The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

by Steve Peters

if you are trying to lose weight you can keep a progress chart on the fridge door.

Try to see a failure or setback as a challenge. It can be an opportunity to develop yourself and your skills to deal with problem-solving. When we fail at something there are consequences for our self-esteem and self-worth. The Chimp sees it as a catastrophic event and typically gets the outcome completely out of perspective. The Chimp often sees failure as evidence it is a worthless and useless being; that everybody is now aware of this evidence; and there is no way to recover this. On the other hand, Humans see failure as being relative; accept that sometimes we don’t win or get things right; and see failure as a learning curve. Humans accept the outcome and work with it. Therefore, there are two very different perceptions of failure that can occur in a typical mind.

Happiness comes at a price because it usually takes effort.

Try now to name ten things under your control that you could do to make you feel happier. Then ask yourself if you have done them recently. Your delayed happy list might include such things as having friends round for an evening; going out for a meal; holidays; playing sport; and so on. You need to take time to put these things in place so that you have something to look forward to. This is very important to most people if they are to remain happy.

Having some future events to look forward to will help your Chimp to get through less happy moments.

The Gremlin is a belief that happiness is a battle; the Autopilot is that happiness is a lifestyle.