You are techY podcast

Ellen Twomey: You are listening to the You Are Techy podcast, episode number 56.

Intro Voice: Welcome to the You are techY podcast where it’s all about growing in your “techy-ness” so you can find the tech job of your dreams. And now your host technology learning coach Ellen Twomey.

Ellen Twomey: This episode is sponsored by our very limited time and free training, Three Strategies to Jumpstart Your Junior Developer Career, specifically designed for moms in this free training. I’ll cover the strategies necessary to become a Junior Full-stack Developer, including the exact skills employers are looking for.

You’ll learn how to maximize your income with portfolio ready skills that Hiring Managers are seeking. Not to mention the steps to skip so you don’t find yourself down that endless tech-learning rabbit hole. Join me live for the Three Strategies to Jumpstart Your Junior Developer Portfolio. Sign up at youaretechy.com/dev that’s Y-O-U-A-R E-T-E-C-H-Y.com/D-E-V. I’ll see you there.

Ellen Twomey:  [00:00:00] I’m fangirling over today’s guest. And if you don’t know her or why I’m so excited, you will soon. I’m thrilled to introduce our guests, Denise Shull for her pioneering work in neuropsychoanalysis, her high-performance coaching work and her groundbreaking application of psychological principles to high finance training.

Denise is in the business of helping professionals elevate their game through the conscious processing of emotions. She began by helping financial professionals, specifically wall street traders, and then moved on to other rockstar performers, such as C-suite sports and entertainment professionals.

Denise started her career as a wall street trader, enabling her to see the hearts and minds of those executing hundreds of decisions a day repeatedly buy, sell, hold, repeat. Based on seemingly factual information. What she found most decisions are made through [00:01:00] the emotional filter, more than the logical data.

We think we’re making it through. This is true in the most technical financial situations. And I’m sure you can see why. I think the topic is extremely relevant to the technology field as well.  In addition to her work on wall street, Denise pursued a master’s from the university of Chicago in neuropsycho analysis.

Her undergrad from the university of Akron is in biology, encompassing, both nutrition and computer science. She’s the author of market, mind games, a book I’ve read at least three times, which is a seminal work in the field of neuropsycho analysis and the psychology of risk.

Denise has run the very popular Rethink Group for the last 17 years where she and her team architect, exceptional performance in market sports and entertainment leaders. Most recently, Denise has released intuition brain games, a game based software that elevates your decision-making capabilities, [00:02:00] their game-based play and engagement.

Denise, welcome to the show. 

Denise Shull: Thank you so much. 

Ellen Twomey: I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. As I said, I’ve read your book several times and, um, it was really seminal for me too. Understand how emotional context and technical situations is , you know, a big part of the work of decision-making, but I know this wasn’t always the standard that people knew and were familiar with.

So can you take us back to the Genesis of the rethink group and, um, how did you come up with that idea and you know, it, wasn’t a big emotional leap for you at the time? 

Denise Shull: Yeah, so actually, I mean, there’s really two pieces of it. I did do my master’s degree in neuropsycho analysis. Um, and then I became a trader, but I was [00:03:00] taking part-time classes in an Institute of modern psychoanalysis. And I had found out that those particular psychoanalysts, which are different than they’re the classic protean that they had had some success with schizophrenia through their techniques. And I had this sort of idea in my head, like literally it went like this really like.

Okay. If you guys help schizophrenia, then you can help these crazy trainers I work with . I was like, that was the, that was the literal seed of this. But around that time, they were doing a journal issue cause they had a small academic journal on neuroscience and psychoanalysis and they knew of my master’s thesis and they said, can we publish it in this journal?

And it was written in 1994 and this was 2003. And I’m like, well you could, but you’re going to look really stupid because it’s really old. In retrospect, they might’ve not have looked as stupid as I thought they would at the time, but I’m like, I’m not putting my name on that unless I [00:04:00] updated and updating it’s a big deal, but blah, blah, it convinced me to do it.

And I thought it will be fun to have an article in an academic journal. So when I went to research, updating that, uh, Antonio Damasio in a group of scientists at university of Southern California, they were in Iowa before, but, um, had shown that we have to have emotion to make a decision. Or at least they’ve done a fair amount of, of research work that seemed to be indicating we can’t make, we can’t make any decision without emotion, but that really amounts to is you, you don’t do anything either, unless you’re confident about it’s the right thing to do, or like you’re afraid and you’re avoiding something.

And I was like, Well, darn like all this trading psychology, I’ve been reading and pouring over for years. Like step one, take the emotion out of it. And I’m like, if he took the emotion out of it, you couldn’t do it. This is a problem. Right. So I kind of had [00:05:00] like these modern psychoanalysts had some technique for working with, you know, crazy people like the traders I work with, forgive me for bad, but, um, And then the science was showing you have to have emotion to make a decision, which was just wildly groundbreaking.

And I mean, even today, 17 years later, you can see a major financial institution who they’ll put out an app and it’s something about take the emotion out of it, control them. But, you know, I have seen it all the time on Twitter. I mean, I’ve just learned for the most part to ignore it, but,  I was telling you a trader I traded with, I didn’t know, very well.

About this, like, and like, this is like really changes the game and he’s like, you gotta write an article and I’m like, Oh yeah, right. Like, so I’m have, I have an academic article published and he’s like, no, you got to write an article for a magazine. I’m like, who’s going to publish an article by me. So it turns out he wrapped this famous trader behind the scenes and he knew all these magazine editors and whatnot.

And he got me in article and I thought that would be it. [00:06:00] Yeah, right. This article is called Freud’s path to profits. It was published in December, 2004, though. That’d be it. And then people start calling

Ellen Twomey: and you thought I’ll jump. I’ll jump careers. Let me start out. 

Denise Shull: No, no, I didn’t. At the time I was still trading. I become a member. I don’t think I was a member yet, but I became a member of the Chicago board of trade at the time, which was going from trading stocks to trading futures. Right. But I thought, well, this would be kind of cool.

 and it like, to this day, I say, I’m in this position essentially. Cause I was telling the truth. We meaning that I would say things and people would relate to it and they would say things like, Oh my gosh, I thought it was just me. Or like, Oh my gosh, that never made sense. Or I’m like, A few years later, I don’t know, 2005 or six.

I was invited to speak at the Chicago mercantile exchange after the trading floors closed and like 200 guys in there trading jackets. [00:07:00] And these are the guys who stand down there and do all that, you know, came. And a friend of mine who was still floor trader said, these guys sat still for an hour. After trading day like that never, ever, ever happens.

And you know, one guy after another one guy walked out in the middle that usually happens. Um, but one guy too, you know, multiple guys came up to me afterwards and said, like, I thought it was just me. I never told anybody that I use my emotions. I couldn’t say I didn’t want anyone to know. Yeah. So. It really took on a life of its own.

And then it kind of seemed like my whole life was leading up to doing this because I don’t like all the time, even growing up, I’d sort of never bought the, you know, just suck it up or just be happy. Like it never made any sense to me. I can remember. My then best friend, like right after college saying to me, well, you know, if you smile, it will just make you happy.

And I was like, okay, let’s try it. [00:08:00] Is it working? You know, like, I mean, we were 23 and like, you know, having that sort of his life, really what we thought it was, but I’m like, I don’t think it’s working. Like, so I just wasn’t ever satisfied myself, which is partially how I got into a master’s degree in neuroscience analysis to begin with.

Right. Like I was just so. Perplexed about why we think, do feel the ways that we do. And I just didn’t think the answers were there and, you know, as it turns out and I mean, this is still really, really true. The model of the mind that most people are working on is wrong. It’s just wrong. We think. That are, you know, analytical and logical abilities are our superior abilities because they’ve allowed us to, you know, create the internet and land on the moon and all the things that we do as human beings.

But we still like the, the [00:09:00] underlying mechanism of perception and judgment is not only how we feel. It’s really how we’re predicting. We will feel. 

Ellen Twomey: Okay, can you, can you explain that a little bit more? 

Denise Shull: Yeah, but the scientific term for it is anticipatory affect, meaning you’re anticipating an affect, uh, but essentially subconsciously the brain’s always predicting what’s coming next and what the implications will be of anything based on our past experience.

Now, all that experience, you know, we’ve learned it, you know, really, since we were conceived, right? Like it’s all subconscious, but even now you don’t know it. You’re, you’re literally your brain is predicting the next words that are going to come out of my mouth based on like, what you know about me, your experience with the English language.

A way I always tell people to test this is like, have [00:10:00] someone hand you a cup of coffee? But tell you, it could be super hot. It could be iced. You don’t know. And you won’t know until you hold it in your hand. And if someone’s really paying attention, they’ll be like a split second there where you’re like, is it hot or is it cold?

You don’t know it’s in your hand, but you don’t know because you didn’t know what to expect. That’s the gap that’s happening subconsciously where we’re doing this prediction, but we’re just not aware of it. But so that’s being, . Basic prediction as the mechanism of how our brain works is being shown in a number of different labs, in a number of different ways.

Some people are focused on like the prediction of thoughts and cognition, but I think the best work is being done primarily out of Stanford, but it’s, it’s other places where they really are showing that we’re predicting feelings like. And so, I mean, even take the political climate we’re in [00:11:00] and like how, you know, it’s clear, like we can’t talk to each other.

Right. Part of it is because people are so stuck in this prediction of what will happen if the other side gets their way, but the reason everyone’s, just stuck is because they’re sure this horrible thing is going to happen . So we can’t talk about like facts and logic and in evidence because the prediction of that, this horrible thing is going to happen is overwhelming.

All right.

So is it, you know, as it turns out, like originally back in 2003, Damasio and company showing you have to have emotion to make a decision and they would show things like. People that were brain damaged in a way that they had no emotion, couldn’t decide what data to make an appointment on or what shirt to wear  couldn’t decide anything, because they’re lacking the like, [00:12:00] feeling that it’s the right thing.

Like you and I look at our calendar and go, well, I’m really busy on Thursday, so maybe I should do that thing on Friday or, you know, but they couldn’t, they couldn’t. I always tell people whatever realm you’re in, there’s the facts and the logic and the data and well there’s whatever, there’s the situation.

You don’t make your decision based on your knowledge of that, you make your decision based on your feeling about it. 

Ellen Twomey: So how do we, how do we tap? Um, I’m, there’s so many thoughts going through my head because of what you’re saying about the emotion of the election and how much coaching I’ve done over the last two weeks on that and how it affects actions.

 That’s what I’m always really curious about. Like how does, how does emotion affect action and even maybe take that a step further cause you work with high-performance. Or how do we leverage that emotion to impact our actions for high-performance? Yeah. Yeah. 

Denise Shull: Well, first of all, everything we do, we do because [00:13:00] of a feeling period.

Ellen Twomey: Yeah. So, 

Denise Shull: so we have to decide like, are we going to, do we want to know that some people don’t want to know cause they’re afraid of what they’ll find out. Right. But if you want to get better at anything. Yeah, you start with deciding, you’re willing to know everything about what you feel, and then you’re willing to undertake the work to sort it out, to find what feelings are really about the here and now, and what feelings are just from your past experience.

So, you know, let’s just take an athlete who. Fails at a certain type of contest, but wins in other contests. You know, they’re coming up on the contest, they fail in and they’re going to feel like they’re just jinxed. Right. And they’re actually expecting  to fail and expecting to feel bad in those cases.

[00:14:00] Now sports psychology will never let them admit that. Right. Right. Because the standard. Um, way of thinking about it is if you think you’re going to fail, you will, but actually how it works. Like it’s, if you feel like you’re going to, or if you’re afraid you’re going to the zeitgeists of positive thinking, doesn’t let most people, particularly with athletes, look at that or be honest about it.

So they tell themselves, you know, this is just another contest and this time is different than lots of these, all these cognitive. Thought based techniques to change how they feel occasionally, occasionally using your thoughts to change how you feel works. What some of the research shows is it works in stuff that doesn’t matter that much.

So, um, like, and other words, your intellect is powerful enough to change your two feelings. If the, if the situation just isn’t that important to [00:15:00] you, like I was still, you know, going to your in-laws for Thanksgiving. Like maybe you could get through the crazy uncle thing because you know, you only have to do it once a year.

Um, if it’s really important to you, your intellect changing your feelings, isn’t gonna work. So the, the way to do it is just to admit to yourself what you really feel and why you really feel it. And like, Develop the courage to be brutal. It may not have to be brutal with yourself, but it really is the courage to admit, to essentially your deepest, darkest fears and feelings, and realize that when you shine the light on them, when you put them into words, they actually lose their power.

And sort of a, like, you know, I don’t know why this is coming to mind, but, you know, vampires don’t live in the daylight. Like it’s like that, you know? But there’s so much information out there that like tells me we’ll do it exactly the opposite. You know, that their, their negative thoughts are going to cause them problems.

[00:16:00] No, it’s actually their so-called negative feelings and their inability to look at them that are going to cause them problems so that they can be, they can think positive all day long and then wonder why they still did it facts because the feeling which is the fuel for the behavior got acted out. And like the thing that always gets me, I was telling someone this just recently, like, it’s not that I’m like, want to be focused on the unpleasant feelings, but I’m so scared of what will happen if I don’t, like, I don’t want, you know, the vampire coming over my shoulder when I least expect it.

Like I want to know. So then I have like some control over the situation. I, I I’m going to get, like, I don’t understand. Not wanting to know the truths about yourself, about a situation by definition. If you don’t know the truth of yourself or the situation you’ve got like an enemy, you know, you’ve got like a [00:17:00] risk, like big unknown that could bite you at the worst possible moment, which is what happens.

And then people go. The other thing that happens is with all the positive thinking pressure. And all that, all the fear of, you know, people are afraid to feel bad. Like, heck it’s like, that makes it, that makes the ability to feel bad, a competitive advantage. Like if you have the fortitude and the courage to sort through the stuff that feels crappy.

 you’re in a better position than all the people who don’t and then a lot of people, 

Ellen Twomey: so. Okay. So a lot of the things you’re talking about here, I just want to talk about one emotion. 

Denise Shull: Okay. 

Ellen Twomey: Is  fear an emotion. 

Denise Shull: Yeah. 

Ellen Twomey: W what does fear causes to do? or does that one come up?

Do you coach on that? 

Do you have to get past fear , or do you have to feel fear? how do you deal with that emotion? 

Denise Shull: Like just this morning, I had a conversation with a trader [00:18:00] where he, we decided he was going to make a list. Of everything he was afraid of if he brought his success to the next level, 

Because In short, he’s afraid of, if he’s more successful, his family will reject him. You know, he shouldn’t be making money. He shouldn’t be making money gambling in the markets, you know? And so what will happen in his case is if he. Gets in touch with that fear and like shines the sunlight on it. So to speak, it will have less power to influence his behavior because what’s happening now is when he’s faced with a trade that he could make a lot of money on.

He can’t take it. 

Ellen Twomey: Oh, wow. That’s 

fascinating. I mean, it’s so, I mean, I see this all the time in a different realm, so it doesn’t shock me. It’s just fascinating. I mean, I see it all the time and it’s like, no, no, no. But if you move here, you know, I help women get hired in tech. So you’re staying at home [00:19:00] with your kids.

You’re going to get hired in tech and. Yeah. And they’re still in this mindset of what they’re doing and I’m like, give it your, life is going to be totally different here. How do we look at that And that’s like all the fear associated with the next step or the next, and oftentimes they’ll volunteer.

There’ll be doing the actual work without being paid. And it’s like, the hurdle they have to overcome is, is just. fear of making money or what is it? 

Denise Shull: You know, I’m just speculating off the top of my head. Never really thought about that problem, but like, okay, you’re going to be afraid of leaving your kids.

You’re going to be afraid of being criticized for doing it. You know, you’re going to be afraid of what your husband might think you know? But the truth is, is if you get all that stuff out, you’re first of all, just that just admitting to the truth of all the things you’re actually afraid of. Will make you less afraid of some of them, like there’s this phenomenon when people just [00:20:00] have the courage, then you go, Oh, wait a minute.

Well, like, you know, three, four and five really? Aren’t that big of deal. Okay. So now I’m left with one and seven. What can I do with that one and seven? Now that piece like that, my trader, where people are afraid of like the next level of success and how their family will react to that. That’s not always that easy for people to do on their own.

You know, it oftentimes it’s helpful to have someone to that can help you see that kind of stuff. Um, but like all human beings are subject to what was expected of them and what role they should play. You know, where they fit in that, you know, we all absorbed messages, messages as we’re growing up about where we fit and what our status is.

And, you know, even then like another realm is making money good or bad, you know? [00:21:00] So like, I can imagine, like, I can imagine a woman, a mother. Who’s got conflicts around this. So by the way, so you can always think of it that way. Like, what are my conflicts, usually the case you have one set of feelings and another set of feelings and they’re in conflict, but you never get to even resolve the conflict because you don’t, sometimes you don’t even realize it is a conflict, but, um, I forgot.

I was going to say, Oh, well you said that volunteer that by not getting paid, it resolves some of those costs. Right, right. And , people have to grapple with the idea. Oftentimes people have to grapple with the idea that, you know what, I am good at this thing. I can do this thing. I have value. And a lot of people have grown up being criticized or even heavily criticized.

Sometimes it’s not necessarily by your parents. It’s like, if you’re the youngest child, like I had a [00:22:00] client who was the youngest of four and super successful bazillions of dollars in a way, not billions, but like millions of millions of dollars. But he was always like acting out the need to be considered smart by his older brothers and sisters.

Yeah. Because he was the baby. And of course they made fun of him and, you know, I can never get him to see that his need to get into the tray that the guys down the street bread was just because like he wanted his older brother to think he was smart. One day I was in his office, his older brother came in and he’s like, you know, are you going to fix him?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, I don’t know. Am I going to ask you a question when he was, when you were five and he was one. Or two what’d you do to him? He’s like, Oh my God. I used to like, sit on him and spit on him and tell him he was worthless. And I looked at my client and I go, and you don’t think that has anything to do with it.

It doesn’t have anything. Anyway, [00:23:00] there’s all the brother goes. Yes, it does like listen to her. That’s your whole problem. So my point is. My point is it’s oftentimes hard for people to see that thing for themselves. Right. But in his case also, he was too, he was too afraid to know that bended against knowing that, um,  it takes courage to underst both feel the feelings, attribute them accurately and like, understand what’s really going on.

But. And I think that anything we do along that road moves us 

Ellen Twomey: forward. Right. Right. So like when you first started out, I mean, you described how you, like you had a room. Full of guys sitting there after the training day. Okay. One left, but I mean, did you have a lot of hurdles when you were trying to convince individual hurdles that people don’t want to face their own fears, but like, did you have a lot of hurdles convincing people?

Like, no, actually this is impacting your trades or there were a lot of [00:24:00] people that were like, yeah, that that’s totally true. 

Denise Shull:  it’s funny you ask that because it does remind me of. I actually spoke at the merch twice. And the first time I got a call from a professor who was then at Northwestern university, this was like 2005 or six.

And it was simulcasts. This is before we could do this, I got this call from this person. I’d never heard of that Northwestern state. I can’t believe you just told her room full of men. They have to pay attention to their emotions. And I was like, Well, they do.

I love the truth. Um, now I also think, you know, we’ve done okay. And we’ve built a little consulting company, but, you know, by definition, there’s, uh, you know, there’s literally millions of possible clients in the world and the ones that call us probably have some idea what they’re going to have to talk about.

Right. So, so in other words, we have a self-selecting bias. Now [00:25:00] having said that, I mean, like I have a client this year, who’s in private equity and wanted me to help him lead more. And I’m just, I mean, I’ve been working with him frequently twice a week since January. I’m just now getting him to sorta kind of admit what he really feels that he’s been making progress.

Sometimes if you just talk about your situation freely with someone you trust. There’s like some unconscious magic that will help you just do better, even without understanding all of it  so like I still, I mean, like yesterday I got a, you know, totally trashed me up one side and down the other review of my book on Amazon.

 There are people on wall street. Who, whatever have blogs or podcasts. And you would think that they would have interviewed me now by now, just all things considered. Won’t give me the time of day. [00:26:00] Why I know why I, they know who I am. They know who I am and what the essential messages it’s.

Cause they don’t want to go there. Right? No, but I still like when it’s whatever success I or the rethink group have achieved. I honestly think it’s simply because I had this interest that I refuse to give up on because none of the answers are satisfactory to me. And then when I started speaking about it, it resonated with enough people because it was the truth that, you know, that brought us clients.

So we don’t always tell me, like, we don’t need to have every, we can’t am going to Evelyn and everybody anyway, you know, 

Ellen Twomey: I always think the negative book reviews too are funny. Like they’re all, there’s so much insecurity revealed by the person it’s like, I mean, I know I’m sure it’s unpleasant, but it’s like, Oh, 

okay.

Thank you for sharing all that insecurity with us. 

Cause [00:27:00] you obviously it struck a chord. Yeah. I, I, in this case, I mean, my book has a long history of getting ones and fives on Amazon. 

I didn’t know. 

Denise Shull: The longest time I literally had, like until the last couple of years I had no threes. Zero. Wow. And so every once in a while, like once every year or two, I, I put that on Twitter.

So yesterday I took a screenshot cause I had two fives that really good. And this one and I’m like, well, the street continues, you know? And, and people on Twitter were like, that’s great. You know, that like means you struck a chord, right? Some people are going to go running like, you know, speaking, isn’t that a vampire thing.

Um, 

Ellen Twomey: And 

Denise Shull: And other people are going to go, I love it. Like, yeah. And all I can tell people is like, look so many people struggle with why the heck did I just do that? Like even my private equity guy was in a meeting the other day where like he could have brought up the fact that he [00:28:00] should get a better title and he didn’t.

And he’s kicking himself. Why the heck? Didn’t I bring it up? Why back then I bring it up? Why the heck didn’t I bring it up? I know that if I really gotten him to talk about it, if I had been able to break through the resistance and been able to get him to talk about the fears earlier, he probably would’ve brought it up, but basically his fear of what happened if he brought it up, took over, even though like intellectually ready to bring it up, right.

If you have an unconscious fear of something, it will stop you. It exactly the moment you don’t want it to. 

Ellen Twomey: So I want to, I want to dive into this a little bit and I, and I want to talk about the book. I have a, I have a quote here from the book that I’m. I’m excited to, to ask you more about and has to do with this exact topic.

And, and in the book in market mind games, you say judgment calls must be made to fill in the gaps between where the numbers leave off in the Elfa or exceptional performance begins. And just for my audience, alpha is active return-on-investment. Is that a student? Well, 

[00:29:00] Denise Shull: it’s excess return investment. So like you could invest straight in S and P 500 or straight in the doubt, and you’re going to get whatever the market does.

Yep. Alpha is like, when, because you were actively investing in making decisions, you get more than what the market does. 

Ellen Twomey: Correct. Right. So how do you direct or improve those judgment calls when you’re talking about judgment calls, filling in the gap between where the numbers leave off? 

Denise Shull: I think if you take on the question of always knowing what am I feeling and why I will expand that now to what am I predicting?

I will feel. And Y, and essentially you build a dictionary on yourself. So you learn when your confidence feels like this, you know, and I don’t mean small, I mean, in a certain shape or when your competence feels like that, like you start to learn these different, they really are pieces of visceral [00:30:00] intelligence.

Like when you’re the sensation in your body is giving you a piece of information and what a particular type of senses, what a particular type of sensation means to you. So you’re able to separate intuition, which is really unconscious pattern recognition based on the expertise you’ve developed from impulse.

Which is some feeling that you have to do something to prevent something from happening. Like, and I even said it, the way that I did, because like intuition is called an impulse, which is like always based on some other feeling that’s not relevant is agitated.  jennifer Lerner of Harvard calls it, and she’s done a lot of work around emotion and decision-making and risk decision-making.

She calls it integral. Is the feeling integral to the situation you’re working with or is it incidental? [00:31:00] I call it generally speaking is the feeling information about the situation you’re working with or irrelevant, meaning it’s about something else. You know, it may be about the fact that your brother beat you up and criticized you and you need to deal with that, but it’s not about like you’re calling people to merge those or in trading.

Is it intuition or impulse? But they’re all the same, like is the feeling relevant or not, and the only way you learn to do that is number one to tackle it and then practice now, then at the end, even after practice, there’s a step. Where do you believe yourself? Like, Hmm. Do you have the guts to go with your intuition?

I cannot tell you. How many portfolio managers and traders behind the scenes,  no matter how elegantly in, you know, in a sophisticated manner, they can describe their [00:32:00] market program at the end of the day is intuition. 

Ellen Twomey: Okay. So it’s not the magic there. They can explain it. They can. Here’s how I logically have my system set up.

But really they’re acting off their intuition. 

Denise Shull: Well, what they’re doing, they do all these steps to find that all this information, but the steps, the steps, like drop out a feeling. Yeah. So God will drops out of feeling. Okay. They tell their trader to buy or sell based on the feeling. Got it. So I’m always, we’re always working with people to understand that spectrum of feelings in a way that they can pull the information out.

Like that they know this feeling means that, or that feeling means this. Or if I, you know, I’m all jumbled and I don’t know how I feel, I need to go figure out how I feel before I decide. 

Ellen Twomey:  You talk about building a dictionary of emotions of yourself. I mean, [00:33:00] the, the, the emotions is information can be different for each person or D 

Denise Shull: Totally.

Well, and the other thing is, I mean, and I, I remind my clients of this all the time. Like, none of us will ever know how the other person actually feels. Right. Like, all we can know is what happens inside our bodies. Our sensations are, you know, you and I can talk, you can describe a feeling and what you, the words that come out of your mouth sound to me, like something that’s happened to me and I’ll go well, and I get it and it resonates.

And we feel like we’re connected. But we don’t really know if you experienced that as a way. You just know that the language will make it sound as if it’s the same. Really? No. So I can’t, I give people like a spectrum in the investment world of conviction. Like how much you believe. It’s how much you believe your [00:34:00] prediction.

And then I build out like all of the things that can influence that. So like fear of missing out and fear of future regret and fear being wrong because people tend to feel those things, but different people feel these different fears in different quantities and in different ways in their body, it’s not always going to be in your back or your shoulder or your gut or whatever.

Like it depends. 

Ellen Twomey: And are we taught to not feel? 

Denise Shull: Oh my gosh, absolutely. Like that’s an understatement. I mean, well, first of all, like we know, you know, for a fact, most men are brought up as little boys will, you know, like don’t cry, you know, or my husband always says when he played football, like PB football, I was like, well, rub some dirt on it.

Make it go away.  Yeah. But there’s lots of other ways we’re taught not to feel,  religion tends to teach people not to feel, you know, you’re supposed to have a faith that the world [00:35:00] works this way. And let’s say you have, you know, you have a lot of feelings about some situation you’re just supposed to have faith that it will work out.

And, and if you’re in a very religious situation, It’s really unlikely that anyone’s going to be really empathetic to your fears, frustrations and disappointments, because sort of by definition, if you have those things, you’re not having enough faith and I don’t care what religion it is. Pick any of them.

Interesting. 

Ellen Twomey: That’s really interesting given up to God. That’s that’s a phrase I give it. Yeah, 

Denise Shull: but now it’s now also there is a, you know, even in people who are, let’s say agnostic, there is a religion of positive thinking.

I had someone who interviewed you, it’s probably been three years ago now, a successful entrepreneur.

And he, he told me that like, he goes, you know, Oh my gosh, you’re so right. He goes, ah, he goes, you know, I have challenges and struggles trying to grow this business. Because, and I don’t have anybody I can talk to anymore [00:36:00] because like all my friends will, you know, I’m once a year successful, but number two, like, well, don’t be afraid or don’t be frustrated because if you’re afraid or frustrated, you’ll just create more of the fear of frustration.

He was like, I can’t even tell anybody. I don’t have anyone to really work. Like he goes, I have some challenge and it’s really frustrating and I want someone to work through it. We helped me decide. It goes not even going to talk to you because no one can tolerate me being frustrated. Now that is starting to change somewhat like last, just last night, I was quoted in an article in fast company that I wasn’t even interviewed for, but it was like, I don’t even remember the exact headline, but it’s something like positive thinking.

Isn’t all just cracked up to be. And like, there was a book a number of years ago called the upside of your dark side, which was largely about being able to tolerate your negative so-called negative emotions. They’re not even negative. They are unpleasant experiences with information. That’s the lead you to summit piece of information, we call them negative because they’re unpleasant, but like they’re unpleasant for a reason.

Like [00:37:00] anyway, I probably got off the track from what you asked me. 

Ellen Twomey: Well, I think, I mean, my point is that we sometimes, I think that, you know, we’re raised not to feel because other people can’t handle our feelings 

a hundred percent. 

This is what my husband, I, so I, he really appreciates how I help him out with this one.

But the, uh, you know, with our kids that they’re crying, he’s like, don’t cry. I’m like, they’re gonna cry. 

You know, 

and so, um, you know, I think that that’s, but that’s how we’re raised. Like this is a don’t do that. No, don’t be, uh, because, because why? Because we, as parents, we went, Oh, we want to be great. We want to be good at it.

So I think there are a lot of layers to that. 

Denise Shull: Oh, there’s as well. There’s a lot of layers to all of this, but you’re a, you’re a hundred percent, right. That like the less comfortable any one given person is with all of their feelings. Yeah, the less comfortable they’re going to be with someone else, having those feelings 

Ellen Twomey: totally, 

Denise Shull: totally out.

Also what’s going to happen is the person who’s uncomfortable with their feelings are going to act those feelings out [00:38:00] and someone who’s more aware is gonna be able to see them acting them out. Like just take passive aggressiveness, like. Oh, things that happen in, you know, mildly passive aggressive, like what the person’s irritated and mad and they won’t admit to it, or they’d say some subtly sarcastic thing that’s acting out that anger would, it’d be better off to say, you know, I’m frustrated about this.

He doesn’t create the same, neither for them nor the other person, the same kind of putrid feeling great. It’s only that generates more. You know, resentment and then it’s it snowball. 

Ellen Twomey: Yeah. Passive aggressive just kind of builds resistance on it. You know, more of that. Oh, that’s super interesting. Okay. I have just a few more questions cause we’re not even getting through.

You’re too interesting. Stopping so interesting. I would be remiss if I didn’t  ask this one. so for those people who haven’t watched billions is not a kid show, so I’m not. [00:39:00] And if you watch it and then you’re judging me, sorry. Cause it’s 

Denise Shull: definitely, 

Ellen Twomey: there’s definitely an extreme show, but, um, you know, you did do some consulting for the Wendy Rhodes character and it it’s, I mean, it’s super interesting character cause I just, there isn’t, you know, how many med.

Med shows and lawyer shows, and we don’t have a lot of financial trading coaches out there. So I’m curious, you know, what was that like? And then how do you feel about your work being portrayed as entertainment? Um, you know, what does that mean? You’re like you’re in that category of interesting work. 

Denise Shull: Yeah.

Um, well I’m first gotta be point blank. You know, I have a lawsuit with them. Right. So what it was like at the beginning, I mean, At the very beginning, I get this email from Andrew Ross Sorkin, who was one of the original creators saying, Hey, you know what, if you know, I’m on, I’m working on this show and there’s this actress, who’s being a female hedge fund performance coach, and she wants to talk to you.

And I was like, [00:40:00] what? You know? So I Google it. And I find out that they’d sell this show and sure enough. And I’m like, Oh, well, that’s interesting. So I’m thinking I’m going to go have a glass of wine with her, you know? Um, And before I knew it, honest to God, like make my head spin. I was in the writer’s room with the two other writers, Brian Koppelman and David, I don’t know.

I never know if it’s living or living. Um, and she’s not even there. And they’re asking me, tell them, like everything I know. Um, and I did up to a certain extent when I realized, wait a minute, this is like, there’s something not right about this. Um, And then I kept in contact with her and they wanted me to work with her.

And, but, you know, it’s sort of like went into never, never liked it. Then they, it just all went dark on me and I’m like, well, that was really weird. What was that about? And I really, I honestly, it was like just sort of dumbfounded, but the truth is  I was releasing the first version of the brain game that you brought up [00:41:00] with Bloomberg and I was like too busy to really think about it.

So then the show comes out and. Everybody is like, Oh my God, Denise, you’re on television. Like, that’s you like, I, I remember I was at an Australia day party in New Jersey and they were talking about the show. I’d only been out like three weeks or whatever. Or if someone said that’s her. At that point in time.

It also, at that point in time, you know, she starts out as a dominatrix 

Ellen Twomey: right. 

Denise Shull: And everybody’s-

Ellen Twomey: To be clear were you consulted on the career portion 

Denise Shull: to be clear, although I will tell you, I have had the answer, that dominatrix thing, almost every talk I’d given substance I’m you serious? I mean, or some joke about it or something, you know?

Um, But so like at that point in time, I didn’t really know how she was going to turn out. And, you know, I knew they had like taken a bunch of stuff from me and, and like went dark. [00:42:00] And, but I also was like, okay, everybody’s talking to me about it. And I thought, okay, I’m just going to like, ignore it. And it became impossible.

I couldn’t go. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t go to a current client meeting a new client, meeting a hedge fund cocktail party. I couldn’t go anywhere really without, you know, anyone that was in the hedge fund business, who knew what I did was like, you’re on TV. Now at that point, I hadn’t said a word about consulting.

Hadn’t said a word. I didn’t say a word about it for a long time.

 it’s been bizarre. Like, so the first thing was like, I think I got, you know, sort of baited and switched, then I couldn’t escape it. Um, then I finally admitted to it then, like they came after me. They told me I couldn’t tell anybody. And I’m like, ah, we didn’t sign the NDA. [00:43:00] I don’t know. It’s just the truth.

And then I had to hire an entertainment lawyer to answer them telling me. And then I found out this whole thing about how entertainment works and, you know, everyone just said, just tell the truth. So I’ve just been telling the truth, um, 

Ellen Twomey: makes sense to me. 

Denise Shull: But as it’s gone on, there’ve been moments where, like I got an email, um, the first year on the magical thinking episode from a client in Australia, I hadn’t heard from him for three years and he says, Oh my gosh, that was just social.

And then there was, uh, you know, there’s been so many incidences where her dialogue and, and her dialogue with Taylor has been like one time I had to turn the television off 

Ellen Twomey: because it was so similar. 

Denise Shull: Like, and my husband is, you know, he’s an economist by training and he’s, you know, he’s not like always going to pick up on any little emotional subtlety and he looked to me and he goes, that sounds exactly like you really?

Yeah. I mean, I had a journalist in [00:44:00] New York. Who said, well, everyone knows it’s you like, no one thinks it’s not you. That’s when I was explaining that, you know, like, I mean, I’ve had a lot of journalists who won’t talk to me anymore. You know, I basically only because if you need to be an financial television or you need to be an entertainment and I’m up against, showtime and billions, like everybody’s going to pick them, not me.

Um, so it’s been a real learning experience. And I will say like my own work helps me a tremendous amount to deal with the frustration of it or, you know, yeah. I’m trying to humiliate me, you know, or make me look stupid or, you know, and then to seem like more and more instances of it. I mean, just this past season, it seemed like they were trying to troll me.

I mean, They mentioned NASCAR, which I, you know, it’s public that I work with a [00:45:00] NASCAR team and I don’t think she would ever talk NASCAR. It’s not her kind of background, you know, then she wear a dress, but I’m worn in, in a bunch of pictures last year. I mean, maybe it’s coincidence kind of seems unlikely under the circumstances.

 some days it’s super annoying, some days it’s. It’s funny. I mean like the dress and the NASCAR thing were pretty just, they just made me laugh and like, there’s this hedge fund kind of sarcastic, I dunno what you call it. It’s called deal-breaker. They’ve been writing stories about the dress.

Um, anything I can laugh at myself because, but why can I laugh at myself? Cause I, you know, I have a lot of practice at like having all of my emotions. 

Ellen Twomey: Right, right. So do you think your job is entertaining? 

Denise Shull: I do think it’s entertaining. And I do think like people, I always want to know, like, like one thing I figured out early on is that people [00:46:00] turn the market into like a Rorschach blot, meaning they take their issues with like their self-confidence and their issues with authority or whatever their stuff is right in the markets and authority figure.

So you can react to the market as if it’s like a father punishing you. And, or, you know, a mother criticizing you or an older brother or whatever. Like it, even though I had psychodynamic background, when I first started doing this, it was just about the emotions of confidence and conviction and fear. Like, I didn’t realize when I, even though I was in class, I mean, Institute of modern psychoanalysis, I didn’t realize that, um, People were going to project their stuff onto the market.

And basically I got a client like six months into it who had this crazy situation. And I, and then he told me his life story. It was really good. Two that they matched. And then that’s when I realized, wait a minute, these prices are moving around. And you know, if they go up, see if you’re buying something to go up, you make money if they go down.

So like, if you’re getting this tick by tick assault on your ego. So of [00:47:00] course. You’re going to project your insecurities onto it. Um, so then once I realized that, like, then, you know, now I have hundreds, if not thousands of stories about how people’s basically their, the totality of their self-image and whatever the nuances are, get worked out in their trade.

Right. So that ends up being like super interesting to me. That is 

Ellen Twomey: super interesting. I agree with you. So let’s talk about intuition brain games, because you created this. Why don’t you tell us what it is and why people need it, and you mean it’s to improve some of these skills, right. That we’re talking about.

Denise Shull: So if I go back to the like information or in REL or irrelevant feelings or intuitive or impulsive. Like intuition, this feels calm. Like it doesn’t, it doesn’t urge you to do anything. You just have this sense of knowing, okay. This physical bodily sense of just knowing. So there was an ex there’s, two experiments, one in [00:48:00] 1944 that showed people, impute a story to geometric shapes, moving around a page.

And then one in 2007, um, showing that the traders who were best at predicting people were best at predicting markets. 

Ellen Twomey: Really? 

Denise Shull: So those two are the same, the shapes moving around the page and creating a story out of that and predicting people at the same. Cause you’re predicting what the shapes are going to do.

Predicting, what people are going to do is the same as predicting where the price is going to go. People forget to think about that, but they’re both called theory of mind. You’re using theory of mind to predict the shapes and you’re using theory of mind. That’s the name for the brain facility to predict other people to predict price.

So we created this game where you can [00:49:00] practice watching the shapes and you’re predicting what they’re going to do. But the way you get the right answer is to like focus on what’s happening and not think, I think just listen to whatever your body tells you. Huh. And that’s the skill people don’t have. So if you get better at it, like you’ll be better at recognizing that same sensation when you’re looking at the market.

And so it’s meant to familiarize you with that really calm, like. Sense of intuition, unconscious pattern recognition, using theory of mind that, you know, so you’re 

Ellen Twomey: thinking, yeah, I’m just, I mean, I did it last time, so you don’t really want to think and I wasn’t very good. So I feel, 

Denise Shull: yeah. And you want to, you just want to watch carefully and then turn your, you know, your conscious cognitive attention to what, [00:50:00] what your body tells you.

Ellen Twomey: Hmm. Got it. 

Denise Shull: Like your body, your body will say the right answer is whatever the circle is going to move to the square. Your body will give you an answer and it’ll be really subtle, quiet feeling. 

Ellen Twomey: Well, people who are better at it get, have, uh, you know, do better 

Denise Shull: or, yeah. Yeah. So like one of the most intuitive traders, I know, couple of weeks ago I asked him to test it and he texted me.

He goes, I just did the first one. I got five out of five. I’m like. Not surprised at the same time I was, another guy was tested for me, who is really, really technical and like overthinks things and admits he gets in his own way over thinking things. He’s like, this is a stupid game. I can’t do this at all.

He goes, but I gave it to my wife and she, I can do it. Why is that? 

Ellen Twomey: I love it. I love it. 

Denise Shull: One of these days we’ll get around to, you know, doing enough statistics on it to show. I mean, you’re not going to get five out of five randomly. Okay. [00:51:00] The statistics of that are, nevermind. Like if you, you know, you play it 10 times and I don’t know, you’d have, you know, 29 out of 40, like the numbers show that there’s something to it.

Right. 

Ellen Twomey: Got it. Well, I didn’t fare that. Well, I was in the middle. I was like a two and a three, I think. So my intuition, 

Denise Shull: so people subscribe, we get some people who subscribe and like two hours later, they unsubscribe. They’re like, okay, they’re not doing very well. And they’re frustrated and they’re mad and they’re like, this is stupid.

You know? Um, it’s meant for people to play, you know, few minutes a day and just try to access that really subtle feeling. It’s more 

Ellen Twomey: feeling. Yeah, 

Denise Shull: I get it a hundred percent about feeling. 

Ellen Twomey: That’s so cool. Okay. Check it out at intuition brain games. You guys. All right, Denise, I’ve got a final question for you.

I told you you’re too interesting, too many to get things to talk about. [00:52:00] So I’d love for you. I’d love to hear your take on, on my audience. 

So. 

Let’s say you’re coaching a woman. Who’s thinking about getting into a technical field and it can one that’s majority held by men. So for me, it’s technology for you, it’s finance.

She isn’t sure she’s cut out for the work. What do you, how do you coach on that? 

Denise Shull: Well, at first be like, why, why aren’t you? What, what are the fears? What, what’s the prediction. You know, so she’s predicting that if she does it and takes the job, she’s going to feel a certain way. And at the moment that she’s doing that, she’s thinking of that ain’t going to be good.

I’m going to be miserable there, you know, get all that out on the table. Yeah. And then sorted out as to what’s more likely and less likely I can basically guarantee you with in that there’s like one or two real fears. [00:53:00] That in some number of cases aren’t even gonna have anything to do with the actual, they’re going to be like really afraid of like leaving her kids at home or would it be something else?

 but once you sort them out and usually by definition, you can sort of easily reduce the number. Then you can investigate what the remaining ones are really about. And once you sign sunlight on that, a number of them are going to be diluted. And usually somewhere in that process of reducing the fears down to what they really are.

You, you gained some courage to take them on 

Ellen Twomey: Denise Shull. Thank you so much for being on the five guests today. 

Ellen Twomey: Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to sign up for the You Are Techy e-mail list. Imagine being in the tech job of your dreams. Join me to get the strategies, training, and never ending support to get tired. Sign up at youaretechy.com. That’s Y-O-U-A-R-E-T-E-C-H-Y dot [00:20:00] com. I’ll see you next time!