Here is the full transcript of Steve Peters’s talk titled “Optimising the Performance of the Human Mind” at TEDxYouth@Manchester 2012 conference.
In this talk, Steve Peters, a psychiatrist, aims to help people become happy, confident, and successful by optimizing the performance of their minds. He introduces the idea of two parts of the human mind: one that thinks rationally and logically, and another that thinks emotionally and catastrophically. Peters explains that the “inner chimp” represents the limbic system, responsible for emotional thinking, and that by recognizing which part of our brains is in control, we can shift control to our logical thinking.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Thank you very much for inviting me. Hard clips to follow. Okay, I’m going to kick off by, first of all, saying that we’re into the London Games, and I want to introduce you to my world of elite sports. So, we’re going back to the Velodrome and what happened there.
Fantastic privilege to be part of the team that supports these elite athletes, and you probably want to know what I actually did. So, I’m going to try and run through about 30 years of experience and knowledge in about 10 minutes. So, we’re off.
The Role of a Psychiatrist in Athlete Success
I’m a psychiatrist. I’m a doctor specializing in looking after the human mind, and basically, my aim from my perspective is to make you happy, confident, and successful people, and that’s a tough challenge. There’s a good reason.
Okay, imagine you’re offered a machine. Okay, so you’re just thinking, here’s this machine I’m going to offer you now, and it’s made you really happy. It can give you confidence, success, it stops you from ever being anxious or worrying, and removes all unpleasant thoughts and feelings.
You’d say, I assume, “Please give me the machine.” The really good news is this: start smiling because you’ve already got the machine. Alright. Let the penny drop.
The machine is with you. Okay. It’s called your mind, and some of you don’t know what’s going on. In fact, probably all of you don’t know what’s going on. So, I’m going to illuminate you today by saying, “Look, this is what’s going on in your head,” and there’s a little bit of a surprise with it.
Understanding the Complexities of the Mind
Why isn’t my mind doing these things? If you say, “If it’s such a good machine, why is it not functioning?” And we’ve got a little bit of a puzzle here. Let’s imagine a Martian came down and had a look at this home.
It said there are lots of these human creatures about, and they don’t make sense to me. And this is the puzzle. While you’re sitting there calmly, you’re in charge of your legs. You don’t suddenly get someone jump up, run around the auditorium, and shout, “Sorry, I had a leg attack.” That doesn’t happen.
And yet, you sit there with your mind going all over the place, giving you thoughts and feelings that you don’t particularly want. And there doesn’t appear to be any control.
The Brain in Conflict: Understanding the Internal Struggle
So that doesn’t make sense to me, as a doctor, as a scientist. I’m thinking, why do you not have control over something that’s in your head? So, it’s a bit of a puzzle. Let me solve the puzzle.
You’re not alone. Okay, you’re not alone. There are two of you in your head. Okay. So, let me show you what’s going on because someone else is sharing your life and has the power.
Let’s investigate it. So, we’re going to start with a tough bit. So, I hope you drank your coffee this morning. The brain in conflict. Now, if you’re one of the medical students at Sheffield University, or I’m an undergraduate dean, I might test you on this at the end, but I’ll let you get away with it.
So, these are the fancy names behind me. You don’t need to remember them, but let’s have a look at the brain, your brain in conflict. Okay, so what you’ve got is not actually one brain, but a series of brains that in the womb all start growing as little units, and then link in and lock into a brain and cause you to have a lot of problems.
Because when these units get together, they don’t always agree on what’s going to happen. And the problem you’ve got with the human brain is this: you’ve got all of these components, and if you look at that brain on the screen, the part which is in the dark yellow at the front, the biggest bit, is your thinking brain. Only the edge thinks, only the cortex thinks, so the rest of it’s just a machine.
And the middle bit, surrounded by the cingulate gyrus and underneath, is called the limbic system, and it reacts. It doesn’t think, it just reacts. Now if that were your brain, you wouldn’t have a problem. You’d have a reacting bit that tells you with instincts and drives what to do, and then a thinking bit which is you saying, “Well, I’ll make a choice now.”
We have a major problem. The brain didn’t stay like that. The little bit in the middle, which is an automatic emotional machine, decided to push its way out to the edge of your brain, and it grabbed part of the cortex and said, “I want to think too.” So, now you’ve got this little machine in your head that’s starting to think for you, but it doesn’t think the same way as you.
So, if you think rationally and logically, this little bit of brain thinks emotionally and catastrophically. So, let’s see it in action, alright? You come into college, you come into school one day, and you hear someone say, “By the way, do you know so-and-so’s just said, ‘You’re really quite dense. You really shouldn’t be in this college, there’s something wrong with her.'”
The Brain’s Internal Dialogue and Conflict
Alright?
So, you think, “Okay, here goes the brain reacting.” Number one brain, immediate shout, “Kill her!” Alright? Number two says, “Hang on, hang on, don’t kill her. Don’t kill her. We have to do it socially aware, so let’s do it deviously, alright?”
Number three is your conscience and guilt that says, “Hang on, it’s in between the two, it’s got an impossible job to keep them apart and stop them acting,” and it doesn’t do very well. It’s not as strong in most of us, it gets persuaded by the other two, maybe, “Maybe it’s not so bad.”
Alright? Number four says, “I’m not interested in emotion, I just want you to give me the facts and the evidence, and I’ll just stay calm and logical and collected.” Number five says, “I don’t know why it’s all about me, me, me. How about the other person?”
Let’s think of empathy and compassion. “Why would this person say this about me? I’ve got to understand them.” And number six says, “Well, I’ll just tap into how bad this actually is, and then look at the memory banks and say, ‘What happens if you go and kill someone, and what happens if you talk to them, and what happens if you…'”
Discovering the Neuroscience Behind Thoughts and Actions
So, these six brains are now fighting each other, and one of them has got to get control. I’m hoping that the laughter when I said, “Number one, kill them,” doesn’t mean that’s the usual one that gets control. You have now this massive conflict. It’s too complicated.
So, if I start working with you to say, “As an elite athlete, what’s going on in your head as you get on that bike and the velodrome,” there’s too many brains trying to speak. Can we make it simple? And the answer is yes.
If you look at the neuroscience of the brain, it actually boils down to three teams, and three teams are in your head, and they’re all fighting as a team to get control of your actions, your feelings, your thoughts.
So, let’s discover what the neuroscience says about this. Okay? We’ve got a machine, without our permission, grabbing hold of you, giving you emotions and thoughts you really don’t want. Anxiety, worries, concerns, trying to please everybody else, worried about what everybody thinks about you, and you deep down are thinking, “I want to do this, I keep doing it, okay?”
So, let me introduce you to that machine. This is your inner chimp. You need to say hello to them. They’ve been with you since you were born.
Understanding the Inner Chimp
In fact, they were there before you, you’re the intruder. And they’re running your life, and you’re interfering. You’re interfering. So, you need to get to know this machine really well if you’re going to be successful.
Simplified brain, therefore, if we look again, is this. You live in your frontal lobe, that’s the main area that you dominate, and you think very clearly. Your inner chimp lives in the limbic system and thinks very catastrophically and emotionally, and finally, the rest of it can be put together, and we’ll stick it up for convenience in the parietal lobe, and that’s just a computer running the system, and it’s saying to the chimp and human, “I’m here at your availability, what do you want to do with me?” So now we understand these are the three components going on in your head, okay?
The problem with the computer is the chimp puts lots of rubbish in, so there’s lots of gremlins in there with silly beliefs and silly actions to promote its behavior. So, they’re stacked really heavily against you actually succeeding. Okay, so what we’ve got are three thinking brains in your head. You’ve got you, facts, truth, and logic, you’ve got the chimp, feelings, impressions, emotions, and a computer which is a machine saying, “Use me as you wish,” and the chimp usually uses it first.
So, you have a choice, human or chimp, how do you know who’s in charge? It’s dead easy. All you’ve got to say is, “Do I want these feelings? No, it’s the chimp. Do I want these thoughts? No, it’s the chimp,” and you’ll probably find 90% of your day the chimp’s in charge. Okay?
Taking Control: Recognizing and Managing Thoughts
So, it’s time to change it round. First, you’ve got to recognize who’s thinking, which part of your brain has got the blood supply and is using the oxygen up, because that’s got the power. Can we actually shift it by boxing the chimp with truth and facts and then finally choosing the thoughts you want? The answer is yes, you can, but it is a skill.
Why is it so difficult? The chimp brain is five times stronger than you, so you’re going to have to be pretty clever. Okay? He or she wins, they know what to do with you.
Learning About and Managing Your Chimp
You have to learn about your chimp and be ready for it. So, let’s show you an example. You go into a room for a meeting, and you’re first in the room, and the people before have left a plate of biscuits. There’s a chocolate biscuit and three plain biscuits.
So, that’s the message coming into the thalamus in your brain, and it sends a message, “You leave it to the chimp, you have no choice on that.” The chimp gets the first bite and the chimp immediately grabs the chocolate biscuit before anybody comes in and eats it quick. Okay? And then it looks into the, sorry, it annihilates you as a human, just in case you try and stop it, it hits you with a brick.
It uses up to 30 neurotransmitters to make sure you don’t interfere with this action. Alright? So, that’s the way the brain works. “Don’t blame me, go hire.”
The Consequences of Impulsive Actions
Alright? So, you look into the computer, and then a little gremlin says, “Eat the rest of them, you’ll never get caught.” Alright? So, you scoff all of them. You think you’ve got away with it, and everybody else comes in the room and sees the empty plate.
Unfortunately, you then belch, and everyone says, “That smells like a chocolate biscuit.” And so, now you as a human get the message and apologize profusely. Alright? That’s the way it works. The chimp acts first, you then calm down, and then you apologize. If you recognize the pattern, we need to do something about it.
Redirecting Thoughts: The Power of the Computer
You can, the missing arrow I’ve put in. You can actually go straight to the computer and stop the chimp in its tracks. So, if you look in that computer and you move the gremlins and put some autopilots, these are constructive, helpful beliefs, values you hold, such as, “It isn’t important what everybody thinks about me. It is important to please everyone. It is important to hold my morals.”
Then, when the chimp goes to do anything, it looks in the computer and stops. So, the computer eventually holds the power. So, this is quite a complicated system, but if you get it right, it means you can succeed in life.
Elite Athletes and the Chimp Brain
So, let’s look at what happens with elite athletes. There they are getting on the bike, Chris Hoy and his chimp, Victoria Pendleton and her chimp get on the bike, and they have very different thoughts. The chimp’s thought will be, “I’ve got to win a gold medal. It’s very important. I mustn’t let everyone down. The crowd looks big and angry. What if my rivals look bigger than me? I can’t fail. I don’t want to be here.”
This is the chimp rattling away, doing what’s natural and healthy. The human, however, has got the choice now. So, both Chris and Vicky are experts in this. They’ve got the skill, and they just box the chimp and say, “Right, what do I want to think? I want to think of process. I’m going to go and enjoy myself and do my best, because that’s all you can ever do in life. Do your best and enjoy it.”
Applying the Principle to Everyday Life
The same for you on the day of an examination. I teach medicine at Sheffield University, and students have to go through rigorous exams. And of course, you can imagine, there you are walking into your exam with your chimp, and it’s withering away at you. “I wish I’d revised more now. Why do they keep watching television? Was it so important to see strictly?” Well, probably from Vicky’s point of view, but your chimp is rattling away, as students do.
You don’t have to put up with this. You can actually start managing yourself. You can actually learn a skill that puts the chimp in a box. You are responsible. You can’t then say, “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t do well in the exam. It was my chimp. It made me watch the telly.” Alright? That’s no louse. OK?
That’s like having the dog that bites someone. You say, “Well, I didn’t bite. It was the dog.” You know, you’re responsible. You are responsible for your chimp. So, don’t blame it. OK? Remember, you always have a choice.
The Challenge of Managing the Chimp
You can choose to go through life listening to your chimp, or you can become human and manage your chimp. It’s a skill to manage it in the chimp, so you have to practice until you get it right. It’s not easy. OK?
So, when Chris and Vicky got on the bikes, it wasn’t easy putting a lot of hard work into the gym, hard work on the track. It was really going against nature and saying, “I’m not going to go natural. I’m going to go unnatural.” And that’s what I’m asking you to do in your minds.
I’m saying, “Stop going natural because it’s very destructive to you. We’re really built to live in a jungle, not society.” I’m going to say, “Go unnatural. Turn your mind over and start being the calm, collected human that you really are and stop being fooled and hijacked by your inner chimp.”
Your chimp isn’t bad or good, it’s a chimp. So, don’t start saying what Vicky Pendleton would ask me, “How do I murder the chimp?” Alright? You can’t do that. You have to look after it. The secret is to talk to your chimp, reason with it, help it, OK? Take care of it, and then it won’t cause you any problem.
Concluding Thoughts: Harnessing the Power of Your Mind
But if you don’t look after it and you’re not even aware it’s there, you’re in serious trouble. You have to reassure your chimp and look after it. OK, this was a rattle through of what can be, hopefully, for some of you, life-changing when you start to realize this fantastic machine in your head is there for your use.
All you’ve got to do is start understanding it and then get a skill to operate with it and get to be the person you really want to be. Thank you for listening. I wish you and your chimp every happiness and success in life. Thank you.