You’re a chimp, a human and a computer. It sounds like a mad idea and frankly it is. But never have I read anything that has helped me understand my brain and other people’s brains better than reading this book has and the sooner that you do too, the better for you.
I only get rowdy when I’m driving to work; people do a lot of stupid and irrational things in the middle of rush hour and when you are commuting for an hour a day in the thick of it you both see and participate in your fair share of idiocy. It’s amazing how many people will almost cause accidents (or actually cause accidents) just to get five seconds ahead. Now, I’m cooler than a refrigerator when someone cuts me up.
The basic idea behind this mental theory of sorts is that you are a human, logical in your thinking and reach conclusions by determining the facts, this is great. But you are also a chimp, an emotional animal that uses the rules of the jungle to reach its conclusions. The problem here, is that your chimp and your human are always listening and reacting to problems at the same time. Like a chimp, it is stronger than you and so, often gets to make its own emotional judgements long before you – the human – can soak in facts and make logical decisions – this is bad.
You’ll learn that you can’t get rid of your chimp, but you can learn to control it and influence the control it has over you by learning how it operates and introducing the computer to make the process automatic. You’ll learn that the computer is the centre that stores our bad habits and bad responses through goblins and gremlins and reading this now means putting good habits and responses into your computer for the rest of your life, and spending much less time re-writing bad behaviour.
If you’ve ever wondered why sometimes you (or someone you know) seems to get their back up over the maddest things; why you might beat yourself up over failure or why you set yourself goals and never achieve them, this book can help you understand why it happens and how to manage it like a buddhist monk, among a tonne of other things. The good thing is that because it’s your own head, it’s something you can work whenever you wish.
If I was rating it out of 647, I’d give it a 501. If you are interested in learning about your own head and want a head start in correcting future mistakes, you should put this on your list. If your life is heaven on earth, I wouldn’t bother.
And with that, if you’re interested you can get it from here.
ljns 