Modern Wisdom - #671 - Dr Steve Peters - The Science Of Reducing Stress & Building Confidence

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Dr Steve Peters is a psychiatrist, sports psychology consultant, a professor and an author. Our brain is largely a black box. It's very important to how we experience life and yet we have very little insight into why it behaves the way it does. Steve has spent an entire career researching the strategies that empower the human mind to perform at its best and the secret to unlocking our full potential? Expect to learn how the Chimp Paradox can help you understand your brain, how to work with our negative emotions, how to manage anxiety, whether it’s possible to have an entirely stress-free life, what you can do to build your self esteem, why imposter syndrome exists, whether mental dysfunctions are actually on the rise, how to better deal with major setbacks in life and much more... Sponsors: Get $150/£150 discount on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 15% discount on Craftd London’s jewellery at https://craftd.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15)  Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr. Steve Peters. He's a psychiatrist, sports psychology consultant, a professor, and an author. Our brain is largely a black box. It's very important to how we experience life, and yet we have very little insight into why it behaves the way it does. Steve has spent an entire career researching the strategies that empower the human mind to perform at its best and the secrets to unlocking our full potential.

Expect to learn how the chimp paradox can help you to understand your brain, how to work with our negative emotions, how to manage anxiety, whether it's possible to have an entirely stress-free life, what you can do to build yourself a steam, why imposter syndrome exists, whether mental dysfunctions are actually on the rise, how to better deal with major setbacks in life, and much more. This Monday we have 7 time Mr Olympia Champion Phil Heath on the podcast. I was unbelievably impressed with this guy, he is a fantastic communicator, and he gives some information on this episode

that he has never spoken about publicly before including his PD use, while he was in the Olympia, his relationship with Kai Green, the greatest rivalry in bodybuilding history. It is a phenomenal episode talking about inner and outer strength, mindset, but everything, everything, it is great. And it goes live this Monday.

So make sure you hit the subscribe button or you're going to miss it. And you'll be sad, you'll be trez sad. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Aitsleap. It is unbelievably hot here in Austin, Texas, and I'm being kept alive exclusively by my Aitsleap. It is a liquid-cooled mattress topper that fits around your existing mattress, just like any other topper will do, and it actively cools and heats each different side of the bed. So if you sleep hot and your partner sleeps cold, this will help to make sure that you can normalize the temperature and stop any more arguments. It's phenomenal.

I can't remember what it's like to sleep without a liquid-cooled mattress topper because I no longer need to worry about the temperature of getting into the bed if I've had a hot shower before I get into bed. No problem. Best of all, there is a 90-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it, sleep on it, and try it for 89 days, and if you are not happy, they will give you your money back. Head to 8sleep.com slash modern wisdom. That's EIGHTSleep.com slash moderndom to save $150 or £150 off the pod cover.

That is the best offer that you'll find. Go to EIGHT-Sleep.com-modern-whisdom. In other, other news this episode is brought to you by Crafted London. They are my favorite jewelry. If you saw the episode I did with Alex Hormuzzi, the start of this week, I'm wearing one of their silver necklaces there. It's fantastic. The perfect price point, the design to subtle, it works with casual wear, with formal wear,

whether you're going out on a date, whether you're doing it during the day, it's amazing. And they are the biggest and fastest-growing men's jewelry company in the world. Necklaces, chains, pendants, bracelets, rings, and earrings, their sweat proof, waterproof heat proof Necklaces, chains, pendants, bracelets, rings, and earrings. They're sweatproof, waterproof, heatproof, and gymproof, custom designs in gold and silver. Plus, they come with a lifetime guarantee. So, if the piece breaks for any reason,

during the entire life of the product, they will send you a new one for free. They have international shipping, plus a money-back guarantee. So, if you want to get 15% off the best men's jewelry on the planet head to bit.ly slash CD wisdom that's b it dot L Y slash letter c letter D wisdom and use the code m w 15. A checkout. And in final news this episode is brought to you by element having element first thing in the morning in a coal glass of water is the best way to start the day. It's what I've done every single morning for over three years now. It's got no junk, no sugar, no coloring, artificial ingredients, gluten, fillers, or any other BS.

It is the best hydration drink that I have found. And you think, why am I bothered about hydration? Well, because it regulates your appetite. It helps to curb your cravings. It optimizes your brain health. It reduces muscle cramps and fatigue. Plus, it ensures that youramps and fatigue, plus it ensures that your energy levels stay stable throughout the day. You don't just need to drink

water, you need to ensure that you have the right electrolyte so that that water can be properly absorbed into your body, and element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium. They are the exclusive hydration partner to team USA weightlifting, plus they have a no BS, no questions asked, refund policy, so you can buy it 100% risk-free, and if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you your money back and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Head to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom to get a free sample pack of all eight flavors

with your first box. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dr. Steve Peters. So your first conception, most famous conception that you had originally, publicly at least, was the chimp paradox. If people I'm familiar with, the chimp model, how do you introduce them to that? I'll try and keep this up saying to put. I'm going back 30 years now. So, yeah, I'm getting old, very old. And as a young doctor, I suddenly started realizing I was talking to two individuals in therapies, and again, I'm making this very black and white. One of the individuals I

talked to was very irrational and common sense and would engage me. The other was highly emotional and usually very irrational and distorted in the way the perceiving things, themselves, the world, the people. But I could get the one that was irrational to become rational by talking and going through things. So that intrigued me that I'd two people in the room and some people they were close, some people they were miles apart. So then turning to neuroscience and looking at the brain, there are circuitries in the brain that are just automatic, they're outside of our control. And as a psychiatrist obviously, as a doctor, I'm learning also the therapeutic background

we have as a basis, we're going right back to Freud. And you think, he was a genius at his time, and he recognized the drives and the instincts. But what can we see now at the 1990s was the functional MI scan as KMN. And now we see, actually, these parts of the brain, they're not just drives and instincts. There's a entire system that thinks and interprets and makes

these interpretations without permission and makes decisions without permission, often based on the drives and instincts. So I have this amazing machine that's trying to run our lives at the same time as we're trying to impose our values and the way we want to run it. So I was intrigued with this, so you mentioned where to the beginning and I often use that as the best example. How many people get up in the morning saying today I'm going to eat healthy, the right amount and at the end of the day they say, again, it hasn't happened. You know, and they were, they were saying, why is it that this is happening because it's crazy. And then they tripped it to willpower. Well, the neuroscience teaches

something different. It shows that there's an entire system based on survival, which thinks and decides, and it's also impulse in it looks, brings to gratification. So when you're offered something you like, say, don't know, tell peanuts, and you think, I've eaten enough, this system says, no, no, we've got a little bit more, because it doesn't see what's coming. So I was intrigued.

I spoke to a omitted specialist, the greater apes. I'm very much an animal lover. So as part of the great apes, the humans are one of the five. What they said to me, simplifying it was the looking at the gorilla, the orangutan and the binobo, this thing, their brains operate differently towards. But the chimpanzee doesn't, it's the same. It's the same thinking, interpreting emotionally based system. So I started looking and I started

recognizing what chimpanzee behave in human. There was such similarities, however, when we turn to rationality and logic, we change that behavior and we become very different. So what I discovered of light bulb for me, I'm sure this is a discovery, what I really for me discovered was, you've got this inner-chimp system that we've inherited alongside you as a human and we've all got it. And depending how strong it is or how we learn to manage it is how often it will present. And that became more and more prominent in when I was working with individuals

to say you didn't think that that is the chimp system. Now that got published in 2018 to show the chimpanzee and the human have the same kind of thinking systems which separates us from the rest of the earth. But by then I didn't want to wait that long because I think it was blatantly obvious. I know we have to give evidence. So I started using it on my medical students, I'm a Sheffield Medical School.

At that point, as undergraduate dean, I was working a lot with youngsters between 18 and 23. So I started explaining, you do have this CHIMP system. They loved it. They really got this. They said, I can recognize one I'm in CHIMP system, they loved it. They really got this. They said, I can recognize one of them in CHIMP mode

and one of them in human mode. And they started to teach us this. So it became part of what I did with them. And we talk about what are the drives that are strong in your CHIMP, because the CHIMP brand is unique to the person again. So it became an entertaining way of starting to understand what you're sharing your brain with. This incredible system which thinks and acts for you with a major backup system.

So when I started doing this simplified neuroscience, the students were not keen on the neuroscience because it was too complex. They kept saying, make it practical, which I wanted to do. So they all started giving me a chance and then And this went on for a good 10 years before I effectively got caught up in the line right with sport, which was a sidetrack. And then it became public and it just went a bit viral and you know, I start meeting people saying they could ask me the chimps man know, I start meeting people saying they could ask me the chimp man, I'm proud to sound the chimp man. But I think the key for me was I saw transformation of people who started recognizing the difference to in themselves and the machine. So that's why I called it the chimp paradox and I wrote the chimp paradox probably over about four years trying to refine

it. I didn't want to get it wrong. So I put out when I thought it's close I can get it to explain this is your brain and how it works. The work I kept being tested to go into more detail and that's why it took me 10 years To actually think okay, do it again. So I rewrote effectively and called it a path through the jungle So a path through the jungle is more with it's got the evidence base, the research behind it. I know in America, the chimpanzee didn't take off and I know I was criticized because there was no evidence.

So I thought they're right to say that. So I've now given 400 references. And I'm pleased to say it was assessed by Cambridge, new science department, and they said, just put on. So there is a writer on Cambridge University's website for those who are academically interested to say that they were saying that, yeah, this is an amazing model and it's very detailed to link it to Newer Science. Why would it have been useful in our past to

have this very reactive setup inside of our minds. It's still useful now. When we look at, I'll talk in terms of the model, when you're using the human circuits, the transmitter systems and the speed at which they conduct are relatively slow. So when we think rationally, we think steadily. Whereas if something dramatic happened where our life is at risk, we need to think quickly and act impulsively, almost instinctually. So the chip system can do that for us. So in a serious emergency, it will know what to do. So it generally uses fight flight freeze because that's what the amygdala

hands to it as part of that system that's running. So if you were there with someone who suddenly drew a knife instinctively you'd know what to do. You know, whereas if you have to think rationally those split seconds could cost you dear. So but you can imagine this in many circumstances where there's an apparent danger we act very instinctively on machine takes over and it's pretty accurate. So it's not that it's a bad system at all and people gave this my inner chimp bit and I'm one of the elite athletes I worked with once said how do I kill my chimp and I'm thinking you've really not got this because my chimps system is my best friend. Because as long as I understand what he's trying to tell me, what is the ways to communicate, and then I can use that and work

as a team. And there's evidence, strong research evidence on this, that when we use a logical basis to our thinking and an emotional instinctive, intuitive basis, it works best on the wrong, they don't work as well. So I keep saying the chimps the best friend, you've got hence the paradox. But you can make it your worst enemy. If you're gonna start saying, I hate myself, I hate the fact I eat too much,

I hate the fact that I lose my temper. That's not really very helpful at all, though, approach is wrong. You need to, for my opinion, you need to be saying, if I'm getting annoyed, what is this part of my brain trying to tell me? You know, why is this evolving, this emotionally? And what can I do to stop this? And that's what I started doing with patients back in the 1990s. I started applying it in my clinical practice.

And I'm pleased to say I got some amazing results. And I don't attribute that to me, I don't. I think the person is the one who gets the results. They get insight and they work with me. All I can do is help them and catalyze what they're understanding is, but the people who is help them and catalyze what their understanding is, but the people who grasp and understood themselves and the where the machine was working, and got the chimp and what I call the computer on board, they started saying it's life-changing,

it's really changed me because what they're doing is saying I'm now in charge of the machine, and they're making it run and using it when it kicks a bit to say what is it you're doing, and they say this is great. And that's what I tried to do. I said it kicks a bit to say what is it you're doing and they say this is great. And that's what I tried to do. I said it's a different approach. I know it's a bit out of the box, but I wanted it based on neuroscience because that's my academic background as a professor in psychiatry. I'm neuroscience based. It seems to me that there's broadly two buckets of people that you've worked with. You've sort of worked with the human mind at its best and the human mind at its worst

as well. What is different, are there many fundamentals that are the same for trying to get Chris Hoye to be in flow state during the Olympics as there are trying to deal with somebody who is highly dysfunctional and who doesn't really like the inside of the texture of their own mind. Do you have different approaches when it comes to that or is it broadly the same physics? No, it's what I said at the beginning, which I know people can't get frustrated because I do a lot of these like magazines or the telemikes say give us five tips

well viewers or and I can't do that. So I often warn people don't ask me because I can't do that like magazines or the telemixer, give us five tips for all viewers. And I can't do that. So I often warn people, don't ask me because I can't do that. Because it does boil down to uniqueness. So I could really talk about people I've worked with who've gone public and say, please, you know, use me if you want to. So we're going to use, I'll use Chris Hoey. I mean, he's, I've known Chris 20 years now and it was an absolute pleasure and privilege to work with him. He's a real gentleman. So when I met him, he was in a great place. He's never had any emotional, you know, disturbances in life of any catastrophic kind. So he's a very

even balanced, very rational man. But what Chris said is, I believe he's insightful that if I work with you, you can explain how my mind works and works now be able to get focus on the track for the event I want to do. So why did his work with him and said tell me what you're thinking is now, what is he trying to do with this event, what would help, what wouldn't, and we worked to pattern out how he we plan a mental program for his event. So clearly it's purely on what Kristen with me. But what we found is his chimpanzees are gentle and too. So the chimpanzee Chris is so close to Chris that you don't get these outbursts. You just don't get them. But Chris would always tell me, I know the difference. So even when he said, when I go emotionally based, there's a risk. So we did

a lot of good fun work, incredibly good at Colin's students, and I meant to great. So he's one extreme of a balanced individual who said, how do I optimize or get etched up while I do? Whereas probably the most popular person I work with, Ronnie Sullivan, who came to me very dysfunctional, and has a really large chimp, and Ronnie says, tell tell the world everything I'm not going to do that all I can say is a fantastic guy that I really like and get on with we've worked together know over 10 years and his chimp's very active Ronnie himself is subjected to this so he's trying to

learn how to manage it so Ronnie as a human being is very very different to his gym. So I conceive in an interview is when Ronnie's answering, Oh, and his gym's answering. And so with him, it's more perfecting the skill. But I can't say that I've worked in 10 years, and it's a privilege and he's great for me, that over those 10 years as he approaches the World Championships in Snoker, which is one of multiple times, which is one multiple times. Each year he's improved, and that's a really key point for working with people, that all

of us can get the skill. Some of them are going to pick it up very quickly, so I've worked with people who transformed themselves within weeks, months, every light bulb moments, but they put a lot of time and effort in. Whereas other people, it's really tough to get the skill, you know, it's no different to say learning to sing. We can all sing but some are brilliant to start with and get even better and some of us struggle, we can still improve a bit. And emotional skills to me are exactly the same. You have a starting point, I don't know what potential

people have until I work with them. So I get someone who can start a square one in a really bad place and then do fantastic in a great place. I actually saw someone this morning who I've worked with on an awful but 10 years and she's in an amazing place now, but didn't start there, but really worked on it and then increased the skill to, it's great to see that. How should we best understand our emotions?

Okay, because I know what you're asking is great. However, I just see you get frustrated with me. However, it's like saying, teach me a tally and if I can't speak it, then teach me it in the next 10 minutes. You think, where do we start? You're very basic stuff. So I think the answer for me, this is only me.

So best to understand is start going steadily. It's not a promotion, but it's why I wrote a path for the jungle, because I think it takes you through 27 units. So it says start and build up, so you learn things gradually, and you practice them. So I give exercises. So again one of the early starting points is understanding the difference between you and your brain working. If you can see the difference and you recognize, I know who I am now, that in itself can lift self-esteem phenomenally because you stop

muddling yourself up with a machine that's overpowering you. So that concept is not as easy as it sounds to grasp. You can get it logically, but the day you actually get it conceptually, you can't go back, you suddenly realize, I've been hijacked, or I'm being sweared by a machine, not me, and I'm very different to that machine. So that's the starting point. Then you go on, I would then go on to emotions

and say, can we start seeing them differently? Can we see them as messages that are coming from the Chimpot computer system to give you an alert or a question? You know? So anger, for example, not every time, but anger can be that you've not processed something from the past. You need to go back and process it. It's still underpinning the way you're approaching the world of people.

However, it may be nothing to do with the past. It could be current belief systems that I can't deal with life if it doesn't go the way I think it is, and that can create anger. The next one can be unrealistic expectations of other people, or yourself, and that can create anger. The next one can be unrealistic expectations of other people or yourself and that can create anger. It can't even be a feeling of rejection. So you're going into relationships or meeting anybody every day with a defense position and that will lead to a potential anger which is more of a defense mechanism. So you can see anger is just an emotion. For me, the emotion is not too important, but the fact you're getting a message is what's important. So anger, despondency, frustration, that's what your tempering is choosing to use. And some of them

use the same emotion to alert you, and it's non-appropriate emotion. So I would start saying, let's look at emotions differently and let's understand the differences between them. And that's why I spend two units, I believe, in the past through the jungle to try and say, look, really at the very early stage, let's understand what's happening here before we go on to start perfecting things like values

and communication, let's understand what our emotions are. You mentioned about how self-esteem can become degraded if people are unable to work through this conflict that's going on inside of them. Why is that? Or how do you conceptualize just self-esteem as a topic? And do you see this tension as one of the most common or one of the common reasons why people's self-esteem can become a little bit eroded? I say for me that the main reason people have low self-esteem, I'll give the example you give a beating, we could use it, I can do it anything. We could use it, but I can go to use it anything. If the person says, I'm going to set off today and I know my values, I'm going to treat people with respect, I'm going to remain calm and collect because that's who I am, then they're defining themselves and they say, that's me setting off.

If they now go out and overeat, what they're now saying is not, I'm a greedy person, not I'm a weak will person, that's now so derogatory and causing self-esteem to drop. And that's not scientifically accurate. That's not accurate. What is accurate is to say I've set off with the intention of doing the following and now this system has now impulsively started eating. Now before we get people who are listening to us, good excuse. It's not an excuse, but you're still 100% responsible. You can't just go down my chamber too much. I don't accept that, all right? I say, oh, no, no, no, you have to manage the chimp. So you can't get angry with someone and blame the chimp. It's not a

good excuse, blame us. What I say is your job is to say, apologize and then say, okay, this is the difference in esteem. I know who I am. What I can't do is manage the machine well and all of the struggle that what I need to do is learn to manage the machine up skill on it. And that could take me some time. That means you know who you are still and you're not muddling yourself up with the machine and starting to come up with silly interpretations such as, I'm an angry person. There isn't an angry person unless you really believe that's who I want to be, which is nonsensical. So I do review people, I've asked one of them, they're coming in and saying, I got really

angry this way, can I say no, you didn't. Unless you're telling me that's what you want to be. And then they're saying, no, no, I don't want to be angry. And I said, in other words, you got hijacked. So let's look at why you got hijacked, and let's give you the skill to manage the hijack, and calm the chimp down.

So it is subtle, but it's, I don't know if you can grasp what I'm saying, I don't have to make it clear. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's interesting is this, might be the wrong word, almost like a depersonalization of you who you are at your core, and things that you do.

The things that you do. Okay, the word is dissociation. You're dissociating, you're saying to yourself, this is me, and now I've got this chimp machine along with a computer, this machine in my head. So I'm now going to go forward, but if something happens, it provokes that, and it overtakes me, I now present to the world my chimp.

I represent a mixture of me and the chimp. And the ideal for me is to always present yourself to the world, but get your chimp and compute as well, because they're not bad things. You know, our chimps can bring colour to our life. So if we have a chimp that's got a sense of humour, which they do have, because our sense of humour is in the chimp system, not in the human. Alright, so the chimp will bring us more than humour. That's why the chimp believes something we say, it's where our punchlines work, and then it realises that's ridiculous and it causes to laugh. So there are actually three different circuits

in the very old based in the chimp system. So if we didn't have that, we probably would be pretty boring. Yeah. Because we wouldn't laugh. We wouldn't laugh. So you're saying, let's get on board, but you're the person who says, these are my values, these are my beliefs, these are what I want to behave in life. And that you've set now. So I work a lot on that with people and say, now we know who you are. Don't worry if you get hijacked and you present something different to the world, just recognize we've got work to do and we're going to learn that skill. And it will happen. You'll always get chimped hijacks. Tell me if I rumble too much because I get asked a lot about, do you have a chimped?

And my chimped wrote the books. You know, it decided to collude with me because I think it's tired of telling me. But as a young man, yeah, I experienced a lot of anxiety, a lot of frustration, a lot. And I couldn't work this out, but as a side come thinking, well, you need to work it out. You're the person who's going to be helping people. You can't do that. It's a critical second help myself. But then I realized that, yeah, like everyone else, I have a chimp. Most of the time I'm an outer manager and it's on board and he's my best friend.

So for me, one of the things I do is be sarcastic with it. I don't know why my chin finds out funny. So if something upsets my chin system and I experience frustration or whatever, I do say to the chin, can we just answer the question, do you want me to be upset for an hour, a week, rest of my lives? And for some reason my chin gives way of age, it laughs and things, okay, it's got get a life, get perspective. And we're okay but I've worked out that that works for me 99% of the time. There will be a time at my chimped hijacks and then I have to say okay I got hijacked because I'm no different to anybody else so but I need to learn again which everyone does

what are my trigger points? So trigger points for me where I know I'm vulnerable to losing this management of the chimps would be bullying, seeing someone intimidated, my chimps constrict in. So I have to be careful in situations where I say, okay, I've got it, let me do the daily. It seems like a real art form to be able to integrate this, the chimp with the human mediated, you know, in the middle. And that chimp human computer relationship seems like a very delicate dance because as you say, if it was just raw rationality and pure cerebral horsepower and cognition all day, it would probably remove an awful lot of the color and a lot of the joy as well from the things that we do. And it is, I think, a lot about about finding that balance. I've heard you talk about ghost emotions. What are those?

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we learn, learn a behavior, and it doesn't belong in real time. So a simple example is we can get a bad experience of said public speaking. Now that would evoke most people's chimps to start getting anxious. So the computer will always come to the rescue if you look at what the leaves and memories you've got. So we can tamper with the computer. We can't do much with the chimps. It's the nature of the animal. We have to manage it. The computer we can tamper with. But let's have a bad experience doing public speaking. It's very likely I've learned to become anxious. So when I stop myself and why are you doing this, it's a learnt behavior. It's a ghost emotion. It doesn't belong there. And it's not actually what I want to experience. Indeed, should be experiencing. So ghost emotions are something

that hang on inappropriately. They can be because we have a process but it can just be a behavior way, they think let's change that behavior. So I find a lot of people carry emotions and it's just something they've learned to do. So you can desensitize them to situations and ignore the ghost. There's a difference, The reason I brought that in is, and again, this is the devil in the detail, some emotions are scars, they're not ghosts, and it's very important to get the difference between them. So, when I work with people, if you've got a scar, say you went through a really bad breakup, and most people don't come out on scar. So, you've got some scarring from the relationship breaking up, whatever it is.

And you can't process it. So I keep saying to people, sometimes I was trying process it and you can do it maybe to later stage, but if it more process, it's a scar. And there's a different way of dealing with that. So we have to have, we deal with that, not by ignoring it, by actually managing it. So it can be to talk it through again, because that helps. As even though we know it won't resolve it, it will actually managing it. So it can be to talk it through again because that helps. As even though we know it won't resolve it, it will actually take pressure off. So some scars, obviously the world I'm in, we mentioned sport, but I work a lot with Joe Public and generally

speaking, the people I made are not in a good place. So I do work with a small number of parents who've lost their children and that must be excruciating. And it is for them and my approach and all the people that have a different approach is to say to them, it is an emotional scar. It's not something you're going to get rid of, it's not something you'll ever even come to terms with. I think it's something you've got to manage. You know, and accept that there will be some terrible days ahead, but there will be some good days. But that's a scar for me. So I don't try and remove it

because I don't think you can. Yeah, it's very, it's the more detailed that you apply to looking at the inside of your own mind, the more that you realize there are very subtle nuances between different things, whether that be the ghosts or the scars. What do you mean when you talk about stabilizers of the mind? Yeah, sometimes the mind can be commercially up and down. So I'll try and give a simple example to bring the point home.

Let's say that let's say I do a lot of public speaking and let's say that I go to an audience and I'm trying to get across everything I do and it doesn't come over and I think I'm not getting there today, I'm fumbling with everything I do. I might leave that hole on my chimps unstable because it's saying you know you didn't do a great job there and maybe I made it a joke that was near the nucle and it was meant in sarcasm to make them laugh and it didn't come up and I think oh gee I probably fenced someone. So my chin will beat me up for this or try. So I stabilise my mind by saying to the gym, hang on.

You did your best, you lived by your values, it's not that you didn't try. You did everything you could, you got it wrong or you didn't, you weren't on form today which no one can be every day. So get a life and then our brain perspective, a week from now nobody's even bothered. The only person that I remember is you. So perspective is a stabilizer of the mind. And so if a lot of people for me, it's a massive one.

So again, you hear people commonly saying, well, this matter in an hour, in a week, in a year. And for a lot of situations, it really, more situations doesn't matter. So that's an example of one stabilizer of the mind. I love broadening time horizons like that. And it's something that I found myself really poor at doing in my past, that the decision

that I was making right now was going to be the decision that I would have to live with for the rest of my life, that this purchase of a car or this move to a new city or this change of a house or this makeup or break up of a relationship or whatever it would be. It's like when you realize that most things are time bound and most things are subject to change in future, it helps to release a little bit of the pressure. And the same thing can occur for public speaking or a bad podcast. I do a bad podcast, like, well, I've got two more to do this week. And in a year's time, there's going to be 150 more released.

You can't have a good podcast every single time that you do it. And it helps to release and relinquish some of that obsession, I think, that we have and the pressure that we apply to ourselves. I think you're demonstrating when I start working with people to say, let's look at what we mean by this chimps system. What does it work with? What can't it do? One of the things it can't do when our blood supply goes into the chimps system, which

is the orbital frontal cortex, just above your eyes. When that light's up, it cannot get in perspective. It struggles with perspective. And it can't bring reality to a situation because it is very emotionally based the way we say things. So if you have your bad podcast, it struggles with this. It starts catastrophizing. And it wants to go over and over and over. It doesn't actually want a solution.

It just wants to get rid of the problem. And there's a sort of difference. Whereas if we can train your brain to move to human mode, this is what I'm doing by my computer come into the rescue saying, as a human being, I've got rationality and saying, you know, and I've got values. So you're bringing which the human system does,

which is the top of your head. We see that light up you now bring perspective in So but the complexity of the brain is that the human can't take the chimpanzee if there's a fight between these two the Chimp will always win because it has transmitters that can actually annihilate the human from functioning So we get hijacked literally emotional hijacks where people act out and they can't do it. And people say, that means I'm doomed because my gym's always going to win, but this is the social degree. I'll explain in the books that the way the gym works, it knocks the human out, but it must

necessitate, this is, turn to the computer and scan, which we see it literally scanning the computer and getting advice, beliefs, experiences, intuition, it gets masses of information within a split second, which then advises the chim, which it has to follow, what to do. So if we program our computer as well, that's the secret of managing the mind. So we program them so that when the chip knocks us out, our computer takes over and manages the chip. So there is a way around this. It's not doom and gloom.

But if you don't program the computer and keep it running, then the chip will definitely take control. A couple of words that you've been using a lot throughout this conversation that I want to dig into, values, beliefs, drives, how do those fit together, how do we know what our true drives are, etc. Drives are in it compelling emotions, feelings we get, the biologically driven, so there's a drive to eat eat and everybody has that drive, so it's exceptional not to have an eating drive. Most people, it's extremely strong,

because this is a survival drive, it's common sense. There are lots of drives, there's a drive for security, and it's where you turn to fulfill that drive, so we talked to teenagers, we'll turn to their pay group for security, we've explained that's got traumatic results at times. But if we turn for security to our environment, that will help the chimp, but not necessarily the human. Our humans turn to security by looking within ourselves and our resources, and what we think we can manage in life. So a human for security doesn't go on the environment. It may help, but it won't help. In overall, the tube will look on the environment, but get in the right environment, but that doesn't help with the mind. So you're not going to get

a great environment, but the tube still, the humans still agitated, saying, I don't feel. So other drives, the sex drive is very powerful and obviously that leads to a lot of difficulties with a lot of people because they can't manage it and the chimpanzee can take over. So if there's nothing in the computer, we're getting to difficulty. So drives are compelling things that get us out of our seats without us having to do anything. They just make us move. First is a drive, the drive for first. There's a lot to them, the drive to be with the people. If you move on to beliefs, these are now what your experiences are or what you've been told. So a

belief, for example, again, I'm taking extremes. Let's say I believe that all people are good and they're nice. I'm leaving myself very vulnerable to those I know will take advantage of me. So I'll be taken in. I'm naive. If I have that extreme belief, if I have the extreme belief that all people are not to be trusted, that can have repercussions and be feeling very isolated and not trusting someone. So I don't get any debts of friendships or interpersonal relationships. So you have to look and say, what are your beliefs? So if you have

a belief, which I push a lot, the one in five belief, and that's best more on reality and the research that's given, that about one in five people love you regardless. They're pretty diluted really because even when you're not in the right, they'll still leave you. One in five people love you regardless. All right, they're pretty diluted, really, because even when you're not in the right, they'll still love you. All right, one in five people criticise you regardless. Unfortunately, they're often the most vocal. So unfortunately, the social media, these are the main vocal people coming in.

And that's really sad that we have one in five people who are quite acoustic. And three out of five are reasonable decent people, where you're upon what you do. So they're like if you're really decent and honest, but they probably won't, if you're not. So if you have that belief that one in five people you need to be wary of, because,

and one in five people don't get flattered and misled, but three out of five, learn who the balanced ones are if you want sound boarding. So if you go in with that belief, which I believe is a correct one, but that's my bias, then it means I'm constantly assessing I'm on is this someone I trust or is this someone who's going to just flatten me and or is this someone who's balanced and will challenge me properly and admit me stop and think hey I'm on the matter of a point. So beliefs are something that guide you, but they're quite strong, because

obviously these are what I call the gremlins and the autopilots, that if these, but you try to do something and a belief stops you, then that can be a positive influence or a negative. So even sensible beliefs like don't skate on an icy pond, you know, especially if it's thawing, you know, especially if it's throwing, you know, that's common sense. So you have that belief because you are detorted or you've experienced it. So that's beliefs, beliefs, you have millions of beliefs, some of them are very strong and some of them are not that influential, but we form them generically and we form them specifically for circumstances.

and we form them specifically for circumstances. Values are really important to me. There is no push values when I started doing this work 30 years ago and creating this model of the mind as I was going to use of our patients. And again, there will be people who disagree with me. I want to give you what I believe and what's experienced over the last 30 years. The only thing that gave pace of mind,

which is different to happiness. So pace of mind, which is different happiness. So peace of mind is knowing what your values are and knowing at the end of the day you've lived by your values. So I worked on my values and I found no matter what happens around me, whether I get criticized, misunderstood, misrepresented, these things will disturb most of us.

At the end of the day, I can look at the mirror and think, have I lived behind my values? And if so, I'm not peace with myself. It doesn't matter, it's uncomfortable, but I can live with it because I respect myself. So when I looked at this and did it with experience, with patients, everyone said, once you know your values,

you're almost immune. You start realizing that's what's going to stabilize me and give peace of mind. So it's very important to know how to find values and what they are and not model them up with things like what's valuable to me, that's not a value. So I was trying to say once you've got your values, then you can measure, which I ask people to do,

demonstrate your values in action every day. Because that will bring you a peace of mind thinking I did the right thing. In your experience, where do most people go wrong when it comes to working out their values, sitting down with a piece of paper or doing some exercise online or whatever, what are the do's and the don'ts when it comes to defining values for most people? What are the do's and the don'ts when it comes to defining values for most people? There's a confusion there because if you go online and say what's a value, you're going to get a lot of different definitions. So I had to say, what am I talking about? So the people I work with are trying to agree this is the definition of a value and then we're on the same page. So I'm going to go with what I create as a definition, but a lot of other people have got the same definition, but I agree with them.

So a value is a moral belief that you hold, something you think is what should happen, a decent person which is going to be me, I'm going to live by this decent value of this belief, which is going to be acted out with a behavior. So for example, they can't be subtle. Let's say which many people do, I want to respect everyone. Because if I know me disrespect someone, I feel bad. I lose my peace of mind. If I unwittingly disrespect someone and then realize it, I'll get told, that will unsettle me. So I need to know how do I measure respecting someone? So for me, I would put down number one is I listen to someone, I don't have to agree with them, but I give them an audience. I don't attack them, I listen. And what their

views are, I listen to their views. And I, I believe personally, for me, that's showing respect. So if I wanted to say, let's just check I'm respecting people, I'm going to have a week where I actually say, how many times did you dive in without listening? How many times did you stop? Especially in an emotional discussion. How many times you stop and say, I want to look actively listening to what they're saying, understand it, and after a great, understand it and respect that value or that belief. So that's an example. What people do is they muddle things up and they say things like, my car. You know, that's not a value because there's no behavior.

It's what you're saying is valuable to me. I really get a lot of pleasure and enjoy it out to my car. But that's not going to be bringing you peace of mind. All right, it may bring you happiness. So, and I like to work on happiness separately to peace of mind. A lot of the exercises that I've seen online, looking at things like core values, do work, you come up with answers with things like curiosity,

adventure, self-development, self-care. It seems like a key part of your definition is that there is an action, there is something which is going to influence your behavior and how you show up in the world. Certain things like curiosity become very nebulous and difficult to define. You know, they're like intrinsic parts of your personality or the bits of you that you enjoy or respect, but when it comes to creating, enacting that, it feels like there's a little bit more of a difficulty going on there. Is there anything to say about that about some of the...

Yeah, I mean, I get your point. I think for me curiosity comes under what I would loosely call it is the drive for stimulation. So some people, the stimulation, we just gone on a computer game, but the brain is satisfied with that was for many people it wants difference, it wants new experiences, it wants to see what would happen if so we know that some people are more prone to saying let's test things outlets and some people are wanting to achieve something. So I always put under this heading of stimulation and again most of us have got something we want as a stimulus but it can in be as straightforward as a social group. It doesn't have to be an I'm going to learn a new language or I'm going to get to a new level on the computer game. And so I try and explore that with people to say, what are you doing to give stimulation

to both your human and your chimps? What is it they both want? And what's gonna satisfy that? And again, I think there's different drives for the human in chimps. So I work out, because some people are much more cerebral and say, I'd like to have a discussion group like you know Reading a certain voc in going in the club and discussing it was others. That's a nightmare

The stimulation could be just being part of a group that supports a football team But you're looking to see some people get stuck and they don't have any And then they'll say things like I feel dissatisfied of it and it's hard when you don't know which way to turn I do I love animals. I've got a lot of animals around me, I've removed some from the room because of the noise as well, we do this. So I rescue some animals and I know some people discover that. So I've had people I've worked with and they've said once you get an animal, not everyone, suddenly you've got this you get an animal, not everyone, suddenly you've got this responsibility, this interaction, this, you see the

animals world differently and it's, they use that as displacing care onto the animal and they get great satisfaction. That's one example. So I would explore with people what you're calling curiosity, add stimulation, the drive to get stimulation and experience. Yeah, that's very interesting. I think I probably need to revisit my, what I've deemed core values, perhaps erroneously. It was maybe three or four years ago when I put mine together.

And in there were a lot of things that I actually can see as stimulation. Two of them were curiosity and adventure. And they're things that I like to do. But I'm trying to run them through a more fine filter, which is, okay, how does this inform the way that I behave in the world? And I don't know if they necessarily give me guidance with regards to that. So I think okay let's do some therapy. Hit me. Hit me. There's only a million people watching so it's fine. Cool. That's fine. It's not really therapy. It's just saying if you were asking me to look at this,

I would try and get us so we understand that the blocks we're working with. So we're looking at the values as being something if you buy into this as peace of mind and things that a moral behavior is that you think I should do the follow-in, no respect people, help people. I don't know what your values would be. And now you've asked something different, you've said, I've got this drive, where does curiosity come in? I put that under one of your drives and say clearly it's important to you. So let's look at how you're going to get mental stimulation through those drives. But you're moving on to different areas again

when you're looking at things like happiness. Because if you're saying that that clearly drives overlap. So happiness is something that most people search for. It's an odd one this because I know when I started writing the books I was told that oh happiness is what people want and I had a little bit of difficulty because I don't search for that. I'm not saying I don't want it, but it's not a big feature in me. I'm content to be peaceful, you know? But I'm not someone who searches for this great happiness

and you know, I'm just happy to be just okay every day. That's satisfying to me. So I'm a little bit odd that way. But if you are saying, not Steve, I need this. I want stimulation, but I also want like full development because I'm expecting your curiosity is leading somewhere. You know, so I would be saying to you, let's look at what you're trying to get that fulfills your chimp brain, which is a really good thing to do. That gives you a great feeling and a wellness and it may be excitement to d excitement, adrenaline, it may be satisfaction.

But I have to say, would are the words that are appropriate for what you're trying to achieve? It could be all of them because then we can start understanding what is you doing. But I have to say, have to be careful because as you get so analytical, you just get on with your life. And I'm saying just to be spontaneous, but if you're finding that you're not feel fulfilled, that's when I think that's sound like, let's see what we can look at in the blocks, what's missing. So you're right, when you're saying I'm not sure you defined them clearly and therefore you won't be using them to advantage. I think that's accurate. I think that

functionally, it sounds nice and they're definitely things that I enjoy, but when it comes down to sort of what functional utility does it give me, can I look back on my day, look in the mirror and go, I was curious today, therefore I feel at peace with myself. There are many, many more things, including respect for others, which is a really great one from you, that I think would more highly influence the peace of mind that I have. You've mentioned it a couple of times. I want to dig into this, this tension between peace of mind and happiness and what's going on there. Yeah, they sometimes don't go together. You know, it's like, let's say I have, I've got

staff, let's say I've got a member of staff who's really not fitting in with a group and we've got me, I haven't just in case any of my staff are listening. And they're clear. And they're probably. And they're definitely not having it. And I haven't got anyone, but if let's say I did and I thought, you know, the team are not jelling and we've got this person who's not fitting in with our values or they're not dead just tried, but they just don't work well. Then I know that the right thing to do morally is to grasp them out and go and see them and say look it's a mismatch.

You know there's no negative in that sense it's going to be difficult and they may they may get to have this in the past. They may attack me and say all the things in the world you know you're meant to be this caring, but I'm thinking it's for the good So I would leave that I wouldn't be happy You know, I'm not saying I don't want to be happy by the way, but I wouldn't be happy But I'd have peace of mind. I've not done the right thing and in the long run they may not like me And I've nothing good to say about me, but I'm knowing the long rates for the best for them under team So there's an example where peace of mind and happiness don't go together. And it can go the other way.

I could be happy about something, but not a peace of mind, because I think actually you didn't do the right thing. So overall, I'm going to end up feeling not so good. I'll think, yeah, it's just superficial happiness. I was going to say, do you think it seems to me that happiness without peace of mind is more difficult to achieve, that peace of mind acts as a tarnish that can kind of color and jade any experiences and that the happiness will inevitably be more fleeting or more fragile? Yeah, I haven't done this, which is okay a great thing, but obviously it's part of my job. I've examined over the years doctors and medical students because that's my world, and I'm with the Royal College, and I want people to pass.

I don't like to feel anybody. And so if somebody's bothered by anything, or they don't really deserve to pass, I haven't done this. My happiness would be to pass them. I wouldn't have peace of mind because at the end of the day, you were wrong. You shouldn't do this, but I might think, I know there's something so much,

and then I'll justify rationalize, well, I'm sure they'll learn on the job and I'm sure they'll be fine and I've got, but that's rationalizing. So you can see there's an example where somebody might lose peace of mind, but actually feel at the time I'm happy because I've passed them because if I don't, I'm going to have such an happiness. So sometimes we compromise our values, which leads to as I think less of a peace of mind. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm saying it's something people have to decide on.

wrong, I'm saying it's something people have to decide on. Yeah, that's very interesting. You brought up your work with medical staff. You've just done this new study. You've been completed and are published as study on burnout and well-being, thinking about amongst NHF nurses and maybe doctors as well. It talked to me about sort of burnout as a concept. It's kind of a buzzword at the moment. I think a lot of people maybe do feel that they are overwhelmed with workload and stimulus and I don't really have time for myself and I feel like the past maybe I was like more peaceful or things were slower and then burn out as a concept and then let's fold in this new study and what you learned from your time working with the NHS there. from your time working with the NHS, though? Yeah, I was with the NHS for 20 years, so it was great time. Burnout, again, is defined differently, but I think it's common sense what we mean. It means you suddenly feel like you don't have the energy anymore.

You get up in the morning and you dread it. So for a doctor, for example, let's go back to my experiences. I would do outpatients twice a week. And if I'm starting stuff at Burnout, I was thinking, I can't face it. I just want to get through this. That's a sign of burnout, whereas normally I'd be at in Cane and then to use the acid, you go and see them, or thinking, you know, if I get the slightest headache, I'm just going to fall into it. And you get signs of burnout. So there's a number of the anxiety, pull a sleeve, but it's generally this feeling, I just can't do this. I can't do it. I'm overwhelmed as you pointed out.

So with that in mind, when I did the chip model, which just took off, and it's very humbling because obviously it was meant to be just for medical students to learn the new science. When the chip model did take off, I wanted to go back to my roots and I worked, we did a series of workshops, I called it Skills for Life, and it's emotional management and understanding yourself as based on our path to the jungle. And we said, we'll take, we took 80 GPs from accounting nearby and I said to them, we'll run eight workshops and we'll see whether this affects your health, your communication with your staff, your burnout, your sickness rates.

That was just a pilot run I did and it worked fantastically. Again, credit to the GPs and the staff who were working with the GPs, they worked on it and they said it did make a massive change. So as a doctor, obviously, I'm bringing out this model, which is semi fun, but serious. I want to know it actually works, otherwise it's fraudulent. So then I took a study with 200 teachers and went into the schools and we tried to say, let's have a look at you. We have three centres of study. And again, it's only pilot run. We're teachers in York, Birmingham and Cambridge. And that was just again, just a pilot run. So we did it roughly and ready. And the feedback was really, really encouraging. So I didn't actually do the next study because clearly I can't

do my own assessment. So it was taken out to my hands by an independent research group. And I was not allowed to do the teaching bit. I was put to one side, which I accept and I think that's right. And the underwent these series about workshops. And then they did analysis, which is published in the Journal for Mental Health. And it showed a massive reduction in burnout, a massive reduction in health issues. And a general health questionnaire was used to show that the increased health was Marked so we've excited by that obviously I'm over the moon The nurses were brilliant and engaging it brilliant

But they took it seriously because obviously they're from mine and the stress on them is immense and amazing It was done under COVID. We had to do it online because and they all were brilliant to say we keep going and the feedback was great. So we're now undergoing another group, I'm not involved. Independent researchers are doing 200 doctors. And again, I do a lot of talks to medical staff because this is my world and I'm more familiar with medical and then I'm sport.

So it's very encouraging. So we run this for the public as well. It's not just academics or and it's just to say if it resonates with you then you can do this and see what you think. And the general fail is it now the research is published and analyzed that it it does have an impact. I was worried that it wasn't like something a flash in the pan because obviously a lot of therapies they see it. They don't hold. So we did go back to the GPs months later without warning and say it was another feed and found it held, which wasn't surprising because what I'm

asking people to do is approach life differently and once you do that you're more or less keep doing it. But you do have to maintain, I do say to people, five or ten minutes a day as all I ask, to maintain these and learn to get your mind in order, before you leave the house in the morning. That's what I'm after. What do you think it is specifically about your approach that is assisting with the symptoms of burnout or targeting even the root cause of burnout and overwhelm? My out I think genuinely I think it isn't the model person. I think it's the person being able to understand themselves and start looking after themselves and start understanding things like I mentioned trigger points,

things like I mentioned trigger points, recognizing anxiety rather than not seeing it. So we give, takes them about subtle signs of anxiety, then recognizing how to detect things like beliefs that are not helping. So we're challenging a lot of things, but it's all about the unique person empowering them and giving them the tools to get the life and be the person that they are. That's what it's

about. So when you do that, which will include practical things like communication skills, assertiveness, but learning how to communicate with the human side of the brain rather than the chimp brain which is emotionally driven and can often cause more problems. So it's a big overall and looking at you. I think that's why it's working because the person makes it work. They have to decide, I can't decide what works for them. Yeah, and as you've sort of emphasized today, because we are so idiosyncratic and because our drives and our genetic predisposition and our life experiences and the ways we've dealt with past trauma and all of that are so unique. It needs to be something which is sufficiently scalable and each person

presumably individually finds their own flavor of this and that resonates with me because I'm more of an angry chimp person or my chimp and my humaner Chris Hoy rather than Ronnie O'Sullivan. Right. And that's why I say I can't, I say this to people, only you are going to discover all I do is help you and catalyze where it's born and suggest. But I'm going to have to ask you to do the work. It's not me that does the work. I do like it. But again, I'd say at this point, you know, it doesn't resonate with everyone. It's not for everyone. And there are fantastic therapies out there.

My job along with everyone in this field is to say, just try and get the best out of yourself and quality of life. So if people go from mine, from a CBT, these are excellent therapies, they're excellent models to work with. I mean, I'm an academic, so I like evidence this. However, if people go for things where there's no evidence,

as if it works for you, I'm not arguing. All right, all I say is be very careful that you don't get fooled by something, particularly someone who is giving you stuff that's going to work in a short term and then find your claps down. So it's got to be something solid. There's plenty of stuff out there to resonate with. Have you found a particular cohort of people that the CHIMP model works particularly well or particularly poorly with? That's a good question and the answer is no, because it's whether that person gets it. I mean, some time ago, and I very first started doing this, I was asked to do a brief television

series, which was with some women. I got four of them and they asked me to take some to ride a bike television series, which was with some women, I got four of them and they asked me to take them to ride a bike because I was with cycling at the time, but now to lose weight and learn how to manage their mind. So it was a fun series I did, I loved it, the women were brilliant, they were brilliant, great fun to work with, but it was interesting that the children of the walls are almost in imposed department. I mean they knew who I was at the time, it's something years ago, but one of them didn't resonate with it at all. I was happy, I said no, I couldn't talk in different terms, but she had a moment where she'd baked, she was doing some sport, and she'd gone after

sport justifying why she was getting a takeaway. And she knew she was on television, she said, I sat outside the takeaway and I said, I deserve this because I've worked hard, I've run off a lot of calories and then I said to myself, you're on a television program, you're meant to be losing weight and then she rang me and said, I've just found my chin. She said it was bizarre, I was talking and I'm thinking,

who am I talking to? So sometimes the penny has to drop where you think, I get what the newer science is, but it doesn't happen for everyone. And that's what I'm saying. Find something that resonates with you. So who works with it is the person that resonates. So my younger student is three or has was three who, who got it, and we'll talk about his naughty chimp. The eldest person that's come to me, that's actually said, this really works. There's about 80. And what he was, he was quite annoyed at me, saying, why didn't you write for 60 years? How was it? A little boy at the time, I don't have any knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. But I've had a lot of people who are very humbly to me,

or in the 60s and 70s, saying, oh, I had known this. So you must bring this to schools, but I don't want to impose it. I think someone has to resonate. So there's danger of imposing. That's the last thing I want to do. It's got to be empowerment.

Rounding out that conversation around, sort of burnout and overwhelm, you spend a good bit of time in the new book talking about robustness, mental robustness and resilience. Big buzzwords, you know, a lot of the guys that I've had on the show, people like David Goggins, who's this ultra-injury in Satholee, it's Jocker Willink, who wrote a book about discipline, equalling freedom, a lot of discussion about mental resilience and robustness. What is interesting do you think about, or what have you

learned about your conception of resilience and robustness compared with maybe what most people don't understand or get wrong about it? Again, your definitions are so vague. If you start looking, there are so many different people saying, this is what Robustin says. So I have to do the same. I have to say to myself, define it. So if people are following you, they say, okay, if we use that definition, I see what you

get going to. So I define Robustin as having a plan. So we can all become robust. It's like getting a toy for a child and saying we've designed it for the child. Resilience is handing it over to Seify Fuerx. So resilience is where you go out of the world and say right. So I would have a mental strategy and plan to deal with my trigger points. But when I get out there, that's being robust. I'm ready to leave the room.

The second they get out, now it's resilience is the skill to stay robust, is to stay in that same strong position. So I think robustness we can all get to, but being resilient is a skill. And I think that's where people come on stuck, because they start beating themselves up instead of saying it's a skill. That means you've got to acquire it and maintain it. But also, some days, you get it wrong, like any sports person, for me, managing my mind is a scale. And every day I've got to work on this. So every day I do, every day I have usually around four points in the day where I do a quick check and say, right, can we just make sure I'm in

human mode, make sure my beliefs are back in we just make sure I'm in human mode, make sure my beliefs are back in place, make sure I understand and get perspective. That's what I do. Very briefly, it can take a minute, five minutes, but that resets my mind, so I'm resetting. So I think resilience is something you've got to work on and know how to use your skill, but it's not easy.

So that's why when I wrote the, I passed through the jungle, I was saying, I'm going to show all the basics. So you know, how, how things work in your mind, what resonates with you, what doesn't. So you can do the exercise to get yourself in a great place. By the end of it, you've now got robustness, and you've got some ideas on how to become resilient. And that's why I did a bit of trouble shooting at the end to say these are the common things I find people say it's not working for some reason. You know, Ronnie was sort of and did say as they said, he has permission to tell anything I'd worked in about two years and he rang me one morning and he was very much in chip mode and distressed and he said it's not working it's not working I'm quite hard and I said to him have you done the work and he said no so I said okay I'm going to put the form down ring me when you've done the work so I'll

put the form down and it rang me about three four days later and I said how you doing he said brilliant I said why I said I did the work. So the answer simple is no different than anything else you've got to do the work and the work is making sure your values are in place, making sure what we did the stone of life, not mentioned, with all your beliefs in place and what the rules of the way the world works, these are the truths of life. And then also put in place a perspective plan. So when he did that, he said, yeah, it's working again. So the answer is when people say to me,

it's not working is, I always ask, have you done the work? And sometimes people need guidance because they'll do, they really try hard, but they're trying hard on the wrong things. And then you've got to say, hang on, can I just adapt that? I'll modify this. And so a little thought almost, and then they say, hang on, can I just adapt that or modify this?

And so a little thought almost and then they go, oh, okay, I'm off again. That's why I call my team the mentors because they're there not to instruct, they're there to mentor you to saying, oh, let me help you. There's a glitch here and challenge things so you can work it out. Yeah, the tendency that we all have to complain about results we're not getting from effort that we're not making is very, very pervasive. And I see it in myself if I start a new training program or switch my diet up or try and do something different with my bedtime routine. I, it's like, you've done it for three days.

What do you mean? And you did that one of those days you didn't do it because such and such a thing happened or you were away from home. So yeah, it's one of the things I'm getting here. And it's interesting. There's almost like a philosophical underpinning here, you know, your own personal philosophy about the way that the world is. And obviously we, we experienced the world through the texture of our

own mind. It's the only way that we have to experience the world, even experiences from other people still get filtered through our own mind. And yeah, it does, there is a sort of almost like a whimsical philosophy, undercurrent that I'm sensing through through some of the stuff that you're talking about, making sense of the world around us? Yeah, I didn't want to be restrictive when I did this to saying, right? I mean, obviously, I've been taught very well with philosophical models and medical models and psychological, but I didn't want to restrict people. I think it's what people want to do with it and make of it.

I'm very much keen that they have empowerment. But I still will challenge things. I'll challenge beliefs people hold, because if I think that's holding them back, beliefs about themselves, particularly, or other people of the world. But I will, yeah, I think there is a philosophy underpinning it, but it's your philosophy.

And I think, sound your boys, we use friends to do this all the time, we say something, they'll correct us, I'll say, what, do you really see it that way? So what I'm doing is doing that with hopefully the neuroscience behind it to give that push. But I want to take you back to something said because on the thing it doesn't work, one of the common things I get, and this is an example of why it doesn't work. Sometimes, if you do work for a few days and then you miss a day or two, you can't go backwards depending on what you're trying to achieve. So I'm going to give sleep as an example. I ran sleep clinics a long time ago, and people say to me, I just have terrible

sleep. And one of the general rules of sleep is that it's a alert behavior. So although there's only circadian rhythms, they're actually secondary to alert behavior. So if we get you to learn a behavior of sleep, then your brain will start to follow this and your body will. The circadian rhythm is obviously powerful, but it's not as powerful as habit. So I work with people who say, right, and I say go to bed wherever time it is, 10 o'clock, wake up, seven o'clock, and that's your sleep. And they'll do this for say, I'm making it up, five days.

And then Saturday comes, oh, well, we'll wait until we went home at one o'clock, and then got to bed and I slept in till 10. And the rules, I'm being very back of my mind, the rules are simple, for the next three or four days, you're finished. You can't do that with the brain. So now your sleep's gone out until about Wednesday or Thursday. So now you try again and you say, well, I'm doing what you said, but that's the subtleties you know you didn't. You have to stick to it

Saturday Sunday as well. Now I know some people get away with it because we're variants, we're not all the same, but the general rule is once you do that, you're finished. It won't accept this destruction of sleep. So, again, I'm trying to point out that sometimes there's subtleties in the way that mind works, and it's the same with emotional stuff, which is why I pre-programmed things about four times a day, because my experience for me is if I don't, then I get my team might say, a midget chimp outbursts. And then I think, gee, I'd have to come around and say,

okay, sorry about that, let's start again. All right, but if I prime it about three or four times, get it back into, I tend to never to get one. So it's consistently. Yeah, what I really appreciate about your approach times get it back in tune, I tend to be able to get one. What a really... Consistency. Yeah, what I really appreciate about your approach and what you've gone through today is a real humbleness or sort of a lack of ego, at least an apparent lack of ego, around needing to be right. And I think that it's a very strong signal of trustworthiness that it's just, I want people to be better. I want them

to have a better relationship with themself, people that are around them, I want them to have more peace of mind and live a more flourishing, better life. You have an approach that you believe in, but if there are other things that people do, I think it's a very refreshing way in a world in which everybody is trying to prove themselves to be right and prove their models and their worldviews and their books or their courses to be. Yeah, but no, but the reality is that none of us are always right and that no everyone will resonate. So I'm not it's very nice to say I don't say it's humble. I think it's been rational that there are plenty of other models that people have said,

it is much better or I don't get this gym model. So I don't think it's necessarily humble. And I think on the eagle thing to be fair, like a lot of people who are in medical, are now I'd sciences, and philosophies and all this, and where we're practical and therapists therapists, we're there to help people we get a kick out of that. So in a sense you feed your ego because but it's only about for you to think oh that person really did well. So I thrive and I think it's nice to on people doing well. So to me you know seeing someone suddenly saying I've really got my act together or achieve something like like Chris Hoy did, you feel thrilled that you're saying,

I had a little bit of a part in that. See, Steve, you're even humble in your humbleness, which is unfalsifiable. I'm gonna keep on, I'm gonna keep on accusing you of it. Now, I really do like it. And I think the idea of the mind having this hidden metric, right, the fact that our piece of mind are happiness, the fact that we're living in alignment with our values, we don't see it

day to day in the same way. It doesn't appear on a scale in the same way. And I'm fascinated by how people sacrifice hidden metrics for observable metrics. So let's take a piece of mind and money. A lot of the time people will sacrifice peace of mind in order to get money because it is so difficult to see. And I really think that one of the things that appears to be happening here is trying to make that hidden metric a little bit more observable by checking in, by seeing where I'm at, by reflecting on what I've done. I, I'm a, again, I guess, I'm a doctor and a scientist

at heart and I like to measure things. And so I do like people to see that progress. Because we also know our chimpanzees like to achieve as our humans do. So I do push this to say, let's get a scale to measure things. Even happiness, you know, we've not we talked about it. But I asked

people not to give me a scale of 5 out of 10 because I don't think that really helps because one minute, they're one, one minute, they're nine. What I do is I say things like, tell me five things that will make you happy. And they're like simple things. So it could be, have you a cup of coffee, go for a walk with a dog or it could be going out with friends for a meal. So what I do is say, I want you to measure how many times you do that in a week because we know that if you do those things, the chance of you being happy go up. So I measure indirect. So I often don't measure direct. I think what's going to influence you to get what you want.

So I'm quite keen on what happiness lists I go on about them because again because most people do want to be happy. I do want to be happy. I've made myself into this kind of weird person book but I'm simply so mind for me. I have a piece of mind list. But I think happiness lists I think are really important and I like to divide them into instantaneous because that can make a difference to our chimps, maybe not our humans. So for me, a couple of copies is right at the top of the list. I'm an addict, so if I want to get happy, I grab a copy and think, I'm happy now.

I even use that as an emotional blackmail on my chim. So if I've got 50 emails and I've got to do them, and my chimps doesn't want to do emails, right? But I know it'll benefit people. So I'll say, you don't get coffee till we do 10. I have no idea why, but it will do 10. So we both do 10 and then I get coffee. So and it works for me.

So simple, simple. There's an equivalent, you may have seen this in some of the training sessions that you've either done yourself or observed, but in CrossFit,, you will have a time-bounded workout and the coach will be stood at the front of the room and you'll be your heart rate at 180 and you've got the taste of metal in the back of your throat and you hate the coach and the workout and gravity and everything. And the coach does this thing, every single CrossFit gym on the planet does this. The coach will shout from the front of the room, Chris, get back on the bar, three, two, one, jump on the bar. And there's something

about that countdown. And it's like someone's literally put their hand inside of you and made you do the thing that they were going to do. And the idea of like, you're not getting a coffee, or you're not going to go for a walk, or you're not going to do the whatever. There are going to go for a walk or you're not going to do the whatever. There are like these little bugs or features, perhaps in the code that we have that's running our operating system. And sometimes you can just inject yourself at the right point to get into it. You can learn to do it. It's the same man. People say to me, I've worked with the British Zoom team for a while. And the biggest thing for them was getting out of bed in the morning because it said it's like four o'clock starts

and it can be hard and so some of them struggle and again it's the same principle of saying don't think, just block the chimp because that's what's stuck in you. You wanna get up, it's only the chimp ring that says stay in bed or we could have five minutes more and it's irrational really because you sound you get up, that's where their arms go. So again, it's quite powerful to learn to block thinking and just say, no, I'm not going without a acting. And that's basically what you did with your Chris

get going through. So you're not thinking anymore. You're just acting. So what he's done effectively, you know, scientifically, is turned your computer on as a behavior. It's neither chimp nor human that's got on the bike. It's the computer that I was taking over and said, it's irrelevant how I feel it's irrelevant, what emotions there's an action needs to in and here we go. So he's used to trick a point for the computer and that's why that will work. But you can learn to do that for yourself, which is what I've done. I get my computer to take over and my chip goes, okay, okay, we'll get copied soon. Steve Peters, ladies and gentlemen, okay, we'll get coffee soon.

Steve Peters, ladies and gentlemen, Steve, I absolutely love your work. I love your demeanor. I think that I think it's very, very good. And no matter how humble you are, I think that you should continue to do the things that you are and take all of the praise, because it seems very, very well deserved.

What should people do beyond the books, but those as well, if they think that they want to get even more information, if they want to start working with somebody on this, what is it that you guys offer? I mean, they can work things out from the books. I say, Path through the jungle is much more explicit with exercises to try that hopefully would resonate with people. And it goes through the science, and there's lots of references, 400 400 plus they can look up. We run a small company and we do do workshops for teams or individuals. I do a lot of fun stuff as well so we have a sports conference coming up in October. I'm going on the Dracula homes back to North Yorkshire and Whitby and we're going to do a fun I'm going to

take should beginning to set them off. I did a a team bill for my team. They loved it. So I thought let's hope that it's the public. So I'm doing that in October as a weekend retreat. So it's fun, but it's team bill for finding Dracula's coffin. And then I do a Christmas conference. So we do do public conferences. We have an annual conference every May where I don't do on speaking. You'll be pleased. My team get up and do it, but we have the team available a'r pwybliwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch yn ymwch at the moment, I'm following a pastor of the jungle to try and give people something to work on practically. And there's a community there who go on discussion boards. So if people want to join in and they're resonating, they could meet like-minded people, which is what I'm trying to set up. It's working, I hope. Fantastic, Steve, I really appreciate you. Thank you.

Thank you so much for inviting me. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,