Controlling Your Chimp!
Our article on the Chimp Paradox from back in December picked up a question of “how to control our chimp”.
This will be a lengthy article, so I’d recommend you grab a hot cup of tea some biscuits and enjoy!
As we know, the chimp is located within the area of the brain responsible for our irrational, emotional and primal thoughts. This formal name of this area is the Limbic System and it holds a potentially sinister mechanism, this feature is known as the Amygdala. The Amygdala itself is buried in the deepest core of the brain whereby it is virtually impossible to reach, yet it holds the greatest control in us..If we let it. Being responsible for emotion as irrational thoughts, it has the ability to hijack us and trigger automatic reactions of strong emotions in the moment leading to physical actions. Time and time again we can see this in sport up to the most elite levels, for example Mike Tyson biting Evander Holyfield and when Marcus Bahgdadis smashing several tennis racquets at the 2012 Australian Open. As we can see the Amygdala is, in other words, our chimp whom many have named “Amy” (get it?).
In summery - The chimp and the Amygdala are the same thing within the Limbic System and they are powerful dictators to our emotional behaviour.
You may be asking “why don’t they just control themselves?” and this may be a common but true thought to many, but I’d argue there is more to the story that than meets the eye. This issue is an element of self-discipline that we as humans do not fully appreciate until we truly acknowledge it. As athletes, amateurs and professionals, we know discipline is a necessity for personal success but psychological discipline in our mental toughness is somewhat overlooked (whether through the stigmatised perceptions of psychology or we work from our chimp). Fortunately, this is a subject in which athletes and coaches are now increasingly recognising as an area for sporting professionalism, fine tuning and good sportsmanship.
“so how do I control my chimp?”
-The answer comes down to self-regulation, reflection and positive self-talk. this we will get to later.
Dr Steve Peters describes dealing with the chimp in four ways:
1) Release the chimp: By this you are releasing the chimp to run wild until he/she has had enough and returns back.
2) Feeding the chimp: By this we are essentially breaking a deal with the chimp such as they can have their way if we progress so far. For example giving yourself a cup of coffee after 5 emails in the morning rather than before – this gives an expectation to your chimp to do well and to be rewarded.
3) Use logic with the chimp: By using facts, truth and logic to continue calming it and address its fears and concerns in that current scenario. This is the most viable option as you are using your Human element to control your primal thoughts.
4) Cage the chimp: From this, which we all try to so, we attempt to lock the negative thoughts away or by “putting it to the back of our mind”. This is a viable action, but I would argue that no one is invincible and there is a danger for the chimp to break out, depending on how tough you make that mental cage.
Positive Self talk, Self-Reflection and Regulation.
As seen from option 3, in sport and the wider areas of life, knowledge and facts have demonstrated to be crucial in becoming a successful athlete. Calming the chimp using logical facts enables us to become more powerful in our ability to perform and remain mentally tough.
- Positive Self-Talk
Through Positive Self-Talk, we are reinforcing that the notion of “we can, we have done before and we will do in future”. The natural effects of this is to cancel out our chimps negative thought control on us, believe it or not the effects of positive self-talk can be the difference between success and failure. Through positive self-talk we not only begin to clear our mind of doubts, but it also influences the body. The body’s’ physiology is directly influenced by the mind, should we ascertain negative thoughts then we will become tense which, affects our horse in turn through transferred feelings in the saddle. Therefore to counter with positive self-talk allows us to retain a more relaxed stance, clearer mind and regulated (to the best of our ability) breathing. This in turn, allows us to remain in control of ourselves and increase performance.
Such positive self-talk could be as simple as “why am I nervous? I’ve done this before”, “we’ve been through worse than this”, “I can and I will do this” and “this is going to be fun”.
In Summary – Positive Self-Talk = Increased performance.
Yet we cannot allow positive self- talk be the only way to aid us, indeed it must be aided by other factors to really give us the edge.
- Self Reflection
In my own research of elite equestrian athletes, Self-Reflection was a key element to boost long term performance. Self-reflection is the ability to for us to look back and see what we did right, what we did wrong and how we can improve it from reflection. Indeed, eventing athletes noted that self-reflections enabled them to understand their own and their horses strengths, limitation and how to get round it. As athletes, this use of self-reflection will not only give us that edge over the chimp as we are giving ourselves true facts we’ve reflected on. These reflections allow us to act accordingly and we do it every day, we just have to direct it.
But if it does go wrong on the day, just remember… reflect and adapt!
In Summary – Self-reflection helps us adapt to where we have gone wrong, giving us factual evidence we then use to sooth the chimp. Allowing us to self-reflect keeps our mind clear and open utilising our thought power.
Self-Regulation
Self Regulation refers to a wide context such as volitional factors of goal setting, self-monitoring, activation and use of goals, discrepancy detection and implementation, self-evaluation, self-consequation and self-efficacy. However today I’m going hone in on the area of the regulation of our own emotions. What does this mean I hear you say!
Emotions are an aspect of our every life and it is demonstrated by everyone, great and small. But what makes the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful athlete is that of influencing and directing our emotion. Remaining emotionally “stable” or regulated will lesson the amount of negative thoughts thrown at us by the chimp, therefore the less we dwell and the more mentally strong we will be. We’ve all been there, we’ve made a hick up on the field and we dwelled “damn, what if this” and “how could I have been so stupid” and by the time you know it, you’ve already made another hick up. But it is that exact thought process and procedure we can go through time and time again. So keeping our emotions regulated is vital to controlling our chimp and ourselves.
One way in doing so is to reappraise i.e. thinking about things from a different perspective) and distract i.e. thinking about or doing something different) have been found to be generally most effective in producing a desired change in feeling. Reappraisal, as mentioned before, allows us to change how we interpret a situation which subsequently decreases emotional responses. This enables us to improve our mood, change our emotions according and having no cognitive or physiological deficits – in other words, no negatives. A study by Oschsner et al. (2014) found when we reappraised our emotions when presented with negative images, the human area of the brain was more stimulated, and the Amygdala activity was lessoned. What does this mean? When we reappraise, we use more thought power and the human is winning the battle over the chimp, who is shouting with a muffled tone.
We can on the other hand suppress emotions as a form of self-regulation, when this happens a person attempts to reduce the emotion they are showing to others (through facial expressions or behaviour). Otherwise known as “putting on a brave face” this has been shown to present detrimental effects as lessoned memory. By presenting the suppression of emotions, we find that we lose the ability use cognitive ability (a necessity of thought power for performance).
In Summary – Reappraisal in changing how we look at emotions has the power to control our own said emotions and suppress the chimp directly. The traditional method of hiding or suppressing emotions has been shown to lead to negatively affected memory recall and concentration.
Closing message
I hope this somewhat lengthy article has demonstrated to you how we can keep in control when we are out performing whether that be at competition or even day to day activities. We are affected more so by our own minds than the outside environment, it is how we deal with situations by training ourselves psychologically that sets the difference between the successful and unsuccessful athletes.
