We have the beliefs within us that it's just too hard to remove, and it may have come from traumatic experiences. Let's learn how to put it in a box. Refender, Steve, Ethan, people world, leading the psychiatrist. Northover number, very influential, but including the chimp paradox.
And then, Phil has helped multiple British athletes. He's been seeing Steve for three years now. I'm not just any psychologist, it's not to Steve pleases him. And the person who wants to help people.
I said it wasn't Chris Hoey. I went over to the cover today, Athens Olympic, so we couldn't make sure that he got his gold medal and running a solo. The emotion that that guy was getting at that point has been so unpleasant, that part went through a world championship with your hands and walked out. So in one of these cases, what do you do?
So the very first step is, oh, really? And that is what winners do. For people to shift, they've got to have psychological mindedness, which means they've got to understand that it's not about what happens to us in life, it's how we deal with it. The world is early childhood trauma play in how we respond in situations.
Well, now we're really getting to. Before we can bond, emotional memories are starting to react to that trauma. Your parent might suddenly say, oh, you're just an idiot. But something might have happened just before that, where you've got one out of ten, and you have got some of the spelling tests.
And the two together get emotionally tangled. And that then damages the circuits. So you get people off them, they're very little self-esteem. How does one go about working with someone who's got serious self-esteem issues?
I'm going to be controversially, I'd say. OK, that's a tough starter. I would say that I'm a person who wants to help people. So what I've done throughout life is in order to help people, what do I need?
So one of the things I felt I needed when I was a young man is I needed medical background. So all of the work I've done, like in psychiatry, particularly becoming consult psychiatrists, it wasn't that I wanted to be that it was I needed that in order to be able to help people effectively. So my experience in life has always been the more people I can help and the more circumstances the better crypt I'll be to deal with, whatever comes through the door. So I think of it slightly different to be about a career.
It's more of an approach and an objective in life. And then what I need to do is learn in order to be good at that. In terms of your academic qualifications, what are those? My friends all laugh at this because I've got five degrees.
So effectively, I started off doing mathematics and teaching, but then I went back into medicine and then from there, their scientific qualifications, I've got a medical degree. And then I went to the Royal College to specialize in psychiatry and get your membership exams. And then I've specialized again in looking at things like, because I got involved with sports people, I did an MSC so that we look at sports medicine itself again and brush up on my medical background, so I'm still a doctor at heart. And then because I teach at university, I did an MSC in medical education.
So I started again following what I've said as a theme. I think, what do I need and what was helping me to do this? And then so that's why I've collected these degrees. So that was my academic background.
And then in terms of experience, give me an overview of the sort of plethora of experience you've had practically working with people in different contexts, industries. Yeah, I mean, I went through medical training and then you do a routine job, so you've met in surgery and so on. And I trained in general practice and then went into psychiatry. And I hit psychiatry as one of my disciplines during training for GP.
From there in psychiatry, you look across a vast spectrum, you select your job. So I covered general adult psychiatry. Then I covered all day to psychiatry, child psychiatry, linear disability, and then into forensics. So when you've done all that kind of training experience, then you start to really specialize.
And initially, I was going into specializing in all day to psychiatry. I felt what the service at that time was a long time ago was quite poor for old age. And there was very little research. It's before I receptor.
So the anti-dimensional drug came out and I wanted to go into that field. But by virtue of the fact I'm a teacher, I got a post in sort of teaching in university alongside clinical work. And that meant really, I needed to do general adults. So I then started off in general adults at psychiatry.
I did a lot of clinical work 20 years in the NHS. But progressed because the difficult cases are often personality disorders and how we manage them. And particularly forensics style. So it's like a pathically cold.
We'd come into social personality disorders. How do you manage these people? So I ended up becoming by default a specialist in this field and then ended up working in a secure hospital, working with people under mental health sector, with a detail of transgressed law. So then you go into the legal aspects of how we deal with people who have transgressed law and then held them to the mental health act almost indefinitely.
When you try and obviously get people back out of these secure hospitals, if they're safe to come into the community. So that in a nutshell is how my career develops. So you end up with a vast experience over the last 40 years. And then hopefully you can pull on that experience when you're working with everyday people.
Working with everyday people. You ended up working in the field of sports, which seems less obvious as a path for you to take based on your experience before that. Didn't seem like you're aiming intentionally at working in sports. No, not so.
I'm not sports fan. I'm a people fan. Which means where people choose to work, then I follow them and I've got to learn their world. So obviously you've got sports specialist, sports psychologist specialist.
I came in a bit left field. I was in forensics at the time, but I was still teaching at university. One of my previous medical students, I teach medicine, went as a doctor with a cycling team that was working for the Olympics. So I knew nothing about this.
And he called me as an excellent student, but he wanted an opinion on somebody who is a professional who was struggling mentally. So I came in just to give an opinion and work with this guy. I can only name people who've gone public, so I can't give names. And he excelled.
And then I can name the next person at that point. I was introduced to Chris Hoy and Chris, an amazing guy, absolutely amazing. So it was an easy bit of work to do to help him to get his mind to do what he wanted to do with his mind. He went off.
I went on the cover to the Athens Olympics. He asked me to go with him, so we could make sure that he got his gold. If I could contribute, he got his gold medal and then said, really, I want you in the team. So I didn't go for a year.
And after a year, I was convinced I was working with Vicki Pendleton, and I knew that needed a bit more work. And she's, again, an amazing person. A great people to work with. And so I then took the leap.
I mean, at that point, I was heading towards retirement then. So that's well over 20 years ago now. And then from there, when I worked with them, the swimming team came in British swimming. And then it was just, I don't know, cascade of all the teams.
And so I started working across the Olympic teams and then went off to Beijing Olympics. And it just, I don't know, game momentum. And I just got this reputation while this guy can help you mentally. You know, so I work alongside the culture.
Obviously they're the people who take them to the front and do the mental side of it. So it wasn't a planned routine. And I still do all my other work. I still work with the public.
I still work in other areas with doctors, with the NHS, with the police. I don't want to work with business people. So it just became generic at that point. So David Brelsford, who's been on this podcast, who was the performance director, I believe, the British cycling team, took over at a time when it was struggling and led it to become maybe the greatest cycling team of all time.
He says that your appointment was the, I quote, the best appointment he's ever made. Now, when I think about, you know, you're getting that first call from that first athlete, the one you say was struggling. And then working with Chris Hui. What exactly are you doing for them?
I think this is like, no matter how cool you are you, Chris Hui. What exactly are you doing for them? I think this is like, no matter who comes in the door, say you come to me, what I've got to say is I'm not a sports psychologist. I'm not a specialist.
Well, I am a specialist in the human mind. So I admit that my career. So I look at how the mind thinks how it functions. And I ask you to first be a student, really.
And I want you to learn your unique mind. I'm going to give you the blueprint. And together we're going to work out how you perceive the world, perceive yourself, perceive others. What do you want to do with your life?
When we've done all of that, then and only then we're asked to go into your world. So then we're going to apply what you've learned. So it was interesting that two people I worked with in public again were Vicky Pendleton. It was probably still the world's most successful female sprinter on the bike and then running a solo in Snoker.
And both were interviewed. And they both said that to the press. They said, you know, he did not take us to sport. He took us to ourself and worked with us as people.
And so we got in a good place. Then we went to sport. Then he said, right, what is he choosing to do with your life? And then I have to learn then because obviously if you take me to your world, I don't know your world.
So I've got to go in there and learn what it is you're experiencing, how you're interpreting it. It's a teamwork. And then I have to test things out. That's basically what I did when I started working with Chris Hoy.
He asked him what he was wanting to do. What was he finding easy? What was he finding difficult? And then try and work out what I felt he needed to do and how he managed his mind.
And then I kept pushing this point. It is a skill you've got to acquire it. So I don't have other people who might be able to do a process. I can't do that.
What I do is ask you to work with me and try things out where you're gaining a skill. For example, a skill of recognizing whether your emotion is actually helpful or unhelpful. Whether you can remove the emotion or need to work with it. Or whether you can actually just dismiss it and learn how to move yourself on.
And so it's a skill to be able to recognize things and then know how to do with that particular thing that you're experiencing. Could you give me a case day from one athlete you've worked with? That will allow me to work through that process of first identifying the emotion potentially, working whether it's positive or negative, how it's serving me. And then how you might with your process lead me to a positive outcome.
Well, I'm going to pick Chris Hoy and Ron and Sullivan on the grounds of Boston. They're very public about working with me. And they put out what I'm about to talk about. So when I worked with Chris, what he was doing, he was doing the kilo at the time, which is four laps on a bike.
But it's very similar to doing 400 metres where you know you've got to get the pace with judgement right. If you go off too fast, you burn out and you won't finish. If you go off too slow, you'll never get the ground back. So it's a really tough, really tough event.
So in the key law, I had to learn that, which wasn't too hard because I'm familiar with 400 metres. So, and then when I did that, I have to test out what his beliefs are. You know, when he sets off on the bike, where is he pulling his focus? And that's what Chris was saying is when I set off on the bike, my focus can be distracted and it will drift off.
And I might start thinking about what other people have just done when I'm watching my competitors. Or am I going fast enough or, and you start to do an analysis. Now, in his particular event, what I said to me is it's not going to help you to do an analysis in this event. Some sport it is because you have a breathing space where you can analyse and then get back into what I call computer mode.
So he needs to programme his mind to have a fixed leg speed, a fixed markers on the track, so that he's not thinking at all. There's no analysis. That was my summary of it. So we tried that out.
So when he went to the Olympics, everything was completely learning to switch off any thinking and analysis. And that's not easy. Easy said and done. But we practice this.
So on the holding camp, which there's like a three week camp before the Olympics, I went to the holding camp in Newport with him. And every day we practice this. So we do 20 minutes of him learning to focus. And then we had specifics on the bike for when he got on it to do this key law.
And to me, he was an excellent student clearly. He committed to it. And he would say then that when he got on the bike and he went around the day of the Olympics, he forgot where he was until he passed the line. So to me, that's like even complete focus mode.
So again, credit to Chris. Why is switching off his mind in such a way or focusing his mind in such a way? Why is that? Then he was trying to complex.
I'm going to cook on his and do it very black and white and simplified. It's complex. But in a nutshell, if you, there are three systems in your head, keeping it very simple. It's much more complex than that, but simplifying it.
One of the systems will put you think very logically and I call that the human system. It thinks logically, but it's very slow, which means if you operate with the human, your body and your reflexes will slow down because you're analyzing as you go along. And it slows the system so you're more pensive. So that's really good in certain circumstances, but it's awful in fast moving sports.
So if he goes into that, it's very likely he's slowed down. It's not going to help him. If he goes into the second system, which we'll probably come back to, the chimp system, this is a primitive system, which thinks it's more than just a reaction and impulsive system. It thinks when it moves, it can move at speed, but it thinks emotionally.
So this is the part of his brain that will think thoughts that are not helpful, such as should I go faster at this point and then it may make a decision to go faster and burn out. So that would be crazy. Finally, the third system is a computer. It just needs programming.
The key to the computer, particularly in sports is it moves so fast. It's approximately 20 times quicker than the human system to execute. And it's about four times quicker than the chimp system. So if you get into a computer more particularly fast moving sports, it doesn't analyze or think it's automatic thinking.
So it works with keys like a computer. Is that the autopilot? Exactly. It's an autopilot.
You're programmed. It's a behavior that's programmed in. So when I came down the stairs to see you today, I know the route, I've done it a hundred times. So I was holding my iPad, but I was an autopilot because I came down the stairs.
Your body knows what to do. You don't need to think. Whereas if we put an obstacle in there, then it will stop. Because it doesn't know what to do.
It's not programmed. But you'll have to think then. It's the computer where I have it. It's habit formation, yes.
All three do work together. But the computer is one that just blocks out the other two. Or if they go silent, it can operate. And it's the computer that drives us to work.
Or like you say, it goes on a familiar track. But it can also generate automatic thinking. So when you meet somebody, your chimp may start to think, is this person going to like me? I'm not going to come across it.
It could give you anything. Whereas the computer system is automatic. So if you've programmed a belief that everybody loves me, then it's much more likely when you meet people, you're going to be very open. And your body language would be positive.
If you have, I'm being severe, obviously. If you have a belief nobody likes me or I'm not as good as everyone else, which unfortunately a lot of computers program with that. Then whenever you meet someone, you're on edge. And you're very conscious about what you're saying and doing because you feel that it's going to be the truth that they don't like and you're trying to overcome that belief, which is so unhelpful.
Now that I call the Gremlin. But these beliefs are programmed into us and we hold thousands of beliefs often without knowing what they are. Okay, we're going to come back to that because we're going to talk about the Gremlin, and where all of the beliefs come from, which ones we can resolve. But to your point then about Chris Hoyle.
So Chris was asking, in my world, he was saying, how do I silence my human and chimp systems from analysing and thinking, which is their job? And how do I go into computing more stuff, I forget where I am and just get them on the process. And he did this nicely. Ronnie Sullivan wasn't in that place.
And again, Ronnie's given me permission. He keeps on telling everybody everything. But I won't tell you everything. A lot of stuff has been unlocked doors.
So he's a great guy. I love Ronnie Sullivan. We've been friends now for over 10 years. So it's a privilege to work with him.
He's one of the hardest working of my students. And he's saying to me all the time. He rings regularly. So I've spoken to him already yesterday.
So we talk. But the key to Ronnie was his chimp was so active in being anxious about how he came across, whether he'd perform well, what people would say, how well his rivals might be doing. It was just giving him what is natural and healthy but extremely unhelpful. And that was creating very anxious moments.
So before I met him, I had a look because I didn't anything about Ronnie. And I went online to see some huge tubes of him. And I saw him hitting the white ball with the cue stick. And I thought, well, obviously that's not the right thing to be doing.
And I saw him walk out of a competition, which distressed me. I didn't know the guy. I thought, wow. The emotion that that guy was getting at that point was to be so unpleasant that part went through a world championships competition.
He just suddenly stopped, froze, shook hands and walked out. And I just thought, you know, when I saw that, I definitely want to help this man. And we went back and actually looked at that incident. And I said, what was it?
And I love this. And he challenged me at the beginning. But after about an hour of chatting, he said, I get this. Because on that incident, he said to me, there was this voice.
Sort of saying, just go out of it. You don't have to be. I don't want to be here. And he said, and I'm saying to myself, I want to play Snooka.
I just want to enjoy the game. And this voice got more strong and said, right, hit the cue. And he said, I hit the cue ball. And he said, I'm walking out.
And the voice is still going. Right? Just keep walking. We're not anywhere out of here.
I can't deal with this. And he said, now I get it. There were two of me. There was me trying to do what I want.
And there's this voice, which I couldn't manage at all. And I couldn't stop it doing what I wanted to do. So once I explained the model to him, and the model isn't for everyone. It's for those who can relate to it.
He said, I get this because my human system, my chimp system, are so different. They're poles apart. So he's worked for 10 years saying, how do I recognize and manage this chimp system? So when he came to me, it wasn't just in Snooka his whole life.
He could see that his emotions were getting the better of him. And it was a whole system that was emotionally driven. And it was almost paranoid about things. It was defensive.
It was making feel vulnerable. It was getting in anxiety. And it's a really powerful system. So it varies in person to person.
Some people have very simple chimp systems which are not that strong. And others, most of us have chimp systems. We really recognize that they're there, and they mean business. And they give us emotions which drive us to do things, make decisions, help behaviors that often are destructive.
Not just unconstructive. So in one of these cases, what do you do? Right, we started to recognize the systems. And so again, I tried to take people through a series of steps rather than just throw things at them.
And so the very first step is let's define who you are, and let's define what your chimp is like. So we recognize, because everyone's unique. So I can't tell you who you are, know what your system is. I'll give you general things like this system is impulsive.
It doesn't think a consequence. It's quite emotionally driven when we're tired. And people generally start to get that. So neuroscientific, that's what happens in the brain.
So how do we start to recognize the difference? And then when we do, let's start simply to say, what is it that's prodding my chimp into action? And this is where it goes a little more complex. The chimp system can just react.
So if I, for example, your friends is me and one day I just shout at you for some reason and get annoyed. And your chimp system is more likely going to shout back. But if it believes I'm not as good as other people or I can't cope, it's likely to go quiet and feel very intimidating and hurt. So again, we have to work out what your chimp system is doing.
But on the other hand, the chimp system, the neurosciences, it always turns to the computer and says, what beliefs do I hold before I make my decision? And this happens in the fifth of the second. So let's say you're about to shout back at me and your chimp looks into the computer and one of your beliefs, I don't know what they are. It might be, if you shout back at people, it makes you look foolish.
Yeah, well, I can tell you what my beliefs are. I can tell you where they came from. So my parents, my parents had a very loud, shouting relationship. I've never shouted in my life because of that.
Because I learned firsthand. So what's your belief? My belief is that shouting achieves nothing. It's harmful for both parties.
You lose when you do it. You're not heard when you do it. No, you stop there, start and do. That's brilliant.
It's what you're saying to me is, I absolutely resonate with these beliefs. They're not something I've given you, which is a danger. So if I said to you, when I try and stop shouting, it never gets you anywhere. You have to resonate with that.
That's why I can't do it. You have to say to me, say that really resonates. I've got to have evidence. Yes.
And you have to believe this. And you can't brainwash yourself into believing. You've got to experience it and say, this rings true to me. So once you've worked that out and you reinforce it, which sounds like you've done through your life, then you don't shout.
And it's not that you can't, it's your computer stopping you because the chimp has to listen to those beliefs. So before it does anything, it can't move. So let's look at the opposite. If someone grew up in a household where they were shouting and they for whatever reason gained the evidence that it was an effective way to communicate or whatever, how does someone go about unprogramming that belief?
Well, it's not my job to do that. So I explain what I mean. I agree with you. To me, shouting is not very helpful at all.
However, it's not my job to tell people. I say to them, why would you hold that belief? And I do have people who say it because people don't listen unless you shout. Some people get half to shout at them.
And so I draw a breath because I'm not agreeing. But I'm not going to try and change the mind. I don't want to challenge them. And say, can we challenge that to make sure that's what you believe?
But if they are insistent, there are certain people in my life that shouting works for. It's not for me to say that. What I would do then is say, right, let's say it does work. That's in the short term.
So now we're in the devil in the detail. Our chimp system is working in the short term. It does not look at long-term consequence. So when your human now comes in, your human system will look at rationality.
What's the long-term consequence in shouting? Now it may be it was person here. There's no long-term consequence. And you think it's something any different.
So I'm going to shout. Right? They get it. And we're okay with that.
However, they might suddenly say with me, actually right, with person B when I shout, there is a repercussion on the person. And I'm actually hurting them. And also in their eyes, it's demeaning. They say me as demeaning myself.
So it's not actually working in the long term. It's not building a relationship that I want. So it can be, you tease the devil in the detail out. You have a blanket by the sound of it.
It doesn't matter who it is. You don't shout. I would agree with that. However, I'm going to be more devil in detail.
You have to be careful because if you add on to that, that shouting is something that's a failure. And then now I have a challenge on you. Because if you think about it, if you then suddenly out of the blue did shout and you're going to now start beating yourself up potentially and thinking. Yeah, I would.
Yeah. So that's not that helpful. So what a better belief I would suggest and see if you resonate is to say, if you shout, even though you don't agree with it, because all your beliefs, in my opinion, are right. If you shout, forgive yourself and say, you know, that is a chimp system.
And maybe I need to reinforce my computer system because my chimp got out there. And I'm not proud of that because actually I don't think that helped. But I like people to understand that we can only manage the chimp system. We do not control it.
And if it wants to get the better of us, it can. So all we can do is keep reinforcing the computer beliefs and strengthen them. You've done it beautifully by having a number of beliefs. And then you've almost got this gang of auto pilots.
So if one gets shake and the others come in. And that's how the brain will work. So I like modern one belief. But on the other hand, if under circumstances your chimp gets out and you shout.
I want you to understand that your chimp got out. It wasn't you. That's not an excuse model. You have to apologize if you think you've done wrong.
But I am saying it's a skill model, which means you says to me now, I do not want to shout. So you didn't do it. However, you're responsible. You can't just absolve yourself.
So I was like an it's having a dog. I'm a great dog lover. If one of my dogs comes in here and bites you, I can't just go to my dog. The answer is I have to manage this system.
I have to manage my dog. And it's my responsibility, 100%. So I work with people to say, be kind to yourself because this system means business. And whatever your system is like, it will break through.
There will be days you do not manage it. Let's pretend today has been a day where I didn't manage it. The dog got off the lead and bit somebody, whatever. I lost my temper, whatever.
And I'm reflecting on it, thinking, oh God, you know, and I was past. And I'm thinking God, I wish I hadn't done that. What can I actively do to prevent it happening again? How I reinforce the computer?
Let me go back to the dog because it's probably the best example. What you wouldn't do, I thought, is kick the dog. Don't do what the dog does. The dog doesn't know.
So your job is to say first, I'm going to apologize to the person because that should not have happened. I know whatever I need to do to compensate, I do whatever. And apologize. The second thing is, naturally, I assume you're going to say, well, I need to work on the dog.
I need to learn to train the dog and manage it. So I know exactly how to stop that happening again. What I'm not going to do is beat myself up. But not being able to manage the dog.
Why is that a bad idea? Beating yourself up. Yeah. Just like, oh, God, I'm such an idiot.
I should have done that. It's sort of self-evident. I mean, again, this is the devil in detail. If you said to me, you know, when I do that, it makes me feel better just to think, right, I've had to go up myself here.
There's nothing wrong with that. What I'm going to do is draw a line after a certain time. And then I'm going to say, right, you've had to go up yourself, get over it. Yeah, let's put that into action now.
Right. Then I'm not disproving. I think it's self-evident that I'm not going to prove to somebody beating myself and going back to the same thing over and over and over. And then escalating that.
So it doesn't just become, I can't manage the dog. I'm an incompetent person. You know, and I get things wrong. And everyone else seems to do this.
What's wrong with me? That's the problem. It's now going down a very dangerous route. Is that depositing certain evidence into the computer about you not being self-worthy, which then is going to make your chimp respond?
Yeah. Well, the chimp's going to be irrational. So when the chimp brain takes over because it puts our beliefs in as well as we do. So for example, the dog one, it will expand on that and say, well, there's something wrong with me.
So let's go to you. And it's okay to give you an excuse. And that's my chimp, but it's not good enough. And I can't allow it to happen again.
And I've done damage to this person irreparably. And now you can say it's starting to escalate. And you're putting all these beliefs inside your system. So they're going to be unconscious beliefs that you're carrying with you.
So then you go and meet some friend and those beliefs might come straight in. I'm going to damage this person. I'm going to say something stupid again. I'm going to lose it again.
This is all really destructive and unhelpful. Sometimes I find it difficult to apologize. Specifically, you know, when you're like in the heat of a situation, you might have had an argument with your partner or whatever else about something tiny. In that moment, sometimes I find it difficult to play this.
I think I've gotten 10x better. I'm thinking about the last sort of confrontation I had with my girlfriend. And in fact, all I did was listen and apologize after I should finish speaking, because I genuinely was like, I completely understand. But I think sometimes over the last 10 years, I just think, why don't you just, what is it that's preventing you from just saying, especially when you know you've done something, which isn't in line with who you want to be, or how you want to behave.
Why didn't I just apologize straight away? What is it? I've got to make a guess because I was like everyone's unique. So if I work into you, I'll say, well, again, we're looking at what beliefs you're holding is, do you think apologizing is something that's strong or weak?
That's a good question. It's a good question. And I think I'm going to say that my belief on that has changed. Okay.
So I think for the first, over the last 10 years, the first eight years, I would have seen it as a weakness. And then in the context of my relationship, I see it as our biggest strength that I can both now listen in total silence, make someone feel hard and understood and apologize to them. I think I see it as this real superpower that I've developed. But in eight years where I didn't, I don't feel like I was apologizing enough, I definitely saw it as a weakness.
I saw it as admitting defeat. That's why I'm going, so I'm saying to you, it's a shame it took eight years. Yeah. And that's why I like to do this work because you look back thinking, if I'd known this eight years ago, it would have made a big difference.
That may not resonate. Some might say, well, I don't see it as weak as all strength. So what difference? So I'll try a different tack and say that how important is it that you're happy or that your partner's happy?
Would you put first? In the situations where I didn't apologize, I put myself first. But what do you want? I think in those situations, I don't even know.
I want it to be right. I don't know, I don't know. Oh, good. I'll just finish on that bit and I'll come back to the next one, which is where I think you're coming from.
I'll give you a surprise coming here. So if somebody said my girlfriend's more important than me, I love this girl, I don't want to lose this girl. And the last thing I want to do is to make an apology. And it's easy to recognize, I don't want to hurt this person.
And even if I'm in the right and she's in the wrong, it doesn't matter. It's not about winning, which is what the chimp brain does. It wants to win. Okay.
The human wants to resolve the situation. So saying, I'm really sorry that you're upset and I didn't mean to upset you. It doesn't mean you're admitting fault or whatever. It just means you're trying to say that you're more important than this.
This is trivial. That's so true. And so that might resonate with people. But you might get somebody, which is where you're going, where you say, well, of course I love her.
But hang on, that's not right. Because if she's done something that's wrong and I've reacted to that, she created that problem. But hang on, I want the apology. Right.
So that's common. This is the surprise. When you look at the neuroscience behind this, you think, well, that must be my human being rational logical, but it actually isn't. When we look at this, why I got called it the chimp system, when we look at chimpanzees, they operate with the chimp system.
They do have a human system, but it's quite primitive, which is where I got the analogy. So I looked at the grid tapes back in the 1990s and the publication came out in 2018 for the people who are academic to show the chimpanzee and human think very differently to the other grid tapes. We're very different. There's a different way of approaching things and interpreting.
So we do have the same system with chimps. So that chimp system is the same. And the way it works is unfairness. So experiments with chimpanzees, I'm sure you find them on YouTube, where they do unfairness to chimpanzees and even basically like cabbage monkeys demonstrate the same thing.
They must have fairness. So whenever we demand fairness, we're actually operating for chimp system, which is emotionally based. The human can accept unfairness. The human gets over it and says, get a life.
You know, stop trying to deal with trivia and get fairness. But our chimp system demands fairness. I bought your book for one of my best friends recently. When I say recently, I mean in the last seven days, and I said, make sure you read that over Christmas break.
And they said, they came to me and said, do you know the best part of the book for me? She absolutely loved the book. She said there was one sentence in it in the book, which made her go, which is where you say in the chimp paradox that life isn't fair. Yeah.
And you actually, I wrote it down early on because you said that to me. You referenced it as an obvious thing. You say, have realistic expectations and remind yourself of the obvious. Life is not fair.
Stress will happen. Things will go wrong. For some reason that sentence resonated with her really profoundly because I think the friction she had in her life was expecting fairness. Yeah.
And that, I'll push this. I'm pushing my next book now. I mean, this one, a path through the jungle is a step up. The reason I did that one was to try and, this is exactly what I'm saying.
I threw all that out as a chimp paradox to say these are concepts. And she's giving what I've experienced doing talks over the last 20 years now to the public and various organizations is people come out of that and everybody picks something different. It's what resonates with you. So I'd have been working one to one with her.
I do this like fishing expedition to see what's resonating. And then we expand on that. So that's why I've gone into much more detail on this next book to say, right, if these bits resonate, he's the science behind it this time. Reference is going to read it up.
But if you don't, he's the practicalities. So that's much more of an investigative. How do you use this now? And what she's really doing.
And I've tried to push this in the next book is to say what she's saying there is, you know what? My first step is acceptance. And that is what winners do. Successful people go, you know, it doesn't mean acceptance will roll over.
It means let me start from what's in front of me and stop fighting it and then work with it and then see what I can do with it. Whereas when you look at the chimp brain, which generally is not as successful can be, what it does is it says, I don't want what's in front of me. I want it different. This is not what should happen.
So it spends its time getting aggravated rather than accepting and moving straight into plan of action. So we often spend a lot of time agitating about what's happened or what's in front of us instead of saying it's happened. One of my favorite podcast episodes that I recorded with a guy called Mo Gada, he said to me, we're in happy when our expectations of how life should be going are in that. Well, that's why when I've gone in, let's say in the new book, I've tried to say, how do these systems approach life?
What I've explained in that is the chimp system writes the script first before we leave the house. So it will say things like, I'm going to drive to work today and I'm going to get in 30 minutes. There'll be no hold-ups. So you can imagine the second or something in the way.
It explodes because that's what it does. It reacts. Whereas the human system doesn't. What the human system goes out with zero expectation, but it has hopes.
I hope to get in 30 minutes. That's a world of difference. And then when I find there's a traffic jam, it doesn't react. It responds.
So the two systems are very different. And if we can learn how to go into human mode, then we set off for work. There's a hold-up. We don't have an emotional reaction.
We have a response, which is accept. There's the word accept what's in front of me, but then follow through with a plan. So I in the book, I also first step is accept, but immediately say, right, what's the plan? Because that's what humans do.
The human system wants solutions. It wants resolution. It wants to move on. The chimp system wants to express emotion and then remove the problem.
Not solve it. There's a difference. Just remove it. Ignore it.
Display us it. Pretend it hasn't happened. That's not ideal because it tends to come back and bite us. What role does trauma play?
Like early childhood trauma play in how we respond in situations. Well, now we're getting deep. It depends on, again, I'm being black and white. If someone has a really bad trauma at childhood, it can have repercussions for our life.
Because now the circuits in your brain are developing. So if you have a really traumatic event and not necessarily what we would define as traumatic, it's what the child defines. So I'm being a bit facetious here. For example, it's got its favorite suites and somebody steals them.
That could be a traumatic childhood event. At that moment in time, the impact was so significant that it has repercussions. It's damaging the circuits. It might, for example, perceive that as nothing in life is safe.
Anything I have can be removed. However, most children get over it in seconds. But it depends on the child and what stage they're at and what the circumstances are at that point. Somebody else might have child abuse, for example, which is much more likely to have repercussions throughout life.
But we still get children to get child abuse and have no repercussions. So it isn't a definite black and white. It's probabilities. The way that I've come to understand it is almost like we're wearing our own sunglasses, which is a metaphor for interpretation.
So me and my brother, we could be identical twins. We go through the same experience, but we're wearing different sunglasses. So we interpret that experience differently. We deposit evidence about what that experience means into our computer.
Yeah. You're actually right. And it all hangs on, for example, somebody like your parent might suddenly say, oh, you're just an idiot. But something might have happened just before that where you've gone to school and you've got one out of ten and you were bottom of the spelling test and you've come home and then your father, you've done something at home and made a mistake and he says, you're an idiot.
And the two together get emotionally tangled. And that then damages the circuits. Whereas normally, if you come home, you've just got nine out of ten for the spelling, come top of the class and he says, you're an idiot. He's just about to think, well, I've got nine out of ten.
So therefore, the brain doesn't pick it up. So again, I'm trying to give examples of it so complicated. What I would say is it's hard to find these because they happen often in very young in life. And the emotional aspects and our memories emotionally and how we formulate things have about a three-year start on the human circuit, which doesn't come in for three years, approximately.
So that's why we have no memories of childhood. We can't remember before the age of two because it's not working. So our emotional memory begins in fetal life. So before we even born, emotional memories starting to work out what trauma is and react to that trauma.
So we act as a mother's heartbeat, for example. And again, every fetus is different. It's on the spectrum. And then we follow that through and therefore the machine can be damaged early in life.
It can be damaged at any point. And then we have something which I then try to give a terminology of gobbling to. So gremlin is a belief or an experience you can process and actually get rid of. Whereas a goblin is something which is really damaged the circuits.
So you get people often who are very low self-esteem. And that's going to continue throughout life. And I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't try and get rid of that. Generally, we can.
But it could be. They always have moments of low self-esteem. And what they need to do is accept. I'm going to have a way of dealing with them and then going back on to much more positive footing.
So sometimes we have beliefs within us that are just too hard to remove. And they may have come from traumatic experiences. What I'm saying is I'm not rolling over and saying, oh, well, this is damaged goods. I'm saying, let's learn if they do raise their heads.
Let's learn how to put them in a box, stop them from having impact in my life to do, and then work forward from that. And again, that's the skill to do. And it just needs people to learn how to do that. So we can take down gremlins, gremlins, but we can't.
Gremlins, you have to accept. And the reason I brought that terminology is sadly I've seen over the years when I've been in educational role as a doctor, I've trained doctors and clinical psychologists, nursing staff, how we deal with emotions. And what I've seen distress is when you get well-meaning therapists of any kind and they're trying to change something that can't be changed. And you have to say, you know, the circuit's damaged.
And rather than try and change it, let's learn to deal with it in a very constructive way, but not put that pressure on the person to do something which will probably never going to achieve. So I'd always say try. I'd always say let's try and process an event and let's try moving on so they remove it. So great if you can get rid of the law self-esteem.
But if it keeps raising its head, let's say stop putting pressure on that person and work with it. You still try and remove it so, but there's a point you say to look, let's accept it, but let's not let it take over. Let's learn how to put it in a box. So it's a bit like a virus in a computer system, exactly the same.
We accept its damage, but we can box it in. And if it does raise its head, we'll mop it up again. It's interesting because from doing this podcast, I used to believe that your traumas, you know, there's early experiences that define you and the evidence it creates could be, all of them could be eradicated with like some form of therapy or treatment. The more I've done this podcast and sat with exceptional people who have, you know, have exceptional stories and in many cases have exceptional traumas.
I've gone the other way and realized that even if they've had all the therapy, they've gone into Ayahuasca, they've had whatever they've had, it's still the some traumas, some of the deeper earlier traumas never seem to disappear. And so my stance has changed in recent podcasts. I've been saying that there are instances where some things just, it seems like people just can't overcome certain things. Is there a age group where goblins, the traumas that we can't seem to overcome the evidence or whatever it is, the damage to the circuitry, does it tend to happen earlier?
Yeah. So younger we are when we're developing the brain. The brain keeps developing up to the age of around 30. So it's young to me at my age is anyone under 30.
Okay. So I'm 30 now. Right. You're just about done.
You're just about done. All right. Some people finished. We know that it was the final sort of like bits of the brain mature, which is actually the rationality of the brain.
It matures around 25 to 30, but there are quite a lot of, particularly more men who keep going to around 32, but by then you're out of the oven. So whatever you've got, you finish. I agree with what you're saying is then you accept. This is the way my system is.
So let me manage my system. Instead of trying to make my system do something, it can't do. So I hope I'm not coming across saying death rollover. I'm not saying that.
But the reason I did it was it's they're also the therapist. It's really hard for the doctor, the nurse, the psychologist. It's really hard to see them struggling to try and change something or help someone. And it's not working.
And that can damage them to think what's wrong with me. I've seen it. Yeah. That's a therapist.
I've seen her crying. Yeah, because she couldn't change something. Right. And that's why I brought this out and said to the therapist, look, stop.
You know, let's you review what you're doing. There are other professionals, but as someone who tries to teach therapists and people are working this field, to say neuroscientific, there are damages to the circuit. So rather than say we're going to change it, you've tried and you've probably done a great job, because again, most people are really good. More therapists, I've worked alongside.
I've been excellent, you know, whatever the profession is. But don't beat yourself up if you're struggling with someone. It may be you are hitting the nail on the head, but exactly what you've just said, we're not going to move this person. So stop worrying about it and say let's try managing it first, whatever's raising it said.
And then if we manage it, then we might still try processing, but now we're not defeated. I have to say that's great advice for therapists, but it's also just great advice for someone in a family unit or in a relationship who has a partner or a loved one who is struggling with something where the circuitry might be irreparably damaged. And they're just wearing a relationship with that person because they're trying to change them. And the devil is in detail again, because there are other elements to this, because in other factories time, we know that the brain will try and repair itself.
Even if emotional scars, it will try and do that. So they can sometimes just be time. So we know like in grief reactions, you have to allow the brain time and the brain will process things in its own time. And that's a piece of strength generally in a serious loss or change of job or relationship gone or you've lost someone because they passed on.
It usually we say around three months is intense, then the 12 months is still bad, but some people it can be 10 years and there is no normal grief. There's just normal grief for you. And then if it gets stuck, then again, this where the clinicians will come in, if you have pathological grief, and this can be due to anything. It's often a belief system again in the computer that's stopping you being able to process something.