Join The Top 1%: The Mindset Behind The World's Top Performers - Professor Steve Peters
01:55:13 Share

By the way, in case you haven't heard, my brand new book, Feel Good Productivity, is now out. It is available everywhere books are sold. And it's actually hit the New York Times and also the Sunday Times bestseller list. So thank you to everyone who's already got a copy of the book. If you've read the book already, I would love a review on Amazon. And if you haven't yet checked it out, you may like to check it out. It's available in physical format and also ebook and also audiobook everywhere books are sold. Whatever life's throwing at you, I ask people, look in the mirror and say, did I live by my values today?

Am I proud of the person that sat in front of me? At the end of the day, go out and just look at the sky and be happy. You know, don't get so heavy that you're so analytical, you strangle yourself. That's counterproductive. In this episode of Deep Dive, I'm joined by Professor Steve Peters. Steve is a world-renowned psychiatrist who's dedicated himself to understanding how the human mind works. He's worked with elite athletes like the Olympic cyclists Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton, five-time snooker world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan, as well as the England football team.

to help them overcome mental barriers and optimize their performance. My job is to help you to understand how your mind is functioning, what will work best for you, but it's your job to try it out and do the work and get the emotional skills. My job is to mentor you with that. And he's perhaps best known for his first book, The Chimper Paradox, which has sold millions of copies all around the world.

Now, in case you're unfamiliar with the book, The Chimp Paradox presents this mind management model that's based around three fundamental forces that are in our brains. Firstly, we've got the chimp, which is sort of the emotion, more emotional, more primal part of our brain that acts subconsciously and without our explicit consent. Secondly, we've got our inner human, which represents our more rational, more compassionate, more humane self. And thirdly, we've got the computer, which is sort of the memory bank that stores our memories and our experiences. Life's about fun as well as learning.

You know, it's not all about being very therapeutic and analytical. Get a sense of humour. Don't spend your life and then end up, you know, at the end of your life looking back thinking why or why or why. Whatever stage you're at in life, it's always good to stop and think, hang on, let me look at the bigger picture.

This season is once again being sponsored very kindly by Trading212. Now people ask me all the time for investment advice because they see that I've made money and I've made videos talking about where I'm investing that money. The thing that Warren Buffett and basically everyone who's sensible in the space recommends, which is to invest in broad stock market index funds, which you can do completely for free using Trading212. Trading212 is a fantastic app

that lets you invest in stocks and shares and funds in a commission-free fashion. And they've got a bunch of features which are really helpful, which is why I personally use Trading212 to manage a portion of my portfolio. So firstly, they've got this great pies and auto-invest feature. So if you're interested in potentially getting into investing, what you can do is you can browse the different pies that different people have created on the platform. So you might get like a hedge fund trader who's gone onto the platform and has created a pie of investments, having done a bunch of research and stuff. And that pie might be like, I don't know, 20% Apple, 20% Tesla, 10% this, 10% that, but

generally way more complicated than that. And you can see the performance of that particular pie of stocks and shares and funds. And then if you want to copy that pie into your own account, you can just copy and paste it directly in. And then you can invest any amount of money and it will automatically split it according to the allocation in the pie. So if you wanted to just play around with a hundred pounds and you were like, okay, that pie looks good.

it will split out that £100 based on the allocations of the Pi, which is pretty sick. They've also recently added support for multi-currency accounts. Now this is really helpful because, for example, if you invest in the S&P 500, which is a US-based index fund, then you won't get hit with all the various foreign exchange fees if, for example, you're investing from the UK like I do. And if you have an Invest or an ISA account, then Trading212 also gives you daily interest on your uninvested cash in pounds or euros or US dollars.

So if any of that sounds up your street, then do please hit the link in the video description or in the show notes. That will let you sign up to Trading212. And if you use that link, you will also get a completely free share up to the value of £100. So it's literally free money, so you might as well. So thank you so much Trading212 for sponsoring this episode.

This episode is very excitingly brought to you by Huel. I've been a paying customer of Huel since 2017, since my fifth year of medical school. And it's absolutely fantastic for those occasions when you need a meal, but you don't have the time to necessarily cook for yourself. Now, these are some of my favorite product that Huel offers. This is the Ready to Drink,

which is a meal in a bottle. And each meal is 400 calories with 22 grams of protein, which is pretty reasonable. And each serving has 26 vitamins and minerals as well. Huel Ready to Drink is made from natural ingredients like tapioca, sunflower seed, coconut, pea protein, flaxseed and hemp seed protein. It is 100% vegan, like all Huel meals. And it's gluten-free and lactose-free with no animal products and no GMOs. And Huel Ready to Drink comes in eight different flavors, including strawberries and cream and iced coffee caramel, along with the classics like chocolate and

and vanilla. Now these are widely available in supermarkets and corner shops and petrol stations all around the UK, but the best way to get them is online. And so if you're like me and you have a fairly busy life where you don't necessarily have time to cook or make the time to cook, then you might like to try out Huel Ready to Drink. Also, if you haven't yet heard the episode of Deep Dive with the founder of Huel, Julian Hearn, you might like to check that out.

But if you'd like to give Huel a try, then head over to Huel.com forward slash deep dive. And that link is available in the video description and the show notes as well. And that link firstly helps me out, but it will also give you a free t-shirt and a shaker. And so you can check out Huel ready to drink and you can also check out the other products that they offer. So thank you so much Huel for sponsoring this episode.

This episode is sponsored by Kajabi, and they've actually got something really valuable for all of our deep dive listeners. Now, if you haven't heard of Kajabi, it's basically a platform that helps creators diversify their revenue with courses and membership sites and communities and podcasts and coaching tools. So it's one of the best places for creators and entrepreneurs to build a sustainable business. We started using Kajabi earlier this year, and as soon as we started using it, we were like, oh my God, why haven't we been using this product for the last three years? It's got everything you'd possibly need for running an online course or hosting an online community or building an online coaching

business. And it essentially makes it really easy to run your entire online business from payments to marketing tools to analytics. Kajabi has everything that we creators need all in one place. And actually, you don't necessarily need a huge audience to generate a sustainable income. A creator on Kajabi can, for example, make $100,000 by converting just 350 customers a year, depending on your price points. And in fact, there are creators on the platform that are making millions of dollars every year with fewer than 100,000 followers across the social media platforms.

We've been using Kajabi to host all of our online courses since the start of 2023, from our $1 part-time YouTuber foundations to help people start off on their YouTube journey, all the way up to our $5,000 package for the part-time YouTuber accelerator

which gives you access to me and my team. And Kajabi does not take any cut of what you earn. Creators keep and own everything. The way Kajabi makes money is through the monthly subscription fee. And even though we generate like literally millions of dollars every year from Kajabi, we're still only paying them a couple of hundred dollars a year. And actually in their lifetime, Kajabi have paid out over $6 billion to creators, that's billion with a B, and over a thousand creators have become millionaires through products on the platform.

Now, back in May 2023, I did a keynote at a Kajabi in real life, Kajabi Heroes event in Austin, Texas. And in that keynote, I talked about the exact steps that I use to grow my business from zero to over two and a half million dollars per year from course revenue alone. Now, people paid for the pretty expensive tickets to watch this keynote at the Kajabi Hero live event. But as an exclusive deal for deep dive listeners, Kajabi have very kindly offered to provide the recording of that keynote completely for free to anyone who listens to this podcast.

So if you're interested in getting completely free access to that keynote, just head over to kajabi.com forward slash Ali. That's kajabi.com forward slash A-L-I. And that'll be linked in the show notes and the video description as well. You just enter your email address and then you will get the recording of that keynote completely for free, whether or not you ever become a Kajabi customer. So thank you so much to Kajabi for sponsoring this episode.

So Steve, welcome to the podcast. You've been a psychiatrist for the last 30 years and you've worked with all sorts of people from all walks of life through your work in the NHS, people with personality disorders, all the way through to kind of high performers in all areas of life. So I guess one question that I'd like to start with is what are the biggest misconceptions that distinguish the top performers from, I guess, the average performers?

I think people think there's a magic formula. There may be, I haven't seen it. There are certain personality types or certain behaviours that lead to success and I haven't found that. I think I've met all types of personalities and all types of approaches.

So, for me, and these are just personal opinions, I think that what works is when the person resonates with whatever approach or method they're doing. In other words, they get themselves into the right place, the right environment, and approach things the way they want to. That leads to success. But I don't think it's either way around.

saying he's a process, follow that process and it'll lead to success. - Ah, okay. So when it comes to the work that you do with top performers, how do you go about, because I guess you've worked with like the England football team and like professional cyclists and things like that. How do you go about, I guess, improving someone's performance who's already performing at a really high level?

Okay, so I know I'm being sort of like typical psychiatrists. I won't improve their performance, they will. So it's very important that we keep the terminology. Otherwise, if somebody came to me and said, I want you to get me to get a gold medal at the Olympics, then we stop and say, that's not what's going to happen. That's not my job. My job is to help you to understand how your mind is functioning, what will work best for you. But it's your job to try it out and do the work and get the emotional skills. My job is to mentor you with that.

So when you say, what would I do? What's my approach? My approach is to talk to the person, ask them what it is they're trying to achieve, what they think will make it happen, what's stopping them. So if they said, right, procrastination stops, then we would look at procrastination. If they said self-confidence stops me, we'd look at that. If it's worrying too much. So it's very specific to the individual. So I feel my job when I meet someone for the first time is to get a background feel for them

get a feel for where they're at, what they're trying to achieve, what's happened in their life previously. So I like to get what we'd call in the trade a functional analysis. You know, what's all the influences and how would they manage them? What's their approach? So I always try and simplify things so people can follow it. And I say, what's your behaviors? What's your thinking? What are your emotions doing? That's my triad. So thinking, behaviors, emotions. And then I look at things that affect me.

So again, I'm taking extremes to drive the point, but you look at your childhood, you might say, you know, what were your parents like? What was it imprinted upon you, you know, about how you approach life? What are the values? What's your culture? You know, because I meet people from different backgrounds, so I need to know their cultural background. Lots of impact things. So it is like really delving in to pick out the really important factors and then get that person to explore that and say, now,

In that setting, what is your mind going to do? And what are you going to do? And I make an emphasis there that your mind and you are different. I always keep saying, please remember, neuroscientifically, that's what I felt hit me like an epiphany in the 1990s, working with patients. I thought, I'm talking to a mind and I'm talking to a patient. They were different. And that's where I think for me, the way I practice medicine, it changed.

The mind and you are different. Yes. Interesting. Okay, so there's triad of thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Yeah. I imagine when you're like, if for example, you get introduced to the England football team and then you start asking them about this sort of the functional analysis stuff, are they surprised? Is that what they're expecting when they have a conversation with you? I think the expectation is different for different players. So some will come in and give you performance issues.

And they'll say things like, you know, I'm lacking confidence. So not just England football, but any sports person in a team. Often a team player might say, I tend to start losing confidence and hide. Or they might say, I feel the crowd.

Or they might say fear making a mistake. So they would bring that to the table, whereas other people in elite sport don't want to talk about performance issues. They want to talk about personal self-esteem or they want to talk about relationships.

And they might bring family dynamics in or, you know, their own self-image might come into it. So I don't go in with an idea of saying this is what we'll cover. I've got to ask the person, what do you want from me? And make sure I can deliver it. But if you look, as my specialty area is the human mind and how it functions, it really doesn't matter what they bring to me, we'll end up going down that road. Nice.

So your book, The Chimp Paradox, is absolutely like world famous. I wonder if I can ask you, what's the mind model that you introduce in the book? And then we'll kind of... Going back, yeah, to the 1990s, what happened is there was an epiphany moment and it was with a particular patient. So I won't go into the great detail, but just to say that I was...

able by just asking the right questions to talk to what I thought was a very sensible person and then suddenly someone who didn't seem sensible at all and was very emotional and pretty catastrophic in thinking. So I started looking at what do, because we've now got functional MRI scanners, what does the research show us on this? And I started realising that if we scan somebody's brain and they were talking as what I'd call a human being,

They were rational, they were logical. So I'm going to simplify the neuroscience because I realize a lot of listeners are not neuroscientists. We looked at the top part of your head, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, seem to be leading on this. And this we know is where executive functioning takes place. So in essence, if you put your oxygen supply in that part of your brain, you're going to think and work in a certain way. You'll look for facts, logic, but the

But there's more to it that hit me. That part of the brain works with acceptance and starts saying it is what it is. That part of the brain looks for solutions.

As opposed to when I started moving the patient by asking emotive questions, so things that would make them upset or more emotional. If you look at functional scanners, what will happen, they'll go to the orbital frontal cortex, just above your eyes. And now they start acting in a very strange way. They wouldn't work with facts at all. In fact, they'd have great difficulty accepting them. So what they do is go on feelings. I'm not saying they're wrong. And intuition. Intuition.

And they'll work with those and they won't understand facts. It's almost like facts are not part of the vocabulary. So what you've got to, I started to see is I've got two people in the room or two brains in the room. So then I start looking and thinking, well, how can I understand this better? And that became two systems.

So then I looked and I thought, you see classic connections in the brain. So when the orbital frontal works, it pulls on things like the amygdala heavily. All of the brain to me is like an orchestra. So both of these systems pull on the brain, but they select certain of the instruments. And the orbital frontal selects feelings, past experience, emotion. It works on trigger points. It works on behaviors. So this is behavioral therapies coming in.

And then I looked at the dorsolateral areas and they don't work with behaviours, they work with rationality and thinking. So your cognitive therapies are coming in. Nice. And that, I thought, oh, this is really good. But there's more to the brain than that. So in the centre, you've got all this other sort of instruments playing away. They're not the lead instruments, they're not the orchestral conductors, which is what these two other parts are, they're the thinkers. But they actually contribute heavily to...

So I started seeing that as being a computer. So what I'd got is essentially the brain was a computer advising, but it does more than advise, and we may get to this. It actually takes over. So there was a paradox that when you imprint a belief in that computer,

The two thinkers are going to be the decision makers. Yep. Have to listen to that. They can't go against it. So, for example, if you had a belief that this building was unsound and the roof is about to collapse, then whether you think emotionally or rationally, you have to get out of the building. Yep. You know? So the center of your brain, it was crucial that it seemed blank at birth.

apart from instincts and drives, it's blank. Belief systems start coming in and we work them out from being taught or experienced. So I started thinking we can alter that and that would alter whether you left the building or not on your belief.

So this all got complicated as he's doing. And I thought, it's got to be made simple. Now, I teach at Sheffield Medical School. And teaching medical students, they like things simple and practical, as I do. And I'm thinking, these are doctors-to-be, and they're not going to be neuroscientists. They're going to be, many of them, GPs and other careers in medicine. But they want an understanding of what the patients are thinking and how they act and how they can work with that. And so...

I then had another epiphany. I started looking at people and thinking when they're irrational, they look just like chimpanzees. I looked at chimpanzees and thought they have a society which is very similar. Not everything is in line. But I started speaking to the hominid specialists, people who knew the apes. But more important, the ones that were the neuroscientists looking at the apes.

And at that point, I was told, and I believed them, the chimpanzee and the human have the same system in their brain when we're reacting emotionally. But the other apes don't. So we think in a certain way. Now, this has been published 20 years on. In 2018, they published this to say the other great apes, the gorilla, orangutan, bonobo, they don't think like humans and chimpanzees. But we are so close that we say this is our nearest relative. Yep.

because we think the way they think. Genetically, it's not our nearest relative. The bonobos got more genes. So I just coined the phrase, I said to the students, if I said you had a little chimp in your head and when you're in this part of your brain, that's the chimp brain. They loved it. It was simple. So when you become irrational, your mind takes over. That part of your brain works with trigger points, behaviors, is impulsive, catastrophic. It's a defense system. Yep.

Whereas when you move to the dorsolateral areas, you're in human mode. Now it's you. But what was intriguing is I was getting this with patients. And then there was this moment for again, for me, an epiphany, probably around just the late 90s.

There was no control over the orbital frontal. It was very fast moving and it's a reactive system. And it's inbuilt and you're given it. And when you look at the development of the brain, it has a head start in the foetus. So it's already operating in foetal life and it keeps going right through the whole of our life. Whereas the human part, as I'm calling it, didn't operate. So we come late to the party. So I started then looking at child development.

And I found that it's obvious, it became blatant, that children around two or three start saying why. And the dorsolateral areas are coming in with reasoning. Before that, they don't ask. It's behavioral. So, for example, if you want to help a child that's distressed, distract it. And we know that works best. Don't reason with it because you can't reason. So this all started coming together. And I thought, I've got to keep it simple.

So the students helped me. They wouldn't let me go complex. So they said, right, you've got a human brain, which is you are in control of that. And that's logic, rational, calm, and solution finding. You've got a chimp brain, which you've been given at birth. And that's why at the beginning of this, I said, that's your mind. It's a machine. You don't have a say in it.

Research shows that for most of us, we're on the neurotic type spectrum. Our chimp system is highly strong and it's quite reactive and impulsive. But there's a spectrum. Some people have very quiescent, calm chimps. And I always say to people, if you've got a calm chimp, it may seem an advantage, but actually in the long run, it's a negative because it's meant to be highly reactive. It's meant to give you warning of danger. And that...

Going back to your point about sports people or anybody, it can be your best friend because that thinks outside the box and reacts quick and warns you of danger. And we know our intuitive skills research shows are far more accurate than when we have to try and find logic and facts initially. So working with intuition, as long as it's functioning well, is actually a massive plus. Hmm.

So you have to start joining forces of two thinking brains and start working together. And again, the research shows the people who work with both the logic and the intuition and learn how to manage them and the emotional warning signals from the chimp system do the best. Nice. This is really complex. No, this is a great explanation. Okay, so the human brain is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right?

Well, that's the lead, and then it has all the system in the computer helping it. Okay, right. But the chimp has its system, the orbital frontal, and it has an entire system working for it. Nice. The thing is that when the chimp brain looks to the computer for advice, it also listens to the human system. And when the human listens, it listens to the chimp system. Got it. So they both have input into the computer.

but the chimp can put some really unhelpful things in so we have unhelpful beliefs appear unhelpful behaviors and we have to learn how to recognize and how to remove them yeah or if we can't remove them manage them interesting okay yeah so as you were saying that i was thinking that

I think I have a fairly quiescent chimp in most areas in that most of my friends would call me, like, hyper-rational. And some would say as a compliment, others would say as absolutely the opposite. And so what that means is that, you know, I'll be in a situation where I'm in Turkey with some friends and some guy is, like, offering us a thing. And I'm like, oh, he's probably very friendly. He's a nice enough chap. And then my friends are like, dude, this is, like, bad vibes. Like, what the hell? Like, this guy's clearly trying to scam us. And I...

I just did not pick up on that intuitively. And I was thinking, oh, no, it's probably... I mean, yeah, I can understand why he's doing this thing. And it's been helpful in some areas where having a quiescent chimp means I'm totally chill making YouTube videos and public speaking. And I don't have a lot of fears that people have with that. But it also does mean that I don't pick up on intuitive cues that can protect me from danger. That's perfect. I mean, that's a really good example where...

Like I said at the beginning, you have to learn about your brain and say, right, this system I've been given is really calm and collected. So I'm not probably going to suffer with this impulsive trigger reactions that a lot of people get. And you may or may not wake up in the night panicking and having imposter syndrome, which a lot of the high strung chimps get, although it's fairly universal. But you have to then say, right, my chimps a bit naive.

And it's a bit too trusting. So you have to then learn and program your computer to say, right, stop.

If I'm in a vulnerable position, so it's quite interesting that you mentioned holiday because we know that certain settings leave you vulnerable. So parties, holidays, new environments, new people, you're much more vulnerable than when you're in your home setting and home territory and familiar routines. There it's much easier to be on guard. Whereas if we're taken off guard, hence holiday romances.

And hence, like you say, if somebody comes up and says, please help, and you're taken off guard, and because you're in a holiday-type mood, you could end up in trouble.

That's interesting. Yeah, one of the rules that we've come up with as a way of managing me within my team is that whenever I go to a conference in America, I get like grandiose thingies. Everybody's like, yeah, I want to grow my business to like, you know, 10x and 20x. Let's do it. And so what the team has realized is that we have a 72-hour button. Whenever I come up with a new idea, they press the 72-hour button and we pause on it for three days. And if I'm still excited about it, then we'll think about it.

And there's been so many occasions where the team has been like, I'd like to invoke the 72 hour button here. We've paused. And three days later, I've forgotten that I was excited about the thing because it was, you know, as much as I like to think I'm rational, it's like in those contexts where there's like adrenaline and people around me and sort of this rah-rah atmosphere that's common in the US, that will then take over. So I guess it's sort of the naive chimp. Let me use that as an example, a generic one. It's really good.

So I'm working with you and you say, right, this is what I do, Steve. And I'm not going to tell you to wait three days. I'm not going to do that. What I would do now is ask you, if you didn't wait three days and were impulsive and it did go wrong, would you be saying, I'm glad I did it because I think that's what life's about. You know, you jump in, if you start drowning, you swim. And I think that's exciting and I love that.

then I'm hardly going to advise you to wait three days because you've told me, I like that kind of lifestyle and I feel I can deal with it. Whereas if you say, if I made a mistake, I wouldn't deal with this very well. Then I'd be saying, okay, well, what advice do you reckon you'll give yourself? And then you'll say, wait three days.

So in other words, you work this out. Yeah. You have to, I don't tell you, I can't tell you because I don't know what you'll deal with. What I might do, if you said, I like to just jump in and I like to drown and I like to swim and I, and then I work with you and think, actually, you're lacking insight because that's not the case. Because what you do is when you start realizing you've gone in too deep,

you have restless nights you make yourself ill your your partners or friends start saying to you oh you you know you're irritable and and now your decision making is going off then i have to say look although you decided that you're this kind of person actually we need to give you some insight it's not actually true it's not getting the best answer and i give you evidence base yep so and then again you have to make a decision i'm not going to say to you right change yep

So that's why it's hard when people say to me, and I get these interviews, right, give us five tips for the listeners or readers. And I always try and warn the host who's interviewing, I'm not going to do it because I can't. What I can do is give you generic things and say common sense says.

So we've talked about the neuroscience, and obviously this is my feels unbiased. So if you then said, well, what is your aim then? And I explained that I'd do the analysis. My aim would be to give common sense questions and say, if you were in a good place at the start of the day, so you're at peace with yourself, you're in a positive frame of mind and happy and quite accepting, what's the chance you'll go through the day and do well as opposed to being in a bad place? Yeah.

It's common sense and self-evident that most people say, well, being in a good place. I have had challenges. I've had people saying, no, I think being in a bad place makes you fight more. And then I have to work with that. I'll challenge it and say, let's keep checking. Because it's common sense that if you can get your mind and yourself in a really good place, the chances are you'll be much more functional. What I'm not advocating is that people become robots.

People often say what we have to do is kill the chimp. And I'm saying no. The chimp gives the absolute flavor, color, excitement, drive in your life. Okay? I'm saying work with it.

but recognize its strengths and its weaknesses, which are unique to you. Everyone's unique. That's, I think, one of the reasons when I started in medicine that psyche became something I enjoyed because I never knew who would come through the door. Every life was different. And I love getting the flavor of whether they're famous people or not. Anybody's the same. It's great.

Yeah, I love this thing around, you know, this is the thesis behind my book as well, which is coming out in a few months, feel good productivity, where we just dove a lot into the evidence that does show that like when you feel good, when you've got the positive emotions, you're more creative, you're more productive, you're less stressed, broaden and build theory and all this, all this sort of stuff. Yeah.

And so I feel like that's how I've been, you know, I've been making YouTube videos for the last six years, partly in medical school, partly while working as a doctor. And people kept on asking, how are you so productive? How do you do all this stuff? And a lot of it was around making sure the thing felt enjoyable and I felt comfortable doing it and I felt at peace, which involved combating, you know, initially imposter syndrome and procrastination and fear of judgment and like, oh, well, I had this negative comment and it's like, there's 100 positive comments, but the one negative comment, I'm going to fixate on that.

and then learning strategies to kind of cope with that over time. And again, you know, if I'd met you at that point and you said, this is what I've got and I've got imposter syndrome and I say, well, the first thing you see it as a very positive thing. It's very positive. Imposter syndrome is not negative.

If you see what the brain's doing, all it's saying is, can you check for me? So I said, this is the chimp at its best to me. So if you get imposter syndrome, the chimp brain is sending you a message to say, look, my job isn't to find solutions. That's your job, right? As the human, you find me the solution. I'll give you the warning.

I'm doing my job. Are you an imposter? So your job is to say, thanks for the warning. Let's have a look at what I'm trying to do. And now, depending on the person, you might want to look at things like, am I articulate? Am I doing the job well? Do I get out of my guests on the podcast? Do I get the information the public want? You could go down that route or you could say, I'm not going to go down that route because...

I don't know what the public will say. And let's be honest, the most vocal people are the negative ones. So you will get a distorted statistic. You might go down a different route and say, let me look at my values. Am I doing what I think is genuine? And if I reach 10 people doing this, is that more important to me than reaching a million who actually don't move anywhere?

So again, I would work with you to say, let's look at the imposter syndrome. Let's pick it up as a positive. Let's give it an answer. Let's give it a solution. And then let's work with it. So then it becomes a positive, productive thing, not a negative. I was interviewing a clinical psychologist yesterday, and we were talking about the idea of

Holding thoughts at arm's length and not over-identifying with them. So I'm an imposter, I guess. If we over-identify with it and we view it as the truth, it becomes quite hard to act. But if we be like, okay, thank you for the warning, I'll take that into account, treat it with lightness, then we can, I guess, take into account the information from the chimp

appreciate and thank the chimp, but choose to act in the way we want to. I think the difference is, it's the same, it's just different models, but what I'm saying is, if I look at the neuroscience, the orbital frontal area is trying to give you information, but in an emotional way, because the only way it can communicate is to disturb you.

That's its job is to disturb you. And that gets your attention. So if you listen and use it correctly, then it stops disturbing you. But if you don't come up with something good enough, then it disturbs you again and says, have another go. And it keeps doing this until you come up with an answer which satisfies it. So it's getting back to homeostasis in the brain. It's saying we're meant to be at peace, you know, but you're not doing your job. It's not the brain that's doing wrong. It's the human who's not finding solutions. Mm-hmm.

And that's where it is hard and sometimes, as you say, we're too close to it and we start listening to the chimp and saying, "Maybe I'm an imposter." And this way it's great to have someone outside to be objective and say, "Okay, let me ask you the right questions and help you." If you can't get an answer, then friends or a therapist or anybody might come in and say, "Well, have you thought of this?" And you think, "Oh, that's true. That's a different perspective." So we're not meant to be isolated as humans.

We never were. We work as part of a team. So I'm not advocating, again, that people get into this position where they're so independent of the world. I don't think that's realistic. I think...

I'd aim for that because it gives you stability and peace of mind for within yourself. But the reality is that our brains are dysfunctional. They're meant to be. And so we will get thrown around by events. And that's where sometimes if you can't get that inner peace, you turn to your friends who can provide it. So that and that's the chimp saying the chimp works externally. It doesn't work internally. What do you mean? So it looks for answers outside of itself.

So it wants you to provide solutions and it looks for stability by friends. So for example,

You send your book out there and then somebody writes a criticism, right? Which it's going to get, right? Inevitable. And your chimp brain will pick that up and panic because it only sees the criticism and it wants to be loved by everybody, right? So you have to now give it rational thinking to say, look, there's 100 people said it's good, you know, and the reality is whoever writes any kind of book, they're going to get criticized and there are always going to be some people who love it.

So you can rationalize it, but if the chimp's still not reassured on that, it's just not strong enough, then your friends are the ones who come in saying, look, I think it's great, and your chimp listens to that. So it listens to the people close, and that's why our friends or partners can make us feel good, because they're more important than the public. Oh, that's good. So there's a lot of rules around it, but as you can see,

This is where it's a challenge for me. I can't impose that because it may not be true for you. And you might be someone who says, doesn't matter what a partner or friends think, but you might have somebody who is older, could be a father, mother, or an older person that you really respect and they give you that stability. So it's almost a substitute parent. It could be a parent. And again, quite a few people work with that

paternal or maternal figure rather than friends and partners. So their default is to get the protective element. Is that something that we can control or change, do you think? Like whose opinion our chimp listens to? Yeah.

I mean, one of the features of a therapist often is to take that role. So if we had someone who had a terrible childhood and their parents were critical of them, either in a negative way or trying to be positive, like saying you could do better, and that sometimes is destructive. If the therapist can substitute being the parent and challenge that,

And then the person who's receiving the therapy actually thinks, yeah, they've got a good point. They become the parent figure. So it's quite a positive thing to do. And our mind works on the emotional rather than rational feeling that I've suddenly got approval from this new parent figure. And so you form these bonds often, professional bonds with a therapist who represents that

And brings this in. But you can do that yourself as well. You know, I'm not saying you need to run off to a therapist. So it's, again, individual. I'm curious. So it sounds like you define the mind as being the chimp part of the brain. And the computer. So the chimp plus computer equals mind. Yeah. But then the human is not like...

Separate. Well, I mean, it's pedantic, really. It's just semantics that the human chimp and computer are the neuroscience of your brain. Okay. And then I'm saying, right, but you must understand that the chimp and the computer are given to you at birth. Yep. To keep it simplified. Yep. The chimp is already programmed. Yep.

and it's going to work in a certain way and work with emotions. The computer is more or less a blank slate. And now it's up to you and the chimp to put beliefs in there, values in there, memories, interpretations of memories. You do all that, but can you go back and modify it? Yes.

you can take out the unhelpful beliefs, the gremlins I call them, and recognize them. The only thing I did feel when I started developing the model in the early 2000s is sometimes I've seen therapists, obviously my work is teaching, whether they're doctors or psychologists, nursing staff,

they'll try and change something which has damaged the system. So, for example, if you've had a really bad experience as a child, sometimes we know that neuroscientifically it's almost like you've got damage to the circuit. So it's like a computer with a virus that we just can't get it out. So what we do is contain it. So sometimes I say to people, you've got to recognize when it's not really a gremlin, it's more what I call a goblin, where you think we can't remove this. It's a bit of damage, but we can contain it and work with it.

Otherwise, again, I'm giving a dramatic example. If you wanted everyone to be independent and their self-esteem to be high, I don't think that's possible. I think some of us need other people and we have a default that I do need people around me. So don't make me independent because it won't happen. So I think, again, it's learning what do we have to live with?

and what scarred us a little bit and what can we change over and think, no, that's something I can rethink. Nice. So while we're here, like, what is the Goblin and Gremlin and how did you arrive at those kind of like quite like high imagery kind of? Yeah, so the commonest one which I mentioned is Goblin

First of all, the gremlins. The gremlins are just beliefs or behaviours that are really unhelpful and we've just got into a routine pattern. So you've formed these pathways in your brain and they keep repeating and repeating and they drive you crazy because you don't want them.

So can we turn them over? Yes. But there are rules about how you turn them over. So often one of the rules is we have a belief is usually underpinned by five, six, seven other beliefs. So I always say these are the gremlins. These beliefs don't dance alone. They're a gang. And you've got to pin all of them. So I go around and find all the supporting gremlins and then we knocked them all on the head one by one.

If you do that, and then you must replace them with what I call the autopilot, that's a really truthful, not a false belief, a truthful belief based on facts and logic. And that will form a new pathway. And we keep reinforcing that till eventually, and it's not brainwashing, it's reality, bringing you to reality. The gremlins go, and you think over time, yeah, they've gone. And it can be instant or it can be over weeks. The goblin is different. The one I usually use is the Fridge Door Syndrome.

which a lot of us relate to. When children first go to school, they're asked to paint a picture and take it home and mum or dad approves and sticks it on the fridge door. What mum and dad often do then is say, aren't you clever? And they're pointing to the picture saying, you know, you're so clever, clever girl, clever boy. I love you. I want the world to see. We'll put it on the fridge door. And

That's damage. That's a goblin. Yeah, that's really bad news. Why is that bad news? Right, it's really bad news. You have to step back and see how a child thinks at this point because they're not fully rational. They're mainly in chimp mode. And what you've really said to the child is...

If you bring something to me that you've done that I approve of, then I love you and the world knows and I'm going to make sure the world knows. I'm going to really emphasize it on the fridge door. Now, I'm saying it dramatically to drive the point, but if you did it differently and you said, put the picture down when the child came home and say, I want to see it. Not yet. And you sat them on your knee and said, I love you as you are. I think you're great. I want the world to know you're great.

And then you say to the child, "What's this?" You can still approve of the picture, but you can also say, "Well, the sun isn't green, is it?" And with the child doing that, what you find is the child begins to form resilience because it learns that I am valued as me as a person. I don't need to prove myself to me or anybody else. What I can do is I can paint a picture and I can self-criticise so the child can laugh at something. If you think it's very subtle,

The question is, does it work? And the answer is yes. Research shows that if you start building resilience in children by giving them the power of self-criticism, both good and bad, they'll learn to do that as teenagers. And it gives them resilience against peer pressure 10 years later. So the evidence is if we work with children, it will work. Would it work on an adult?

So if we now call myself a fridge door child, so I've been impregnated with this belief at the age of five and I can't get away from it. And now I just want to make sure I don't get it wrong. And I'm terrified, which imposter syndrome is based on, of getting things wrong. Can I turn it over? Yes, you can.

Once you start recognizing it, you can start saying, actually, I'm not a five-year-old. I don't need parents' approval. I need my approval. And I might shift my system now from chimp to human and say, I'm going to work with my values. Now we're into much more powerful territory because values will give you peace of mind, whereas producing a good picture won't.

it'll give you temporary relief. But we know that your chimp brain will then say it's not good enough and it will compare what you did yesterday with today and that's never favorable. So there's a trap here and it's getting through to that subtle trap that if you keep working with that system and you don't know it, you can't find peace of mind. It's always temporary. Whereas if you shift systems, you suddenly think I've got it now, I'm bringing perspective in, you know, I'm bringing values in. The system shifts.

I can give you an anecdote of someone I worked with who heard the fridge door syndrome and came to me and said, we're just about to have our first child as a man. And he said, he won't be a fridge door. And time passed, cut the story short, six years later, he came and said, went to the first parents' evening. We were so elated because the teacher said, why can't they all be like him? And he said, he wasn't bothered. He'll have a go at anything because he's self-contained.

and his value is within himself and he's a happy child. Now that may be just a coincidence, but he was adamant. We did not give him the fridge door syndrome. I was only sort of like preening my feathers thinking that was good until he said, it actually works what you do. I thought, well, I hope it does. I spent my life doing it. But yeah, but it's a good example that a lot of us are fridge door and we're worried about what people think.

and even criticize ourselves. So we become our own worst critic. Yeah, this reminds me of Alfie Kohn's book, Unconditional Parenting. Okay. Basically talks about, and he's got another book called Punished by Rewards. And his whole thesis for, he's a child psychologist. His whole thing is like, praise is actually really damaging for kids because of this thing of like,

you know, little five-year-old Johnny thinks, oh, I am loved when I get good grades. That's it. That's it. That's what I remember. Fridge door. The whole thing. I love the fridge door thing. It makes so much sense. I think just to relate that to something in my life, I think in the early days of, I think I was very much a fridge door child as well, where it's like, you know, if I got 98% in an exam, it's like, why isn't it 100%? Kind of thing. And a lot of my time in secondary school was

desperately to retain my... Because in the 11 plus, I got top of the cohort. I was like, oh my God, I need to retain my position because I wanted to go to medicine. I wanted to go to Cambridge. It's like my entire identity was wrapped up in retaining this academic status. And then I got to medical school and I'm like, uh-oh, I'm bang average here. This is dangerous. And...

But that's emphasising the point that, you know, I've put him on the books. I worked, I was privileged to work with sports people. I'm not a sports fan, but I'm a people fan. And so it's been great to go to multiple Olympic games. But I remember walking around Olympic Village at one of them with someone who didn't get a gold medal. They got a medal. Yeah.

but it wasn't gold and I had to console them and I just thought this is ridiculous you know step back you know even getting to the Olympics is phenomenal but it's that power of the chimp and as a principle whatever people are watching or listening to this you've got to step back and say is this in

in my life where no matter what I do, it's never good enough. You know, the chimp complains or it's good enough for that day and then it starts pulling it to bits the next day. And I've seen this in medicine. Obviously, I've had a privilege again of being an undergraduate dean and working with young people for 30 years in Sheffield. And, you know, some of them struggle their way through medicine for five years and they desperately want to be doctors and they say, if I just get to be a doctor...

And the day they graduate, they come back to me and get to know some of them well. And then they're saying, ah, everyone's a doctor. It's nothing. And they've dissed what they've been working for for five years. And this is typical of how the chimp brain works because it's always got to keep trying to be better and prove itself. And if you conflict a human, then you still drive yourself, don't get me wrong, and you can still celebrate a medical degree and say, I'm pleased, but you rely back on your values.

You rely back on, you know, how do I feel I'm doing as a human being? What do I value? Yeah. I can push that point because it's interesting because you said you want people to take away points. One of the common things I find when people are in this mode and they down themselves with low self-esteem and I ask them, how would they describe their best friends?

And it's a trap and they fall in. And they always start describing them as being nice people or kind people, people who listen, someone who's got a sense of humour, reliable. It's amazing. They never start with, well, he's got a degree in business studies, he's got a first class from... They don't ever say that. And I'll say, is that important? They say no. Yeah.

But so you can't be a hypocrite and then, so I'm going to use values for choosing my friends, partner, and look at the way I see people. You can't be a hypocrite and then flick yourself into external achievements, possessions. You know, I'm not against achievement and possession. I'm just saying that keep them in their place. And if you're weighing your friends upon values, weigh yourself upon values. Yeah. One of the things, so when we emailed you before this podcast and we asked like, what would...

be a good result for you. You said a line that really resonated with me. It was to the effect of, as long as this helps one person who's in a bad place, then that's the goal. And that reminded me of like, you know, after three years of making YouTube videos, I think my chimp was very fixated on like the performance of the video, like the view count and all that kind of stuff.

And I realized that actually my model for making YouTube videos now is as long as this helps at least one person or has the potential to help at least one person, then I'm happy. And that's like takes all the pressure off. It means that even though the mind still is like, oh, you know, I can't say this because it's not quite right. And like, it's still helping one person. And just that kind of thing helps me at least just get over all of the inherent emotional baggage associated with like

making a video putting myself out there that's well done so and i think um again if you're looking at the model i'm using uh which is not for everyone but if people resonate great um if you're in chimp mode i promote that so i would be saying to you if i'm working with you i want you to look at your figures i want you to use the chimp system to say right because that's going to prod you into thinking make sure this is quality but

Once you've done the podcast, now turn, move systems into human and say it's one person. So there is a place for the chimp in our lives. It isn't that I'm saying don't use it. I'm saying I use it in sport. I want the chimp to say I'm going to get the gold medal and the world record. I want that because that will drive you and give you some commitment. I don't need it.

I can use the human system, which is commitment. The chimp is motivation. So I don't work with motivation, but people push me because it's just an emotion. I work with commitment because successful people work with commitment.

So, and I would then say, but by all means, when you're in training, use the chimp to say that this has to be a brilliant session. All I'm saying is when you've finished, switch to human and be proud of the fact to give it everything. Didn't work perfectly or it did. That's great. There's another day, get some perspective. Then you leave your training session in a good place.

Because you've flicked into a reasonable state of mind now. Instead of leaving thinking that wasn't good enough, I'm not going to make it, which is leaving you in the chimp mode walking out. And that's not going to help at all. It's too emotional. It's destructive.

But again, you know what you experienced? I did the same when I first invented the chimp model and it started really taking off and there was a lot of like gravity with it. And I thought, I mean, what have I done? Because I'm an academic professor and, you know, my chimp was saying, you've got to face your peers and they're going to say a chimp and a human inside your head. Yeah.

And I got to this point where, you know, I saw what it did for medical students. Some of them, they'd say, it transforms your life. You realize it's not me, this, it's a machine and I'm going to manage this. And I've stopped then attacking myself and I've un-muddled myself.

And so I did the same when I wrote the first book. I said, if 10 people write and say this has changed my life, then I've done the right thing. And if the rest of my peers slate me, then fine. I'm a little bit off the wall. I'm a little bit maverick. But I just think it's not important what the public think. It's important what the 10 people think. Yeah.

Luckily, more than 10 of them have written. It's been a major success for a lot of people. And that's, again, my values. You think that's what I came to do, help people and have done it. Yeah, because I guess even when I was writing this one, when talking about neuroscience and things, there's a lot of simplifying that needs to be done. And in my mind, I was also like,

yeah, but like if someone like follows up the references and they see that like, well, you haven't mentioned the nuance in that study and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of this sort of stuff. And it took kind of my agent and editor to be like, hang on, you're not writing this book for an audience of like, for an academic peer review paper, you're writing it for normal people who will find it helpful. And so if that's the goal, then we can put all the references in the footnotes, which no one's going to read. And it's like, yeah.

There's that balancing act, which I guess you've gone as well. And again, you're not, I'm assuming I haven't seen the vote, but you're not purporting that you're this expert in neuroscience and interpretation. Because we don't know. And I would say like the students, sometimes as doctors, we change our mind. And the neuroscience is moving all the time and it's confusing and there's contradictory research. But I think the bottom line for me is, although...

I come in as a neuroscientist, a doctor, a consultant, psychiatrist. That's secondary to being a human being, saying what works. So although I'm saying as a doctor I want evidence-based, I'm not so tight on it. I think I've always joked about the hoppy candles. If you put them in your ears and light them and you say it gives me peace, then light your candles. You know, there's no evidence it's going to do anything, but that's not for me to say. I think it's what works for you. All I can do is say if we look at evidence, there's no evidence.

but it could have a placebo effect and we know that's powerful. So I wouldn't worry when the book comes out because as long as you're saying, look, which I've done in mine and the new book, The Passer of the Jungle, I tried to give them references because people said, where's the evidence? So there's a lot there, but I've also tried to say that, you know, that's up to you, read around because you will get, even the neuroscientists argue that

But the point at the end of the day I'm trying to do is just be practical. What works for you? What's giving you better quality of life? What's making you love yourself a bit and having great relationships, you know, and success? And if it works, then okay, the evidence is there. That's a bonus. You don't work from the evidence and go the other way. Yeah. Nice. We used the fridge door as an example of a goblin. Yeah. What are some examples of gremlins and like what's the distinction between the two? Okay. Yeah.

Goblins can't be removed. So the fridge door tends to stick with us all the time. It's so ingrained. It's like a pathway in the brain that's so fixed. We have to work with it and say, okay. So again, I'm taking the fridge door as an example. But you can imagine in the world of psychiatry, there's a lot of

terrible life stories you hear and some children particularly might have been neglected or abused and we know that children who are really thrown around for the first seven, eight years of their life often find they're unstable as adults emotionally and quite clingy. Not all, not all. And that's not the child or the person, that's the machine. Yeah.

So the machine is, and we struggle to get them to be calm and collected and form good relationships. And I'm saying, rather than try and change the machine, let's work with the machine. However, when we're going through life, let's say we have a bad experience. We form a relationship, which is an intimate one, and it's the first relationship we have, and the person is dishonest with us and betrays us.

then we have a belief that we can form a belief that all relationships are going to be like this. All people are not trustworthy. And it's based on that one really severe emotional experience. That can be turned around. That's a belief you've got, which is false. You've just picked the wrong person.

You know, so you look at phrases throughout the years that tell us this is common experience. You kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. So they're telling us that you will have some false starts and they'll be painful, you know, but that doesn't mean there isn't somebody out there that's like you that's going to say this means something to me and I'm going to work

on a valued relationship. So that's a belief you've formed, which is false, but you're working with it and we have to turn false beliefs into reality and the truth. Okay. So the false beliefs that we form as like adults are the gremlins. And children. We can form them as children. Yeah. But a goblin is something which is something which is so ingrained, it's hard to shift because the circuits have altered.

So we know that as we're developing, there are windows for some parts of the brain to develop. And if they don't develop in the time we expect, then we find it a struggle to change them. So they've not developed properly. So we know certain areas of the brain don't reach their full potential. And children that are abused, we find certain areas of the brain don't actually grow to the extent they're meant to and form the connections they're meant to. And that window is lost. So we know their brain will always have a struggle.

And one of them for children, for example, is the ability for one part of the brain to dampen down emotion is lost. So we know they're far more reactive to emotional situations. And that's the machine not being able to dampen down. That's all I'm saying. So if we recognize that in neuroscience terms, I give it the name goblin. So you're always going to have that.

bit of overreaction so we're going to have to program it to manage it but it may never go so don't beat yourself up if it happens you think my machine's a bit damaged and so goblins and gremlins are part of the computer which is that sort of blank slate kind of computer model which the human and also the chimp refer to and then get guidance or advice from awesome or it takes over

If it's programmed enough, because it's also like, the example is the easiest one is driving to work. If you drive to work, you don't think about it. And you drive to work and I said, was there any problems? You can't recall it. So your computer's doing that. But it's an everyday conversation. You meet friends and the first thing you probably do is say, how are you doing? You didn't think about that. Your computer says that's what you do. So we're programmed by a computer for most of the day.

It's only when something unusual happens or the chimp alerts us to a danger or something's different that we move out of computer mode and then start moving into chimp or human. Otherwise, we default back to computer mode, which is programmed by the chimp or human. Hence, that gives our behaviours.

And is that the autopilot that you refer to? Yeah, the autopilot is a constructive belief or behavior. So let's say a simple example. If someone says socially, I find it difficult to get on with people. And I say, let's have a look at how you introduce yourself. And let's say they come in and something very simple as an example. And they say hello and the person says hello and then there's this pause. And they say, then I feel really awkward and I just don't know what to do. So what you've got is you've actually got a program which is to pause.

So that's the gremlin because it's not helpful. You're being uncomfortable. It's leading to an emotional chimp reaction. So we say, right, what could we program the computer to do? So quite simple, the social skills, we would just say, ask them, oh, where have you come from today? And that breaks the ice. So you're programming automatic speech. And then they say, oh, it feels a lot better now because I know what I'm doing. And that's no different to working with elite sports people.

You know, you program the brain in sport to do certain reactions, certain positions, certain behaviors. And then you repeat them and repeat them if they're productive and helpful. So if you're working with an elite golfer, the swing is crucial to them. So they'll program themselves. And the computer, we try and get them to just go into computer mode because it's then programmed.

Whereas for them, if they move back to chimp or human while they're stood waiting to tee off, then they're going back to trying to learn how to tee off because the chimp and human don't have those memory banks. So the computer has to take over. Okay. So it sounds like programming the autopilot in a certain way can help us manage goblins and gremlins that are otherwise... We remove them. We remove them. To remove a gremlin, you must replace it with a new pathway. You can't say, I'm not going to do that pathway.

So it's like people saying, right, today I'm going to eat sensibly. And then they don't. And you think, well, what did you change in your beliefs or your behaviors today? Because if you don't change your belief or behavior and just go in saying, I'm going to eat, then it's likely you won't.

Because you're going to follow certain pathways again and certain beliefs like, well, if I have the Mars bar now, I'll go to the gym and run a bit longer on the treadmill, which doesn't work. So you have to change your belief and alter it to get a different behavior coming out. So you have to bring in autopilots and you have to see. And this again goes back to people say, well, give me the autopilots. And that's why I don't know what they are. Because, yeah.

an autopilot for you might be really strong and it works whereas for me it won't resonate so I have to say what really resonates with you and you gave me one if you said to me when I release this book I believe if it helps 10 people I'm happy if you really believe that that's going to be so powerful to settle you down when a criticism comes because you say we knew that would come happens to everybody you know whereas if you don't really believe it

then it won't work and you'll say you gave me that belief and i'll say oh okay and i need another belief yeah you know and it could be something which wouldn't work for me but it might for you it might be as bizarre as me saying what about recognizing there's a belief that if you don't get criticized you're probably not saying anything powerful

Now that's a strange one, but someone would say, do you know what? That really resonates. The only person who doesn't have enemies is a jellyfish. So once you've got a spine and you've got a lifestyle or opinion or your values, you're going to get enemies. And some people resonate with that and say, that makes sense. That wouldn't resonate with me. So what I do, I call in the grade A hits. These are the autopilots that really make sense to you and stabilize you.

So I have my own, and I like people to get about five grade A hits where they say that really resonates in life. So a common one that people use without my jargon would be things like, will this matter in a week's time? That, for a lot of people, is such a powerful autopilot to think. Some people say, well, it will matter. If I'm in a relationship I don't want to end and they leave me, I'll be scarred for life. And so they say it does matter.

And then I would probably go down the route of, well, will you cope? Or does this happen to everybody? And that might resonate and say, yeah, life's gonna throw us around a bit. It doesn't run smoothly. So what my job is to find something that resonates and get you to think. And then when you say, ah, that resonates, to get you to keep using it. And how do you keep using it? Are we talking like affirmations or like what's the method here? Yeah, you've got to start, it's a habit. So for example,

The book I've written, A Path to the Jungle, is trying to be very practical manual. And I go through this in detail. And one of the things I've done there, which a lot of people have got back to me, so I'm glad I put it in, was whenever...

something goes wrong it's not what you want or it's not what you expect the chimp kicks and you get an emotional reaction I say immediately program yourself to say okay I've now got an emotional message what's the plan because that what's the plan from the computer flicks you into human mode nice and everybody says that's so powerful that's

Something happens, I go, okay, what's the plan? And immediately I know because you've shifted system, there's a calmness starts coming because the chimp's going, okay, I don't have to worry now. I've alerted and you're on the ball now. You're coming up with a plan. So it's something as simple as that, that you have to learn. Every time I get emotional, I stop and say, okay, what's the plan? Being emotional isn't going to help. So that's the kind of stuff which...

It may not resonate with everyone. And I've tried to put a lot in the book that people in the past when I've worked said that resonates with me. Yeah. You know. That's very good. What's the plan? Because I guess the chimp is the warning system, but it's not the planning system. Exactly. Exactly. And people engage with the emotion. I keep saying that's not what it's there for. Yeah. So if you get anxious, go, thank you. Thank the chimp. You've got me anxious. Let me work the plan out.

Let's get a solution. Let's see what it is. And sometimes the plan may not solve the solution. So let's go back to relationships because it's a big one in most people's lives. And let's say that the relationship's going wrong and it's something you don't want to go wrong. And you get very emotional as this person says, look, I'm sorry, but I think this is the end of the line. And your emotions go and you say, what's the plan? And you think, well, there isn't a plan because it is the end of the line. Well, there is a plan.

The plan is to say, for example, it may not resonate with everyone. This happens to lots of people. We do get over it. Yes, we could even be emotionally scarred, but life will go on. Nearly everybody finds somebody else if that's what you want.

Yeah. And life will continue. If you have that in your head and say it will take around three months on average, you'll go through a lot of emotions, but you will come out the other side. So take a deep breath. You've got three months of a rough and tumble coming. For someone to have that as the plan is a good plan because you're saying I'm accepting. I've got to go through it.

So taking a much more dramatic example, which, and everyone's different in how they approach it. My approach, as I say, psychiatry is not a happy world. So I deal with, unfortunately, parents who've lost a child. They died in their sleep or an accident. And this is tragic. I cannot change that. And they can't change. We all know that. And then to say, what's the plan, would be a little bit unkind. Instead, you've got to work through. But I'd explain, we're going to go through grief.

Not everyone would agree with me. I say to them, you won't recover. I don't think you recover. And you won't even come to terms with it. What you'll do is you'll manage the system, but you'll have some good days in the future and you'll have some terrible days. We're going to learn how to manage them. And things will get better, but you will be scarred. And I found that's really helpful to people because it's reality. Yeah.

So there you've got what's the plan, but it's done in a much gentler way. Because obviously you can imagine emotional distress is just incredibly painful. And then it doesn't set up like a false expectation or a hope in their mind of like they're going to be...

completely back to normal. Yeah. And so just saying that that's never going to happen but let's figure out a way to manage this. Yeah. And to the lesser though obviously he's really painful at the end of a broken relationship. Yeah. That can be a loss of a job. It can be where you didn't want to leave a job but there's a bully in the company or you just can't tolerate it anymore and you go through a grief reaction. You think your identity might go...

there's a lot of areas where I'd give a lot of TLC, but also, you know, a little bit of, right, come on, we still need a plan. But that plan can be that, how do I deal with the feelings of loss? How do I deal with the really bad emotions I'm experiencing? It doesn't mean let's be positive. I'm not a keen fan of that, if I'm honest. I'm a keen fan of let's use reality. And reality can be positive.

But I'm also, reality is sometimes you can't be positive. There is a negative. There's nothing good about something which, you know, is a devastation to you. I don't think that's helpful to say that. I think the answer is sometimes we get scoured. We mentioned how the chimp is the sort of warning system, makes us feel anxious or disturbed. I wonder what's your view on how granular should we go in trying to understand the emotions in the sense of,

Is I feel disturbed enough or is it important to go deeper to be like, okay, I think I'm feeling frustration or irritation, which is a subset of anger. Okay, like I'm really nailing the specific emotion versus just...

I'm feeling a bit like off about the situation. I think it depends on the person again, because some people don't want to go heavy. They just keep it simple and really simple. Whereas someone says to me, I'd like to understand more, then we go to the depth they want to understand. But there is a point you have to say, don't overanalyze because you can, you know, it's death by analysis. And at the end of the day, you've got to have some element of spontaneity. But I think that's up to the person.

What I do say is, like you gave some words there, frustration, anger, and I say, well, let's look at the most appropriate word. And often the chimp's vocabulary is quite limited in a lot of people. So they end up calling themselves, and I'm an angry person. Because what they say is if something goes wrong, I get angry. And they don't have an alternative word. So I work with people and say, what do you want to use as an alternative? Codispondent.

be a better word so they start learning to train their chimp to use different vocabulary and clearly the way the brain works if I say I'm angry then it alerts systems to be angry I'm telling my brain this is what you need to be

So I actually start behaving it. Whereas if I say I'm despondent, it's changed my mindset instantly. So I like to do vocabulary training for the chimp. Oh, nice. Yeah, I do. And then I've done some fun sessions of people saying, give me 20 different words describing what you say is anger but isn't. Because there's a big difference between anger and frustration. There's a big difference between anger and disappointment.

or being let down, you know, or whatever it would be. So we have a lot of words and then we try and use the vocabulary to say, right, what's the word I'm really experiencing? And that's almost like programming an autopilot. That when I experience something, don't call it anger. Your computer goes, what's another word? And if you start using them, you say, I've got other words.

So you can see what I tend to do with people is emotional skills training where you're really using your intelligence, your brain to say, how can I manage this machine to get the best out of me? There's an app that a previous podcast guest actually recommended to me. It's very interesting. In fact, I'll do a screen recording. So we'll show this on screen for anyone who is watching this on YouTube.

It's a free app. It's called How We Feel, which is interesting. So you click on the app, you do like a check-in, and then so have a look. So it gives you these four options. How am I feeling? So it's like high energy pleasant, high energy unpleasant, low energy pleasant. And if you click on one of them, you'll see what it does. And it gives you all of this vocabulary of like, ah, okay. So I've been finding this really helpful. It gives me an Apple Watch notification a couple of times a day. How are we feeling? I click on it and be like, oh, okay, I'm feeling good.

and serenity and tranquility. And it's all these words where before, if someone asked me, how do I feel? I've been like, yeah, fine. But now this almost like, it's a nice, easy way to train the vocabulary to be a bit more... Yeah. And that's why I'd say to people, then you start...

Realizing there is such a choice, but it's not just that I'm thinking let's just use a word Once we pick a word in the brain the brain reacts to that word and it's banked on lots of things So it once you use the word anger the system is set up to Immediately kick in and it often becomes are the defensive and aggressive or it becomes withdrawing and panicky Whereas if you choose other words

which are less emotive, then you will experience a less emotional reaction. So it's learning to start saying, ah, this is a machine. I can actually manipulate this. So I do this in detail. I know a lot of people, so I'm going to push it now. The reason I wrote A Path to the Jungle over the years, it took me 10 years to follow Chimp Paradox,

is people kept saying Chimp Paradox is great. It introduced you to a model. And it's like, you know, for those who resonate, it completely changes the way you see yourself. But A Path Through the Jungle, what they kept saying is it doesn't help us to really do the skills.

It's not really mind management. So I wanted to do a course, which I've done in there. So it works from dot and goes through 27 units saying like things like this, that might resonate with someone and say, that's really helpful. Whereas others can skip the exercise, the what's the plan might be the one they say, that's changed me. But there's lots of others and

I think I've tried to do as many as I can. So anyone picking up and say four or five of these really resonate or 50 resonate. But it is a course because I think that's what people kept saying to me is it's all well and good talking all this, but how do I start and do it structured and work over time on this? So I was saying to one of your staff, it's a big book. I originally was going to call it One Year.

because I wanted the people to realize the 27 units and I was saying, do one every couple of weeks. Let it absorb, let it practice it so you're building, like learning a language. Rather than read it and you think it's all very good and you forget. I want it to be working practice. So...

That's what it was written for. So if people do say, where's the follow up? That's it. I haven't got another one after that. Yeah. Yeah. Just to the point of the that I really like that thing around, you know, the the emotion that we label is actually informs our response. Yeah. I've been working with a therapist recently. And one thing that he said, which I found really helpful, that really resonated was underneath every anger is a hurt emotion.

And in a relationship expressing anger is generally unproductive, but expressing sadness or hurt generally is an opportunity to connect.

And so in my relationship, for example, whenever I feel anything resembling frustration, irritation, anger, I think, what's the hurt underneath this? And try my best to express the hurt rather than the anger. And it's just been game changing in the last few months. - Yeah, I mean, this is, so well known like in grief reactions, anger is much easier to do than grief. So we know this is a common experience when people make a loss of anything or someone close, there's an anger that comes with it.

often named at doctors on nursing staff. And we understand that, that people can't deal with the grief. It's too painful. Anger's not as painful. But it's interesting. I'm an animal lover, and I say this about dogs, that dogs are not normally angry. They're worried. So a dog that's aggressive is generally a very nervous, worried dog. Yeah.

But there is subtlety. Sometimes anger is bordering from frustration where people have an expectation of what should happen. I try and remove the word should. It's a chimp word for me. A human word is could. So I often say replace should by could, and it changes it. So, you know, I should get an Olympic medal can lead to frustration and anger, where I could get an Olympic medal gives an opportunity, but it may not happen. Hmm.

So I'm keen on words. I think they do make a big difference. But anger, yeah, often comes from expectation. The should. Yeah. Speaking of words, one distinction that you make is the difference between control and manage. Massive. I wonder if you can expand on that.

Yeah, again, I mean, again, I'd be happy to criticise on the fact that it's semantics, but... I think semantics are really important. Yeah, I think so. But I think if someone says, for example, look, come on, control your emotions. The implication is the word control means you can if you want to, whereas that's unkind because you can't. Manage your emotions is different. Manage means you hope you can do it, but management is a skill.

Control is an option. Oh, nice. And that's why I see the difference. So I think when I hear people saying control your emotions, I think that's quite abusive almost to the person because you're asking them to do something they can't do. It's like saying jump out the window and fly. You wouldn't do that. And yet say control your emotions. We can't, otherwise we would. You know, nobody wants to lose it emotionally. But manage means you've got an option here and it's a skill.

So that's why I'm really pushy to say nobody controls their mind. We manage it. And some days we don't do it well. It's a skill. So, and I get this a lot. Have I got a chimp? And I would say I've got a gorilla, you know, and I have a chimp and does it get out? Absolutely. Can I manage it? Usually, usually, because my chimp sort of knows the rules. So I work with it. But does that mean it doesn't ever get out? No, it gets out.

And I don't want my chimp to be in a box. Again, sometimes it's good for it to come out. I may have to stop it and say, stop, stop. But I don't want people to be, I don't want to be a robot. I don't want to be this person who shows no emotion, you know? But on the other hand, I have to recognize when it's damaging. So if my chimp has a rant...

then that could be really helpful for my chimp to just have a rant. As long as the people around me know I'm in chimp mode and I'm ranting and they all ignore me, then I'm happy. And I'll say, okay, I'll finish ranting. And I'll say, now, as a human. So I'm not saying we should be in human mode.

I'm not saying that. People keep saying this. And they also keep saying human is logic, chimp is emotion. That's not true either. Both use emotion, both use logic. I've always said this. It's just the human starts with logic and bases their emotion on the logic.

So I still experience a lot of emotion as a human. My chimp uses emotion and bases logic on it, which is not a sound. So I'm saying just recognize the difference and switch. So I think if you were without emotion, it must be awful. So I don't want to be non-emotional and I don't want to be in human mode all the time. There's times I think being in chimp mode is good. As long as I can manage it to say, stop, stop, you're going over the top and pull the chimp in and say, right, you've had enough now. Yeah.

We we've talked a lot about negative emotions as it relates to the chimp, because that tends to be the thing that holds people back. How do you think of positive emotions and how that relates to chimp plus human?

Loads and loads of positives. Interestingly, if you look at the neuroscience, it's the chimp that makes us laugh. There are no laughter circuits in humans. Because the reason is that the human is a slow system. So we're second to work. That's why we're impulsive often in speech and actions. And the human comes in second thinking, hang on, I should have thought about that. But if we're listening to how the chimp operates, it believes what it hears immediately.

And then it challenges it or hands to the human and say, what do you think? So that's why we often were gullible. Yeah. And then you mentioned being on holiday and a guy saying, please help me. And your chimp's going, I believe he's struggling and he's a genuine guy. That's gullible. Right. And your human should have stepped in and said, hang on. Yeah. There's a reason this is happening. So your chimp was gullible. And this is the basis of laughter. You know, when we hear a joke and the punchline, the chimp believes laughter.

the joke and then suddenly the punchline comes and it laughs. So it's actually three different circuits within the chimp all operating. So it has to accept the reality, then the contradiction and then mirth is the third circuit. So it makes us laugh. So the chimp gives us laughter, you know, and the human's pretty slow to take it up on that. So that's one example. The chimp gives us motivation. I'm not a fan of motivation.

because I get a lot of talks please motivate our company or motivate and I said I want to do that the alternative option is I mentioned earlier is commitment so I'll give a simple example let's say I'm not a gardener so and I've got to weed the garden the neighbors are complaining and it is a mess and I'm saying I just can't get out there I can't get out there and my chimp won't let me go because it's saying it's too big it's overwhelmed so I'm now procrastinating

The chimp might one day get up and say, when I'm in the right mood, when I'm motivated, I'm going to... Well, that's ridiculous, in my opinion. So I'd say to my chimp, right, you tell you what, I don't care what I feel, I'm going out. You stay where you are, I'm going to do a commitment. It needs to be done. I'm not interested in being in the right mood.

What tends to happen is once I do that commitment, my chimp gets motivated. So it's just stepping back and saying switch systems. So let's do commitment and get on with what I need to do. Not interested. That is definitely one measure that we show success in people. I'm not saying they can't do it by motivation, but it's harder to do. So I like to say the chimp is about motivation and excitement. The human is about commitment and inspiration.

But then they work together because my chimp, when I've weeded a third of the garden, will get annoyed and say, why have you waited this long to do this? And start chewing me up when I'm thinking, well, it wasn't me that waited. So therefore, I've learned to switch systems on things my chimp doesn't want to do, but I've got to do them. At the risk of being pedantic about semantics, how do you feel about the word discipline and willpower? And how does that relate to this? I'll get into trouble here.

Willpower would suggest there are circuits where you can tell the chimp what you're going to do and you have strength to do that.

And there aren't any circuits, neuroscientifically. You can't control the orbital frontal and the amygdala. You can influence them. So technically we call it modulating. But actually they'll have the last say. And that's crucial they do because if a crisis situation happens where my life is in danger, then I don't want to start thinking logically, what do I do? I need to act impulsively with the defense mechanism. So there's a reason nature has made us so we're impulsive.

But it's not really applicable nowadays because we're not living in a jungle area or in danger. We've put ourselves in a society where we're generally not at risk.

But there will be moments. There will be. So willpower would suggest that. Now, I'll get into trouble. And so I avoid it by saying there aren't circuits of control, but there are circuits of management. So we're back to saying the reason I picked this model is to take that pressure off people. Because my experience has been you're going back down to control. And then I get a lot of people who start beating themselves up saying what is wrong with me?

And I keep saying, you're seeing it wrongly. In my opinion, what you're saying is, how do I get the management skills? I need to upskill. And it is a skill. So some people will do it really well. And some people will struggle. But we can all improve. So I encourage people, everyone can improve in emotional management.

Okay, but some people are better than others, but that's true of any skill. But that's why I go away from willpower and discipline. I think a better word is to say, how do I switch systems and work with my emotions and learn to manage them so that we do what I want rather than what my chimp might be doing. You mentioned that human is inspiration. What's the, I mean, inspiration and motivation seem somewhat similar. What's your distinction between the two?

Okay. Again, I could argue semantics. Motivation is a feeling. I'm in the right mood. I want to do this. I'm excited, which may or may not result in something. Inspiration is a feeling that I can do this. It's going to be well-being or it's going to help people or it's going to help me. So you're inspired to do it. So it's a driving force that gives you a vision.

I think it's subtle. And I think if you think it through, they're both emotional. Like I said, the human works with emotion, but it's basing it on logic. And the inspiration is, I've got a vision here. I can see what... Whereas motivation can often just be, I'm in the right place now and look at the gains, look at the rewards. So it's a different one. The chimp's looking at... And there's nothing wrong with this. Achievement, success, possession.

Whereas the human's more likely to use things like fulfillment of values, a feel-good factor. Yeah, like that service component. It's more... Than service to others. Yeah, and it's long-term. Whereas the chimp's much more usually in the immediate, here and now, doesn't think of consequence. Thinks of just what's happening at the moment. No long-term vision.

One thing that, so we've got like a telegram community around the podcast and we always ask questions to be like, hey, what would you like us to talk about? One topic that always comes about is anxiety. I think especially, increasingly it seems, young people experiencing a lot of anxiety, the whole social media comparison that we all get into. How do you, I mean, it's a big question, but how do you think about anxiety as it relates to the chimp model? Anxiety is a message from the chimp to say, oh, this is not well.

And your job, I say, as a human is to say, right, what is it that's causing the anxiety? So

If you look at where anxiety comes from neuroscientifically, it isn't the amygdala. No, it's not? No, it's not the amygdala. The amygdala works with fear, and it's working with fight, flight, freeze. So if you look close by, there is another nucleus, which is probably because it's got a bigger name. So the bed nucleus of the striatum in Arlis works with anxiety. So this is the area that looks at anxiety.

And it's interesting that in an emergency situation, it doesn't appear. It doesn't work for about 10 minutes. The amygdala works to give you fight, flight, freeze. After about 10 minutes, give or take, it seems to wake up. Now it brings beliefs in. Now anxiety can be created. So anxiety is based usually around beliefs. It can be based around trigger points and behaviors.

So, for example, if you see a snake appear in the room, for a lot of people, that would create an anxiety. But if you think the reason it's a trigger point and it's almost inbuilt

I think children need to read that because we tell that it's in milk from birth, but my experience is having got rescue animals, children are more keen on touching the snake than they are the rabbit. But the snake would create anxiety because your belief is it's dangerous. Whereas if we said that it doesn't have fangs, for example, it's been defanged for whatever reason and it's not venomous, then you might change your mind. So your beliefs...

are usually behind anxiety and it's often a belief I can't cope

Now, again, I don't know. This is so unique to the person of what's creating anxiety. But let's say it's a change of a job and the anxiety is there about, will I make the bills? Can I do the new job? And there's a lot of emotion going on and anxiety mixes in with it. What it's really saying is, can you cope? Have you got a plan again? And is the plan good enough? Is it rigorous? And can you guarantee it? Because the chimp ridiculously wants guarantees. Yeah.

And we know that nearly everything in life, there's no guarantees. So we have to say to the chimp, there are no guarantees. You've got to live with that. And that's hard for the chimp to do. But what we can reassure it with is, although there are no guarantees, I'm always going to be active.

to find solutions. And if I can't, I know people who can. Now, for a lot of people, that can reassure them. You're not alone. So one of the big things working with people is to remind them, whatever battle they're going through, I'm going through it with them. I've no intention of leaving the battle. And so I would say to them, right, I'm going to take you through it. And that, for a lot of chimps, will relax them.

So anxiety is very unpleasant and it's usually on beliefs. It can be learned behaviors. It needs analyzing, but the answer is always going to be the same is what address the problem. Don't live like come up with a solution, come up with a plan. And the plan might be, we don't know. So let's take a deep breath and wait till we see. Nice. Yeah, that's good. Things like ADHD, does that?

work with the model? - Yep, so again, ADHD is a medical condition. Again, there's always debates about is it well-diagnosed? So I'm not gonna go there. Let's assume we've got some with ADHD.

The easiest way I try and explain this is if you imagine the brain is an orchestra and the conductor is asleep, then it's really noisy. So we need to wake the conductor up because people always say, why would you give someone their DHG amphetamines, which are alerting drugs when they're already hyperactive? And what you're doing is waking up the conductor in the brain.

So the parts of the brain that are not active become active, and then they tap the button and the orchestra settles down. As an executive function. Executive function, exactly. And that can be life-changing for people with ADHD.

Obviously, I don't dive in. I'm sure most doctors wouldn't. We try and do it behaviorally because you can with children and adults, but it would be unkind if somebody's brain isn't functioning in the way they want it to, to leave them with that. So you do medicate then. So it's not taken on lightly, but sometimes medication can bring a person to life and they'll say it's just a godsend because now I can function. I can form relationships. I can study. I can do a job.

I can social settings. So all this I've heard having done these. But my first port of call would be to try and train the mind into the computer system, learning how to behave so the computer starts taking over, which is what we do with children, not dive into drugs. But they still work with the chimp model.

They still work with it. I worked with a very young lad who was suspected of having ADHD. He didn't have it. And I decided we'd do this. And he actually pulled his parents in line with the chimp model. He did warn them when they were in chimp mode. So I always say to parents, if you're going to use this model with your kids, get ready. Because they'll definitely, definitely pull on it.

And then something like depression, how does that fit into the chip model? Okay. When I, again, tried to simplify things so we didn't get too technical, I used to call it, and still do, malfunction is where the brain isn't working. And dysfunction is where it's working, but you're not running it well. So it's a bit like a car. If it's broken down, you need a mechanic. If it's not broken down, you need to learn how to drive. All right? So malfunction, depression is an umbrella term.

We know that some people, when it's mild to moderate, you can do talking therapies and they'll improve. So things like cognitive behavioral therapy, which is used for many conditions, is very powerful and people resonate with that. It's fantastic. Therapists do a great job with that. But we know that if it goes severe with what we call biological symptoms, then it doesn't appear to respond to talking therapies. So now we're down the route of saying, right, we need some form of medication.

And that's where we're now into deeper water. The problem is often a lot of GPs are under a lot of pressure. So when people come in, they're getting such short times to assess them. As psychiatrists, we give them the luxury of an hour. They don't get that. So it's advisable for them to say, look, try an antidepressant, which...

If the person's got a biological illness, then they're probably going to respond, but not everyone does, and there are dangers with it. So you have to warn people. But the vast majority won't suffer side effects. The vast majority don't have these, but that doesn't help the people who do. So again, it's this risk-benefit, and the doctor has to make that decision.

And it's never easy. The ideal is to avoid the medication, but if you need it, don't hesitate. Because it would be cruel if somebody's not well. It's like holding back thyroxine from someone who's got a thyroid problem and you're saying that, you know, you can't say to them, come on, let's get some energy. You've got to treat it.

But that's a really, it's a really difficult area. So like my mum's a psychiatrist, for example, but she has not been called on to consult with the England football team. How did the cool stuff happen where you ended up working with like Ronnie O'Sullivan and like Steven Gerrard and like these elite performers? By accident. Again, I mean, I've had a very interesting life and people say to me, oh, you've done so many things. It's never been planned.

I'm a leaf in the wind. I see where the wind takes me with a little bit of direction. But I was working at Sheffield Medical School at the time when one of my previous students took a job

with the cycling team and said look I've got a guy who's got mental health problems can you do me a favour and see him and so I went along saw this guy and I can only name people that have gone public and worked with him he did exceptionally well and so the head of cycling said what did you do and quite frankly I didn't know I'm a doctor and I said I'm just trying to get it to explain how his mind works and he gave me Chris Hoy and said we'd like to meet this young man and

And Chris, it was a dream to work with. I stayed in touch with Chris, a lovely guy, absolute gentleman. Got a very nice chimp as well, which is really well behaved. But Chris knew what he wanted from me and

that set it off and we worked really well as a team and he worked hard and he was already in a good place. It wasn't about emotions, Chris, it was about performance and focus and so on. And then he said, I want you to come to Athens Olympics. So I went undercover and got offered a job with him and refused it because I said, you know, I'm a doctor and I've trained to help people. But there was a moment I thought, you know,

I say I'm not a sports fan, but most of Britain are. And I realized actually helping people wherever they are was what I want to do. And if I can help sports people in whatever areas they want, performance or their life or lifestyle, whatever, then maybe I'm helping the public too. So it took me a year to jump. So I was at Rampton doing forensic psych. And I jumped and started working in elite sport. And it just...

and I got offered jobs everywhere. And then obviously I had to learn the sports and being great to get support from other people in the sports who would guide me on each sport as I came to it. So I worked very closely with coaches as well as athletes because I have to learn each environment. So working with Ronnie...

obviously he's a friend and I've worked with him over 10 years and he's a great guy I have to learn the rules of snooker which again is weird where you have total silence during play as opposed to England football where it's deafening but I have to learn football

And then I have to learn individuals. So it was an exciting challenge and every sport's different. So that was accidental. And then I just got stuck with sport and people started wrongly calling me a sport psychiatrist. And that's not true. And I'd say a quarter of my work, if that, maybe 20% is sport, 80% is sports.

Working with doctors still, working with students, working with the public, teachers, a lot with education, the police. So I do very generic work.

And so like writing the books and forming the business around it, like how does that fit into your clinical stuff? Well, when I was helping people, obviously I'm one person and the demands were getting enormous. And you realize just how tough it is out there for people as human beings. I realized, wow, it's bigger than I thought. Because as a doctor in hospital, you get your outpatient clinics and I'm seeing severe cases. Whereas suddenly your public came to light and it was like this mass, really bad population.

place for the public, you know, anxiety states, you say stress, relationship problems, lots of organisational problems. So I formed a company and I said as long as it's helping people and not making lots of money, I'll do it. So I've got a brilliant team of 12 mentors and we've been together a long time now.

and support staff. So it's a small team really and we do work across the board to try and help people who resonate with the Chimp model so that it didn't, it wasn't planned, it's happened and it's working well for those who resonate. Nice. So,

I mean, your career is very sort of, I mean, it's like reading about it. I'm just like, whoa, all of it just seems really, really cool. You know why? Because I'm old. Really? People say, how are you doing this much? Because I'm old. I've been around. And, you know, like I said, the sport just, that was an opportunity that just appeared and I just helped out and then it started to take off. And then from the sport, you can imagine I got inspired

into television and I did some telly shows and then

workshops and then radio and podcasts and suddenly it was media and then from there it was like suddenly I got actors, musicians and you think oh wow and I'm learning then what's it like being on stage and what are the peculiarities of doing the West End or a television soap I've got to learn every time and say I need to know the environment of this person so you can see it wasn't planned

And even the forensic wasn't planned. I was a general adult and it was just working. I became clinical director of a hospital. And so you tended to get the cases people didn't want. And I had to do that. So I took on some of the forensics in the community at the time and the alcohol services. And from there, the police got involved saying, look, you're working with two guys who've given death threats on you. And yeah, and I said, okay, fine.

And I did say, what's the plan? And they said, there isn't one. Which I thought, okay, just letting you know. And I didn't flinch. So the head of Rampton was at that meeting and said, you really need to work with the Rampton patients because you're not phased by it. And that was a change of career. And I went to forensics and really learned a lot. And again, that's where I started really looking at the human mind and predictability and

and obviously helping students a lot of them 18 to 23 is most of them were going through a lot of traumas just finding themselves in life so these were big challenges for me to try and apply the neuroscience so I've got to thank all these people so but yeah it's been great it's great

When we were in medical school, like there was a real sense of pressure that everyone needs to have figured out their life plan because there would be like the handful of kids in the year who'd be already gunning for their ST3 applications in neurosurgery and already doing all the stuff and publishing 10 papers and the rest of us are like, I can barely get one like letter to editor published and doesn't even have a PubMed ID so it doesn't count. It's like there's a lot of,

the mind potentially thinking that it has to have a very clear like life plan. I think especially amongst medics who are used to having a long-term career trajectory. What advice would you give to people who are maybe like finally a medical student thinking like they need to have everything, everything sorted? Yeah.

Okay, I mean there is pressure and I think the trouble is let's say that I don't just make a figure of 10% of students know exactly what they want to do. They want to be you know a cardiac surgeon and that's so they're going to do a PhD and whatever. Don't compare yourself to them. I was in the 10% that thought at the time I thought GP so I did do GP training but then I realized it probably wasn't for me. So I think the answer is

I would suggest this step back, don't compare, and just say, why have I come into this profession and what pathway do I want to follow? Because, you know, getting through the exams, you just work hard and you get through and then you find your feet.

It's become a little more difficult now because I'm a dinosaur and we could form our own rotations. We could jump around. So I could do six months pediatric, six months obs and gyne. You can't do that now. It's not possible. You have to go down a certain route. And I think that's probably not a good thing with doctors, if I'm honest, because I think my feeling was I did, like I said, GP taught me a lot, you know, which I wouldn't have got in psyche, I don't think.

And I think jumping around, you get a lot more of a basis of general medicine, which goes across anything when you're treating people holistically. So I think at the end of the day, we are doctors and not super specialists. But I also accept there will be doctors who want to be super specialists, who just say, all I want to do is this discipline and have an awareness of the rest. So I'd say to medical students, first of all, step back and get a bigger picture.

Life is going to go on wherever you do and you'll get through whatever you do. And like for my example, I know I'm extreme. You have no idea what opportunities are coming. And when you get out there, suddenly opportunities will unfold and the NHS is shifting ground and hopefully we can get it together properly and it will be more doctor friendly. I don't think it is at the moment, but it's probably not friendly for everybody. So if we get that, it's going to change the landscape again. So just live in the moment and just do what you do.

And what's your, like, when it comes to, like, let's say you're going through a career and you've got like opportunity A or B or C, and it's like each will take you down a different path that's sort of hard to imagine. What sort of frameworks or systems do you use for making decisions in that context of which path you want to go down? It's always difficult because if you inspire people, say I get medicals and I inspire them and they say, I want to be a psychiatrist, you've inspired them and

Maybe anyone could. I could have been an obstetrician and they'd say, "Oh, I want to be an obstetrician," if I'm inspiring them. So we often go on our teachers.

and doctors we meet. Which is, you know, at the end of the day, most of us, any human being, not just doctors, can choose a career and just make the most of it. So I don't think it would have mattered, maybe I'm wrong, if I had stayed in surgery or if I had gone into GP. I think it's just finding an environment and a discipline that I feel fulfilled in. So helping people could have been done in many ways and psyche was not my first choice, definitely not.

It was only that when I got in in GP that I thought, wow, these people are so vulnerable. And I didn't feel they were getting a good deal. When I was training as a student, I felt it wasn't taught well. I think it's moved ground a lot now. But I was determined to lift that standard.

So I think with medical students, I don't think they get too uptight. I think you just make a choice. And there are ways of changing. I do know doctors who've changed career, as in like they've changed out of medicine or, as you've done, or they've changed within medicine. It is possible to change. And maybe we'll get more flexible with that.

For medical students listening, there was a big move, I don't know what's happened to it now, where they were saying to people like me, say this 20 years ago, so I would be now a consultant for some time. And to stop us being stale, they would say, why don't you move to an allied discipline and we do a 12-month upgrade? So I could have gone, for example, close...

allied fields might be neurology or endocrinology so i would retrain for 12 months under endocrinology and then move disciplines and that might keep doctors in the profession so those who feel i want a bit more of a challenge yeah i'm not sure what happened to that so there's possibilities that we might start to look at but we're going off piece there that was good um one thing i'm curious about so you've um i guess coached or spoken to a lot of

people who by external metrics are rich and famous and successful and have won the medals and all that stuff. To what extent is there a relationship between those external markers of success and like happiness, fulfillment, those things?

It's common sense that if you sat there with someone who's a multi-billionaire, the chance of them being happy is a bit higher than someone who's really worrying where the next meal's coming from. It's blatantly obvious. So when people say money doesn't make you happy, that's true. But blimey, it goes a long way. So the real world is we have to make money to just survive. And then it does give us the extra things.

However, however, yeah, I mean, I've worked with the whole spectrum. So I've worked with people who are, you know, at one point I worked with Down and Outs years back and who were struggling and just on the street. And, you know, I'll work with anyone who comes to the door and say, let's work within what your life's offering you and what you can do, you know. But do I get people who are really rich and unhappy? Absolutely. You know, because again...

The chimp may be happy with what they've got, but the human's looking for something much more meaningful. So if they're all chimp, then that person's probably going to always be happy.

Some people stay in chimp mode. If they're someone who's much more human than they are chimp, then this achievement can disillusion them. And then they'll come to me and say, I just feel unfulfilled. I just feel life's empty. And it often is the case they're in chimp mode and trying to get into human and there's nothing there. And we have to look at then what their values are. What are they doing it for? A bit like we said a minute ago with the medical students, you've got to ask, why did you come into medicine?

And if it was to help people, then why are you worrying about whether you got on a rotation or not? You'll get to help people. So step back and get the bigger picture. So the answer to your question about the richness, of course it helps because people don't have to worry about certain things. But I still get rich businessmen who come in worrying and worrying, and they're doing so well in terms of their method of success. But then they'll talk about, I don't relate to my daughter.

And they'll say, how do I get her to love me? I can't communicate. And you think, this is so sad. And then you see, you know, money doesn't buy that. So sometimes people do come in and it's not what you think. But I get why people are struggling with money might look and be resentful and think, well, it's easy for them to come in and say that because, you know, they have no money problems. Tough one. One thing I read about recently is

they called it gold medal syndrome which is once you've won the gold medal at that point you're like well I've kind of won the game now what more is there to do I guess you know people like you know the people that you've worked with yeah

have won the gold medal. What do they do next? Like, how do they find fulfillment once you've already hit the pinnacle? It's a common problem. And you get this in management as well. And they're getting doctors. I've got doctors who say, I've now become a consultant. And now what? Is this it? And again, I've got to start saying, well, we have to accept that

If you want a challenge, let's look at what you want for the challenge. It may not be achievement per se. It may be doing something which is fulfilling, which is a sort of achievement. So, you know, even learning a new musical instrument, joining a choir, going in a rambling group, start to look at life differently and saying this could be a success instead of always having that challenge.

you know, of saying I've got to achieve. But if you get somebody who says, no, I want another achievement, I think sometimes you have to go into this reality land that if you've got an Olympic gold medal, you're not going to probably achieve in another sport. You might, one or two people would have, but you're probably not. So you'll change over and you won't do as well. But see it as a challenge, see how far can I get in that sport? And also, as happens with sports people, they've aged.

So you're physically not as strong. So you've got to look and say, do you want to get out of sport or do you want to stay in it but do a different sport but accept age may play a part of it? It's getting them to re-accept that you may have reached a pinnacle, that there won't ever be another moment like the Olympic gold medal. You know, that's reality. But it's looking to see could there be some golden moments which are different.

Because again, for me, I'm someone who I'm not that much into the achievement. It's nice to achieve. But for me, I live on a farm. I do animal rescue. So patting the donkey is more rewarding than another degree. You think I'm not another degree? Yeah. Which sounds ridiculous. But it's true that I think so. I reset one of my values, what's going to make me feel really good.

And rescuing the animal would probably do that. Rescuing a person is great. How do you figure out what your values are?

That's really difficult because whenever I say this to people, because I push this point and I'm trying to keep things very black and white just to make it accessible. But if we look at peace of mind, that's the only thing that gives people peace of mind, not happiness, peace of mind, so you're at rest, is your values and living them out. So defining your values is never easy. And there's so many different ways people say what is their value. So I go through this a bit when I'm working with people is,

I say to them, a value is a moral stance that you're taking. It's what the right thing is in your eyes. It's doing the right thing, but it's an action attached to it. So for example, when people say, one of my values is respecting other people. And if I respect them, I feel good. If I disrespect somebody, I feel bad. So there's your piece of mind lost. And you can gain it back. Apologies never go wrong. So I say to them, well, how do you demonstrate respect?

And what they don't know is how to demonstrate it. So I try and help them to clarify it and say, let's give you some ideas. So one of the ones is listening to someone. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but it does mean you have to understand them. So you give them space. You don't have to agree, but you have to make sure they get that you understand and respect that opinion. Now, if they say, yeah, that would be respect.

They learn to do it. So I ask people when I'm working with them to actually count how many times in the week, say I see them in a week's time, how many times you demonstrate respect by stopping them. No, stop. I need to listen to you first, but I need to listen and I need to check I've understood, right? Then I'll discuss it. That's an example of a value in action. So for me, I like values in action because at the end of the day,

Whatever life's throwing at you, I ask people, look in the mirror and say, did I live by my values today? Am I proud of the person that sat in front of me? Because that can override once you start doing things like, did I do well in an exam or what did people think of me? It can override all of that. And to what extent do you find...

Like there are some values that are, I guess, more selfish values and some that are more like service oriented. Yeah. Like for me, I find like when, whenever I do a values finding exercise or anything like freedom and autonomy often come fairly high on the list. And that's a very selfish values. I want the freedom to do whatever I want and like to be able to not do things I don't want to do and stuff. And it's, you know, I've, I know, I know a few people who are older than me who were like, yeah, when I was in my twenties, I also had freedom as a value. And then I got a family and I realized there were more important things.

What do you see as the balance between these self-oriented values versus other oriented values? On the individual, you hit a number of points there. One is that we have a hierarchy of values. And you have to work out what your hierarchy is. But that can shift. And your values can shift. Because they may shift on your beliefs. So if your value is, I will always help someone who asks for help. That is a value I hold.

So when you went on holiday, you want to help that guy, even though they're saying you're being sucked in. Whereas you might rethink your belief that actually...

It's not a value to help someone who's using you. So you've modified how you see that value. It doesn't mean you're not going to help someone, but what you've now said, whenever I know someone is genuine, I will always help them. That's a modified value. So we have to revise our values, put them into a hierarchy of which are the important ones here. So you might have respect for others and self-respect.

And you've got to decide, I can't give you the answer, you can. What's the difference and how do I make sure I've done it the right way around? And then you don't lose your peace of mind. But if you put your hierarchy the wrong way around, then again, your peace of mind will probably go, even though you're living out your values. You think, oh, I still don't feel comfortable because that was a value. So it's not as simple as it looks. Yeah.

But it's doing it step by step and that's why I try and when I work someone take them through a course and say let's just define values first then we'll test using them. Then I'd come in and say let's look at collisions in values. Let's look at hierarchies. Let's look at modification. It's a course. You're learning to refine it. Bit like learning a language.

Yeah, and this finding fulfillment stuff seems tricky. Yes. Yeah, it does. It does. But again, I'm jumping around a bit here, but, you know, get a sense of humor. Like you're doing, laugh at yourself and say, hang on, don't take it too hard. At the end of the day, go out and just look at the sky and be happy. You know, don't get so heavy that you're so analytical, you strangle yourself. Yeah. You know, that's counterproductive.

Steve, I think that's a great place to end this. Thank you so much. Any final words of wisdom or recommendations for anyone who's listened to the last two hours of this and has gotten all the way through? Yeah. I think at the beginning I said it was self-evident if you get in a good place, then obviously you're better with yourself and everyone around you. Everyone benefits. It's how you get in that good place.

I came in as someone a bit left field into this and saying this is the way I feel I can work with people. It's not for everyone. But I would say if people agree that are listening, find a model or therapy or something that works for you.

and then work on it. All I'm saying, everyone in the field is saying the same, get yourself in a good place. How you do it is up to you. Just make sure it's something that resonates with you and is constructive. But that's all I'm asking people, stopping their tracks and think, hang on, step back. Don't spend your life and then end up, you know, at the end of your life looking back thinking why or why or why. Whatever stage you're at in life, it's always good to stop and think, hang on, let me look at the bigger picture.

Fantastic. And then if someone's gotten through this and they want to find out more about your work, who would you recommend go through A Path Through the Jungle? If someone resonates, they can have a look at it. A Path Through the Jungle is a course. It's what I wrote because I thought people wanted something that was...

something that can follow, chew over and take time on. So it's quite a big book. But I was expecting, like I said earlier, to be over a year roughly, but people sometimes go quick. But I would recommend if you resonate with this, do the exercises and take your time. Don't rush. If you want to work with people and you resonate, then we do, as I'm not trying to promote, we don't need to help people, but we do do an eight workshop series.

online so you can do it online and join about 20 other 30 people with a mentor who'll take you through this and highlight the points and give you work to do in discussion because some people like to reflect with others so but as I said there's a lot of stuff online that people can do individually and there's a lot of stuff we run like conferences and fun stuff

We have fun away days. We've got one coming up, a Dracula hunt. I'll say no more. Go online if you're interested. It's on our website. But it was just to show people life's about fun as well as learning. You know, it's not all about being very therapeutic and analytical. Get a sense of humor. Brilliant. We'll put links to everything down in the video description or in the show notes wherever you're watching this. Steve, thank you so much. Thank you.

All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching.

Do hit the subscribe button if you want already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.