My Hidden Chimp: From the best-selling author of The Chimp Paradox

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Your Chimp thinking (emotional) and your Human thinking (rational) are two separate, independent kinds of thought. My Hidden Chimp is an effective and powerful new educational book that offers parents, teachers and carers some ideas and thoughts on how to help children to develop healthy habits for life. In general, your goal is to allow your Human to drive your actions, not your Chimp, because you’re less likely to behave in positive, productive ways when your Chimp is in control. Your Human thinks about the future, deciding on actions that will ensure that later, you’ll be happy with how you used your time. Explain that our minds can run wild and cause us a lot of pain with anxiety being at the top of the list.

The science behind the habits is discussed in a practical way with exercises and activities to help children think the habits through and start putting them into practice. If we consider the brain as a machine that can function in different ways, a valid question could be ‘can we develop the ability or skill to manage our brain, and make it work for us in the way that we want it to, all of the time?And just think of what we witness daily on social media, Twitter being the ultimate Chimp-provocation system. The Chimp Paradox isn’t a new psychoanalytical theory or approach, but it explains the neuroscience behind the complex working of the human brain that determines action and behaviour.

This is putting the human system firmly in the foreground and forcing your chimp to take a back seat. The book offers parents, teachers and carers some ideas and thoughts on how to help children to develop healthy habits for life. Further, the pleasurable element attached to drives can become a problem in and of itself, if it leads to addiction. For example, your Chimp will not panic when it meets strangers if your underlying value is ‘treat all people with respect.A key learning for me (albeit it now seems obvious) is how expectations should ideally change with a child’s age. It then offers practical ideas for the reader, using the 10 habits from My Hidden Chimp as examples. If the process might take longer, or your Chimp needs more than one exercise, allow as much time as your Chimp needs.