The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happiness

I'm not into self help books, but this one is a readable explanation of how the parts of your mind work together or against each other and gives tactics on where to spend your energy to get your mind in order. The author uses readable language, and understandable concepts to explain how it works.While not the authorial intent, if you are a Christian, this is a nuts and bolts explanation of what Paul is talking about in the latter part of Romans 7. This is where Paul describes his two selves, the one that does what he wants to do (the human), and the one that does stupid stuff despite his best efforts (the chimp). I suspect there are parallels in other religious traditions and would be interested in their writings on the topic.

the book was so well written. it provided me with amazing tools to go about my life and be successful at everything i want and don’t want to do. very well organized into steps and perfect for building on top of each chapter. a good buy all around and would recommend to anyone, especially right before college.

As a recreational cyclist of 50 years or so and an amateur racer for the past 30 years and a follower of pro cycling, I had read frequent references to chimps in relation to the elite athletes of British Cycling. I had also read of Dr Steve Peters who works with British Cycling and the Sky Procycling Team. I also knew that his work with the athletes had been extremely successful in helping them win a string of Olympic Gold Medals in Beijing 2008.I was therefore curious as to what the fuss was about. This book neatly and clearly sums up the concepts applied by the author in his work. His thesis is that we all have 3 parts to our brain, a Chimp who works on emotion and sees things in black and white and a Human who is calm, sensible and logical. Both struggle for control and often the Chimp wins and make us do things in sport and everyday life that we might regret. The Chimp and the Human program the third part of our brain which is the Computer. In other words the part that allows us (amongst other things) to ride a bike, drive a car, and behave in a reasonable manner towards our fellow humans.Using the concepts and ideas in the book, one can learn how to manage the Chimp to get the best out of sport, work and life. It also teaches us how to recognize and work around other people's Chimps.I found this book gave me a great insight into the way I used to react to sporting, work and general life situations. It alerted me to the existence of my Chimp and gave me some tools to manage it.The book is an excellent tool for planning sporting objectives.Don't expect this book to give you the answers to life's problems but it will certainly give you the tools to help you deal with them.Highly recommended

There are two phrases, among others, that I like to live by. The first is "if you don't like something change it, if you can't change it change your attitude towards it." And the second one is "you can't control how you feel, but you can control how you react to it." These two phrases have Chimp Paradox written all over it, and this book is pretty much the great elaboration of the phrases.Derive his fact-based theories from neurological researches and decades of experience, Prof Steve Peters analyses the mechanism of the brain between the Frontal (the logical Human), the Limbic (the emotional Chimp) and Parietal (the memory-storing Computer), and how different functions of these 3 can conflict and/or complement each others to produce our thinking process and decision making process.Surprisingly, for such a complex subject matter this book is really a light reading, which is written in a simple and concise way using easy to digest symbols, diagrams and bullet points. But yet, when I tried to read more on neuobiology as a follow up, I can somehow keep up with the complicated and serious stuff thanks to the understanding from this book.It is by far the book that I highlighted the most, with every single line seems to be important, and it is so psychologically spot on that it feels like it is tailored on the conflicts between my own Human and Chimp. It also gives me huge understanding on how to differentiate between the Human and the Chimp in people around me (and how to engage to them accordingly), and it even has given me a clear and simple solutions to some of my, my family's, and friends' real problems. 5 stars!

This book has helped me so much in EVERY ASPECT of my life, time and time again.Working in Corporate America, I found myself overly stressed, frustrated, depressed and reactive to so much in my life."WHY ME??""WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME???"- Just SOME of the daily mantras I would scream in my head as I begrudgingly poured my morning coffee and wished a sudden and tragic death upon my life...!!DRAMATIC MUCH?!This was my daily life before listening to this book..**********I committed this entire book to memory.I remember the EXACT moment when I suddenly realised, while listening to this book..."LIFE ISN'T FAIR.IT ISN'T ACTUALLY FAIR, IS IT?!"You see, I was UTTERLY CONVINCED that things would always 'turn out in the end'.. 'it would 'all be okay'.IT'S BLOODY NOT OKAY."THE WICKED WITCH DOESN'T DIE IN THE END!!!!"***********I nearly cried that day.I wanted to call my mum up and straight have a MASSIVE GO AT HER and ask herWHY ON EARTH DID SHE LIE TO ME ALL THESE YEARS WITH THESE SOPPY FAIRYTALES?!?!?!?**********Needless to say that was the best moment of my life.A turning point.My journey to taking back the reins of my life started around then.Rarely again, would I be a victim to my EMOTIONAL CHIMP.**********Get this book.Your mindset will shift dramatically.

When I read this book I thought it was genius however afterwards I realised it had just made a convincing case that what it says is true, when in fact it isn't. I ended up wasting more time worrying about how I was feeling and reacting than being myself and ultimately the whole exercise was a total waste of time. I don't recommend this book, it convinced me to never read a 'self help' book again and instead focus on books in which I actually learn something useful toward a hobby, craft or a new skill in my job.

The few good points covered in this book could have been covered in a couple of short paragraphs. The rest was waffle and pretty patronising. A shame as the waffle devalued the few and far between little gems hidden underneath the unnecessary 'padding' I had to force myself to finish and sadly wouldn't recommend.

It's an ok read, but from the reviews i expected this to be fantastic, and to be honest, it's not. I've given up half way through. In my opinion, it has the 1 good theory about us all having this chimp inside us, and we need to control it. This is dragged out throughout the book. Maybe it's me, but i got a bit bored with it.

Peters is a Consultant Psychiatrist, who is a Dean for undergraduate students at Sheffield University Medical School. He is also credited with helping athletes achieve success and has worked with: Sky Pro Cycling team, Olympic Gold medal winners and Liverpool Football Club.The Chimp Paradox is not a new theory. Peters has taken an old theory and repackaged it, making it more accessible to more people. The theory goes that within our mind we have three aspects: the computer, the chimp and the human.The computer stores autopilots (useful beliefs or behaviours), gremlins (destructive beliefs or behaviours that are removable/changeable in the computer) and goblins (destructive beliefs or behaviours that are difficult to remove/change). All of these are based on past experiences. The computer also holds the values and beliefs that we live our lives by.The chimp is the emotional part of your brain and is wired for survival and procreation. Whenever the chimp perceives a threat he will decide to fight, flight or freeze. The chimp can hijack you and is responsible for often irrational or destructive behaviours.The human on the other hand is the logical and rational part of you. The problem comes that the chimp responds 5 times quicker than the human. So it is up to the human to learn to manage the chimp and to change the programming of the computer, so that all parts of the brain work towards the same goals without conflict.Anyone struggling with emotions, emotional intensity or regulation will find The Chimp Paradox useful. The book covers improving: day to day functioning, motivation, health, success and happiness.Overall Peters should be commended for making the psychological theory more accessible. The Chimp Paradox is simple to understand and includes plenty of real life examples. The only downside to this is that Peters sometimes over explains the obvious.If you’re into self-improvement, self-help or other similar topics, then you’ll enjoy The Chimp Paradox.Review soon,Antony

This is a great book - it's very easy to read but it makes you think! I don't normally read these type of 'self help' or 'motivational' books but this is good. All I need to do now is get the wife to read it in the name of domestic peace & quiet.