The Mindset Doctor: The Secret Man Behind The World's Top Performers: Steve Peters

Do you control your emotions or do your emotions control you? Has the irrational parts of your consciousness ever hijacked your logical mind? Have you ever wanted to understand how to overcome these thoughts in order to become the person you always wanted to be? This is exactly what Professor Steve Peters has helped people from all areas of life to achieve. He has worked with everyone from psychiatric patients to elite athletes. His classic book, ‘The Chimp Paradox’, has helped to change thousands of lives. In this enlightening conversations Professor Peters uncovers the ways that our mind is often at odds with itself, the psychological tricks used by Olympians to achieve gold, and the toll is takes upon the psychologists helping their patients through their trauma. Steve: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3D5YBBA Website - https://bit.ly/3iZtr84 Steve’s book: https://bit.ly/3wm10Ec Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Steve Peters?

  We have beliefs within us that are just too hard to remove, and they may have come from traumatic experiences. Let's learn how to put it in a box. Professor Steve Peters. He's a world-leading psychiatrist.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  The author of a number of very influential books, including The Chimp Paradox.

• 0:15Speaker 02

  A man who has helped multiple British athletes. Been seeing Steve for three years now. Not just any psychologist, Dr. Steve Peters.

• 0:23Steve Peters?

  I'm the person who wants to help people. I started working with Chris Hoy. I went undercover to the Athens Olympics so we could make sure that he got his gold medal. And Ronnie O'Sullivan. The emotion that guy was getting at that point was to be so unpleasant that partway through a world championship, he shook hands and walked out. So in Ronnie's case, what do you do? So the very first step is... Oh, really? And that is what winners do. For people to shift, they've got to have psychological mindedness, which means they've got to understand that it's not about what happens to us in life, it's how we deal with it. What role does early childhood trauma play in how we respond in situations? Wow, now we're really getting deep. Before we even born, the emotional memories are starting to react to that trauma. Your parent might suddenly say, "Oh, you're just an idiot."

• 1:07Steve Peters?

  But something might have happened just before that where you've got one out of 10 and you were bottom of the spelling test. And the two together get emotionally tangled, and that then damages the circuits. So you get people often who have very low self-esteem. How does one go about working with someone who's got serious self-esteem issues? I'm gonna be controversially, I'll say.

• 1:28Steven Bartlett?

  Whenever there's a podcast episode that I record that really has a profound impact on me, I always want to provide a little bit of a disclaimer at the start to make sure that you give it a chance. And this is one of those episodes that comes along once in a while, which I absolutely, absolutely adore because of the depth of wisdom and the potential it offers to change your life. So what I'm gonna ask you to do is to listen to this episode, to give it a chance, and to try and get to the end. Because this is one of the rare ones that once in a while I think will genuinely change your life. It'll be one of those episodes that you pass around to your friends.

• 2:06Steven Bartlett?

  Steve, how would you summarise your professional academic bio and experience?

• 2:15Steve Peters?

  Okay, that's a tough starter. I would say that I'm a person who wants to help people. So what I've done throughout life is say, in order to help people, what do I need? So one of the things I felt I needed when I was a young man is I needed a medical background. So all of the work I've done, like in psychiatry, and particularly becoming a consultant psychiatrist, it wasn't that I wanted to be that, it was I needed that in order to be able to help people effectively. So my experience in life has always been the more people I can help and the more circumstances, the better equipped I'll be to deal with whatever comes through the door. So I think of it slightly differently to be about a career, it's more of an approach and an objective in life.

• 2:59Steve Peters?

  And then what I need to do is learn in order to be good at that.

• 3:03Steven Bartlett?

  In terms of your academic qualifications, what are those?

• 3:07Steve Peters?

  My friends all laugh at this because I've got five degrees. So effectively, I started off doing mathematics and teaching, but then I went back into medicine. And then from there, their scientific qualifications, I got a medical degree. And then I went through the Royal College, so you specialise in psychiatry and get your membership exams. And then I've specialised again in looking at things like, because I got involved with sports people, I did an MSc so that we look at sports medicine itself again and brush up on my medical background. So I'm still a doctor at heart. And then because I teach at university, I did an MSc in medical education. So I sort of, again, following what I've said as a theme, I think, what do I need?

• 3:48Steve Peters?

  And what would help me to do this? And then, so that's why I've collected these degrees. So that is my academic background.

• 3:56Steven Bartlett?

  And then in terms of experience, give me an overview of the sort of plethora of experience you've had practically working with people in different contexts and industries.

• 4:07Steve Peters?

  Yeah, I mean, I went through a medical training and then you do your routine jobs, so your medicine surgery and so on. And I trained in general practice and then went into psychiatry when I hit psychiatry as one of my disciplines during training for GP. From there, in psychiatry, you look across a vast spectrum. You select your job. So I covered general adult psychiatry, then I covered old age psychiatry, child psychiatry, limb disability, and adding into forensics. So when you've done all that kind of training experience, then you start to really specialise. And initially, I was going into specialising in old age psychiatry. I felt that the, what the service at that time, it was a long time ago, was quite poor for old age, and there was very little research.

• 4:49Steve Peters?

  It's before I recept, so the anti dementia drug came out. And I wanted to go into that field, but by virtue of the fact I'm a teacher, I got a post in sort of teaching in university alongside clinical work. And that meant really I needed to do general adult. So I then set off in general adult psychiatry. Did a lot of clinical work, twenty years in the NHS, but progressed because the difficult cases are often personality disorders. And how you manage them, and particularly forensic style, so psychopathic colloquially called. We'd call them disocial personality disorders. How do you manage these people? So I ended up becoming by default a specialist in this field and then ended up working in a secure hospital,

• 5:32Steve Peters?

  working with people under the Mental Health Act who are detained, who have transgressed the law. So then you go into the legal aspects of how we deal with people who have transgressed the law and are now held under the Mental Health Act almost indefinitely. And you try and obviously get people back out of these secure hospitals if they're safe to come into the community. So that in a nutshell is how my career developed. So you end up with a vast experience over the last forty years. And then hopefully you can pull on that experience when you're working with everyday people.

• 6:03Steven Bartlett?

  Working with everyday people. You ended up working in the field of sports?

• 6:08Steve Peters?

  Yes.

• 6:08Steven Bartlett?

  Which seems less. Obvious as a path for you to take based on your, you know, based on your experience before that. Didn't seem like you were really aiming intentionally at working in sports.

• 6:21Steve Peters?

  No, not at all. I'm not a sports fan. I'm a people fan, which means where people choose to work, then I follow them and I've got to learn their world. So obviously you've got sports specialists, sports psychologists are the specialists. I came in a bit left field. I was in forensics at the time, but I was still teaching at university. One of my previous medical students, I teach medicine, went as a doctor with a titling team that was working for the Olympics. So I knew nothing about this and he called him, he's an excellent student, but he wanted an opinion on somebody who is a professional who was struggling mentally. So I came in just to give an opinion and worked with this guy.

• 7:02Steve Peters?

  Now, I can only name people who've, you know, gone public, so I can't give names. And he excelled. And then I can name the next person. At that point, I was introduced to Chris Hoy. And Chris, amazing guy, absolutely amazing. So really, it was an easy, easy bit of work to do, to help him to get his mind to do what he wanted to do with his mind. He went off, I went undercover to the Athens Olympics. He asked me to go with him so we could make sure that he got his gold, if I could contribute. He got his gold medal and then said, really, I want you in the team. So I didn't go for a year. And after a year, I was convinced. I was working with Vicky Pendleton and I knew that needed a bit more work and she's,

• 7:45Steve Peters?

  again, amazing person, great people to work with. And so I then took the leap. I mean, at that point, I was heading towards retirement then. So that's well over 20 years ago now. And then from there, when I worked with them, the swimming team came in, British Swimming. And then it was just, I don't know, a cascade of all the teams. And so I started working across the Olympic teams and then went off to Beijing Olympics. And it just, I don't know, gave him momentum and I just got this reputation, well, this guy can help you mentally. You know, so I work alongside the coaches, obviously they're the people who take them to the front and I do the mental side of it. So it wasn't a planned route in. And I still do all my other work. I still work with the public. I still work in other areas

• 8:29Steve Peters?

  with doctors, with, in the NHS, with the, the police, I've done a lot of work with, business people. So it, it just became generic at that point.

• 8:38Steven Bartlett?

  Sir David Brailsford, who's been on this podcast, who was the Performance Director, I believe, of the British Cycling Team, took over at a time when it was struggling and led it to become maybe the greatest cycling team of all time. He says that your appointment was the, I quote, "the best appointment he's ever made." Now, when I think about, you know, you getting that first call from that first athlete, the one you said was struggling, and then working with Chris Hoy, what exactly are you doing for them?

• 9:11Steve Peters?

  I think this is like, no matter who comes in the door, say you come to me, what I've got to say is, I'm not a sports psychologist, I'm not a specialist. What I am is a specialist in the human mind. So I've made that my career. So I look at how the mind thinks, how it functions. And I ask you to first be a student, really. And I want you to learn your unique mind. I'm going to give you the blueprint, then together, we're going to work out how you perceive the world, perceive yourself, perceive others, what do you want to do with your life. When we've done all of that, then, and only then, would I ask to go into your world. So then we can apply what you've learned. So it was interesting that two people I worked with, the public again, were Vicky Pendleton, who was probably

• 9:54Steve Peters?

  still the world's most successful female sprinter on the bike, and then Ronnie Sullivan in Snooker. And both were interviewed, and they both said that to the press. They said, you know, "He did not take us to sport. He took us to ourself and worked with us as people. And so that we'd gone in a good place, then we went to sport. Then he said, right, what is it you're choosing to do with your life?" And then I have to learn then, because obviously, if you take me to your world, I don't know your world. So I've got to go in there and learn what it is you're experiencing, how you're interpreting it. It's a teamwork, and then I have to test things out. So that's basically what I did when I started working with Chris Hoy. He asked him what he was wanting to do, what was he finding easy, what was he finding

• 10:37Steve Peters?

  difficult, and then try and work out what I felt he needed to do and how he managed his mind. And then I keep pushing this point, it is a skill, you've got to acquire it. So I don't have other people might be able to do a process, I can't do that. What I do is ask you to work with me and try things out where you're gaining a skill. For example, a skill of recognizing whether your emotion is actually helpful or unhelpful, whether you can remove the emotion only to work with it, or whether you can actually just dismiss it and learn how to move yourself on. And so it's a skill to be able to recognize things and then know how to deal with that particular thing that you're experiencing.

• 11:14Steven Bartlett?

  Could you give me a case study from one athlete you've worked with, so that that will allow me to work through that process of first identifying the emotion potentially, working on whether it's positive or negative, how it's serving me, and then how you might with your process lead me to a positive outcome, a productive outcome?

• 11:30Steve Peters?

  Well, I'm going to pick Chris Hoyer and Ronnie Sullivan on the grounds that both of them are very public about working with me, and they put out what I'm about to talk about. So when I worked with Chris, what he was saying, he was doing the kilo at the time, which is four laps on a bike, but it's very similar to doing 400 metres, where you know you've got to get the pace judgment right. If you go off too fast, you burn out and you won't finish. And if you go off too slow, you'll never get the ground back. So it's a really tough, really tough event. So in the kilo, I had to learn that, which wasn't too hard because I'm familiar with 400 metres. So and then when I did that, I have to test out what his beliefs are. You know, when he sets off on the bike, where is he putting his focus? And that's what Chris was saying is, when I set off on the

• 12:13Steve Peters?

  bike, my focus can be distracted and it will drift off. And I might start thinking about what other people have just done when I'm watching my competitors, or am I going fast enough? Or, and you start to do an analysis. Now, in his particular event, what I said to him is, it's not going to help you to do an analysis in this event. Some sported is, because you have a breathing space where you can analyse and then get back into what I call computer mode. So he needs to program his mind to have a fixed leg speed, a fixed markers on the track, so that he's not thinking at all. There's no analysis. That was my... Summary of it. So we tried that out. So when he went to the Olympics, everything was completely

• 12:54Steve Peters?

  learning to switch off any thinking and analysis. And that's not easy, easier said than done. But we practiced this. So on the holding camp, which there's like a three week camp before the Olympics, I went to the holding camp in Newport with him. And every day we practiced this. So we do 20 minutes of him learning to focus. And then we had specifics on the bike for when he got on it to do this kilo. And to me, he was an excellent student, clearly. He committed to it. And he would say then that when he got on the bike and he went round the day of the Olympics, he forgot where he was until he passed the line. So to me, that's like you're in complete focus mode. So again, credit to Chris.

• 13:33Steven Bartlett?

  Why is switching off his mind in such a way, or focusing his mind in such a way?

• 13:40Steve Peters?

  Okay.

• 13:40Steven Bartlett?

  Why is that?

• 13:41Steve Peters?

  The neuroscience is complex. So I'm going to cut corners and do it very black and white and simplified. It's complex. But in a nutshell, if you, there are three systems in your head, keeping it very simple. It's much more complex than that, but simplifying it. One of the systems will help you think very logically, and I call that the human system. It thinks logically, but it's very slow. Which means if you operate with a human, your body and your reflexes will slow down because you're analyzing as you go along. And it slows the system. So you're more pensive. So that's really good in certain circumstances, but it's awful in fast moving sports. So if he goes into

• 14:22Steve Peters?

  that, it's very likely he'll slow down. It's not going to help him. If he goes into the second system, which we'll probably come back to, the chimp system, this is a primitive system which thinks. It's more than just a reaction, an impulsive system. It thinks. When it moves, it can move at speed. But it thinks emotionally. So this is the part of his brain that will think thoughts that are not helpful, such as, should I go faster at this point? And then it may make a decision to go faster and burn out. So that would be crazy. Finally, the third system is a computer. It just needs programming. The key to the computer, particularly in sports,

• 15:01Steve Peters?

  is it moves so fast, it's approximately 20 times quicker than the human system to execute, and it's about four times quicker than the chimp system. So if you get into computer mode, particularly in fast-moving sports, it doesn't analyse or think, it's automatic thinking. So it works with keys like a computer.

• 15:21Steven Bartlett?

  Is that the autopilot?

• 15:23Steve Peters?

  Exactly. It's an autopilot. You're programmed. It's a behaviour that's programmed in.

• 15:27Steven Bartlett?

  So when I came down the stairs to see you today, I I know the route, I've done it a hundred times. So I was, I was holding my iPad, but I was on autopilot.

• 15:36Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 15:37Steven Bartlett?

  As I came down the stairs and walked.

• 15:38Steve Peters?

  Your body knows what to do. You don't need to think. Whereas if we put an obstacle in there, then it will stop.

• 15:43Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 15:43Steve Peters?

  Because it doesn't know what to do. It's not programmed.

• 15:45Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 15:46Steve Peters?

  But you'll have to think then.

• 15:47Steven Bartlett?

  Is is is the computer where our habit?

• 15:50Steve Peters?

  It's habit formation, yes. All three do work together.

• 15:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Steve Peters?

  But the computer is one that just blots out the other two, or if they go silent, it can operate. And it's the computer that drives us to work, or, like you say, goes in a familiar track. But it can also generate automatic thinking.

• 16:08Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 16:08Steve Peters?

  So when you meet somebody, your chimp may start to think, is this person going to like me? Am I going to come across okay? It could give you anything. Whereas the computer system is automatic. So if you've programmed a belief that everybody loves me, then it's much more likely when you meet people, you're going to be very open, and your body language will be positive. If you have, I'm being severe, obviously.

• 16:31Steven Bartlett?

  Of course.

• 16:32Steve Peters?

  If you have a belief, nobody likes me, or I'm not as good as everyone else, which unfortunately, a lot of computers are programmed with that, then whenever you meet someone, you're on edge. And you're very conscious about what you're saying and doing, because you feared that it's going to be the truth, that they don't like you, and you're trying to overcome that belief, which is so unhelpful. Now, that I call the gremlin. But these beliefs are programmed into us, and we hold thousands of beliefs, often without knowing what they are.

• 16:59Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, we're going to come back to that because I want to talk about the gremlin, the trauma and where all of those beliefs come from and which ones we can resolve. But to your point then about Chris Hoy on that.

• 17:06Steve Peters?

  So Chris was asking to, how do, in my world, he was saying, how do I silence my human and chimp systems from analysing and thinking, which is their job? And how do I go into computer mode so I forget where I am and just get on with the process? And he did this nicely. Ronnie Sullivan wasn't in that place. And again, Ronnie's given me permission, he keeps telling everybody everything, but I won't tell you everything. A lot of stuff is behind locked doors. So he's a great guy. I love Ronnie Sullivan. We've been friends now for over 10 years. So it's a privilege to work with him. He's one of the hardest working of my students. And he's saying to me all the time, he rings regularly, so I've spoken to him already yesterday. So we talk. But the key to Ronnie was, his chimp was so active in being anxious about how he came

• 17:50Steve Peters?

  across, whether he'd performed well, what people would say, how well his rivals might be doing. It was just giving him what is natural and healthy but extremely unhelpful. And that was creating very anxious moments. So before I met him, I had a look because I didn't know anything about Ronnie, or snooker. And I went online to say, can I see some YouTube of him? And I saw him hitting the white ball with the cue stick. And I thought, well, obviously that's not the right thing to be doing. And I saw him walk out of a competition, which distressed me. You know, I didn't know the guy, but I thought, wow. The emotion that that guy was getting at that point was to be so unpleasant that part way through a world championships competition, he just suddenly stopped, froze, shook hands and walked out.

• 18:34Steve Peters?

  And I just thought, you know, when I saw that, I definitely want to help this man. And we went back and actually looked at that incident. And I said, what was it? And I love this. And he challenged me at the beginning, but after about an hour of chatting, he said, I get this. Because on that incident, he said to me, there was this voice sort of saying, just go out of here, you don't have to be, I don't want to be here. And he said, and I'm saying to myself, I want to play snooker, I just want to enjoy the game. And this voice got more strong, saying, right, hit the cue. And he said, I hit the cue ball. And he said, I'm walking out and the voice is still going, right, just keep walking, we're not, we're out of here, I can't deal with this. And he said, now I get it, there were two of me.

• 19:16Steve Peters?

  There was me trying to do what I want and there's this voice which I couldn't manage at all and I couldn't stop it doing what I wanted to do. So once I explained the model to him, and the model isn't for everyone, it's for those who can relate to it. He said, I get this because my human system, my chimp system are so different, they're poles apart. So he's worked for 10 years saying, how do I recognise and manage this chimp system? So when he came to me, it wasn't just in snorkel, his whole life. He could see that his emotions were getting the better of him and it was a whole system that was emotionally driven and it was almost paranoid about things, it was defensive, it was making him feel vulnerable, it was giving him anxiety and it's a really powerful system.

• 20:01Steve Peters?

  So it varies in person to person. Some people have very simple chimp systems which are not that strong and others, most of us, have chimp systems we really recognise, they're there and they mean business. And they give us emotions which drive us to do things, make decisions, have behaviours that often are destructive, not just unconstructive. So in Ronnie's case, what do you do? Right, we started again to recognise the systems and say, right, let's just start because again, I try to take people through a series of steps rather than just throw things at them. And so the very first step is let's define who you are and let's define what your chimp is like. So we recognise because everyone's unique, so I can't tell you who you are nor what

• 20:44Steve Peters?

  your system is, I'll give you general things like this system is impulsive, it doesn't think of consequence, it's quite emotionally driven, when we're tired it takes over. And people generally start, I get that. So neuroscientifically, that's what happens in the brain. So how do we start to recognise the difference? And then when we do, let's start simply to say, what is it that's prodding my chimp into action? And this is where it gets a little more complex. The chimp system can just react. So if I, for example, you're friends with me and one day I just shout at you for some reason and get annoyed. Your chimp system is most likely going to shout back. But if it believes I'm not as good as other people or I can't cope, it's likely to go quiet and feel very intimidated and hurt.

• 21:28Steve Peters?

  So again, we have to work out what your chimp system is doing. But on the other hand, the chimp system, the neuroscience is it always turns to the computer and says, what beliefs do I hold? Before I make my decision. And this happens in a fifth of a second. So let's say you're about to shout back at me and your chimp looks into the computer. And one of your beliefs, I don't know what they are, might be if you shout back at people, it makes you look foolish.

• 21:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, well, I can tell you what my beliefs are. And I can tell you where they came from. So my, my parents shout, my, my parents had a very loud shouting relationship. I've never shouted in my life because of that, because I learnt firsthand.

• 22:04Steve Peters?

  So what's your belief?

• 22:06Steven Bartlett?

  My belief is that shouting achieves nothing. It's, it's harmful for both parties. You lose when you do it. You're not heard when you do it.

• 22:16Steve Peters?

  Now you stop there, so I can do, that's brilliant. So just to try and be steady with this is what you're saying to me is I absolutely resonate with these beliefs. They're not something I've given you, which is a danger. So if I said to you, we're going to try and stop you shouting, it never gets you anywhere. You have to resonate with that. That's why I can't do it. You have to say, to me, Steve, that really resonates.

• 22:39Steven Bartlett?

  I've got to have evidence.

• 22:40Steve Peters?

  Yes. And you have to believe this and you can't brainwash your self into believing. You've got to experience it and say, this rings true to me. So once you've worked that out and you reinforced it, which it sounds like you've done through your life.

• 22:53Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 22:54Steve Peters?

  Then you, you don't shout. And it's not that you can't, it's your computer stopping you because the chimp has to listen to those beliefs. So before it does anything, it can't move.

• 23:07Steven Bartlett?

  So let's look at the opposite then. If someone had, you know, if someone grew up in a household where they were shouting and they, and they for whatever reason gained the evidence that it was an effective way to communicate or whatever, how does someone go about unprogramming that belief?

• 23:19Steve Peters?

  Well, it's not my job to do that. So I'll explain what I mean. I agree with you. To me, shouting is, it's not very helpful, you know, at all. However, if somebody, that's not my job to tell people. I say to them, why, why would you hold that belief? And I do have people who say it because people don't listen unless you shout. Some people, you have to shout at them. And so I draw breath because obviously I'm not agreeing, but I'm not going to try and change their mind. I'm going to challenge them and say, can we challenge that to make sure that's what you believe? But if they are insistent, there are certain people in my life that shouting works for. It's not for me to say that. What I would do then is say, right, let's say it does work. What, that's in the short term. So now we're in the devil in the detail. Our chimp system is working in

• 24:03Steve Peters?

  the short term. It does not look at long-term consequence. So when your human now comes in, your human system will look at rationality and say, what's the long-term consequence of me shouting? Now, it may be with person A, there's no long-term consequence. And you think, it doesn't make any difference. I'm going to shout, right? They get it. And we're okay with that. And I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm saying it's what they want to do. However, they might suddenly say with me, actually, you're right. With person B, when I shout, there is repercussion on the person and I'm actually hurting them. And also in their eyes, it's not, it's demeaning. They see me as demeaning myself. So it's not actually working in the long term. It's not building a relationship that I want.

• 24:44Steve Peters?

  So it can be, you tease the devil in the detail out. You have a blanket, by the sound of it, belief that it doesn't matter who it is, you don't shout.

• 24:52Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Steve Peters?

  I would agree with that. However, I'm going to give you more devil in detail. You have to be careful because if you add on to that, that shouting is something that's a failure, and then now I have, I have a challenge on you.

• 25:07Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 25:08Steve Peters?

  Because if you think about it, if you then suddenly out of the blue did shout. And you you're gonna now start beating yourself up potentially and thinking.

• 25:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I would.

• 25:16Steve Peters?

  Yeah, so that's not that helpful. So what a better belief I would suggest and see if you resonate is to say, if you shout, even though you don't agree with it, because all your beliefs, in my opinion, are right. If you shout, forgive yourself and say, you know, that is a chimp system. And maybe I need to reinforce my computer system because my chimp got out there and I'm not proud of that because actually I don't think that helped. But I like people to understand that we can only manage the chimp system. We do not control it. And if it wants to get the better of us, it can. So all we can do is keep reinforcing the computer beliefs and strengthen them. And you've done it beautifully by having a number of beliefs. And then you've almost got this gang of autopilots.

• 26:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Steve Peters?

  So if one gets shaken, the others come in and that's how the brain will work. So I like more than one belief. But on the other hand, if under circumstances your chimp gets out and you shout, I want you to understand that your chimp got out. It wasn't you. That's not an excuse model. You have to apologize if you think you've done wrong, but I am saying it's a skill model. Which means you says to me now, I do not want to shout. So you didn't do it. However, you're responsible. You can't just absolve yourself. So I always liken it to having a dog. I'm a great dog lover. If one of my dogs comes in here and bites you, I can't just go as my dog. The answer is I have to manage this system. I have to manage my dog. And it's my responsibility a hundred percent.

• 26:47Steve Peters?

  So I work with people to say, be kind to yourself because this system means business. And whatever your system is like, it will break through. There will be days you do not manage it.

• 26:58Steven Bartlett?

  Let's pretend today has been a day where I didn't manage it. The dog got off the lead and bit somebody, whatever, you know, I I lost my temper, whatever. And I I'm reflecting on it, thinking, oh, God, you know, an hour's passed and I'm thinking, God, I wish I hadn't done that.

• 27:10Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 27:10Steven Bartlett?

  What what can I actively do to?

• 27:15Steven Bartlett?

  Prevent it happening again. How do I reinforce that computer?

• 27:18Steve Peters?

  Let me go back to the to the dog because it's probably the best example. What you wouldn't do, I hope, is kick the dog. The dog's doing what the dog does, you know, the dogs, the dog doesn't know. So your job is to say first, I'm going to apologize to the person. Because that should not have happened. I know whatever I need to do a compensate, I do whatever and apologize. The second thing is naturally, I assume you're going to say, well, I need to work on the dog. I need to learn to train the dog and manage it. So I know exactly how to stop that happening again. But what I'm not going to do is beat myself up for not being able to manage the dog.

• 27:56Steven Bartlett?

  Why is that a bad idea?

• 27:58Steve Peters?

  Beating yourself up?

• 27:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, just like, you know, oh, God, I'm such an idiot. I shouldn't have done that.

• 28:02Steve Peters?

  It's sort of self evident. I mean, again, this is the devil in detail. If you said to me, you know, when I do that, it makes me feel better just to think, right, I've had a go at myself here. And there's nothing wrong with that. But what I'm going to do is draw a line after a certain time. And then I'm going to say, right, you've had a go at yourself, get over it. Yeah, let's put that into action now. Right, then I'm not disapproving. I think it's self evident that I'm not going to approve of somebody beating myself up and going back to the same thing over and over and over. And then escalating that. So it doesn't just become, I can't manage the dog, I'm an incompetent person. You know, and I get things wrong and everyone else seems to do this. What's wrong with me? That's the problem. It's now going down a very dangerous route.

• 28:47Steven Bartlett?

  Is that depositing certain evidence into the computer about you not being self worthy, which then is going to make your chimp respond?

• 28:54Steve Peters?

  Yeah, well, the chimp's going to be irrational. So when the chimp brain takes over, because it puts our beliefs in as well as we do. So it, for example, the dog one, it will expand on that and say, well, there's something wrong with me. So let's go to you, you shouted. And then you start saying, you know, I'm not a great person. You know, because my belief is great people shouldn't be doing that. And it's okay giving an excuse in that was my chimp, but it's not good enough. And I can't allow it to happen again. And I've done damage to this person irreparably. And and now you can say it's starting to escalate and you're putting all these beliefs inside your system. So there are going to be unconscious beliefs that you're carrying with you. So then you go and meet some friend and those beliefs might come straight in. Am I going to damage this person? Am I going to say something stupid again? Am I going to lose it again?

• 29:39Steve Peters?

  This is all really destructive and unhelpful.

• 29:41Steven Bartlett?

  You know, sometimes I find it difficult to apologize. Specifically, you know, when you're like in the heat of a situation, you might have had a, an argument with your partner or whatever else about something tiny. In that moment, sometimes I find it difficult to apologize. I think I've gotten 10x better. I'm thinking about the last sort of confrontation I had with my, with my girlfriend. And in fact, all I did was listen and then apologized after she'd finished speaking because I genuinely was like, I completely understand. But I, I think sometimes over the last 10 years, I just think, why don't you just, what is it that's preventing you from just saying, especially when you know you've, you've done something which is, which isn't in line with who you want to be or how you want to behave. Why didn't I just apologize straight away? What is it?

• 30:20Steve Peters?

  I've got to make a guess because I was like, I said, everyone's unique. So if I work in with you, I'll say, well, again, we're looking at what beliefs you're holding is, do you think apologizing is something that's strong or weak?

• 30:32Steven Bartlett?

  Good question.

• 30:39Steven Bartlett?

  It's, it's a good question. And I think I'm going to say that my belief on that has changed.

• 30:43Steve Peters?

  Okay.

• 30:44Steven Bartlett?

  So I think for the first,

• 30:48Steven Bartlett?

  over the last 10 years, the first eight years, I would have seen it as a weakness. And then in the context of my relationship, I see it as our biggest strength, that I can both now listen in total silence, make someone feel heard and understood, and then apologize to them. I think I see it as this like real superpower that I have, that I've developed. But in the, in the eight years where I didn't, I don't feel like I was apologizing enough, I definitely saw it as a weakness. I saw it as admitting defeat.

• 31:12Steve Peters?

  And that's where I'm going. So I'm saying to you, it's a shame it took eight years.

• 31:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Steve Peters?

  And that's why I like to do this work because you look back thinking if I'd learned this eight years ago.

• 31:20Steven Bartlett?

  Gosh, yeah.

• 31:20Steve Peters?

  It would have made a big difference. But it, that may not resonate. Some might say, well, I don't get, I don't see it as weakness or strength. So what difference? So I would try a different tack and say that how important is it that you're happy or that your partner's happy? Who would you put first?

• 31:38Steven Bartlett?

  In the situations where I didn't apologize, I put myself first.

• 31:41Steve Peters?

  But what do you want?

• 31:43Steven Bartlett?

  I think in those situations, I, I don't even know. I want it to be right. I don't know. I don't.

• 31:48Steve Peters?

  Ah, good, good. This, I'll just finish on that bit and I'll come back to the next one, which is where I think you're coming from. I'll give you a surprise coming here. So if somebody said, my girlfriend's more important than me, I love this girl. I don't want to lose this girl. And the last thing I wanted is to upset and hurt her. It's easy to make an apology.

• 32:08Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 32:08Steve Peters?

  And it's easy to recognize, I don't want to hurt this person. And even if I'm in the right and she's in the wrong, it doesn't matter. It's not about winning, which is what the chimp brain does. It wants to win. Okay. The human wants to resolve the situation. So saying, I'm really sorry that you're upset and I didn't mean to upset you. Doesn't mean you're admitting fault or whatever. It just means you're trying to say that you're more important than this. This is trivial.

• 32:30Steven Bartlett?

  That is so true.

• 32:31Steve Peters?

  And so that might resonate with people, but you might get somebody, which is where you're going, where you say, well, of course I love her, but hang on, that's not right. Because if she's done something that's wrong and I've reacted to that, she created that problem. I know I'm wrong to react. But hang on, I want the apology. Right. So that's common. This is the surprise. When you look at the neuroscience behind this, you think, oh, that must be my human being rational, logical, but it actually isn't. When we look at, and this is why I called it the chimp system, when we look at chimpanzees, they operate with the chimp system. They do have a human system, but it's quite primitive, which is where I got the analogy. So I looked at the great apes back in the 1990s and a publication came out in 2018 for the people academic

• 33:16Steve Peters?

  to show the chimpanzee and human think very differently to the other great apes. We're very different. There's a different way of approaching things and interpreting. So we do have the same system with chimps. So that chimp system is the same. And the way it works is on fairness. So experiments with chimpanzees, and I'm sure you find them on YouTube, where they do unfairness to chimpanzees and even basic, like capuchin monkeys demonstrate the same thing. They must have fairness. So whenever we demand fairness, we're actually operating from a chimp system, which is emotionally based. The human can accept unfairness. The human gets over it and says, get a life. You know, stop trying to deal with trivia and get fairness.

• 34:01Steve Peters?

  But our chimp system demands fairness.

• 34:04Steven Bartlett?

  I bought your book for one of my best friends recently. When I say recently, I mean in the last seven days. And I said, make sure you read that over the Christmas break. And they said, they came to me and said, do you know the best part of the book for me? She, she absolutely loved the book. She said, there was one sentence in it, in the, the book, which made her go, which is where you say in the chimp paradox that life isn't fair.

• 34:24Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 34:25Steven Bartlett?

  And you actually, I wrote it down earlier on because, because, because she said that to me. You, you, you've referenced it as an obvious thing. You, you say, um, have realistic expectations and remind yourself of the obvious. Life is not fair. Stress will happen, things will go wrong. For some reason, that sentence resonated with her really profoundly because I think the friction she had had in her life was expecting fairness.

• 34:48Steve Peters?

  Yeah. And that, I'll push this, I'm pushing my next book now.

• 34:51Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, this is, I mean, this one's.

• 34:53Steve Peters?

  A path through the jungle is to me is, is a step up.

• 34:55Steven Bartlett?

  No, it is.

• 34:56Steve Peters?

  The reason I did that one was to try and, this is exactly what I'm saying. I threw all that lot out as a chimp paradox to say, these are concepts. And she's giving what I've experienced doing talks over the last 20 years now to the public and, and, and various organizations is people come out of that and everybody picks something different. It's what resonates with you. So had I been working one to one with her, I do this like fishing expedition to see what's resonating. And then we expand on that. So that's why I've gone into much more detail on this next book to say, right, if these bits resonate, here's the science behind it this time. And references, you're going to read it up. But if you don't, here's the practicalities. So that's much more of an investigative, how do you use this now?

• 35:37Steve Peters?

  And what she's really doing, and I've tried to push this in the next book, is to say, what she's saying there is, you know what? My first step is acceptance. And that is what winners do. Successful people go, you know, it doesn't mean acceptance roll over. It means let me start from what's in front of me and stop fighting it and then work with it. And then see what I can do with it. Whereas when you look at the chimp brain, which generally is not as successful, can be, what it does is it says, I don't want what's in front of me. I want it different. This is not what should happen. So it spends its time getting aggravated rather than accepting and moving straight into plan of action. So we often spend a lot of time agitating about what's happened or what's in front of us instead

• 36:22Steve Peters?

  of saying it's happened.

• 36:24Steven Bartlett?

  One of my favourite podcast episodes that I recorded with a guy called Mo Gouda, he said to me, we're unhappy when our expectations of how life should be going are unmet.

• 36:35Steve Peters?

  Well, that's why when I've gone in, they say in the new book, I've tried to say, how do these systems approach life? And what I've explained in that is the chimp system writes the script first before we leave the house. So it will say things like, I'm going to drive to work today and I'm going to get there in 30 minutes. There'll be no holdups to be. So you can imagine the second there's something in the way, it explodes because that's what it does. It reacts. Whereas the human system doesn't. What the human system goes out with zero expectation, but has hopes. I hope to get there in 30 minutes. That's a world of difference. And then when I find there's a traffic jam, it doesn't react, it responds. So the two systems are very different. And if we can learn how to go into human mode, then we set off for work. There's a holdup. We don't have an emotional reaction. We have

• 37:20Steve Peters?

  a response which is accept, there's the word, accept what's in front of me, but then follow through with a plan. So in the book, I always say, first step is accept, but immediately say, right, what's the plan? Because that's what humans do. The human system wants solutions. It wants resolution. It wants to move on. The chimp system wants to express emotion and then remove the problem, not solve it. There's a difference. Just remove it. Ignore it, displace it, pretend it hasn't happened. That's not ideal because it tends to come back and bite us.

• 37:56Steven Bartlett?

  How much does, what role does trauma play, like early childhood trauma play in how we respond in situations?

• 38:02Steve Peters?

  Wow, now we're really getting deep. It depends on, again, I'm being black and white. If someone has a really bad trauma at childhood, it can have repercussions throughout life. Because now the circuits in your brain are developing. So if you have a really traumatic event, and it not necessarily how what we would define as traumatic, it's what the child defines. So I'm being a bit facetious here. For example, if it's got its favourite sweets and somebody steals them, that could be a traumatic childhood event. At that moment in time, the impact was so significant that it has repercussions. It's damaging the circuits. It might, for example, perceive that as nothing in life is safe. Anything I have can be removed.

• 38:45Steve Peters?

  However, most children get over it in seconds. You know, but it depends on the child and what stage they're at and what the circumstances are at that point. Somebody else might have child abuse, for example, which is much more likely to have repercussions throughout life. So, but we still get children who get child abuse and have no repercussions. So it isn't a definite black and white, it's probabilities.

• 39:08Steven Bartlett?

  Is it, the way that I've come to understand it is almost like we're wearing our own sunglasses, which is a metaphor for like interpretation. So me and my brother, we could be identical twins. We go through the same experience, but we're wearing different sunglasses. We interpret that experience differently. We deposit evidence about what that experience means into our computer.

• 39:27Steve Peters?

  Yeah. You're absolutely right. And it all hangs on, for example, somebody like your parent might suddenly say, oh, you're just an idiot. You know, but something might have happened just before that where you've gone to school and you got one out of 10 and you were bottom of the spelling test. And you've come home and then your father, you've done something at home and made a mistake. And he says you're an idiot. And the two together get emotionally tangled and that then damages the circuits.

• 39:53Steve Peters?

  Whereas normally, if you come home, you've just got nine out of ten for the spelling come top of the class, and he says you're an idiot, he just bats it off and think, well, I've got nine out of ten. So therefore, the brain doesn't pick it up. So again, I'm trying to give examples where it's so complicated. What I would say is it's hard to find these because they happen often very young in life. And the emotional aspects and our memories emotionally and how we formulate things have about a three-year start on the human circuit, which doesn't come in for three years approximately. So that's why we have no memories of childhood. We can't remember before the age of two because it's not working. So our emotional memory begins in fetal life. So before we're even born, the emotional memory is starting to work out

• 40:34Steve Peters?

  what trauma is and react to that trauma. So we react to the mother's heartbeat, for example. And again, every fetus is different on the spectrum. And then we follow that through and therefore the machine can be damaged early in life. It can be damaged at any point. And then we have something which I've then tried to determine, give a terminology of a goblin to. So gremlin is a belief or an experience you can process and actually get rid of. Whereas a goblin is something which has really damaged the circuits. So you get people often who have very low self-esteem, and that's going to continue throughout life. Now, I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't try and get rid of that. Generally, we can. But it could be they always have moments of low self-esteem. And what they need to

• 41:17Steve Peters?

  do is accept that they're always going to appear, but I'm going to have a way of dealing with them and then going back on to them a much more positive footing. So sometimes we have beliefs within us that are just too hard to remove, and they may have come from traumatic experiences. What I'm saying is I'm not rolling over and saying, oh, well, this is damaged goods. I'm saying, let's learn if they do raise their heads, let's learn how to put them in a box, stop them from having impact in my life today, and then work forward from that. And again, that's a skill to do, and it just needs people to learn how to do that.

• 41:50Steven Bartlett?

  So we can, we can take down gremlins, but we can't.

• 41:54Steve Peters?

  Goblins, you have to accept. And the reason I brought that terminology in is sadly, I've seen over the years when I've been in an educational role as a doctor, I've trained doctors and clinical psychologists, nursing staff, to how we deal with emotions. And what I've seen distressed is when you get well-meaning therapists of any kind, and they're trying to change something that can't be changed. And you have to say, you know, the circuit's damaged. And rather than try and change it, let's learn to deal with it in a very constructive way, but not put that pressure on the person to do something which we're probably never going to achieve. So I'd always say, try, I'd always say, let's try and process an event and let's try moving on. So they remove it. So great if you can get rid of low self-esteem.

• 42:38Steve Peters?

  But if it keeps raising its head, let's say, stop putting pressure on that person and work with it. You still try and remove it. So but but there's a point you say to them, look, let's accept it. But let's not let it take over. Let's learn how to put it in a box. So it's a bit like a virus in a computer system, exactly the same. We accept it's damaged, but we can box it in. And if it does raise its head, we mop it up again.

• 43:04Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because I, from doing this podcast, I used to believe that your traumas, you know, there's early experiences that define you and the evidence it creates could be, all of them could be eradicated with like some form of therapy or treatment. The more I've done this podcast and sat with exceptional people who have, you know, have exceptional stories and some in many cases have exceptional traumas. I've gone the other way and realised that even if they've had all the therapy, they've gone and done ayahuasca, they've had whatever they've had, it's still the, some traumas, some of the deeper, earlier traumas, never seem to disappear. And so my stance has changed. And in recent podcasts, I've been saying that there are instances where some things just, it seems like people just can't overcome certain things. Is there a age

• 43:52Steven Bartlett?

  group where goblins, the traumas that we can't seem to overcome, the evidence or whatever it is, the damage to the circuitry, is there, does it tend to happen earlier?

• 44:01Steve Peters?

  Yeah, the younger we are, when we're developing the brain, the brain keeps developing up to the age of around thirty. So it's young to me at my age as anyone under thirty.

• 44:11Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, so I'm thirty now.

• 44:12Steve Peters?

  Right, you're just still, you're just about done. All right. Some people finish, we know that matures, the final sort of like bits to the brain mature, which is actually the rationality of the brain. It matures around twenty five to thirty, but there are quite a lot. Of particularly more men who keep going to around thirty two, but by then you're out of the oven. So wherever you've got, you've finished.

• 44:34Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, God.

• 44:35Steve Peters?

  I agree with what you're saying is then you accept this is the way my system is. So let me manage my system instead of trying to make my system do something it can't do. So I hope I'm not coming across saying death roll over. I'm not saying that. But the reason that I did it was it's they're also the therapists. It's really hard for the doctor, the nurse, the psychologist. It's really hard to see them struggling to try and change something or help someone and it's not working. And that can damage them to think what's wrong with me.

• 45:03Steven Bartlett?

  I've seen it.

• 45:04Steve Peters?

  Yeah. All right.

• 45:05Steven Bartlett?

  I've got a friend that's a therapist and I've seen her crying.

• 45:07Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Steven Bartlett?

  Because she couldn't change something.

• 45:09Steve Peters?

  Right. And that's why I brought this out and said to the therapist, look, stop, you know, let's, you review what you're doing. They're their own professionals, but as someone who tries to teach therapists and people are working in this field, to say neuroscientifically, there are damages to the circuit. So rather than say, we're going to change it, you've tried and you've probably done a great job because again, most people are really good. Most therapists I've worked alongside have been excellent, you know, whatever their profession is, is but don't beat yourself up if you're struggling with someone. It may be you are hitting the nail on the head, but exactly what you've just said, we're not going to move this person. So stop worrying about it and say, let's try managing it first,

• 45:50Steve Peters?

  whatever's raising its head. And then if we manage it, then we might still try processing, but now we're not defeated.

• 45:57Steven Bartlett?

  I have to say that that's, that's great advice for therapists, but it's also just great advice for someone in a family unit or in a relationship who has a partner or a loved one who is struggling with something where the circuitry might be irreparably damaged. And they're destroying the relationship with that person because they're trying to change them.

• 46:14Steve Peters?

  Exactly. And the devil is in the detail again, because there are other elements to this, because another factor is time. We know that the brain will try and repair itself, even of emotional scars, it will try and do that. So there can sometimes just be time. So we know like in grief reactions, it, you have to allow the brain time and the brain will process things in its own time. And that's a piece of string generally in a serious loss or change of job or relationship gone, or you've lost someone because they've passed on. It usually we say around three months is intense, then a 12 months is still bad. But some people, it can be 10 years and, and there is no normal grief. There's just normal grief for you.

• 46:55Steve Peters?

  And then if it gets stuck, then again, this where the clinicians will come in if you have pathological grief. And this can be due to anything. It's often a belief system again in the computer that's stopping you being able to process something.

• 47:09Steven Bartlett?

  And on that point of low self-esteem seems to be incredibly common.

• 47:12Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 47:13Steven Bartlett?

  Confidence issues, low self-esteem, people believing like they are not enough. I remember I sat with a therapist called Marissa Pippia, Marissa Pia. And she said, I do you know what, Steve, I've, I don't think I've had a patient come to me that believed they were enough. Whether they're an Olympic star or they're a business person, at the heart of them, there was some kind of sort of deeper self-esteem issue. How does one go about working with someone who's got, you know, clearly serious self-esteem issues, confidence issues?

• 47:43Steve Peters?

  I'm gonna be

• 47:46Steve Peters?

  almost paradoxical here and controversially almost. It's a, you know, if you look at the neuroscience of our brain and what it's trying to do. The chimp system is naturally and healthily low self-esteem. That is the natural chimp system. And we see this not just in our system in humans, in chimpanzees. So the fear that they're not up to it is inbuilt. So if you have a fear that you're not as good as other people and you've got low self-esteem and then you start searching for evidence and you'll find it. You'll find it because if you compare yourself to anyone who's excelling, you've found it. That is the chimp system trying to help you. It sounds paradoxical.

• 48:27Steve Peters?

  What it's saying is, don't put yourself in a vulnerable place where you beat your chest and say, look, I'm strong because you could get attacked. Better to keep your head down, wear a tin helmet and hope it goes away. So that's how the chimp system works. So I say, if someone comes in with low self-esteem, the first step to me is accept this is absolutely healthy and natural, but it's unhelpful. So it's, it's natural and healthy. So celebrate you've got this amazingly healthy machine, but what it's giving you is unhealthy. So what you say is, well, why would it give me this? And the answer is so that you don't get shot down. You don't put your head up, but that doesn't mean you can't start saying, right, well, what can I do to gain self-esteem where it's reasonable self-esteem?

• 49:09Steve Peters?

  And then you start saying, for example, don't compare yourselves to others. It's not a healthy thing to do. Even wild chimpanzees do this. They have a hierarchy and they they will compare and they'll jostle for position. So we're built to do similar. We jostle for position and sport is one way we see it blatant. All right. And we enjoy that, provided we retain it as sport and not start going self esteem on it. So we muddle the two up. Uh, and again, in say the typical everyday person. Social media. Yeah. Oh, that's a disaster area because again, what our chimps do is they wanna be loved by everybody. Oh, gosh. And and the evidence is quite strong that if I am your friend and I like you. Okay.

• 49:50Steve Peters?

  Uh, and then you've got another friend who is not keen on you at times and you'll actually give more attention to the person who's not keen on you than me. It sucks. And and that's what we do because our chimp is based to say, I've got to be loved by everyone. So you just say, well, Steve likes him, I'm not gonna bother with him. But if it's Brian or whatever, I'll I'll try and curry favor and you try and please these people. Yeah. And if you look, it's really unhealthy to do that and it's not rational. Instead of saying, let me create a world, uh, because I'm not gonna work with my chimps. It's not a human which says, I value my friends who I wanna invest in, who do respect and love me. They're the people I'm gonna give my time to. And people who find me a bit, you know, maybe not so good or don't like me. Well, that's up to them. You know, they're not in my world. They're outside my world.

• 50:34Steve Peters?

  So if we look at that, that's how the human system works. It builds its own inner world and says, this is how I'm gonna survive the world. But social media can be a disaster because then we look to say, well, who doesn't like me? And what comments? And we give them undue attention. And that's a natural, healthy thing for your chimp to do when it's trying to get everyone on side. But it's a ridiculous thing to do and it's unhealthy. Is that because the chimp cares about status? Yeah, because in in a troop, a natural, and again, not everything that chimpanzees in the wild do refer to us. But some things do overlap and we've found that a chimpanzee will always try and curry favor with the the powerful chimps. Because it doesn't want excluding. Excluded chimp is in trouble. I mean, it's gonna die because it's unlikely another troop will take it.

• 51:20Steve Peters?

  Uh, and it's unlikely a leopard will get it. It's gotta sleep sometime. So, but if you think of us as humans, we tend to see this. So you particularly seen teenagers, they try and make everybody their troop.

• 51:33Steve Peters?

  So anyone who's rejecting is fearful and to the chimp it's life and death. So to our inner system, which is chimp driven in the same way, emotionally, if we get rejected, it potentially we could be kicked out. And we know that if you look at the neuroscience of the brain, particularly in teenagers, it's extremely sensitive to peer pressure. It's built at that point to start forming peer groups. So if somebody says, I don't like your hairstyle, I don't like your socks, or even worse, I don't like you, then that can be extremely damaging to the circuits, that can create damage. So we have to try and get to young children and say, right, we need to teach them, you don't have to please everybody, you please people on your terms with your morals and your values, but you self assess, you decide whether you're good enough, you decide what's

• 52:18Steve Peters?

  important to you. But if we don't teach them at young stage, as a teenager, we go outside that and then social media becomes extremely, extremely dangerous.

• 52:27Steven Bartlett?

  You see that in schools, I went undercover in a school and it was funny, I was on the playground and I was looking out and I could, I saw all of the boys had the same haircut, this kind of weird mullet thing. And all of them had the Under Armour backpack. It was, I couldn't believe it, I was like, they are, they're identical, this group of twenty lads who are all together, perfect mullets and this, this Under Armour backpack. I think at the time when Anthony Joshua, who was the, the, the great boxer, was, was an Under Armour ambassador, I think the brand was becoming really cool. So, and that made me think about how we seek to conform so much at that age and how much I did, I was wearing the skinny jeans, if that was in, and the Fred Perry top, then I was listening to rap music and then.

• 53:06Steve Peters?

  I think that's, that's really important to do, isn't it? Because again, if we got a child who, under the age of ten, wandered away from parents and didn't really care, that's very disconcerting.

• 53:17Steven Bartlett?

  It would be able to build a community, right?

• 53:18Steve Peters?

  The child should be dependent on the parent.

• 53:20Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 53:21Steve Peters?

  You know, if you get a teenager who's outside the peer group, we start getting concerned, it doesn't mean there's something desperately wrong, some people are more isolated than others, it's on a spectrum, but it is worrying. So you like to see teenagers together, but in order to be accepted, you've got common ground. So we, we, our chimps always look for common ground or common experiences. So if I wear orange socks and I'm the gang leader, then you wear orange socks. And now we're all on orange socks. And if I suddenly decide they're out, then everyone stops wearing them. That is pretty healthy as a teenager, uh, because they're peer group bonding. We hope they go through that stage into what we call individualisation. So around seventeen, neuroscientifically, the brain does change almost to the day for most people.

• 54:03Steve Peters?

  So by eighteen ninety, we're starting to individualise. And that means we decide whether I want to really wear orange socks. We get individual identities. However, again, a lot of research, obviously it's contradictory at times, but most of it shows that around that age, we have the leaders come out, which is about one in four people genetically are going to individualise and decide, I'm just going to set my own agendas and I like what music I like and do what I like. But about three in four are semi-dependent throughout their lives. So they'll always look to some strong figure to bond with them. And that tends to be a bit insecure.

• 54:40Steven Bartlett?

  People that have this low self-esteem we talked about a second ago, are they more likely to become what we call people pleasers?

• 54:47Steve Peters?

  Yes, because again, they're trying to curry favour. So that's one way of coping with low self-esteem. So ever, again, everyone's different. So some people might close themselves down and they'll go into their own little world and just not engage. And they don't go and join a new club or form a new hobby or make new friends because they just haven't got that confidence. So they deal, the coping strategy is to just close down. And my, my answer is if, as long as you're happy with that, I'm not going to dispute it. But if you're not and you want to get out, let's get you out there. But everyone has different coping strategies. The next one you've mentioned commonly is to try and please people. Never say no, always say yes. Make sure, it doesn't matter how much it puts you out. Never speak up, don't be assertive.

• 55:31Steve Peters?

  It's critical not to be assertive. So this is their chimp system saying, if you do all this, people will like you more. Sadly, the reality is they don't. People like assertive, confident people. They don't like people who suck up to them. Tends to be then, there's a real danger, now I'm going into forensics. Somebody who's in that position where they're desperate trying to please is really vulnerable to abuse. So they're going to get someone who finds them and then they'll use this against them. And then it really is dangerous. So, so when you look at that, my gut feel as well as logic would be to get them out of that and say, look, be very careful. If you're gonna lean on someone, don't lean on them by trying to please them.

• 56:12Steve Peters?

  Lean on them as a friend who's there to look after you, that's building you up, not controlling you.

• 56:19Steven Bartlett?

  Is that what you tend to find in abusive relationships?

• 56:22Steve Peters?

  Yeah, there's usually very low self-esteem. I mean, years ago, when I did a lot of work in general adult psychiatry and hospital medicine, I would see quite a lot, not just women, but mainly women, who would be, have such low self-esteem that they would subject themselves to someone who was really abusing them. And there was a book out at the time, which I used to recommend, which I think is excellent, written by a woman. And it was entitled Women Who Loved To Him Up. I read through this book and I thought she'd written it, in my opinion, it was excellent. So I used to hand them that and say, I think this is better than me as a man trying to help you to get self-esteem. I can do this, but I think if you understand where she's coming from, and she's saying exactly what you're saying. She's saying, you know, the reason you're clinging to these guys is because you have such low self-esteem.

• 57:08Steve Peters?

  You're actually saying to them, give me my self-esteem, and they're abusing you. So you've got to build your self-esteem.

• 57:16Steve Peters?

  That's so, you're right, but there are lots of ways people do. Some of them are not so blatant. So some people don't recognise they've got low self-esteem until you point out. For example, they just don't know how to be assertive. And if you think about it, if you've got reasonable self-esteem, then you would say, I have the right to speak my mind and also to say to people, please don't do that. It offends me or it upsets me, and this is what I'd like you to do, which is what assertiveness is. So again, sometimes it's subtle that you think, oh, wow, low self-esteem presents with different faces. And again, that's my job to to help people to tease out and think, ah, this is low self-esteem or it isn't.

• 57:53Steven Bartlett?

  I want to figure out how to build self-esteem, but can self, low self-esteem also manifest as the very apparently successful guy or girl who has got a mansion and a Lamborghini and is head to toe in designer brands? Because I know those people as well. I think at one point I was one of those people, if I'm being full disclosure. But is that a form of low self-esteem?

• 58:16Steve Peters?

  Again, it's a, I put under as a poor coping strategy. And what you're trying to say is, look, if I keep elevating myself, then I'll suddenly feel good because people see me as being this wealthy person or this successful person. And it's interesting, even within sport, one of the questions asked is, why are you doing this? Because it's great to do sport, I'm not against sport, but why are you doing it? And often, the answers, which do lead to success, but can have consequence, are I need to prove to myself that I can do something. And that's probably, I would have said, not an ideal reason to do it. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but I think the long term consequence is, you won't stop at the end of sport, you'll keep doing that. That's my, the risk. Or someone who says, I need to demonstrate to other people how good I am. Again, these

• 59:00Steve Peters?

  can be very successful beliefs while you're in sport, but coming out of it, it can lead to danger. So again, it's not for me to say, change it, it's for me to question it and say, is there an alternative way to succeeding sport? And I've met plenty of people who say, it's only sport, but I love it, commit to process and get on with it and succeed, fantastic, and a really great place. So again, it's not for me to say, it's for me to try and tease it out to people.

• 59:28Steven Bartlett?

  I think sometimes, I think even with myself, I've wondered and worried that if the The insecurities I had from being a child, you know, with the only black family in the neighbourhood, we were the poor family with the smashed up house.

• 59:42Steven Bartlett?

  Though that insecurity, I think, has been a driving force for me. I think it was much the reason that I cared so much about getting money and status and material, material success. And then I think there was a point, I think I wrote about this in my book, where I pondered that, if I lose that, do I lose my ambition and my drive?

• 59:57Steve Peters?

  That's a good point. It's interesting that, I'm sorry, you experienced that.

• 1:00:02Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, no.

• 1:00:02Steve Peters?

  Because it did sound great. And again, it was a driving force that eventually led you to being successful in some sense. So it's not altogether negative, but there's a really key point here. It's like when people have a driving force in sport. I think it's great to have a driving force wherever it is, provided you can stop in your tracks and look at perspective and say, you know what? Without this, I'm still a decent person and have good self-esteem within yourself. So I think I'm not against these driving forces, as long as you can contain them and they don't contain you.

• 1:00:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Steve Peters?

  There's a difference. So I think if you said, right, I want to try and prove that I can make this because I'm from a poor family. I'm black, I'm the only one in the neighbourhood and I'm going to show you, we can succeed here as people in this position. And that's true of a lot of minority groups. I don't think it's ideal. I'd much rather, if I'd met you then, say, can you just see yourself as being you? And who cares what the rest of the world thinks? Let's make you and your values. And that could have driven you. But if you say, well, what if I suddenly see myself as being me? And I don't see this as me being poor and I need to prove myself, will that not lose my force? The answer is not really. Your force is driven by emotion at that point. So that's your trimp driving you, right? Which I'm not saying is right or wrong, I'm just saying that's what it's doing. But is there a way the human can drive you?

• 1:01:21Steve Peters?

  And the answer is yes, by your values and saying, I'd like to do things that I think are really valuable to me. And it could be, I want to earn money and I want to help other people and I want a good life. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't think there's anything wrong, but that's for you to decide. But then you can have a driving force and you won't lose it. In sport, I deal with people who I try and get them to put sport in perspective. So my phrase is always, it's tiddlywinks, you know, life is tiddlywinks. But let's do it with a passion. But at any point, if we're not doing well and we make a bad move, let's be able to laugh and say it's tiddlywinks.

• 1:01:57Steven Bartlett?

  Are you doing that to detach it from their self-esteem?

• 1:01:59Steve Peters?

  It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't have to be with self-esteem. That's completely different to me. You've chosen to put your self-esteem on what you can achieve, which is what the chimp does, or who it is, or how people perceive it, or what it's got, what values, valuables it's got, you know, money. That's a way of dealing with it, but it's not a very sound one because what happens is you still keep going. Because deep down, what I've experienced, and I don't know whether you'd resonate, if I met you heart to heart behind locked doors, at that point, you say, I'm not happy. Because I'm aware of what I'm doing and I know it's superficial.

• 1:02:32Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:02:33Steve Peters?

  And that's what I've experienced. I've worked with with the extremes of each spectrum with people who are struggling with finances and people who are extraordinarily wealthy. But the bottom line is, at the end of the day, when you're back in your own house, in your own room, you're living with yourself. And that's why I say, do you want to look at that? Because if you can live with yourself comfortably and be at peace of mind, then nothing's going to get to you. The world will be a much better place.

• 1:02:59Steven Bartlett?

  So when I think back to that time, when I feel like I was most driven by that pursuit, which was before, before I had attained the things that I was aiming to attain, because I think sometimes when you attain those things, they they act as pretty profound evidence that you were you were aiming for the wrong thing at some time. But if I look through, the thing that I think would would make me unhappy was that all the things I sacrificed because of my pursuit for like materials, for for money or material success. So not having relationships or friendships or social connection. Sacrificing all of those things created like an emptiness.

• 1:03:34Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Steven Bartlett?

  You know, just working seven days a week in an office, not and then thinking that, you know, this was the a noble cause because it would make me rich. It was actually the things I, well, I think it was the things that I sacrificed that led me to feeling a little bit empty inside. I wouldn't necessarily say I was unhappy, but I was definitely, it was unsustainable for sure. I was definitely heading to a bad place. Like I could see that coming. I'd seen a couple of my friends, actually, who were doing the same thing at the time, end up in bad places, on medication, having panic attacks, drinking a lot of alcohol, too much alcohol. So I could see myself heading to a bad place. But um.

• 1:04:07Steve Peters?

  But I think, again, I don't think we should see this black and white things, shades of grey again. I'm not, it makes clear, I'm not against people earning money and having great possessions and holidays and, because that will obviously give them some pleasure and happiness. I'm not against, I'm just saying alongside that, let's look at the other aspects which you're neglecting.

• 1:04:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:26Steve Peters?

  So do both. Just get a perspective that that's going to help me or my chimp to feel happy, but actually what's going to make me feel good. Now, some people will say, I'm happy, I've got my money and I've got my car. And it's not for me to say, oh, wow, what about your values? It's, I'm not, who am I to do that? What I'm saying is my experience has been with a lot of people I work with, you're resonating with what I find, that behind locked doors, they're saying there's an emptiness. There's something, like you're saying, I'm sacrificing things that mean a lot to me. And I want these great friends, and I want to have a meaning in my life. I want purpose. I want my values defining. I want to be able to live with my values. And so I say to people, could you just get a balance? Just tell me, what do you need? What do you want? And let's get both of these things in position.

• 1:05:11Steven Bartlett?

  You come to learn, like, I think I thought that I didn't need those things, because I thought I was some anomaly.

• 1:05:16Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:17Steven Bartlett?

  I didn't think I needed the like fundamentals of hu- human needs. I didn't think I needed a connection. I thought all of these things, well, you could take it or leave it. But the longer you run that experiment, the, this, sooner you'll find out that you too are human.

• 1:05:29Steve Peters?

  But again, i- if you try and give some context to this, when you're sort of nineteen to twenty-five roughly, you're generally searching for a partner and your brain is telling you, look at your best.

• 1:05:40Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Steve Peters?

  You know, otherwise you're not going to get anybody. So therefore you're wanting this admiration, you're wanting this status. And, and that's because that's nature driving. You say, if you're the best, that's who they'll pick. They're not going to pick someone who's not the best. Right? So we're driven, and then we do this comparison with other people, which can drive us on, or it can cause incredible depressive feelings, and then low self-esteem. So again, I think if we can help people to understand that's normal and healthy, but it's unhealthy if you don't address the rest. So in saying that, we're not all going to look like Tarzan on this world. You know, and if that's what you're aiming to do, then you're going to fail because you'll always see a bigger talson or a better miss world. It doesn't matter. And I think that can

• 1:06:22Steve Peters?

  be a faulty stance in life. But at that age group, you're meant to be doing that. Whereas once you start going beyond that, either you've got a partner, or you start to realise it's a bit superficial. And so what you're doing is maturing into the 30s, not everyone. Most people mature to thinking, this is empty. This is not a good place to be. And this not going to last. And also, you remember you're aging. So you know, you look in the mirror and suddenly think, wow, that wasn't what I used to see. And then if you're not wise, you start trying to be something you're not. So you're trying to get yourself 10 years younger. And that can become an embarrassment. So again, but it's up to people what they

• 1:07:03Steve Peters?

  want to do. But I'm saying the natural development of the brain in the 30s is to mature you. As I've said, it finishes now, it really matures. And then in your 40s, you do see life differently. So as you develop, your brain matures, and it will see things differently. I always joke with people and say, you know, when you get in middle age, because you buy a bird table. And you can't believe many people resonate, or you go to the garden centre on a Sunday. But that doesn't mean you can't do that at 19. And it doesn't mean you have to do it at 40. I'm just saying, we recognise that what it's symbolising is, I'm starting to look at more aesthetics in my life now, and not chasing after a mega career, I'm not chasing after wealth. I'm saying, look, there's a point where you've got enough. And

• 1:07:48Steve Peters?

  there are other things, there's quality of life now. And for a lot of people, they start tuning into things like nature. So it's not that surprising. They've got the garden centre. You know, I'm not saying that negatively at all. All right, I've got my bird table.

• 1:08:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, we just put my girlfriend's dad a bird.

• 1:08:04Steve Peters?

  There you go.

• 1:08:05Steven Bartlett?

  Box with a camera in it.

• 1:08:06Steve Peters?

  There you go. But the point is, at this age, more people are more likely to appreciate that than when you're 18.

• 1:08:12Steven Bartlett?

  Of course, yeah.

• 1:08:13Steve Peters?

  But we're not saying that, you know, I'm not trying to put people in boxes. I'm trying to say, let's look at how the brain develops. But learn what works for you. But it's good to know that your brain is maturing all the time. And you will move, you will move ground, whether you like it or not, your brain will mature as well as your physical body.

• 1:08:28Steven Bartlett?

  I've always, I've always wondered why at twenty three, twenty four years old, I would go to nightclubs and spend a ridiculous amount of money on champagne bottles with sparklers on them to try and impress people. Whereas now, in my thirty year old mind, I look at that behaviour and go, I wouldn't even go, like, I don't even wanna go to nightclubs at all, period anymore. But twenty three, twenty four year old Steve, which isn't that long ago, it's only like six years ago, that's all I look forward to. That's all I wanted to do. And it's funny, in just six years, how my interests can seem to be so profoundly different. And you know, when I was twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, I always thought about like older people, like thirty, forty, fifty year olds go, why aren't they coming to nightclubs? Like, why aren't they here? They don't know how to have any fun. That'll never happen to me. I'll be in this club when I'm forty five.

• 1:09:12Steven Bartlett?

  And I guess looking at the brain kind of explains why that.

• 1:09:15Steve Peters?

  Yeah, and, and there are exceptions, don't forget, there are.

• 1:09:18Steven Bartlett?

  Of course, yeah.

• 1:09:19Steve Peters?

  But it's even like with music, you know, when you're ten, generally it's a big feature in most people's lives. And in the twenties it is, but it starts to diminish. So you don't find people in the forties and fifties, you can, but most people have moved on. And they say, you think you're gonna be into music forever, and then you suddenly realise, actually, it's loud. And that's when you think, oh my goodness, what's happening here? But I mean, this is a natural progression. You know, but then again, I love it if you get somebody who's in their sixties, seventies and still into pop music. And that's great. You know, I'm not saying that's something wrong, but I'm saying there is a general trend and you're experiencing this.

• 1:10:01Steve Peters?

  So I think pulling it back to my world is, that's why I say the brain's doing the same thing. So we go through these stages and we've mentioned about self-esteem, which is really important in the peer group, really important. Unfortunately, they get self-esteem by comparison generally and by admiration and possessions. And then as you get into your twenties, we start to change. And hopefully, if people mature and start tuning into their mind, by the thirties and forties, we're matured enough to start looking at our values and what's important to us in our life, such as friendships.

• 1:10:34Steven Bartlett?

  So if I'm thirty odd, you know, and I've got low self-esteem, I'm, you know, I'm thirty three, got low self-esteem, and I came to you. Where would you begin with trying to help? And that low self-esteem was manifesting in abusive relationships, bad work relationships, very negative sort of feelings about myself and maybe even some impulsive behaviours. You know, I'm, I'm eating too much or I'm, I don't know, whatever. Where would you start with me?

• 1:11:00Steve Peters?

  Okay, the first, I mean, just so people say, oh, wow, that's a strange starting point. I'm a doctor, so the first is make sure you're actually okay.

• 1:11:08Steven Bartlett?

  I'm okay.

• 1:11:08Steve Peters?

  Because if someone were presenting with this, they could be in depression and that can present in many ways. Typically, it's low mood and loss of pleasure and everything and loss of energy. But that doesn't have to be, so I mustn't miss that. So I would make sure your mind is not ill, but only treatment. Now, we assume that this is longstanding and what you've done is what you're describing is a lot of maladaptive coping strategies. So I eat too much, which is probably comfort eating, or it's just habitual stuff that you're just not, you know. Or it could be you've got so low self-esteem, I've seen this, you're almost punishing yourself. You know, I don't deserve to eat well and I don't deserve to eat the right things. So I deserve to be overweight or I deserve to look like this. So that could be the bottom bit.

• 1:11:52Steve Peters?

  So I have to start, my starting point is exploration. But the key to this would be to move all that to one side. If you're in a reasonable place where you can actually communicate, if not, I let you express it all. It's important you get it off your chest. If you've got it, you say, I don't need to do that. What I do is what I've said in the book here, in A Path of Jungle, I explain the starting point is, get a blank piece of paper and write down who you want to be. What behaviours do you want to have? Let's define what you want, not what you don't want, not what you're experiencing. Don't start with a treacle, I call that the treacle. Start with a blank piece of paper and then write down the person you want to be.

• 1:12:31Steven Bartlett?

  I want to be, I want to be really confident, I want to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, I want to get married, I want to have kids, I want to work out every day, I want to eat really good food.

• 1:12:40Steve Peters?

  Right, so what you're describing now is the human system. The great news is when I ask you with the characteristics you've got, so I want to be calm, I want to be happy, I want to be confident, that is you. That is you.

• 1:12:53Steven Bartlett?

  How do you know it's me?

• 1:12:54Steve Peters?

  Right, because if we were, we can't surgically remove interference neuroscientifically, which we can see on functional marrow scanners. If we remove the chimp and computer system, then you're completely in control of yourself. So you would choose to be calm. You would choose to be confident. So therefore, that's you. The human system can choose. What happens is when you choose to be calm, the chimp system interferes or the computer interferes and throws shows to the world someone who's not calm. So it's very important to recognize who you are before we start. So now we've got a guy, you're not gonna write, no one ever writes anxious.

• 1:13:31Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 1:13:31Steve Peters?

  No one. They say, no, what I want to be is calm, collected, a good friend, have integrity. That is you if, if we didn't have interference in the machine. So it's very crucial, this is the biggest point in the book, the biggest point is to define yourself because now you've got, self-esteem can rise just on that alone. Once you've grasped that, you say, wow, what I'm presenting to the world is interference. It's not me. If I didn't have this machine, I would not have anxiety. Because that's the system that you're saying the human system can't do anxiety. It's not built to do that. It's built to be rational and calm. But what it wants to do and how it wants to present is a choice. The chimp has no choice. The computer has no choice.

• 1:14:15Steve Peters?

  The computer's programmed, but these are interfering and presenting to the world someone who is not you. So it's very important to grasp that concept. That's my starting point. Now we've grasped that, we build on that. So now we, I know who you are. I, I'll say this, sometimes when you're with a friend and you've been chatting a while, and maybe it's got late in the evening, and you've got a lot off your chest and you've discussed, you calm down. And sometimes the real you presents. And suddenly you feel at peace. People often say, I don't know, it's just now felt totally relaxed and thought, I've got perspective. I've gathered the world's the way it is, I accept things are, and I've calmed down. And then suddenly you see the real person.

• 1:14:58Steve Peters?

  And they've got morals and values and not every human has. Sometimes the chimp's the good guy. Some, you know, sometimes the human's not nice. So I do get people who do not write, for example, who you are. They don't write compassion. They don't write integrity. They don't care. And if I challenge, say, you didn't put compassion, they say, I don't, not bother about that. So I have to work out who you are. Okay, so not everyone is going to write the same things. That's why I know it's you and not just a generic list.

• 1:15:26Steven Bartlett?

  Because someone could just be virtue signaling because you're asking me to do it or because I want to be these people. But really, I'm a, I'm a burglar, I'm a bad guy, you know, I'm, I wanna hurt people.

• 1:15:34Steve Peters?

  Yeah, I'll tease that out.

• 1:15:36Steven Bartlett?

  How, how?

• 1:15:37Steve Peters?

  That's my job. Cause again, then you look at evidence based and you look at remorse, you look at whether somebody compensates for mistakes. You look, there's a lot of things, I wanna see the history here.

• 1:15:46Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 1:15:47Steve Peters?

  And then I'll challenge that and challenge it. So that's a series of talks. So often we have a long time when we detain someone to, to explore this, so we don't get fooled.

• 1:15:56Steven Bartlett?

  Is this in you, you talk referencing much of your psychiatric work here within psych hospitals?

• 1:16:00Steve Peters?

  Yeah. So somebody is psychopathic, we generally, everyone's a different version of what it is. For me, a newer scientific, we know there's certain tracks in the brain that are not really fully developed or don't function. Uh, and this produces someone without empathy, without remorse, without any conscience. Uh, these are classic. And so I don't know that, I'm not a mind reader, I can't tell until people talk. You know, so yes, they could deceive me, I, I have to just go on what they tell me. But I can listen carefully to the words they use, I can listen to what they're saying, I can look at their past life events and it starts to unravel. So eventually you think, okay, I know what I'm dealing with now. So, but to be honest, people don't do that with me. Uh, what you tend to is, cause I, I would hopefully set a scene where I don't care what you write.

• 1:16:45Steve Peters?

  I don't care what you wanna do with your life. It's not for me, I'm not a judge. I'm here as a doctor to explore this with you and get insights for yourself. So the most people are not psychopathic. We're decent people who've just got lost in the way they knew science of our mind just tumbled us. So my starting point, when you gave me all this, was to say, let's write out the real you. And let's start building ourselves on that and recognizing what is not us. And let's start unpicking it. So let's just start saying, right, why would you have? And we went earlier about low self-esteem. Let's look at why you have that. First, it's natural and healthy. That can help people. Sometimes just saying that, they go, that's amazing. I feel better for knowing it's natural and healthy. Maybe rubbish and unhelpful, but at least I know it's healthy.

• 1:17:29Steve Peters?

  And there's not something wrong with me. Because the second you start saying, oh, I'm trying to please people and I can't say no. And you see that as being a weakness or a fault, we're in trouble again. Because you're muddling yourself up with a machine. So that's my starting point. Who are you? What's the machine doing? All of this, anything the chimp does, anything it does is natural. There's nothing you're going to give me, even if it murders someone. That's what chimps do. They're violent. So it's still illegal and not acceptable. But I'm saying, everything's natural. So that puts us on a different way of looking at it. Again, to try and give context to that, natural isn't always good.

• 1:18:13Steve Peters?

  So overeating is natural, but it's not good. And even like the classic one I always use with parents and teenagers, I always say, if you've got, said it this morning with someone, if you've got a teenager who's got a tidy bedroom, that's what I want to meet. If they have a messy bedroom, great, that's normal, you know? So you're more concerned with teenagers that aren't being teenagers. So if you've got a teenager who never lies, then it's a bit worrying. Maybe they're good at deceit. Because teenagers are learning to lie and they're learning to defend themselves. And it's a natural of doing it. It's not helpful and hopefully they grow out of it. But you've got to say, what's natural? And let's work with that to minimize risk or whatever we want to do. So that's a long-winded way of saying, you know, get you to be yourself, get your

• 1:18:58Steve Peters?

  machine, let's see what the machine's doing and let's change the coping strategies. But I accept the machine is the machine.

• 1:19:05Steven Bartlett?

  Do we, do we choose what we believe? Could I choose, could I genuinely choose a belief? You know, we talked earlier on about how you can't just lie to yourself and brainwash yourself to think something. Could I genuinely make myself believe something? If, could I choose to? So could I choose to believe that you're a spaghetti monster? If the, if my whole life or my family was on the line, could I choose that belief?

• 1:19:26Steve Peters?

  No, no. Well, others might argue, no, because clearly you've given a good example. It's so ridiculous that you're brainwashing yourself. Whereas when you look at beliefs, we have to look at evidence-based to say, what's your experience in life? And that will formulate our belief. Or what's your education?

• 1:19:44Steven Bartlett?

  So with that said, then I can't choose my, I can't choose a belief because my experience, my evidence, my education, but I couldn't.

• 1:19:50Steve Peters?

  You couldn't, no, what you, if we don't choose beliefs, we develop beliefs.

• 1:19:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:54Steve Peters?

  We develop them, but we develop them on what we experience or what education tells us. If I say to you, research shows one in 200 people have got psychopathic brains, then you look at the research and go, okay, that's, I believe that research now. You may dispute it, but if you have experience that, blimey, about one in 200 people hurt me, then you've worked that out yourself. So your experience, but you might get someone who's really oblivious and lack of insight and say, I believe one in two people hurt me. And now, you know, you think, well, can we challenge that? And let's see your experience. But if it resonates with them, it's not for me to say, well, that's just rubbish. They're, that's their experience.

• 1:20:33Steven Bartlett?

  I'm really compelled by this idea of whether we choose our beliefs or not, because I think that this is at the heart of a lot of these topics like confidence and self-esteem. You know, there's a lot of people out there that say, go look in the mirror and say nice things to yourself in the mirror and that will help you believe in yourself.

• 1:20:47Steve Peters?

  Okay, I'm glad you're laughing. I'm glad you're laughing. Yeah, it is silly, isn't it? I think if you look in the mirror and you say, uh, something that you don't really like, looking back, uh, I think then you have to go down the road to say, right, is it really that important what I look like? I can give you a good example, years and years and years ago, I worked with a young lady who didn't like what she looked like. She really didn't. And, uh, she was attractive in my opinion, but I think everyone's attractive. Uh, and. There was no point me trying to convince her. I was a young doctor then, and this taught me. And I couldn't get anywhere. So I was struggling. And eventually, she was in an inpatient, we were worried about self-harm and so on. And that was her coping strategy

• 1:21:29Steve Peters?

  for having very low self-esteem, and I was lost. So as a junior doctor, by chance, I asked her, just chatting, to try and get her to see some value in her. I said, what do you like doing? And she said, I love animals. And by chance, we did have a bird table, which was neglected. And we also had a cat on the ward. And no one really bothered with the cat. And I said, can I ask you to do something for me? And this wasn't planned. I just thought, can you look after the bird table? And can you look after the cat? And without a word of lie, a different person emerged. And I sat there and I thought, why has that changed? Because this isn't what you learnt at medical school. You learn antidepressants and, you know, therapies and talk. And I thought, what have I just done? And I'm young

• 1:22:11Steve Peters?

  at that point to read around, and I like to read outside of medicine. And I thought, I gave her a purpose. And that was her self-esteem. She took it out of herself. She then said, it doesn't matter what I look like, I want to help the animals. And this is a true story that she got discharged and went to work at an animal centre. And I met her in outpatient follow-up. And she was as happy as could be. And I said, we've got to broach the subject. What about, you know, your self-esteem and where you look? And she said, well, my self-esteem doesn't matter, because she actually did have it, but it was on I am a carer. And these animals need me. So you could argue psychodynamically, she was looking after herself by looking after the animals. She needed love, so she gave love. So I could see psychoanalysis saying, there you go. I don't mind how it's interpreted. It worked.

• 1:22:56Steve Peters?

  For me, it worked. So I suddenly thought, wow, sometimes people just need to have a purpose in life and feel valued, rather than what they look like. So that was the start of me really starting to think as a young doctor, you know, don't go down one route. Trying to see things as being like a spectrum, and have a toolbox to say, well, hang on, let's stop looking in the mirror and let's start looking outside yourself. Because that could be the turning point for you. So again, that won't work for everyone. So I have to, when you say about this, I'm probably getting the idea now, whenever someone comes in, I have to really work hard to understand their mind. What beliefs are they holding? What's going to turn them around? What's not

• 1:23:38Steve Peters?

  helping? What are the long-term consequences? What hidden beliefs have they got that they're not aware of, but I've got to get them out. And when I've done all that, I then go to work on it to help them to challenge what we can both see as being unhelpful and replace them.

• 1:23:53Steven Bartlett?

  In that example of giving that young lady a bird box and the cat, and then I had going and working with animals and that, making her feel a sense of sort of worthiness, I guess.

• 1:24:02Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:04Steven Bartlett?

  I was thinking about that. If that job becomes, gives her that sense of worthiness, just like the relationship we've talked about and all these other stimulants, can that then become a negative thing?

• 1:24:18Steve Peters?

  Exactly. Anything can count it. And this is why I'm saying that when people say, write me a book. And I think, I'm always reluctant to do it. And it's taken me 10 years to write this one, as in 10 years later, after the first one, because I don't want to go in there with a process, but I feel I've got to, because, you know, some people, it is very humbling, have said, this has so helped, you know, it really makes sense to me, that I thought, I've got to expand on it and give it in more detail. So people have really can do it themselves. But the problem is, it's very individual. So I have to work with the individual. And yes, that could become a positive for the rest of her life. But as long as we can give her perspective as well, that she's worthy as an individual.

• 1:24:58Steve Peters?

  But if your value is, I believe the value I have is, I want to be altruistic. If that is a value you hold, and you're living that value out by helping animals, for example, then we know that that will give you peace of mind.

• 1:25:13Steven Bartlett?

  What I was, what I'm alluding to there as well is this workaholism.

• 1:25:16Steve Peters?

  Yeah. Yeah. Do I keep helping more and more?

• 1:25:19Steven Bartlett?

  Do I work seven days a week and I can't leave the bloody animal sanctuaries?

• 1:25:22Steve Peters?

  Exactly. And that's where you've got to get this tiddlywinks, but come out and get perspective. So say, right, it's great you're doing that, but don't start making it, the more I do, the better I am, instead of saying, no, I have to look after myself too. So again, it isn't just one thing. We're giving it very sort of linear here. I'm just giving you an example of one angle, but then I would work on the girl in other areas of her life. So it isn't just that angle. But the bottom line is, if you, and I guess most people think this, if you live, if you've defined your values and you live by your values, then you become a wholesome person. So it's, it's, most people don't even know what their values are. So I push this point that I think this is the only thing that I've ever seen that gives peace

• 1:26:06Steve Peters?

  of mind, and that's to live out your values. But you have to find them first. And people muddle up what's valuable and what's value. They muddle them up. So I tried to define that clearly so people know, like, let's find your values and then let's start measuring how you live those values out, because it's not as easy as you think. So I give this as exercise in the book to try and say, work out your values and then live them out, but measure them. So again, as an example, let's say most people put down respect, respect for others. They like that, that's a value I really hold to. And then when you say to them, well, how would, how would you demonstrate that? People go, I don't know, you know? So I say, well, let's look, there are many ways you can. So for example, one way you could

• 1:26:50Steve Peters?

  demonstrate respect is by listening to someone, by thinking, I want to get their point of view, because that's respectful. Not judging them, just listening. I may not agree, but I'm going to listen. That is one thing you could do by testing it weekly, to say, let me start listening to people, because that, then at the end of the day, I think that was respectful. I may not agree, and I would be polite in saying, be assertive, I don't agree, but I'm listening and I respect your view. So if that resonates, if, then that's one way of measuring them being respectful. So I like people to do work with me where we work on things like this. And then they get high self-esteem. So going back to the young lady, if I did that with her, then she would say, right, so caring for animals

• 1:27:33Steve Peters?

  is great, it's altruistic, but actually I've got something else now as well. So exactly what you said, it doesn't become the devil, where I've got to, I've got to do this every day, otherwise I'm failing again. You get, get it into context.

• 1:27:47Steven Bartlett?

  Has working with a patient ever made you cry?

• 1:27:49Steve Peters?

  Yes.

• 1:27:52Steve Peters?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:27:53Steven Bartlett?

  Can you tell me about an instance?

• 1:27:55Steve Peters?

  I don't think I've ever cried in front of a patient. I'm pretty sure I haven't. But I think obviously I deal with tragedies in life and they're painful. So in the room, I have to contain emotion. You've got the psyche falling apart. But on the other hand, you know, I'm a human being and you go away and you think somebody, for example, horror stories, like some parents who's lost their child. There's no way back, you know, and my view, which may be wrong, is that I say to people, can we start by you're emotionally scarred? This isn't going to go away. This is for life, but we're going to learn how we can cope with it. But you're not going to be the same. You cannot get over this. So you won't come to terms with it at all. You'll learn to manage it. There's a difference. Because I think, I'd love it to have my parents say, I've come to terms with it,

• 1:28:39Steve Peters?

  but that's really hard. My experience has been they don't. So when I leave the room and I think, how am I going to work for this man and woman? And get them to come to terms with it, I have to sort of, this is the only way I work. Get inside their head and that's so painful that it distresses me. I feel it then, you think, gee, you know. So I do that with everyone. I do it with sports people. I do it with the police. I do it with doctors. I'll try and get in their head and think, what is their world? Hopefully it's not that tragic. But when it's tragic, tragic, yeah, it's painful. So it brings tears to me.

• 1:29:11Steven Bartlett?

  How do you deal with that?

• 1:29:14Steve Peters?

  Learn to recognize and talk to myself, you know, which I do. And say, at the end of the day, I can't change life. I can't change things, you know, tragedies happen. And it's not going to be helpful for me to dwell on it. What is helpful is to me to get inside the head and experience the pain, experience the feelings and hopefully even the thoughts. So that I can then get outside of my head, which I think is a skill to do. And actually then say, right, what can I do about it? Because then if it resonates with me, it's possibly going to resonate with the person I'm working with. So I go back feeling, yeah, I know what I can say here and try it. But then I don't have this approach where actually I'm not feeling or experiencing what they've got. This is not for everyone. I can hear a lot of therapists going, this is everything you're taught not to do.

• 1:29:57Steve Peters?

  Good on you. It's how I work and it works for me.

• 1:30:02Steven Bartlett?

  I I've heard you in A Path Through the Jungle talk, talk about what you just said there, which is you actually talk to yourself.

• 1:30:08Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09Steven Bartlett?

  In The Path Through the Jungle, you talk about talking to the chimp.

• 1:30:12Steve Peters?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, to lighten the mood, because it's quite heavy. There's lots of great things I've had and lots of great experiences, lots of success. And I say to people, always pat yourself on the back when you do this. But one of the things my chimp responds to, and I don't know why he responds to this, is sarcasm. But I've worked that out. So whenever something upsets my chimp, and I just think, oh, come on, get a life. And I can't, my chimp's going for me. I say to the chimp very quickly, right, can I just ask, do you want to be upset for a minute, an hour, the rest of our lives? Just give me, give me a help. I don't know why, it makes me laugh. So it disarms my chimp. And we know that if you can laugh at yourself, or a circumstance, you can't always, but

• 1:30:55Steve Peters?

  if you can, we know that's the only time the brain seems to default into human mode. Because what you're really doing, if you think the chimp's job is to alert us to danger and worry, where you start laughing genuinely, particularly at yourself, the chimp's disarmed, it has no job. So it goes silent, it literally will silence, and you'll see the blood supply and oxygen uptake in the human circuits. And so I come back to me and think, okay. And my chimp may witter again, but you know, I'll deal with it. So, yeah, I talk to my chimp in that I know what it, what can bring me around.

• 1:31:29Steven Bartlett?

  When you say talk to, do you mean out loud?

• 1:31:32Steve Peters?

  I wouldn't do that without people around.

• 1:31:35Steven Bartlett?

  Because I tried upstairs.

• 1:31:37Steve Peters?

  All right, yeah.

• 1:31:37Steven Bartlett?

  I felt like my chimp had a little bit of a hold of me about something. And so I tried just having a conversation with myself out loud.

• 1:31:44Steve Peters?

  And it works.

• 1:31:45Steven Bartlett?

  It worked.

• 1:31:45Steve Peters?

  It will work. I'll tell you why, and again, I'll both go through this in detail for those who want the science behind it, it's referenced. When, when we talk to ourself. We talk often from the chimp. We can talk from the human, but when we listen, the human processes what we hear, which is why often, you know, we talk to a friend and we say, I feel a lot better. It's not just getting it off your chest, you're listening. So often in a team meeting in business, for example, I'll sit and I'll say, just talk from your chimp. And they'll talk and talk and I say, right, when you've got off your chest, how much you believe of that? And they'll go, nothing. It's rubbish because you're actually processing what you're saying. So the more we talk out loud, the more we process from our human

• 1:32:27Steve Peters?

  and bring perspective in, which the chimp can't do. We bring perspective and reality to the table and that can bring us back to earth. So it does work. So behind locked doors, yes. I mean, when I worked with British Cycling, which was great at the time and many fantastic people there, great achievements. When I used to drive in for, I live in the Peak District, so it was an hour's drive. And I would literally on the morning say to my chimp, right, before we get there, don't want your opinion, don't want you to interfere, but when we come home, I'll let you talk. Don't ask me why it works, probably think I'm nuts. But it worked. My brain almost went into computer mode to say, not the right time, yet not the right time.

• 1:33:08Steve Peters?

  So I would deal with a lot of upsets. You can imagine working with people, you get a lot of, all kinds of things. And then I would come home and I'd just particularly point entering the peaks where I'd say, okay, it's your time. And my chimp would come out. And then I would let it say, well, that was so unreasonable of that person. That was. And once I've done that, as our chimps do, you can't keep going. It used to get bored of its own voice. And I'd say, you're finished? And he'd say, yeah, it's fine now. So that won't work for everyone, you know, but I'm just saying sometimes it does work. I would just like to add, because I think I'm fairly resilient. When we're not resilient, sometimes you've got to give TLC. So I'm not always firm with the chimp. Sometimes I go, you got a point.

• 1:33:51Steve Peters?

  Sometimes I agree with it. And again, this is learning how to deal with you, your own emotions, what works for you. So I try this with people and say, what resonates with you? You've got to try it. But sometimes I have to say even to my own chimp, you've got good reason to be upset. You've got good reason to be distressed. You know, I get it. And that giving yourself reassurance and TLC can be very powerful.

• 1:34:15Steven Bartlett?

  Is that what you refer to as exercising your chimp?

• 1:34:18Steve Peters?

  Exercising the chimp is when you let out emotion, express yourself. So it doesn't have to be high emotion. Expression can just be, can I just say, I think what's just happened was unreasonable? I think this person was way out of order. Or it can be without emotion, saying this person's just damaged me. You know, or particularly reputations of people are in other people's hands. And you see, I see a lot of this where you've got reputational damage and you can't do anything about that because it's not in your hands. And the more you try and defend your reputation, the worse it gets. So you have to just suck it up. So there's where I'd said, be reasonable with your chimp. You know, don't down it and say, come on, get over it because it needs TLC. And there's lots of times, lots of circumstances, TLC is appropriate.

• 1:35:02Steve Peters?

  But you have to learn when to go enough because it tips to self pity.

• 1:35:06Steven Bartlett?

  So we exercise the chimp, we let it out.

• 1:35:08Steve Peters?

  Let it out, express emotion or express feelings or express it in words.

• 1:35:13Steven Bartlett?

  Step two, as I read in the book, is then we figure out if it can be addressed.

• 1:35:17Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:18Steven Bartlett?

  And say, in the case of reputational damage, someone said something, it's not true, it's out in the press, I can't, whatever. You know, I can't respond, whatever it might be. Then step three is we make a plan to move forward.

• 1:35:28Steve Peters?

  Yeah. And that can often be, let's look at reality here and the facts of the situation. That nobody, nobody is immune to attacks, nobody. It doesn't matter, you know. I often say if an angel from heaven fell to earth, it would be attacked. And so you've got to get reality that, and then the reality is if you're not going to please everyone and something has terrible happened, go to your friends because that's all that counts at the end. You know, it's who you're with at the end of the day. And these are your friends, your partner, potentially your family. The people that stand with, that's why I say the truth, this is your fallback we talked about earlier. You turn to them and they're then the ones who go, we don't care. We know you, who you are, we love you. And even if you've made a mistake, they're forgiving.

• 1:36:10Steve Peters?

  You know, at the end of the day, we're not perfect human beings. Nobody's an angel. We're not angels. We're human beings with machines that can run us aright. And even our humans can get it wrong. Sometimes we blame the chimp. It's not. It's the human. You know, that circuit can do it irrationally. You know, it's not always rational when it comes in.

• 1:36:28Steven Bartlett?

  You must have dealt with this a lot, dealing with high performance athletes and people in the public eye.

• 1:36:33Steve Peters?

  Yeah, yeah. A lot of teenagers, because again, that's a vulnerable time, but a lot of people. So it's a privilege to deal with. It's uncomfortable. You know, you deal with actors, actresses, I deal with sports people.

• 1:36:46Steven Bartlett?

  What about footballers? Have you ever dealt with any footballers?

• 1:36:48Steve Peters?

  Yeah, I worked in England football for three years and I worked with Liverpool for three years. So I know a lot of the lads went very public, which was great. And again, they were not in a bad place when I met them. What they were saying is how to optimize performance. And again, they might deal with some really bad comments in the press. And which, you know, behind locked doors, I'm thinking, this isn't right. I don't think they've got the right end of the stick here, you know. And so all I can do is stand with them and say, look, you know, I know the real person. And I know what you're going through and I can only give them my support. And sometimes that's all people need. They need somebody who's there for them to say, you know, you're struggling here, but I'm here and I know the truth. We can't change a falsehood or the way someone interprets.

• 1:37:31Steve Peters?

  You know, we can't. So we have to recognize when we can't change it. We fall back to the troop and say, just give me some TLC or support.

• 1:37:40Steven Bartlett?

  Habits. A lot of people are thinking about habits. It's January. I made a video on habits a couple of weeks ago.

• 1:37:50Steven Bartlett?

  In a path through the jungle, you talk about how our habits are influenced by our self-image.

• 1:37:57Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:58Steven Bartlett?

  That was a curious sentence to read and not something I'd heard before. What do you mean by that?

• 1:38:03Steve Peters?

  Okay, there's lots of ways we form habits, whether they're helpful or destructive. And I'm giving examples. So that's one you picked out. It's quite powerful if you grasp it. So for example, Um, I'll take the simple example, which I may have put in the book, I don't remember. If I wrote down, I'd say to someone, do you see yourself as someone who is a tidy person who gets on with things immediately? Or do you see yourself as someone who procrastinates and is pretty untidy? I'm untidy. Right. So if you've got that self-image and you go home and your room is untidy, I'm being very black and white here. Then there's no feelings at all, because that's who you are, you're untidy. It's true. So therefore you don't do anything. That's true. Whereas if you say, right, change your image and say, actually, my chimp being untidy, I'm a tidy person.

• 1:38:47Steve Peters?

  In some cases, you're now programming the computer, you now go home and say, wow, this isn't me. And that can change. So if your self-image is, I'm not my chimp, that's an untidy little beggar. I am actually a tidy person. How do I change that self? Well, you've got to sit down and reflect on this. I mean, a lot of the things in the book I've done as a young doctor, when I became a psychiatrist, I decided I didn't want to be a psychiatrist who didn't actually manage themselves. And that's no detriment to psychs who struggle, because it's not an easy career or any, any therapist, it's a tough career. But I decided, look, I'm going to work on me because I can't keep doing this, which is where the chimp model came from.

• 1:39:26Steve Peters?

  And it was one of my lightbulb moments many, many years ago, where I would, I would be procrastinating and, and then I suddenly thought, you know what? That isn't who I want to be. So I thought, that isn't me, I'm actually someone who gets on with things. And I used to get in and I'd just go, right, get on with it. And it's never left me, I just, no, that is who I am. So I become uncomfortable now. If things are untidy, I agitate and think, no, get it tidied up. So I start perceiving myself as this energized guy who's going to get up and do stuff. So if you define your self-image, you're actually programming your computer to say, this is normal, anything else isn't. And that will actually help your chimp to agitate, which will then join forces and tidy the room.

• 1:40:09Steve Peters?

  So instead of your chimp going, oh, I can't be bothered, suddenly it's saying, well, I'm being told we're not untidy. So this is unacceptable and not normal. And that's what I did, and I found that very powerful in my life. So I get, I get lots and lots of emails.

• 1:40:25Steven Bartlett?

  The other thing I found really curious in this section about habits in chapter, in stage four of the book is, when people think about habit loops, they often have a reward at the end of it. You referenced suffering. Now, there's this quote I heard many years ago, I think it was just over 10 years ago, it must have been, God, I'm getting old. Where I heard this YouTuber say, change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change. And when I'm thinking about friends that I have in my life, or myself, where there's habits or there's behaviour patterns that, that I want to break. Sometimes, I'm thinking about one particular person who's, who's, who's a musician. Sometimes they have to get to that rock bottom place before you see change happen. Is that because of that? Is that because sometimes the suffering has to?

• 1:41:09Steve Peters?

  Yeah, I mean, it's such a self evident, you know, if you're, for example, in a bad relationship and it's really not doing you any favours and it's not doing them any favours, but it's not bad enough, then you struggle along and struggle along. But if suddenly something happens where it becomes untenable and it's painful now, then you move, you think, stop the relationship. And then you look back thinking, why didn't I move earlier? And the answer was because it wasn't painful enough. And the same with like untidiness, you, you leave it and leave it and leave it. And then somebody comes in and says,

• 1:41:40Steven Bartlett?

  A partner.

• 1:41:41Steve Peters?

  Yeah. Blimey, I can't live with this. And suddenly you think, wow, suddenly it's painful.

• 1:41:47Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a way to get there without the person needing to point it out?

• 1:41:51Steve Peters?

  Yeah, there is. I mean, when I talk about relationships are critical to us. And I say to people, the way we move is we've got to, I have the triangle of change, which is really the three key things that cause us to move. And with the one you've highlighted is either it's got a massive reward or there's going to be massive pain and suffering. So if you're trying to, you want it, you're courting someone, you want to form a permanent relationship. When they say, I can't stand untidiness, you'll guarantee your flat's perfect when they come in, right? Because you're thinking, if I don't, I'm going to lose this person. So the, the reward is so big. However, then they marry you and for some reason we take them for granted and we forget that bit now. And then the flat becomes untidy and then she starts saying to you, you know, I'm struggling with this, I'm struggling, but there's no threat yet.

• 1:42:35Steve Peters?

  So now it's not painful enough. So she's struggling with it, you know, I love the guy, but this is, this is now what I do. So I say, let's increase the pain. I want you to sit down and imagine. She can't cope and she's had a bad day and someone at work says, oh, come over and chat. And this young man has a tidy flat, naturally. And she goes, oh, wow. And I warn people, how are you going to feel if she walks? Because once they've gone, they very rarely come back. And if you don't look after them, someone else will. If you reflect on that, that can suddenly make reality come to life to say, I'm not there yet. But blimey, this would be painful. So I'm suddenly going to stop and think, let me look after them. Because if I don't, somebody will.

• 1:43:19Steve Peters?

  And we know unfortunately, that happens a lot. And when you do interview people, say, well, why did you leave him or her? And they say, I just got fed up with it. And there was no love or affection left. They didn't pay any attention, they used to. That's so common, that's so common. So you can increase the concept of suffering by reflecting and thinking, what would life be like if she left? So anyway, I don't know, you might say it'd be better.

• 1:43:45Steven Bartlett?

  No, I was thinking about how I need to tidy my room.

• 1:43:49Steve Peters?

  Well, no, that's, that's what I'm saying. Now, again, it may not work for you. You might say to me, I did that and it didn't make any impact.

• 1:43:55Steven Bartlett?

  No, it does. I can remember the last time my girlfriend, I saw her upset about something. And I care about, this is, I wanted to add in from earlier on, the reason why I think in the last two years, as I said, I am, I've been able to listen to when we have conversations and apologize straight away is because I just love, I love her so much. And I think about the last time she raised an issue with me and she was upset and she was talking to me. She never shouts like me. I, I was so scared about like losing her that.

• 1:44:25Steve Peters?

  There you go.

• 1:44:26Steven Bartlett?

  A part of my head, I don't, she'll listen to this because she's a big fan of yours. She loves this book, by the way.

• 1:44:29Steve Peters?

  Okay.

• 1:44:30Steven Bartlett?

  I got it for after last time we spoke and she absolutely loves it. Um, part of me was like.

• 1:44:37Steven Bartlett?

  She was telling me how she feels. I was like, oh my God, she's gonna dump me. Oh my God.

• 1:44:40Steve Peters?

  Exactly.

• 1:44:40Steven Bartlett?

  I thought I was gonna lose her. And this, I know it's not the case. And it's just, just this irrational part of my brain was going, I think she's finished with you. And that really makes me go, I need to immediately change it. It was, we're having a conversation about quality time. And I hadn't given, I hadn't spent much quality time with her because I was so caught up in my work. So the minute she said that, I was like looking at my calendar and cancelling things. But I needed the warning, it seemed.

• 1:45:05Steve Peters?

  And that's what I'm trying to say now. There's, there's just like the devil's in the detail. Let's say that you go home and you really make an effort. You tidied the house and you really clean it up and she comes home and she didn't notice. And there's a danger now, and I do advocate that sometimes you say to them, because your chimp needs to get that accolade. So it's no good not helping it. You don't need that, but your chimp does. So it's worth saying, can I just say, because I love you, I've tidied the flat? Because then your chimp goes, right, good, I get the accolade now. So I'm not saying you should knock the chimp out. I'm saying you should be getting the chimp so it feels good. And then hopefully she'll say, wow, I love you too, and I appreciate that.

• 1:45:43Steve Peters?

  And then that's nicely rounded up. But you get, you do get circumstances where I'll work with people and say, I tidied the flat, I did everything, she doesn't even recognise it. I cancelled it for my diary, she didn't recognise it. And I think, well, you know, I'm not saying I'm a goodie goodie, but I'm saying, let them know. Because your chimp's saying, please make sure they know and they've recognised it. And again, I don't know, there may be couples where they say, if I say that, she'll lose it. So I said, well, don't do it then. Tell me and I as a therapist will say to you, well done. And that might be enough for your chimp. So again, it's that thing which I keep saying to you, Steve, I've got to work with the person in front of me and even potentially their partner or family and say, well, what would they do before we make a plan?

• 1:46:23Steven Bartlett?

  That was step one in your triangle.

• 1:46:26Steve Peters?

  That's one, yeah, one of the points. The other two. For people to shift, they've got to have psychological mindedness, which means they've got to understand that it's not about what happens to us in life, it's how we deal with it. That's basically what we mean. So we understand that just because you've got certain emotions doesn't mean you can't change them and things have to change or people have to change for you to change. It's within your power to be responsible for the things you believe and change. So psychological mindedness means you get up and start working on this. It's within your power to shift things.

• 1:46:59Steven Bartlett?

  That's that personal responsibility.

• 1:47:00Steve Peters?

  Yes, and also if you can't shift them, you know, like say go back, let's say life hadn't been great for you, and I'm sure you worked hard to get where you've got, but let's say you still were in that poverty situation, you thought, I didn't have the skill to do what I'm doing, I didn't use that skill because it was never there. So a lot of people are trapped and they say, well, I'm still living in a pretty bad place and I'm struggling financially and that's a lot of people. It's painful, but again, psychological mindedness, tough as it is, is to say, well, let me deal with that. I can't change it, but I can change my approach to it. And that's not easy. I'm not saying that's easy. And then you have to work at how do you do that and it'll be different for different people. So psychological mindedness means take responsibility, accept what's in front of you and then move

• 1:47:45Steve Peters?

  forward. So other than that, what you do, non-psychological mindedness, where you blame everybody else or blame circumstances or say this happened to me in childhood or, these may all be genuine, but they're not actually helpful.

• 1:47:58Steven Bartlett?

  Disempowering, right?

• 1:47:59Steve Peters?

  Yeah, you're using them as an excuse not to take responsibility and turn them over.

• 1:48:03Steven Bartlett?

  It's like giving your power to something else, right?

• 1:48:06Steve Peters?

  Yes, and you've got to get the power back and say it's within my power.

• 1:48:10Steven Bartlett?

  Why do people like doing that?

• 1:48:12Steve Peters?

  Why do people like making excuses?

• 1:48:13Steven Bartlett?

  Including me, I have to say.

• 1:48:16Steve Peters?

  Again, it's really difficult to say, I mean, a lot of people, when they're in not a great place, find it very easy to be the victim. They don't wanna be a victim, but they find it easy. So they'll use an illness as an example, so that it gives them that remit, say, well, I'm not well, I'm not well. When the reality is, they don't know how to move forward. So it's easier to just go, I'm not well. And people then go, well, they're not well. And there'll be some truth in it, but actually not fully the truth. So people often use as a defence mechanism, the victim role. Sometimes they are have been a victim, and then they need to work through that and process it. But there's a danger you start to use it, or you start blaming circumstance,

• 1:48:58Steve Peters?

  like you might have said to me, I didn't make it because my parents never helped me. Well, you know, there are people whose parents don't help them, but they do make it. So you have to say, well, hang on, don't use that because it'll keep you in this not great place. There will be truth in it potentially. And then I would give the TLC and the recognition that that didn't help. But on the other hand, let's look at what you can do, regardless of the background.

• 1:49:18Steven Bartlett?

  I was reading, and I talked about something in my episode about habits, that there's something called the question behaviour effect, where if someone is asked about something they wanna do. So like, let's say I wanna go to the gym. If I'm asked verbally by a friend, they say, you know, are you gonna go to the gym? People might say, whatever, they might say yes, no, they might come up with an excuse as to why they can't go today. But when they're asked on pen and paper, or on a computer, and it's a yes or no answer, if they answer yes, they are more likely to then go to the gym. And when I was reading around the science as to why that is, they talked a lot about this idea of cognitive dissonance, and we wanna...

• 1:49:54Steve Peters?

  Right. Can I interrupt you? Because what you're giving me is exactly what you said earlier about self-image. So what you've affected is the same thing, is when I take yes, it means that's the norm, I go to the gym. So the cognitive dissonance, if I don't go to the gym, that's not normal. That's exactly the same as saying, when I'm a tidy person, I come home, I don't expect a mess. I tidy up immediately. The cognitive dissonance is I'm doing something which doesn't tally with my belief.

• 1:50:21Steven Bartlett?

  For people that don't understand the term cognitive dissonance...

• 1:50:25Steve Peters?

  It's doing something against your belief system. So if I say I'm a vegetarian and then I eat meat, I'm now in turmoil.

• 1:50:35Steven Bartlett?

  It's like, it's like a mental friction because your behaviour doesn't align to who you think.

• 1:50:39Steve Peters?

  The dissonance is doing one thing which is opposed to what you're saying or believing. So I might say, I'm not someone who lies. And then you come to see me and I tell you a lie. I go home, I'll have cognitive dissonance. It's very likely, if I have a conscience, which most of us have, that that will prey on me. And I think, oh, I don't like myself for doing this. This is wrong. And then I'll hopefully ring and say, can I just clear it? So I'm not living out my values. So this is cognitive dissonance. So I can get why if you said, are you going to go to the gym and you tick yes? It's the same principle. I need to go because if I don't, I'm going to be in trouble. I've ticked yes.

• 1:51:14Steven Bartlett?

  Interestingly, when it's not on pen and paper and when it's not a binary choice of yes or no, people are then less likely to go to the gym because there's room for excuse.

• 1:51:22Steve Peters?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:51:24Steven Bartlett?

  So I can go, I'm going to go on Monday.

• 1:51:25Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:26Steven Bartlett?

  And then there's no cognitive dissonance because I feel like I've satisfied myself with an excuse.

• 1:51:30Steve Peters?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:30Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm nice and aligned. But yeah, I found that really interesting. And I was talking to, in the episode about how when you do want to set an intention, a great way of doing it is by asking yourself a yes or no question and doing it in some kind of binary way.

• 1:51:46Steve Peters?

  Again, it's why, and again, I recommend this, not everyone, but most people, if you put something on a piece of paper and measure things, our chimp gets behind us now. So it drives us to do things. So if we can see something being measured and it's getting worse, we tend to do something about it. And that's because the chimp doesn't like to fail because his ego's at risk. And as I said earlier, when you, way back in our conversation, the chimp has, it's about achievement, it's about self-esteem. So it doesn't want to fail. So the chimp joins forces with us. So one way is to help yourself is get it on board. Instead of seeing it negative, it's the best friend you like. It's my best friend. My chimp is my best friend. He just needs a bit of help at times and he does things different to me. And I usually say he's inept.

• 1:52:30Steve Peters?

  But that doesn't mean I don't love him. So I don't dislike my chimp, I just need to learn to understand him and get him to help me. Use his energy.

• 1:52:39Steven Bartlett?

  Goals and I guess health trackers and those kind of things really help to keep us.

• 1:52:42Steve Peters?

  Because the chimp will join forces with you.

• 1:52:44Steven Bartlett?

  And then that last point in the, in the triangle.

• 1:52:46Steve Peters?

  Right.

• 1:52:47Steven Bartlett?

  Habit triangle, commitment.

• 1:52:48Steve Peters?

  Yeah, what I'm saying with this is again, teasing out the neuroscience. If we go on motivation, and, and again, if people use it, great, all right. But the evidence is that it doesn't really help, it doesn't really work. It's very hard to maintain. Whereas if, that's the chimp system, so it can work if your chimp is motivated because the reward is so big. Their motivation will follow that and be high. But we all know that I get a lot of talks, can you help motivate? And I say, no, not at all, I don't want to do that because you're constantly propping it up. My approach, which is not, as I say, not everyone will agree, is if you look at the science, neuroscience, if you use commitment, that means I remove my emotion and I plan on what I have to do and I get on with it.

• 1:53:31Steve Peters?

  So commitment, there's a lot of evidence that that makes us succeed. So for example, if I've got to go and weed the garden, it's not my favourite pastime. But I think, right, you know, the neighbours might complain, I don't have any neighbours, but they might. So, but, and my chimp's going, oh, I'll leave it, who cares? There's only weeds and it's going to kill your back and it. But I would then say, which I will, right, you stay in here, I'm going out. And if you want to join me, great, but I'm, I'm doing the garden. I remove emotion and I say, what has to be done is getting done and it's getting done now. We're not discussing it and I will start. Motivation will follow commitment. And that means the chimp brain will then get behind me because by the time we've done half the garden, it will say, I can't believe we've left it this long. That's a typical approach by the chimp.

• 1:54:16Steve Peters?

  And then it tries to make me finish and I might have to stop and say, let's respect my back now, we'll stop now. So I manage my emotions by using commitment and if they don't marry, I move them to one side. So I don't really work with emotion to drive me to do something. I think if people can use that and they use motivation, that's great. My experience has been it doesn't actually hold.

• 1:54:37Steven Bartlett?

  The last point I want to talk to you about is relationships. We've talked a little bit about it there in the context of my own relationship. But one of the sentences in A Path Through the Jungle is that, I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, is that you need to have a good relationship with yourself before you try and have a relationship with someone, someone else. Now, a lot of people that I know, and we talked a little bit about abusive relationships, will see another party's being able to fix them in some way.

• 1:55:01Steve Peters?

  Again, this is shades of grey, so I'm not saying definitively, but as a golden rule, it's self evident again. If you're in a great place, then you become attractive to most people because you're exuding this positivity and energy. And so if you can get yourself where you respect and love yourself, then you've got a much better chance that people are attracted to you and think, that's great. However, however, I'm going to give you a bizarre example. Many years ago, I'll simplify this. I worked with a lady who had an overpowering desire to help others. And I tried to say to her, let's stop and just get yourself, and she couldn't do this, couldn't get in a good place. I have to help others. And it damaged all relationships she had

• 1:55:45Steve Peters?

  because he was overpowering. And eventually, I thought this is a great success, this is many years ago. And I went really out the box, which is not recommended, all right. But I just got to the point, I thought, I can't see a way forward. And I said, you know what, why don't I help you to pick the right person? Right? Because I thought this is more practical psychiatry. And she laughed and said, okay, let's try that. Because she said, why do I do it? And she went off to one of these, like, this is a long time ago, where you wrote in, it's not before the internet. And she got a group of guys wrote to her, and we picked one out. I said, try him. And she was in a great place to work with me and said, I must stop doing this overpowering and learn to manage

• 1:56:27Steve Peters?

  myself. And then she picked this guy and absolutely worked fantastic. And I brought her in and I said, I'd love to meet him before I discharge from the clinic, because her esteem was good then. It was more tragic than that. She wasn't in a great place at all because of this. So she was, I met this guy and I said, what's the best thing about? And he said, because she mothers me. And again, it taught me something to say, you know, sometimes there's a positive dysfunctional relationship. And they were very happy that he wanted this mothering figure, she was that, and both fulfilled what they wanted to do. So I felt at the time as an amazing failure. But looking back, I think, yeah, they were happy. So it's not for me to say what kind of relationships people want. I've given that as a bizarre example. The golden rule is, I like people to get in a

• 1:57:12Steve Peters?

  good place within themselves, because otherwise, what you do is you start trying to use your partner to help you to compensate for your deficiencies.

• 1:57:22Steve Peters?

  Or you start getting very dependent on them, or you start getting controlling of them. Because you're not actually in a good place yourself. So that's the danger with that kind of situation. So I'm not recommending what I thought was an amusing, though it taught me something story. I'm saying ideally in relationships, get to respect and love yourself first. And then when you've got to that position, then go out and find someone because then they don't affect you as much. You can enjoy the relationship rather than looking for something out of them.

• 1:57:52Steven Bartlett?

  So interesting, so interesting. Steve, thank you, thank you so much. You know, I said this to you last time we spoke, but you've helped several people that are the closest people in my life. Of the, of the seven closest people in my life, you've profoundly helped two of them with your work. One of them, who we talked about last time, was my business partner, who's very open about his relationship with, he went through some difficulties and ended up being, in his words, a functional alcoholic and reading your book, in his own words, was the changing, the turning point for him. Helped him to finally understand his behaviour pattern. And in fact, he is the one, my friend Dom, he's the one who put me on to your work because that book was so profound in his life.

• 1:58:34Steven Bartlett?

  And then also I've got another friend who, who's the one that I gave your book to recently, who reported to quote, "That book really, really, really helped me." And I highlighted one of the sentences, but she managed to get through the whole book. So thank you for that because your work helps so many people. This is one of my top three favourite books of all time because it's practical, because it's, because of the way that it has these images, which again, I'm the type of person that really loves imagery in the way that I learn, but also has the robust sort of scientific knowledge from your experience. And I'm obsessed with books that are centred in human behaviour and the human mind that help us to understand it. Because as far as I'm concerned, that is all there is in the world, really. That's everything that stands in my way.

• 1:59:18Steven Bartlett?

  It's my troubles every single day, is the human mind, either my own or someone else's. So it's, I feel like this is essential reading for everybody and that's why it's so great that you're doing so much work in schools as well.

• 1:59:30Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:59:31Steve Peters?

  Thank you. And again, it's one of the two guys you've got in your team that have done this. You know, all I'm doing is presenting the neuroscience in what I think is an accessible way that is entertaining but quite serious to try and get people to get the neuroscience simplified because it's out there, but it's so complex. To me, it's complex and I'd like to present in a way that's practical and that's what I've done. But the bottom line is let them pat themselves on the back because I work with lots of people. Those who succeed have done it themselves. All I am is a catalyst. So again, anyone who's really benefited, they need to compliment themselves because it means they've worked and they've succeeded. And it is a skill. So those who say, well, I didn't, I couldn't do it, don't give up because it is a skill.

• 2:00:15Steve Peters?

  And if this doesn't resonate, there's loads of stuff out there. I'm sure you've had a lot of people on your programme. We're all in the same boat. We're trying to help people. So find something that does resonate so that we have a nation with a much better psychological health. That would be my dream.

• 2:00:30Steven Bartlett?

  We've got a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. And the question that's been left for you.

• 2:00:35Steve Peters?

  Okay.

• 2:00:40Steven Bartlett?

  If you were on your deathbed and could leave only one lesson behind, what would it be?

• 2:00:48Steve Peters?

  Wow.

• 2:00:52Steve Peters?

  I would, in the context of my scientific background, never forget who you are. Because that means you've removed the chimp on the computer and you've found yourself. So never forget who you are, remember the blank piece of paper. Because that's going to give you the self-esteem that you deserve.

• 2:01:15Steven Bartlett?

  Steve, thank you.