This Is Why You Aren’t Happy: The Chimp Paradox Explained!

0:00This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. We have six major beliefs and behaviors that are destructive. And you don't know why you feel uneasy. You don't know why you're unhappy. If we can learn to shift systems, we'll approach life very differently.

0:39Really? The chimp system, it's a survival mechanism, making decisions that are not rational. The problem is a lot of people live in that all the time. People say to me, have you got a chimp? And I keep saying, it's almost a gorilla. So many people believe that they are stuck in a pattern and you'll never escape it. I was constantly in chimp brain. So I stress you in some way and the chimp system lights up and now you're very emotionally based. The problem is you're being hijacked. So there's techniques of how to clean your brain. You have to try putting outside your head all the problems because reality challenges beliefs.

1:12Wow. And now 40 years of doing this, everybody improves and then you'll be the person you keep saying I'd love to be. Always try and not cry in this podcast. It's really hard. The biggest problem I get with people listening is... So, Professor Steve Peters, it's so nice to have you here with me today. and I'd like to start with a question actually about... First, thank you for inviting me and call me Steve. Right. Hi, Steve. Steve, I'd like to talk to you about when did the sort of chimp idea come to you? How old were you then? It was a gradual thing and it was in... It's now 30 years ago. Wow.

1:59So I was a doctor then doing clinics and obviously I'd been trained in medical approaches and that is it is a mixture of therapeutic, like talking therapies and medication and knowing which one is appropriate, if not both. And there was a light bulb moment where I was chatting with a patient and I just felt there's two different people talking to me. And by then just suggesting things, I seemed to be getting a different answer. Then by reassurance, I got another answer. So then by unsettling them, I thought, so I needed to then look at functional MRI scanners, which are like the brain working in real term.

2:38And in real times, you can see which parts are lighting up. But at first, it was just like the whole brain lights up. You think, how can you tell? But if you slow it down, there is a definite pattern forming. So keeping this simplified, I ended up with two leaders of the brain. So this was effective, the two people talking to me. one of them was the person and one was i realized was a machine so we look at often damaging someone so someone who's had like a stroke and damaged this bit i'd call the person then the machine talks to me and their partners or relatives this is the person we knew but not quite right there's there's changes and i'm thinking that's because the machine's in charge now and then others i would be thinking i worked with someone where the machine was in charge and their life was quite dysfunctional and you start giving them ideas of beliefs and behaviors and you start working therapeutically and they changed and they started changing as a person and becoming what I call the real person and the machine then started losing power so that's where it all started and and I suddenly thought at first I called it devils and angels just to give it a name and one of my students came she's Muslim and she said to me I'm not happy Dr Peters I was having these devils in me and I said okay and I had to think and and it dawned on me that you've got to go back to neuroscience and and the hominids the great apes and so I looked at the great apes and that's when speaking to a specialist um they were saying that the chimpanzee and the human are different to the others and in the way our brain is structured and thinks but we have this additional system which is us whereas the chimpanzee didn't it has it's too primitive to use so but the chimp system was the same so that's where they came from i just said that's your chimp system it's given to you genetically it isn't you and people the students at sheffield where i work uh they were saying they got it they loved that and and this girl come back and i'm happy with the chimp i can see that in me it's quite interesting that though isn't it using words or coming up with kind of a theory behind it It is important to think of everybody and be inclusive and make sure that it's not stressful or distressing for someone.

4:52Yeah, exactly. I didn't want to alienate anyone. And it was just, it's not for everyone, it's for those who relate to it. But I'm saying that the neuroscience shows us we have two effectively thinking systems and you can learn to move from one to the other. And if you can learn to move, then you change. What's so nice, I think, is this idea of you can change. I think so many people believe that they are stuck in a pattern and they can't escape it. And sometimes you think these behaviours or these ideas are so entrenched that you'll never escape it. Can I, this is going to be really, I'm going to try and do it simplified again.

5:31It's a hard concept. I think people don't change. They are who they are, but they're masked by this machine. so when I find the real person which is the one that they say I would love to be and I say if you say I love to be calm, compassionate, have integrity you're telling me who you are now and I can find that person and that's what really inspired me I thought I know I can find this person inside this machine and if I can remove the machine I find the person so you always are that person it's not you're trying to be them what you're really saying the problem is you're being hijacked constantly by a machine and if I can show you that what that machine's trying to do and then you find yourself you then manage the machine you'll be the person you keep saying I'd love to be but the machine has got a grip on some people with behaviors thinking and you've got to start really taking it apart and restructuring it and I did question can you really restructure the brain and the answer was yes so a lot of research around 2000 was done once we had these functional scanners to show you can literally change it's no different to you going to the gym and building muscle your brain will change structures aren't fixed so people talk of an amygdala that changes in size all the time depending what you do with it it's not fixed people what the amygdala is one that a lot of people have heard of it it's a very small it's like a peanut size in the middle of your brain and it's the fight flight freeze mechanism it actually there's tons of other jobs and being in there now it's got about 17 sets of nuclei and they're all great but we talk about fight flight freezing because it's easy because we all recognize that yeah but a lot of us don't want that we don't want to have fight flight freeze so that's a good example of the machine hijacking you because if people say i don't want to panic i don't want to run away i don't want to avoid things or i don't want to get aggressive i don't want to get hostile or angry or frustrated.

7:27But that's what that part of the brain does. But if we learn how to manage this and we can reset some of this, then it stops doing it. It literally will shrink in size. It loses power. So there are parts of the brain which intrigue me that you can build up, which actually what we call modulate or manage it. So it influences it to calm down. And I started working on this thinking, can I do it? and my first, I call them guinea pigs, they were patients. So I thought, no medication, we're going to work on these areas and see if I can do it with them. And they did it. And they were saying, I feel so different.

8:04Wow. And that was like so inspiring that I then developed the chimp model and the students were merciless, which was good, show me the scientific evidence. So I worked a lot and learnt a lot. And around, I'd say, 2005, so 20 years ago, the model was finished, but I didn't go public because I kept thinking by then this academic profession I'm thinking am I really going to go Ramsey because it's little in the chimp but I was inspired enough by the students who said it's wrong not to share it so I thought oh well it's life I put my head on the block and get mocked so I threw it out there and it just took off it absolutely took off I mean I always think of you when every time I go abroad and I go into WH Smith and I think I'm going to go and look for a book you are always in there in the you must read pile i mean it's been 20 years it's unbelievable how long and it's still still you know it's a top best seller it's unbelievable how many copies have you sold i think in all formats nearly two million i mean that is so brilliant what i love is the way that you look at everybody as a how can I unpick you it's like um it's like a problem that you can solve in someone yeah it's a puzzle exactly and that and the satisfaction that you get when you fix the puzzle yeah like how nice that feels but what I love about it I mean I've got goosebumps every time I talk about what I love about it is that you get somebody, you do this to someone, like fix their self-esteem, but then the good that they go out and do to the world with this new self-esteem and the difference that they make to other people, it's like a wave, a ripple.

9:53Yeah, it's amazing. I want to go back. You were talking about sport. There was so much in what you just said. I'm going to pick it up a little bit. No, it's amazing. I want to go back and talk about sport and talk a little bit about... There was a footballer, wasn't there, that you helped. Steve Gerrard was it and also Chris Hoy yes because were you sort of part of the team that were helping him or you were helping him personally before Beijing yeah I met Chris over 20 years ago I was reminding me before he's famous again I only as a doctor I can only talk about people who give me permission and clearly Chris has and he's written the book and explained and what I'm doing with at the moment.

10:34And I can say he's one of the most genuine people that I've met. He's an absolute gentleman. He's amazing, isn't he? I've met him a couple of times. He's absolutely knockout. He is exactly what you see is what, you know, you get what you see. He was trying to help himself focus. He was always in a good place. So people said you always work with people who are falling apart at the seams. I work with anybody. It's what people want to do with their mind that's important. so he wanted to learn how to focus at the olympics so i actually went to athens olympics with him but i wasn't public then because i didn't actually want to be in the limelight so for three years i didn't do interviews i kept sort of in the dark in the shadows because i just didn't feel comfortable being in the public limelight but i reckon then i realized if i didn't go in the public land i couldn't help people i could only help a limited number maybe maybe just think okay deep breath let's go um and then i went to the limelight room so i went to bejing with the team um but chris again works really hard on the mental skills yes really hard so um again he worked every week we'd have regular sessions and in between he might call um but he learned how to manage his mind um and but he was always in a good place so his wasn't an emotional thing it was a definite specific can you help me to do the following um and he achieved it i think that's very interesting that you say that he's very good with his mind because i think um in in any case when we're talking about a method or even somebody that would go and do something as simple as a life coach there's no point in doing anything like that if you're not prepared to put the work in um it's like being a bit of a teacher's pet like you tell chris to do something and he'll come back the next week and he's done it.

12:22He's done it. You know, times ten. Yeah. But that was the year that he just won gold after gold after gold. Yeah, six in a row. I mean, unbelievable. It was three Olympics. What an achievement. Yeah. And again, I deserved it. We forget, though, again, I was just part of one piece of the jigsaw. Yes. I'm not going to say it wasn't crucial, but, you know, the physical aspects were horrendous that he had to go through. And, you know, there was a whole team behind him with nutrition coaching, medics, physios. So I was part of that team. Again, I don't know how much everyone would have to say. Some people say it's like a small amount.

13:00Some people say it's everything on the day if you're not mentally in the right place. That's like life. Life, exactly. So what I try and do is explain that with Chris. I'm teaching emotional skills. So you're right. It's like anything. If you practice, then you get better. The encouragement for anyone listening is I've never had anyone who doesn't improve who puts work and I've never had that happen in now 40 years of doing this. Everybody improves, but it's like I liken it to taking you all to a running track and say we're going to make you run 100 metres. And some will be fit and can do a reasonable time and some will be very unfit, not even make it.

13:38But all of us can learn to do it, but some will reach Olympic level and some will reach school sports day level. But that doesn't mean we can't improve. And it's the same with emotional skills. I'm not asking people to be in this amazing place where they never have an emotional crisis they never have thoughts that are eating them up I'm not asking them to, I'm asking them to improve and start picking things off and show gradual improvement over years and then know what to do if you can't manage emotion then I can say right we can put things in place when you think okay I'm struggling here it's not that that's it then so it's a complex thing but it's unique to the person I think one of the things that really resonated when you were talking a minute ago was when you said you can change.

14:26And I got a bit emotional then because. Take your time.

14:36I always try and not cry in this podcast. It's really hard.

14:44so i was like i'm not gonna cry in this one um listen i've i've done it where somebody turns on me and they start asking you detail and i just broke and i thought oh god this is so embarrassing so humiliating but at the end of the day you know like people say to me have you got a chimp and i keep saying it's almost a gorilla uh you know i'm a very emotional man i tend to manage it well because I need to. I can't meet people and then break down with them. Yes. But, yeah, you don't want to be non-emotional. No. You don't want to be non-emotional. And I think what it is is this idea that it's in you and you can find it.

15:27Like, you are you and you can't lose you. You might lose it for a bit because something else is taking over. I'm not being very clear, but... No, you are. No, what you're saying is, I'll do your analysis. Yeah, great. Great problem. So you've always been the same person. Yes. You've never changed. Yeah. But life throws things at you. So you then learn really poor coping strategies. You make poor decisions. You make emotional decisions. You grab a hold of things that you think might give security and then find that they let you down. Because you don't recognize that within you, it's all there. It's all there.

16:02but because you can't find it you have to substitute something to survive but that can often meet even more detriment and then that spirals to this low self-esteem you can't get off the floor and there must be someone which there's a lot of people like me who will come in and try and get rid of the mess and go right let's draw a line and let's just go back and review what happened here so and let's get rid of judgment let's get rid of regret let's say what we're going to learn what experiences have we got that we're really at the time negative but we can turn them around so if you learn how to do that with this positive mindset which is not easy and i do think most people should turn to a psychologist therapist counselor someone who's qualified and experienced in it so that they can help you go through this it's a lot easier with someone then you can come out of this and you can look back and be happy with your life you know and realise it was always you there.

17:00We just need to untangle you. And as I say, for me, now we're on a different thing. We're untangling you from the machine, so it stops hijacking you and recognise who you are and what the machine is, because it does think for you. But also we're untangling you from experience. You know, sometimes you've got to go back and reprocess things. And we do get what I call emotional scars. So we can't remove them. What we need to do is recognise what they are and put them in their place, but learn how to manage them. And there's different ways and different days that you might want to manage them differently, gain a skill.

17:34Can I talk to you about resilience? Yeah. Because I feel like emotional scars are things that I think as a parent we try and protect our children from, but actually I feel like also my emotional scars from my life have been brilliant learning. like I've learned from everything I've been through good things always like I've never isn't bad things have always been a good experience in the end it's fantastic yeah but it's interesting how as parents you want to protect your children what what do you think is best as a parent in order to build resilience in children oh well this is a big topic sorry you're good at big topics come on i'll be here till tonight i think i'll go on two different aspects one i agree with you i've dealt very recently with a parent who was trying to protect the child and i said don't protect the child give them the skill to understand accept and deal with life don't remove them from it but obviously i'm not saying let them be subjected to horrendous experiences i'm saying let them have the rough and tumble of life warn them it's coming and then learn how we start getting used to this and managing it because we have to face life is rough so that's one aspect of experience but a bigger one for me was always uh and i'm going on research i'm back to being nerdy when they start looking at this and i want to know what's the difference between a child being resilient and an adult because they are different yes the way their brain works different and an adolescent is different so i would work with the individual at the position that child or adolescent or adult has reached and emotionally we're all at different points in life so you can't say same for every six-year-old every 10-year-old it isn't we're all different so you find where we are what the biggest factor focusing in then and i push this is get the child to be the critical uh constructive critical analyst of themselves don't keep rewarding or punishing or punishment never works but don't be the judge jury because it teaches the child nothing all it does is teach the child to keep looking externally you need to say to the child this is only my opinion and the research seems to back it to say you know i keep it simple on this one if they paint a picture ask them to say what's good about it ask them say what's not so good ask what they could improve on the next time but recognize it's they're talking objectively about a piece of work not themselves whereas what we tend to do is model them up with what they produce and what they can do what they can achieve and that leads to problems 10 years later yes because then they look to their peer group and say do you approve of what i'm wearing what i'm doing and then social media destroys them because they've never learned to be self-critical but in a constructive positive manner so the evidence base is if you start as young as four year old to get children to you still compliment i'm not saying you don't give a but you make their opinion the one that counts.

20:33And then they will learn to respect the opinion of one or two people that care about them, that give them good criticism and, you know, good compliments where they think these are helpful. And they dismiss people that they think, well, that's not important because I know what I feel. I know what the people who count feel. And then the theory, which seem to be born at practice as adults, we do the same. So I learned to think I'll be the judge of how I'm doing which gives me my stability so and i often say to people don't let somebody else own your happiness take it back why would you depend live your happiness to someone else and say what you say will affect me you have to learn skill and we can do it so i own my happiness what people say and think is not important but i do listen to people that love and care about me because they're going to give me criticism which i need to listen to so i do allow them in but for your public i I don't know.

21:25Or even people acquaintances, colleagues, I'm respectful, but they won't get through because that's not what I allow. What happens if you've got a parent or a loved one who is critical of you? You know, they're a loved one, but they are saying things that is undermining you and your opinion of yourself. again if you look at what i've said that's where had we learned as a child to say let me do the analysis then what they say isn't as bad you just feel like okay it will still affect because it's a parent so now we're getting a bit more complex so the chimp model that i brought in when i said the your brain the chimp brain the problem is as we grow up the chimp must necessarily go to the parents for survival.

22:15So therefore we idealise our parents and we have expectations of them and we don't grow up. So even at any age, 30, 40, 50, we look to our parents through the chimp's eyes saying, you should be this ideal parent, which is ridiculous, really. They're a human being and no one gives them skills to be a parent and they get things wrong and they can be not so nice, but our chimp brain won't accept that. So we're very critical of our parents and what they should and shouldn't do. Whereas if we'd switch systems and say as a human, they're just another person. Yes. And I've to temper the fact, why let them come through the barrier?

22:52Let me just put a barrier up. Because what you're saying isn't actually helpful and I'm dismissing it. But if you're in a chimp brain system and you literally give your oxygen supply to that, you'll keep getting hurt. And so I teach people to move systems and say, right, let's see them as an adult. Let's see them as someone who is also dysfunctional. someone who doesn't know how to communicate. Also, I like to use the word that they're not a bad parent, they're not a good parent. It's a mismatch. You need more love and affection than they've got to give. Wow. Or the way that they're giving it isn't the way you want it given.

23:27So a lot of dads I've seen, and mums, but dads in particular, seem to throw money at children in a way of trying to get their love when they want a cuddle from dad. So there's a mismatch in what I need and what I'm getting. but that doesn't mean they're not trying it means they don't know how to do it so behind locked doors they often find these harsh critical parents blubbering in tears thinking I can't do this I don't know how to show love to the daughter or the son so it's a complex one but also in fairness to people listening you might have a psychopath for a dad or a mum and you've got to recognise it is what it is go in human mode and say right that's what I was given stop complaining it's not going to help you say why didn't they do this right they didn't so and i'm tough now on people and say let's start with what is and let's work with it but i'd be giving tlc because we're still going to chimp mode saying well i just never felt loved or respected or understood and unfortunately they're the emotional scars which we can learn to manage we got very heavy here no it's really interesting because i was looking at you know i thinking about my experience with my mother and I was thinking about other people

24:44who I ended up estranged from my mother but I did that because you know they say that insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results and I just kept going back thinking that she might kind of parent me then I thought this is ridiculous I'm asking somebody who can't who can't she can't she can't do it and actually after her death I found enormous forgiveness and an ability to understand that she just was never going to be able to do it in a way that I couldn't when she was alive which was interesting um but what what's your opinion on people that estranged themselves from their parents like should you be able to work it out or is it is it okay to do that i always um say never use the word should it can be used improperly it could is better so instead of saying should we be able to could we work it out it's just to stop the judgment of feeling why could i do it yes and the answer is sometimes we can't could we sometimes we can't sometimes we can so it's it's understanding what have you done what have you tried and you've exhausted all things and you've got to be realistic and survival mode and if you think right we cut them off then i'm not disapproving but that's your decision or limit the contact or be prepared mentally psychologically don't expect something that isn't going to happen yes you know and rather see them in a different light and then i my experience has been most people can then come to a reasonable relationship with the person but they're not then expecting them to do something they can't deliver I mean, I always think, how would I feel?

26:30I used to think, how would I feel if she died? And I haven't seen her for many years. How will I feel? And I felt like I thought I would feel okay. And when she died, I did feel okay.

26:49but it's a big one that I think letting go of someone that and I often hear people who kind of ask me was it the right thing and a bit like you're saying I always say look this is your life and your parent only you know if it's the right thing but for me it definitely was. I think it's a case of sitting down and working out what are your options with this person yes what have I tried and again this is really approaching in a rational way rather than just going emotionally and yes think right today I'm going to be nice to them and and that's not a plan you know whereas if you and I'm not saying it should be so heavily analytical but have a structure where you think right I've exhausted all possibilities this works or this doesn't so we know what we're canning and can't do yeah and then a big thing that you said which is a bit different is often we look back on decisions we make and regret them.

27:43And that's really actually unhelpful because at the time we make a decision, it's the right decision. It's as simple as that. It's the right decision on what information we've got and the state of mind we're in. So we don't make wrong decisions. We make decisions. And I think, you know, going back and beating yourself up for anything in your life is really, really negative and it's hopeless. and the reality is you've got to say at that moment in time I made this with good intentions or I made it because I couldn't deal with life I couldn't deal with situation but it was the right decision at the time it wasn't the wrong decision it may turn out there could have been a different type of decision but at the time you do what you're capable of doing so I think then it becomes more positive to say right how do I go forward making decisions which are more helpful you know Or what process could I now use that I didn't use at the time?

28:39That's then very constructive and a positive mindset where you think, you know, I'm looking at life like you've done and think things I did. I don't regret. I just think I did it at the time. What can I learn from this? So if it's not a great thing, I don't want to repeat it. You know, how can I get insights? And that's a lot of work that I do. So you're clearing all this, like, backlog of unprocessed information in people's lives so they get a freedom to draw a line and move into a new chapter, which we can all do, and leave behind all of this, process it and bring positives with you. I feel like when you've been...

29:16Yeah, I'm going to get out the drawing. Steve, it's time for the drawing. Because you've talked about two parts of the brain, but actually in this diagram there are three parts right can you this was drawn the very first time when um people saying well where are these elements so it's very inaccurate in this a diagram just to give you the idea there's three bits of the brain it explains so your human is in the yellow front lid in fact the chimp's also there but it complicated things i'll put the chimp because it's limbic system in the middle of the brain which is where the limbic system is but there's like a big strand going out into the yellow bit and the chimp actually lives there right so just for the people who are saying this isn't accurate um what i was trying to say is these the chimp and human are the two thinking systems which we can see so i stress you in some way and it's very like the chimp system lights up and now you're very emotionally based uh and making decisions that are not rational, they may be paranoid, you lose perspective, you can't see beyond the moment you're in, you might want immediate gratification instead of delayed gratification, so you become impulsive, you react fast to things, you don't respond, it's just a reaction with words or actions, so it's not thought through, it's a survival mechanism.

30:39And then I realised that a lot of people live in that all the time, and what I did is started working to say, we're going to put a pause and move the blood supply into this yellow frontal bit to the human, which is at the top of your head. And what happened then when I moved it, the person gained perspective, they gained reality. And they started thinking rationally and logically, if I do this, what am I going to feel like in half an hour? And now they could do it. Now they can press the pause button and relax. So I was thinking, how can I train people to move themselves rather than me move them?

31:13But we can see this on a functional MRI scanner we can see it literally lighting up which means if we can learn which is what I quite challenged 30 years ago to shift systems we'll approach life and ourselves and other people very differently in the way we want to rather than this emotional reaction because humans respond they don't react you said earlier that you can live in your brain all the time yes so it is possible that you are constantly yeah in that kind of reactive yes place that must be exhausting it is and it's sad when you meet these people and and behind locked doors i can get them and i see what i said before i see the the person the person comes out and now i know who you are and then something happens and immediately going to chimp again i think okay i'm just seeing your chimp again and then they they go with the chimp because it feels right and then they regret it, then they think, what's wrong with me?

32:10And I keep saying, nothing wrong with you, I found you. But you're caught in this. You say, man, I found you. Yeah. Like you're in there. You're in there. People get very emotional when you say that. Those who realise what I'm saying, yes, because they suddenly think, I do know who I am. And you do know it because if you have a friend that you're close to and you've had like an evening together and you start opening up, you relax and you become you. And suddenly you don't feel any venom, you don't feel any anger, you don't feel regret you feel relaxed and peaceful you know and suddenly you're you now so your best friends know who you are and your best friends don't muddle you up and say well you're really impatient or aggressive or they don't, they say no that's not you but behind locked doors I have found the person and then that's so rewarding enough I can just get them to see it and then you literally like growing the person and then we're coming to the computer bit because really the rest of the brain is the computer.

33:09So when I work with children, we just do chimp and human and the children respond better than adults. That's okay. People have seen it a lot. They've seen that. You're done. Three systems. This is it. Enjoy it. Goodbye. Right. So the computer, because we haven't really talked about it yet. So children like just working in human and chimp and some adults do because they keep it simple. I had an 80-year-old and I wrote My Hidden Chimp, which is a children's book, and he wrote to me and he said, that's better than the chimp paradox wait so just explain that so you you had a children's book but you also had one for parents come out at roughly the same time yeah that was what was the parents one it wasn't meant to be um it was added on to go with the book so oh okay it was to sort of like but and then it expanded a bit it was a little bit rushed and it was a regret but not fully no regret no regrets not no regrets it was to say i need to go back and do that again but i haven't time so what what i said was um we'll send it out um so that's called uh the silent guides so the hidden chimp book doesn't touch the computer it's implied because children work on a very basic level as adults we work much more with the computer what we do with the computer is we have beliefs we have behaviors we have automatic behaviors and beliefs so it runs our life when the other two go silent so when you meet somebody and introduce someone new we have automatic things like hello how are you and there's a response that we're programmed to say I'm fine or whatever and then how are you that's all we don't think about it it's just programmed when we go to work driving or getting the tube or whatever we're doing we don't think about it we just know what to do so the computer keeps running it doesn't analyze or think it's just automatic instinct yeah you've programmed it but we program it to learn behaviors as well we program it to uh use avoidance a lot we program it yeah so and it it knows what it's doing you know we program it to overeat we program it with excuses we put so it comes to the rescue of the chimp if we try and manage the chimp in comes the computer uh and these are what i call the gremlins beliefs and behaviors really don't help you right but sometimes you don't even know they're there so for example again extreme just to drive a point home some people have this belief that they're not as good as other people or the world they don't belong in this world they're onlookers uh they're common it's a defense mechanism of the chimps and i won't go out into the world because it's dangerous and then the gremlin comes in which is the the false belief saying yeah you're not as good as the people so when i say to someone right let's go whatever they'll go immediately the gremlin's going you're not as good as the people you probably get things wrong and don't do any risks you look silly so i need to find that gremlin and remove it right so that's not actually the chimp at all it's a belief you're holding so when i look at people we often have i would say there are six major beliefs people hold that are destructive so on average i'll turf six out uh i work with someone i can't go public about somebody well known uh and i had 22 gremlins and we we got a big piece of paper with all these false beliefs and um and then we found the dance together oh wow and what he said is oh by that um one will say you're not as good as others so we then bring what I call a constructive belief.

36:44What do you really believe? And it's nobody's world. It's our world. And I'm as good as anyone else. I may not be as good in whatever talent I've got, but I'm a nice person and I value my... So that's your belief. I'm as good as heaven. And then there's another gremlin will come in and go, yeah, but that's not what other people think. So it reinstates the first gremlin. So you've got to kill them both off. And we're literally getting rid of them. So often I say one belief is followed by about four or five. They have little gangs. So I do an exercise. Let's just pick up all the beliefs. And then you find there's about five or six and we need to get rid of all of them.

37:20And otherwise they come back. So can a life experience like a divorce create a load of new beliefs about yourself? And then you've got to go and work on those because you get older, you're picking up more and more beliefs, right? Oh, thousands. So what I say is it's almost like I ask people who work with me to do a five-minute clearance at the end of the day and just go over the day and think, let's just have a look what happened, let's get the right beliefs and interpretations. Otherwise, you're seeding again more beliefs that go into the computer, which are now hidden and keep nudging the chimps throughout the day.

37:54And you don't know why you're feeling easy. You don't know why you're unhappy. And you think, well, that's because there are all these unconscious beliefs. so I asked people to clean the computer up so there's techniques of how to do it and go over your day and say it's journaling good yes yeah yeah I'm working with someone at the moment who said this is really helping me again it was someone that I'd been working with for a while and they weren't as progressing as I'd wanted and uh and I suggested this and I've used it with a lot of people and this person said this definitely has made a difference because what I'm doing is scientifically it's accurate you're putting outside your head all the problems so therefore you your human can now see them if you keep them in your head the one of the rules of the brain is that the chimp keeps going over around in a circle it never solves any of them because it's not a solver the human has to solve but unless you talk if you talk this is why therapies work the human the brain picks this up immediately and starts bringing in perspective reality challenges beliefs and often we talk and go that's ridiculous you know what i've just said isn't right you know so talking is great but if you can't write it down and sometimes you write and you think that's crazy it is interesting how writing does give you a completely different perspective than something i think yeah so i like that idea idea of daily assessing yeah so they don't you don't they don't run away lean it up yeah and say right why is that helpful is this really going to help me this belief and again sometimes i believe me need to be put on the table and challenged because we can learn from it so if someone says well you know you were very rude at that point and you think oh and you get home and you think i still chewing me up that comment because i don't think i was rude then you can reflect the right don't be defensive why would they say that especially someone who likes you it means i need to rethink this and this is a way i could have done it differently and why would i have said that what belief am i holding about that person or that situation and this is where sometimes it helps to write it out because it dawns on you or someone can talk to you and say let's throw some ideas of what belief are you holding at that point and then you you know a therapist a psychologist or somebody like a doctor in my shoes would work through it with you and then you've got to say no that's not right Steve and then you say but I'll tell you what has made me think that's how it works you're a team it's not me saying right that's wrong I don't do that it's you that says that's resonated and that hasn't resonated I mean this idea so many people find it hard I think um in relationships I I observe how relationships work and I guess like later in life I've met somebody and we work really well together we can say quite difficult things and neither of us ever fly off the handle or we will listen I think because we know the other person genuinely cares about like us that we can take a criticism and go oh okay so what made you think that or what did I do or okay I'm going to think about that or you might want to go away and think about it a little bit and say I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna think about how I'm gonna respond because I need to go away and assess it and then come back and then you can come back it feels really healthy but when I I'm around other friends or couples and they get defensive with each other it makes my heart hurt right but again there's love there yeah you're going back to what I said before where I'll be self-critical but I will listen to the people who love and care for me because they're not hurting me they're trying to help me so therefore it doesn't hurt other people doing it to each other when you know that they love each other yeah like you think oh but you don't want to you can't say something it's their relationship you can't but if couples realize that the problem is sometimes we don't suffer enough you know i always say people won't move unless you're really suffering or you really a reward you have to recognize what's happening but a lot of couples trundle along in the relationship which is almost not surviving but it suits them it's practical it's comfortable but the quality of life isn't great um but they tolerate it and it's a shame because like you say they could get a much better relationship if they worked on it and thought let's put some energy into it but a lot of people don't want to do that so i think it's quite frustrating also when you when you see one person wanting to change and being prepared to kind of and then the other doesn't and I guess that's the beginning of the end if you're on completely different journeys then yeah and again I do a lot of work in couple relationships but yeah yeah that's interesting well only because if you think about it for most bits the most crucial aspect of your life so even with like um CEOs of companies I'm asked to work with and you're talking about high performing teams and managing staff and but behind locked doors it's often can we go about my family you know that's not unusual i want to go back to something you said because i think it's important um you said about a divorce happening and what could happen so i'm again i'm putting it into boxes to try and make it accessible understandable that there's a difference between the divorce happening and you get emotionally scarred and it does effectively scar you so therefore the brain has now got almost damaged circuits that doesn't mean we can't manage them but it means we can't repair them so we got to accept a little bit of a scar there so when it raises its head we learn what to do with it as opposed to a divorce going through and someone getting damaged at the time but we can repair that one and it's not that oh well it's the kind of divorce it's the kind of person so a same person can go through um a really traumatic or two people the same traumatic divorce from parents one comes out unscathed and one is damaged yes it isn't like your this is what will damage you it's very much unique to you so it can even be a comment a teacher made when you were young that never left you and did some damage at that vulnerable moment in time or a parent's made whereas other people go well that's nonsense just dismiss it and you can't for some reason it went in so we have a look at that now we i try and get it to be processed and removed which you can do and i've done that with people it's finding it um but sometimes it they say it just keeps coming back and i'm saying well don't try and change it let's work with it then let's leave it stop trying to say i can't do it and therefore feeling a failure again say no well when it raises its head how do i contain it what do i do to and there's ways of doing that is that what you're talking about when you talk about gremlins and goblins that that gremlins are the things you can change that you have power and control over and you are able to say right that's it i don't want to do feel like this anymore and you can change it but the goblin is something that just won't leave you yeah it's something that's and it's not that it's it can be a devastation like um a parent dying suddenly um who yeah it was in a great relationship with you uh and that can become something you can't really get over but it can also be like I've said a comment that someone makes and yes and a teacher says well you're stupid and you always will be and you you have that still fixed in your head and you try and compensate throughout your life and you think we can go back and reprocess it but sometimes like I say people say I can't remove it so we learn what to do with it so we can overwrite it but it's still there so again it gets a little bit in complex here going back to very basics i would be saying to people who are listening if they really want to improve the quality of life and get to respect and love themselves then it doesn't have to be my model i'm strongly advocating that any work you do will start improvements but be realistic yes you know it takes years sometimes to overwrite these programs in your brain you can do it but you have to have a very different approach a very different mindset and the biggest problem i get with people listening is they try and make a real big effort and i'm saying it's paradoxical the more you relax the more power you get yes the more you fight the weaker you become because the chimp takes you up and it will fight whereas when you relax the chimp and say it's not that important now we're just going to relax the chimp then it's got no purpose it's there to defend and protect you i have to say i've got to plug the last book I wrote because I'm not down in the Chimp Paradox or the other books that I don't regret.

46:45But I have to say, I've written one called A Path Through the Jungle. The reason I wrote it 10 years later is people said, left them in the air a little bit, give them the concept, but where was the lessons? So this is a bit heavier book. I was going to call it one year because that's the time I think it takes to work through it. And it's a course. It's a course. in a book form oh great and it says you just tell us the name again a path through the jungle just want to say to anybody watching that if you go and look we'll put all the information about um all of steve's book in the um bit below i'm sure anybody that watches youtube a lot will understand what i'm talking about i don't really understand what i'm talking about but you know what i mean yes so i should say i don't know youtube yeah i do yeah i'm not that bad uh but i'm old i'm allowed to say this oh computers but uh it was quite funny when i got the first degree because uh when i got thrown in the limelight they wrote to me and they said uh it was at sterling university and they said you're claiming you've got a math degree from us but you're not actually on the system and i said well i did and i was one of the very first students to qualify when it just opened and they actually hand wrote it.