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

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

I'll try and keep this succinct, but I'm going back 30 years now. So, uh, yeah, (laughs) I'm getting old, very old. Uh, and I, as a young doctor, um, I suddenly started realizing I was talking to two individuals in therapies where... And, a- and again, I'm making this very black and white. Uh, one of the p- individuals I talked to was very rational and common sense and would engage me. The other was highly emotional and usually very irrational and distorted in the way they're perceiving things, themselves, the world, other people. Uh, but I could get the one that was irrational to become rational by talking and going through things. So that intrigued me that I had two people in the room. And some people, they were close, some people they were miles apart. So then turning to neuroscience and looking at the brain, uh, there are circuitries in the brain that are just automatic, they're outside of our control. Uh, and as a psychiatrist, obviously as a doctor, I'm learning also the therapeutic, um, background we have as a basis. So going right back to Freud, and you think, "Yeah, he was a genius of his time and he recognized the drives and the instincts." But what can we see now at the 1990s was the functional MRI scanners came in. And now we see actually, these parts of the brain, they're not just drives and instincts, there's a entire system that thinks and interprets and makes these interpretations without permission, and makes decisions without permission, often based on the drives and instincts. So we have this amazing machine that's trying to run our lives at the same time as we're trying to impose our values and the way we want to run it. So I was intrigued with this. So you mentioned weight at the beginning, and I often use that as the best example. How many people get up in the morning saying, "Today I'm gonna eat healthy, the right amount," and, and at the end of the day they say, again, "It hasn't happened." You know, and they were, they were saying, "Why is it that, uh, this is happening?" Because it's crazy. And then they attribute it to willpower. Well, the neuroscience teaches something different. It shows that there's an entire system based on survival, which thinks and decides, and it's also impulsive and it looks for instant gratification. So when you're offered something you like, say a donut or peanuts and you think, "I've eaten enough," this system says, "No, no, we've got a little bit more," because it doesn't see what's coming. So I was intrigued. So I spoke to hominid specialists, the great apes. Uh, I'm, I'm very much an animal lover. So as part of the great apes, the humans are one of the five, um, what they said to me, simplifying it, was the or- uh, looking at the gorilla, the orangutan, uh, and the bonobo, they think their brains operate differently to us. Uh, but the chimpanzee doesn't. It's the same. It's the same thinking, interpreting, emotionally based system. So I started looking and I started recognizing watching chimpanzee behave in human, there was such similarities. However, when we turn to rationality and logic, we change that behavior and we become very different. So what I discovered or sort of light bulb for me, I'm sure (laughs) others have discovered it, what I, what I really, for me, discovered was, you've got this inner chimp system that we've inherited alongside you as a human, and we've all got it. And depending how strong it is or how we learn to manage it is how often it will present. And that became more and more prominent in, when I was working with individuals to say, "You didn't think that. That is the chimp system." Now, that got published, uh, in 2018 to show the chimpanzee and the human had the same kind of thinking systems which separates us from the rest of the apes. Um, but by then I didn't wanna wait that long because I think it's, it was blatantly obvious. I know we have to give evidence. So I started using it on my medical students, um, at Sheffield Medical School, and at that point as undergraduate dean, I was working a lot with youngsters between 18 and 23. So I started explaining, "You do have this chimp system," and they loved it. Uh, they really got this. They said, "I can recognize when I'm in chimp mode (laughs) and when I'm in human mode." Uh, and they started to then teach us this, so it became part of what I did with them, and we'd talk about, "What are the drives that are strong in your chimp?" Because the chimp brain is unique to the person again. So it became an entertaining way of starting to understand what you're sharing your brain with, this incredible system which thinks and acts for you with a major backup system. So when I started doing the simplified neuroscience, the students were not keen on the neuroscience 'cause it was too complex. They kept saying, "Make it so it's practical," which I wanted to do, so they all started t- giving their chimps a name. Uh, and this went on for a good 10 years before I effectively got catapulted into the limelight with sport, uh, which was a, a sidetrack. Um, and then it became public and it just went a bit viral and, you know, I started meeting people saying, they k- ask me, "Are you the chimp man?" (laughs) I'm, I'm proud to say I'm the chimp man. Uh, but I think the key for me was, I saw a transformation of people who started recognizing the difference between themself and a machine, so that's why I called it the chimp paradox. And I wrote The Chimp Paradox, uh, probably over about four years, trying to refine it. I didn't wanna get it wrong, so I put out when I thought, "As close as I can get it," to explain, "This is your brain and how it works." There were, uh, I kept being pestered to go into more detail, and that's why it took me 10 years (laughs) to, to actually think, "Okay, do it again." So I rewrote effectively and called it A Path Through the Jungle. So A Path Through the Jungle is more with, it's got the evidence base, the research behind it, um, I know in America, The Chimp Paradox didn't take off and I know I was criticized because there was no evidence. So I thought, "They're, they're right to say that," so I've now given 400 references-And I'm pleased to say it was assessed by Cambridge Neuroscience Department, and they said it's spot on. So there is a write-up on Cambridge University's website for those who are academically interested to see that, they were saying that it, yeah, this is an amazing model, and it's very detailed, uh, to link it to neuroscience.