The Jordan Harbinger Show - 19: Denise Shull | How to Turn Bad Emotions into Good Decisions

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

Denise Shull (@DeniseKShull) is a performance architect, ReThink Group founder, and author of Market Mind Games: A Radical Psychology of Investing, Trading and Risk, considered the Rosetta Stone of trading psychology. "The worst decision you make is always from acting out some feeling you usually don't know you have." -Denise Shull What We Discuss with Denise Shull: Why understanding what we feel and why we feel it is a source of power for creating change and spurring transformation. Why the avoidance mechanisms high performers often use to escape the influence of emotion on actions is counterproductive. How feeling negative emotions can help us decode hidden information inside those emotions to help us perform at our best. What we can do to recognize what we're feeling -- especially if we've regulated ourselves to feel nothing in the face of difficult decisions. How a thesaurus can be used to keep us from making mistaken decisions. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The research actually shows that if you can come up with the right word for the feeling, like, is it fear, uncertainty, doubt, concern, panic on that spectrum, you will be less likely to mistakenly act on the feeling. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer Jason DeFilippo, and today we're talking with Denise Schull. She's the author of Market Mind Games, and frankly, this book is the Rosetta Stone of Trade psychology. She also was the inspiration for Wendy, the character Wendy, the performance psychologist that is in the office on the show Billions. And I thought that was a fascinating

character. I was surprised and happily so to find that there was a real life, Wendy, and here she is. Denise leverages neuroscience, emotion research, and modern psychoanalysis and has created mental models and strategies for solving otherwise unsolvable mental blocks, which is, you can see why that might be useful in a hedge fund or other high performance environment. And of course, She now addresses these challenges of slumps, repetitive mistakes, and confidence crises in traders, portfolio managers, Olympians, pro poker players, and professional athletes are all on the roster. And today, we'll discover why understanding what we feel and why we feel it, two things that are harder than they sound, is the source of power to create, change, and transform. And we'll explore how high performers often use avoidance mechanisms to escape our feelings and instead bear down on other achievements. and why this is actually counterproductive.

We'll also uncover how feeling negative emotions can help us decode hidden information inside those feelings and emotions to help us perform at our best. As usual, there's a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of all the key takeaways here from Denise Schell. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. Now, here's Denise. Denise, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Jordan.

So you're a performance architect, which on the one hand, it sounds really cool. On the other hand, it sounds kind of space age, and I'm not sure what the heck it means. You want to tell us what that is? Space age is funny. Pretentious might be the term other people have used, but basically the reason we use that term for my title is because I look at each individual in their totality of their emotional patterns and then figure out how we work with them. So I don't come in with my five-step or ten-step program.

It's about really creating, i.e. architecting each person's situation or how I'm going to help each person. So that's why we feel like performance architect is a bit more descriptive than performance coach. Okay. I can see that. And I understand that it's more all-encompassing. And I've seen billions and Jason's a huge fan of billions. And the role that Maggie Siff as Wendy plays is a fictionalized version of what you do. But how close is it?

I mean, do you have an office or do you work in a conference room with people at these firms and they roll in and they're just having these breakdowns and they're screwing up their work? How close to reality is this? Yeah, it's surprisingly close. Now, when the whole show got started, I didn't work with them until they were like two or three episodes. into it. So some of that stuff she did at the very beginning, like pound your chest and remember how much money you made was not so much me. That was some Tony Robbins stuff right there. They were like, uh, all right, I went to date with Destiny and let's implement this. And then they found you finally. Yeah, I sort of thought that too. But and you know what?

If a full confession, I probably have actually used that kind of thing subsequently and said, not to sound too much like Wendy, but you know, I do really want you to think about that silver medal you won or that bonus you got last year and really feel it. So maybe I learned something from the show, but beyond that, there's one particular hedge fund where I work with everyone in the firm. I'm not on site full time, but I'm on site once a month. And I sometimes think this is amazing. This is exactly like the show. Nice. I have my own office in New York. I do a lot of work on the phone. I've got clients all over the world. So in that sense, it's probably different than Wendy.

You know, television's not likely to show someone on the phone doing this kind of work. That's less exciting. Yeah, yeah, less exciting. And there's actual research that shows it can be more effective. I've always found it to be more effective. I would prefer to be on the phone with someone as opposed to sitting in a room looking them in the eye. Because if someone's talking about their feelings and I'm really trying to listen to the nuance and what they're saying, it's easier to do if we're not looking at each other.

Really? Okay, let's dive into that a little bit. So you're listening a lot to their vocal tonality and maybe those pauses, but if you're looking at them, you get, what, it's distracting somehow? Yeah, yeah, you get distracted by, you know, the look on their face, what they're wearing, I mean, you know, what they look like. It's just easier for me to do the kind of work I do if I'm just listening to them. I like to meet people in person and I have lots of clients that even New York City clients that we do most of the work on the phone and then get together once a month or once every quarter.

In those situations, touching base in person does provide a more nuanced, more robust view of them. But that's the point at which I already know what emotional patterns they tend to go through. So on a day-to-day basis, it's actually easier for me to help people if I'm just listening. Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense. For me, it seems like, it seems a little counterintuitive. Oh, I'd want to see their body language and the way that their eyes are moving and what are they avoiding?

And are they just, are they quiet because they're looking at their Blackberry? Are they quiet because we've touched on something that has an element of shame attached to it? But now I'm just maybe reading into it slash I've watched too many psychologists. on TV and now I have no concept of how this is actually done, which is also very possible. Well, you know, in a bit, being on the phone is a bit like being on a couch in a psychoanalyst office. Yep, I could see that. Where the person on the couch in a psychoanalyst office, I mean, the reason that exists

is so that they're not looking at you and so that they can more free associate by, you know, just being looking at the ceiling. But I just did it because, like, I had a client when I first started in Hong Kong, I have a couple clients in Hong Kong and Australia and London. And so it's like, okay. And occasionally we'll do FaceTime or Skype. Usually what happens is people who can meet with me in person insist on it at first. And then I tell them that that's great, but, you know, over time it probably works better.

And that after one or two meetings, we'll be like, okay, it's fine. We can do the phone. Yeah, I can see that. especially, look, if I was a trader at a hedge fund and you said, just jump on the phone and tell me all your secrets. I might say, actually, let's go ahead and have a coffee quickly first so I can make sure this isn't going to bite me in the butt. Because I used to work on Wall Street as well in finance and as an attorney, of course, but it's not exactly an environment with a lot of fuzzy feelings and trust being thrown around there with no without being earned. It's really kind of the opposite in a lot of ways. And I would imagine that some of the clients that you work with, one, probably think that what you do is either BS or stupid or doesn't matter for them until they really need it.

And they probably come to you when they're either going to fail and or get fired and have no choice or when somebody they also trusts really recommends you. Yeah. I mean, I can think of a guy just recently who, oh, it's a different fund where we've worked with him for a year and we started out. And we prefer to start out with some sort of education for the whole team so they get some baseline, this different idea of emotions. And he told me, oh, my gosh, the first time you were here, I thought this was insane. He goes, now I think it's the best thing we're doing. But truth is, I wouldn't be here if people didn't actually ultimately have that reaction. And I think that's only because I was interested in and have tried to educate a more,

accurate view of feelings and emotions and what happened for all these years now is people related to it and said things to the effect of, oh my gosh, I thought it was just me or, you know, your description is so much more accurate to my experience, but I didn't want to tell anybody. So it was that kind of reaction that propelled me to actually build this business. It really didn't start out like that. So you leverage neuroscience, emotion research, modern psychoanalysis, and you've created these mental models and strategies for solving what people used to consider unsolvable mental blocks. And as a former trader and trading desk manager, I'm wondering, how did you then go, all right,

I'm trading, oh, let's start to apply neuro economics and psychology to my work at this trading desk. It seems like a very random connection, unless you've been watching billions in the first place, which is based on your work. So how did this even happen? Well, it happened in reverse. I was at the University of Chicago getting my master's degree in what's now called neuropsychoanalysis, but back then it was biopsychology. And I played volleyball with some Sibo floor traders at the, where is that, the East Bank Club in Chicago. And they kept telling me I would be a good trader. And I kept like, yeah, right, guys, I'm going down there waving my arms with all you guys who are half foot taller than me. I don't think so. But as I was figuring out which PhD program I wanted to be in and writing my master's thesis, they went upstairs, it was called. So it's 94, and there's some of the first people trading on computer networks. And they're like, come keep track of our trades and we'll teach you to trade.

And so I did, and they did. And within about three months, I was trading my own account and was actually no longer being their admin. And then one of the guys that ran the firm, which was called, interestingly, electronic trading group like, oh, we can trade by electricity. Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like, we use this thing called the internet. It's really going to be the future. Yeah. Well, it was packed. I mean, it was 94. So it was really pre, you know, pre widespread internet. Anyway, he says to me, Denise, you know, I got to tell you, have the best instincts I've ever seen. And I didn't think a woman can trade. I'm like, Bob,

am I supposed to feel good about that or not good about that? No, I'm just saying we should hire more broads around here, Denise. Well done. Yeah. But, you know, there is recent. now that shows that women are a big asset to an investment team. But in any event, so I just ditched the PhD is really what happened. I traded for a few years. Then someone in New York wanted me to run, started a trading desk and wanted me to run it. So I did that and enrolled in a PhD program in modern psychoanalysis that I didn't know was any different than Freudian, but it is. At nighttime, it's kind of like my hobby. So it started to be interesting what I learned, how

these people worked with people with really challenging problems like dissociative personality, meaning, you know, people are sometimes not in the same world. And I started thinking to myself, you know, if this could help schizophrenics, for example, it could probably help these trading friends of mine. I just had that in the back of my mind when that institute asked to publish my master's thesis. So it's now 2003. I'd written it in 94, 95. I'm like it's ancient history neuroscience-wise, but how about we update it? So when I updated it, Antonio DiMasio, who's now at USC and a handful of colleagues of his, had shown that you really can't make a decision without emotion.

And I was like, well, darn, I've been reading all this trading psychology for the last eight years. It's been telling me I have to be disciplined, follow my rules, take the emotion out of it. Oh, but yeah, I'm supposed to use my intuition every once in a while. like if you really did that, you couldn't make a decision. That's a problem. I just happened to be telling someone that I chaded with about it. He's like, you've got to write about this. You've got to talk about this.

Someone's got to know. I was like, yeah, right. He's going to publish an article by me. And he so happened to know someone who was an editor of a magazine and she published an article. Then she went to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and she asked me to come speak. So I had this neuroscience and neuroscience of emotion and neuroscience of the unconscious. before I became a trader. The bottom line is it came back around.

So it ended up feeling, I mean, now all these years later, it feels to me like it was all meant to be. Because really, who has a master's degree at neuroscience psychoanalysis and is run a trading desk? Like, really? Yeah. And that whole expensive master's degree that I paid for seemed like it was just a, you know, fun but expensive lark.

But it ultimately came back together. And so then after there started to be interest in this, and how does emotion really work in a risk decision? Me, I'm really an academic at heart, actually. So I took the opportunity to go to all these academic conferences and started learning about how people were, in that 10 years ago, it was assumed in neuroscience that you had to have emotion to make a decision. Like there are still people that don't know that's true.

But if you're on the cutting edge of neuroeconomics or affective science, which is affect is sort of a fancy word for feelings and emotions. You know that feelings and emotions are germane to performance, judgment, decision-making, perception. So that's how. Neuroscience first, trading second, then someone basically wanted to know my opinion. And I had this particular interest in how emotion really works. And one thing led to another. You mentioned emotion in how they really work.

So senses, feelings, emotions. You've said in your work are points on a spectrum of intensity and are the clue to everything. What does that mean? So the spectrum of intensity, if you think about it, they are all physical, bodily experiences. You have a sense of something's right or wrong. You experience that below your neck, not in your head. A feeling, you know, just even say a feeling of being sick. You know, you experience that.

you know, in your body, a feeling of what we might call intuition or pattern recognition, or the feeling that something's just right, like confidence. You experience that below your net. People don't think about that. They think it's a head intellectual event. And then an emotion is just a more intense, more severe form of a physical bodily experience. So it's just the information that both your body is giving you about its state and that it's giving you as a reaction to what it's experiencing or what it's seeing. So I find it's helpful for people to realize that their sense of something, they're feeling about it, let's just say confidence or some level of concern or doubt, or some intense.

physical experience in that we might call fear or panic is all just on a spectrum of a physical sensation. Okay. And so understanding what we feel slash why we feel it sounds powerful if we're talking about things that are on a spectrum and our body that we can kind of, I mean, are you teaching people to regulate their feelings or are you teaching them to just be more aware of them? I guess that's the starting point here because it seems like on the show, of course, which is slightly different. Wendy's trying to get people to feel a certain way, feel more powerful. But really, it sounds like in market mind games and in your work, you start with understanding what you're actually feeling in the first place and why we're feeling it

in the first place. Yeah, the first thing I want people to do is even recognize they're feeling anything. Fair number of people don't recognize they're feeling anything and then get better at recognizing a wider spectrum of feelings than understand. understand why they're feeling what they're feeling, get good at labeling it, putting into words, and then choosing which feeling they want to take an action from. And to your question, I don't care about regulating. In fact, generally, I think regulating sends the wrong message. How do we even start to understand what we feel and why we feel it? What's the first step with your clients, what's something that people can try at home who are listening in thinking,

oh, okay, I tend to, I think a lot of high performers, we push our feelings away. Oh, I'm a little bit uneasy about this. Well, suck it up. You know, get after it. You know, it doesn't matter what you feel. Feel it later, that kind of thing. And you're saying maybe that's not the best way to do it. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's exactly the opposite, actually. So as a practice exercise, what people can try to do is say, okay, you know what for the next five minutes, I'm going to try to see what I feel in its most extreme form. Like, let's say I feel really bad about whatever, you know, losing this job, losing this girlfriend, whatever it is. I'm going to try if I could see how much I can feel that. How many different places in my body I can feel it, what it actually feels like, like lean into that physical experience. People do that. And they usually find that. that, oh my gosh, number one, I didn't like evaporate or blow up or shrivel up and die.

Like, I lived through it. And oh my gosh, it wasn't that bad. That in and of itself, that process, that revelation that you can feel, you know, sad, afraid, angry and just experience it is usually a revelation to people. Step one. Yeah, it sounds terrible. Step. What? I don't want to do that.

Everybody thinks it's so terrible. It's not. It's not. And somewhere in there is really useful information to you. Well, there's that useful information in all of it. It's just a question of which information is about your here and now and whatever you're facing and extracting that out and which is about your history and knowing that and then having a path to work with that over time to make the here and now easier. But everyone's so afraid of that. And really, at their core, all feelings, but particularly negative feelings, are meant to help us.

Like there's information and value in every one of them. And they won't eat you alive, which is what everyone seems to think. It seems like sitting with the feelings to begin with is a skill. Sitting there because I would imagine you sense and feel a lot of resistance from the people that you're working with. Because if looking back at how I was on Wall Street in my late 20s. You're probably dealing with people in their 30s by that point by the time they're hiring coaches to work with them. I think in your 20s you're more or less expendable. But in your 30s, guys and gals who are on the trading floor or at a Wall Street firm or an investment bank in their 30s are not exactly the type of people that say, you know what?

I just really need to sit with my feelings for a while. Yeah, but they should be because they'll make more money if they learn that skill. Now you're speaking the language, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always like, what should we do? What should we do? What should we do? Well, let's first figure out what you're feeling it and why you are feeling it. Because the why might be yesterday's trade, in which point has nothing to do with today's trade. The why might be that let's say you're long, short equity and you do fundamental research and you're feeling nervous about a name and you think you should get bigger because the market's falling and you know, you should be buying more of this. But there's something. nagging at you. Well, let's see. You had a conversation with the CFO last week and he sounded like he was hymning and not telling the truth. And somewhere your psyche's telling you, hey, there's something not quite right here. But you in the midst of the anxiety are just wanting

to act. So, you know, let's say you're jumping into a falling market and buying more. All the way, I got this little thing on your shoulder going, you know, you should be worried about that. But you're not because you want to set all that aside. And really, what the option does is take away the static of the feeling. People take action so much of the time simply because it gets rid of the feeling and makes them feel better. Yes. And then they go, excuse me, but damn, why did I do that again? Oh, interesting. Yeah. So you're saying that action often is a cover up for a feeling. So instead of instead of sitting with a difficult feeling, we might say, oh, I've got to get moving. I've got to, and that's very familiar to me. Absolutely. Everyone does that all this. I mean, and, you know, in

2018, there's so much advice to take action. Like, don't talk about it and do something. No, actually talk about it until you understand what you're feeling and why and then you can choose what to do. But that requires the skill of being able to tolerate that uncomfortable feeling while you're talking about it. And oh, by the way, the research actually shows that if you can come up with the right word for the feeling, like, is it fear uncertain? doubt, concern, panic on that spectrum, you will be less likely to mistakenly act on the feeling. So I literally have my clients look up words for the, like the type of feeling, the category in the the Thesaurus and say, okay, like I had someone come up with, well, it's trepidation.

I feel trepidation. And then once they got that word, like something in the body clicks and you feel better, i.e. like empowered better. Okay. Now I know how nervous I feel and I have a better sense in my situation. Well, now let's pull that apart and figure out what I want to do about that. Is it telling me to go get more information? Is it telling me to wait? Is it telling me to walk away? Until you know what the feeling is and then you start to say what's causing me to have that feeling, what's the catalyst, you don't really know what the best action is. Oh, that's so interesting. I'll tell you, One of the things that I discovered recently going through a rough sort of corporate split that was unexpected was I got back to work right away.

So I took action and I went, wow, this is kind of the magic pill for me. Just get my head back down, push through a bunch of work. And it sounds like what you're saying is, well, okay, maybe that worked sort of. But what you maybe I should have done was sit there and go, okay, what am I feeling and why am I feeling this? And maybe let those terrible feelings sink in, find the right words to it. identify those feelings, even if I have to bust out a thesaurus, and then maybe re-evaluate my course of action after that instead of just going, oh, I don't want to feel this. Let me just get back to work. Exactly. Now, having said that, I will give credence to people have their coping mechanisms.

So I'm never trying to just disrupt anyone's coping mechanism or make it particularly harder on them. I am, though, trying to get people to do the what am I feeling and why. And to the extent that people can learn to tolerate waiting to take action till after that step, the better off they're going to be, really. Why don't you want to, what is it, interfere with someone's coping mechanism? Because it sounds like for me, for example, I'm a workahologist like everybody else on Wall Street. So that's a coping mechanism that a lot of people that you work with also have. In fact, I think that's a requirement for working on Wall Street to essentially be a workaholic. And so whenever I do have difficult feelings, I dive into my work.

And thankfully, I love it or I'd be a miserable wretch of a person. But I also realize and talking with close friends of mine, they'll say things like, hey, I know that you have to start your podcast over. You should evaluate whether or not this is something you want to do as a business or if it's just a hobby. There's all these difficult conversations. And I'm like, no, I've got to work really hard on this and do this. And that works really well for me, and it does make me feel better. But I've had close discussions with business partners and people who work with me now here

on the Jordan Harbinger Show. And they say things like, hey, you're working really hard and this project's turning out really well, whatever project it is. But I got to tell you, this is not super high ROI for the company. I'm glad it's making you feel better. But can we redirect the canon of energy that you're, you know, shooting? at something else. And I kind of, I resist that because I go, no, I like doing this and it's making me feel

better and I don't have to think about all this other crap that's going on in my life. But so you don't, but you say you don't want to interrupt someone's coping mechanism. Why not? It seems like almost like that's the point. Or am I just talking at odds here? It's a balance. No, it's a balance. I mean, there are a lot of coaches in the world who would come in and say, okay, Jordan,

you got to do this, this, this, and this. And you'd do it for a while. Sure. And then you'd stop. And then you have like a reverberation or, you know, some sort of slingshot reaction to having done it. The most middle of me, well, that didn't work, you know, and maybe lose whatever part. So again, back to the performance architect, I try to be very sensitive to what the, what's the next step the person can tolerate? Like, how much could you tolerate not acting?

I don't know, because I don't know you. And, you know, maybe what other tricks could we come up with for? you to work on what am I feeling and why in bite-sized pieces such that it's able to stick, such that it starts to create a new emotional experience for you that you can then leverage in the future. And you know, you just don't know with any one person what their, frankly, defense mechanisms are to, and defense mechanisms meaning to not know what they're feeling. Like I have one hedge fund manager who he walks my walk, and talks my talk to his team.

And he can't know one of his feelings to save his life at this point. Like his view of where he's at and his entire team's view of where he's at, it's completely different. And so I'm constantly trying to get creative to say something to him that will soften or will open up a little window in that defense mechanism. But I can't go in there and go, you've got to stop doing A, B, and C because you don't. have a clue what you're doing. Like it'll work for a day or two, but it's not, you know,

I'm about really helping people gain a skill that will last. And so I don't want that just the quick hit for them or me, even though it'd probably be better, probably be better for me from a, you know, career company reputation point of view. So you actually have to let people get away with a little bit of shit in order to get them to continue with the stuff that's actually going to work. I have to let them get away with a lot of shit, usually. Especially those guys. But I do know this. Every step I can get them to take is the better next decision. And with hedge fund managers, particularly, I look at it like, okay, if we cut out the worst 5% of our decisions last year, what would our bottom line look like? Well, it's always wildly

different. So in the hedge fund trading world, I'm just trying to cut out the worst. 5% from last year. I'm trying to solve the whole enchilada. I mean, in my mind, like, as a life's mission, yes, I am. But, like, immediately as a performance coach, I'm trying to make this year better by avoiding that the worst decision's always from acting out some feeling you don't know you have. That's true for everyone. I mean, it's really clear on Wall Street. I was about to say it's clear with athletes, too, but it's so clear on Wall Street. The worst decision you make is always from acting out some feeling. You usually don't know you have, or you don't want to have.

Can you give us an example? Yeah. So in the market, it'll be like, you know, you're mad at yourself because you missed an opportunity in stock A and you feel like an idiot. And so then opportunity B comes up and you don't really know that much about it. You haven't done your research. But you're so worried about feeling like. an idiot again, which I call that fear of future regret, but that you just buy asset B without

having fully done your work. And all you're doing is acting out the desire to not feel like an idiot again. And it never works out. Like those kinds of trades, people always know like right afterwards, why did I do that? And then it goes against them and then they can't get out of it. And then, I mean, you know, it's been years ago now, but the London whale at J.P. Morgan was that way. Can you tell us about that? I'm not familiar with that. Well, they lost $6 billion ultimately. And they went through a whole, they even re, I can't think what the right word for it is, but basically rewrote the model behind the trade to justify staying in the trade.

This is a really common feeling on Wall Street. I don't want to feel like an idiot in the future. It's the feeling below the fear of missing out. Like fear of missing out, okay, I don't want to not make the money or I want to make sure I make the money on Wall Street. But there's this other, yeah, yeah, there's this other feeling below that that technically is fear of future regret. But, you know, it's fear of feeling bad in the future.

And that fear of feeling bad in the future usually doesn't relate to the money. It relates to like, am I stupid or smart or what are people going to think of me? It has an ego element to it. People will do all kinds of things to avoid this prospect of feeling bad. and stupid in the future, including rewriting models, including, I mean, this is what keeps people in losers on Wall Street. Like, everyone knows your first loss is your best loss and you should just get out. And people stay in all the time. And like the J.P. Morgan example, you know, they rationalized it as a corporation. Stayed in for months. Ultimately last $6 billion. Jamie Diamond had to go to

Congress to explain it. But they just didn't want to feel stupid in the future. Every Trader has had the experience of getting out of a losing position and having it come back. And then you feel like an idiot. I shouldn't have gotten out. I didn't have to take the loss. And that's a really painful feeling. And no one wants to feel it again. So everyone avoids feeling it by rationalizing why they're staying in the loser.

And the loser just gets bigger until no one can stand it anymore. You know, the company's going to go under. The risk management people are like just getting you out of the position. where if you could realize, I'm really afraid of feeling like an idiot in the future and put that into words, then you go, oh, man, okay. Well, I don't want to just act out that feeling. So therefore, I don't want to just justify this trade. So maybe I should get out now. And then you realize that you possibly feel less like an idiot by getting out now than risking feeling more like an idiot in the future.

That's interesting. So it's almost like maybe not a mirror of FOMO, but it's kind of the, but yeah it kind of is it's like a reverse mirror image of fomo it's like oh oh phomo no i'm in and so i don't want to have fomo and i also don't want to look stupid for having pulled out so this is what we see with cryptocurrency and things like that especially with unsophisticated markets where they're totally unregulated like cryptocurrency you see people saying oh well this is going down it's time to buy more well it's either time to buy more or this is actually a really terrible idea and you really don't know so since you've had FOMO so many times I should have bought

Bitcoin in 2011 when my dumb cousin bought it now and he lives in a mansion instead of a trailer right you have that so you go well you know I bought a ton of Bitcoin at $17,000 and now it's 8 or 6,000 or whatever it is today and you say well instead of doing stop loss or hedging I'm just going to maybe either buy more of this or sit on this this cash for as long as I can because I don't want to look dumb and then repeat the cycle of feeling dumb in the future, plus adding FOMO on top of it. So you see people right now taking a second mortgage out on their home and saying there's even more uncertainty of the market.

I'm going to buy more now. And you go, well, do you really know what you're doing? Or are you just trying to avoid what happened through 2011 where you said, oh, I could have had this outcome? Well, see, and if you sit with your feelings and ask yourself what you're feeling and why you're feeling it, then you know the answer to that. And then once you know the answer to that, your chances of having to act on it go down. And you can basically pick your poison. Because obviously, no one knows what's going to happen, right? And we never know what's going to happen. So if you can

at least choose what you want to feel in the future and know why you want to feel it in the future, as opposed to just acting on these fears without realizing it, your odds of making a decent decision go up. So are you doing this in the moment when somebody has to make a decision? Is this like, hey, look, we need to know in the next 10 minutes whether or not we're going to make this decision or the next hour, the next day, and you say to your clients, what, go for a walk, go get some coffee, lay on the couch, look at the ceiling? What does this process actually look like where you say, sit with your feelings? Are they literally sitting with this or are they just doing something else for a few minutes? Well, both. I mean, I try to get people to just, you know, close their

eyes and breathe for a few minutes. As popular as meditation seems to be on Wall Street, that's still hard for a lot of people. I definitely try to get them to leave their desk. You know, a lot of funds, not so much banks, but the funds do have some place that people can go. Of course, then becomes the peer pressure of, oh, why have they gone into the, you know, relaxation room or why have they gone into the nap room? Well, because they're trying to make a better decision or take a nap, which, you know, is a good idea, too. I truthfully, I tell all my clients that they can text me and all, almost none do in real time. Shocks me.

Well, that makes sense. Yeah, I get that, though. I get that. I mean, and you also get it from the Wall Street perspective. I mean, you're essentially saying, hey, be really vulnerable and put it in writing. And that's just not, those are two things that Wall Streeters don't love to do, generally speaking. True, true, true. But what oftentimes happened like this happened the other day, I get an email.

Can I talk to you for 30 seconds? And so, but I was with another client, so I called in an hour. Oh, never mind. you know, of course you can imagine that being the Wall Street. Yeah. Sorry, I needed you 59 minutes ago and I already made a bad decision based on my feelings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it is like just developing that skill of taking a deep breath, you know, stopping, asking yourself. Like, you can get good at it and knowing the answer quickly. I mean, it's like, I always say it's like a physical skill. It's like learning to ski or play golf because you are just becoming so much more aware of things that are happening in your body, just like a sport.

but it's also the path of least resistance for the most part. So people will find that they can do it better than they thought they could for the most part. Okay, a whole slew of defense mechanisms notwithstanding, I'm saying. When people who really want to do it, find that they can do it. Okay, a whole slew of defense mechanisms sounds like avoiding those same unpleasant feelings that we just mentioned before. So do you find that your clients have like a huge list of avoidance mechanisms? where they switch to to avoid those feelings that you're trying to get them to sit with in the

first place? Yeah. So, like, on Wall Street's analysis paralysis, in the athletic world, it's train harder. On Wall Street, it's also, you know, train harder, like run marathons and, you know, whatever, do extreme sports. I mean, everybody's got, you know, resistance at some level to changing anything. despite what their conscious mind may tell them. And then, you know, robust forms of resistance turn into defense mechanisms. But by the way, I do believe resistance and defense mechanisms were created for a reason. So like when we're kids and difficult stuff is happening to us,

it's best if we can put it in a box because as kids, we have so little control over it. So the idea of resistance and defense mechanisms helps a kid. But, you know, if you still then use the same mechanisms as an adult, which you will unless you've learned otherwise, you're not working with your own brain and psyche in the, in the most effective way or in the most powerful way. So, like, I think part of being adult is learning to unwind those defense mechanisms slash resistances. And then back to me being a performance architect, it's like, how do I help this person where they are do that in a way, in a pace that will be most affected for them, effective for them in their situation? Is there a commonplace that that process begins? Because it always seems to

mean like it's awareness. So do you have them make a list of all their avoidance mechanisms or make a list of all the ways in which they feel something and then go for a run instead? They usually don't know. What I try to do is get them to talk about their feelings related to things that have happened to them in the past. And then hopefully we can get a good handful of examples of how they felt in situations in the past. And then they're able to see, oh my gosh, I felt the same way every time, even though it was three completely different situations. And then they go, hmm, if I felt the same way every time, I felt the same way every time, I feel the same way every time. time, but it was three completely different situations. Maybe it's the feeling, not the situation.

Can you give us an example of that? Because it's sort of abstract for me right now. Let me think for a second. I just did this with a hedge fund guy the other day. And so we went through three really bad trades they had made over the past 20 years. And they are a bit private equity-ish. So, you know, they're in complex situations where they research all this level of detail about the company and the people. And they had three completely different situations. And what they ended up figuring out was actually in each case, something out of left field had gone wrong.

So that was interesting because it's like, what did that do to the person in terms of making them feel out of control? And then how they might feel once that thing went wrong that shouldn't have gone wrong, like there need to be back in control, basically feeling a, a, intense level of anxiety causing them not to see the real situation, something had gone wrong. They'd also gotten an inkling that they should get out of the trade. But their reaction in each case was to prove that they were right. So, you know, you can always prove, you can usually prove just about anything you want if you're, you know, kind of have selective attention. So they proved to

their team in each case that they should get bigger in the position, hold the position for longer. And, you know, of course, in each case, it went very badly. But when they looked to it in 2018, and I think the first example was from like 2006 and the second one was from 2011, and the third one was from 2013. They all looked exactly alike. And they realized they'd had the exact same set of feelings. So then it's like, okay, now that we know their set of feelings, like feeling out of control because something went wrong, feeling afraid because you're out of control, reacting to the fear, like, I have to prove that I'm right and I have to prove that I have control. And so, therefore, just taking action and, you know, doubling down into the

position. Now, in 2018, and I just started coaching this fund, it's like, okay, we're going to be on the lookout. We're actually going to go through each one of our positions and make sure we're not reenacting that scenario in any of the current positions. Okay. So that seems complex in a way, but on the other hand, it is quite simple in that it seems like a large portion of this is awareness. It seems almost like the name of the game for you and your clients with this is awareness because we spend so much time with our coping mechanisms or with our avoidance mechanisms that we want to, we have spent most of our lives purposely being unaware or burying these feelings, and now we have to undo that process.

Yeah, yeah, it really is awareness. It's just that aware, the reason I don't like to just say it's awareness, even though it is technically, is because that makes it sound like it's this intellectual thing that you can realize in a moment. Right. And it's a more physical thing that you have to work at, like that learning to ski or play golf. And it helps to have someone being able to speak to you and ask you questions in a way that it will make it easier to see the connection. So like to do that, you know, the thing I just described about the hedge fund manager in a way that was like, what's the thing I'm always feeling? Like, what's the thing that always happens to me?

Like, everyone has some story of the thing that always happens to them. I can pretty much tell you it's not what you think it is. Like, and if you start to realize, I always feel this way and you'll start to see similarities in the circumstances. And then you'll also usually, I mean, we didn't get into this with the hedge fund manager yet, but like how does that relate to his whole personal history and that was sort of the feeling of being out of control and the need to prove he was right. But at level number one, you can realize I always feel this way. I always have the same exact circumstance happened to me.

Well, if you have a repetitive circumstance, repetitive feeling, it's not just about the thing outside of you. It's about how you're perceiving the situation, how you're acting. It's about feelings that you've learned over the arc of your life. But you can like unravel that and then start to change the thing that always happens to you. Have a slightly different experience through awareness, but not intellectual awareness, like a physical awareness of this feeling is starting to come over me. To what extent do we see these unpleasant feelings coming from, let's say, a past experience like childhood. I mean, are we talking about things that go way, way back or just things that happened to us at work? So, for example, if there's a baseball player that can't hit suddenly,

are we talking about they had a bad game a couple weeks ago, or are we talking about their, they were abandoned in a shopping mall when they were 12, and now suddenly that's coming back to rear its head? Well, the truth is, it could be both in that case. But when you, and let me explain what I mean by that. So when you have a sort of sudden performance problem, it always makes sense to go back to when it started, like the baseball player who had a really terrible game three weeks ago and now goes into a slump. It's like everyone says shake it off and, you know, think positive and all that. No, no. They need to go back to when it started and understand like whatever, how embarrassed they were that night it started and how then that made them afraid just back three weeks.

But if I, and that chances are we'll solve the problem. If it's just something at that kind of level where there's sort of weird, mysterious performance problem that comes in at a proverbial left field. But if it's some longer standing challenge, it usually pays to figure out what the symbolism is from growing up. And what I mean by that is like what was similar in your developmental years that felt the same and sort of maybe what experience, if you go back to your memories, what experiences felt the same and what was happening? Like, did your younger sister, you know, get hit by a car on the first

night that you, you know, couldn't catch a ball? Like, usually these things are, well, always. They exist in a layered format. So you've got this top layer that's like your intellect and the things we think about. And that matters. And then you've got kind of conscious feeling. of the here now. And then you have the not so conscious feelings of, in this case, example you gave like three weeks ago when you first had trouble hitting. And then you got all this advice to set all that aside and just think positive. You know, and then you have potentially, if it becomes an intractable problem,

you have some connection to when this happened to you in the past. And if you can ultimately realize that you feel the same now as you did then, and that some of the intensity of the feeling now is not about now. It's about when it happened in sixth grade. Then you go, okay, I feel really intense about this, but only 20 or 30% about that is now. And the really unpleasant stuff is about then. So, okay, I know I have some sort of work to do about the then, but I can just deal with the feelings of when this problem started three weeks ago. So if we want to tackle this for ourselves, how do we?

we get started? You know, we're not on your couch or on the phone with you. How do we get this process kicked off on our own? Is it possible? Yeah, yeah. So I think first you just commit to the extent that you can to drop the defenses that you've got. And then think about what you do, do make a list of what you do to actually avoid your worst feelings. And when you realize that, you might say, hmm, you know, I do go into action or I do go to the gym. And, you know, or do you drink too much, you know. Just what are the things you do? I may, you know, surf the internet too much.

I might do distracting things. To just admit to yourself that there's activities you engage in that really, if you really look at it, it's trying to avoid feeling lousy. And just like, it's okay. It's okay that you do those, but realize that maybe if you did a little less of them and you're able to know a little bit more what you're feeling and why you were feeling it, you might get some valuable information. So we make a list of all the ways that we can think of consciously, of course,

that we avoid these unpleasant feelings. And then how do we decode the information? Are we journaling this? Are we writing a list of what we think there might be in the information and the feelings that we're trying to avoid? Is there a way to sort of parse that? Because it seems like I can even. easily say, all right, well, when I'm feeling bad, I go to the gym, or when I'm feeling bad,

I go for a walk. When I'm feeling bad, I go for, I try to read or do show prep or something like that. But how do I get the useful information out of there or the potentially useful information out of there? There is this phenomenon where if you dive into the what is this really lousy feeling about and you get to the thing it really is about, the feeling. vanishes or at least dissipate so greatly it practically vanishes. Like you go, oh yeah, you know, I'm mad at that person who did this to me for, you know, because it was insulting.

And then you're like, oh, okay, well, maybe I will react. Maybe I will just, you know, not have anything to do with them anymore. There's something about actually finding the kernel that's the fuel for the bad feeling that causes it to contract and be way less disruptive. The other thing that happens is as you sort through these, you know, yucky, unpleasant feelings, you often do find useful pieces of information, both about the situation and about yourself. You go, oh, I know, I have a tendency to this, that, or the other thing, or that person, you know, always whatever, whatever, you know, drops the ball,

is late, whatever. But you find information in there that can help you. And all you need is the skill to be able to sit with feeling lousy for some period of time or the skill to be able to feel lousy in doing the basics of what you need to do while you're going, okay, I'm not going to feel guilty about feeling bad because that's kind of what goes on in 2018. There's so much pressure to feel positive that on top of whatever you're already upset about it was always making you feel bad. You have to feel guilty that you're not being positive because everyone tells you. There aren't that many people you can talk to. Oh, no, no, you're being negative. I don't want to talk to you. Well, we're doing the world. You're doing the world a huge

disservice when you do that and yourself. So, but my point was is it's oftentimes easier to be acting in a wise way while you're giving yourself the time to feel whatever you feel about something and sort through it. And that way, if you're saying, okay, I'm going to give myself some time to sort through this frustration, you know, that maybe could be called anger and maybe even be called rage just to bring up that totally unacceptable emotion. But I'm going to just let myself feel that and try to examine it, research it, until I figure out what it's really about.

And in the meantime, you're going about your basic business. And it really, in a way, gives you energy. That's the irony about all of this, because everyone thinks that if you delve into your fears or you delve into your frustrations and, you know, particularly anger and rage, it'll, you know, like it'll explode and, you know, you'll ruin the world. It has a way of focusing you, helping you concentrate, and then ultimately helping you get to a better understanding of your situation and therefore a better choice as to what you really do want to do that will be effective to move you and yours forward. So in a way anger can be an ally. Why, again, do we ignore all this

pressure to be positive. I think that's a very common theme. Everyone's trying to be inspiring. Everyone's trying to think positive. And I do have people that I kind of can't even talk to when I have an actual problem because their solution to everything is just think positive or just look on the bright side. It's like, no, I actually need a real strategy here. Or no, I want to feel upset about this thing so that I don't continue to feel upset about it for 20 years. Exactly. Exactly. Like the feeling I've said about it, there is some piece of information in there that's trying to help you. And that's the only purpose of those feelings. Like to get your attention.

Jordan, you know, your psyche, your unconscious wants to know, wants you to know this thing. Because if you know it, you'll make a better choice or you'll know more, you'll be more productive. But you're not allowed to. And I believe me, I know. I mean, you would think that no one would ever say that to me. Just be positive because if you know me at all, like, but even people. still do and I'll be like, oh my gosh, you got to be kidding me. It's a skill. Being angry or ignoring the positive, the pressure to be positive. Well, both. But allowing yourself, just allowing

yourself all of your thoughts and all of your feelings without judging them, saying, what are they about? And then what do we do with that information? Are you writing it down or are you just letting it sort of swirl around in your head? Well, again, this goes back to me not having a specific plan for everyone. A lot of people find value in writing it down. But a lot of people are averse to writing it down, right? Like they're afraid if they put it on paper, it will get more real. Now, the truth is, it won't.

So I can say generically, like, it's not going to get more real and you can delete it right after you've done it. But I'm very well aware that very many people are afraid of writing it down. So if you're afraid of writing it down, you know, you don't have to write it down. You can just think about it to yourself. And but if you can write it down, you know, it's usually a plus because it helps you put things into words and the more things that you can put into words, the more you can sort through this. So the more words you use, it's sort of getting better at the golf skill of this sorting through your feelings. I'm just doing what I do, which is sort of not pressure the people who are disinclined to write it down.

to write it down. And so do you find that market or athletic performance improves, even if they're already really good at what they're doing, of course, when one learns to recognize, comprehend all of one's emotions, do you find that their performance improves as a result? Well, I think it's actually astonishing. The more people can recognize their fears and their frustrations. And frustrations is, you know, as I've sort of already alluded to, or if I haven't said directly, is a code word for anger slash rage, the better people. perform. I mean, it's really black and white to me. Like, it's astonishing. It lets people focus. The energy gets channeled in a way that you can use it. And even if it doesn't rise to the

level of channel, it stops being as disruptive. Are we talking about negative emotions mostly here, having those new strategies for negative emotions that offer the most leverage? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can be, you know, elated and jubilant and sometimes that cause you to take more risk. And there's some research showing that to be the case. But that's like, you know, in terms of people's challenges and problems, feeling too positive is so low on the, you know, totem pole that I don't talk about it that much. You know, unless it's induced, of course, by substance. That's a different story, you know. It's induced by a substance.

and you're avoiding a negative feeling. There's plenty of that on Wall Street as well, if memory serves. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I never thought of that as avoidance, though. I always thought of that as like prescription strength, Red Bull. But you're right. It is really, it just is avoidance. All things in moderation.

Anything that's beyond moderation is suspect. Denise, thank you so much for your time. I know that a lot of people were curious. First of all, when I saw Wendy on Billions, I was like, is that a real thing? Is that a real job? I need to find this person and then little, I was, I can't even remember how I found you. I think I was literally flipping

through Twitter and I saw your bio. I think I clicked on your profile by mistake. So this is kind of a lucky find. But is there something practical that you can leave us with because I know that you work with a lot of different high performers from Wall Streeters to athletes and I would love to see what your first bit of advice is

for someone who's listening to this and says, oh, I've got to do all this and I have all these pressure to be positive, all these negative emotions and I got to channel these things. what would you recommend? Just be gentle with yourself. Like you can nurture yourself and you can be kind to all of your thoughts and feelings and not judge them and say to yourself,

I'm just going to let myself admit to what I'm thinking or feeling and see what I can deduce out of it. But I'm not going to tell myself not to think it and certainly not to feel it. Because like be that best friend to yourself that you wish you could talk to without any pressure to be positive and more with a curious mind to understand, you know, what's this really about and where this is coming? Where is this coming from? Kindness and gentleness to yourself. It seems like a tough habit for people who are used to who have gotten where they are in life by being really hard on themselves. It seems like a tough habit for them to go, you know what?

now the next step for me is to not do that anymore all the time, 24-7. Yeah, well, I can virtually guarantee this. If that person has any sort of consistent frustration or any sort of thing in the back of their mind that they worry about, if they take this approach to themselves, the consistent frustration or the thing they worry about will probably be a little bit. alleviated to some degree over time. In other words, what I'm saying in a nutshell is this will be the solution for the thing they haven't solved. Right. And this makes a lot of sense, right? Because if your intensity, if your focus, your drive got you to where you are and you have this unsolvable problem,

maybe more intensity and drive and focus is actually not what's needed to solve this. Maybe you have to choose a different path and maybe this is it. Yeah. Plus, oftentimes the intensity, drive and focus, there's a bit of a wasteland around that. What do you mean by that? It means that fears and frustrations and anger and rage, they don't go away no matter how much people think they power through them. So they just come out in different ways. So like in the hedge fund world, a PM might be thinking that they're not feeling any of those

things while they're screaming at their people. And so the screaming, you know, may solve the immediate problem, but what is the it get out of the people, you know, over the next week, month, year? Like, in other words, it's not like the negative emotions aren't there just because people think they power them into action. They're still there. They get distorted and turned into other kinds of behaviors that tend to get in your way in other ways. And the obvious one with high performers is with a team around them. So that the team then gets, you know, sort of they feel underappreciated, let's just say, generically. And then,

then maybe they aren't as committed or don't work as hard. And so it comes back to bite you. Because no man's an island, right? No one can do it completely on their own. So if you think you're powering through, let's say frustration particularly, and it comes out in blame or criticism or haste or unreasonable request, that has a cost. You just tend not to see it because you're the hard charger that's just going to then hard charge through the next thing. that was created by the cost of the distorted frustration that happened in the last situation. I almost called you, Wendy. Denise, thank you so much for coming on the show.

That would have been one of those subconscious. Yeah, that's an easy one to dissect, though. What happened was I watched too much TV. That's the reason for that. Thank you so much for your time today and your expertise. Thank you, Jordan. The real life, Wendy, I love it. It actually makes perfect sense to me that there are negative emotions.

that we avoid, what I didn't really realize was that those negative emotions had some sort of encoding of useful information and that we were often just repeating childhood patterns and they were really interrupting our decision making. It's a little scary. It's a little scary to think decisions I make now in a high-stakes environment would be influenced by something that happened to me when I was 12. That's a little scary. And it's scary that other people are doing that as well. Yeah, little Joey on the playground stole your toy and now you're making a bad business decision. really is kind of scary. Yeah, or worse, right? Worse. Yeah. I mean, this could happen in any field. And we see it with the athletes, of course, with the financial folks. And I'm sure it happens in politics and in other

areas as well. So that's a little bit, a little bit scary. But of course, interesting to see the behind the curtain look at how these people address these problems when they address those problems. So great big thank you to Denise Schull. The book title is Market Mind Games. And of course, we'll have all of that linked in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this, don't forget to thank Denise on Twitter. That's where I found her in the first. place, that'll be linked up in the show notes for this episode, which can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Also, if you tweet at me your number one takeaway here from Denise, I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter, and I'm also on Instagram at Jordan Harbinger as well.

Of course, don't forget, we have worksheets for today's episodes. You can make sure you understand everything that we brought through here from Denise, those takeaways, those exercises, that link to that worksheet. That'll be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And hey, if you're not subscribed, go to Jordan Harbinger. slash subscribe for a list of all the ways you can connect with the show as soon as it comes out. This episode was produced and edited by Jason DeFilippo. Show notes are by Robert Fogarty.

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