiar. Things like “believing in yourself, working hard, putting in the hours” I’m the best, I’m an expert in this.
Muhammad Ali said, “I told myself I was the greatest before I ever was.” He believed he was the best and he became the best.
They all have to tell themselves they are the best. Whatever you tell your mind, it believes. So tell it better things. First you make your beliefs, then your beliefs make you. And if you believe in yourself, others will believe in you too.
When you stretch your mind to a new dimension, it never goes back, because your potential expands as you move towards it.
