Book Club
First rule of book club ....
In this section we will be reviewing all things books, focusing on the burgeoning wellbeing genre.
This quarter we have reviewed 'The Chimp Paradox' by Dr Steve Peters
Do your emotions sometimes rule your life? Are you sometimes left wondering why you reacted that way and later question why your response was so emotional?
In this book, Dr Steve Peters looks at the neurological make up of our brains to better understand how our minds are programmed to function. The book focuses both on understanding what and why you react in specific ways and also provides simple tools to manage our emotions and reactions, or as the book describes it ‘managing your chimp’.
The book begins by outlining the specific scientific facts and principles forms his working model. Dr Peters shows that within our minds we have three different teams, each with a different agenda and way of working. These are the human, the computer and the chimp. Through reading the book we come to learn the characteristic of each, how to understand which one is functioning when making a decision and how to manage that part and get the best out of it.
The focus initially starts by looking to define the key differences between the human and the chimp. The human can be described as the real you, it mainly operates in the frontal lobe and understands the world by working with facts and truth. While the chimp acts as an emotional thinker and works based on feelings and impressions. Dr Peters outlines that the chimp is the strongest part in your brain and usually the first to react as it works on jungle law and fight or flight instincts. In a phrase used several times throughout the book, Dr Peters’ model suggests that everyone has a chimp that “thinks independently from you and it is not good or bad, it is just a chimp”. The purpose of this is to understand that some of our reactions are not a reflection of our true selves and are simply our chimp taking control.
The model designed by Dr Peters, which has been used by several high profile individuals such as Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton, outlines that although we are not responsible for the very nature of our chimps we are responsible for managing it. The books takes us through the characteristics and real life scenarios to help us identify when our chimps are taking charge, before moving on to give simple tips to help manage anxiety and our chimp reactions. Such tactics include, boxing the chimp and allowing the chimp to have its say, or as we would see it allowing some venting time before reacting. These are simple delaying tactics to give our human brains time to wake up and take over whilst allowing the chimp an outlet. As the book explains we can’t simply overrule the chimp by will power, as the chimp is stronger than us and will always win.
To summarise, The Chimp Paradox outlines a simple and relatable model to understanding our emotions and minds better. This in turn has proved successful working models for Olympians and high performing professionals to help cope with anxiety and to become more successful. Success is a key point that underlines the book and Dr Peters outlines that success is different to everyone and we should all define what that means to us and behave with those values if we want to be happy. This book does provide a great balance between the science behind our minds and relatable content to get the point across in a simple and understandable way.