Tag: emotions

Taming the Chimp – Living our Values, Shaping Society

Prof Steve Peters, renowned psychiatrist, (particularly for his work with Sports teams) has written a brilliant book called ‘The Chimp Paradox’, which I regularly recommend to my patients. It’s well worth the read and full of helpful and practical tools to enable effective mindset and behaviour change. In it, he teaches about the 3 main parts of the brain when it comes to our habitual behaviours – what he calls The Chimp (Limbic System – where we make our immediate responses – based on our feelings and impressions), The Computer (the parietal cortex, which stores our automatic programmes and responses based on our beliefs and experiences) and The Human (the frontal cortex, where we do our thinking and make more conscious choices based on fact, truth and evidence, usually from a place of compassion and empathy). Many times we find ourselves acting in ways which are simply responses of our chimp brain – we’re not being guided by conscious choices or values, or even if we want to, we can’t seem to overcome the strength of our chimp. The problem is that our chimp is 5x faster than our human brain. And if we also have ingrained trauma-based responses to certain situations, when we are triggered (e.g. when we feel scared or lonely or whatever), our chimp gets ready to act, checks its facts with the computer which agrees that this is how it should/would usually respond and a bar of chocolate later……. Same old cycle, same old shame…..

 

 

So how can we change these patterns? Well, we need to feed our computer brain some new messages, so that when the chimp starts acting out and checks in with the computer, the computer no longer agrees with that old way of reacting, puts a pause on the chimp and allows the human brain to kick in with more positive choices. This happens, by consciously renewing your mind by feeding your mind your core truths and values. When you fill your mind with what you know to be true and the values you want to live by, you begin to make different choices. Your computer begins to store new and different information and therefore when your Chimp begins to act out, it will check in with your computer and find that the automatic affirmation of a learned behaviour can begin to change. This has huge implications in how we think about ‘taking responsibility’ and managing our own behavioural choices. I also think it has a wider application to our corporate mindsets and behaviours which cause us to continue acting in certain ways in society (which I will come onto later).

 

So, I have some core truths and core values which my lovely wife has painted on a board in my office. I have them written in my notebook, and (now less then I used to – to begin with it was at least twice a day) I remind myself of them regularly.

 

Here are the Truths that I live by:

1) I am unconditionally loved by the community of God (who unconditionally loves everyone and in whom we live, move and have our being), my wife and a bunch of other people

2) I am seen and accepted for who I am

3) Being a husband and a father are more important than any status I can ever achieve in work

4) It’s OK to make mistakes – in fact, failure is a gift

5) I can’t do everything – limits are important and so are teams!

6) Life is not always easy and happy, in fact it is unfair and really sucks at times – pain is part of the journey

7) People may not always deserve love and may not be easy to love, but you can still choose to love them – even your enemy

8) Forgiveness is a choice and it sets you and the other person free

 

Here are my Values:

Love people unconditionally

Walk with humility and integrity

Listen with kind eyes

Seek first to understand

Encourage and Forgive others and yourself

Act gently

Live generously with extravagant hospitality

Be open, honest and vulnerable

Leak joy

Release healing and hope

Walk in peace

Be faithful

Speak truth with compassion

Embrace pain

 

If you don’t know what is true and you don’t know what your values are, you cannot line up your behaviours to match them. If every time I experience pain, in whatever form that may take, I need to find comfort in a self-destructive behaviour, I have lost sight of my truths that I am unconditionally loved, that life sucks sometimes and have let go of my value to embrace pain. However, if I accept that I mess up sometimes. then I can forgive myself, and get back on track. It doesn’t have to mean a downwards slide. This is how change happens – slowly, but encouragingly as I learn to focus on who I am becoming, rather than believing I will never break out of unhelpful habits.

 

In her brilliant book, ‘The Value of Everything’ in which she talks about an Economics of Hope (how good is that?!), Mariana Mazzucato applies some of this thinking into the realm of how we build a society based on our values. What if we broke out of some of our self-defeating societal norms and built our economy from the best of our compassionate values? I wonder how many of our corporate chimp-computer agreed behaviours might change if we really examined what we value when it comes to the way we build society, through our economics and politics.  So much of the time we are sleep walking with our eyes wide shut to the mindsets we unconsciously imbibe, which shape our corporate behaviours and choices. How often do we examine our core values or the truths that we live by? It takes determined effort to demolish strongholds set up in our minds and replace them with a renewed set of values with which we can build a more loving and kinder world. What would this mean for health inequalities, poverty, and who or what we might choose to prioritise? Without this work, however, we will continue to behave in ways which tolerate huge social injustice and climate destruction. But things do not have to remain as they are. We can change! Hold onto hope! In this apocalyptic moment, in which we are seeing the realities behind the facades more clearly than for many years, it remains time to rest, reflect, reimagine and reset.

 

 

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Narcissus and the Narrow Path

Narcissus – The Ego Image of Ourselves

Do you know the story of Narcissus? Such a tragedy of a young man, who looked into a pool of water, seeing his image for the first time and found it so mesmerisingly beautiful that he could never bear to look away and died looking at his own reflection. Needless to say, in the world of selfies, it provides a stark warning to us! Its real meaning though is deeper and profoundly challenging.

I have written on this blog a few times about the enneagram and the power it holds in causing us to confront our root issues. In truth, each of us has an ego that we protect and project to the world around us. It is the image of ourselves that we want others to see, the things we would like others to believe of us. But it is only a narcissistic projection, a fake image that we portray, perhaps the image of ourselves that we are in love with or would, perhaps, like others to love. Our life’s work is to own up to the ego we have created and instead become our true selves, which enables us to become a gift to others. This is our deepest, spiritual healing.
My ego projection is that of a Type 7. I project to those around me that I am an enthusiast, an activator, a visionary, full of fresh and new thinking. I am fun and fun loving, I am an activator, a leader and generous. I so easily love this image of myself and what others think and say about me. But truthfully, I am and do those things because I am, for the most part, avoiding pain. There is, if you like, an inner child or shadow, I am trying to protect. A child who didn’t feel content and did not like pain I encountered early in life. So, in order not to feel that pain, I bury my true emotions and project to the world that “I am ok”. I may not be, but I want you to think that I am. And truthfully, I most likely think that I am ok, because I am a “head type” and so I process things very rationally. In any given moment it is often hard for me to know what I actually feel, because I bury my true emotions so that they do not overwhelm me and I do not have to feel any pain. And if you don’t ask me what I’m feeling I don’t have the language to tell you and even if you do, it will take me an enormous amount of energy and courage to really feel whatever it is that I am feeling. And so, in order to bury that pain further I encounter my root sin, which for a Type 7 is gluttony.

This gluttony does not have to be for food, though in my case it often is – I do love food! But it is also a gluttony for fresh or exciting or stimulating experiences – living life to the max. It can lead to such a rushing and business, so that life is never boring and I do not have to be still too long enough to encounter anything particularly negative. This can easily lead to addictive tendencies e.g. to social media, to creating a fantasy world or to always moving onto the next new thing, leaving those around me feeling caught up in the whirlwind or a bit used, abused and taken for granted, whilst the ‘Andy Show’ rolls on through town.

So, what do I do about my narcissistic ego projection that I want the world to believe of me and that I rather love? Well, I can stay as I am. I can continue to let everyone know that “I’m ok”; or I can fall over The Stumbling Stone and receive the invitation to accept just how overwhelmed I feel sometimes; that there is a deep dissatisfaction within me that drives my gluttonous behaviour to cover over my pain. And as difficult as it may be, there is no other salvation for me, no other way to find the simplicity and contentment I long for and to become the gift I can be. Does it mean if I accept that invitation that all my struggles stop, that my ego will die and that my sin will no longer trouble me? Well….yes and no!

There is a death of the ego, but it keeps rearing it’s ugly head and so needs a daily death and some days it dies more than others. And when I’m running from pain and feeling overwhelmed, gluttony of one sort or another will too easily take hold. But always in my path is The Stumbling Stone, inviting me, instead, to walk the narrow path, the path less trodden, the path less looked for because it means walking through a narrow gate in which the ego, I love too much is stripped off me. What I so easily forget is just how heavy and tiring that old ego is. To have it removed with surgical precision and find a way to walk that is so much lighter and less burdensome is pure joy. No more pretence, no more projection, just me, as I am, loved at the very core of my being.

No matter who you are, you too have an ego that you are projecting to the world. Your life’s work is to recognise that ego and choose which path you will walk. For a Type 2 you project that you are loving and helpful. For a Type 3 you project that you are successful and outstanding. For a Type 4 you project that you are sensitive and special. For a Type 5 you project that you are perceptive. For a Type 6 you project that you are reliable, a loyal skeptic. For a Type 7, like me you project that you are enthusiastic. For a Type 8 you project that you are strong. For a Type 9 you project that you are peaceful. For a Type 1, you project that you are honest, hardworking and orderly. The invitation to each of us to fall out of love with our ego and become our true self. Then we can say, like God, I am who I am.

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Embracing Weakness

Posted on by Andy

Tweet Last weekend, I spent the weekend with my wife and a bunch of close friends, immersing ourselves in the enneagram. It’s something I’ve done a bit of before and highly recommend it! The enneagram is an ancient way of understanding the human personality, our instincts, gifts, struggles and strengths. There are several different perspectives [Continue Reading …]

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