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

by Steve Peters

Within the Chimp Management model, three of these brains – frontal, limbic and parietal – combine to form the ‘Psychological Mind’ and we will only look at these brains.

The three psychological brains in our model, the frontal, limbic and parietal, are called the Human, the Chimp and the Computer.

It is important to grasp that only one of these beings is you, the Human.

The Chimp is the emotional machine that we all possess. It thinks independently from us and can make decisions. It offers emotional thoughts and feelings that can be very constructive or very destructive; it is not good or bad, it is a Chimp.

The Chimp Paradox is that it can be your best friend and your worst enemy, even at the same time. The main purpose of this book is to help you to manage your Chimp and to harness its strength and power when it...

When people have accidents that damage their frontal lobe or where they have a disorder or illness affecting the frontal lobe, their personality alters. Effectively the Human part of the brain stops working and the new personality that presents is the Chimp. Very often, people affected in this way will become disinhibited and lose their judgement or they can become apathetic or have outbursts of aggressive behaviour.

Functional brain scanners show the blood supply in your brain going to the area that is being used. If you think calmly and rationally then we can see the blood going to the frontal area, the Human in your head, and you become the person that you want to be and that you really are. If you become emotional and somewhat irrational, especially when you are angry or distressed, then we see the blood supply go to your Chimp, and you would usually say this is not how you want to be and that you don’t want this. The truth is that it is your Chimp, an emotional machine, that is overpowering your Human mind.

Having a Chimp is like owning a dog. You are not responsible for the nature of the dog but you are responsible for managing it and keeping it well behaved. This is a very important point and you should stop and think about this because it is crucial to your happiness and success in life.

One of the secrets of success and happiness is to learn to live with your Chimp and not get bitten or attacked by it. To do this, you need to understand how your Chimp behaves, and why it thinks and acts in the way that it does. You also need to understand your Human and not muddle up your Human with your Chimp.

Habits are formed when they are easy to do. Therefore, setting aside a specific time in the day that is sacrosanct for development thinking will increase your chances of it happening regularly. This session must be easy to do otherwise your Chimp won’t agree and you won’t do it! So making the session just ten minutes long is more likely to establish the habit than making the session an hour long. Try to establish ten minutes a day. By reflecting during development time, the Human is reviewing what is in the Computer and modifying it. As we will see in future chapters, this is critical to managing your Chimp.

During this time, you need to look back over the last 24 hours and reflect on how you managed it. Keep a logbook and write only one or two lines for each day, which will help focus your mind on how you can improve the way that you do things or how you are thinking. It will also help you to work through the points raised in this book.

The Chimp interprets this information with feelings and impressions. When it has got a feel for what is going on, it then uses emotional thinking to put things together and to work out what is happening and form a plan of action. All of this process is based on emotion. Emotional thinking means that the Chimp makes guesses and fills in detail by assumptions that are typically based on a hunch, paranoid feelings or defensive thoughts. The chances therefore that the Chimp will get the right interpretation as to what is happening may not be so good; however, sometimes the gut feeling it has is right. It can only think and act with emotion.

The Human, on the other hand, will interpret information by searching for the facts and establishing the truth. When it has done this, it will then put things together in a logical manner using logical thinking and form a plan of action based on this. So logic is the Human’s basis for thinking and acting.

Both processes can be healthy, but lead to different interpretations of what is happening and how to deal with it.

Sometimes the two of you agree on what to do and there is no problem, but often the two of you disagree. When you disagree, the Chimp is the most powerful and therefore gets control of your thoughts and actions. However, if you recognise what is happening, and have strategies for managing this, you will gain control of your thinking and then you can act in a logical manner.

The message always goes to the Chimp first (this is one of the rules of how the brain works).

‘Why do I sometimes become so irrational in my thinking?’ The answer may now be clear. It is not you thinking at all, but your Chimp taking over and thinking for you. The solution therefore is to understand how your Chimp thinks, recognise when it is taking over, and intervene.

the Chimp is less predictable than the Human when it comes to decision-making and the process is often irrational. Because of this unpredictability, it is usually unhelpful to let the Chimp think for us, so we need to address it.

Of course, it is good to have feelings from the Chimp and they can be a very useful indication for us to know what to do. However, they are not always reliable and can change quickly. So working with feelings can be helpful or unhelpful. Sometimes the Human needs to say to the Chimp, ‘I don’t care how you feel we have to do it,’ or ‘I don’t care whether you are in the mood or not, it is not about mood.

Here are some of the traits of emotional thinking

Jumps to an opinion The Chimp is fast to reach a conclusion and doesn’t wait for all of the information to come through before reaching its conclusion. The Chimp forms an opinion based on its feelings and impressions and then fixes its opinion. It then searches out evidence to back up its opinion and prove its point. In doing this, it typically twists the facts to fit its opinion and is very unreasonable and irrational if challenged.

Thinks in black and white Inner Chimps are very much like children, they think in terms of black and white. They can be very unforgiving and will not discuss shades of grey. Adult Humans are more able to appreciate that very little in life is black or white. As Chimps think in black and white, they become very judgemental and are quick to respond. When you are thinking with your Chimp you tend to see only one possibility. Chimps don’t usually consider alternative interpretations of what might be happening.

Paranoid The Chimp needs to know that it is safe, so it is vigilant and continually looks for danger and therefore is prone to paranoia. It thinks that it is far safer to be a bit paranoid and wary towards others or a situation than to relax and lose your life. Therefore it is not unusual for our Chimps to be suspicious of others and have some mistrust. The more vulnerable that a Chimp feels, the more paranoid it will become in its outlook. Chimps that are insecure may read lots of things into harmless situations. They can also read intrigue and malice in comments or statements that others make and then allow their imaginations to run wild. When the Chimp has an opinion it will become even more paranoid about defending it. The ...

Catastrophic As Chimps are constantly vigilant to danger, they tend to think catastrophically. They overreact to situations and fuel them with high and intense emotion. Whenever they perceive something is wrong, they have a tendency to start worrying about what might happen and then get things completely out of perspective. This frequently leads to terrible feelings of gloom and doom and stomach-churning moments. These moments are often linked to black-and-white thinking, which means you are left with a feeling that there is no way out or there can be no recovering from what you are going through. The emotion the Chimp then offers to the Human is horrendous and extreme, causin...

Irrational The Chimp does not work rationally. It doesn’t try to decide if something is likely or feasible but typically jumps to conclusions and fills in missing details with anything it chooses. It can therefore become very unreasonable and end up looking foolish. If the Chimp manages to get control of your mind and then interprets what is happening to you, the reasoning it offers is likely to be silly and unfounded. There will be little, if any, logic shown. Sadly this irrat...

This simple story represents how the Chimp thinks very emotionally, it did not wait for the facts but just made assumptions and got offended. In this case the Chimp got angry but there are many other ways it could have responded and still left Rob acting inappropriately. This happens a lot to all of us if we don’t manage our Chimps. By managing our Chimps we would live in a very different world.

Emotive judgement Chimps judge others quickly and without mercy. Judgement is based on all of the criteria that it uses to think with. Therefore it can be based on pure feelings or impressions or on its own paranoia. These judgements are not open to reasoning, so the Chimp is unlikely to be persuaded that it may be wrong. Chimps may also judge others to fulfil their own agenda, such as getting revenge or to wield power over someone.

The Chimp does not use sound reasoning. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is not a good basis to work from. Thankfully there is an alternative way of thinking and we can learn to shift the blood supply in our brains in order to use this alternative. The alternative way is that of the Human.

Humans begin to work out what is happening by first establishing the facts. They gather all the information available before beginning to make plans. Having gathered the facts, Humans try to establish the truth and then base their beliefs on the truth. In society, we spend a lot of energy and discussion finding out the truth, whether it is about something serious or trivial. There is an innate Human desire to try to reach the truth in all situations and when the truth does not come out it can cause distress to both Chimp and Human. Being misrepresented is a particularly unpleasant experience that Humans try to rectify and if this doesn’t happen then the Chimp often joins forces with the Human to demonstrate its annoyance!

Here are some of the traits of logical thinking

Evidence-based Humans work with evidence and they search for proof. They remain open-minded and have the ability to change their mind and to see someone else’s point of view. They don’t personalise their viewpoint or belief, and therefore do not become defensive if challenged.

Rational Rational thinking is when we use common-sense and decide if something is feasible and realistic. Ironically, rational thinking is often prompted by the Chimp, which activates the Human. The Chimp does this by an intuitive prompt; a bell ringing in your head saying that something just doesn’t sound true. However, the Human must remain in charge and search for evidence to back up the Chimp’s prompt. If we don’t do this and allow our Chimp to take over, common-sense disappears and at some point in the future the Chimp’s prompt may work against us. We will then look back and say, ‘What was I thinking?’

In context and with perspective Keeping situations in context and perspective demonstrates Human thinking. Wanting to understand how things came about and what was happening at the time is a Human trait. This helps us to give actions and remarks a context. Humans also appreciate that all events come and go and therefore gai...

Shades of grey and balanced judgement Typically, when we are very young we work via the Chimp and see most things in black and white. Children demonstrate this by being quite harsh in their judgements of situations. Adult Humans think in shades of grey. As adults, we learn to appreciate that there may be many factors involved when we are trying to understand something and we accept that we may not have all of them in our possession. Therefore, we are less likely to judge harshly and we are more likely to see things in shades of grey or not judge at all. We also modify our thinking with the experience that life gives us. Humans acce...

answer or it may be just a matter...

The Human’s basis for making decisions is by using ‘logical thinking’ Logical thinking means that we follow patterns of thinking that are linked and make sense and then reason out conclusions on which to act. If someone is upset, for example, then we can say that there must be a reason for this. The counter-argument would also be true, that if someone experiences something unpleasant then they are likely to become upset. There are several forms of logic that we use. Examples include: • Deducing things by going through steps • Working w...

The purpose and agenda of the Chimp is survival. The Human’s agenda is to achieve self-fulfilment. This is usually about becoming the person you want to be and achieving the things you want to achieve. The Human will often search for the meaning of life. Many people might consider the Human as having the soul or spirit of the person. As we consider the differences between the agenda of the Chimp and the Human we will see why there is frequently a severe clash between the two beings.

the main agenda of the Chimp is to produce the next generation.

A very close second agenda of the Chimp is self-survival, which includes protecting itself from harm.

For many people the drive for sex cannot be underestimated, it is nature’s way of ensuring the species continues. This is why some people who are in a loving relationship and wish to remain monogamous find it almost impossible to remain faithful. The Human is saying and wanting one thing, and the Chimp is saying and wanting another.

One thing is clear: that having a purpose in life is something that Humans thrive on.

Humans by their nature will constantly try to establish society rules and society living. These rules are based on equality and opportunity and are really there to contain the Chimp within people. The Human looks for justice and structure, and works with ethical and moral principles to establish Human rights and Human values to live by. They are based on value judgements of right and wrong, with consequences attached to them.

Other objectives Other Human objectives vary greatly from individual to individual but most are based around happiness and success, however these are defined. The problem with these agendas is that if we are not careful the Chimp takes them up and employs ‘jungle laws’ to achieve them. For example, Humans would like businesses to be based on ethical principles and have an agenda to succeed. However, often bullying and intimidation take place as the Chimp takes over this Human agenda to succeed, and mixes in its own agendas, such as fulfilling its own ego or establishing its own territory.

By far, the biggest challenge for the individual Human is to live with an animal within that is determined to live by the laws of the jungle and to use extremely powerful drives and instincts to fulfil its own agenda.

The Fight, Flight or Freeze (FFF) response is arguably the most frequently used and most important instinct that our Chimps possess.

Fight is taking on the threat; Flight is running away from the threat; Freeze is keeping still and hoping the threat will go away and you won’t be noticed. Freeze can also be interpreted as avoiding, siding with or giving in to the threat in the hope that it won’t be too damaging. Which one of the responses the Chimp chooses depends on how vulnerable the Chimp feels.

For example, when we have to walk into a room full of strangers, many of our Chimps start to go into Flight mode and want to get out. Some go into Freeze mode and try to remain unnoticed, whilst others may take on the Fight mode and try to establish their presence. These responses occur because our Chimp has sent a message saying, ‘I feel under threat and need to do something.’ Occasionally these responses become intense and cause us gross anxiety. In order to calm the Chimp, the Human needs to speak to it and use logic to reassure the Chimp. Some people’s Chimps don’t perceive any threat and therefore they have little, if any, reaction.

Anxiety typically occurs when you don’t make a decision. It is a perfectly natural response from your Chimp showing that it is healthy. The answer therefore is to make a decision or reassure the Chimp!

The Chimp has powerful drives such as sex, dominance, food, security, parental, territorial and the search for a troop. The purpose of these drives is to perpetuate the species. Like instincts, drives are in-built, they are there from birth, but they don’t require a trigger or stimulus. As drives are necessary for survival, their compelling nature makes them difficult to resist.

The Chimp is insecure by nature.