“10 Bullets-100 Words” Book Review— “The Chimp Paradox” By Dr. Steve Peters

Nishith Goyal
Nov 8 · 2 min read

“10 bullets-100 words” is an experiment to summarize my learning from a book which then entices my readers towards the book. The format is akin to a wholesome meal i.e. right ingredients, sound quality, and just the right quantity.

Book title — “The Chimp Paradox” by Dr. Steve Peters

  1. An easy analogy to control your mind and emotions!
  2. Your brain has two major parts, which often collide, so it’s important to understand them.
  3. The Prefrontal cortex — the human or rational part.
  4. The Limbic system — inner chimp or emotional part.
  5. Don’t wrestle your chimp, it’s stronger then you are!
  6. Eat well, stay healthy, seek happiness, and celebrate victories to tame your chimp.
  7. The third part — Computer, performs automatic functions based on past learnings.
  8. During conversation avoid “Chimp vs Chimp” scenario!
  9. Understand the “human”, “chimp” and “computer” to outplay each of them.
  10. A simple metaphor to bring confidence, success, and happiness.

My takeaways

The title of this book never let me assume the content inside. Once, I started reading, I realized the profoundness of the metaphor. We have a “Chimp” in our brains and it wants to act like an animal all the time. So how do you manage an animal? Manage your Chimp the same way. Our brains are made up of so many distinct parts, each one operates based on its own internal logic and assumptions. Some are rational, thoughtful and objective, and they are “Human” while others are highly emotional and impulsive, and they are “The Chimp” or simply automatic and they are our “Computer”.

These different parts and their differences can easily cause some internal conflict amongst them, but you can manage these through training, and simply being aware of these three distinct parts and their functioning.

A very “simple to read” book but with profound learning. There is a lot of science in there and the “basicness” of this book makes it very easy to understand all those complex scientific logic.


100 words are as easy as it’s challenging to summarise a good book. There is so much which remains unsaid. Still, I realize, confining myself to 100 words will bring out more creativity and effort.

And this is exactly what came about. I hope this structure entices you to pick up this book, learn a new thing or two and expand your outlook.

Thanks for reading.


If you liked this article, I would request you to kindly hit the 👏 button as many times as you can, so that more people like you can read it. Also, please share this article with your loved ones, so that they can read this summary and attempt to understand their inner chimps and manage their expectations.

    Nishith Goyal

    Written by

    Ardent reader, passionate writer, marathon runner, photography enthusiast, phillumenist & Success coach - Join "Be Better Bit-By-Bit" WA group.

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