The Blank Piece of Paper
Start with who you want to be, not with what is wrong — and recognise that list as the actual you.
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Peters calls this the biggest point in his book and his standard starting point with anyone, including someone presenting with low self-esteem, abusive relationships and impulsive behaviour. Instead of beginning with the problem — which he calls the treacle — you take a blank sheet and write down the person you want to be and the behaviours you want to have. What people write is invariably the Human system: calm, confident, a good friend, of integrity. Nobody writes 'anxious'. The logical move is then decisive: if you could remove the Chimp and Computer, that list is what would be left, so that list is you. Everything anxious you present to the world is interference from a machine, not a description of your character. Self-esteem can rise on that recognition alone.
Origin
It is the explicit starting-point exercise Peters sets out in his book A Path Through the Jungle, written ten years after The Chimp Paradox because so many people asked him to expand the concepts into something they could work through themselves.
Core principles
- 01Define what you want, not what you don't want and not what you are currently experiencing.
- 02The Human system can choose; the Chimp has no choice and the Computer is merely programmed.
- 03The Human system is not built to do anxiety — it is built to be rational and calm.
- 04What you present to the world when you are anxious is interference, not identity.
- 05The list must be genuinely yours, not a generic virtue list, or it proves nothing.
How to run it
- 1
Rule out illness first
Peters starts as a doctor: make sure the person is actually well. Low self-esteem, loss of pleasure and loss of energy can present as depression, and depression presents in many ways, so he checks that the mind is not ill and in need of treatment before treating anything as a long-standing pattern.
Watch out Do not run a self-development exercise over an untreated clinical condition.
- 2
Move the problem to one side
If the person needs to get it off their chest, let them — Peters says that matters. But then the presenting material is deliberately set aside. He explicitly refuses to start in what he calls the treacle.
Pro tip Getting it off your chest is itself useful, because you process your own words when you hear them.
- 3
Write the person you want to be on a blank sheet
Characteristics and behaviours, in the positive. I want to be calm. I want to be confident. I want to be a good friend, of integrity. Peters notes people also write life content — a partner, marriage, kids, working out, eating well — but it is the character list that does the work.
Pro tip Write it as characteristics, not achievements. Achievements are what the Chimp hangs self-esteem on.
Watch out Nobody writes 'anxious'. That absence is the point of the exercise, so do not pad the list with problems.
- 4
Recognise the list as you, and everything else as interference
Peters makes the argument explicitly: if you could surgically remove the Chimp and Computer systems you would be in complete control of yourself, and you would choose to be calm and confident. Therefore that is you. The anxiety being presented to the world is the machine interfering, not your character.
Pro tip Self-esteem can rise on this recognition alone, before any other work is done.
- 5
Test and challenge the list over time
Peters does not take the list at face value. Not everyone writes compassion or integrity, and some genuinely do not care about them — so he has to work out who the person really is. He looks at evidence: remorse, whether they compensate for mistakes, their history. It takes a series of conversations so that neither of you is fooled.
Pro tip The fact that different people write different lists is what proves it is yours rather than a generic list.
Watch out Someone can write a virtue list because you asked them to, or because they wish it were true. Challenge it against their actual history.
In the wild
Bartlett poses a hypothetical: 33 years old, low self-esteem manifesting in abusive relationships, bad work relationships, very negative feelings and impulsive behaviours like overeating. Peters describes overeating in that context as a maladaptive coping strategy, possibly self-punishment — 'I don't deserve to eat well'. But rather than starting there, he checks for depression, lets the person unload, then goes to the blank sheet.
→ The starting deliverable is not a plan to fix the eating; it is the person grasping that the calm, confident person on their sheet is who they actually are, and that the rest is machine. Peters says self-esteem can rise on that alone.
Asked what single lesson he would leave behind, Peters answered from his scientific background: never forget who you are — because that means you have removed the Chimp and the Computer and found yourself.
→ He pointed straight back to the exercise: remember the blank piece of paper, because that is going to give you the self-esteem you deserve.
Common mistakes
Starting with the problem
Peters calls the presenting mess the treacle. Beginning there anchors the whole process to what you do not want and to symptoms, rather than establishing an identity that the later work can be built on.
Muddling yourself up with the machine
The moment you say 'I'm trying to please people and I can't say no' and read that as a personal weakness or fault, Peters says you are in trouble, because you have confused yourself with a system that is behaving naturally.
Writing a generic virtue list
If the list is what you think you should write, it is signalling rather than definition, and it cannot serve as the reference point for everything afterwards. Peters spends multiple sessions challenging the list precisely so this does not happen.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone starting mindset work from a low point — low self-esteem, people-pleasing, self-criticism — who needs a stable reference point for who they are before working on behaviour.
Not ideal for
Someone in acute untreated illness, where Peters' own first step is clinical assessment rather than this exercise.
From the transcript
“the starting point is get a blank piece of paper and write down who you want to be what behaviors do you want to have…”
“if we remove the chimp and computer system then you're completely in control of yourself so you would choose to be calm you would choose…”
“the biggest point is to define yourself because now you've got self-esteem can rise just on that alone”
“never forget who you are ... remember the blank piece of paper because that's going to give you the self-esteem you deserve”
From the episode
The Mindset Doctor: The Secret Man Behind The World's Top Performers: Steve Peters
The Mindset Doctor