The Chimp Paradox Quotes

“When you decide to do something, remind yourself that it is commitment not motivation that matters.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“If you wake during the night, any thoughts and feelings you might have are from your Chimp and they are often very disturbing, catastrophic and lacking in perspective. In the morning you are likely to regret engaging with these thoughts and feelings because you will see things differently.”
― Dr Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: How Our Impulses and Emotions Can Determine Success and Happiness and How We Can Control Them

“Remember: you can’t use your Chimp as an excuse. If you had a dog and it bit someone, you couldn’t just say, ‘Sorry but it was the dog, not me.’ You are responsible for the dog and its actions. Likewise, you are totally responsible for your Chimp and its actions. So no excuses! You”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“how can you determine who you really are? To work out who you really are as a person is easy to do. If you wrote a list of all the things you would like to be, you may write things like calm, compassionate, reasonable, positive, confident and happy, then this is who you really are. Any deviation from this is a hijacking by the Chimp.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“the person that you want to be is the person that you really are.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Summary key points The Psychological Mind is made up of three separate brains: Human, Chimp and Computer. You are the Human. Your Chimp is an emotional thinking machine. Your Computer is a storage area and automatic functioning machine. Any one of them can take complete control but usually they work together.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happiness

“The best relationships are the ones where you accept the person as they are and work with this.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“• I am an adult and I can deal with any situation. • Life is not fair. • Everything that happens comes and goes. • Disappointments are tough but they need to be kept in perspective. • Happiness can be found in many ways. • It’s the way you deal with things, not what happens, that gives peace of mind. • Every day is precious.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“The very simple question, therefore, is to begin with ‘Do I want…’ and then finish the sentence. For example: ‘Do I want these feelings?’ or ‘Do I want these thoughts?’ or ‘Do I want to be behaving this way?’ If the answer is ‘no’ then you are in Chimp mode and if the answer is ‘yes’ then you are in Human mode.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Sometimes no matter what you do, you can’t have what you want, so you must accept this and live with it.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Work out what you can control and what you can’t.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Managing your impulsive, emotional Chimp as an adult will be one of the biggest factors determining how successful you are in life.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Don’t be disheartened if you have setbacks; instead learn from them and always celebrate any successes. Remember: you always have a choice.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Do not measure ‘reasonable’ by your own standards and then impose them on to others because everyone has different standards. Measure”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“A golden rule for understanding people and situations is to ALWAYS try to establish THE FACTS before you make your assessment.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“The Stone of Life is the ultimate power source in our Psychological Mind.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“One thing is clear: that having a purpose in life is something that Humans thrive on.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“How many times have you talked to yourself, reassured yourself or had battles within your own head? Often you have thoughts and feelings that you do not want and even carry out behaviours that you know at the time are not really what you want to do. So why are you doing this? How can it be that you do not have control over what thoughts or emotions you have and what behaviours you carry out? How can you be two very different people at different times?”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“When people have accidents that damage their frontal lobe or when 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 judgment or they can become apathetic or have outbursts of aggressive behavior.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happiness

“In the first scenario what the parent did was to tell the child that it was clever and that the parent was proud of it because of what the child had achieved. In other words, implying that the child’s worth is dependent on the painting. Then the parent went on to tell the child that they wanted to let the world know by putting the picture on the fridge door. The message to the child was: ‘It is what you can achieve in life that will make you worthy. It is what you do that will make others see you in a good light.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“So what are you going to do today that will make you happier and more successful?”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Most people have reliable partners and sharing with a partner is one of the joys of life. However, basing your security on a partner or any other one individual is a recipe for disaster. When”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“The right part of the jungle is where your work and home environments are happy places to be.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“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”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“The Chimp does not necessarily work with facts but it works with what it believes is the truth or with a perception of the truth or, even worse, with a projection of what might be the truth. It is quick to form an impression on little, if any, evidence and usually won’t give way. Of course, some impressions that the Chimp gives us are accurate and helpful, but they can just as easily be wrong. Searching for some accuracy and truth would help us to reach a sensible conclusion.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happiness

“The problem is that if the person then says I would rather go home and finish the job tomorrow, they start to feel guilty. Their Chimp is now saying, ‘You can’t let the troop down, what will they think?’ Well as we now know, it isn’t the troop at all. It is work and work colleagues. Looking after the Chimp by getting it home on time and looking after the real troop is more important than working to please work colleagues.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Humans try to establish the truth and then base their beliefs on the truth.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“As a child you were read or watched fairy stories. The prince always married the princess and the wicked witch died and everyone lived happily ever after (except the witch, of course, but she got what she deserved). In other words, good always wins in the end. But that was a fairy story and you have been brainwashed into believing that it really does happen this way. It doesn’t. In fact we might do our children a favour by changing the ending to let the witch kill off the princess and marry the prince.”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“If we knew nobody thought badly of us then we would have little fear, it would be more of a nuisance to fail and we would then deal with the consequences. We would also not weigh our own self-worth by an exam result. This is the Fridge Door Goblin at its best!”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

“Here are some of the traits of emotional thinking”
― Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happiness