🙈 Five Chimps Theory
o.o
For the past year, I experimented with not listening to music, audiobooks, or podcasts while driving (psychopathic behavior, I know). My body’s response to commuting with music has been enlightening. Different songs produce a visceral feeling that influences my mood.
You might be like, “Duh, that’s why people love music!” This phenomenon relates to the Five Chimps Theory I originally heard from Naval Ravikant. If you see a group of five monkeys playing soccer with a mango pit, you can assume a 6th monkey that spends most of her time with them is scoring an absolute banger of a goal elsewhere. (In English this time) you can predict the behavior of a chimp by observing the behavior of the five chimps it spends the most time with. You are the average of who you spend your time with, so if you want to be a more positive person, spend time with positive people.
Nowadays, music gives me bliss for 20 minutes of my commute. Suddenly, a song by Baby Keem comes on (sorry, he’s not that good), and the buzz is killed. Now I’m searching for an album that gives me that rush again. I feel like we do this in so many aspects of our lives. We make goals, achieve or don’t achieve them, and then make more goals. This is useful for creating the life we want, but when does the cycle end? Your group may have a lazy chimp, a chimp that is always crying about spoiled bananas, or a chimp that keeps falling out of trees, but they’ve been with you through it all. Why would you give up on them?
Is that chimp Ronaldo or Messi? Hmmm….