How To Take Full Control Of Your Mind: Prof. Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox | E96

My work now is helping people to optimize performance, get a good relationship with themself, finding their peace, happiness, confidence.

Professor Steve Peters, he's a world-leading psychiatrist, arguably one of the most famous, renowned, and important of our time.

You will come out the other side much better. People do recover from broken relationships. People don't know what the next relationship will be. Not everybody is the same. What tends to happen is people either don't recognize they're getting stressed, and it becomes chronic, and they've got these behaviors which are damaging to them, as people think stress is where we're wringing our hands and panicking, and that's not really true. Stress comes in all different forms and often isn't recognized. Even for people in a much more serious situation where they become, uh, suicidal, you can tell them with honesty there is always a future, and things do change, and feelings do move. You know, we have to accept that reality. We cannot know everything about the person we're with. And if our chimps switch a panicky a bit and want guarantees and want... then we're, we're going down the wrong path, and we have to tell our chimp, "You can't do this."

Professor Steve Peters, he's a world-leading psychiatrist, arguably one of the most famous, renowned, and important of our time. He's also a doctor and a hugely successful author. Some of you, most of you will know him from his bestselling book, The Chimp Paradox, which has sold millions of copies worldwide, and that's a book that actually saved the lives of some people very close to me. He's worked with elite level athletes, including Steven Gerrard and the England football team, and Ronnie O'Sullivan, gold medal Olympians like Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton, as well as business leaders and CEOs, and he helps them overcome what he calls mental dysfunction. He's helped them optimize for performance, and he's really helped them get out of their own way, and in many respects in life, we're all in our own way. Steve's invented this groundbreaking concept called the CHIMP model, and it focuses on how there's these kind of three parts to our brain. The first part is called the chimp, which is our sort of desire to be impulsive and irrational and emotional and short-term. The second part is what he calls the human, and you'll hear him talk about this, which is logical and rational and thinks in terms of facts and thinks things through in the long term. And the third part is what he calls the computer, which is our set of core values and beliefs. Steve's work focuses on how we can manage and control the interaction between these three parts of our brain, and we all have these three compartments within our brains, and if you can understand them, if you can understand these three elements, it gives you greater power to utilize them to be happy, successful, however you define it, and to live a much more fulfilled life. Man, this episode gave me so many personal epiphanies, so many sort of penny drop moments and so many personal realizations. It's one of the podcasts that I, I, I know I'll reflect on going forward and I know for sure will change my life forever. So, this is one where I implore you to listen to the entire conversation, 'cause I think it will change your life too. So, without further ado, sorry, that was a very long intro, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Professor Steve Peters, thank you for, for joining me today. I've, uh, been a big fan of your work, as has a lot of people close to me in my life for a long, long period of time. Um, where I wanted to start with you is w- with a question, which is how do you define yourself professionally? And I've read, you know, I've read about the diverse amount of work you've done across multiple sectors with sports stars, with leaders, with, with the NHS, with the, the Fire Service, with, um, you know, a, a broad spectrum of people. But what is the sort of basis of your work and how do you define what you do?