The forces of no tell you not to give in to your impulsive side, but to look elsewhere in your brain for guidance. There are good reasons for this, mostly having to do with the fact that the world has recently changed very fast. We used to live in a world in which we didn’t need an inner no, because no was all around us. Now we live in a world designed to give us what we think we want. Now yes is all around us. The psychologist Steve Peters gives one of the clearest metaphors for the impulsive part of the brain. He calls it the chimp. Everybody has an inner chimp, he says. Actually, he’s talking about the limbic system, the centre of emotions. We all have an inner human, too. Your inner human is located in the prefrontal cortex. The chimp makes snap judgments. It’s obsessed with food, sex and immediate danger. [. . .] One of the most important things Peters says is this: the inner chimp is much more powerful than the inner human. When information reaches the brain, it gets to the chimp first. The chimp has first dibs. Which means that everything you see or hear is framed by your impulses. When you see something you want, yes comes first. Yes is louder. No is a distant second. One thing you might notice at this point is that we seem to be living in a world designed for the inner chimp in all of us. Politics is for chimps; Twitter is for chimps; clickbait is for chimps. In a broader sense, the internet is for chimps. Not all of it, of course. But watch the blogger Tim Urban’s brilliant Ted talk on procrastination. You start out with the best intentions. But it’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole. [. . .] In other words, the world has got too fast for us. Things have evolved to grab the chimp’s attention. Food is fast. It’s engineered to get glucose into our blood as soon as possible. Social media is fast. It stirs us up. It engages the chimp. To thrive, we must slow down. Everybody else is led by their inner chimp. So slow down. If you wait, you’ll win.
William Leith, Say ‘No’ and change your life
