Why You Keep Choosing The Wrong People And How To Break The Cycle | Marisa Peer

0:00And I found it really interesting and I found I was listening to this actually after I spoke to a coach of mine. And he was like, you just need to do this one thing. And he was saying, you know, wake up in the morning and put your without looking at your phone, put a timer on for three minutes and say three gratitudes out loud. Yeah. And just say it out loud for one minute on each gratitude. and actually I realised that you know by literally focusing on one thing and picturing one thing and doing one thing that was actually way more helpful than trying to do 10 things at once yeah because your brain gets quite overwhelmed yeah yeah um and although these all flow in you can literally pick yeah a few from each rather than thinking oh my gosh I've got to work my way through

0:43Marisa Peer:each single one yeah you can pick one of the rules and say let me just work on that one rule the one rule about the mind only working in the now or shall I work on the conflicting thoughts or the brain wanting to go to what's familiar so make good stuff really just pick one obviously if you don't want to do all 16 at the same time that is a bit overwhelming because you're you're spinning plates now so pick one rather habits of success there are eight but pick one or two and work on those what's your favorite my favorite rule I think the familiar I think the familiar because therapists find it so vexing here's this client who tells you they want love so much and are dating people with no good partnership habits and dating people already married or not involved or overseas and it's so vexing for therapists so people say I'm looking for love oh where they go well I'm not actually looking for love well I am looking for love but I don't go out and I'm at home watching tv so you're not actually looking for love they go well I go to a club I've gone to a book club with all my friends how many men are there none you're not actually looking for love at all you've got to you've got to be focused on what you require but my favorite is always the brain wants what is familiar so you know when I was a kid my father was my head teacher which I would never recommend because I felt like a freak and I went to my dad's school when I was 11 years old and I did feel like a freak I felt so different but that's when I understood where the not enough comes from.

2:13Marisa Peer:And so because he was a head teacher and loved all these kids so much, I mean, I never saw him. He was never at home. He was so dedicated, he'd go to his office and do all the paperwork in his time. So he had all his free time to be with these kids. But we never saw him. So my brain, what was familiar was not having a present dad, was having a dad who was invested with other people's kids. So of course, when I began dating, although I have to say my first boyfriend was just perfect but I was so damaged by this belief that love isn't very we've got to work for it and earn it I set about really ruining that relationship as fast as I could and probably the second one too because I formed this belief you have to work really hard but you've got to chase it you've got to earn it you've got to work for it and it took me a little while to understand what I was doing because what was familiar was trying to prove I was worth it to my dad who was never really there.

3:10Marisa Peer:I mean, he was a lovely guy, but he wasn't there. And that was so familiar to me. So I took that into my relationship. Plus, I saw my parents' marriage, which was very unhappy. And I had another belief, have a great career that's engrossing and take away the pain of a relationship. Never if, it was always when. If you have a great career, when the relationship goes wrong, you'll be okay. So that's what my brain believed. I had a model for having an amazing career. I had no model at all for having a loving relationship. So I began to see that what was familiar to my brain was having an engrossing group and not a loving relationship.

3:47Marisa Peer:And I thought, but I can have both. So I had to do a little tiny bit of work on myself by saying, I attract love. It's not got to be run after or chased or worked on. And I just did a bit of work to understand what being a head teacher's daughter had done to me and how I felt different and as a kid being different is the bane of your life it's like walking through the world with a curse I'm different because we are wired to need connection but I always felt different and the minute I got rid of that I met my husband we got married within 10 months it would have been 10 weeks if he had anything to do with it but I met him and it immediately worked but it worked because I had to get rid of this belief you have to earn love work really hard it's not available to you it's not just there you've got to go and get it so what changed in your patterns to then get you into a very stable loving relationship well it was the same thing I found the pattern this little kid at school who felt like a freak I understood how it had shaped me and influenced me then I changed it and said well I'm not a kid at school I'm not living with my dad I'm a totally different person and I'm lovable and love I'm going to find love and it's going to find me I told my brain that what I want wants me what I am moving towards is moving towards me and I kind of thought about the person I'd like to share my life with because that helps too I wanted someone who was funny self-employed because I'm always on a plane and I wanted him to be too so funny self-employed a family person loves cooking all the the only thing I didn't put in was tidy but that doesn't matter you can pay someone to do that so I really focused on what I wanted I made a little vision board I put some vision every single thing on that vision board came true and I met my husband I already knew him because our kids went to the same school so I bumped into him somewhere and 10 months later we got married and we're really really happy and now it's so strange because of course that familiar it was so fluidly alone and to come last and now that's so unfamiliar my husband makes me feel every day that I'm the most important person in his world and now that's familiar but like if you always turn right on a plane then turn left all the time you forget what it was like to turn right you know when I never had an ensuite bathroom growing up I don't think we even had central heating but now that's just familiar so now I've been married for such a long time it's familiar to feel loved and cared about and prioritized but when I was a kid that wasn't familiar at all, not even maybe.

6:24But it's a great lesson in, you know, what can you make familiar?

6:30Marisa Peer:And while you're making something good familiar, what can you make unfamiliar? Lying on the couch, you know, eating donuts as soon as you wake up, being dismissive of yourself, having imposter syndrome. You can make all of that unfamiliar. It is a choice to go, okay, I'm going to make good stuff familiar, certainly praise and believing that I'm worthy of love and deserving of it and while I'm making that familiar I can make oh I'm not really worthy of it unfamiliar so it's always a choice what can you make familiar and unfamiliar never add I'll make this one if it kills me don't ever put that on the end just say and I just I'm making the love of a great man familiar I'm making people would say to me oh my god you know i came to see you change my relationship we're so happy oh it's amazing i better do that for myself then because i could see how much my clients were benedict from this familiar unfamiliar so what advice would you give to someone then who's like well i just you know i'm struggling to find take your take out the word struggling you know love is everywhere so first of all i go people say you know you can't find love at 50 You've got more childs being run over by a double-decker bus.

7:39But who told you that?

7:41Marisa Peer:The highest, you know, people are getting married at 50 all the time, and 60, and indeed 70. So... Is it our environment, like who we're surrounding ourselves with, that's just really... Is it even such as simple as getting out of that environment? Yeah, you're very affected by the company you keep. So let's imagine, you don't say, you require love. You require love. So your first thing is, what would I have to believe about me? To find love. I'd have to believe that I'm lovable. The only thing you need to require love is one thing. A belief that you are absolutely worthy of it and deserving of it just the way you are.

8:18Marisa Peer:That's it. Nothing has to be snipped out, injected in. Nothing has to be changed. A six-pack is not required. You don't need to have big breasts, big hair and thin thighs. You don't need any of that. You don't need a great outfit. You don't need a great home. You just need one thing. I am worthy and deserving of love and by the way you were born with it so it's not even weird you had it when you came out of the womb you had it in the womb so go back and reactivate what's already there and just start saying I'm worthy of love over and over again of course you'll bring in some doubts but I'm not really my last boyfriend cheated on me my last girlfriend dumped me it doesn't matter i'm worthy of love say it say it state it and believe that what you want wants you what you are moving towards is moving towards you and then ask yourself that question what would i have to believe about me to have love i'd have to believe one thing i'm worth it what would i have to not believe which would be the same thing i'm not worth it so it isn't hard isn't complicated.

9:25Marisa Peer:It's just a belief. You know, if you have deep, wonderful love and your partner dies, you'll get married again straight away because you have a template for love. It's people who've never had it and don't know where and say, oh, it's so hard. There's no good people. It's so hard to find love. Everyone just wants sex. Everyone's just a player. But that's not true most people if you ask them to say I want love listen to all those songs most people want to wake up with someone that loves them and go to sleep with someone that loves them you know I was working with a billionaire just before he died I said I've been such an idiot so I never had a kid what was I thinking of all those women he said I never had a son or a daughter to pass on my legacy I've been such a fool and at the end of his life he was so full of regrets he had so much money and multiple girlfriends lived on an island, had everything except the thing.

10:20Marisa Peer:He never passed on his genes and he died actually full of regrets. Such a shame. Is that why achievements can't just bring us massive happiness? Because I guess you and I are surrounded by people all the time that have achieved great success, right? And I definitely, I meet so many amazing people. Lots of people that have earned lots of money, founded, exited massive companies. And to me, they're not all happy. Some of them are. That doesn't say they're not all happy. Some of them are. But 50 % of them aren't. Well, you know, if money made you happy, every wealthy person would be happy. If beauty made you happy, every supermodel would be happy.

11:03Well, that was my old job, and that's how I was the most insecure you'd ever met.

11:07Marisa Peer:So the thing is, your potential expands as you move to it. So here's your potential. It's in the middle of this table. As you get to it, it expands again and again. So you could never, ever, ever know what your potential is. And as you meet it, hey, I've written a book. I need to write another book. I got an Oscar. I need another Oscar. I designed and built this amazing house. Now it's finished. I think I'll go and design and build another house now. So that is quite normal that you can never know what your potential is. And when your mind goes to a new dimension, it doesn't go back. So that's quite normal to say I did it.

11:41Marisa Peer:I built this company. I wrote this book, I designed this house, I moved overseas. Now I'm thinking, well, where can I go now?