The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - The Mindset Doctor: The Secret Man Behind The World's Top Performers: Steve Peters

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Do you control your emotions or do your emotions control you? Has the irrational parts of your consciousness ever hijacked your logical mind? Have you ever wanted to understand how to overcome these thoughts in order to become the person you always wanted to be? This is exactly what Professor Steve Peters has helped people from all areas of life to achieve. He has worked with everyone from psychiatric patients to elite athletes. His classic book, ‘The Chimp Paradox’, has helped to change thousands of lives. In this enlightening conversations Professor Peters uncovers the ways that our mind is often at odds with itself, the psychological tricks used by Olympians to achieve gold, and the toll is takes upon the psychologists helping their patients through their trauma. Steve: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3D5YBBA Website - https://bit.ly/3iZtr84 Steve’s book: https://bit.ly/3wm10Ec Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to amazon music who when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you

that listen to this show let's continue 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. An 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.

Not just any psychologist, it's Dr. Steve Peters. I'm a 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 Ronnie O'Sullivan. The emotion that that guy was getting at that point was to be so unpleasant that partway through a world championship

he shook hands and walked out. So in Ronnie's case, what do you do? 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?

Wow, now we're really getting deep. Before we're even born, the emotional memory's starting to react to that trauma. Your parent might suddenly say, oh, you're just an idiot. But something might have happened just before that where you've got one out of 10 and you were bottom of the spelling test. And the two together get emotionally tangled

and that then damages the circuits. So you get people often who have very low self-esteem. How does one go about working with someone who's got serious self-esteem issues? I'm going to be introvertially unsafe. 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 Steve, how would you summarize your professional, academic bio and experience? Okay, that's a tough starter. I would say that I'm a person who wants to help people. So what I've done throughout life is say, 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, in particular becoming a 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, what are those? My friends all laugh at this because I've got five degrees. So effectively, I started off doing mathematics and teaching, but then I went back into medicine. And from there, their scientific qualifications, I got a medical degree. And then I went to the Royal College.

So you specialise in psychiatry and get your membership exams. and then I've specialised again in looking at things like because I got involved with sports people I did an MSc so that we look at sports medicine itself again and brush up on my medical background so I'm still a doctor at heart and then because I teach at university I did an MSc in medical education so I sort of again following what I've said as a theme 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 so that that is my academic background. And then in terms of experience what give me an overview of the sort of plethora of experience you've had practically working with people in different contexts and industries. Yeah, I mean, I went through medical training,

and then you do your routine job. So you medicine, surgery, and so on. And I trained in general practice, and then went into psychiatry when I hit psychiatry as 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, child 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 um learning disability and then 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 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 psychiatry. I felt what the service at that time,

it was a long time ago, was quite poor for old age and there was very little research. It's before iRecept, so the anti-dementia drug came out and 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 in university

alongside clinical work. And that meant really I needed to do general adult. So I then set off in general adult psychiatry, did a lot of clinical work, 20 years in the NHS, but progressed because the difficult cases are often personality disorders and how you manage them, and particularly forensic style, so psychopathic, colloquially called. We'd call them dissocial 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 who were detained, who've 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.

When 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 developed so you end up with a vast experience over the last 40 years um 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 no so uh i'm not a sports fan i'm a people fan uh 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 came in a bit left field i was in forensics at the time but i was still teaching at university uh one of my previous medical students

i teach medicine uh went as a a doctor 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 he excelled. And then I can name the next person. At that point, I was introduced to Chris Hoy.

And Chris, amazing guy, absolutely amazing. So really, it was an easy bit of work to do to help him to get his mind to do what he wanted to do with his mind. 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 for a year.

And after a year, I was convinced. I was working with Vicky Pendleton. And I knew that needed a bit more work. And she's, again, an amazing person. Great people to work with. And so I then took the leap. I mean, at that point, I was heading 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, I don't know, a cascade of all the teams. And so I started working across the Olympic teams and then went off to Beijing Olympics and it just I don't know gave momentum and I just got this reputation well this guy can help you mentally um you know so I work alongside the coaches obviously they're the people who take them to

the front and I do the mental side of it so 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, in the NHS, with the police. I've done a lot of work with business people. So it just became generic at that point. Sir David Brailsford, who's been on this podcast, who was the performance director, I believe,

of the British cycling team, took over at a time when it was struggling and led it to become maybe the greatest cycling team of all time. 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 was struggling,

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 to say is 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.

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. And 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, and only then,

would I ask to go into your world so then we can apply what you've learned so it was interesting that two people i worked with the public again were vicky pendleton um who was probably still the world's most successful female sprinter on the bike and then ronnie o'sullivan in snooker 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 got 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 I keep pushing this point. It is a skill. You've got to acquire it. So 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 whether your 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 of 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 hoyer 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 worked with 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 pace judgment, right? If you

go off too fast, you burn out and you won't finish. And 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 kilo, 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. When he sets off on the bike, where is he putting his focus? And that's what Chris was saying is when I set off 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? And he'd 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, easier 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 there's like a three-week camp before the olympics i went to the holding camp in newport with him 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 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 around the day of the o Olympics, he forgot where he was until he passed the line. So to me, that's like you're in 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 awkward? 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, 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 help you 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 he goes into that, it's very likely he'll slow down. It's not going to help him.

If he goes into the second system, which we'll 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.

Finally, 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 to 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 so when i came down the stairs to see you today i i know the route i've done it a hundred times so i was i was holding my ipad but i was on autopilot yeah as 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 then. Is the computer where our habit sits?

It's 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. 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 and your body language will be positive. If you have, I'm being severe, obviously, if you have a belief nobody likes me or I'm not as good as everyone else, which unfortunately a lot of computers are programmed with that, 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. 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 which ones we can resolve. But to your point then about chris hoy on that 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 um 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 given me permission. He keeps saying, tell everybody everything, but I won't tell you everything. A lot of stuff is behind locked doors. So he's a great guy. I love Ronnie 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 he's saying to me all the time, he rings regularly. So I've spoken to him already yesterday. 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, 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 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 the white ball with the cue stick 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 wow, the emotion that that guy was getting at that point was to being so unpleasant that partway through a world championships competition, he just suddenly stopped, froze, 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. 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 here. 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 saying, right, hit the cue. And he said, I hit the cue ball. And he said, I'm walking out. And the voice is still going, right, just keep walking. We're out of here. I can't deal with this.

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 it wanted to do. So once I explained the model to him and the model isn't for 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 they're 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 snookery his whole whole life, he could see 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 have 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 a 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 of 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 is me and one day I just shout at you for some reason and get annoyed and your chimp system is most likely going to shout back. But if it believes I'm not as good as other people or I can't cope, 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 neurosciences, 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 at people, it makes you look foolish. Yeah, well, I can tell you what my beliefs are and I can tell you where they came from. So my parents had a very loud shouting relationship. I've never shouted in my life because of that, because I learned firsthand. So what's your belief 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 now you stop there so and do that's brilliant yeah so just to try and just 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, we're going 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 say, to me, Steve, that really resonates. I've got to have evidence. Yes. And you have to believe this. And you can't brainwash your brain at self-interbelieving. 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, then you don't shout. And it's not that you can't, it's your computer 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 grew up in a household

where they were shouting and they, for whatever reason, gained the evidence that it was an effective way to communicate or whatever, how does someone go about unprogramming that belief? Well, it's not my job to do that. So I'll explain what I mean. I agree with you.

To me, shouting is not very helpful, you know, at all. However, if somebody, that's not my job to tell people. I say to them, 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 their 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. 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 and say, what's the long-term consequence of me shouting? Now, it may be with person A, 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 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 then now 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. 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. If you shout, 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 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. 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 as 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 days 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. I lost my temper, whatever.

And I'm reflecting on it thinking, god you know an hour's 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 dog because it's probably the best example uh what you wouldn't do i hope is kick the dog dog's doing what the dog does you know the dogs the dog doesn't know 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 a 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 going to do is beat myself up for not being able to manage the dog why is that a bad idea beating yourself up yeah just like you know oh god i'm such an idiot i shouldn't have done that it's sort of self-evident i mean again this is the devil in the detail if you said to me you know, oh God, I'm such an idiot, I shouldn't have done that. 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 makes me feel better just to think, right, I've had a go at 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 a 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 approve of somebody beating myself 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 respond? Yeah, well, the chimp's going to 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 and say, well, 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, 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 now you can see how it's starting to escalate, and you're putting all these beliefs inside your system. So there are 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? Am I going to 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 an argument with your partner or whatever else about something tiny. In that moment, sometimes I find it difficult to apologize. I think I've gotten 10x better. I'm thinking about the last sort of confrontation I had with my girlfriend.

And in fact, all I did was listen and then apologized after she'd finished speaking. Because I genuinely was like, I completely understand. 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 done something, 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, everyone's unique. So if I'm working with you, I'll say, well, again, we're looking at what beliefs you're holding is, do you think apologizing is something that's strong or weak? It's a good question. It's a good question. And I think I'm going to say that my belief on that has changed.

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 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 gosh yeah 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 tack

and say that how important is it that you're happy or that your partner's happy who do 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 don't even know. I want it to be right. I don't know. Ah, good, good. I'll just finish on that bit and I'll come back to the next one, which is where I think you're coming from. I'll give you a surprise coming here.

Uh-oh. 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 I want to do is upset and hurt her, it's easy to make an apology. Yeah this girl. I don't want to lose this girl. And the last thing I want is to upset and hurt her. It's easy to make an apology. 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. 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. You know? That is 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 her, 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 the 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 i called it the chimp system when we look at chimpanzees they 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 great apes back in the 1990s, and a publication came out in 2018 for the people who are academic to show the chimpanzee and human think very differently to the other great 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 on fairness. So experiments with chimpanzees, and I'm sure you find them on YouTube, where they do unfairness to chimpanzees and even basic, like capuchin monkeys demonstrate the same thing. They must have fairness so whenever we demand fairness we're actually operating the chimp system which is emotionally based the human can accept unfairness the human gets over it 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 chimp paradox that life isn't fair yeah and you actually i wrote it down earlier on because because because she said that to me you you reference 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 push this, I'm pushing my next book now. Oh, this is, I mean, this one's... A Path Through the Jungle is, to me, is a step up. No, it is. The reason I did that one was to try and, this is 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, here's the science behind it this time and references, you're going to read it up. But if you don't, here'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 my favorite um podcast episodes that i recorded with a guy called mo gowda he said to me um we're we're unhappy when our expectations of how life should be going are unmet well that's why when i've gone in let's say in the new book i've tried to say how do these systems approach

life and 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 has 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 emotion 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 oh wow, now we're really getting deep. It depends on, 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 not necessarily what we would define as traumatic, it's what the child defines. So I'm being a bit facetious here. For example, 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 repercussions throughout life. So, but we 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 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 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 nine out of ten for the spelling come top of the class and he says you're an idiot you just bat it off and think well i got nine to ten so therefore the brain doesn't pick it up so again i'm trying to give examples where 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 fetal 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 and again every fetus is different on the 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 give a terminology of a goblin to. So a gremlin is a

belief or an experience you can process and actually get rid of. Whereas a goblin is something which has 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 they may have come from traumatic experiences. What I'm saying is I'm not rolling over and saying,

oh, well, this has 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 take down gremlins, but we can't... Goblins you have to accept. And the reason I brought that terminology in is,

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 therapists of any kind, and 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 say stop putting pressure on that person and work with it. You still try and remove it but there's a point you say to them, look, let's say stop putting pressure on that person and work with it you still try and remove it so but but there's a point you say to them 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 it's damaged but we can box it in and if it does raise it 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 there's 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 it seems like people just can't overcome certain things. Is there an age group where goblins, the traumas that we can't seem to overcome,

the evidence or whatever it is, the damage to the circuitry, 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 just about done.

Okay. Some people finish, we know that it matures, the final sort of like bits to the brain mature, which is actually the rationality 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 of the oven. So wherever you've got, you're finished. I agree with what you're saying is then you accept this is the way 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 death roll over i'm not saying that but the reason that i did it was it's they're also the therapists 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 all right that's the 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 uh 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. Most therapists I've worked alongside have been excellent, you know, whatever their profession 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 another 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. 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 know like in grief reactions, you have to allow the brain 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 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

where 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 pip here yeah marissa pier and um she said i do you know what Steve I've 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 going to be almost paradoxically and controversially almost.

It's to say, you know, if you look at the neuroscience of our brain and what it's trying to do, the chimp system is naturally and healthily low self-esteem. That is the natural chimp system. And we see this not just in our system in 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 tin helmet and hope it goes away. So that's how the chimp system works. So I say, 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 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 and they will compare and they'll jostle for position. So we're built to do similar. We jostle for position. And sport is one do similar we jostle for position and sport is one way we see it blatant all right and we enjoy that provided we retain it as sport and not start going self-esteem on it so we muddle the two up and again in say 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 you than me. It's facts. And that's what we do because our chimp is based to say, I've got to be loved by everyone. So you just say, well, Steve likes me, I'm not going to bother with him. But if it's Brian or whatever, I'll try and curry favour. And you try and please these people.

And if you look, it's really unhealthy to do that. And it's not rational. Instead of saying, let me create a world, because I'm not going to work with my chimps, I'm going to work with 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 giving 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 see, 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, and again, not everything that chimpanzees in the wild do refer to us, but some things do overlap. And we find that a chimpanzee will always try and curry favour 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 likely a leopard will get it. It's got to sleep sometime. But if you think of us as humans, we tend to see this. So you particularly see in teenagers.

They try and make everybody their troop. So anyone who's rejecting them 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, 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 i don't 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. 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 Armour backpack. I think at the time when Anthony Joshua, who was the great boxer, um, was, was an Under Armour 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.

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. They wouldn't be able to build a community,

right? The child should be dependent on the parent. Right. You know, if you get a teenager who's outside the peer group, we start getting concerned it doesn't mean there's something desperately wrong some people are more isolated 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 have common ground so we all our chimps always look for common ground or common experiences so if i wear orange socks and i'm the gang leader then you wear orange socks and now we're all on orange socks. And if I suddenly 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 neuroscientifically, the brain does change almost to the day for most people. So by 18, 19, 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 individualise and decide, I'm just going to set my own agendas and I like what music I like and do what I like. But about three in 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. 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 favour. So that's one way of coping with low self-esteem. So 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

it's 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 Tends to be then there's a real danger. Now I'm going into forensics. Somebody who's in that position where they're desperately trying to please 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 when you look at that, my gut feel as well as logic would be to get them out of that and say, look, be very careful. If you're going to 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 low self-esteem i mean

years ago uh when i did a lot of work in general adult psychiatry and 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 uh there was a book out at the time uh which i used to recommend which i I think is excellent, written by a woman. And it was entitled Women Who Love 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 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, I have the right to speak my mind and also to say to people, please don't do that. It offends me or it 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 into a poor 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 in sport, one of the questions asked is, why are you doing this? Because it's great to do sport. I'm not against sport. But why are you doing it? And often the answers which do lead to success but can have consequence are, 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 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 sport. You'll keep doing that. That's 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, coming out of it it can lead to danger so again it's not for me to say change it's for 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 insecurities I had from being a child, you know, with the only black family in the neighborhood, with the poor family, with the smashed up house, 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 wrote about this in my book where i pondered that if i lose that do i lose my ambition and my drive that's a good point it's interesting that um i'm sorry you experienced that oh no because it didn't sound great and again it was a driving force that eventually led you to being successful in some sense

so it's not altogether 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 wherever 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 forces as long as you can contain them and they don't contain you. There's a difference. So I think if you said, right, I want to try and prove that I can make 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 minority groups. I don't think it's ideal. I'd much rather if I'd met you then say, can you just see yourself as being you? 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 that not lose my force? The answer is not really. Your force is driven by emotion at that point. So that's your chimp driving you, 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, it's tiddlywinks. You know, life is tiddlywinks, but let's do it with a passion. But at any point, if we're not doing well and we make a bad move, let's be able to laugh and say it's tiddlywinks. 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 valuables it's got, you know, money. That's a way of 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 heart to heart behind locked doors at that point, you'd say, I'm not happy because I'm aware of what I've experienced, I don't know whether you'd resonate. If I met you 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. Oh, yeah, 100%. And that's what I've experienced. I've worked 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 before, before I had attained the things that I was aiming to attain, when I feel like I was most driven by that pursuit which was before 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 that 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. You know, just working seven days a week in an office, not and then thinking that, you know, this was the 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 and

drinking a lot of alcohol too much alcohol so i can 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 shades of gray again i'm not it makes clear i'm not against people earning money and having great possessions and holidays and because that will obviously give them some pleasure and happiness i'm not against 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 or 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? 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 doors they're saying there's an emptiness there's something like you're 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 say to people could just get a balance just tell me what 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 but i thought i was some anomaly yeah i didn't think i needed the like fundamentals of human needs i didn't think i

needed a connection i thought all of these things what 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 just say otherwise you're not going to get anybody. So therefore you're wanting this admiration, you're wanting this status. 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, 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 don't address the rest. So in saying that we're not all going to look like Tarzan or Miss World, you know, and if that's what you're aiming to do, then you're going to fail because you'll always see a bigger Tarzan or a better Miss World. It doesn't matter. And I think that can be a faulty stance in life. But 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 there.

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 you're 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 right table and you can't believe how many people resonate or you go to 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 uh and there are other things there's 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 yeah all right i've got my bird table yeah we just we just put my girlfriend's dad a bird 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 it or not 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 go, why aren't they coming to nightclubs like why aren't they here they don't know how to have any fun that'll never happen to me I'll 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 a teenager generally it's a big feature in most people's lives. And in the 20s it is, but it starts to diminish.

So you don't find people in the 40s and 50s. You can, but most people have moved on. 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's happening here um but 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 i mean that's great yeah you know i'm not saying that's something wrong but i'm saying there is a general trend and you're experiencing this so i think pulling it back to

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 twenties, we start to change 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 eating too much or I'm 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. We don't need treatment.

Now we assume that this is longstanding. And what you've done is, what you're describing is a lot of maladaptive coping strategies. So I eat too much, which is probably comfort eating, or it's just habitual stuff that you're just not, you know. Or it could be you've got so low self-esteem, I've seen this, you're almost punishing yourself. You know, I don't deserve 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. So I have to start, my starting point is 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 said in the book here. In A Path to the Jungle, I explain 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. I want to be really confident. I want to have 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 about 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? How do you know it's me? can see on functional MRI scanners, if we remove the chimp and computer system, then you're completely in 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 be calm, 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 writes anxious. No one. They say, no, what I want to be is calm, collected, a good friend, have integrity. That is you 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 that, you say, wow, what I'm presenting to the world is interference. It's not me. If I didn't have this machine, I would not have anxiety because that 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 it wants to present is a choice.

The chimp has no choice. The computer has no choice. The computer's programmed. But these are interfering and presenting to the world someone who's 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 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 suddenly you feel at peace people often say i don't know it's just i felt totally relaxed and thought i've got perspective i've got gather the world's 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 chimp's the good guy so 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. They don't write integrity.

They don't care. And if I challenge, say, you didn't put compassion, they say, I'm not bothered by 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 virtue 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'm

i want to hurt people yeah i'll tease that out how'd you how that's my job because again then you look at evidence-based and you look at remorse you look at whether somebody compensates for mistakes you look 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 detain someone to explore this so we don't get fooled is this and 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 neuroscientist we know there's certain tracks in the brain that are not really fully developed or don't function and this produces someone without empathy without remorse without

any conscience 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, they could deceive me. I have to just go on what they tell me. But I can listen carefully to the words they use and 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. But to be honest, people don't do that with me. What you tend to, because I would hopefully set a scene where I don't care what you write 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 way the neuroscience of our mind has tumbled us

so what i said my starting point when you gave me all this was to say, let's write out the real you and let's start building ourself on that and recognising what is not us and let's start unpicking it. So let's just start saying, right, why would you have, and we went earlier 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, they go, that's amazing. I feel better for knowing it's naturally 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'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. So overeating is natural, but it's not good. And even like the classic one I always use with parents and teenagers, I always say, if you've got, I said it this morning with someone,

if you've got a teenager who's got a tidy bedroom, that's who I want to meet. If they have a messy bedroom, great. That's normal, you know? So you're more concerned with teenagers that aren't being teenagers. So if 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 a natural way of doing it. It's not helpful and natural way of doing it. It's not helpful and hopefully they'll grow out of it. But you've got to say what's natural and let's work with that to minimise 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 I accept the machine is the machine. Do we choose what we believe? Could I i choose could i genuinely choose a belief you know we talked earlier on about how you can't just lie to yourself and brainwash yourself to think 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 and 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 to say what's your experience in life and that will formulate our belief or what's your education so with that said then i that said then, I can't choose a belief because my experience, my evidence, my education, but I couldn't... You couldn't, no, if we don't choose beliefs, we develop beliefs. Yeah. We develop them on what we experience

or what education tells us. If I say to you, research shows one in 200 people have got psychopathic brains, then you look at the research and go, okay, i believe that research now 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 know, you think, well, can we challenge that? And let's see your experience. But if it resonates with 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 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 something that you don't really like looking back, 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 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 there was no point in 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 her 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 her to see some value in her. I said, what'd you like to do? And 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 the cat. And I said, can I ask you to do something for me? And this wasn't planned. I just thought, can you look after the bird table? And can you look after the cat? And without a word of lie, a different person emerged. And I sat there and I thought, why has 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 give her a purpose.

And that was her self-esteem. She took it out of herself. She then said, it 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 and I met her in outpatients 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 amacara. 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 psychoanalysis 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 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. Try and see things as being like a spectrum and have a 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'm probably getting the idea now, whenever someone comes in, I have to really work hard to understand their mind. What beliefs are they 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, but 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 as being unhelpful and replace them. In that example of giving that young lady a bird box and the cat, and then her going and working with animals and that making her feel a sense of

sort of worthiness, I guess. 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 what 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 taken 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 I've said this has so helped you know it really makes sense to me that I thought I've got to expand on it and give it in more detail 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 a 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'm alluding to there as well is this workaholism. Yeah. Yeah, do I keep helping more and more?

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, 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 her 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, most people don't even know what their values are. So I push 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 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 it's not as easy as you think. So I give this as exercise in the 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 you demonstrate that? People go, I don't know. So I say, 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, be assertive, 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 with 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 you said it doesn't become the devil where i've got to i've got to do this every day otherwise i I'm failing again. You 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 have to contain emotion. They've got the psych falling apart.

But on the other hand, you know, I'm a human being and you go away and you think somebody, for example, horror stories like some parents who's lost their child. There's no way back, you know. And my view, which may be wrong, is that I say to people, can we start by you're 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 i'd love it to hear from parents i've come to terms with it but that's really hard my experience has been they don't 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 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 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? Learn to recognize and talk to myself, you know, which I do, and say, at the end of the day,

I can't change life. I can't change things, you know, tragedies happen. 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 back feeling 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. Good on you. It's how I work and it works for me. I've heard you in A Path Through the Jungle talk about what you just said

there which is you actually talk to yourself yeah in the path 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 lots of success and and i say to people always pat yourself on the back when you do this. But one of the things my chimp responds to, and I don't know why he responds to this, is sarcasm. But I've worked that out. So whenever something upsets my chimp and I just think, come on, get a life. And I can't, my chimp's going for me. I say to the chimp very quickly, can I just ask, do you want to be upset for a minute, an hour, the rest of our lives? Just give me a help. I don't know why.

It makes me laugh. So it disarms my chimp. And we know that if you can laugh at yourself or a circumstance, and you can't always, but if you can, 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 chimp's 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 my chimp

may witter again but you know i'll deal with it so yeah i talk to my chimp may witter again, but you know, I'll deal with it. So yeah, I talk to my chimp in that I know what can bring me round. When you say talk to, do you mean out loud? I wouldn't do that without people around. 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. And it works. And it works. And it works. I will. I'll tell you why there's, and again, I'll both go through this in detail for those who want the science behind it.

It's referenced. When we talk to ourself, 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 in 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 you believe of that and they'll go nothing it's 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 with British Cycling, which was great at the time and many fantastic people there, great achievements. When I used to drive in, I live in the Peak District, so 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 to say not the right time yet not the right time so I would deal with a lot of upsets you can imagine working with people you get a lot of in all kinds of things and then I would come home and I just particularly point entering the peaks where I'd say okay it's your time and my chimp 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 chim chimps do, you can't keep going. It used to get bored of its own voice. And I'd say, you're finished. And he'd say, yeah, yeah, it's fine now. So that won't work for everyone, you know. But I'm just saying sometimes it does work. I would just like to add, because I think I'm fairly resilient, when we're not resilient, sometimes you've got to give TLC. So I'm fairly resilient. When we're not resilient, sometimes

you've got to give TLC. So I'm not always firm with the chimp. Sometimes I go, you've 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 resonates with you? You've got to try it. But sometimes I have to say even to my own chimp, 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've got reputational damage and you can't do anything about that because it's not in your hands. And 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 say, 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 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 nobody 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 and something has terrible happened go to your friends because that's all that counts at the end you know it's who you're with at the end of the day and these are your friends your partner potentially your family the people that stand with that's why i say 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 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 our humans can get it wrong sometimes we blame 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 in england football for three years and i worked with liverpool for three years so i know i know a lot of lads went very public which was great and again uh 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 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 voice or the way 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 TLCL support. Habits. A lot of people are thinking about habits.

It's January. I made a video on habits a couple 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, whether they're helpful or destructive. And I'm giving examples. So that's one you picked out that's quite powerful if you grasp it. So for example, I'll take the simple example, which I may have put in the book, I don't remember. 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. It's true. So therefore you don't do anything. It's true. Whereas if you say, right, change your image and say actually my chimp being being tidy 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 self well you've got to sit down and reflect on this. 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 who didn't actually manage themselves. And that's no detriment to psychs who struggle because it's not an easy career or 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 chimp 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 someone who 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 said no that is who i am so i become uncomfortable now if things run tidy i agitate and think no get it tied it up so i start perceiving myself as this energized guy who's

going to get up and do stuff so if you define your self-image you're actually programming your computer to 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 stage four of the book is

when people think about habit loops, they often have a reward at the end of it. You referenced suffering. Now there's this quote I heard many years ago. I think it was just over 10 years ago. It must've been, God, I'm getting old. 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 or 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 sort of self-evident you know if you're for example in a bad relationship and it's really not doing you 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 um and the same with like untidiness you leave it and leave it and leave it and then somebody comes in and says a partner yeah blimey 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 it out? Yeah, there is. I mean, when I talk about relationships are critical to us, and 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 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 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 the reward is so big. However, then they marry you, and for some reason we take 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 threat yet.

So now it's not painful enough. So she's struggling with it. I love the guy, but this is now what I do. So I say, let's increase the pain. I want you to sit down and imagine she can't cope 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 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 blimey this would be painful so i'm suddenly going to 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 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 life 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 tidy 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 you 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'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 was so scared about like losing her that- There you go. 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 got it for her after last time we spoke and she absolutely loves it.

Part of me was like, she was telling me how she feels. I was like, oh my God, she's going to dump me. Oh my God. I thought I was going to lose her. And I know it's not the case. And it's just this irrational part of my brain was i think she's finished with you yeah and that really makes me go back and i need to immediately change it was we're having a conversation about quality time and i hadn't given i hadn't 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 cancelling things yeah but i needed the warning, it seemed. And that's what I'm trying to say. Now, there's 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. And there's a danger now.

And I do advocate that sometimes you say it to them because your chimp needs to 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 tidied the flat. Because then your chimp goes, right, good, I get the accolade now.

So I'm not saying you should knock the chimp 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 do get circumstances where I'll work with people and say, I tidied the flat.

I did everything. She doesn't even recognize it. I canceled it for my diary. 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 chimp's saying, please make sure they know and they've recognized it. And again, I don't know.

There may be couples where they say, if I say that, she'll lose it. So I say, well, don't do it then. Tell me and I as a therapist will say to you, well done. And that might be enough for your chimp. So again, it's that thing which I keep saying to you, Steve, I've got to work with the person in front of me and even potentially their partner or family and say, well, what would they do before we make a plan?

That was step one in your triangle triangle that's 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 or 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 great 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. So other than that, what you do, non-psychological mindedness is where you blame everybody else or blame circumstances or say, this happened to me in childhood. These may all be genuine, but they're not actually helpful.

Disempowering, right? Yeah, you're using them as an excuse not to take responsibility and turn them over. It's like giving 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?

Including me, I have to say. Again, it's really difficult to say. 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, I'm not well, and people then go, well, they're not well.

And there'll be some truth in it, but not fully the truth so people often use as a defense mechanism the victim role um sometimes they 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 blaming 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 whose 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 would give the tlc and the recognition that that didn't help but on the other hand let's look at what you can do regardless of the background i was reading and i talked about something in my episode about habits that there's

something called the question behavior effect where if someone is asked about something in 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 know you're 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 why that is they talked a lot about this this idea of cognitive dissonance and we want to right can

i interrupt you because what you're giving me is exactly what you said earlier about self-image right so what you've affected is the same thing is when i take yes it means that's the norm i go to the gym so the cognitive that's the norm i go to the gym so the cognitive dissonance 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 dissonance is 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, 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 tick 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, people are then less likely to go to the gym because there's room for excuse. Exactly. Exactly. So I can go, I'm going to go on Monday and then my 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 not everyone but most people if you put 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 and that's because the chimp doesn't like to fail because his ego's at risk. And as I said earlier, way back in our conversation,

the chimp, it's about achievement. It's about self-esteem. So it doesn't want to fail. So the chimp joins forces with us. So one way is to help yourself is get it on board. Instead of seeing it negative, it's the best friend you'll have. It's 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. 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.

Yes, because the chimp will join forces with you. And then that last point in the triangle, right. The habit triangle commitment. Yeah. What I'm saying with this is again, teasing out the neuroscience, if we go on motivation and again, if people use it, great. All 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 ch 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 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 chimp's gonna leave it who cares there's any weeds and it's going to kill you back in it but i would then say which i will right you stay in here i'm going out and if you want to join me great but i'm doing the garden i remove emotion and i say what has to be done is getting done and is getting done now we're not discussing it and i will start motivation

will follow commitment and that means the chimp brain 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 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've talked a little bit about

it there in the context of my own relationship. 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 sheds of i'm not saying definitively, but as a golden rule, it's self-evident again. If you're in a great place, then you become attractive to most people because you're exuding this 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, I'm going to give you a bizarre example.

Many years ago, I'll simplify this. I worked with a lady who had an overpowering desire to help others. And I tried to say to her, let's stop and just get yourself. And she couldn't do this, couldn't get in a good place. I have to help others. And it damaged all relationships she had because these were overpowering. And eventually, I thought this was a great success many years ago. And 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 wrote in it's not before the internet and uh she got a group of guys wrote 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. And then she picked this guy and absolutely worked fantastic. And I brought her in and I said, I'd love to meet him before I discharged from the clinic because her esteem was good then. It was more tragic than that. She wasn't

in a great place at all because of this. So she was, I met this guy and I said, what's the best thing about it? 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 and both fulfilled what they wanted to do. So I felt at the time it was an 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 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. One of them who we talked about last time was my business partner,

who's very open about his relationship with, 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 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, 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. This is one of my top three favorite books of all time because it's practical, 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 and 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 the human mind, either my own or someone else's. So it's, I feel like this is essential reading for everybody. And that's why it's i feel like this is essential 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 and again tell the two guys you've got in your team that have done this you know all i'm doing is presenting the neuroscience in what i think is an accessible way that is entertaining but quite serious uh to try and get people to get the neuroscience simplified 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 the bottom line is let them pat themselves on the back because 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 skill so 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 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? Wow. 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've found yourself. So never forget who you are. Remember the blank piece of paper because that's going to give you the self-esteem that you deserve. Steve, thank you. you