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

by Steve Peters

Suggested exercise: Creating your troop

Think carefully about who is really in your troop

recognise who is not in your troop

Think about what each person in the troop is offering you and what you are offering him or her.

Writing out your needs first

prioritise your time to engage with them. Look after your troop, as neglected people often leave.

The ideal conversation between two people would be Human to Human because this will be logical and contained.

Talking to the right person would save them a lot of time, effort and emotional stress.

Being assertive means explaining to someone else what is acceptable in your world and what isn’t acceptable and why. This is explained in a calm manner without expressing emotion.

By contrast, being aggressive is expressing emotion and behaviours that are attacking in manner in order to convey your message.

There are three parts to being an assertive communicator, and all three parts must be used, in order to be effective.

1. Say to the person what you don’t want, using the word ‘I’.

2. Say to them how it is making you feel.

3. Say to them what you do want, using...

assertiveness with the word ‘I’ is making a statement that tells somebody very clearly that you are not happy with the situation and that you have an opinion about it.

Make sure you have the right amount of time to listen to the other person and express what you want to

A neutral place, which is not on either person’s territory, is often the best location.

It is also very easy to get distracted and taken onto another agenda. Try to recognise this and stick to your original agenda.

Be sure that you address what is on your mind and don’t dress it up

The Chimp’s agenda is based on emotion and typically has a ‘win or lose’ mentality.

the Human’s agenda is not to ‘win or lose’ but to reach a sensible outcome where both people are happy and satisfied.

The Human will do this by containing emotion and listening to the other person FIRST and seeing their point of view. The Human will focus on the solution and not on the problem.

Understand

Allow the other person expression

Gather all the information

Look for a s...

Use ...

Remain calm

Use ‘gentle’ non-emotional words

L...

See a different poin...

Be open to changi...

Recognise opinions are not facts • Reason and discuss • Find common ground • Use reasoning to tr...

Compr...

Accept diff...

each Human to first have a discussion with their own Chimp and find out what it wants to say and why.

Human to tell their own Chimp that some of what they want is destructive and not going to happen and some of what they want is reasonable.

Human will then represent the Chimp’s reasonable points and will do this i...

Preparing yourself is the best thing that you can do

body language is generally Chimp-to-Chimp,

When somebody speaks quickly they will alert the Chimp in the other person.

Make no mistake, an attack by words from one person to another is exactly the same as an attack from one chimpanzee to another, using teeth and fists, and the damage can be equally as savage.

there are no hard and fast rules; try to think a little deeper about the effect your chosen words will have

clearly defining to yourself what you want out of the conversation.

Remove the unreasonable parts of your Chimp’s agenda.

allow their Chimp to exercise and listen but don’t interact or respond to anything it says. Allowing them a few minutes of what might be uncomfortable comments will help to settle their Chimp down.

Try to meet the other person’s agenda first before your own.

damage is done not by what we say but by what we don’t say.

When two people get into conflict with a difference of opinion, there are basically three levels of dealing with this. These three levels are negotiation, mediation and arbitration.

Make a conscious effort to choose the right words to describe what you want to say.