The Chimp Paradox
This week in what I’ve been reading: managing your mind for confidence, success and happiness in The Chimp Paradox by Prof. Steve Peters.
It is a fascinating and frustrating paradox that our complex, brilliant brains can at times work against us, while simultaneously being fundamental to our success, happiness and our very existence. Practical and reassuring, The Chimp Paradox will help you understand these inner struggles in your mind, and then provide strategies for managing your thoughts and emotions to be happier, more productive and more confident. If you get on with Prof. Peters straightforward style – and not everyone will – this is a simple yet powerful guide to understanding and managing yourself better.
What’s it all about then?
The Chimp Paradox introduces a model of the human mind comprising three parts:
The Human – this part is the real you, and interprets information by searching for facts and establishing the truth. It is logical and rational, and tends to operate more slowly.
The Chimp – this is your emotional machine. It interprets information based on feelings and impressions, and uses emotional thinking to make decisions. It operates and gets involved much faster.
The Computer – this is your storage area for information, thoughts and behaviours, put there by the Chimp and the Human. It uses this information as a reference point, or as a prompt to act in an automatic way.
You may well recognise the basic framework; many others, notably Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow have described the different parts of our mind in similar if slightly different ways.
Where The Chimp Paradox differs is in its level of practical application of the model. Part 1 helps you to understand your own mind, exploring what drives the Chimp and the Human, how they interact and respond to events you experience, and how to tell who is in charge at any given moment. Chimps have strong drives for dominance, food, security, territory, a troop etc., and these show up in our needs, professionally and personally, to feel safe and secure, to establish control, to avoid threats and so on.
It continues by exploring how to manage your Chimp, first nurturing it through praise and recognition, then managing it by exercising it, shutting it away or distracting it, to allow our (rational) human mind to take over. This part also examines the intersection with our Computer, including why we need to take care about the information we store and which automatic behaviours we develop.
Part 2 moves on to explore how we function in the world. It looks at how we understand and relate to others, how to choose and develop a support network (our troop), how to communicate effectively and suggestions for handling both chronic and short term stress. In this part Peters introduces his second core metaphor, the Psychological Universe. Each of these aspects of what we need to function becomes a planet or a moon – the Planet of others, the Troop Moon, The Planet of the Real World etc. Peters suggests that we travel across the universe working on one at a time, and that our overall goal is to have these planets in alignment to support ourselves – in this universe we are known as the Divided Planet, recognising the Chimp/Human struggle.
Finally Part 3 looks at how we can manage ourselves for health, success and happiness. This covers areas such as establishing our realm (and being clear what is someone else's realm), establishing commitment to what we really want, using rewards and incentives, handling failure and creating happiness.
It is full of metaphor and visual cues which make many parts very memorable, and the book is packed with illustrations to bring the ideas to life. He also offers plenty of exercises to put the concepts into practice, which build on each other through the chapters.
The core ideas may be simple, but they’re presented in an accessible and actionable way. It’s one thing to understand a bit about how our mind works, quite another to really be able to harness it effectively, and if you engage fully with the ideas and exercises in this book, they will help you do just that.
What are the highlights?
I enjoyed Prof. Peters blunt, straightforward style – and it won’t be for everyone. The concepts feel simple, almost basic at times. Yet that helped me get out of overthinking and self-indulgent intellectualising (who me? 👀) and simply focus on understanding what was going on in my mind and how I might change aspects that were distracting or actively unhelpful.
The matter-of-fact style also helped steer me away from judgement or self-recrimination. Which is somewhat ironic, because that in itself is of course a Chimp behaviour…!
“The Chimp is the emotional machine that we all possess…It offers emotional thoughts and feelings that can be very constructive or very destructive; it is not good or bad, it is a Chimp. The Chimp Paradox is that it can be your best friend and your worst enemy, even at the same time.”
I found the Chimp/Human/Computer brains metaphor ingenious, because every time he explored a new facet of the metaphor it simply worked. The Chimp screeching? Yes, I know what that feels like. The Chimp’s need for a troop? Yes, I can’t do this alone and getting the right, supportive people around me make a massive difference. The Chimp using emotion to make decisions? Yup, I recognise that too. Fear, scarcity, avoidance are all familiar to me, as is the rational part of my brain (the Human) wondering what on earth all the fuss is about, yet still struggling to take charge.
Anything you didn’t like?
As a coach I *LOVE* a good metaphor, and, there was a point it felt like Prof. Peters had stretched some of his metaphors to the limit and then some way beyond. His psychological universe of seven planets and multiple moons became at times more of a distraction than it was helpful. The Moon of Carrots anyone? I laughed out loud at this one. It felt as if he was shoehorning things in to fit, so the metaphor lost its potency. Though, for all its faults, it was at least memorable, which was perhaps the point. He also uses so many metaphors, particularly in the latter parts of the book, that they became a bit much for me.
There were a few times where his attempts to simplify crossed over into being trite, for example when he described the conflicting drives of a working mother. This is one way in which this book felt a little dated (it was published in 2012). I suspect greater awareness around nuance and compassionate language might now lead to such sections being slightly reframed/rephrased – as it stands, they come across as clunky, and even borderline offensive. Thankfully these are thin on the ground.
Finally, I was frustrated with the frequent breaks in the text. Peters regularly summarises and reiterates key points, which is helpful as a general concept but felt a little overdone so that the flow of the narrative got lost. It may not have helped that I was listening to this as an audiobook – the formatting in the print version helps with navigation, and makes it easier to skip these parts if you don’t want to read them.
Why should I read it?
If you recognise the inner struggle between your rational and emotional minds, and would like practical, powerful strategies to manage it, this is for you.
Equally if you have the basics managed but are looking for the next level of self-management, this will have something for you too.
And if all you’re looking for is reassurance that the inner struggle is real and shared by everyone, this book does that in spades.
What’s the one thing you’ll do differently as a result of reading this?
Two related things, actually (it’s my Substack and I can change things if I want to!). First was a reminder to have more compassion for the chimp side of me. When I get scared, or confronted, or avoid things, my inner chimp is simply doing what it is programmed to do. Nothing more nothing less. Beating myself up over it is completely pointless and only makes me feel worse.
This has also reminded me to be much more proactive about managing this side of me. I can’t always anticipate what will happen, but the rational human in me has a lot of options for proactive chimp management and they really do make a difference. I’m working my way through a few of the exercises in the book (there’s at least one per chapter) and they are simple but effective.
A final note…
As I mentioned above, I listened to this book as an audiobook before picking up the hard copy. It is read by Prof. Peters himself (I’m always in favour of audiobooks read by the author) in his broad Middlesborough accent, which was for me a joy to listen to. It only accentuated the straightforward style of his writing, and was like listening to someone patiently telling you things in a simple fashion that really ought to be obvious but somehow aren’t. Things that you very much need to hear. Oh, and every time he said book (bewk) it made me smile .
The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness
by Prof. Steve Peters. Published by Vermilion in 2012.
Available at Amazon UK, Amazon US, or Bookshop.org. (#aff links)
Have you read The Chimp Paradox? I’d love to hear what you thought, soclick here to add a comment or your own review:
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