Before we get into today's episode, I want to talk about the time that you were driving from your home to a wedding and you didn't make it. Why didn't you make it? Because I put petrol in my diesel van. You put petrol in your diesel van. Today is the 10th of February. There is no more stupefying thing than anger. Nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant. If foiled, none more insane.

Since it's not driven back by weariness, even in defeat, when fortune removes its adversary, it turns its teeth on itself. Wow. We love words, don't We love words. We don't get on, but we love words. That was Seneca on anger. That sounds like a Jerry Springer episode, doesn't it? It certainly does. And I think where it gets me thinking is one of our other friends, we've never met him, but I think we'd get on, Dr. Steve.

Peter's author of The Chimp Paradox. The Chimp Paradox. Which is a great book that talks about how our brains are split into almost separate compartments. There's the chimp, there's the human, and there's the computer. And often as human beings, at the mercy of the chimp. So the chimp for people who don't know is this idea of you've got this ancestral brain that's carried you for all of evolutionary histories as a species.

but it's designed to do things that sometimes feel a bit counterintuitive. It's designed to say, is that a tree or is that a lion? It's safer to assume it's a lion. I'll assume the worst to keep me safe. There's part of your brain that's always doing that. And it's also the part of the brain that looks after emotional response. Because if you think of emotional response as a survival mechanism, in a moment where it's time for me to defend myself against the lion, well, anger is going to be

pain relief. It's going to be fight or flight. There's going to be bit of adrenaline involved with that as well. Excitement is going to be, oh, I feel like something's about to happen. I'm going to get that dopamine rush. I'm going to do it again. So that part of the brain is certainly responsive for those survival mechanics. So it's a good thing. It's not a bad thing that it's there, but we've got to think about these different moments where the chimp takes over. And I think about who's driving the car. Yeah. Who's driving the bus.

You're a human being that's walking through life with these different parts of your brain that trying to grab the steering wheel at different moments. And there might be a moment where as the salesperson, you've had the call where someone's slammed the phone on you. They've said something rude to you. They've said, get a real job, whatever it may be. You've had that response to the email that's like, delete this or words that I fuck off or whatever it may be. And suddenly the chimp's getting involved because it's saying, look, this isn't a safe environment. Let's stop.

But what it'll start doing is looking for stacking of negative things. It'll start looking for other reasons not to do it. You don't really like this job anyway. And actually, yesterday was rubbish. Why don't you bucket out? Why don't you leave? It'll look for other reasons, but that's not you. That's the chimp part of the brain looking to protect you and find other excuses not to put yourself in harm's way again. I've made, that was beautiful. That was really good stuff. I've found myself talking to my chimp.

in the past. Oh yeah, me too. found myself in, very rarely happened, but I do have bouts of rage where you're just like, where has that come from? And then all of a sudden, like the toasty, the toasty, I once a toasty was burning and I threw the frying pan off the balcony and I had to say, okay, chimp brain, what's going on over here? Why have you just thrown that cheese toasty off the balcony? But you talk to yourself and be like, right, okay.

Is this a human thing? And then typically after a bout of anger, you feel silly, don't you? There's a lot of like guilt or silliness or a bit of shame. So it's about controlling those emotions in the moment. And you've got to remember that when you're calling people up, you're always going to be speaking to the chimp part of the brain first. And that's why we talk about permission-based openers, because there are three things that kind of dissect.

the the chimp part of the brain and get you through it. Tell me what they are. Come on. Just hold your horses. Don't keep your secrets. Humor. Yes. Honesty. Okay. And allowing them room to say no. Beautiful. So if you can make somebody laugh, I've never seen somebody laugh and angry at the same time. Ha ha. Wow. Now I have, now I have guys. There's a first for everything. But if you can make someone laugh, they're not going to be angry.

And if you can hit them with upfront honesty and allow them that space, that chimp then starts to feel safe. And when that chimp starts to feel safe, the chimp part of the brain will kind of dissolve and the human part, the rational part will come forward and you can engage in a logical conversation and you can talk about different things and start to get them to open up. Yeah. When we were first coming out of lockdown, I used to s-

feel certainly for the first few months, a bit anxious about going to like big social events. So we might be driving to like a wedding or something like that. And I could feel on the way there like, it's all the anticipation of, cause you've just not been used to it for a few years, have you? And I found that the chimp room, when I was learning about the concept of it, you were talking about talking to yourself. If I was in the car and I'd say, look, we can, we can, in my brain, I'd say, we can definitely talk about this, but just not now, is it all right if we deal with this later?

It just all calm. It's really weird. It just, my whole body had just calmed down. It'd go, it'd be like, I've been acknowledged and now we've moved on. But the thing to be aware of is those other times when perhaps it's sneaking into the conversation, isn't it? From the, from the prospect side. So those moments where you might have outstayed your welcome and the chimp suddenly snaps back into the conversation. So what does that normally sound like? Well, the call's going really well. And then suddenly the prospect just said, actually, can you send me an email?

or can you give me a call back or, I've got to go. Something's happened there upstream. You've said something that's triggered. Like a salesy question. Yeah. And the chimps suddenly woken up and gone, well, hold on a second. You're trying to do something here. We're not safe. And the bias that that's called reactants. So we've got all these hundreds of different biases that exist in human psychology. But reactants would basically say, I feel like you're trying to persuade me. So I'm going to do the opposite.

of you want me to do. And that's reactants again, keeping you safe, which would be a chimp response. And with reactants, the more I try and push you into it or push you back into it, you're going to pull away. So I need to allow you that space and accept it and try to get that chimp out of the brain to disappear again and bring back the human brain. This has been a lovely lesson. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zach Thompson. Remember you will die. Bend it like Beckham. I can tie it in a knot.