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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Steve Peters
Chimp Management,
The Chimp is an emotional machine that thinks independently from us. It is not good or bad, it is just a Chimp.
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.
You are not responsible for the nature of your Chimp but you are responsible for managing it.
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.
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 Divided Planet is where the Human and Chimp live. You and your Chimp typically have an uneasy relationship
that frequently involves compromise and conflict. It is often a battle for power between the two of you. As the Chimp is far stronger than you are, it is wise to understand it and then nurture and manage it. To understand how you and your Chimp work differently, we will approach this in a systematic way by looking at four aspects:
Ways of thinking • Agendas • Modes of operating • Personalities
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.
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.
searching for the facts and establishing the truth.
logical thinking
So logic is the Human’s basis for thinking and acting.
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.
Why do I sometimes become so irrational in my thinking? One of the opening questions was: ‘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.
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.’
Dealing with paranoia in your Chimp is a skilful business and will be addressed in the Chimp Management section.
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 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 irrational approach will lead us into uncomfortable situations and when the truth appears we may want the ground to swallow us up.
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.
When we are thinking with the Chimp, we use ‘emotional thinking’ to piece together our ideas on what is happening. Very little logic, if any, is used, just emotional energy. So the Chimp pieces together its irrational, black-and-white and catastrophic impressions,
feelings and paranoia, in an often nonsensical way to draw up conclusions and then a plan of action.
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 ...
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Understanding the Human – logical thinking The basis of logical think...
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Humans begin to work out what is happening by first establishing the facts. They gather all the information available before begi...
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the facts, Humans try to establish the truth and then base their ...
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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!
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 gain a perspective on what is happening and how important it is in the scheme of things.
Logical thinking means that we follow patterns of thinking that are linked and make sense and then reason out conclusions on which to act.
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.
the main agenda of the Chimp is to produce the next generation. It’s nature’s way of perpetuating the species. The Chimp uses its sex drive along with other drives to try and fulfil this agenda. Therefore your Chimp has this drive high on its priority list! A strong sex drive indicates a healthy Chimp.
second agenda of the Chimp is self-survival, which includes protecting itself from harm.
Examples include: attracting a mate, establishing a territory, searching for food and finding shelter. We will cover the drives behind these agendas later in this chapter in the ‘Jungle Centre’ section.
One thing is clear: that having a purpose in life is something that Humans thrive on.
Other Human objectives vary greatly from individual to individual but most are based around happiness and success, however these are defined.
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.
The Chimp operates by the laws of the jungle and it does this by having powerful drives and instincts. The Human operates by the laws of society and it does this by using powerful ethical and moral drives, typically with a conscience.
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.
An instinct is a built-in response or reaction, usually present from birth, to a particular stimulus or trigger. Instincts are in place to ensure that we survive. They are pre-programmed automatic behaviours and do not require us to have a say in what happens, they just need a stimulus.
For example, when a baby is born it has an automatic (instinctual) response to being touched by a finger on the cheek. It will turn towards the finger and
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.
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
