I’ve always wanted to leave a legacy. When I’m not here anymore I want people to still refer to me as a great therapist. I want to do good in the world, I want to leave a mark. I want my life to have had meaning and purpose, and I find this meaning and purpose in helping other people and showing them that life can be wonderful, life can be amazing. We can’t change what happens to us but we can how we think about it. We can’t choose events but we can choose how we feel about them. And learning to understand that everything originates from your thinking will change your life. I want to leave a legacy behind so even when I’m not here my passion, mission, and purpose for helping people will continue.
By Dr. Marina Kostina, Get “Unstuck”
Do you ever wake up in the morning feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, unchallenged, and have nothing to look forward to? It doesn’t have to be that way. One idea that I always advise my clients is the concept of “Stop pushing the pain away and see it as the guide to your life purpose”
As a society, we are hardwired to sit on our tush in a comfortable lethargy. I invite you to start EXPERIENCING your life, rather than observing it, getting used to the uncomfortable and finding the deepest inspirations in your pain. We grow from the dark much more and faster than we do from the light and often our deepest gifts (and the source of our passion, pleasure and joy) are located where it hurts the most. Life purpose is a waltz between pain, pleasure, play
For me, all my trials and tribulations resulted in the most incredible outcome- finding my life purpose and aligning my entire life around it. Once I did that my business took off, my lifestyle changed and, most importantly, I started living a passionate, joyful life. I started TRULY trusting myself. While before I outsourced my reasons for happiness outside of myself to online courses that promised to give me love overnight or make me rich in a click of a button, to gurus that were telling me how to live my life and lead my business, to magical objects or juju, now I use these means as supplementary help, not as my guide as I have found my own internal compass that is never wrong and is ALWAYS working for me.
As a part of our series interviewing experts on how to live a “ravenous life” — a life filled with the passion, pleasure, playfulness and abundance that come naturally to those who dare to be authentic, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marisa Peer. Marisa is a celebrity therapist and pioneering hypnotherapy trainer. She is also a best-selling author of “Ultimate Confidence” “You Can be Thin”, “You Can be Younger” , “I Am Enough” and more.
Named Britain’s best therapist by Tatler magazine, Marisa has spent nearly three decades treating a client list that includes international superstars, CEOs, Royalty, and Olympic athletes.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I originally trained as a child psychologist and I was really interested in helping children however I soon found out this was very frustrating because it wasn’t just the child that I had to help but also the mother and the father which often made it difficult to implement change. Then I went to teach aerobics for Jane Fonda in South Robertson in L.A, and I was intrigued by how many women had bulimia, body dysmorphia, and other eating disorders and I wanted to find a way to help people overcome those difficulties. Because I had a psychology background I was fascinated by these issues people had in my class and I wanted to help them feel better about themselves. So I found this amazing Hypnotherapist and went to train with him and had amazing success in helping people and also found I really enjoyed it.
What does it mean for you to live “on purpose”? Can you explain? How can one achieve that?
It means finding what you’re meant to be an then becoming outstanding at it. When you find out what your gift and talent is and why you’re meant to be here and then go after that with absolute drive and focus and confidence your life is extraordinary. So we all have a purpose, we all have something we’re meant to do. And so many of us get caroled into doing things that we think we should do or what would make more money or what would please our parents. Living your life with purpose means that there’s a purpose for you, there’s something that you’re meant to do better than anyone else. Find out what that is, find the drive, the ambition, the confidence to go after it, then your life will be amazing.
Do you have an example or story in your own life of how your pain helped to guide you to finding your life’s purpose?
I was diagnosed with cancer twice which was very shocking to me however I used the ability of my own mind to fix that, to take responsibility for my wellness, to bounce back super fast. Even the hospital that treated me said that they were going to use me as an example of how you can bounce back, how you can be amazing. So the pain of having cancer twice really helped me help other people realize that it doesn’t matter what you’re diagnosed with, it’s your ability to take responsibility for your healing that matters. You can have surgery, you can have medication but you’ve got to participate in your recovery. You can’t say to your doctor here I am, here’s my sick body, fix it. You have to participate in your recovery, so I can say to people I’ve been there, I do know what you’re going through but I also know that you can turn it around. You’ve got to participate in it, you’ve got to take responsibility for it, you’ve got to take responsibility for your own healing.
The United States is currently rated at #18 in the World Happiness Report. Can you share a few reasons why you think the ranking is so low?
In most moderns cultures, certainly not just the American, we are taught to go after the dollar, work hard, get a nice house, get a nice car, get your kids into a great school… We’re on this hamster wheel of achieving-achieving-achieving to buy more stuff. But stuff doesn’t make you happy, people make you happy. Everything we want is because of how it’s going to make us feel and if you can get the feeling without the stuff then you really are winning. It’s a great shame that we are taught to pursue things and not people because the thing that makes us happy is the connection. When we were born we have a driving need to find connection and avoid rejection and connecting with people especially who are like us makes us happy. If you’re pursuing stuff then you’re not connecting, you’re working all the time and going home and sleeping and even if you have a great partner and kids, you’re not seeing them or spending quality time with them. So our pursuit of material things makes us disconnect. The media’s damaged us a lot with a belief that you’ve got to have a perfect body and a perfect, this idea takes us away from what makes us shine as humans which is the connection. So don’t go shopping for clothes, invite your friends around and swap clothes, don’t go out to an expensive restaurant you can’t afford, get your friends together and have a picnic or a cookout because it is your relationships with people and your connections that makes you thrive and pursuing money to buy stuff that’s never going to make you happy.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I’ve created an anti-bullying program that I’ve given away to schools all over the world completely free of charge. I actually give it away to anyone who’s working with children. We also give away lots of products on finding love, finding your purpose, changing your relationship with money to help people feel good about themselves. And by helping people feel good about themselves I’m bringing goodness to the world because people tell me: “You’ve changed my life, your book changed my life, your anti-bullying program changed my life, your message changed my life”. I’ve just received an award recently for helping women called The International Day of the Girl Child Inspiration Award — won specifically for my work in inspiring confidence in women and girls through the #MarkYourMirror and #IAmEnough movement and I won 8 Stevie awards because my products change lives.
What are your 6 strategies to help you face your day with exuberance, “Joie De Vivre” and a “ravenous thirst for life”? Can you please give a story or example for each?
1. Gratitude.
When I wake up the first thing I do is say: “I love my life, I love my sheets, I love my bed, I love my shower gel…” because gratitude is the highest level to vibrate at and I do believe that.
2. Find pleasure in simple things.
I take the time to say I love this coffee, I say it because I know that if I can find pleasure in simple things then I will certainly find pleasure from big things.
3. Always look for what’s right.
I love my husband, I love my daughter, I love my life, I love my business.
4. Train your mind regularly.
I have a huge amount of emails to get through each day, so I tend to stay in bed with some tea and I do all my emailing in the morning because it doesn’t feel like work. I sing to myself a lot, it sounds crazy but “this girl is on fire” or “I`m a titanium”, “I’m bulletproof” and it sends a message to my mind that I’m happy.
5. Understanding how your mind works.
One of the rules of your mind is that your mind does what it thinks you want it to do, I’m always giving my mind very clear instructions about what I want and what I need.
6. Working to build a legacy.
I’ve always wanted to leave a legacy. When I’m not here anymore I want people to still refer to me as a great therapist. I want to do good in the world, I want to leave a mark. I want my life to have had meaning and purpose, and I find this meaning and purpose in helping other people and showing them that life can be wonderful, life can be amazing. We can’t change what happens to us but we can how we think about it. We can’t choose events but we can choose how we feel about them. And learning to understand that everything originates from your thinking will change your life. I want to leave a legacy behind so even when I’m not here my passion, mission, and purpose for helping people will continue.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that most inspired you to live with a thirst for life?
There are so many books that I love!
I love all of Gil Boyne’s books, I love ‘Unlock Your Mind and be Freed’ by Edgar Barnett, I love all of Lewis Howes podcasts and there are so many TED talks I like listening to. They are all resources that have inspired me to live with a thirst for life. My father was an amazing educator he always believed that you must make every child feel important and he also inspired me to live with a thirst for life.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” that relates to having a Joie De Vivre? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite quote is by Henry Moseley and he says ‘The feeling that cannot find it’s expression in tears may cause other organs to weep’.
What that means is when you don’t express your thoughts, your hurt or your feelings, they regroup and come out elsewhere. We’ve got to feel our feelings until they no longer require to be felt. In the west we are taught to Netflix our feelings, shop our feelings, Amazon our feelings, eat our feelings, drink our feelings, medicate our feelings and it’s a massive mistake.
So my own quote would be ‘Feel the feelings until they no longer require to be felt.’ Your feelings are the most real things you have and you can’t shop them, eat them, drink them or medicate them because they just become stronger however when you feel them, they actually are acknowledged and they go away. So that’s my own, life lesson quote and if you feel your feelings and you live in touch with yourself you’ll be so much happier.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I have an anti-bullying program that’s going out across the world. This program will help not just children who are bullied but also bullies because I know that bullies never feel good enough. On January the 5th we’re having our first ever international #IamEnoughDay, we want to make it as big as Mother’s day and Sister’s day and Valentines Day and we believe that one day it will be.
I’m currently in L.A training people into Rapid Transformational Therapy and I’m going to Sydney to do the same thing there. Getting doctors, nurses, mental health practitioners, and other therapists to recognize the power and the strength and the resolution focus of RTT is so important to me as I really believe it’s going to change the world of therapy. It’s happening already and it’s immensely exciting.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
#IamEnough day would be a great movement. I’m also getting the anti-bullying program into schools so that every child could feel good about themselves, every child could go to school feeling that they matter and that they are enough and they are significant and that they have something of value to offer the world. I believe that would minimize bullying in schools. If you could minimize bullying in schools, you could minimize bullying in the office, it would minimize bullying online, it would minimize trolling because the people who do that, don’t like themselves. So the anti-bullying program and the ‘I am Enough’ movement are very interlinked. I would love to help everyone feel that their are enough. I think that could trigger positive change in the world given that we’ve been asked to put our program in schools, prisons, mental hospitals, and rehabs. It’s already happening and I’m super excited about it.
