Become Unstoppable: The Man Behind The World's Top Performers - Dr Steve Peters

Dr Steve Peters is a psychiatrist, sports psychology consultant, a professor and an author. Our brain is largely a black box. It's very important to how we experience life and yet we have very little insight into why it behaves the way it does. Steve has spent an entire career researching the strategies that empower the human mind to perform at its best and the secret to unlocking our full potential? Expect to learn how the Chimp Paradox can help you understand your brain, how to work with our negative emotions, how to manage anxiety, whether it’s possible to have an entirely stress-free life, what you can do to build your self esteem, why imposter syndrome exists, whether mental dysfunctions are actually on the rise, how to better deal with major setbacks in life and much more... Sponsors: Get $150/£150 discount on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 15% discount on Craftd London’s jewellery at https://craftd.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: A Path though the Jungle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Path-through-Jungle-Psychological-bestselling/dp/1998991105 Chimp Management: https://www.chimpmanagement.com Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #mindset #psychology #stress - 00:00 The Basics of the Chimp Paradox 06:22 Why Instinctive Reactions Are Evolutionary 09:48 Can Anyone Develop their Emotional Skills? 13:50 How to Start Understanding Our Emotions 16:50 The Link Between Emotional Control & Self-Esteem 23:21 What is a Ghost Emotion? 26:12 How to Stabilise Your Mind in the Heat of the Moment 30:50 Defining Our Values, Beliefs & Drives 36:35 What We Misunderstand About Our Values 45:13 Tensions Between Peace of Mind & Happiness 48:12 What Steve Has Learned from the NHS About Burnout 58:11 The Truth About Mental Robustness & Resilience 1:02:58 Steve’s Philosophical Underpinnings 1:13:14 Where to Find Steve - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Your first conception, most famous conception that you had originally, publicly at least, was the chimp paradox. If people aren't familiar with the chimp model, how do you introduce them to that?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  I'll try and keep this succinct, but I'm going back thirty years now. So yeah, I'm getting old, very old. And I, as a young doctor, I suddenly started realising I was talking to two individuals in therapies, where, and again, I'm making this very black and white. One of the individuals I talked to was very rational and common sense and would engage me. The other was highly emotional and usually very irrational and distorted in the way they're perceiving things themselves, the world of the people. But I could get the one that was irrational to become rational by talking and going through things. So that intrigued me, that I had two people in the room and some people, they were close, some people they were miles apart.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  So then turning to neuroscience and looking at the brain, there are circuitries in the brain that are just automatic, that are outside of our control. And as a psychiatrist, obviously as a doctor, I'm learning also the therapeutic background we have as a basis. So going right back to Freud and you think, yeah, he was a genius of his time and he recognised the drives and the instincts. But what can we see now at the 1990s was the functional MRI scanners came in. And now we see actually these parts of the brain, they're not just drives and instincts. There's an entire system that thinks and interprets and makes these interpretations without permission and makes decisions without permission, often based on the drives and instincts.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  So you have this amazing machine that's trying to run our lives at the same time as we're trying to impose our values and the way we want to run it. So I was intrigued with this. So you mentioned weight at the beginning and I often use that as the best example. How many people get up in the morning saying, today I'm going to eat healthy, the right amount. And at the end of the day, they say, again, it hasn't happened. You know, and they were, they were saying, why is it that this is happening? Because it's crazy. And then they attribute it to willpower. Well, the neuroscience teaches us something different. It shows that there's an entire system based on survival, which thinks and decides, and it's also impulsive and it looks for instant gratification. So when you're offered something you like, say, doughnuts or peanuts, and you think,

• 2:24Speaker 01

  I've eaten enough, this system says, no, no, we've got a little bit more, because it doesn't see what's coming. So I was intrigued. I spoke to hominid specialists, the great apes. I'm very much an animal lover. So as part of the great apes, the humans are one of the five. What they said to me, simplifying it, was the, looking at the gorilla, the orangutan, and the bonobo, they think their brains operate differently to us. But the chimpanzee doesn't. It's the same. It's the same thinking, interpreting emotionally based system. So I started looking and I started recognizing, watching chimpanzee behave in human. There were such similarities.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  However, when we turn to rationality and logic, we change that behavior and we become very different. So what I discovered, or sort of lightbulb for me, I'm sure others have discovered it. What I really, for me, discovered was you've got this inner chimp system that we've inherited alongside you as a human, and we've all got it. And depending how strong it is, or how we learn to manage it, is how often it will present. And that became more and more prominent when I was working with individuals to say, you didn't think that, that is the chimp system.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Now, that got published in 2018 to show the chimpanzee and the human have the same kind of thinking systems, which separates us from the rest of the apes. But by then, I didn't want to wait that long, because I think it was blatantly obvious. I know we have to give evidence. So I started using it on my medical students. I'm at Sheffield Medical School. And at that point, as undergraduate dean, I was working a lot with youngsters between 18 and 23. So I started explaining, you do have this chimp system. And they loved it. They really got this. They said, I can recognize when I'm in chimp mode, when I'm in human mode. And they started to teach us this, so it became part of what I did with them. And we'd talk about what are the drives that are strong in your chimp?

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Because the chimp brain is unique to the person again. So it became an entertaining way of starting to understand what you're sharing your brain with. This incredible system which thinks and acts for you with a major backup system. So when I started doing this simplified neuroscience, the students were not keen on the neuroscience because it was too complex. They kept saying, make it such practical, which I wanted to do. So they all started giving their chimps a name. And this went on for a good 10 years before I effectively got catapulted into the limelight with sport, which was a sidetrack. And then it became public and it just went a bit viral. And, you know, I started meeting people saying, they asked me, are you the chimp man?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  And I'm proud to say I'm the chimp man. But I think the key for me was I saw transformation of people who started recognizing the difference between themselves and the machine. So that's why I called it the chimp paradox. And I wrote the chimp paradox probably over about four years trying to refine it. I didn't want to get it wrong. So I put out when I thought, it's close I can get it, to explain this is your brain and how it works. There were, I kept being pestered to go into more detail. And that's why it took me 10 years to actually think, okay, do it again. So I rewrote effectively and called it A Path Through the Jungle. So Path Through the Jungle is more with, it's got the evidence base, the research behind it.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  I know in America, the chimp paradox didn't take off and I know I was criticized because there was no evidence. So I thought they're right to say that. So I've now given 400 references. And I'm pleased to say it was assessed by Cambridge Neuroscience Department. And they said, spot on. So there is a write-up on Cambridge University's website for those who are academically interested to say that they were saying that, yeah, this is an amazing model and it's very detailed to link it to neuroscience.

• 6:22Chris Williamson?

  Why would it have been useful in our past to have this very reactive setup inside of our minds?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  It's still useful now. When we look at, I'll talk in terms of the model, that when you're using the human circuits, the transmitter systems and the speed at which they conduct are relatively slow. So when we think rationally, we think steadily. Whereas if something dramatic happened where our life is at risk, we need to think quickly and act impulsively, almost instinctually. So the chimp system can do that for us. So in a serious emergency, it will know what to do. So it generally uses fight-flight-freeze, because that's what the amygdala hands to it as part of that system that's running.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  So if you were, say, with someone who suddenly drew a knife, instinctively you'd know what to do. You know, whereas if you had to think rationally, those split seconds could cost you dear. So, but you can imagine this in many circumstances where there's an apparent danger. We act very instinctively and our machine takes over and it's pretty accurate. So it's not that it's a bad system at all. And people gave this my inner chimp bit. And I am one of the elite athletes that once said, how do I kill my chimp? And I'm thinking, you've really not got this because my chimp system is my best friend. Because as long as I understand what he's trying to tell me,

• 8:02Speaker 01

  what is the way he's communicating, then I can use that and work as a team. And there's evidence, strong research evidence on this, that when we use a logical basis to our thinking and an emotional instinctive, intuitive basis, it works best. On their own, it don't work as well. So I keep saying the chimp's the best friend you've got, hence the paradox. Uh, you know, but you can make it your worst enemy if you're going to start saying, you know, I hate myself, I hate the fact I eat too much, I hate the fact that I lose my temper. That's not really very helpful at all. The approach is wrong. You need to, from my opinion, you need to be saying, if I'm getting annoyed, what is this part of my brain trying to tell me?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  You know, why is, why is this evoking this emotion? I mean, what can I do to stop this? And that's what I started doing with patients back in the nineteen nineties. I started applying it in my clinical practice. Uh, and I'm pleased to say I got some amazing results. And I don't attribute that to me. I don't. I think the person is the one who gets the results. They get insight and they, they worked with me. All I can do is help them and catalyze what their understanding is. But the people who grasped and understood themselves and the way the machine was working and got the chimp and what I call the computer on board. They started saying it's life changing. It's really changed me because what they're doing is saying I'm now in charge of the machine.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  And they're making it run and using it when it kicks a bit to say, what is it you're doing? And they say, this is great. And that's what I tried to do. I said, it's a different approach. I know it's a bit, a bit out of the box. Uh, but I wanted it based on neuroscience because that's my academic background as a, as a professor in, in psychiatry. I'm neuroscience based.

• 9:48Chris Williamson?

  It seems to me that there's broadly two buckets of people that you've worked with. You've sort of worked with the human mind at its best and the human mind at its worst as well.

• 9:58Chris Williamson?

  What is different? Or are there many fundamentals that are the same for trying to get Chris Hoy to be in flow state during the Olympics? As there are trying to deal with somebody who is highly dysfunctional and who doesn't really like the inside of the texture of their own mind. Do you have different approaches when it comes to that? Or is it broadly the same physics?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  No, it's what I said at the beginning, which I know people can get frustrated with me because I do a lot of these like magazines or the telly might say, give us five tips for our viewers or, and I can't do that. So I often warn people, don't ask me because I, I can't do that. Because it does boil down to uniqueness. So. I could really talk about people I've worked with who've gone public and say, please, you know, use me if you want to. So we're gonna use, I'll use Chris Hoy. I mean, he's, I've known Chris twenty years now and it was an absolute pleasure and privilege to work with him. He's a real gentleman. So when I met him, he was in a great place. He's never had any emotional, you know, disturbances in life of any catastrophic kind. So he's a very even balanced, very rational man. But what Chris said is, I believe, uh, he's insightful.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  That if I work with you, you can explain how my mind works and I'll be able to get focus on the track for the event I want to do. So why did his work with him and said, tell me what your thinking is now, what is he trying to do with this event? What would help, what wouldn't? And we worked to pattern out how we plan a mental program for his event. So clearly, it's purely on what Chris did with me. But what we found is, his chimp is a gentleman too. So the chimp in Chris is so close to Chris that you don't get these outbursts. You just don't get them. But Chris would always tell me, I know the difference. So even when he said, when I go emotionally based, there's a risk.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  So we did a lot of good fun work, uh, incredibly good. I call them students. I'm a mentor. Um, great. So he's one extreme of a balanced individual who said, how do I optimize or get better at what I do? Whereas probably the most, um, popular person I worked with, Ronnie Sullivan, who came to me very dysfunctional and has a really large chimp. And Ronnie says, tell the world everything. I'm not gonna do that. Uh, all I can say, he's a fantastic guy that I really like and get on with. We've worked together now over ten years. Uh, and his chimp's very active. Ronnie himself is subjected to this, so he's trying to learn how to manage it. So Ronnie, as a human being, is very, very different to his chimp.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  So I can see even in interviews when Ronnie's answering or when his chimp's answering. And so with him, it's more perfecting the skill. But I can say that I've worked with him ten years and it's a privilege and he's great fun. That over those ten years, as he approaches the world championships in Snooker, which he's won multiple times. Each year he's improved and that's a really key point for working with people. That all of us can get the skill. Some of us are going to pick it up very quickly. So I've worked with people who've transformed themselves within weeks, months. They have lightbulb moments, but they put a lot of time and effort in. Whereas other people, it's really tough to get the skill.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  You know, it's no different to say learning to sing. We can all sing, but some are brilliant to start with and get even better. And some of us struggle, but we can still improve a bit. And emotional skills to me are exactly the same. You have a starting point. I don't know what potential people have until I work with them. So I get someone who can start at square one in a really bad place. And end up fantastic in a great place. I actually saw someone this morning who I've worked with on and off over ten years. And she's in an amazing place now, but didn't start there, but really worked on it and increased the skill to. It's great to see that.

• 13:49Chris Williamson?

  How should we best understand our emotions?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Okay, because I know what you're asking is is great. However, I just see you get frustrated with me. However, it's like saying, teach me Italian if I can't speak it and teach me it in the next ten minutes. You think, where do we start? Your very basic stuff. So I think the answer for me, this is only me. To best understand is start going steadily. It's not a promotion, but it's why I wrote Path to the Jungle. Because I think it takes you through twenty seven units. So it says start and build up. So you learn things gradually and you you practise them. So I give exercises. So again, one of the early starting points is understanding the difference between you and your your brain working.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  If you can see the difference and you recognise, I know who I am now, that in itself can lift self-esteem phenomenally. Because you stop muddling yourself up with a machine that's overpowering you. So that concept is not as easy as it sounds to grasp. You can get it logically, but when you, the day you actually get it conceptually, you can't go back. You suddenly realise, I'm being hijacked. Or I'm being swayed by a machine, not me. And I'm very different to that machine. So that's the starting point. Then you go on, I would then go on to emotions. And say, can we start seeing them differently? Can we see them as messages? That are coming from the chimp or computer system to give you an alert or a question.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  You know, so anger, for example, not every time. But anger can be that you've not processed something from the past. You need to go back and process it. It's still underpinning the way you're approaching the world or people. However, it may be nothing to do with the past. It could be current belief systems that I can't deal with life if it doesn't go the way I think it is. And that can create anger. The next one can be unrealistic expectations of other people or yourself. And that can create anger. Uh, it can even be a feeling of rejection. So you're going into relationships or meeting anybody every day with a defence position. And that will lead to a potential anger, which is more of a defence mechanism.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  So you can see anger is just an emotion. For me, the, the emotion's not too important. The fact you're getting a message is what's important. So anger, despondency, frustration, uh, that's what your chimp brain is choosing to use. And some of them use the same emotion to alert you and it's not an appropriate emotion. So I would start saying, let's look at emotions differently and let's understand the differences between them. Um, and that's why I spent two units, I believe, uh, in a path through the jungle to try and say, look, really at the very early stages, let's understand what's happening here. Before we go on to start perfecting things like values and communication, let's understand what our emotions are.

• 16:50Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned about how self-esteem can become degraded.

• 16:56Chris Williamson?

  If people are unable to work through this conflict that's going on inside of them, why is that? Or how do you conceptualize just self-esteem as a topic? And do you see this tension as one of the most common or one of the common reasons why people's self-esteem can become a little bit eroded?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  I think for me, the main reason people have low self-esteem, I'll give the example you give of eating, we could use it, I could use it, anything, is if the person says, I'm going to set off today and I know my values. All right, I'm going to treat people with respect. I'm going to remain calm and collected because that's who I am. Then they're defining themselves and they're saying, that's me setting off. If they now go out and overeat, what they're now saying is not, I'm a greedy person, or I'm a weak-willed person, that's now so derogatory and causing self-esteem to drop. And that's not scientifically accurate, that's not accurate. What is accurate is to say, I've set off with the intention of doing the following,

• 18:05Speaker 01

  and now this system has now impulsively started eating. Now, before we get people who are listening think, oh, it's a good excuse. It's not an excuse, but you're still 100% responsible. You can't just go, I'm a chimp, ate too much. I don't accept that, all right? I say, oh, no, no, no, you have to manage the chimp. So you can't get angry with someone and blame the chimp. It's not an excuse blame. What I say is, your job is to say, apologize and then say, okay, this is the difference in esteem. I know who I am, what I can't do is manage the machine well. And all of us struggle with that. What I need to do is learn to manage the machine, upskill on it. And that could take me some time. That means you know who you are still,

• 18:49Speaker 01

  and you're not muddling yourself up with a machine and starting to come up with silly interpretations, such as, I'm an angry person. There isn't an angry person unless you really believe that's who I want to be, which is nonsensical. So I do rebuke people harsh when I'm working with them. If they come in and say, I got really angry this week. And I say, no, you didn't. Unless you're telling me that's what you want to be. And then they say, no, no, I don't want to be angry. And I say, in other words, you got hijacked. So let's look at why you got hijacked and let's give you the skill to manage the hijack and calm the chimp down. So it is subtle, but it's, I don't know if you can grasp what I'm saying. I just made it clear.

• 19:29Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, what's, what's interesting is this, might be the wrong word, almost like a depersonalization of you, who you are at your core, and things that you do, the things that you do.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Okay, that, yeah, the word is dissociation. Uh, you're dissociating, you're saying to yourself, this is me. And now I've got this chimp machine, uh, along with a computer, this machine in my head. So I'm now gonna go forward, but if something happens and it provokes that and it overtakes me, I now present to the world my chimp. Or I present a mixture of me and the chimp. And the ideal for me is to always present yourself to the world. But get your chimp and computer as well, because they're not bad things. You know, our chimps can bring color to our life. So if we have a chimp that's got a sense of humor, which they do have, because our sense of humor is in the chimp system, not in the human.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  All right. So the chimp will bring us mercy and humor. That's why the chimp believes something we say. It's why punchlines work. And then it realizes that's ridiculous and it causes us to laugh. So there are actually three different circuits in the brain, all based in the chimp system. So if we didn't have that, we probably would be pretty boring.

• 20:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Because we wouldn't laugh, we wouldn't laugh. So you're saying, let's get on board, but you're the person who says, these are my values, these are my beliefs. Uh, this is how I want to behave in life. And that you set that out. So I work a lot on that with people. And say, now we know who you are. Don't worry if you get hijacked and you present something different to the world. Just recognize we've got work to do and we're gonna learn that skill. And it, it, it will happen. You'll always get chimp hijacks. Tell me if I ramble too much, because I get asked a lot about, do you have a chimp? And I, my chimp wrote the books, you know, it decided to collude with me because I think it was tired of telling me.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Uh, but as a young man, yeah, I experienced a lot of anxiety, a lot of frustration, a lot. And I, I couldn't work this out, but as a psych, I'm thinking, well, you need to work it out. You're the, you're the person who's gonna be helping people. You can't do that. It's hypocritical, so I can't help myself. Uh, but then I realized that, yeah, like everyone else, I have a chimp. Most of the time I know how to manage it and it's on board and he's my best friend. Uh. So for me, one of the things I do is be sarcastic with it. I don't know why my chimp finds that funny. So if something upsets my chimp system and I experience frustration or whatever, I do say to the chimp, can we just answer the question, do you want me to be upset for an hour, a week, the rest of our lives?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  And for some reason, my chimp gives way immediately, laughs and thinks, okay, it's got get a life, get perspective. Uh. And we're okay. But I've worked that out, that that works for me ninety nine percent of the time. There will be a time when my chimp hijacks me and then I have to say, okay, I got hijacked because I'm no different to anybody else. So, but I need to learn again, which everyone does. What are my trigger points? So trigger points for me, where I know I'm vulnerable to losing this management of the chimp would be bullying. Seeing someone intimidated, my chimp comes straight in. And so I have to be careful in situations where I say, okay, I've got it. Let me do the deal. You don't speak.

• 22:46Chris Williamson?

  It seems like a real art form to be able to integrate this the, the, the chimp with the human mediated, you know, i- i- in the middle. And that chimp, human, computer relationship seems like a very delicate dance because as you say, if it was just um raw rationality and pure cerebral horsepower and cognition all day, it, it would probably remove an awful lot of the color and a lot of the joy as well from the things that we do. And it is, I think, a lot about, about finding that balance. I've heard you talk about ghost emotions. What are those?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes we learn, learn a behavior uh and it doesn't belong in real time. So a, a simple example is we can get a bad experience of said public speaking. Now that would evoke most people's chimps to start getting anxious. So the computer will always come to the rescue if you look at what beliefs and memories you've got. So we can tamper with the computer. We can't do much with the chimp. It's, it's the nature of the animal. We have to manage it. The computer we can tamper with. But let's say I have a bad experience doing public speaking. It's very likely I've learned to become anxious. So when I stop myself, why are you doing this? It's a learnt behaviour, it's a ghost emotion. It doesn't belong there and it's not actually what I want to experience or indeed should be experiencing.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  So ghost emotions are something that hang on inappropriately. They can be because we haven't processed, but it can just be a behaviour where you think, let's change that behaviour. So I find a lot of people carry emotions and it's just something they've learnt to do. So you can desensitise them to situations and ignore the ghost. There's a difference, the reason I brought that in is, and again, this is the devil in the detail. Some emotions are scars, they're not ghosts and it's very important to get the difference between them. So when I work with people, if you've got a scar, say you went through a really bad breakup and most people don't come out unscarred. Um, so you've got some scarring from the relationship breaking up, whatever it is. Um, and you can't process it.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  So I keep saying to people, sometimes I always try and process it and you can do it maybe to a later stage. But if it won't process, it's a scar and there's a different way of dealing with that. So we have to, we, we deal with that not by ignoring it, by actually managing it. So it can be to talk it through again, because that helps us even though we know it won't resolve it, it will actually take pressure off. So some scars, obviously the world I'm in, we mentioned sport, but I work a lot with Joe Public. Uh, and generally speaking, the people I meet are not in a good place. Uh, so I do work with a small number of parents who've lost their children and that must be excruciating. Uh, and it is for them and my approach, I know other people might have a different approach. Um, is to say to them, it is an emotional scar.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  It's not something you're going to get rid of, it's not something you'll ever even come to terms with. I think it's something you've got to manage. You know, and, and accept that there will be some terrible days ahead, but there'll be some good days. But it's, that's a scar for me, so I don't try and remove it because I don't think you can.

• 25:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's very, um, it's, it's, the more detail that you apply to looking at the inside of your own mind, the more that you realise there are very subtle nuances between different things, whether that be the ghosts or the scars. What do you mean when you talk about stabilisers of the mind?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes the mind can become emotionally up and down. So I'll try and give a a simple example to bring the point home. Let's say that, let's say I do a lot of public speaking, and let's say that I go to an audience and I'm trying to get across everything I do, and it doesn't come over and I think I'm not getting there today. I'm fumbling with everything I do. I might leave that hole and my chimp's unstable because it's saying, you know, you didn't do a great job there. And maybe I made a joke that was near the knuckle and it was meant in sarcasm to make them laugh and it didn't come over. And I think, oh gee, I probably offended someone. So my chimp will beat me up for this or try. So I stabilize my mind by saying to the

• 26:59Speaker 01

  chimp, hang on, you did your best, you live by your values. It's not that you didn't try, you know, you did everything you could, you got it wrong, or you didn't, you weren't on form today, which no one can be every day. So get a life and then I will bring perspective. A week from now, nobody's even bothered. The only person that will remember is you, you know? So perspective is a stabilizer of the mind. And for a lot of people, for me, it's a massive one. So again, you hear people commonly saying, will this matter in an hour, in a week, in a year? And for a lot of situations, it really, most situations, doesn't matter. So that's an example of one stabilizer of the mind.

• 27:39Chris Williamson?

  I love broadening time horizons like that. And it's something that I found myself really poor at doing in my past, that the decision that I was making right now was going to be the decision that I would have to live with for the rest of my life, that this purchase of a car, or this move to a new city, or this change of a house, or this makeup or breakup of a relationship, or whatever it would be. It's like, when you realize that most things are time bound, and most things are subject to change in future, it helps to release a little bit of the pressure. And the same thing can occur for public speaking or a bad podcast. I do a bad podcast, like, well, I've got two more to do this week. And in a year's time, there's going

• 28:21Chris Williamson?

  to be 150 more released. You can't have a good podcast every single time that you do it. And it helps to release and relinquish some of that obsession, I think, that we have and the pressure that we apply to ourselves.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  And I think you're demonstrating when I start working with people to say, let's look at what we mean by this chimp system. What does it work with? What can't it do? One of the things it can't do when our blood supply goes into the chimp system, which is the orbitofrontal cortex, just above your eyes. When that lights up, it cannot gain perspective. It struggles with perspective. So, and it can't bring reality to a situation because it's very emotionally based, the way we see things. So if you have your bad podcast, it struggles with this. It starts catastrophizing. And it wants to go over and over and over. It doesn't actually want a solution. It just wants to get rid of the problem. And there's a sort of difference. Whereas if we can train your brain to move to human mode, this is what I'm doing by

• 29:19Speaker 01

  my computer coming to the rescue, saying, as a human being, I've got rationality and saying, you know, and I've got values. So you're bringing, which the human system does, which is the top of your head. We see that light up. You now bring perspective in. So, but the complexity of the brain is that the human can't take the chimp on. If there's a fight between these two, the chimp will always win because it has transmitters that can actually annihilate the human from functioning. So we get hijacked, literally emotional hijacks where people act out and they can't do it. And people say, oh, that means I'm doomed because my chimp's always going to win. But this is the subtle degree.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  I've explained in the books that the way the chimp works, it knocks the human out, but it must necessity, this is, turn to the computer and scan, which we see it literally scanning the computer and getting advice, beliefs, experiences, intuition. It gets masses of information within a split second, which then advises the chimp, which it has to follow, what to do. So if we program our computers well, that's the secret of managing the mind. So we program them so that when the chimp knocks us out, our computer takes over and manages the chimp. So there is a way around this. It's not doom and gloom. But if you don't program the computer and keep it running, then the chimp will definitely

• 30:46Speaker 01

  take control.

• 30:48Chris Williamson?

  Couple of words that you've been using a lot throughout this conversation that I want to dig into. Values, beliefs, drives. What, how do those fit together? How do we know what our true drives are, et cetera?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Drives are innate compelling emotions, feelings we get. They're biologically driven, so there's a drive to eat. And everybody has that drive, so it's exceptional not to have an eating drive. All right, most people, it's extremely strong because it's a survival drive, it's common sense. There's a, there are lots of drives, there's a drive for security. So, and it's where you turn to fulfill that drive. So we talk to teenagers who'll turn to their peer group for security. We've explained that's got traumatic results at times. But if we turn for security to our environment, that will help the chimp, but not necessarily the human.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Our humans turn to security by looking within ourself and our resources and what we think we can manage in life. So a human for security doesn't go on the environment. It may help, but it won't help in overall. The chimp will look on the environment, but get in the right environment, but that doesn't help with the mind. So you can often get a great environment, but the chimp still, the human's still agitated, saying, I don't feel. So other drives, the sex drive is very powerful. And obviously that leads to a lot of difficulties with a lot of people. Because they can't manage it and the chimp can take over. So if there's nothing in the computer, we get into difficulty. So drives are compelling things that get us out of our seats without us having to do anything.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  They just make us move. First is a drive, the drive for first, there's lots of them, the drive to be with the people. If you move on to beliefs, these are now what your experiences are or what you've been taught. So a belief, for example, again, I'm taking extremes. Let's say I believe that all people are good and they're nice. I'm leaving myself very vulnerable to those I know will take. Advantage of me. So I'll be taken in. I'm naive. If I have that extreme belief, if I have the extreme belief that all people are not to be trusted, that can have repercussions to me feeling very isolated and not trusting someone. So I don't get any depths of friendships or interpersonal relationships.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  So you have to look and say, what are your beliefs? So if you have a belief, which I push a lot, uh, the, the one in five belief. And that's based more on reality and the research that's given that about one in five people love you regardless. All right. They're pretty deluded really, because even when you're not in the right, they'll still believe you. All right. One in five people criticize you regardless. Unfortunately, they're often the most vocal. So unfortunately, the social media, these are the main bulk of people coming in. And that's really sad that we have one in five people who are quite acoustic. Um, and three out of five are reasonable, decent people are wary of on what you do. So they like you if you're really decent and honest, but they probably won't if you're not.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  So if you have that belief that one in five people you need to be wary of, because one in five people don't get flattered and misled. But three out of five, learn who the balanced ones are if you want soundboarding. So if you go in with that belief, which I believe is the correct one, but that's my bias. Then it means I'm constantly assessing, hang on, is this someone I trust? Or is this someone who's gonna just flatter me and, or is this someone who's balanced and will challenge me appropriately? Uh, and then make me stop and think, hey, hang on, they might have a point. So beliefs are something that guide you, but they're quite strong. Because obviously these are what I call the gremlins and the autopilots. That if these, but you try to do something and a belief stops you,

• 34:42Speaker 01

  uh, then that can be a positive influence or a negative. So even sensible beliefs like don't skate on an icy pond. You know, especially if it's thawing, you know, that's common sense. So you have that belief because you're either taught it or you've experienced it. So that's beliefs, beliefs, you have millions of beliefs, some of them are very strong and some of them are not that influential. But we form them generically and we form them specifically for certain circumstances. Values are really important to me. The reason I push values, when I started doing this work thirty years ago and creating this model of the mind as I was going to use with my patients.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  And again, there will be people who disagree with me, I'm only giving you what I believe and what's experienced over the last thirty years. The only thing that gave peace of mind, which is different to happiness. So peace of mind is knowing what your values are and knowing at the end of the day you've lived by your values. So I worked on my values and I found no matter what happens around me, whether I get criticised, misunderstood, misrepresented. These things will disturb most of us. At the end of the day, I can look in the mirror and think, have I lived by my values? And if so, I'm at peace with myself. It doesn't matter, it's uncomfortable, but I can live with it because I'm, I respect myself.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  So when I looked at this and did it with experience with patients, everyone said, once you know your values, you're almost immune. You start realising that's what's going to stabilise me and give peace of mind. So it's very important to know how to find values and what they are and not muddle them up with things like what's valuable to me, that's not a value. So I was trying to say, once you've got your values, then you can measure, which I ask people to do. Demonstrate your values in action every day. Because that will bring you a peace of mind thinking I did the right thing.

• 36:35Chris Williamson?

  In your experience, where do most people go wrong? When it comes to working out their values, sitting down with a piece of paper or doing some exercise online or whatever. What are, what are the do's and the don'ts when it comes to defining values for most people?

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Values. There's a confusion here because if you go online and say what's a value, you're going to get a lot of different definitions. So I had to say, well, what am I talking about? So the people I work with, I try and agree, this is the definition of a value. And then at least we're on the same page. Um. So I'm going to go with what I've created as a definition, but a lot of other people have got the same definition, but I agree with them. So a value is a moral belief that you hold, something you think is what should happen. A decent person, which is going to be me, I'm going to live by this decent value or this belief, uh, which is going to be acted out with a behaviour. So for example, they can be subtle. Let's say which many people do. I want to respect everyone.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Because if I normally disrespect someone, I feel bad. I'll lose my peace of mind. If I unwittingly disrespect someone and then realise it or get told, that will unsettle me. So I need to know, how do I measure respecting someone? So for me, I would put down number one is I listen to someone. I don't have to agree with them, but I give them an audience. I don't attack them. I listen. And what their views are, I listen to their views. And I, I believe personally, for me, that's showing respect. So if I wanted to say, let's just check I'm respecting people, I'm going to have a week where I actually say, how many times did you dive in without listening? Or how many times did you stop, especially in an emotional discussion?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  How many times do you stop and say, I want to actively listen to what they're saying, understand it, I don't have to agree, but understand it and respect that value or that belief. So that's an example. Uh, what people do is they muddle things up and they say things like, uh, my car. You know, that's not a value because there's no behaviour. It's what you're saying is valuable to me. I really get a lot of pleasure and enjoy it out of my car, but that's not going to be bringing you peace of mind. All right. It may bring you happiness. So, and I like to work on happiness separately to peace of mind.

• 38:58Chris Williamson?

  A lot of the exercises that I've seen online, looking at things like core values, do work, you come up with answers with things like curiosity, adventure, self-development, self-care.

• 39:12Chris Williamson?

  It seems like a key part of your definition is that it is, there is an action, there is something which is, it's going to influence your behaviour and how you show up in the world. Certain things like curiosity become very nebulous and difficult to define. You know, they're like intrinsic parts of your personality or the bits of you that you enjoy or respect, but when it comes to creating, enacting that, it feels like there's a little bit more of a difficulty going on there. Is there anything to say about that, about some of them?

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I get your point. I think for me, curiosity comes under what I would loosely call is the drive for stimulation. So some people, the stimulation will be just going on a computer game, but their brain is satisfied with that, whereas for many people, it wants difference, it wants new experiences, it wants to see what would happen if. So we know that some people are more prone to saying, let's test things out, let's, and some people are wanting to achieve something. So I always put under this heading of stimulation. And again, most of us have got something we want as a stimulus, but it can be as straightforward as a social group. It doesn't have to be, you know, I'm going to learn a new language or I'm going to get to a new level on a computer game.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  And so I try and explore that with people to say, what are you doing to give stimulation to both your human and your chimp? What is it they both want? And what's going to satisfy that? And again, I think there's different drives for the human and chimp. So I work out, because some people are much more cerebral and say, I'd like to have a discussion group, like, you know, reading a certain book and going in the club and discussing it, whereas others, that's a nightmare. The stimulation could be just being part of a group that supports a football team. But you're looking to see, some people get stuck and they don't have any. And then they'll say things like, I feel dissatisfied, and it's hard when you don't know which way to turn. I do, I love animals. I've got a lot of animals around me.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  I've removed some from the room in case I make noises while we do this. So I rescue some animals and I know some people discover that. So I've had people I've worked with and they've said, once you get an animal, not for everyone, suddenly you've got this responsibility, this interaction, this, you see the animals world differently. And it's, they, they use that as displacing care onto the animal. And they get great satisfactions. That's one example. So I would explore with people what you're calling curiosity. I'd say stimulation, the drive to get stimulation and experience.

• 41:55Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's very interesting. I think I probably need to revisit my, what I've deemed core values, perhaps erroneously. It was maybe three or four years ago when I, I put mine together. And in there were a lot of things I actually can see as stimulation. Two of them were curiosity and adventure, and they're things I like to do. But I, I'm trying to run them through a more

• 42:18Chris Williamson?

  fine filter, which is, okay, how does this inform the way that I behave in the world? And I don't know if they necessarily give me guidance with regards to that. So I think.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Okay, let's do some therapy really.

• 42:33Chris Williamson?

  Hit me, hit me. There's only, there's only a million people watching, so it's fine. Cool.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  That's fine. It's not really therapy. It's just saying if you ask me to look at this, I would try and get us so we understand the, the blocks we're working with. So we're looking at your values as being something, if you buy into this, as peace of mind and things that are moral behaviors that you think I should do the following. You know, respect people, help people. I don't know what your values would be. And now you've asked something different. You've said, I've, I've got this drive. Where does curiosity come in? I put that under one of your drives and say clearly it's important to you. So let's look at how you're going to get mental stimulation through those drives. But you're moving on to different areas again, when you're looking at things like happiness. Cause if you're saying that, it clearly drives overlap. So happiness is something that most people search for.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  It's an odd one this, because I know when I started writing the books, I was told, oh, happiness is what people want. And I had a little bit of difficulty because I don't search for that. I'm not saying I don't want it, but it's not a big feature in me. I'm content to be peaceful. You know, um, but I'm not someone who searches for this great happiness and you know, I'm just happy to be just okay every day. That's satisfying to me. So I'm a little bit odd that way. Um, but if you're saying, no, Steve, I need this. I want stimulation, but I also want like fulfillment. Cause I'm expecting your curiosity is leading somewhere. You know, so I would be saying to you, let's look at what you're trying to get that fulfills your chimp brain.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Which is a really good thing to do. That gives you a great feeling and a wellness and it may be excitement, adrenaline. It may be satisfaction, but I have to say, what are the words that are appropriate for what you're trying to achieve? It could be all of them, cause then we can start understanding what is you're doing. But I have to say, have to be careful, cause as you get so analytical, you just get on with your life. And I'm saying, just be spontaneous. But if you're finding that you're not feel fulfilled, that's when I think let's analyze. Let's see what we can look at in the blocks, what's missing. So you're right, when you're saying, I'm not sure you defined them clearly and therefore you won't be

• 44:42Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Using them to advantage.

• 44:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think that functionally, it sounds, it sounds nice and they're definitely things that I enjoy. But when it comes down to sort of what functional utility does it give me? Can I look back on my day, look in the mirror and go, I was curious today, therefore I feel at peace with myself. There are many, many more things, including respect for others, which is a really great one from you. Uh, that I think would more highly influence the peace of mind that I have. You've mentioned it a couple of times. I want to dig into this. This tension between peace of mind and happiness and, and what's, what's going on there?

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they sometimes don't go together. You know, it's like, let's say I have, I've got staff, let's say I've got a member of staff who's really not fitting in the group. And we've got me, I haven't, just in case any of my staff are listening.

• 45:36Chris Williamson?

  Uh.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Uh, and they're clearly causing a problem.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  It's not definitely not Andy. And I haven't got anyone, but if let's say I did and I thought, you know, the team are not gelling and we've got this person who's not fitting in with our values or they're not dead, just try, but they just don't work well. Then I know that the right thing to do morally is to grasp them up and go and see them and say, look, it's a mismatch. You know, there's no negative in that sense. It's going to be difficult and they may, they may get attacked. I've had this in the past. They may attack me and, and say all the things in the world, you know, you're meant to be this caring person, but I'm thinking it's for the good. So I would leave that. I wouldn't be happy. You know, I'm not saying I don't want to be happy by the way, but I wouldn't be happy, but I'd have peace of mind. I know I've done the right thing. And in the long run, they may not like me.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Uh, and I've nothing good to say about me, but I know in the long run, it's for the best for them and the team. So there's an example where peace of mind and happiness don't go together. Um, and it can go the other way. I could be happy about something, uh, but not have peace of mind because I think actually you didn't do the right thing. You know, so overall I'm going to end up feeling not so good. I'll think, yeah, it's a superficial happiness.

• 46:50Chris Williamson?

  I was going to say, do you think it, it seems to me that happiness without peace of mind is more difficult to achieve? That peace of mind acts as a, a tarnish that can, that can kind of color and jade any experiences and that the happiness will inevitably be more fleeting or, or more fragile.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't done this, so just in case people think, oh, uh, but obviously it's part of my job. Um, I've examined over the years, doctors and medical students because that's my world. Uh, and I'm with the Royal College and, uh, you know, I want people to pass. I don't like to fail anybody. And so if somebody's bored or anything, oh, they don't really, really deserve to pass. I haven't done this. My happiness would be to pass them, but I wouldn't have peace of mind. Cause I think, you know, at the end of the day, you were wrong. You shouldn't do this, but I might think. I know this means so much and then I'll justify it rationalise, well, I'm sure they'll learn on the job and I'm sure they'll be fine and I've got, but that's rationalising. So you can see there's an example where somebody might lose peace of mind but actually feel

• 47:55Speaker 01

  at the time, I'm happy because I've passed them, because if I don't, I'm going to have such unhappiness. So sometimes we compromise our values which lead to us having less of a peace of mind. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm saying it's something people have to decide on.

• 48:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's very interesting. You brought up your work with medical staff. You've just done this new study, you've completed and now published a study on burnout and wellbeing, I think amongst NHS nurses and maybe doctors as well. Talk to me about sort of burnout as a concept, it's kind of a buzzword at the moment. I think a lot of people maybe do feel that they are overwhelmed with workload and stimulus and I don't really have time for myself and I feel like the past, maybe I was like more peaceful or things were slower. And then burnout as a concept and then let's fold in this new study and what you learned from your time working with the NHS then.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was with the NHS for over 20 years, so it was a great time. Burnout, again, it's defined differently, but I think it's common sense what we mean. It means you suddenly feel like you don't have the energy anymore. You get up in the morning and you dread it. So for a doctor, for example, let's go back to my experiences, I would do outpatient twice a week. And if I'm starting to suffer burnout, I was thinking, I can't face it. I just want to get through this. That's a sign of burnout, whereas normally I'd be keen and enthusiastic to go and see them. Or thinking, you know, if I get the slightest headache, I'm just going to fall into it. And you get signs of burnout. So there's a number of them, anxiety, poor sleep, but it's generally this feeling of, I just can't

• 49:34Speaker 01

  do this. I can't do it. I'm overwhelmed, as you pointed out. So with that in mind, when I did the CHI model, which just took off and it's very humbling, because obviously it was meant to be just for medical students to learn the neuroscience. When the CHI model did take off, I wanted to go back to my roots and I worked, we did a series of workshops, I called it Skills for Life, and it's emotional management and understanding yourself. So it's based on a path through the jungle. And we said, we'll take, we took eighty GPs from the county nearby. Uh, and we, I said to them, we'll run eight workshops and we'll see whether this affects your health, uh, your communication with your staff, your burnout, your sickness rates.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  And that was just a pilot run I did and it worked fantastically. Again, credit to the GPs and the staff who were working with the GPs. They worked on it and they said it did make a massive difference. So as a doctor, obviously, I'm bringing out this model, which is semi fun, but serious. I want to know it actually works, otherwise it's fraudulent. Um, so then I took a study with two hundred teachers. Uh, I went into the schools and we tried to say, let's have a look at you. We had three centre study. And again, it's only pilot run with teachers in York, Birmingham and Cambridge. And, and that was just again, just a pilot run. So we did it roughly and ready and the feedback was really, really encouraging. So I didn't actually do the next study because clearly I can't do my own assessment.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  So it was taken out of my hands by an independent research group. Uh, and I was not allowed to do the teaching bit. I was put to one side, which I accept and I think that's right. Uh, and they underwent these series of eight workshops. And then they did an analysis, which is published in the Journal for Mental Health. Uh, and it showed a massive reduction in burnout, a massive reduction in, um, health issues. Um, and a general health questionnaire was used, uh, to show that the, the increased health was marked. So we were excited by that, obviously, I'm over the moon. Uh, the nurses were brilliant and engaging it, brilliant. Uh, but they took it seriously because obviously their frontline and the stress on them is immense.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  And amazingly, it was done under Covid, uh, we had to do it online, uh, because, uh, and they all were brilliant to say, we keep going. Uh, and the feedback was great. So we're now undergoing another group, I'm not involved. Independent researchers are doing two hundred doctors. Um. And again, I do a lot of talks to medical staff because this is my world and I'm more familiar with the medical one than I am sport. Um. So it's very encouraging. So we run this for the public as well. It's not just academics or. Uh. And it's just to say, if it resonates with you, then you can do this and see what you think. Uh. And the general feel is it it now the research is published and analysed that it it does have an impact.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  I was worried that it wasn't like something a flash in the pan because obviously a lot of therapies and they see it, they don't hold. So we did go back to the GPs months later without warning and say, give us another feed and and found it held. Which wasn't surprising because what I'm asking people to do is is approach life differently. And once you do that, you more or less keep doing it. Um. But you do have to maintain, I do say to people, five or 10 minutes a day is all I ask, to maintain these and learn to get your mind in order before you leave the house in the morning. That's that's what I'm after.

• 53:01Chris Williamson?

  What do you think it is specifically about your approach that is assisting with the symptoms of burnout or or targeting even the root cause of of burnout and overwhelm?

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Maya, I think genuinely, I think it isn't the model per se. I think it's the person being able to understand themselves and start looking after themselves and start understanding things like I mentioned, trigger points. Uh. Recognising anxiety rather than not seeing it. So um we give teach them about subtle signs of anxiety, then recognising how to detect things like beliefs that are not helping. So we're challenging a lot of things, but it's all about the unique person, empowering them and giving them the tools to get the life and and be the person that they are. That's what it's about. So when you do that, which will include practical things like communication skills, assertiveness,

• 53:59Speaker 01

  uh but learning how to communicate with the human side of the brain rather than the chimp brain, which is emotionally driven and can often cause more problems. So it's a big overall of looking at you. I think that's why it's working because the person makes it work. They have to decide. I can't decide what works for them.

• 54:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, and as you've sort of emphasized today, because we are so idiosyncratic and because our drives and our genetic predisposition and our life experiences and the ways we've dealt with past trauma and all of that are so unique, it needs to be something which is sufficiently scalable. And each person presumably individually finds their own flavour of this. And that resonates with me because I'm more of an angry chimp person, or my chimp and my human are Chris Hoy rather than Ronnie O'Sullivan.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Right. And that's why I say I can't, I say this to people, only you are going to discover. All I do is help you and catalyze ways forward and suggest, but I'm going to have to ask you to do the work. It's not me that does the work. I do my bit. But again, I'd say at this point, you know, it doesn't resonate with everyone. It's not for everyone. And there are fantastic therapies out there. My job along with everyone in this field is to say, just try and get the best out of yourself and quality of your life. So, you know, if people go for mine from a CBT, these are excellent therapies. They're excellent models to work with. I mean, I'm an academic, so I like evidence-based. However, if people go for

• 55:29Speaker 01

  things where there's no evidence, if it works for you, I'm not arguing. Right? All I say is be very careful that you don't get fooled by something, particularly someone who, you know, is giving you stuff that's gonna work in the short term, and then find you collapse down. So it's got to be something solid. And there's plenty of stuff out there to resonate with.

• 55:50Chris Williamson?

  Have you found a particular cohort of people that the chimp model works particularly well or particularly poorly with?

• 55:58Speaker 01

  That's a good question. And the answer is no, because. It's whether that person gets it. I mean, some time ago, when I very first started doing this, I was asked to do a brief television series, which was with some women. I got four of them and they asked me to teach them to ride a bike because I was with cycling at the time. But they had to lose weight and learn how to manage their mind. So it was a bit of a funny, a fun series I did. I loved it. The women were brilliant. They were brilliant. Great fun to work with. But it was interesting that the chimp mobile was almost imposed upon them. I mean, they knew who I was at the time, it's some years ago. But one of them didn't resonate with it at all. And I was happy. I said, no, I can talk in different terms.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  But she had a moment where she'd been, she was doing some sport. And she'd gone after sport justifying why she was getting a takeaway. And she knew she was on telly and she said, I sat outside the takeaway and I said, I deserve this because I've worked hard. I've run off a lot of calories. And then I said to myself, you're on a television programme, you're meant to be losing weight. And then she rang me and said, I've just found my chimp. She said it was bizarre. I was talking and I'm thinking, who am I talking to? So sometimes the penny has to drop where you think, I get what the neuroscience is. But it doesn't happen for everyone. And that's why I'm saying, find something that resonates with you.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  So who works with it is the person that resonates. So my youngest student is three or was three, who got it. And we'll talk about his naughty chimp. The eldest person that's come to me that's actually said, this really works is about eighty. And what he was, he was quite annoyed with me saying, why didn't you write this sixty years ago? But I was a little boy at the time, I didn't have any knowledge.

• 57:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I've had a lot of people who were, which is very humbling to me, who are in their sixties and seventies saying, oh, it only, I had known this. So they're vehement, you must bring this to schools. But I don't want to impose it. I think someone has to resonate. There's a danger of imposing. And that's the last thing I want to do. It's got to be empowerment.

• 58:11Chris Williamson?

  Rounding out that conversation around sort of burnout and overwhelm, you spend a good bit of time in the new book talking about robustness, mental robustness and resilience. Big buzzwords, you know, a lot of the guys that I've had on the show, people like David Goggins, who's this ultra endurance athlete, Jocko Willink, who wrote a book about discipline equaling freedom. A lot of discussion about mental resilience and robustness. What is interesting, do you think about, or what have you learned about your conception of resilience and robustness compared with maybe what what most people don't understand or get wrong about it?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Again, your definitions are so vague. If you start looking, there are so many different people saying this is what robustness is. So I had to do the same. I had to say to myself, define it. So if people are following you, they say, okay, if we use that definition, I see what you're going to. So I define robustness as having a plan. So we can all become robust. It's like getting a toy for a child and saying, we've designed it for the child. Resilience is handing it over and see if it works. So resilience is where you go out of the world, into the world and say, right. So I would have a mental strategy and plan to deal with my trigger points. But when I get out there, that's being robust. I'm ready to leave the room. The second I get out,

• 59:31Speaker 01

  now it's resilience is the skill to stay robust, is to stay in that same strong position. So I think robustness we can all get to, but being resilient is a skill. And I think that's where people come unstuck because they start beating themselves up instead of saying it's a skill. That means you've got to acquire it and maintain it. But also, some days, you get it wrong, like any sports person. For me, managing my mind is a skill and every day I've got to work on this. So every day I do, every day I have usually around four points in the day where I do a quick check and say, right, can we just make sure I'm in human mode, make sure my beliefs are back in place, make sure I understand, get perspective.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  That's what I do. Very briefly, it can take a minute, five minutes, but that resets my mind. So I'm resetting. So I think resilience is something you've got to work on and know how to use your skill, but it's not easy. So that's why when I wrote the Path of the Jungle, I was saying, I'm going to show all the basics. So you know what, how, how things work in your mind, what resonates with you, what doesn't. So you can do the exercise to get yourself in a great place. By the end of it, you've now got robustness and you've got some ideas on how to become resilient. And that's why I did a bit of troubleshooting at the end to say, these are the common things I find. People say, it's not working for some reason. You know, Ronnie O'Sullivan

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  did say, as he else is, he has permission to tell anything. I'd worked with him about two years and he rang me one morning and he was very much in chimp mode and distressed. And he said, it's not working. It's not working. I'm quite harsh. And I said to him, have you done the work? And he said, no. So I said, okay, I'm going to put the phone down. Ring me when you've done the work. So I put the phone down. And he rang me about three, four days later. And I said, how are you doing? He said, brilliant. I said, why? I said, I did the work. You know, so the answer's simple. It's no different to anything else. You've got to do the work. And the work is making sure your values are in place, making sure what we did, the stone of life not mentioned, with all

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  your beliefs in place and what the rules of the way the world works. You know, these are the truths of life. And then also put in place a perspective plan. So when he did that, he said, yeah, it's working again. So the answer is when people say to me, it's not working is, I always ask, have you done the work? And sometimes people need guidance because they'll do, they really try hard, but they're trying hard on the wrong things. And then you've got to say, hang on, can I just adapt that or modify this? And so a little subtleness, and then they go, oh, okay, I'm off again. And that's why I call my team the mentors, because they're there not to instruct, they're there to mentor you to saying, oh, let me help you. There's a glitch here and challenge

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  things so you can work it out.

• 1:02:30Chris Williamson?

  Tendency that we all have to complain about results we're not getting from effort that we're not making is very, very pervasive. And I see it, I see it in myself. If I start a new training program or switch my diet up or try and do something different with my bedtime routine, I, it's like you've done it for three days. What do you mean? And you did that one of those days you didn't do it because such and such a thing happened or you were away from home. So yeah, it's one of the things I'm getting here. And it's interesting. There's almost like a philosophical underpinning here, you know, your own personal philosophy about the way that the world is. And obviously, we, we experience the world through the texture

• 1:03:13Chris Williamson?

  of our own mind. It's the only way that we have to experience the world. Even experiences from other people still get filtered through our own mind. And yeah, it does, there is a sort of almost like a whimsical philosophy undercurrent that I'm sensing through, through some of the stuff that you're talking about, making sense of the world around us.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't want to be restricted when I did this to saying, right, I mean, obviously, I've been taught very well with philosophical models and medical models and psychological. But I didn't want to restrict people. I think it's what people want to do with it and make of it. I'm very much keen that they have empowerment, but I still will challenge things. I'll challenge beliefs people hold, because if I think that's holding them back, beliefs about themselves particularly, or other people or the world. But I will, yeah, I think there is a philosophy underpinning it, but it's your philosophy. And I think sounding boards, we use friends to do this all the time. We say something, they'll correct us or say, oh, do you really see it that way? So what I'm doing is doing that with hopefully the neuroscience

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  behind it to give that push. But I want to take you back to something you said, because

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  on the thing, it doesn't work. One of the commonest things I get, and this is an example of why it doesn't work. Sometimes if you do work for a few days and then you miss a day or two, you can go backwards depending on what you're trying to achieve. So I'm going to give sleep as an example. I ran sleep clinics a long time ago. And people say to me, I just have terrible sleep. And one of the general rules of sleep is that it's a learned behaviour. So although there's all these circadian rhythms, they're actually secondary to learned behaviour. So if we get you to learn a behaviour of sleep, then your brain will start to follow this and your body will. Uh, the circadian rhythm is obviously powerful, but it's not as powerful as be as habit.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  So I work with people who say, right, and I say, go to bed, whatever time it is, ten o'clock, wake up seven o'clock and that's your sleep. And they'll do this for, say, I'm making this up, five days. Uh, and then Saturday comes, oh, well, we're late home, we went home at one o'clock and then got to bed and I slept in till ten. And the rules, I'm being very black and white, the rules are simple, for the next three or four days, you're finished. You can't do that with the brain. So now your sleep's gone out until about Wednesday or Thursday. So now you try again and you say, well, I'm doing what you said. But that's the subtleties, no, you didn't. You have to stick to it Saturday, Sunday as well. Now, I know some people get away with it because we're variants, we're not all the same. But the general rule is, once you do that, you're finished.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  It it it won't accept this disruption of sleep. So again, I'm trying to point out that sometimes there's subtleties in the way the mind works. And it's the same with emotional stuff, which is why I pre-programmed things about four times a day. Because my experience for me is if I don't, then I get minor chimp. My team might say major chimp outbursts. Uh, and then I think, gee, and I have to come around and say, okay, sorry about that, let's start again. Right, but if I prime it about three or four times, get it back in tune, I tend never to get one.

• 1:06:30Chris Williamson?

  What I really

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Consistency.

• 1:06:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, what I really appreciate about uh your approach and what you've gone through today is a real uh humbleness or sort of a uh a lack of ego, or at least an apparent lack of ego uh around needing to be right. And I think that it's a very strong signal of trustworthiness. That it's just, I want people to be better. I want them to have a better relationship with themselves, people that are around them, I want them to have more peace of mind and and live a more flourishing, better life. You have an approach that you believe in, but if there are other things that people do, I I think it's it's a very um refreshing way. In a world in which everybody is trying to prove themselves to be right and prove their

• 1:07:15Chris Williamson?

  models and their worldviews and their books or their courses to be

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but no, but the the reality is that none of us are always right and that now everyone will resonate. So I'm not, it's very nice to say, but I don't say it's humble. I think it's been rational. But you know, there are plenty of other models that people have said is much better or this, I don't get this chip model. So I don't think it's necessarily humble. And I think on the ego thing, to be fair, like a lot of people who are in medical, what an allied sciences and philosophies and all this, and where we're practical and therapies therapists, we're there to help people we get a kick out of. So in a sense, you're feeding your ego because but it's only about for you to think,

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  oh, that person really did well. So I thrive, and I think it's nice to on people doing well. So to me, you know, seeing someone suddenly think I've really got my act together or achieved something like Chris Hoy did, you feel thrilled that you're saying I had a little bit of a part in

• 1:08:16Chris Williamson?

  that. See, Steve, you're you're even humble in your humbleness, which is unfalsifiable. I'm going to keep on, I'm going to keep on accusing you of it. No, I really, I really do like it. And I think the the idea of the mind having this hidden metric, right? The fact that our peace of mind, our happiness, the fact that we're living in alignment with our values, we don't see it day to day in the same way. It doesn't appear on a scale in the same way. And I'm fascinated by how people sacrifice hidden metrics for observable metrics. So let's say, let's take peace of mind and money. A lot of the time, people will sacrifice peace of mind in order to get money because it is

• 1:08:56Chris Williamson?

  so difficult to see. And I really think that one of the things that appears to be happening here is trying to make that hidden metric a little bit more observable by checking in, by seeing where I'm at, by reflecting on what I've done.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Well, again, I guess I'm a doctor and a scientist at heart and I like to measure things. And so I do like people to see that progress because we also know our chimp brains like to achieve, as our humans do. So I do push this to say, let's get a scale to measure things. Even happiness, you know, we've already talked about it, but I ask people not to give me a scale of five out of 10 because I don't think that really helps because one minute they're one, one minute they're nine. What I do is I say things like, tell me five things that will make you happy. And they're like simple things. So it could be having a cup of coffee, going for a walk with the dog, or it could be going out with friends for a meal. So what I do is say, right, I want

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  you to measure how many times you do that in a week. Because we know that if you do those things, the chances of you being happy go up. So I measure indirect. So I often don't measure direct. I think what's going to influence you to get what you want. So I'm quite keen on happiness lists. I go on about them because again, because most people do want to be happy. I do want to be happy. I've made myself into this kind of weird person, but I'm saying peace of mind for me. I have a peace of mind list. But I think happiness lists, I think are really important and I like to divide them into instantaneous because that can make a difference to our chimps. Maybe not our humans. So for me, a cup of coffee is right at the top of the list. I'm

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  an addict. So if I want to get happy, I grab a coffee and think I'm happy now. I even use that as an emotional blackmail on my chimp. So if I've got 50 emails and I've got to do them and my chimp doesn't want to do emails, right, but I know it'll benefit people. So I'll say, you don't get a coffee till we do 10. I have no idea why, but it will do 10. So we both do 10 and then I get a coffee. So and it works for me. So simple.

• 1:11:05Chris Williamson?

  There's an equivalent, you may have seen this in some of the, the training sessions that you've either done yourself or observed, but in CrossFit especially, you will have a time bounded workout and the coach will be stood at the front of the room and you'll be, your heart rate's at 180 and you've got the taste of metal in the back of your throat and you hate the coach and the workout and gravity and everything. And the coach does this thing, every single CrossFit gym on the planet does this. The coach will shout from the front of the room, Chris, get back on the bar. Three, two, one, jump on the bar. And there's something about that countdown and it's like someone's literally put their hand inside of you and made you do the thing that they were going to do. And the, the idea of like, you're not getting a coffee or you're not going to go for

• 1:11:47Chris Williamson?

  a walk or you're not going to do the whatever. Um, there are like these little bugs or features perhaps in the code that we have that's running our operating system. And sometimes you can just inject yourself at the right point to get them.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  You can learn to do it. It's the same. And people say to me, I worked with the Brey Suing team for a while and the, the biggest thing for them was getting out of bed in the morning. Cause they said it's like four o'clock starts and it can be hard. And so some of them struggled. And again, it's the same principle of saying, don't think, just block the chimp. Cause that's what's stopping you. You want to get up. It's only the chimp brain that's saying, stay in bed or we could have five minutes more. And, and it's irrational really because you're starting to get up. That's why the alarm's gone. So again, it's, it's quite powerful to learn to block thinking and just say, no, I'm not going without, I'm acting. Um, and that's basically what he did with your Chris, get going. Three, two, you're not thinking anymore. You're just acting. So what he's

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  done effectively, neuroscientifically is turned your computer on as a behavior. It's neither chimp nor human that's got on the bike. It's the computer now has taken over and said, it's irrelevant how I feel. It's irrelevant what emotions. There's an action needs doing and here we go. So he's used a trigger point for the computer and that's why that will work. Uh, but you can learn to do that for yourself, which is what I've done. Uh, I get my computer to take over and my chimp goes, okay, okay, we'll get coffee soon.

• 1:13:13Chris Williamson?

  Steve Peters, ladies and gentlemen. Steve, I absolutely love your work. I love your demeanor. I think that I think it's very, very good. And no matter how humble you are, I think that you should, you should continue to do the things that you are and take all of the praise because it seems very, very well deserved. What should people do beyond the books, but those as well? If they think that they want to get even more information, if they want to start working with somebody on this, what is it that you guys offer?

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  I mean, they could work things out from the books. I say Path Through the Jungle is much more explicit with exercises to try that hopefully would resonate with people. And it goes through the science and there's lots of references, 400 plus they can look up. We run a small company and we do do workshops for teams or individuals. I do a lot of fun stuff as well. So we have a sports conference coming up in October. I'm going on the Dracula hunt back to North Yorkshire at Whitby. And we're going to do a fun, I'm going to teach at the beginning, but set them off. I did as a team build for my team. They loved it. So I thought, let's open it to the public. So I'm doing that in October. As a weekend retreat. So it's fun, but it's team build fun.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Finding Dracula's coffin and then I do a Christmas conference. So we do do public conferences. We have an annual conference every May. Where I don't do all the speaking, you'll be pleased enough. My team get up and do it, but we have the team available to do workshops. And they can join what we call the troop, which is online. It's free. Just go on the chimp management website and I do a once a month thing, which at the moment I'm following a path through the jungle to try and give people something to work on practically. And there's a community there who go on discussion boards. So if people want to join in and they resonate, they could meet like-minded people, which is what I'm trying to set up. It's working, I hope.

• 1:15:02Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Steve, I really appreciate you. Thank you.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for inviting me.