The Mindset Doctor: The Secret Man Behind The World's Top Performers | Professor Steve Peters

we have beliefs within us that are just too hard to remove and they may have come from traumatic experiences let's learn how to put it in a box Professor Steve Peters he's a world leading psychiatrist the author of a number of very influential books including the chimp Paradox a man who has helped multiple British athletes I've been seeing Steve for three years now look just any psychologist that's Dr Steve Peters and the person who wants to help people I started working with Chris Hoy I went undercover to the Athens Olympics so we could make sure

that he got his gold medal and running a Solomon the emotion that that guy was getting at that point was to being so unpleasant that part way through a world championship shook hands and walked out so in Ronnie's case what do you do so the very first step is oh really and that is what winners do for people to shift they've got to have psychological mindedness which means they've got to understand that it's not about what happens to us in life it's how we deal with it what role does Early Childhood trauma play in how

we respond in situations and well now we're really getting deep before we're even born the emotional memory is starting to react to that trauma your parent might suddenly say are you just an idiot but something might have happened just before that where you've got one out of ten and you were bottom of the spelling test and the two together get emotionally Tangled and that then damages the circus so you get people often who are very low self-esteem how does one go about working with someone who's got serious self-esteem issues I'm gonna be controversially I'd say

whenever there's a podcast episode that I record that really has a profound impact on me I always want to provide a little bit of a disclaimer at the start to make sure that you give it a chance and this is one of those episodes that comes along once in a while which I absolutely absolutely adore because of the depth of wisdom and the potential it offers to change your life so what I'm going to ask you to do is to listen to this episode to give it a chance and to try and get to the

end because this is one of the rare ones that once in a while I think will genuinely change your life it'll be one of those episodes that you pass around to your friends foreign [Music] how would you summarize your professional academic bio and experience okay that's a tough starter uh I would say that I'm a person who wants to help people so what I've done throughout life is in order to help people what do I need so one of the things I felt I needed when I was a young man is I needed a medical

background so all of the work I've done like in Psychiatry and particularly becoming consult psychiatrist it wasn't that I wanted to be that it was I needed that in order to be able to help people effectively so my experience in life has always been the more people I can help and the more circumstances the better equipped I'll be to deal with whatever comes through the door so I think of it slightly different to be about a career it's more of an approach and an objective in life and then what I need to do is learn

in order to be good at that in terms of your academic qualifications yeah what are those and pick my friends I'll laugh at this because I've got five degrees so it effectively um I started off doing mathematics but um and teaching but then I went back into medicine and then from there their scientific qualifications I've got medical degree and then I went through the Royal College so you specialize in Psychiatry and get your membership exams and then I've specialized again in looking at things like um because I got involved with sports people um I did

an MSC so that we look at Sports Medicine itself again and brush up on my medical background because I'm still a doctor at heart and then because I teach at University I did an MSC in a medical education so I I sort of again following what I've said as a theme I I think what do I need and what would help me to do this and then so that's why I've collected these degrees um so that that was my academic background and then in terms of experience what give me um an overview of the sort

of plethora of experience you've had practically working with people um in different contexts in Industries yeah I mean I went through a medical training and then you do your routine job so you mentioned surgery and so on and our Trend in general practice and then went into Psychiatry when I hit a psychiatrist one of my disciplines during training for GP from there in Psychiatry you look across a vast Spectrum you select your job so I covered General adult psychiatry then I covered old age Psychiatry a child psychiatry learning disability and adding into forensics so when

you've done all that kind of training experience then you start to really specialize and initially I was going into specializing in old age Psychiatry um I felt the the um what the service at that time was a long time ago was quite poor for old age and there was very little research it's before I received it so the anti-dementia drug came out and uh I wanted to go into that field but by virtue of the fact I'm a teacher I got a post in sort of teaching and University alongside clinical work and that meant really

I need to do General adults so I then set off in general adult psychiatry I did a lot of clinical work 20 years in the NHS but progressed because the difficult cases are often personality disorders and and how we manage them and particularly forensic style so Psychopathic clocally cold we'd call them dysocial personality disorders how do you manage these people so I ended up becoming by default a specialist in this field and then ended up working in a secure Hospital working with people under the mental health act to a detained of transgressed the law so

then you go into the legal aspects of how we deal with people who have transgressed the law and are now held under the mental Health act almost indefinitely and you try and obviously get people back out of these secure hospitals if they're safe to come into the community so that in a nutshell is how my career develops so you end up with a vast experience over the last 40 years and then hopefully you can pull on that experience when you're working with everyday people working with everyday people um you ended up working in the field

of sports yes which seems less obvious as a path for you to take based on your um you know based on your experience before that didn't seem like you're really aiming intentionally at working in Sports no not at all uh I'm not a sports fan I'm a people fan which means where people choose to work then I follow them and I've got to learn their world so um obviously you've got Sports Specialists Sports psychologists the Specialists I come in a bit left field I was in forensics at the time but I was still teaching at

University one of my previous medical students I teach medicine went as a doctor um with a a cycling team that was working for the Olympics so I knew nothing about this and he called him he's an excellent student but he wanted an opinion on somebody who is a professional who was struggling mentally so I came in just to give an opinion and work with this guy now I can only name people who've you know gone public so I can't give names and um he excelled and then I can name the next person at that point

I was introduced to Chris high and Chris an amazing guy absolutely amazing so really it wasn't easy I need a bit of work to do to help him to get his mind to do what he wanted to do with his mind uh he went off I went undercover to the Athens Olympics he asked me to go with him so we could make sure that he got his gold if I could contribute he got his gold medal and then said really I want you in the team so I didn't go off for a year and after

a year I was convinced I was working Vicki Pendleton and I knew that needed a bit more work and she's again an amazing person a great people to work with and so I then took the leap um I mean at that point I said in towards retirement then so that's well over 20 years ago now and then from there when I worked with them the swimming team came in British swimming and then it was just a I don't know a Cascade of all the teams and sire started working across the Olympic teams and then went

off to Beijing Olympics and it just I don't know again momentum and I I just got this reputation well this guy can help you mentally um you know so I work alongside the cultures obviously they're the people who take them to the front and I do the mental side of it so it wasn't a planned routine and I still do all my other work I still work with the public I still work in other areas with doctors with in the NHS with the the police I've done a lot of work with uh business people so

it it just became generic at that point sir David brailsford who's been on this podcast um who was the performance director I believe of the British cycling team took over a time when it was struggling and led it to become maybe the greatest cycling team of all time he he says that your appointment was the I quote the best appointment he's ever made now when I think about you know you getting that first call from that first athlete the one you said were struggling um and then working with Chris hoy what exactly are you doing

for them I think this is like no matter who comes in the door say you come to me what I've got says I'm not I'm not a sports psychologist I'm not the specialist what I am is a specialist in the human mind so I've made that my career and so I look at how the mind thinks how it functions and I ask you to First be a student really and I want you to learn your unique mind I'm going to give you the blueprint then together we're going to work out how you perceive the world

perceive yourself perceive others what do you want to do with your life when we've done all of that then an only then would ask to go into your world so then we can apply what you've learned so it was interesting that two people I work with the public again were Vicki Pendleton um it was probably still the world's most successful female Sprint on the bike and then running a Solomon in snoka and both were interviewed and they both said that to the Press they said you know he did not take us to sport he took

us to ourself and work with us as people and so that we've gone in a good place then we went to sport then he said right what is it you're choosing to do with your life and then I have to learn then because obviously if you take me to your world I don't know your world so I've got to go in there and learn what it is you're experiencing how you're interpreting it it's a teamwork and then I have to test things out so that's basically what I did when I started working with Chris hoy

he asked him what he was in wanting to do what was he finding easy what was he finding difficult and then try and work out what I felt he needed to do and how he managed his mind and then it keeps pushing this point it is a skill you've got to acquire it so I I don't have other people might be able to do a process I can't do that what I do is ask you to work with me and try things out where you're gaining a skill for example a skill of recognizing where the

emotion is actually helpful or unhelpful whether you can remove the emotion or need to work with it or whether you can actually just dismiss it and learn how to move yourself on and so it's a skill to be able to recognize things and then know how to deal with that particular thing that you're experiencing could you give me a case study from one athlete you've worked with so that that will allow me to work through that process so first identifying the emotion potentially working on whether it's positive or negative how it's serving me and then

how you might with your process lead me to a positive outcome productive well I'm going to pick um Chris Hyatt and Ronnie Sullivan on the grounds that both of them are very public about working with me and and they put out what I'm about to talk about so when I was Chris what he was saying he was doing the kilo at the time which is four Laps on a bike but it's very similar to doing 400 meters where you know you've got to get the Judgment right if you go off too fast you burn out

and you won't finish if you go off too slow you'll never get the ground back so it's a really tough really tough event um so in the key law I had to learn that um which wasn't too hard because I'm familiar with 400 meters so and then when I did that I have to test out what his beliefs are you know when he sets off on a bike where is he pulling his focus and that's what Chris was saying is when I set up on the bike my focus can be distracted and it will drift

off and I might start thinking about what other people have just done when I'm watching my competitors or am I going fast enough or and you start to do an analysis now in his particular event what I said to him is it's not going to help you to do an analysis in this event some sport it is because you have a breathing space where you can analyze and then get back into what I call computer mode so he needs to program his mind to have a fixed leg speed a fixed markers on the track so

that he's not thinking at all there's no analysis that was my summary of it so we tried that out so when he went to the Olympics everything was completely learning to switch off any thinking and Analysis and that's not easy easy said than done but we practice this so on the holding Camp which there's like a three-week camp before the Olympics I went to the holding camp in Newport Within and every day we practice this so we do 20 minutes of him learning to focus and then we had specifics on the bike for when he

got on it to do this kilo um and to me he was an excellent student clearly he committed to it and he would say then that when he got on the bike and he went round the day of the Olympics he forgot where he was until he passed the line so to me that's like even complete Focus mode so again credit to Chris why is switching off his mind in such a way or focusing his mind in such a way okay why is that the Neuroscience is complex so I'm going to cut corners and do

it very black and white and simplified it's complex but in a nutshell if you there are three systems in your head keeping it very simple it's much more complex than that but simplifying it one of the systems will hopefully to think very logically and I call that the human system it thinks logically but it's very slow which means if you operate with a human your body and your reflexes will slow down because you're analyzing as you go along and it slows the system so you're more pensive so that's really good in certain circumstances but it's

awful in fast-moving Sports so if it goes into that it's very likely he's slow down it's not going to help him if he goes into the second system which will probably come back to the chimp system this is a primitive system which thinks it's more than just a reaction an impulsive system it thinks when it moves it can move at speed but it thinks emotionally so this is the part of his brain that will think thoughts that are not helpful such as should I go faster at this point and then it may make a decision

to go faster and burn out so that would be crazy um final the third system is a computer it just needs programming the key to the computer particularly in sports is it moves so fast it's approximately 20 times quicker than the human system so execute and it's about four times quicker than the chimp system so if you get into computer mode particularly fast moving sports it doesn't analyze or think it's automatic thinking so it works with keys like a computer is that the autopilot exactly it's an autopilot you're programmed it's a behavior that's programmed in

but so when I came down the stairs to see you today I I know the route I've done it 100 times so I was I was holding my iPad but I was on autopilot yeah because I came down the stairs and your body knows what to do you don't need to think whereas if we put an obstacle in there then it will stop okay because it doesn't know what to do it's not programmed okay but you'll have to think man is is is the computer where our habit this habit formation yes all three do work

together yeah but the computer is one that just blots out the other two or if they go silent it can operate and it's the computer that drives us to work or like you say it goes on a familiar track but it can also generate automatic thinking okay so when you meet somebody your chimp may start to think is this person going to like me am I going to come across okay it could give you anything um whereas the computer system is automatic so if you've programmed a belief that everybody loves me then it's much more

likely when you meet people you're going to be very open um and your body language will be positive if you have I'm being severe obviously if you ever believe nobody likes me or I'm not as good as everyone else which unfortunately a lot of computers are programmed without then whenever you meet someone you're on edge and you're very conscious about what you're saying and doing because you figured that it's going to be the truth that they don't like and you're trying to overcome that belief which is so unhelpful now that I call the gremlin but

these beliefs are programmed into us and we hold thousands of beliefs often without knowing what they are hmm okay we're going to come back to that because I want to talk about the gremlin the trauma and where all of those beliefs come from and how which ones we can resolve but to your point then about Chris Hoyle now so Chris was asking to how do in in my world he was saying how do I silence my human and chimp systems from analyzing and thinking which is their job and how do I go into computer mode

so I forget where I am and just get on with the process and he did this nicely Ronnie Sullivan wasn't in that place and again Ronnie's giving me permission he keeps saying tell everybody everything but I won't tell you everything a lot of stuff is behind Nocturnals so he's a great guy I love running Sullivan we've been friends now for over 10 years so it's a privilege to work with him it's one of the hardest working of my students and and he's saying to me all the time he Rings regularly so I've spoken to him

already yesterday uh so we talk but the key to Ronnie was his chimp was so active in being anxious about how he came across whether he'd perform well um what people would say how well his Rivals might be doing it was just giving him what is natural and healthy but extremely unhelpful and that was creating very anxious moments so before I met him I had a look because I didn't know anything about Ronnie and or snooker and I went online to say can I see some YouTubes of him and I saw him hitting uh the

white ball with acoustic and I thought well obviously that's not the right thing to be doing and I saw him walk out of a competition which distressed me you know I didn't know the guy but I thought wow the emotion that that guy was getting at that point was to being so unpleasant that part way through a World Championships competition he just suddenly stopped for all the shook hands and walked out and I just thought you know when I saw that I definitely want to help this man and we went back and actually looked at

that incident and I said what was it and I love this um and he challenged me at the beginning but after about an hour of chatting he said I get this because on that incident he said to me there was this voice sort of saying just go out of it you don't have to be I don't want to be here and he said and I'm saying to myself I want to play snooker I just want to enjoy the game and this voice got more strong sin right hit the queue and he said I hit the

queue ball and he said I'm walking out and the voice is still going right just keep walking we're not we're out of here I can't deal with this um and he said now I get it there were two of me there was me trying to do what I want and there's this voice which I couldn't manage at all and I couldn't stop it doing what I wanted to do so once I explained the model to him um and the model isn't everyone it's for those who can relate to it he said I get this because

my human system my chimp system are so different their poles apart so he's worked for 10 years saying how do I recognize and manage this chimp system so when he came to me it wasn't just in snow career his whole life he could say that his emotions were getting the better of him and it was a whole system that was emotionally driven and it was almost paranoid about things it was Defensive it was making him feel vulnerable it was giving him anxiety and it's a really powerful system so it varies in person to person some

people are very simple chimp systems which are not that strong and others most of us have chimp systems we we really recognize they're there and they they mean business and they give us emotions which drive us to to do things make decisions have behaviors that often are destructive not just unconstructive so in Ronnie's case what what do you do right we started the game to recognize the systems and say right let's just start because again I try to take people through a series of steps rather than just throw things at them and so the very

first step is let's define Who You Are and let's define what your chimp is like so we recognize because you're everyone's unique so I can't tell you who you are know what your system is I'll give you General things like this system is impulsive it doesn't think consequence it's quite emotionally driven when we're tired it takes over and people generally start I get that so neuroscientifically that's what happens in the brain so how do we start to recognize the difference and then when we do let's start simply to say what is it that's prodding my

chimp into action and this is where it gets a little more complex the chimp system can just react so if I for example your friends with me and one day I just shout at you for some reason and get annoyed and your chimp system is most likely going to show it back but if it believes I'm not as good as other people or I can't Co-op it's likely to go quiet and feel very intimidated and hurt so again we have to work out what your chimp system is doing but on the other hand the chimp

system the newer Sciences it always turns to the computer and says what beliefs do I hold before I make my decision and this happens in a fifth of a second so let's say you're about to shout back at me and your chimp looks into the computer and one of your beliefs I don't know what they are might be if you shout back up people it makes you look foolish yeah well I can tell you what my beliefs are right and I can tell you where they came from so my my parents shout where my my

parents had a very loud shouting relationship I've never shouted in my life because of that because I learned firsthand so whilst you believe my belief is that um shouting achieves nothing um it's it's harmful for both parties you lose when you do it you're not heard when you do it um uh no stop there so I can do that's brilliant yeah so just to try and do the steady with this is what you're saying to me is I absolutely resonate with these beliefs they're not something I've given you which is a danger so if I

said to you uh where we want to try and stop you shouting it never gets you anywhere you have to resonate with that that's why I can't do it you have to assist to me Steve that really resonates I've got to have evidence yes yeah and you have to believe this and you can't brainwash your Brit at seven to believing you've got to experience it and say this Rings true to me so once you've worked that out and you reinforced it which it sounds like you've done through your life oh God yeah then you you

don't shout and it's not that you can't it's your computer's stopping you because the chimp has to listen to those beliefs so before it does anything it can't move so let's look at the opposite then if someone had you know if someone grew up in a household where they were shouting and they and they for whatever reason gained the evidence that it was an effective way to communicate or whatever um how does someone go about unprogramming that belief well it's not my job to do that and try to explain what I mean I I agree

with you to me shouting is it's not very helpful you know at all however if somebody that's not my job to tell people I said to them why why would you hold that belief and I do have people who say it because people don't listen unless you shout some people you have to shout at them and so I draw breath because obviously I'm not agreeing but I'm not going to try and change the mind I'm going to challenge them and say can we challenge that to make sure that's what you believe but if they are

insistent there are certain people in my life that shouting works for it's not for me to say that what I would do then is say right let's say it does work what that's in the short term so now we're in the devil in the detail our chimp system is working in the short term it does not look at long-term consequence so when your human now comes in your human system will look at rationality what's the long-term consequence of shouting now it may be with Personnel there's no long-term consequence and you think it doesn't make any

difference I'm going to shout right they get it and we're okay with that and I'm not saying that's wrong I'm saying it's what they want to do however they might suddenly say with me actually you're right with person B when I shout there is repercussion on the person and I'm actually hurting them and also in their eyes it's not it's demeaning they see me as demeaning myself so it's not actually working in the long term it's not building a relationship that I want so it can be you tease the devil in the detail out you

have a blanket by the sound of it belief that it doesn't matter who it is you don't shout yeah I would agree with that however I'm going to give you more devil in detail you have to be careful because if you add on to that that shouting is something that's a failure and then now I've I have a challenge on you because if you think about it if you then suddenly out of the blue did Shout and you're going to now start beating yourself up potentially and thinking yeah I would yeah so that's not that

helpful so what a better belief I would suggest and see if you resonate is to say if you shout even though you don't agree with it because all your beliefs in my opinion are right uh if you shall forgive yourself and say you know that is a chimp system and maybe I need to reinforce my computer system because my chimp got out there and I'm not proud of that because actually I don't think that helped but I'd like people to understand that we can only manage the chimp system we do not control it and if

it wants to get the better of us it can so all we can do is keep reinforcing the computer beliefs and strengthen them and you've done it beautifully by having a number of beliefs and then you've almost got this gang of autopilots yeah so if one gets shaken the others come in and that's how the brain will work so I like more than one belief but on the other hand if under circumstances your chimp gets out and you shout I want you to understand that your chimp got out it wasn't you that's not an excuse

model you have to apologize if you think you've done wrong but I am saying it's a skill model which means you says to me now I do not want to shout so you didn't do it however you're responsible you can't just absolve yourself so I always liken it to having a dog I'm a great dog lover if one of my dogs comes in here and bites you I can't just go with my dog the answer is I have to manage this system I have to manage my dog and it's my responsibility 100. so I work

with people to say be kind to yourself because this system means business and whatever your system is like it will break through there will be does you do not manage it Let's Pretend today has been a day where I didn't manage it the dog got off the lead and bit somebody whatever you know my I I lost my temp or whatever and I I'm reflecting on it thinking oh God you know and I was passed and I'm thinking God I wish I hadn't done that yeah what what can I actively do to prevent it happening

again how do I reinforce that computer let me go back to the to the Dom because it's probably the best example uh what you wouldn't do I hope is kick the dog the dog's doing what the dog does you know the dogs the dog doesn't no so your job is to say first I'm going to apologize to the person because that should not have happened I know whatever I need to do or compensate I do whatever and apologize the second thing is naturally I assume you're going to say well I need to work on the

dog I need to learn to train the dog and manage it so I know exactly how to stop that happening again but what I'm not gonna do is beat myself up for not being able to manage the dog why is that a bad idea we're dating yourself up yeah just like you know oh God I'm such an idiot I shouldn't have done that and it's sort of self-evident I mean again this is the devil in the detail if you said to me you know when I do that it it makes me feel better just to

think right I've I've got to go up myself here and there's nothing wrong with that but what I'm going to do is draw a line after a certain time and then I'm going to say right you've had to go at yourself get over it yeah let's put that into action now right then I'm not disapproving I think it's self-evident that I'm not going to prove for somebody beating themselves and going back to the same thing over and over and over and then escalating that so it doesn't just become I can't manage the dog I'm an

incompetent person you know and I get things wrong and everyone else seems to do this what's wrong with me that's the problem it's now going down a very dangerous route is that depositing certain evidence into the computer about you not being self-worthy which then is going to make your chimp recipe yeah well the chimp's gonna be irrational so when the chimp brain takes over because it puts our beliefs in as well as we do so it for example the dog one it will expand on that so there's something wrong with me so let's go to

you you shouted and then you start saying you know I'm not a great person you know because my belief is great people shouldn't be doing that and it's okay giving an excuse and that's my chimp but it's not good enough and I can't allow it to happen again and I've done damage to this person irreparably and and now you can see how it's starting to escalate and you're putting all these beliefs inside your system so they're going to be unconscious beliefs that you're carrying with you so then you go and meet some friend and those

beliefs might come straight in am I going to damage this person am I going to say something stupid again I'm gonna lose it again this is all really destructive and unhelpful you know sometimes I find it difficult to apologize specifically you know when you're like in the heat of a situation you might have had a an argument with your partner or whatever else about something tiny yeah in that moment sometimes I find it difficult to follow this I think I've gotten 10x better I'm thinking about the last sort of Confrontation I had with my with

my girlfriend and in fact all I did was listen and then apologized after you should finish speaking because I genuinely was like I completely understand um but I think sometimes over the last 10 years I just think why didn't you just what is it that's preventing you from just saying especially when you know you've you've done something which is which isn't in line with who you want to be or how you want to behave why didn't I just apologize straight away what is it I've got to make a guess because I was like I said

everyone's unique so if I work in the or say well again we're looking at what beliefs you're holding is do you think apologizing is something that's strong or weak good question um it's a good question and I think I'm going to say that my belief on that has changed okay so I think for the first over the last 10 years the first eight years I would have seen it as a weakness and then in the context of my relationship I see it as our biggest strength that I can both now listen in total silence make

someone feel heard and understood and then apologize to them I think I see it as this like real superpower that I have that I've developed but in the in the eight years where I didn't I don't feel like I was apologizing enough I definitely saw it as a a weakness I saw it as admitting defeat and that's where I'm going so I'm saying to you uh it's a shame it took eight years yeah and that's why I like to do this work because you look back thinking if I'd learned this eight years ago it would

have made a big difference but it that may not resonate some might say well I don't get I don't see it as weakness or strength so what difference so I would try a different attack consider that how important is it that you're happy or that your partner's Happy who would you put first in the situations where I didn't apologize I put myself first but what do you want I think in those situations I I don't even know I want it to be right I don't know I don't oh good good this but I'll leave just

finished on that bit and I'll come back to the next one which is where I think you're coming from um I'll give you a surprise coming here so if somebody said my girlfriend's more important than me I love this girl I don't want to lose this girl and the last thing one is upsetting her to it's easy to make an apology yeah and it's easy to recognize I don't want to hurt this person and even if I'm in the right and she's in the wrong it doesn't matter I'm not it's not about winning which is

what the chimp brain does it wants to win okay the human wants to resolve the situation so saying I'm really sorry that you're upset and I didn't mean to upset you doesn't mean you're admitting fault or whatever it just means you're trying to say that you're more important than this this is trivial that's so true and so that might resonate with people but you might get somebody which is where you're going where you say well of course I love it but hang on that's not right because if she's done something that's wrong and I've reacted

to that she created that problem I know I'm wrong to react but hang on I want an apology right so that's common this is the surprise when you look at the Neuroscience behind this you think oh that must be my human being rational logical but actually isn't when we look at this why a girl called it the chimp system when we look at chimpanzees they operate with the chimp system they do have a human system but it's quite primitive which is where I got the analogy so I looked at the gray tips back in the

1990s and the publication came out in 2018 for the people academic to show the chimpanzee and human think very differently to the other greater Apes we're very different there's a different way of approaching things and interpreting so we do have the same system with chimps so that chimp system is the same and the way it works is unfairness so experiments with chimpanzees I'm sure you find them on YouTube where they do unfairness to chimpanzees and even um basic like capuchin monkeys demonstrate the same thing they must have fairness so never we demand fairness we're actually

operating from the chimp system which is emotionally based the human can accept unfairness the human gets over and says get a life you know stop trying to deal with trivia and get fairness but our chimp system demands fairness I bought your book for uh one of my best friends recently when I say recently I mean in the last seven days and I said make sure you read that over the Christmas break and they said they came to me and said do you know the best part of the book for me she absolutely loved the book

she said there was one sentence in it in the book which made her go which is where you say in the chin Paradox that life isn't fair yeah and you actually I wrote it down earlier on because because she said that to me you you've referenced it as an obvious thing you you say um have realistic expectations and remind yourself of the obvious life is not fair stress will happen things will go wrong for some reason that sentence resonated with her really profoundly because I think the friction she'd had in her life was expecting fairness

yeah and that I'll pushed this I'm pushing the next book now oh this is I mean this one's a pass through the jungle is to me is is a step up no it is the reason I did that one was to try and this exactly what I'm saying I threw all that lot out as a chimp Paradox to say these are Concepts and she's giving what I've experienced doing talks over the last 20 years now to the public and and various organizations is people come out of that and everybody picks something different it's what resonates

with you so had I been working one-to-one with her I do this like fishing expedition to see what's resonating and then we expand on that so that's why I've gone into much more detail on this next book to say right if these bits resonate he's the science behind at this time when references you're gonna read it up but if you don't he's the practicalities so that's much more of an investigative how do you use this now and what she's really doing and I've tried to push this in the next book is to say what she's

saying there is you know what my first step is acceptance and that is what winners do successful people go you know it doesn't mean acceptance roll over it means let me start from what's in front of me and stop fighting it and then work with it and then see what I can do with it whereas when you look at the chimp brain which generally is not as successful can be what it does is it says I don't want what's in front of me I want it different this is not what should happen so it spends

its time getting aggravated rather than accepting and moving straight into plan of action so we often spend a lot of time agitating about what's happened or what's in front of us instead of saying it's happened one of my favorite podcast episodes that I recorded with a guy called Mo gauda he said to me um we're we're unhappy when our expectations of how life should be going are unmet hmm well that's why when I've gone in that's in the new book I've tried to say how do these systems approach life um what I've explained in that

is the chimp system writes the script first before we leave the house so it will say things like I'm going to drive to work today and I'm going to get there in 30 minutes there'll be no hold UPS to be so you can imagine the second there's something in the way it explodes because that's what it does it reacts whereas the human system doesn't what the human system goes out with zero expectation but as hopes I hope to get them 30 minutes that's a world of difference and then when I find there's a traffic jam

it doesn't react it responds so the two systems are very different and if we can learn how to go into human mode then we set off for work there's a hold up we don't have an emotional reaction we have a response which is accept there's the word accept what's in front of me but then follow through with a plan so in the book I always say first step is accept but immediately say right what's the plan because that's what humans do the human system wants Solutions it wants resolution it wants to move on the chimp

system wants to express emulsion and then remove the problem not solve it there's a difference just remove it ignore it displace it pretend it hasn't happened that's not ideal because it tends to come back and bite us how much does what role does trauma play like early childhood trauma play in how we respond in situations and well now we're really getting deep um it depends on if again I'm being black and white if someone has a really bad trauma at childhood it can have repercussions throughout life because now the circuits in your brain are developing

so if you have a really traumatic event and and not necessarily how what we would Define as traumatic it's what the child defines so I'm being a bit facetious here for example if it's got its favorite sweets and somebody steals them that could be a traumatic childhood event at that moment in time the impact was so significant that it has repercussions it's damaging the circuits it might for example perceive that as nothing in life is safe anything I have can be removed however most children get over it in seconds you know but it depends on

the child and what stage they're at and what the circumstances are at that point somebody else might have child abuse for example which is much more likely to have repercussion throughout life so but we'd still get children who get child abuse and have no repercussions so it isn't a definite black and white it's probabilities is it the way that I've come to understand it is almost like we're wearing our own sunglasses which is a metaphor for like interpretation yeah so me and my brother we could be identical twins we go through the same experience but

we're wearing different sunglasses so we interpret that experience differently we deposit evidence about what that experience means into our computer yeah um you're absolutely right and and it all hangs on for example somebody like your parent might suddenly say oh you're just an idiot you know but something might have happened just before that where you've gone to school and you've got one out of ten and you were bottom of the spelling test and you've come home and then your father you've done something at home and made a mistake and he says you're an idiot and

the two together get emotionally Tangled and that then damages the circuits whereas normally if you come home you just got 9 out of 10 for the spelling come top of the class and he says you need you just bat it off and think well I got 9 to 10. so therefore the brain doesn't pick it up so again I'm trying to give example it's so complicated what I would say is it's hard to find these because they happen often very young in life and the emotional aspects and our memories emotionally and how we formulate things

have about a three-year start on the human circuit which doesn't come in for three years approximately so that's why we have no memories of childhood we can't remember before the age of two because it's not working so our emotional memory begins in fatal life so before we're even born the emotional memory is starting to work out what trauma is and react to that trauma so we react to the mother's heartbeat for example um and again every fetus is different it's on Spectrum and then we follow that through and therefore the machine can be damaged early

in life it can be damaged at any point and then we have something which I've then tried to determine um give a terminology of gram a goblin to so Gremlin is a belief or an experience you can process and actually get rid of whereas a goblin is something which is really damaged the circuits so you get people often who have very low self-esteem and that's going to continue throughout life now I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't try and get rid of that generally we can but it could be they always have moments of low self-esteem

and what they need to do is accept they're always going to appear but I'm going to have a way of dealing with them and then going back onto a much more positive footing so sometimes we have beliefs within us that are just too hard to remove and and they may have come from traumatic experiences what I'm saying is I'm not rolling over and saying oh well this is damaged goods I'm saying let's learn if they do raise their heads let's learn how to put them in a box stop them from having impact in my life

today and then work forward from that and again that's a skill to do and it just needs people to learn how to do that so we can we can take down gremlin's Gremlins but we can't goblins you have to accept the reason I brought that terminology is uh sadly I've seen over the years when I've been in an educational role as a doctor I've trained doctors and clinical psychologists nursing staff to how we deal with emotions and what I've seen distressed is when you get well-meaning therapist of any kind um and you they're trying to

change something that can't be changed and you have to say you know the circuit's damaged and rather than try and change it let's learn to deal with it in a very constructive way but not put that pressure on the person to do something which we're probably never going to achieve so I'd always say try I'd always say let's try and process an event and let's try moving on so they remove it so great if you can get rid of low self-esteem but if it keeps raising its head let's so stop putting pressure on that person

and work with it you still try and remove it so but but there's a point you said and look let's accept it but let's not let it take over let's learn how to put it in a box so it's a bit like a virus in a computer system exactly the same we accept its damage but we can box it in and if it does raise its head we mop it up again it's interesting because I from doing this podcast I used to believe that your traumas um you know those early experiences that Define you and

the evidence it creates could be all of them could be eradicated with like some form of therapy or treatment The more I've done this podcast and sat with exceptional people who have you know have exceptional stories and some in many cases have exceptional traumas I've gone the other way and realized that even if they've had all the therapy they've gone and done Ayahuasca they've had whatever they've had it's still the some traumas some of the the deeper earlier traumas never seem to disappear and so my stance has changed and in recent podcasts I've been saying

that there are instances where some things just it seems like people just can't overcome certain things is there a age um group where Goblins the traumas that we can't seem to overcome the evidence or whatever it is the the damage to the circuitry is there a does it tend to happen earlier yeah the younger we are when we're developing the brain the brain keeps developing up to the age of around 30. so it's young to me at my age as anyone under 30. okay so I'm 30 now right you're you're just I'm still you're just

about done okay right so some people finish we know that mature is the final sort of like bits to the brim mature which is actually the rationality uh of the brain it matures around 25 to 30 but there are quite a lot of particularly more men who keep going to around 32 but by then you're out to the oven so wherever you've got you finished I agree with what you're saying is then you accept this is the where my system is so let me manage my system instead of trying to make my system do something

it can't do so I hope I'm not coming across saying let's roll over I'm not saying that but the reason that I did it was it's they're also the therapist it's really hard for the doctor the nurse the psychologist it's really hard to see them struggling to try and change something or help someone and it's not working and that can damage them to think what's wrong with me I've seen it yeah oh right there you go and that's a therapist and I've seen her crying yeah because she couldn't change something right and that's why I

brought this out and said to the therapist look stop you know let's you review what you're doing uh there are their own professionals but as someone who tries to teach a therapists and and people are working this field to say neuroscientifically there are damages to the Circuit so rather than say we're going to change it you've tried and you've probably done a great job because again most people are really good more therapists I've worked alongside have been excellent you know whatever the profession is is but don't beat yourself up if you're struggling with someone it

may be you are hitting the nail on the head but exactly what you've just said we're not going to move this person so stop worrying about it and say let's try managing it first whatever's raising its head and then if we manage it then we might still try processing but now we're not defeated I have to say that that's that's great advice for therapists but it's also just great advice for someone in a family unit or in a relationship who has a partner or a loved one who is struggling with something where the circuitry might

be irreparably damaged and they're destroying the relationship with that person because they're trying to change them exactly and the devil is in the detail again because there are other elements to this because in other factor is time we know that the brain will try and repair itself even if emotional scars it will try and do that so there can sometimes just be time so we're not liking growth reactions it you have to allow the Britain time and the Brain will process things in its own time and that's a piece of string generally in a serious

loss or change of job or relationship gone or you've lost someone because they've passed on it usually we say around three months is intense then the 12 months is still bad but some people it can be 10 years and and there is no normal grief there's just normal grief for you and then if it gets stuck then again this way the clinicians will come in if you have pathological grief and this can be due to anything it's often a belief system again in the computer that's stopping you being able to process something and on that

point of low self-esteem seems to be incredibly common yeah um confidence issues low self-esteem people believing like they are not enough I remember I sat with a therapist called Marissa pipia do you know what Steve have I don't think I've had a patient come to me that believed they were enough whether they're an Olympic star or they're a business person at the heart of them there was some kind of sort of deeper self-esteem issue how does one go about working with someone who's got you know clearly serious self-esteem issues confidence issues I'm gonna be uh

almost paradoxical here and um controversially almost so you know if you look at the newer science of our brain and what it's trying to do uh the chimp system is naturally and healthily low self-esteemed that is the natural chimp system and we see this not just in our system and humans in chimpanzees so the fear that they're not up to it is inbuilt so if you have a fear that you're not as good as other people and you've got low self-esteem and then you start searching for evidence and you'll find it you'll find it because

if you compare yourself to anyone who's excelling you've found it that is the chimp system trying to help you it sounds paradoxical what it's saying is don't put yourself in a vulnerable place where you beat your chest and say look I'm strong because you could get attacked it's better to keep your head down wear a 10 helmet and hope it goes away so that's how the chimp system works nice if someone comes in with low self-esteem the first step to me is accept this is absolutely healthy and natural but it's unhelpful so it's it's natural

and healthy so celebrate you've got this amazingly healthy machine but what it's giving you is unhealthy so what you say is well why would it give me this and the answer is so that you don't get shot down you don't put your head up but that doesn't mean you can't start saying right well what can I do to gain self-esteem where it's reasonable self-esteem and then you start saying for example don't compare yourself to others it's not a healthy thing to do even wild chimpanzees do this they have a hierarchy in there they will compare

and they'll jostle for position so we're built to do similar we jostled for position and sport is one where we see it blatant all right and we enjoy that provided we retain a sport and not start going self-esteem on it so we muddle the two up and again instead the typical everyday person social media yeah oh that's a disaster area because again what our chimps do is they want to be loved by everybody oh gosh and and the evidence is quite strong that if I am your friend and I like you okay and then you've

got another friend who is not keen on you at times and you'll actually give more attention to the person who's not keen on using me and and that's what we do because our chimp is best to say I've got beloved by everyone so you just say well Steve likes I'm not going to bother with him but if it's Brian or whatever I'll I'll try and Curry favor and you try and please these people yeah and if you look it's really unhealthy to do that and it's not rational instead of saying let me create a world

uh because I'm not going to work with my chimpses no I'm a human which says I value my friends who I want to invest in who do respect and love me they're the people I'm getting my time to and people who find me a bit you know maybe not so good or don't like me well that's up to them you know they're not in my world they're outside my world so if we look at that that's how the human system works it builds its own inner world and says this is how I'm going to survive

the world but social media can be a disaster because then we look to say well who doesn't like me and what comments and we give them undue attention and that's a natural healthy thing for your chimp to do when it's trying to get everyone inside but it's a ridiculous thing to do and it's unhealthy is that because the chimp cares about status yeah because in a troop a natural and again not everything that chimpanzees in the Wilder refer to us but some things do overlap and we've found that a chimpanzee will always try and Curry

favor with the powerful chimps because it doesn't want excluding excluded chimp is in trouble I mean it is going to die because it's unlikely another troop will take it and it's a likely a leopard will get it it's got to sleep sometime so but if you think of us as humans we tend to see this so he's particularly seeing teenagers they try and make everybody their Troop so anyone who's rejecting is fearful and to the chimp it's life and death so to our inner system which is chimp driven in the same way emotionally if we

get rejected it potentially we could be kicked out and we know that if you look at the Neuroscience of the brain particularly in teenagers it's extremely sensitive to peer pressure it's built at that point to start forming peer groups so if somebody says I don't like your hairstyle I don't like your socks or even worse that are like you then that can be extremely damaging to the circuits that can create damage so we have to try and get to young children and say right we need to teach them you don't have to please everybody you

please people on your terms with your morals and your values but you self-assess you decide whether you're good enough you decide what's important to you but if we don't teach them at young stage as a teenager we go outside that and then social media becomes extremely extremely dangerous you see that in schools I went undercover in a school and it was funny I was on the playground and I was looking out and I could I saw all of the boys had the same haircut this kind of weird mullet thing and all of them had the

Under Armor backpack yeah it was I couldn't believe it I was like they are they they're identical this group of 20 lads who are all together perfect mullets and this this under armor backpack I think at the time when Anthony Joshua who was the the great boxer um was was an Under Armor Ambassador I think the brand was becoming really cool so um and that made me think about how we seek to conform so much at that age and how much I did I was wearing the skinny jeans if that was in the Fred Perry

top then I was listening to rap music and then but I think that's that's really important to do isn't it because again if we got a child who under the age of 10 wandered away from parents and didn't really care that's very disconcerting will be able to build the community right the child should be dependent on the pair current right you know if you've got a teenagers outside the peer group we start getting concerned it doesn't mean there's something desperately wrong some people are more isolate than others it's on a spectrum but it is worrying

so you like to see teenagers together but in order to be accepted you do have common ground so we we all our chimps always look for common ground or common experiences so if I wear orange socks and now I'm the gang leader then you wear orange socks and now we're all on our own socks and if I can decide they're out then everyone starts wearing them that is pretty healthy as a teenager because they're peer group bonding we hope they go through that stage into what we call individualization so around 17 neuroscientific the brain does

change almost to the day for most people so by 1890 and we're starting to individualize and that means we decide whether I want to really wear orange socks we get individual identities however again a lot of research obviously it's contradictory at times but most of it shows that around that age we have the leaders come out which is about one in four people genetically are going to individualize and decide I'm just going to set my own agendas and I like what music I like do what I like but about three and four are semi-dependent throughout

their lives so they'll always look to some strong figure to bond with them and that tends to be a bit insecure the people that have this low self-esteem we talked about a second ago are they more likely to become what we call people Pleasers yes because again they're trying to Curry further so that's one way of coping with low self-esteem so ever again everyone's different so some people might close themselves down and they'll go into their own little world and just not engage and they don't go and join a new club or form a new

hobby or make new friends because they just haven't got that confidence so they deal the coping strategy is to just close down and my my answer is if as long as you're happy with that I'm not going to dispute it but if you're not and you want to get out let's get you out there but everyone has different coping strategies the next one you've mentioned commonly is to try and please people never say no always say yes um make sure it doesn't matter how much it puts you out never speak up don't be assertive is

critical not to be assertive so this is their chimp system saying if you do all this people will like you more sadly the reality is they don't people like assertive confident people they don't like people who suck up to them tends to be then there's a real danger now I'm going into forensics somebody's in that position where they're desperate time to plays is really vulnerable to abuse so they're going to get someone who finds them and then they'll use this against them and then it really is dangerous so so when you look at that my

gut feel is as well as logic would be to get them out of that and say look be very careful if you're gonna lean on someone don't lean on them by trying to please them lean on them as a friend who's there to look after you that's building you up not controlling you is that what you tend to find in abusive relationships yeah there's usually very little self-esteem I mean years ago uh when I did a lot of work in general adult psychiatry in hospital medicine I would see quite a lot not just women but

mainly women who would be have such low self-esteem that they would subject themselves to someone who was really abusing them and there was a book out at the time which I used to recommend I just think Saxon written by a woman and it was to entitle women who loved too much I read through this book and I thought she'd written it in my opinion it was excellent so I used to hand them that and say I think this is better than me as a man trying to help you to get self-esteem I can do this

but I think if you understand where she's coming from and she said exactly what you're saying she's saying you know the reason you're clinging to these guys is because you have so such low self-esteem you're actually saying to them give me my self-esteem and they're abusing you so you've got to build your self-esteem that's so you're right but there are lots of ways people do some of them are not so blatant so some people don't recognize they've got low self-esteem until you point out for example they just don't know how to be assertive and if

you think about it if you've got reasonable self-esteem then you would say have the right to speak my mind and also to say to people please don't do that it offends mirror to upsets me and this is what I'd like you to do which is what assertiveness is so again sometimes it's subtle that you think oh wow low self-esteem presents with different faces and again that's my job to to help people to tease out and think ah this is low self-esteem or it isn't I want to figure out how to build self-esteem but can self

low self-esteem also manifest as the very apparently successful guy or girl who has got a mansion and a Lamborghini and his head to toe in designer Brands because I know those people as well I think at one point I was one of those people if I'm being full disclosure but um is that a form of low self-esteem again it's what I put under was a public coping strategy and what you're trying to say is look if I keep elevating myself then I'll suddenly feel good because people see me as being this wealthy person or this

successful person and it's interesting even within sport one of the questions asked is why are you doing this because it's great to do sport I'm not a great sport um but why are you doing it and and often the answers which do lead to success but can have consequence uh I need to prove to myself that I can do something and that's probably I would have said not an ideal reason to do it I'm not saying it doesn't work but I think the long-term consequence is you won't stop at the end of spot you'll keep

doing that that's my the risk or someone who says I need to demonstrate to other people how good I am again these can be very successful beliefs while you're in sport but coming out of it it can lead to Danger so again it's not for me to say change it's me to question it and say is there an alternative way to succeeding Sport and I've met plenty of people who say it's only sport but I love it commit to process and get on with it and succeed fantastic and really great players so again it's not

for me to say it's for me to try and tease it out to people I think sometimes I think even with myself I've wondered and worried that if the the insecurities I had from being a child you know with the only black family in the neighborhood we were the poor family with the smashed up house um though that insecurity I think has been a driving force for me I think it was much the reason that I cared so much about getting money and status and material material success and then I think there was a point

I think I read about this in my book where I pondered that if I lose that do I lose my ambition in my drive well that's a good point it's interesting that um I'm sorry you experienced that oh no because I don't sound great and again it was a driving force that eventually LED you to being successful in some sense and so it's not all together negative but there's a really key Point here it's like when people have a driving force in sport I think it's great to have a driving force where it is provided

you can stop in your tracks and look at perspective and say you know what without this I'm still a decent person and have good self-esteem within yourself so I think I'm not against these driving force as long as you can contain them and they don't continue yeah there's a difference so I think if you said right I want to try and prove that I commit this because I'm from a poor family I'm black I'm the only one in the neighborhood I'm going to show you we can succeed here as people in this position and that's

true of a lot of minor minority groups I don't think it's ideal I'd much rather if I'd met you then say can you see yourself as being you yeah and who cares what the rest of the world thinks let's make you and your values and that could have driven you but if you say well what if I suddenly see myself as being me and I don't see this as me being poor and I need to prove myself will not not lose my Force the answer is not really your force is driven by emotion at that

point so that's your trip driving you all right which I'm not saying is right or wrong I'm just saying that's what it's doing but is there a way the human can drive you and the answer is yes by your values and saying I'd like to do things that I think are really valuable to me and it could be I want to earn money and I want to help other people and I want a good life there's nothing wrong with that I don't think there's anything wrong but that's for you to decide but then you can

have a driving force and you won't lose it in sport I deal with people who I try and get them to put sport in perspective so my phrase is always is tiddlywinks you know life is Tiddly wings but let's do it with a passion but at any point if we're not doing well and we make a a bad move let's be able to laugh and say it's totally Winks are you doing that to detach it from their self-esteem it doesn't yeah it doesn't have to be with self-esteem that's completely different to me you've chosen to

put your self-esteem on what you can achieve which is what the chimp does or who it is or how people perceive it or what it's got what values valuables it's got you know money that's and we're dealing with it but it's not a very sound one because what happens is you still keep going Because deep down what I've experienced I don't know whether you'd resonate if I met you at Heart to Heart behind locked doors at that point you say I'm not happy because I'm aware of what I'm doing and I know it's superficial and

that's what I've experienced I've worked with with the extremes of each Spectrum with people who are struggling with finances and people who are extraordinarily wealthy but the bottom line is at the end of the day when you're back in your own house in your own room you're living with yourself and that's why I say do you want to look at that because if you can live with yourself comfortably and be at peace of mind then nothing's going to get to you the world will be a much better place so when I think back to that

time when I feel like I was most driven by that Pursuit which was full um before I had attained the things that I was aiming to attain because I think sometimes when you attain those things they they act as pretty profound evidence that you were you were aiming for the wrong thing at some time but if I look through the thing I think would would make me unhappy was that all the things I sacrificed because of my Pursuit for like materials for money or material success so not having relationships or friendships or social connection sacrificing

all of those things created like an emptiness yeah you know just working seven days a week in an office not and then thinking that you know this was the a noble cause because it would make me Rich it was actually the things that I well I think it was the things that I sacrificed that led me to feeling a little bit empty inside I wouldn't necessarily say I was unhappy but I was definitely it was unsustainable for sure I was definitely heading to a bad place like I could see that coming I'd seen a couple

of my friends actually who were doing the same thing at the time end up in bad places on medication having panic attacks um drinking a lot of alcohol too much alcohol so I could see myself heading to a bad place but um but I think again I don't think we should see this black and white things should agree again I'm not it makes clear I'm not against people earning money and I've been great possessions and holidays and because that will obviously give them some pleasure and happiness I'm not because I'm just saying alongside that let's

look at the other aspects which you're neglecting yeah so do both just get a perspective that that's going to help me on my chimp to feel happy but actually what's going to make me feel good now some people will say I'm happy I've got my money and I've got my car and it's not for me to say oh wow what about your values that's I'm not who am I to do that what I'm saying is my experience has been with a lot of people I work with you're resonating with what I find that behind locked

dolls they're saying there's an emptiness there's something like saying I'm sacrificing things that mean a lot to me and I want these great friends and I want to have a meaning in my life I want purpose I want my values defining I want to be able to live with my values and so I said to people you just get a balance just tell me what do you need what do you want and let's get both of these things in position you come to learn like I think I thought that I didn't need those things because

I thought I was some anomaly yeah I didn't think I needed the like fundamentals of human needs so I didn't think I needed connection I thought all of these things but you could take it or leave it but the longer you run that experiment the this sooner you'll find out that you two are human but again if you try and give some context to this when you're sort of 19 to 25 roughly you're generally searching for a partner and your brain is telling you look at your best yeah you know otherwise you're not going to

get anybody so therefore you're wanting this admiration you're wanting this status and and that's because that's nature driving you say if you're the best that's who they'll pick they're not going to pick someone who's not the best right so we're driven and then we do this comparison with other people uh which can drive us on or it can cause incredible depressive feelings and then low self-esteem so again I think if we can help people to understand that's normal and healthy but it's unhealthy if you do an address the rest so in saying that we're not

all going to look like Tarzan on this world you know that's what you're aiming to do then you're going to fail because you'll obviously a bigger thousand or a better Miss World it doesn't matter and I think that can be a faulty stance in life but it at that age group you're meant to be doing that whereas once you start going beyond that either you've got a partner or you start to realize it's a bit superficial and so what you're doing is maturing into the 30s not everyone most people mature to thinking this is empty

this is not a good place to be and it's not going to last and also you remember your aging so you know you look in the mirror and suddenly think wow that wasn't what I used to see and then if you're not wise you start trying to be something you're not so you're trying to get yourself 10 years younger and that can become an embarrassment so again but it's up to people what they want to do but I'm saying the natural development of the brain in the 30s is to mature you as I've said it

finishes now it really matures and then in your 40s you do see life differently so as you develop your brain matures and it will see things differently I always joke with people and say you know when you're getting middle-aged because you buy a bird table and and you can't believe many people resonate or you've got the garden center on a Sunday but that doesn't mean you can't do that at 19 and it doesn't mean you have to do it at 40. I'm just saying we recognize that what it's symbolizing is I'm starting to look at

more Aesthetics in my life now and not chasing after a mega career I'm not chasing after wealth I'm saying look there's a point where you've got enough and there are other things is quality of life now and for a lot of people they start tuning into things like nature so it's not that surprising they've got the garden center you know I'm not saying that negatively at all right I've got my bird tail yeah we just put my girlfriend's dad a bird there you go box with a camera in it there you go but the point

is at this age more people are more likely to appreciate that than when you're 18. of course yeah but we're not saying that you know I'm not trying to put people in boxes I'm trying to say let's look at how the brain develops but learn what works for you but it's good to know that your brain is maturing all the time and you will move you will move ground whether you like not your brain will mature as well as your physical body I've always I've always wondered why at 23 24 years old I would go

to nightclubs and spend a ridiculous amount of money on champagne bottles with sparklers on them to try and impress people whereas now in my 30 year old mind I look at that behavior and go I wouldn't even go like I don't even want to go to nightclubs at all period anymore but 23 24 year old Steve which isn't that long ago it's only like six years ago that's all I look forward to that's all I wanted to do and it's funny in just six years how my interest can seem to be so profoundly different and

you know when I was 23 24 25 I always thought about like older people like 30 40 50 year olds get why aren't they coming to nightclubs like why aren't they here that they don't know how to have any fun that'll never happen to me I will be in this club when I'm 45. and I guess looking at the brain kind of explains why that yeah and and there are exceptions don't forget there are of course yeah but it's even like with music you know when you're taking a generally it's a big feature in most

people's lives and in the 20s it is but it starts to diminish yeah so you don't find people in the 40s and 50s you can but most people have moved on uh and they say you think you're going to be into music forever and then you suddenly realize actually it's loud and that's when you think oh my goodness what's happening here um but no I mean this is a natural progression you know but then again I love it if you get somebody who's in their 60s 70s and still into pop music that's great yeah you

know I'm not saying that's something wrong but I'm saying there is a general Trend then you're experiencing this so I think pulling it back to where my world is that's why I say the brain's doing the same thing so we go through these stages and we mentioned about self-esteem which is really important in the peer group really important Unfortunately they get self-esteem by comparison generally and by admiration and possessions and then as you get into your 20s we start to change and hopefully if people mature and start tuning into their mind by the 30s and

40s we're matured enough to start looking at our values and what's important to us in our life such as friendships so if I'm 30 odd you know and I've got low self-esteem I'm you know I'm 33 got low self-esteem and I came to you where would you begin with trying to help and that low self-esteem was manifesting in abusive relationships bad work relationships very negative sort of feelings about myself and maybe even some impulsive behaviors you know I'm I'm eating too much around I don't know whatever where would you start with me okay the first

I mean just so people say oh wow that's a strange start but I'm a doctor so the first is make sure you're actually okay I'm okay because if someone were uh presenting with this it could be in depression if and that can present in many ways typically it's low mood and um loss of pleasure and everything and loss of energy but that doesn't have to be so I mustn't miss that so I would make sure your mind is not ill but I need treatment now we assume that this is long-standing and what you've done is

you what you describing is a lot of maladaptive coping strategies so I eat too much uh which is probably Comfort eating or it's just habitual stuff that you're just not you know or it could be got so low self-esteem I've seen this you're almost punishing yourself you know I don't deserve to to eat well and I don't deserve to eat the right things so I deserve to be overweight or I deserve to look like this so that could be the bottom it so I have to start my starting point is an exploration but the key

to this would be to move all that to one side if you're in a reasonable place where you can actually communicate if not I'll let you express it all it's important you get it off your chest if you've got it you say I don't need to do that what I do is what I've seen the book here in a passage jungle I explained the starting point is get a blank piece of paper and write down who you want to be what behaviors do you want to have let's define what you want not what you don't

want not what you're experiencing don't start with a treacle I call that the treacle start with a blank piece of paper and then write down the person you want to be do you want to be I want to be really confident I want to have a a girlfriend or a boyfriend I want to get married I want to have kids I want to work out every day I want to eat really good food right so what you're describing now is the human system the great news is when I ask you the characteristics you've got so

I want to be calm I want to be happy I want to be confident that is you how do you know it's me right because if we were we can't surgically remove interference neuroscientific glitch we can see unfunctional Marie scanners if we remove the chimp and computer system then you're completing control of yourself so you would choose to be calm you would choose to be confident so therefore that's you the human system can choose what happens is when you choose to become the chimp system interferes or the computer interferes and throws shows to the world

someone who's not calm so it's very important to recognize who you are before we start so now we've got a guy you're not going to write no one ever acts anxious no no one they say no what I want to be is calm collected a good friend of Integrity that is you if if we didn't have interference in the machine so it's very crucial this is the biggest point in the book the biggest point is to Define yourself because now you've got self-esteem can rise just on that alone once you've grasped like you say wow

when I'm presenting the world is interference it's not me if I didn't have this machine I would not have anxiety because that's a system that you say in the human system can't do anxiety it's not built to do that it's built to be rational and calm but what it wants to do and how I want to present is a choice the chimp has no choice the computer has no choice the computer is programmed but these are interfering and presenting to the world someone who is not you so it's very important to grasp that concept that's

my starting point now we've grasped that we build on that so now we I know who you are I'll say this sometimes when you're with a friend and you've been chatting a while and maybe it's got late in the evening and you've got a lot off your chest and you've discussed you calm down and sometimes the real you presents and sudden you feel at peace people often say I don't know it's just now felt relaxed and thought I've got perspective I'll get gather the world to the way it is I accept things are and I've

calmed down and then suddenly you see the real person and they've got morals and values and not every human has sometimes The Chimps the good guy some you know sometimes the human's not nice so I do get people who do not write for example who you are they don't write compassion the don't write Integrity they don't care and if I challenge you you didn't put compassion they say Adam not bother about that so I have to work out who you are okay so not everyone is going to write the same things that's why I know

it's you we're not just a generic list because someone could just be virtually signaling because you're asking me to do it or because I want to be these people but really I'm a I'm a burglar I'm a bad guy you know I want to hurt people yeah I'll tease that out how that's my job because again then you look at evidence base and you look at remorse you look at whether somebody compensates for mistakes there's a lot of things I want to see the history here okay and then I'll challenge that and challenge it so

that's a series of talks so often we have a long time when we determine someone to to explore this so we don't get fooled is this you talk referencing much of your psychiatric work here within psych hospitals yeah so somebody is psychopathic we generally everyone's different version of what it is for me a newer scientific we know there's certain tracks in the brain that are not really fully developed or don't function uh and this produces someone without empathy without remorse without any conscience uh these are classic and so I don't know that I'm not a

mind reader I can't tell until people talk you know so yes they could deceive me yeah I I have to just go on what they tell me but I can listen carefully to the words they use I can listen to what they're saying and look at their past life events and it starts to unravel So eventually you think okay I know what I'm dealing with now so but to be honest people don't do that with me uh what you tend is because I I would hopefully set to scene where I don't care what you're right

I don't care what you want to do with your life it's not for me I'm not a judge I'm here as a doctor to explore this with you and get insights for yourself so the most people are not Psychopathic we're decent people who've just got lost in the the word the new science of our mind just tumbled us so what I stop my starting point when you give me all this was to say let's write out the real you and let's start building ourselves on that and recognizing what is not us and let's start unpicking

it so let's just start saying right why would you have and we went early about low self-esteem let's look at why you have that first it's natural and healthy that can help people sometimes just saying that to go that's amazing I feel better for knowing it's natural and healthy maybe rubbish and unhelpful but at least I know it's healthy and there's not something wrong with me because the second you start saying oh I'm trying to please people and I can't say no and you see that as being a weakness or a fault we're in trouble

again because you're muddling yourself up with a machine so that's my starting point who are you what's the machine doing all of this anything the chimp does anything it does is natural there's nothing you're going to give me even if it murders someone that's what chimps do they're violent so it it's still illegal and not acceptable but I'm saying everything's natural so that puts us on a different way of looking at it again to try and give context to that natural isn't always good um so overeating is natural but it's not good and even like

the classic one I always use the parents and teenagers I always say if you've got said it this morning with someone if you've got a teenager who's got a tidy bedroom that's where I want to meet if they're messy bedroom great that's normal you know so you're more concerned with teenagers that aren't being teenagers so if this you've got a teenager who never lies then it's a bit worrying maybe they're good at deceit because teenagers are learning to lie and they're learning to defend themselves and it's unnatural doing it it's not health and the hope

to the grounds of it but you've got to say what's natural and let's work with that to minimize risk or whatever we want to do so there's a long-winded way of saying you know get you to be yourself get your machine Let's see what the machine's doing and let's change the coping strategies but accept the machine is the machine quick one as some of you know Intel are sponsoring this podcast and for me Intel has made the search for a premium laptop so much easier by creating the Intel Evo platform which is signified by this

sticker here in the corner laptop designs only receive the Intel Evo badge when they have been tested to pass Intel's own very strict requirements so that they can actually perform as you need them to out in the real world and the result for me is a premium laptop that can perform everywhere even with my crazy schedule in mind and most importantly it can handle multiple tabs open and a battery that really lasts throughout the entirety of my meetings whenever you need your laptop for intelivo have you covered it's a game changer to find out more

and to get your hands on an Intel Evo laptop go to intel.co.uk Evo and let me know how you get on it is that time of year again when my life becomes incredibly reliant on Hill I'm busier than ever I'm trying to be nutritionally complete in all that I do I'm trying to make sure I get all of the vitamins and minerals that I need in my diet and heal has been for the last three and a half years the primary reason as it relates to my diet that I've been able to be nutritionally complete

while also being incredibly productive I always find that when I'm most busy when I'm most sort of sucked into my work my diet Falls by the wayside that's the trend that I've seen in all of my life especially when I'm stressed that's when I I end up resorting to foods that aren't nutritionally complete or healthy for me having fuel on hand has been a game changer not just for me I see it in my team we have two heel fridges in this building that we record the podcast in um and it's become a crutch I

guess a health crutch a positive Health crutch for all of our team thank you huel for creating a product that has helped me and help my health stay intact in my busiest days over the last couple of years to the episode do we do we choose what we believe could I choose could I genuinely choose a belief you know we talked to everyone about how you can't just lie to yourself and brainwash yourself to think of something could I genuinely make myself believe something if could I choose to so could I choose to believe that

you're a spaghetti monster if the if my whole life or my family was on the line could I choose that belief no no well others might argue no because clearly you've given a good example it's so ridiculous that you're brainwashing yourself whereas when you look at beliefs we have to look at evidence-based so say what's your experience in life and that will formulate our belief or what's your education so then with that said then I can't use my I can't choose a belief because my experience my evidence my education but I couldn't you couldn't no

what you if we don't choose beliefs we develop beliefs yeah we develop them but we develop them on what we experience or what education tells us if I say to your research shows one in 200 people have got Psychopathic brains then you look at the research and go okay that's I believe that research no you may dispute it but if you have experience that blind me about one in 200 people hurt me then you've worked that out yourself so your experience but you might get someone who's really oblivious and lack of insight and say I

believe one in two people hurt me and now you know you think well can we challenge that and let's see your experience but if it reson nets for them it's not for me to say well that's just rubbish that's their experience I'm really compelled by this idea of whether we choose our beliefs or not because I think that's this is at the heart of a lot of these topics like confidence and self-esteem you know there's a lot of people out there that say go look in the mirror and say nice things to yourself in the

mirror and that will help you believe in yourself okay I'm glad you're laughing I'm glad you're laughing yeah it is silly isn't it I think if you look in the mirror and you say uh something that you don't really like looking back uh I think then you have to go down the road to say right is it really that important what I look like I can give you a good example years and years and years ago I worked with a young lady who didn't like what she looked like she really didn't and she was attractive

in my opinion but I think everyone's attractive and I could there was no point me trying to convince her I was a young doctor then and this taught me and I couldn't get anywhere so I was struggling and I eventually she was in an inpatient we were worried about self-harm and so on and that was a coping strategy for having very low self-esteem and I was lost so as a junior doctor by chance I asked her just chatting to try and get us to see some value in her I said what'd you like doing she

said I love animals and by chance we did have a bird table which was neglected and we also had a cat on the ward and no one really bothered with a cat and I said can I ask you to do something for me and this wasn't planned it was I just thought can you look after the bird table and can you look after the cat and without a word a lie a different person emerged and I sat there and I thought why is that changed because this isn't what you learned at Medical School you learn

antidepressants and you know therapies and talk and I thought what have I just done and I'm young at that point to read around and I like to read outside of medicine and I thought I'd give her a purpose and that was her self-esteem she took it out of herself she then said doesn't matter what I look like I want to help the animals and this is a true story that she got discharged and went to work at an animal center on a veteran outpatient's follow-up and she was as happy as could be and I said

we've got to broach the subject what about you know your self-esteem and where you look and she said well my self-esteem doesn't matter because she actually did have it but it was on I am a carer and these animals need me so you could argue psychodynamically she was looking after herself by looking after the animals she needed love so she gave love so I could see psycho and I was saying there you go I don't mind how it's interpreted it worked for me it worked so I suddenly thought wow sometimes people just need to have

a purpose in life and feel valued and rather than what they look like so that was the start of me really starting to think as a young doctor you know don't go down one route trying to say things as being like a spectrum another toolbox to say well hang on let's stop looking in the mirror and let's start looking outside yourself because that could be the turning point for you so again that won't work for everyone so I have to when you say about this I probably get an idea now whenever someone comes in I

have to really work hard to understand their mind what beliefs they're holding what's going to turn them around what's not helping what are the long-term consequences what hidden beliefs have they got that they're not aware of I've got to get them out and when I've done all that I then go to work on it to help them to challenge what we can both see has been unhelpful and replace them in that example of giving that young lady a a bird box and the cat and then I heard going working with animals and that making her

feel a sense of sort of worthiness I guess yeah I was thinking about that if that job becomes gives her that sense of worthiness just like the relationship we've talked about and all these other stimulants can that then become a negative thing exactly any anything can count it and this is why I'm saying that when people say uh write me a book and I think I'm always reluctant to do it and it's took me 10 years to write this one as in 10 years later after the first one because I don't want to go in

there with a process but I feel I've got to because you know so many people it's very humbling have said this is so helped you know it really makes sense to me that I thought I've got to expand on it and give it more details so people have really can do it themselves but the problem is it it's very individual so I have to work with the individual and yes that could become more positive for the rest of her life but as long as we can give a perspective as well that she's worthy as an

individual but if your value is I believe the value I have is I want to be altruistic if that is a value you hold and you're living that value out by helping animals for example then we know that that will give you peace of mind what I was what I'm alluding to there as well is this workaholism yeah yes do I keep helping more and more and that do I work seven days a week and I can't leave the bloody Animal Sanctuary exactly and that's where you've got to get this tiddlywinks but come out and

get perspective so say it right it's great you're doing that but don't start making it the more I do the better I am instead of saying no I have to look after myself too so again it isn't just one thing we're giving it very sort of linear here I'm just giving an example of one angle but then I would work on the girl in other areas of a life so it isn't just that angle but the bottom line is if you and I guess most people think this if you live if you've defined your values

and you live by your values then you become a wholesome person so it's it's most people don't even know what their values are so I pushed this point that I think this is the only thing that I've ever seen that gives peace of mind and that's to live out your values but you have to find them first and people muddle up uh what's valuable and what's value they muddle them up so I tried to Define that clearly so people know like let's find your values and then let's start measuring how you live those values out

because that it's not as easy as you think so I give this as exercise in a book to try and say work out your values and then live them out but measure them so again as an example let's say most people put down respect respect for others they like that that's a value I really hold to and then when you say to them well how would how would you demonstrate that people I don't know you know so I said well let's look there are many ways you can so for example one way you could demonstrate

respect is by listening to someone by thinking I want to get their point of view because that's respectful not judging them just listening I may not agree but I'm going to listen that is one thing you could do by testing it weekly to say let me start listening to people because that then at the end of the day I think that was respectful I may not agree and I would be polite in saying beer said if I don't agree but I'm listening and I respect your view so if that resonates if then that's one way

of measuring them being respectful so I like people to do work with me where we work on things like this and then they get high self-esteem so going back to the young lady if I did that was her then she would say right so caring for Animals is great it's altruistic but actually I've got something else now as well so exactly what he said it doesn't become the devil where I've gotta I've got to do this every day otherwise I'm failing again uh you get get it into context has working with a patient ever made

you cry yes yeah I mean can you tell me about an instance I don't think I've ever cried in front of a patient I'm pretty sure I haven't but I think obviously I deal with tragedies in life and they're painful so in the room I I have to contain him or if you look at the psych falling apart but on the other hand you know I'm a human being and you go away and you think uh somebody for example horror stories like some parents who's lost their child that there's no way back you know and

my view which may be wrong is that I say to people can we start by your emotionally scarred this isn't going to go away this is for life but we're going to learn how we can cope with it but you're not going to be the same you cannot get over this so you won't come to terms with it at all you'll learn to manage it there's a difference because I think yeah I'd love it to you from parents to say I've come to terms with it but that's really hard my experience has been adorned so

when I leave the room and I think how am I going to work for this man and woman um and and get them to come to terms with it I have to sort of this is only where I work get inside the head and that's so painful that it distresses me I feel it then you think gee you know so I do that with everyone I do it with sports people I do it with the police I do it with doctors I'll try and get in their head and think what is their world hopefully it's

not that tragic but when it's tragic tragic yeah it's painful so it brings tears to me how do you deal with that um learn to recognize and talk to myself you know which I do and so at the end of the day I can't change life I can't change things you know tragedies happen uh and it's not going to be helpful for me to dwell on it what is helpful is to me to get inside the head and experience the pain experience the feelings and hopefully even the thoughts so that I can then get outside

of my head which I think is a skill to do and actually then say right what can I do about it because then if it resonates with me it's possibly going to resonate with the person I'm working with so I go about feeling it I know what I can say here and try it but then I don't have this approach where actually I'm not feeling or experiencing what they've got this is not for everyone I can hear a lot of therapists going this is everything you're taught not to do uh good on you uh it's

how I work and it works for me I I've heard you in a path through the jungle talk talk about what you just said there which is you actually talk to yourself yeah in the past through the jungle you talk about talking to the chimp yeah yeah I mean again to lighten the mood because it's quite heavy um there's lots of great things I've had and lots of great experience and not success and and I said to people I was packed yourself in the back when you do this but one of the things my chimp

responds to it I don't know why he responds to this uh is sarcasm that I've worked that out so and ever something upsets my chimp and I just think oh come on get a life and I can't my chips going for me I say to the chimp very quickly right can I just ask do you want to be upset for a minute an hour the rest of our lives just give me a give me a help I don't know why it makes me laugh so it disowns my chimp and we know that if you can

laugh at yourself or a circumstance you can't always but if you can uh we know that's the only time the brain seems to default into human mode because what you're really doing if you think the chimp's job is to alert us to danger and worry where you start laughing genuinely particularly yourself The Chimps disarmed it has no job so it goes silence it literally will silence and you'll see the blood supply and oxygen uptake in the human circuits and so I come back to me and think okay May Witter again but you know I'll deal

with it so yeah I talked to my chimp and that I know what it what can bring me around when you say talk dude you mean out loud I wouldn't do that without people around uh because I tried upstairs all right yeah I felt like my chimp had a little bit of a hold of me about something and so I tried just having a conversation with myself out loud then it works and it works tell you why this and again I'll both go through this in detail for those of what the science behind it is

reference when um when we talked ourselves we talk often from the chimp we can talk from the human but when we listen the human process is what we hear which is why often you know we talk to a friend and we say I feel a lot better it's not just getting it off your chest you're listening so often in a team meeting and business for example I'll sit and I'll say just talk from your chimp and they'll talk and talk and I say right when you've got off your chest how much do you believe without

no go nothing is rubbish because you're actually processing what you're saying so the more we talk out loud the more we process from our human and bring perspective in which the chimp can't do we bring perspective and reality to the table and that can bring us back to Earth so it does work so behind locked doors yes I mean when I worked um with British cycling which was great at the time and my many Fantastic people there great achievements when I used to drive in for I live in the peak districts it was an hour's

drive and I would literally on the morning say to my chimp right before we get there don't want your opinion don't want you to interfere but when we come home I'll let you talk don't ask me why it works probably think I'm nuts but it worked my brain almost went into computer mode saying not the right time yet not the right time so I would do with a lot of upsets you can imagine working with people you get a lot of all kinds of things and then I would come home and at a particularly Point

entering the Peaks where I'd say okay to your time and my chip would come out and then I would let it say well that was so unreasonable of that person that was and once I've done that as our chimps do you can't keep going it used to get bored of its own voice and until you're finished and it's Yayo it's fine now so that won't work for everyone you know but I'm just saying sometimes it does work uh I would just like to add because I think I'm fairly resilient um when we're not resilient sometimes

you got give TLC so I'm not always phone with the chimps sometimes I go you got a point sometimes I agree with it and again this is learning how to deal with you your own emotions what works for you so I try this with people and say what what resonates with you you've got to try it but sometimes after saving to my own gym you've got good reason to be upset you've got good reason to be distressed you know I get it and that giving yourself reassurance and TLC can be very powerful is that what

you refer to as exercising your chimp exercising the chimp is when you let out emotion express yourself so it doesn't have to be high emotion expression can just be can I just say I think what's just happened was unreasonable I think this person was way out of order or it can be without emotion saying this person's just damaged me you know or particularly reputations of people are in other people's hands and you see I see a lot of this where you you've got reputational damage and you can't do anything about that because it's not in

your hands the more you try and defend your reputation the worse it gets so you have to just suck it up so there's where I'd said be reasonable with your chimp you know don't down it and say come on get over it because it needs TLC and there's lots of times lots of circumstances TLC is appropriate but you have to learn when to go enough because it tips to self-pity so we we exercise the chimp we let it out let it out express emotion or express feelings or express it in words step two is as

I read in the book is then we figure out if it can be addressed yeah and say in the case of reputational damage someone said something it's not true it's out in the Press I can't whatever you know I can't respond whatever it might be then step three is we make a plan to move forward yeah and that can often be let's look at reality here in the facts of the situation that no but nobody is immune to attacks nobody it doesn't matter you know I often say if an angel from heaven fell to Earth

it would be attacked you know and so you've got to get reality that and then the reality is if you're not going to please everyone uh and something has terrible happened go to your friends because that's all that counts at the end you know it took you with at the end of the day and these are your friends your partner potentially your family the people that's done with that's why I said the truth this is your fall back we talked about earlier you turn to them and they're then the ones who go we don't care

we know you who you are we love you and even if you've made a mistake they're forgiving you know at the end of the day we're not perfect human beings nobody's an angel We're Not Angels we're human beings with machines that can run as a right and even though humans can get it wrong sometimes it would be in the chimp it's not it's the human you know that circuit can do it irrationally you know it's not always rational when it comes in you must have dealt with this a lot dealing with high performance athletes and

people in the public eye yeah yeah a lot of teenagers because again that's a vulnerable time but a lot of people so it's a privilege to deal with it's uncomfortable you know you deal with actors actresses and deal with um Sports people what about footballers have you ever dealt with any footballers yeah I worked at England football for three years and I worked with Liverpool for three years so I know a lot of the lads went very public which was great and again they were not in a bad place when I met them what they

were saying is how to optimize performance and and again they might deal with some really bad comments in the press and which you know behind locked doors I'm thinking this isn't right that I don't think they've got the right end of the stick here you know and so all I can do is stand with them and say look you know I know the real person you know I don't know what you're going through and I can only give them my support and sometimes that's all people need they need somebody who's there for them to say

you know you're struggling here but I'm here and I know the truth we can't change a falsehood or so otherwise someone interprets you know we can't so we have to recognize when we can't change it we fall back to the troop and say just give me some TLC or support habits a lot of people are thinking about habits it's January um I made a video on habits a couple of couple of weeks ago um in in a path through the jungle you talk about how our habits are influenced by our self-image yeah that was a

curious sentence to read and not something I'd heard before what do you mean by okay there's lots of ways we form habits um whether they're helpful or destructive um and I'm giving examples so that's one you picked out that's quite powerfully if you grasp it so for example um I'll take the simple example which I may have put in the book I don't remember uh if I wrote down I'd say to someone do you see yourself as someone who is a tidy person who gets on with things immediately or do you see yourself as someone

who procrastinates and it's pretty untidy I'm untidy right so if you've got that self-image and you go home and your room is untidy I'm being very black and white here then there's no feelings at all because that's who you are you're untidy that's true so that if you don't do anything that's true was if you say right change your image and say actually my chimp being tied I'm a tidy person in some cases you're now programming the computer you now go home and say wow this isn't me and that can change so if your self-image

is I'm not my chimp that's an untidy little beggar I am actually a tidy person how do I change that so far well you've got to sit down and reflect on this um I mean a lot of the things in the book I've done as a young doctor when I became a psychiatrist I decided I didn't want to be a psychiatrist didn't actually manage themselves and that's no detriment to psykes who struggle because it's not an easy career or any any therapist it's a tough career but I decided look I'm going to work on me

because I can't keep doing this which is where the chip model came from and it was one of my light bulb moments many many years ago where I would I would be procrastinating and and then I suddenly thought you know what that isn't who I want to be so I thought that isn't me I'm actually similar gets on with things and I used to get in and I'd just go right get on with it and it's never left me I just don't know that is who I am so I become uncomfortable now if things were

untidy I agitate and think no get it tidied up uh so I start perceiving myself as this energized guy who's going to get up and do stuff so if you define yourself image you're actually programming your computer say this is normal anything else isn't and that will actually help your chimp to agitate which will then join forces and tidy the room so instead of your chimp going oh I can't be bothered suddenly it's saying wow I'm being told we're not untidy so this is unacceptable not normal and that's what I did and I found that

very powerful in my life so I get I get lots and lots of emails the other thing I found really curious in this section about habits in chapter in stage four of the book is um when people think about habit Loops they often have a reward at the end of it yeah you reference suffering now there's this quote I heard many years ago I think it was just over 10 years ago it must have been God I'm getting old um where I heard this YouTuber say change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes

greater than the pain of making a change and when I'm thinking about friends that I have in my life all myself where there's habits or there's Behavior patterns that that I want to break sometimes I'm thinking about one particular person who's um who's uh who's a musician sometimes they have to get to that Rock Bottom place before you see change happen yeah is that because of that is that because sometimes the suffering has to yeah I mean it's just a self-evident you know if you're for example in a bad relationship and it's really not doing

any favors and it's not doing them any favors but it's not bad enough then you struggle along and struggle along but if suddenly something happens where it becomes untenable and it's painful now then you move you think stop the relationship and then you look back thinking why didn't I move earlier and the answer was because it wasn't painful enough and the same would like untied in US you leave it and leave it and leave it and then somebody comes in and says a partner yeah fly me I can't live with this and suddenly you think

wow suddenly it's painful is there a way to get there without the person needing to point out yeah there is I mean when I talk about relationships are critical to us now I say to people the way we move is we've got to I have the triangle of change which is really the three key things that cause us to move and with the one you've highlighted is either it's got a massive reward or there's going to be massive pain and suffering so if you're trying to you want it you're courting someone you want to form

a permanent relationship when they say I can't stand untidiness you'll guarantee your Flat's perfect when they come in right because you're thinking if I don't I'm going to lose this person so that the reward is so big however that then they marry you and for some reason we've tipped them for granted and we forget that bit now and then the flat becomes untidy and then she starts saying to you you know I'm struggling with this I'm struggling but there's no right yeah so now it's not painful enough so she's struggling with it now I love

the guy but this is this is now what I do so I'll say let's increase the pain I want you to sit down and imagine she can't call up and she's had a bad day and someone at work says oh come over and chat and this young man has a tidy flat naturally and she goes oh wow and I warn people how are you going to feel if she walks because once they've gone they've very rarely come back and if you don't look after them someone else will if you reflect on that that can suddenly

make reality come to life to say I'm not there yet but blindly this would be painful so I'm suddenly gonna stop and think let me look after them because if I don't somebody will and we know unfortunately that happens a lot and when you do ask interview people say well why did you leave him or her and they say I just got fed up with it and there was no love or affection left they didn't pay any attention they used to that's so common that's so common so you can increase the concept of suffering by

reflecting and thinking what would like be like if she left so anyway I don't know you might say it'd be better no no I was thinking about how I need to tell you my my room well no that's that's what I'm saying now again it may not work for you you might say to me I did that and he didn't make any impact no it does I can remember the last time my girlfriend I saw her upset about something and I care about this is I wanted to add in from earlier on the reason why

I think in the last two years as I said I am I've been able to listen to when we have conversations and apologize straight away is because I just love I love her so much and I think about the last time she raised an issue with me and she was upset and she was talking to me she never shouts like me I I was so scared about like losing her that there you go I I part of my head she'll listen to this because she's a big fan of yours she loves this book by the

way okay I I got it for her after last time we spoke and she absolutely loves it um part of me was like she was telling me how she feels I was like oh my God she's gonna dump me oh my God exactly I thought I was gonna lose her I know it's not the case and it's just just this irrational part of my brain I think she's finished with you and that really makes me go [ __ ] I need to immediately change it it was we're having a conversation about quality time and I

hadn't given I hadn't give spent much quality time with her because I was so caught up in my work so the minute she said that I was like looking at my calendar and canceling things yeah but I needed the warning it seemed and that's what I'm trying to say now there's there's this like the devil's in the detail let's say that you go home and you really make an effort you tidy the house and you really clean it up and she comes home and she doesn't notice there's a danger now and I do Advocate that

sometimes you say it to them because your chimp needs to that get that Accolade so it's no good not helping it you don't need that but your chimp does so it's worth saying can I just say because I love you I've tied at the flat because then your chimp goes right good I get the Accolade now so I'm not saying you should not jump out I'm saying you should be getting the chimp so it feels good and then hopefully she'll say wow I love you too and I appreciate that and then that's nicely rounded up

but you get you do get circumstances where I'll work with people say I tied to fly I didn't she doesn't even recognize me a concert for my dad she didn't recognize it and I think well you know I'm not saying I'm a goody goody but I'm saying let them know because your trip saying please make sure they know and they've recognized it and again I don't know that maybe couples where they say if I say that she'll lose it so I said well don't do it then tell me and I as a therapist I'll say

to you well done and that might be enough for your chimp so again it's that thing which I keep saying just Dave I've got to work with the person in front of me and the potentially their partner or family and say well what would they do before we make a plan that was step one in your triangle which is one yeah one of the points the other two um for people to shift they've got to have psychological mindedness which means they've got to understand that it's not about what happens to us in life it's how

we deal with it that's basically what we mean so we understand that just because you've got certain emotions don't doesn't mean you can't change them and things have to change our people have to change for you to change it's within your power to be responsible for the things you believe and change so psychological mindedness means you get up and start working on this it's within your power to shift things that's that personal responsibility yes and also if you can't shift them you know like say go back let's say life hadn't been grit for you and

I'm sure you worked hard to get where you've got but let's say you still were in that poverty situation you thought I didn't have the skill to do what I'm doing I didn't use that skill because it was never there so a lot of people are trapped and they say well I'm still living in a pretty bad place I'm struggling financially and that's a lot of people it's painful but again psychological mindedness tough as it is is to say well let me deal with that I can't change it but I can change my approach to

it and that's not easy I'm not saying that's easy and then you have to work at how do you do that and it'll be different for different people so psychological mindedness means take responsibility accept what's in front of you and then move forward um so other than that what you do non-psychological mind is where you blame everybody else or Bloom circumstances I said this happened to me in childhood or these may all be genuine but they're not actually helpful disempowering right yeah yeah you're using them as an excuse not to take responsibility and turn them

over and whatever your power to something else right yes and you've got to get the power back and say it's within my power why do people like doing that why do people like making excuses um including me I have to say again it's really difficult to I mean a lot of people when they're in not a great place find it very easy to be the victim they don't want to be a victim but they find it easy so they'll use an illness as an example so that it gives them that remit say well I'm not

well I'm not well when the reality is they don't know how to move forward so it's easier to just go not well and people then go well and not well and there'll be some truth in it but actually not fully the truth so people often use as a defense mechanism the victim role sometimes they I have been a victim and then they need to work through that and process it but there's a danger you start to use it or you start blooming circumstance like you might have said to me I didn't make it because my

parents never helped me well you know there are people his parents don't help them but they do make it so you have to say well hang on don't use that because it'll keep you in this not great place there will be truth in it potentially and then I will give the TLC and the recognition that that didn't help but on the other hand let's look at what he can do regardless of the background I was reading and I talked about something in my my episode about habits that there's something called the question Behavior effect where

if someone is asked about something they want to do so like let's say I want to go to the gym if I'm asked verbally by a friend they say you you know are you going to go to the gym people might say um whatever they might say yes no they might come up with an excuse as to why they can't go today but when they're asked on pen and paper or on a computer and it's a yes or no answer if they answer yes they are more likely to then go to the gym and when

I was reading around the science as to where that is they talked a lot about this this idea of cognitive dissonance and we want to right kind of interrupt you because what you're giving me is exactly what you said earlier about self-image right so what you've affected on is the same thing is when I take yes it means that's the norm I go to the gym so the cognitive distance if I don't go to the gym that's not normal yeah that's exactly the same as saying when I'm a tidy person I come home I don't

expect a mess I tidy up immediately that the cognitive dissonances I'm doing something which doesn't tally with my belief for people that don't understand the term cognitive dissonance it's doing something against your belief system so if I say I'm a vegetarian and then I eat meat I'm now in turmoil it's like it's like a mental friction because yes you're not like your behavior doesn't align to who you think the dissonance is doing one thing which is opposed to what you're saying or believing so I might say I'm not someone who lies and then you come

to see me and I tell you a lie I go home I'll have cognitive dissonance it's very likely if I have a conscience uh which most of us have that that will prey on me and I think oh I don't like myself for doing this this is wrong and then I'll hopefully ring and say can I just clear it so I'm not living out my values so this is cognitive dissonance so I can get why if you said are you going to go to the gym and you take yes it's the same principle I need

to go because if I don't I'm going to be in trouble I've ticked yes interestingly when it's not on pen and paper and when it's not a binary choice of yes or no um people are then less likely to go to the gym because there's room for excuse exactly exactly so I can go I'm gonna go on Monday yeah and then like there's no cognitive dissonance because I feel like I've satisfied myself with an excuse yeah and I'm nice and aligned um but yeah I found that really interesting and I was talking to to in

the episode about how when you do want to set an intention a great way of doing it is by asking yourself a yes or no question and doing it in some kind of binary way well again it's why and again I recommend this in not everyone but most people if you're putting up something on a piece of paper and measure things our chimp Gets behind us now so it drives us to do things so if we can see something being measured and it's getting worse we tend to do something about it um and that's because

the chimp doesn't like to fail because it's ego is at risk and as I said earlier when you we're back in our conversation the chimp has it it's about achievement it's about self-esteem it's so it doesn't want to fail so the chimp Jones forces with us so one way is to help yourselves get it on board instead of seeing it negative is the best friend your life is my best friend my chimp is my best friend he just needs a bit of help at times and he does things different to me and I usually say

he's inept uh but that doesn't mean I don't love him so I don't dislike my chimp I just need to learn to understand him and get him to help me use his energy goals and I guess Health trackers and those kind of things really help to keep us because the chimp will join forces with you and then that last point in the in the Triangle right The Habit triangle commitment yeah what I'm saying with this is again teasing up the Neuroscience if we go on motivation and and again if people use it great right but

the evidence is that it doesn't really help it doesn't really work it's very hard to maintain whereas if that's the chimp system so it can work if your chimp is motivated because the reward is so big their motivation will follow that and be high but we all know that I get a lot of talks can you help motivate and I say no not at all I don't want to do that because you're constantly propping it up um my Approach which is not as I said not everyone will agree is if you look at the site

Neuroscience if you use commitment that means I remove my emotion and I plan on what I have to do and I get on with it so commitment there's a lot of evidence that that makes us succeed so for example if I've got to go and weed the garden it's not my favorite pastime but I think right you know the neighbors might complain I don't have any neighbors but they might so but and my Chip's gonna leave it who cares there's any weeds and it's going to kill you back and it but I would then say

it this I will right you stay in here I'm going out and if you want to join me great but I'm I'm doing the garden I remove emotion and I say what has to be done is getting done and he's getting done now we're not discussing it and I will start motivation will follow commitment and that means the chimp room will then get behind me because by the time we've done half the garden it'll say I can't believe we've left it this long that's a typical approach by the chimp and then it tries to make

me finish now I might have to stop and say let's respect my back now we'll stop now so I manage my emotions by using commitment and if they don't marry I move them to one side so I don't really work with emotion to drive me to do something I think if people can use that and they use motivation that's great my experience has been it doesn't actually hold the last point I want to talk to you about is relationships we talked a little bit about it there in the context of my own relationship but one

of the sentences in a path through the jungle is that um I'm paraphrasing a little bit here is that you need to have a good relationship with yourself before you try and have a relationship with someone someone else now a lot of people that I know and we talked a little bit about abusive relationships will see another party's being able to fix them in some way again this is shared degree so I'm not saying definitively but as a golden rule it's it's self-evident again if if you're in a great place then you become attractive to

most people because you're exuding this positive positivity and energy and so if you can get yourself where you respect and love yourself then you've got a much better chance that people are attracted to you and think that's great however however um I'm going to give you a bizarre example many years ago I'll simplify this um I worked with a lady who had um an overpowering desire to help others and and I tried to say to her let's stop and just get yourself and she couldn't do this couldn't get in good place I have to help

others and it damaged all the relationships you had because he was overpowering and eventually um I thought this is a great successes many years ago and I I went really out the box which is not recommended all right but I just got to the point I thought I can't see a way forward and I said you know what why don't I help you to pick the right person all right because I thought this is more practical Psychiatry and she laughed and said okay let's try that because she said why do I do it and she

she went off to one of these like this is a long time ago where you wrought in it's not before the internet and uh she got a group of guys wrought to her and we picked one out I said try him and she was in a great place to work with me and said I must stop doing this overpowering and learn to manage myself uh and then she picked this guy an absolutely worked fantastic and I brought her in and I said I'd love to meet him before I discharge from the clinic because her steam

was good then it was more tragic than that she wasn't in a great place at all because of this so she was she I met this guy and I said what's the best thing about and he said because she mothers me and again it taught me something to say you know sometimes there's a positive dysfunctional relationship and they were very happy that he wanted this mothering figure she was that both fulfilled what they wanted to do so I felt at the time was a amazing failure but looking back I think yeah they were happy so

it's not for me to say what kind of relationships people want I've given that as a bizarre example the golden rule is I like people to get in a good place within themselves because otherwise what you do is you start trying to use your partner to help you to compensate for your deficiencies or you start getting very dependent on them or you start getting controlling of them because you're not actually in a good place yourself so that's the danger with that kind of situation so I'm not recommending what I thought was an amusing though it

taught me something story I'm saying ideally in relationships get to respect and love yourself first and then when you've got to that position then go out and find someone because then they don't affect you as much you can enjoy the relationship rather than looking for something out of them so interesting so interesting Steve um thank you thank you so much you know I I said this to you last time we spoke but um you've helped several people that are the closest people in my life of the of the seven closest people in my life you've

profoundly helped two of them with your work um one of them who we talked about last time was my business partner who's very open about his relationship with um he went through some difficulties and ended up being in his words a functional alcoholic and reading your book in his own words was the changing the turning point for him helped him to finally understand his behavior pattern and in fact he is the one my friend um Dom he's the one who put me onto your work because that book was so profound in his life and then

also I've got another friend who um who's the one that I gave your book to recently who um reported to quote that book really really really helped me and I highlighted one of the sentences but she managed to get through the whole book so thank you for that because your work helps so many people um this is one of my top three favorite books of all time because it's practical because it's um because of the way that it has these images which again I'm the type of person that really loves imagery in the way that

I learn but also has the robust sort of scientific knowledge from your experience and I'm obsessed with books that are centered in human behavior in the human mind that help us to understand it because as far as I'm concerned that is all there is in the world really that's everything that stands in my way it's my troubles every single day is is the human mind either my own or someone else's so it's I feel like this is a central reading for everybody um and that's why it's so great that you're doing so much work in

schools as well um thank you thank you thank you and again you tell the two guys you've got on your team that have done this you know all I'm doing is presenting the Neuroscience in what I think is an accessible word that is is entertaining but quite serious uh to try and get people to get the newer science simplify because it's out there but it's so complex to me it's complex and I'd like to present in a way that's practical and that's what I've done but at the bottom line is let them Pat themselves on

the back because um I I work with lots of people those who succeed have done it themselves all I am is a catalyst so again anyone who's really benefited they need to compliment themselves because it means they've worked and they've succeeded and it is a skills for those who say well I didn't I couldn't do it don't give up because uh it is a skill and if this doesn't resonate there's loads of stuff out there I'm sure you've had a lot of people in your program we're all in the same boat we're trying to help

people so find something that does resonate so that we have a nation with a much better psychological Health that that would be my dream we've got a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest and the question that's been left for you okay if you were on your deathbed and could leave only one lesson behind what would it be I would in the context of my scientific background never forget who you are because that means you've removed the Chimp on the computer and you found yourself so never forget who you

are remember the blank piece of paper because that's going to give you the self-esteem you deserve Steve thank you quick one as you might know crafted are one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are a jewelry brand and they make really meaningful pieces of jewelry and this piece by crafted when I put it on for me it represents courage it represents ambition it represents being calm and loving and respectful and nurturing while also being the antithesis of that seemingly the antithesis of that which is um sometimes a little bit aggressive with my goals

and determined and courageous and brave the really wonderful thing about crafted jewelry is it's super affordable it looks amazing the pieces hold tremendous meaning and they are really well made hahaha [Music]