- Hey, it's Marisa here doing my favorite thing,
'Ask Marisa Anything', answering your questions.
And I've had so many comments, so many messages,
all asking me the same question,
and it's about my life as a therapist,
so today I'm going to focus
on answering all of your questions
about my life as a therapist.
And the first question I've got here says,
"Hey Marisa, why did you decide to become a therapist?"
And that's a good question,
because I didn't actually decide to become a therapist.
I was initially going to be a child psychologist.
I gave that up, I ended up working for Jane Fonda
in her workout studio in LA, which I absolutely loved.
So I was a kind of personal trainer
and I noticed in that studio,
every third girl was bulimic, anorexic, exercise-compulsive,
or had body dysmorphia, or other eating issues.
And it was so fascinating,
these smart, beautiful, talented women had these issues.
And so I studied hypnotherapy
because I figured it was the fastest way
to fix eating disorders.
And for some time, that's what I was,
an eating disorder expert using hypnosis.
And then people would ring me up
and go, "Hey, I've got a fear of lifts or bees,
"and I only want to see you,
"because my neighbor said you sorted them out."
So I then stopped specializing and diversified
and found that I actually loved it,
even when I was working with children
with a fear of going into school,
people with a lack of confidence or depression.
And I absolutely love being a therapist.
It's the most amazing job in the world.
Everyday, I get certainty,
diversity, connection, significance.
No two days are ever the same.
But the thing I get the most
is people saying, "You have changed my life."
"Here's the baby I thought I'd never have."
"Here's the wedding, the body, the job,
"the promotion, I thought I would never have."
and getting letters and texts and cards
saying, "You changed my life.
"I'm happy now because of you,
"because of a skill you have, I'm happy."
So that's why I became a therapist,
because most people go, "Hey, I'd love to change the world,"
but that's really kind of hard.
But when you're a therapist,
you change people one at a time,
and in your own little way, you do change the world.
And that's why I do what I do, I love what I do.
So I became a therapist.
That's why, 33 years later, I'm still a therapist.
I will never do any other job because I love it.
Here's another question.
"Hey Marisa, what is your greatest success
or your best moments in your career?"
Well, there are so many, so many,
but I have to really cast my mind back,
but I'm going to pick some recent favorites.
I worked with a lot of children who are bullied,
or who have phobias about going to school,
who wet the bed, who have nightmares.
And every time I work with a child and make them happy,
it's the best feeling in the world.
And I worked with a little boy a couple of years ago,
who had a phobia about the school gates,
and he couldn't actually physically go into school,
and he was being very badly bullied.
And I hypnotized him to be so confident
and to stand up to the bully and to help the school.
And his grandmother called me
and said, "Wow, you know, in 48 hours, he's a different boy.
"He's confident, he skips through those school gates.
"He's not being bullied. Thank you from all our family."
Someone else I worked with was about to get divorced.
And we realized that it was not about her husband,
it was about her relationship with her dad.
And she called me and said, "Thank you.
"You've changed five people's lives,
"me, my husband, our three kids,
"'cause we're not getting divorced,
"and our marriage is working."
And my recent favorite was I was giving a talk in LA
and there was a girl in the front in a wheelchair.
And I didn't really talk to her particularly
because there was a lot of people there,
but I did something called the Healing Vortex.
And she wrote to me later
and said, "I don't know what you did,
"but the only time I haven't been in pain since my accident
"is when you did that Healing Vortex,
"can I have a session with you?"
I said, "I'm back in London now,
"but I'm actually coming back to LA.
"I'm teaching my method to 70 people in Santa Monica.
"If you want to come along and allow me to work with you
"in front of the class, you can have a free session.
She turned up in her wheelchair.
So in front of the class, I unpicked what had happened.
Of course she had an accident, but why she hadn't recovered?
Her doctor had told her,
"Your life now is a life of medication and in a wheelchair."
And at the end of that hour-long session, she stood up.
She walked around, she went outside and stood in a fountain.
She then sent me this wonderful footage
of her walking to the airport to meet her mom,
who cried hysterically
because she didn't even know she could walk.
She's training to run a marathon. Her life is so different.
Most of my class were in tears at the end
and I pretty much almost was too.
And now she's trained with me
and it's just the most wonderful thing
that she can walk, she can move, she has freedom,
because I was able to go back
and understand what was really going on,
why she hadn't recovered.
And she said, "Amazingly, my doctor, my physio,
"my pharmacist, no drug could give me what you've given me."
And that's why I love what I do,
because it really does produce miracles
for some people, amazingly.
And I love the fact people I trained see that happen
right in front of their eyes
and think, "Wow, I can do this too."
And somebody reached out
and said, "Hey, just to let you know,
"I've got my own Laura miracle.
"I was in that classroom,
"and I've now worked with someone also in a wheelchair,
and they're walking."
So it isn't so much what I do, it's a method,
it's a technique, but it's an amazing thing
when what you do can change someone's life.
Get a bullied child back to school
and have someone who cannot get pregnant, get pregnant,
have a baby, have someone who's obese
lose half their body weight,
have someone who lacks confidence shine and blossom and grow
and have someone who's in physical pain get better.
"Hey Marisa, how do you find clients easily?"
That's a very good question for a therapist
because you know your clients are everywhere.
If you're a parent, your clients are at the school gates,
they're your children's friends.
If you're in the office,
all of your colleagues will be your clients,
wherever you are.
I used to go to the hairdresser
and they'd go, "Oh my God, you're that girl.
"I've got a client I want to send you
"who bites their nails or picks their spots."
So everywhere in the world, I find clients.
My removal man became my client.
My plumber became my client.
They are all around the world.
And so a lot of it is word-of-mouth.
You tell people what you do.
I actually don't say what I do now
because I kind of get bombarded,
but I was on a plane once
and this girl said, "God, you're so lucky, you fell asleep
the minute that plane took off."
I said, "That's hypnosis."
She said, "Can you do that for me?" I took her address.
wherever I go, I find clients.
By word-of-mouth, by talking about it,
by telling people a story.
"Hey, my niece
"has been trying to get pregnant for 10 years."
"Oh, I happen to do that,
"I work with unexplained infertility, I could help her."
On top of the word-of-mouth
and the fact that your clients are all around you,
because everybody wants to feel better,
of course, marketing. I use marketing and I use media.
I use search engine optimization.
I use marketers that tell me where my clients are.
So when you understand marketing,
you understand that your clients are everywhere,
in the gym, so many, in a restaurant, in a café, on a plane,
at an airport, at the school gates,
they are everywhere, at your kids' party, they are everywhere.
Your friends, your neighbors,
your colleagues, are your clients.
I also see clients on Zoom and Skype.
So my clients are all over the world,
they're in Dubai, they're in Australia, they're everywhere.
And I love my job.
And it's easy to find clients when you understand marketing.
When we teach RTT®, we also teach marketing,
they go together so well.
We teach people how to be a great therapist
and we teach them how to market themselves
so they can be found.
We also teach people how to get testimonials.
Testimonials from your clients
will bring in more clients and more clients.
I've worked with entire families, entire offices,
because of the testimony that one person has given me
that's made someone else go,
"I want what you've got, I want that."
So remember, if you're a therapist,
your clients are all around you,
and if you use marketing and testimonials
and learn to do therapy on Skype or Zoom,
they're not only all around you, they're all around the world,
and they'll all work with you.
And we show you how to do that.
"Hello, Marisa, how do you disconnect
"from people's problems?"
People always think as a therapist,
that you take everyone's problems onboard
and that when someone comes in with trauma and you hear it,
you go home, take on that trauma.
But I never do that. I know when someone is working with me,
no matter how awful it is,
no matter how awful their childhood was,
or their situation is,
I know this is the day they get better.
And I focus on the fact that I have the skills to help them.
Yes, there are times that I hear stuff
and I get a tear in my eye,
especially when I'm working with children who've been hurt.
Maybe the parent has died,
or something awful has happened to them.
But I know, again, that I have the skills to help them.
Many therapists say, "You know, when I go home,
"I have a bath," or, "I have crystals around me,"
or, "I put myself in this imaginary bubble."
But you see, to do that, you have to have a belief.
The belief is I'm taking on all your trauma.
What can I do to get rid of the trauma?
But I've never believed that,
I have never believed for a minute
that I take on that trauma, that it's painful,
that I take it home with me.
I love what I do, I focus on the difference I can make.
And even though I hear some real eye-popping stuff
and see people crying and in great distress,
I focus on the fact that they are getting better.
Their life is going to improve.
And that's how I cope with it.
I don't believe it affects me. I don't think it affects me.
Sometimes I come home and I take a bath
and have a nice dinner and chat to my husband.
In 33 years, I've never gone home
and thought, 'Oh no, I'm absorbing this
'and it's making me feel sad or bereft.'
I always think, 'I'm so glad that client found me
''cause I know I can help.
'No matter how bad it is, I can change their life.'
And if you focus on that, you don't take the trauma.
You take the fact home that you can help people.
Secondly, I noticed that people
are actually incredibly resilient.
We hear that we're so weak and fragile and damaged,
but I've seen people come through absolute horror stories
and get better.
Because human beings are actually resilient.
And if you believe you're resilient,
you'll be more resilient.
I know that this works because all the people I teach
say, "Hey, I listened to you. I noticed you.
"I saw you in class work with that client.
"I saw you had a tear in your eye,
"but I saw you half an hour later at lunch,
"laughing and smiling, and I've seen in action
"that it doesn't affect you, that you don't take it home.
"I heard you say that. And now I'm working with people
"who've been abused physically, mentally, emotionally,
"and I too am not taking it home
"because I saw you in action not doing that.
"I heard you say if you don't believe it,
"it doesn't have to be true.
"And I see what you told me, human beings are resilient."
So here's another question.
"Hey Marisa, how did you grow to be so successful?"
That's a really good question, isn't it?
Well, I think I understood very early on
that to be successful in most fields requires marketing.
You see, when you're a therapist,
you're working in a clinic.
It's not like a shop, where people know where you are,
people have to find you.
And I understood it doesn't matter how good you are,
how gifted or talented anyone is,
if nobody knows where you are.
And I was very ambitious, I wanted to be amongst the best.
And so I decided that I would use the media.
And one day, I was reading a magazine, Men's Fitness,
and it was all about walking on coals.
So I rang up and said, "Hey, you know the article you wrote
"about walking on coals, that's actually about hypnosis.
"Would you like me to write about real hypnosis of athletes?"
Luckily they said, "Oh yes, please."
So they were very excited.
Later on, I got my own column in Men's Fitness,
that took a leap of faith.
It's not easy to cold-call a magazine,
"Would you like to write about me?"
because they're like, "You? Course not, who are you?"
Put the phone down. I was very lucky.
The first one said "yes." And I did that a lot,
I would see something in the newspaper
about someone who'd lost their memory.
I'd ring up and go, "Hey, you know, I'm a hypnotist.
"I could hypnotize that person and get their memory back."
So I love reading luckily,
and I was always reading magazines and papers,
and seeing a way where I could get myself showcased,
if you like.
And it actually really worked.
I think I was in a magazine or a newspaper every month
for 18 months until I actually had to stop calling them all
because I almost got too busy.
And people say, "Gosh, that took courage." It did actually.
It wasn't natural for me to have to ring up people
who might go, "I don't want to talk to you," but to succeed,
you have to do what you don't want to do,
and you have to take action every day
in the direction of your goal.
So I did it, it was hard, then it became easier.
I kept doing it.
I grew a business because I understood marketing
and I would always look for ways.
Often I would go on radio talk shows, television talk shows.
And I became a speaker.
So I grew my business by understanding the market.
You know, when I began to be a writer,
I realized that you have to write what people want to read.
Some think, 'Well, I'm going to write what I want.'
It's not really like that.
You have to give your audience what they want, right?
What people need to read.
If you're a speaker,
speak about what people want to hear about,
give your customers what they want.
And one of the things that really helped me
is when I understood this,
everything we buy, without exception, is
because of how it's going to make us feel.
I knew as a therapist, I could make my clients feel good.
I could empower them. I could give them freedom.
And I knew they would buy that.
Because that's what we're always buying.
'Will that make me feel good?'
'Will that make me feel better?'
So that's why I was so good at marketing myself.
Because I knew people were buying freedom
and feeling good about themselves.
And in many ways, that's kind of priceless.
"Hey Marisa, what degree do I need to train with you
"and do what you do?"
You might be surprised to know
that you don't need a degree to train with me,
And I actually don't have a degree.
I did train in child psychology, but I left.
But to be a hypnotherapist, and to be an RTT® therapist,
the method I created, no degree is required.
No previous background in psychology is required.
What you really, really need, to do what I do
are people skills.
If you love people, like working with people, like listening
to their problems, unpicking them and fixing them,
you will love being a trained therapist.
And when I first began my training school,
most people that came on it were existing therapists,
coaches, NLP therapists, all kinds of therapists,
and they were great to train.
But then we started to take on people
that were doing secretarial work, or school teachers,
or maybe a beautician, a hairdresser.
And what I discovered is they had such a knack
for listening to people and talking to them,
they had such empathy naturally.
They really took to being a therapist.
So the only existing skill you need,
the only qualification you need to train with me
and do what I do are people skills.
If you have that,
I can make you an amazing therapist, really quickly too.
Thanks for staying with me
and asking me such fascinating questions.
If you want to know more about what I do
and how you can do it,
I have a completely free masterclass,
it's got five breakthrough tips
that show you how you can become a world-class therapist.
It's free, click the link below.
See you there.