your brain responds to two things the pictures you make and the words when you go yay this is fantastic you have a different reaction [Music] so i'm going to give you a crash course in how to run your brain in 25 minutes and you really can do it so i've always been fascinated by human behavior and how the brain works and i've spent most of my adult life studying how the mind works which is why i became a therapist and i was very lucky because i got voted best therapist in britain and got voted the
best of the best in tatler and in lots of other magazines too and i only tell you that because that opened so many doors for me and suddenly i'm being flown all over the world working with olympic athletes and rock stars and that was great for me because i got a chance to really look at how people's brains work and i was fascinated by how people who've got everything have a bit of a different mindset i had two types of clients those that had everything and loved it and they had everything and thought how quickly
can i [ __ ] this up and it was really interesting how their mind works so when i was studying to be a therapist my teacher who was very eminent said to me well he said to the whole class the mind is really complicated it's extraordinarily complex takes a lifetime to understand and a lifetime to master and i thought well how's that going to work then who's got a lifetime to work with their patients not me i've never got a lifetime to sort out my own brain let alone someone else's so i thought that was
a strange thing that we're taught our mind is complicated complex takes a lifetime to master maybe whatever you're 90 you might have got it worked out but that's a bit too late but i found three things and in my own school i've been teaching them to people who are now becoming extraordinary therapists too so you need to know three things about your brain and i'm going to tell you what they are and you're going to put them into practice and i promise you it will change your life and you can have pretty much whatever you
want so let's start with number one this is how your brain works it does what it thinks you want it to do sadly it works off information you gave it once upon a lifetime ago when you were 6 or 10 or 15 but your mind is always doing what it thinks you want it's always doing what it truly believes is in your very very best interest so if any of you here have got a habit you'd love to be free of but guess what you still got it your mind thinks no you don't really want
to be free of that and anyway it's better for you to keep it on the other hand if there's a habit you'd love to acquire like speaking in public being really successful believing in yourself not eating junk your mind thinks no it's in your best interest to keep that habit and so i kind of everything i'm going to teach you today i didn't learn from a book i learned from my own patients and i was thought i could never have children and i just have to get over it but i knew even then i wasn't
going to believe that and i'm very much known as a therapist therapist so when doctors can't get anywhere with their patients they send them to me and for a while because i was told i was infertile and then proved that not to be the case i worked with infertile women and almost always got them pregnant usually by the very next cycle even if they hadn't had a period for 10 years because you really can throw miracles when you understand how the brain works so doctors will say okay this patient has unexplained infertility well what does
that mean it means i can't explain it there's nothing wrong with their body they have periods eggs are fine husband sperm's fine can't have a baby so they'd come to see me and i'd usually regress them back and they always came up with the same thing where are you i'm 17 what's going on oh my god i think i could be pregnant my dad's going to kill me i'm going to get thrown out of the house i'll get kicked out of school where are you oh um you know i think i might be pregnant and
i'm going to lose my job or sometimes you just go back to normal things like saying to their boyfriend every month for god's sake don't get me pregnant that would be a nightmare and now the brain is very clear you don't want a baby god no you've used nightmare hell disaster my dad will kill me you don't want a baby and now the brain is very clear you don't want a baby it's like no that was when i was 16 and i'm 36 i just spent 20 grand on ivf i really do want a baby
but the mind doesn't catch up with you we think we're so smart and our mind is so evolved but it is often stuck in the past so who here has done this who here has said i'm dreading going to that meeting next wednesday why did i volunteer to speak i'd give anything not to have to go and share the meeting speak up go anyone ever done that anyone notice that that day comes around they're sick because here's how the mind works you say oh my god i volunteered to share that meeting i must have been
out of my mind i die if i've got to go on stage i don't want to do that and your brain's like leave that with me now next wednesday comes and you wake up with diarrhoea and your brain's like how cool am i you can't even leave the bathroom no let alone go for that meeting who here has ever said i'm so stressed i'm pushed to the max here i'm at my limit what i would give for a weekend in bed just lying around your brain's gone oh do you want the flu i could give
you that tomorrow now there you are in bed and of course that's not what you wanted but you've got to be very very clear with the brain because this is your brain's job and it really is a specific your brain's job is to keep you alive on the planet and it does that by moving you away from anything it thinks will cause you pain so when we were tribes people we didn't really wander too far from the tribe we didn't eat anything that looked a bit odd because we survived by linking pain to something and
life hasn't changed anyone here ever eaten something that's made them really really sick like mushrooms you still eat them now anyone had really bad food poisoning anyone find they cannot now eat that food that they were up all night bringing up over the toilet sure because when you go oh my god i never eat seafood again as long as i live your brain remembers next time you see seafood you kind of feel a bit odd and think i can't eat that no no no so your brain's job very clear move you away from pain so
what do you think happens when you drive to work going this traffic is killing me i am dying in this job my client is hell my boss is a nightmare i'm up going up the wall with stress well your mind goes um okay let me just get that again your job is killing you your boss is driving you crazy you're up to the wall with stress and you're dying under your paperwork well i don't think you should go back to that job anymore so i can make you really sick so you can't go and if
you ignore me i'll just make you sicker i can give you an ulcer i can give you panic attacks that's what the mind does so give you an example one of my clients was telling me that when he was a kid he had to read and read out loud and you had to read out stomach and when you got to you read stomach my stomach ate all the children laughed and even the teacher laughed and he went bright red and his brain starts to search for oh what's making you so stressed oh you read out
loud you drew attention to yourself everyone laughed at you don't ever do that again and so many many many years pass and he decides to go for an interview and his brain's like going what are you doing don't you remember what you said you were never going to draw attention to yourself again you seem to be going for an interview i make you really anxious and nervous then you won't go for people that stuff they go you know what i thought i could do that public speaking but actually when it came to i was so
nervous i pulled out of it and i've never done it since that's one group second group ignore that and go now i've got to do i want to do it and they do it under terrible duress they're anxious they're stressed and their brains going hello why are you ignoring all these fantastic illnesses i'm coming out with to get you off that stage you appear to be on that stage so i'll just crank them up even more third group they're much smarter they dialogue with their brain very very very differently so let me give you an
example who here's got their own business or would like their own business okay so when you have your own business or you write books or you speak you often have to work weekends sometimes you have to work nights and so if you're sitting at home this is you going oh god i've got to spend all weekend writing this is so hard it's really boring all my friends are in the pub your brain's like you don't really want to do that why don't i have you tidy up your sock drawer for three hours and empty out
your your emails because you don't want to do that work and you go no i've got to do it i have to do it it's so boring but i must do it your brain's like ah i'm going to distract you because your brain's job is to pull up resistance if you don't want to do something so it's really poor communication saying i've got to and i have to and it's really hard and it's dull and it isn't just using words like this is a nightmare that says hell just saying this is so boring oh this
is so dull is enough to get your brain to say move so this is how you communicate with your brain you say to it i have my own business i really want to do this i have chosen to work through the night i've chosen to do it i've chosen to feel great about it because i've chosen to be successful your brain goes you really want to work when i yep i really want to work all night and i'm going to say it excites me to work it empowers me to work all right it throws me
brain's like yeah i got it great so instead of making you resist i can just give you loads of energy and i can set you on fire and you can work all night because you told me you want it you like it you've chosen it and you've chosen to feel great about it so i learned this technique when i was working i used to work on a lot of shows with very fat celebrities with the idea that we'd get them very thin and one day we're working with submarines in wales and the marines were running
up a hill it was pouring with rain they were running through sheep [ __ ] they had half their body weight on their back and they had a miner's light on strapped onto their head and so they're running running running and the brain's going um yeah this is a bit weird you're running up a hill in the pouring rain you've got a minus light on your head you've got half your body weight on your back it's freezing cold but you're singing and of course because the marines singing the brain is like yeah well i guess
you like this stuff i mean you're singing you must like it i don't have to do anything because you like it and that's why people sing when they're doing something difficult now the celebrities okay here's the minders like they go if you think i'm putting that miners light on my head you are out of your [ __ ] mind there's no way excuse me swearing i'm gonna wear that you think i'm gonna run through sheep [ __ ] in the rain at seven o'clock at night i'm not doing that and of course they couldn't do
it because they said i'm not doing it was when you say i've chosen to do this i want to do this this excites me it empowers me then you get what you want so let me just move on to how many people have done this asked thought i want some time off and got really sick let's go on to our next slide because this is not positive thinking it's nothing like that this is clear specific detailed precise communication with your mind and when you're detailed you get whatever you want because your mind doesn't care your
mind doesn't care if what you tell it is good or bad right or wrong healthy or unhealthy it just believes it so who like who likes to have proof that everything i'm saying is true stand up and let's have a little bit of proof so i want you to remember this your mind does not care what you tell it if it's positive or negative good or bad healthy unhealthy it just goes in so i want you all to take your left arm and i want you to point your left arm out like that and all
you're going to do is have a little rehearsal so you don't poke at your neighbor's eye all you're going to do is that so you might need to come forwards or out a bit so all i want you to do is everyone take their left arm and i want you to take it as far back behind as it will go push it to where it is now look over your shoulder and just notice where your left arm is that's all you have to do notice where it is bring it back drop your arm down again
close your eyes and you're going to have a bit of amazing proof now i want you to tell your left arm in a minute when i repeat this exercise you will go a third further you are super flexible you're like play-doh you're like elastic you're like a bendy doll and you are going to go a whole third further and now i want you to see all the muscles in your shoulder like spaghetti cook spaghetti so believe your arm is super super super flexible see it going further and now tell it you will go a third
further don't move it yet see it going further tell it to go further open your eyes lift up your left arm and just watch as it goes a whole third further when you do it again because you told it to so now you have the proof you can never again go i'm rubbish at this i can't do that i knew i'd get that wrong i knew i'd mess that up we're going to do another one so stay standing up these are all fun so we just do one more there's nothing humiliating or embarrassing it's all
cool just put your hands by your side and put your feet together and close your eyes just keep your eyes closed and i want you to imagine right in front of your chin is the most powerful magnet an enormous magnet it's so super powerful it is pulling you forwards forwards forwards from the chin your whole body is leaning tipping hinging your chin is moving forward your shoulders are moving forwards you're bending from the waist your knees are locking you really really want to come up onto your tiptoes as that magnet pulls you and pulls you
and pulls you and now i want you to imagine it's changed position it's gone right to the back of the back of your head and this time it's pulling you backwards backwards backwards your head is going backwards your shoulders are going backwards your knees are locking your toes are trying to come into the air as that magnet pulls you backwards backwards backwards and finally it's gone to the left of your left shoulder your whole body is pulled over to the left by this powerful powerful magnetic force you're like a weeping willow in the wind and
you are pulled over to the left more and more and more and now just open your eyes and take a seat [Music] because there's no magnet that's your mind how powerful your mind is i would really love if they teach this stuff in school because once you know how powerful your mind is now it's your fault before you can say i didn't know better it's not my fault i describe myself as an idiot now you know better and it is your fault so you're not allowed to do that anymore no more diminishing yourself so let's
just do one more you can all see that lemon can't you put your hand in front of your mouth just like that close your eyes and i want you to imagine that you're holding half of a big fat juicy lemon it smells like the most best lemon smell ever you can feel that great lemony waxy thing and you can inhale it and you can really feel this juicy lemonade open your mouth and cram that lemon in there shove it in and start sucking it and biting it and chewing it and just go to work on
that lemon and of course what's going to happen what's happening is that your mouth is filling up with saliva right now to a thought and open your eyes thoughts are things whatever you think your body agrees the mind says yes the body says yes it doesn't really work the other way around so you've got to say yes to better stuff so how many of you do this i just got a new pa she's amazing but every time she said oh my god i wanted to die when i got the job with you oh this boy
just asked me out i want to die and i'm like i don't think that is going to work out until you stop using that word so hope says it's hell in tesco's it's a nightmare on the m25 my commute is killing me put your hand up if you use any of those words or ever have in your lifetime sure and you have to change that and just call it it's a challenge in the traffic it's yeah it's a little bit boring being in tesco's but it's not hell because you respond to the picture so let's
go straight on to step two because it what figures in very well the first thing about your brain does exactly what it thinks you want it to do what it thinks is in your best interest and what you told it years and years ago and it's up to you to change that and go yeah you know i didn't want to draw attention myself when i was 12 but now i'm like 52 and i really want to draw attention to myself i want to have a great business i want to ask for a pay rise i
deserve it i'm worth it i matter i'm significant because the second thing about the brain is and this is really interesting it responds to two things only two things there's nothing else it responds to the pictures you make in your head and the words you say to yourself so a patient rang me up last year and went could you help me i can't merge and i'm like what does that mean because i can't merge i can't merge because i've got these companies all over england i have to drive from london to manchester manchester edinburgh and
i have to go on all the a-roads b roads because i can't merge on a motorway but now i've got to give people lifts and i can't tell them i can't merge i'm like oh come in you'll be merging in 24 hours it's fine but as it happened i had to drive to manchester with my husband and we were driving back really early in the morning it was still dark and it was raining really badly and i had to overtake a juggernaut and i was thinking about my client thinking wow what that must be like
not to merge and i thought about it i thought oh my god i can't merge i'm halfway past this lorry and i have forgotten how to merge because i'm thinking his thoughts and seeing his images and i had to very quickly stop and go come on you know how to merge you put your foot down you follow the curve of the road and you say i can do it and then i got back into the inside lane and i thought i could wait my husband would say baby you've got to drive now because i can't
merge but this is silly of course i can merge but you know when you take on someone else's words and thoughts you start to feel like them so i'm flying to spain to see a client and i'm in the queue to get on the plane and um this woman is crying hysterically her husband's begging and pleading come on babe get on the plane they're gonna and the staff are going well she's not getting on the plane and we're taking off her luggage because she's not getting on the plane like that and i'm like oh no
it's going to be a disaster i'll help her out i would have helped her and said listen what is the matter she said i can't get on the plane i'm like why not and she went well look at it that looks like a flying coffin and i'm scared if i get on i'll never get off and i'm like oh right well you know that would make anyone scared calling a plane a flying coffin you could call it flying sofa maybe but flying coffin that's not a great word and so i asked her a few questions
and said you know what did you do yesterday and she looked at me i said i know what you did she said what i said you did all your laundry didn't you how did you know and i said curse people who think they're going to die tidy up their house because yes i always do that before i go on a plane and then i usually can't get on it absolutely you know you don't even have a fear of flying you have a fear of not being in control but i'm going to fix it so i'm
telling you this story that i took my daughter to disneyland and i thought i've got a little ride that went like that and actually went like that and like that and i my brain was being thrown around my skull my daughter was screaming because she hated it and i thought well i could scream too but that's not going to help her so i started going oh yay this is fantastic i love this it's amazing i really didn't i can't can't tell you how much i didn't but it confused my brain and then it confused her
brain and she was going yay i like it too when we got back to did you like that mommy i'm like no but i wanted to confuse myself because oh mama you confused me because i thought you loved it so i'm telling this woman this story going okay we're going to get on the plane i'm going to hold your hand and we're going to pretend we're in disneyland we're going to go i love this as the plane takes off we're going to go yay this is great so i explained to a lot of things we
got on the plane i held her hand and as it took off she looked at me went oh my god this is like why is it this easy i'm like because it is this easy your brain responds to two things the pictures you make and the words and when you go yay this is fantastic you have a different reaction and she said so should i lie to myself i'm like absolutely all the time a hundred percent you should lie to yourself and lie because you know we think we're so smart we think we've we've evolved
but you know when you go up to the top of the shot i went to the top of the shot i went to the edge and i had to do that and walk around it and i wasn't remotely scared but my body was going get away from the edge because its job is to move you away from pain so you respond to the pictures you make in your head and the words you say to yourself so here's a thought anyone here not having the most amazing success that being on a healthy diet anyone failing to
avoid pizza and chocolate and ice cream and ben and jerry's they're not finding themselves going for a run at six o'clock every morning so this is what happens you're in a restaurant let's pretend this is a menu and you go oh my god they have burger and fries and pizza i love all of that oh it's my favorite and apple crumble with custard and double chocolate fudge ice cream and you could butt i'm on a diet i'm having the salad and your brain's going salad no no no you love all that stuff last time you
ate it went oh my god this is better than sex it's so good and now you're going to deprive yourself of it and your brain is going eat the pizza eat the pizza go no i'm having salad and roasting salad when did that ever give you intense pleasure don't be silly eat the pizza so you go okay now i think now i feel so bad i ate the pizza your brain's like eat more that's why it's called comfort food like now i've eaten more pizza i feel bad your brain goes eat some ice cream have
a beer so this is the wrong way to go i love chocolate i'm never having it again all my favorite things i'm giving up and i'm never eating ice cream again i love it it's yummy it's do i can't have it and it doesn't help with what they call it divine and love and celebration here so the way to do it is to go oh look they have pizza yeah i like that but you know what i like being a size 10 way more i like fitting into my jeans way more and there's pizza i
can have that one on 96 right now i would look good in my clothes and maybe out of them too and your brain's like you don't want the pizza no i don't want the pizza i want to be really fit and healthy and i've got pizza for the next 50 years right now i'm choosing to look good in my clothes i'm 95. i'm not going to look good in my underwear no matter how thin i am that door is shut and then i can have loads of pizza and your brain's like oh you don't get
that i get that with your language you've said you could have it you're choosing not to it makes you happy not to it thrills you not to empowers you not to and then all resistance goes away because you just change the pictures instead of thinking that cake looks nice you go yeah it does look nice but doesn't look as nice as i look when i fit into my clothes so who here when you look at this picture what do you see so i'm going to give you four reactions straight away oh that's really painful or
yeah i'm going to get off my head or oh i'm going to look 10 years younger tomorrow or this is going to take away all my pain you see how you can choose i mean i have clients who love doing that to themselves and they're not street junkies they're major movie stars who think that's fantastic i have women who have so much surgery they love that too because you can choose what that means you can choose what everything means you can choose when you go on a plane either those pictures you can choose what this
one means you know is that really how to be in a traffic jam well hell is actually not having a car or any money to run one is it hell going shopping no when i was in cuba we lost all our luggage we went to get one they went we haven't got anything we haven't got anything we don't have any provisions in cuba there's nothing to buy that's hell i should have said it was quite liberating really but you can't go to shops and go it's hell it's a nightmare it's a disaster until you go
somewhere else and see what it is really like so let's come to the very last part of my talk which is the thing that therapists find the hardest making what is familiar unfamiliar and what is unfamiliar familiar so your brain loves what is familiar it really wants to go for what is familiar and if you want success you got to make unfamiliar familiar really hard work applying yourself but most of all extraordinary self-belief that will take you further than anything so whatever you haven't got that you'd like make it familiar and if there's things that
you've got that you don't like make them unfamiliar if you if you land around every morning on a weekend and start to go to the gym that becomes familiar so i worked with a lot of women on shows and we do makeovers to make them look really pretty and the minute the cameras stopped rolling they take all the makeup off put their track suit on and go home and i worked with one once and she went yeah i don't know what you've done to me but it's really changed and i met this really nice guy
and he took me out he opened doors he bought me dinner i don't think i can see him again he's too good for me i said no no no it's unfamiliar you know your dad tried you like [ __ ] men that do that are familiar and now here's a nice guy and usually i'm sitting i'm gonna make this familiar make this familiar make this familiar and make the other stuff unfamiliar and of course it worked and here's the thing that i find the most interesting people who have never had praise that is so wonderful
if you say to them i love that type of girl i got it in primark in the sale only cost five pounds or i love your talk yeah but i left out the best bit and the other person was much much better than me so if you do that here's a tip make praise familiar make self praise really really familiar and make criticism unfamiliar people can say things you don't have to let it in so i want you all to close your eyes and you know i i worked with this very interesting guy whose parents
had abandoned him and they were really horrible too and you become very very successful and and they got to buy them a lot of stuff but they never praised him and then his dad died without ever telling him he was worth it being and one day i said to him you know you're a good son i put my hand on his shoulder he sobbed uncontrollably for 10 minutes and i had to say look let this in you're a good son your dad's not going to tell you but i will so i want you all to
think about what is the one thing you would have loved to have heard we all want the same stuff you're a great kid how lucky am i that you're my kid how lucky am i to be married to you dating you living with you you're a great employee you're great at your job you know what you need to hear i don't have to tell you close your eyes think of what you most wanted to hear now or 30 years ago and say it to yourself now i am you can do it in your head or
out loud no one's listening just say it right now i'm a good person i'm smart i matter i'm successful i'm significant and just say it over and over and over again because you're going to make that so familiar for the old voice is unfamiliar and here's a great thing to end on studies have shown over and over again that depression is usually caused by harsh hurtful critical words that you say to yourself over and over again make that unfamiliar tell your brain what you want take responsibility for the words and pictures you use make great
stuff familiar negative stuff unfamiliar i promise you can have whatever you like if you enjoyed that video check out the next one right here you can also click the link below right here for your free gift when you focus on where you want to go you actually go towards it the more you focus on where you want to be the more your mind like a heat seeking miss out
