#19 – John Wood – How To Feel Your Feelings AND Get Rich

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What if your ability to feel your heartbeat, to feel your feelings,

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To connect with your body could predict how much money you make. That’s not woowoo, spiritual, hippie dippy nonsense. It’s neuroscience and traders and bankers are

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Already using it to crush it. And

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In this video, and in this video, I’m going to break down the science of this and how you can get started right now.

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Let’s get into it. Okay. So my name

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Is John Wood and I am the founder of Ray Yard. And I am so fucking fascinated by this whole thing of feeling feelings, getting into the body, doing what some call somatic therapy, nervous system regulation. I’ve been doing it for about five years now, and to me it is the most rewarding, fulfilling, satisfying thing you can do. But when I try and explain it to people, especially people like my friend Rob, who are very into their numbers, they’re very business focused. He’s a management consultant. So he’s all about the numbers, all about what’s measurable. And when I start talking about this sematic thing, this feeling your feelings thing to him, it just sounds like fluff, nonsense, spiritual woowoo, hippie dippy stuff, vague, culty, manipulative. These are all words he’s used when I’ve spoken to him about this. But recently he found a couple of scientific studies which explained to him, helped him to understand that this whole feeling you’re feeling, staying, getting into the body, doing somatic therapy, regulating your nervous system, getting connected with your emotions, all those bits and pieces that people actually perform better in teams at work with their families when they do this.

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So this is not a hippie, dippy, woowoo, spiritual, fluffy, vague, manipulative, culty thing. This is a proven path to being a better human being in whatever domain you are in. Okay? So what I want to do today is show you two different studies. The two studies that he found, I’m going to explain them to you. And this should illustrate that this, like I said in the beginning, this feeling your feelings thing, getting in touch with your emotions, that sort of thing that’s traditionally being soft and fluffy and feminine and even weak and boys don’t cry and all that bullshit. I’m going to show you with these two studies that there is a pretty good case to be made, that you will become a better human being. Whatever domain you’re in, whether you’re a banker or a trader, you have a family, you are in the gym, whatever it is that you do, that you care about, that you believe in, learning how to feel your feelings, learning how to regulate your nervous system is a very, very reliable path.

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Two, improving whatever that thing is. Okay, so let’s take a look at study number one. Interoceptive ability predicts survival on a London trading floor. Now this is a fairly small study, so you can criticize it on that level if you want, I suppose, but to me it’s still sheds a light on what’s really going on with interoception. Now, what the hell is interoceptive ability? Interoception is basically your ability to understand or feel what’s happening inside you. So here’s the study. Researchers tested 18 high frequency traders using the heartbeat detection task, which is where participants had to silently count their heartbeats over set intervals without touching their body. So the idea is that you would sit there, you can’t touch the veins on your wrist, the veins here, your carotid artery, you can’t touch any of that. You have to just sit there. And by tuning into your body, by feeling your sensations, you’re into reception, your sensations inside your internal sensations, you will then start to feel the heartbeat.

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And then they would then compare people’s scores with their actual heart rate and the closer their ability to sense their heartbeat with their interoceptive ability. They would call that interoceptive accuracy. Does that make sense? Okay, so they’re doing a test to find out how good they are at accurately gauging their heartbeat based on what they feel, and then they give them a score. And what they found is that traders had significantly better interception than control groups. So the control groups that people who did not do this, nont traders and matched professionals, traders had significantly better interception. That means that they were significantly better than other people at sensing what’s going on internally. And higher interceptive accuracy predicted profitability. In other words, traders who could feel their internal signals more accurately made more money. Lemme say that again. Traders who could feel their internal signals, their internal sensations made more money.

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I’m not just saying they were better at feeling their heartbeat. The point is, if you’re present enough and quiet enough and you have the ability to feel your heartbeat without touching a vein, you can just feel it from the sensation inside your body. That’s like a litmus test for can you feel other sensations in your body, aches and pains? Can you feel the different emotions that might arise? Can you feel where they arise in the body? Right? Often when I talk about this, people are like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Especially my friend Rob, who’s a business guy, he’s like, well, tell me how to make more money. And so now I feel like now we’re finally starting to get some data on saying, okay, if you could actually learn to feel this inside, you can get better at feeling your feelings regulating your nervous system.

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If you can do that, you’re going to make more money. And higher interceptive accuracy also predicted longevity. So which basically means that they lasted longer in the industry, the trading industry, which is known for high burnout and turnover. So not only do you make more money, but you’re actually less likely to succumb to burnout and various health issues. That was study number one, why this matters. This is another thing I’ve got written down here. Interoception acts like a 6 cents under stress, so it can help you make faster, more accurate decisions in chaotic environments. And if it works for traders, right? That’s a very high pressure, very high stakes environment. Do you think it might work for you with your family or in the gym at work, whatever your job might be, jujitsu. And so it wasn’t also another interesting point here is it wasn’t IQ or education that predicted success. It was their ability to feel what’s happening inside them. So when I talk about rage yard and regulating your nervous system and getting in touch with your feelings and getting into your body, it can sound or remember who you are connecting with yourself, following your impulse. It all, I admit it can sound a bit vague a bit, yeah, but what does this mean for me?

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And I guess this to me is finally showing me to understand as well, how do you actually package this or present this in a way so that people are like, oh, I get it now I get why this is important. And maybe that’s the entry point. Maybe it’s not just about the money, but that’s an entry point that a lot of people can like, oh, I get that. I do want more money. Most people want more money. They can do the things that they want to do even if they don’t want to be billionaires. So that’s an entry point, a way to get people interested into this, into somatic work, into regulating the nervous system, feeling your feelings. So that’s study number one. The takeaway, remember is interceptive ability accuracy, interceptive accuracy, the ability to sense what’s happening inside leads to you make more money and you last longer, less likely to succumb to burnout and stress, things like that.

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Okay, study number two, transcending socialization. I don’t know why I’ve got that written down there. They did a nine year ethnography tracking investment bankers across two firms. So basically just looking at the culture of different investment bankers at two firms, and they observed how their relationship with their bodies evolved over time from burnout to breakthroughs. Now, what they found is in the initial phase, initially most bankers treated their bodies as tools. They ignored the pain, fatigue, stress. The body was just this thing to dominate, to override, to I’m the boss, I’m going to do the thing, whatever my body says despite what my body says. But over time, years of overwork actually causes physical and emotional crashes, whether we’re talking chronic illness, burnout, dysfunction problems for them. And then at some point there was a bit of a transformation where some of these bankers began listening to their bodies.

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And instead of seeing the bodies as an obstacle to defeat, to dominate the body became a source of knowledge. Again, this goes back to that interceptive ability. Instead of thinking, oh, my body’s all tired, instead of, oh, I just need to drink another coffee. If only I didn’t feel tired, like the body’s a hassle. No, the body’s giving me valuable information right now, and if I pay attention to that, it’ll make me better at what I’m trying to accomplish. So some of these bankers began listening to their bodies, treating them as sources of knowledge instead of obstacles like most people. And as a result in this study, they became more creative, they had more ideas, they developed better ethical judgments, they had better ethics. That was surprising to me. I was like, oh, that’s never thought of that before. Built better work structures, made smarter, more adaptive, more adaptive decisions.

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So it does say here, physical breakdowns became the doorway to more sustainable success. So by paying attention to the physical breakdown, they were able to learn from that and go, okay, I might need to change what I’m doing instead of just drinking coffee and overriding this motherfucker and then listening to the body, learning from that, and then starting to listen to the body created unexpected performance gains, not by working harder, but by working with their nervous system. So so much of our culture these days, we celebrate, we value, we adore and look up to these people who can override and work crazy, crazy hours, and they just go and they go and they hustle and they rise and they grind. Our whole culture in society celebrates these types of people. Go and look at those motivational videos that you can find on YouTube. There’s like a whole addiction to this way of being.

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And the funny thing is, in a lot of these cases, I think these people are actually just extremely disconnected from this thing right here to their detriment. So I burnout and overwhelm and chronic health problems and anxiety and depression, all these things are such an issue or the issues that they are. So the point of these two studies, the reason I brought them up is to show you that when I’m talking about feeling your feelings, regulating your nervous system, somatic therapy, right? Understanding the fight and flight response, the survival response, getting in touch with your impulses, right? The biological impulse to go to the bathroom, all these different bits and pieces that I talk about here on this channel and on the email [email protected], it’s free. You can sign up there anytime. All this stuff I’m talking about, it may sound fluffy, vague, it may sound a bit sort of ethereal or I don’t really get it.

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Is this really going to help me? And what I’m saying is that not only would you be happier and more fulfilled in general just for the fact of doing it, but you’ll most likely make more money. You’ll be more creative, you will get, if not more done. I don’t want to promise that you’ll get more done, but you may be more creative, you’ll probably be more creative with how you’re getting things done. So you’ll accomplish more while working the same or less, you accomplish more or the same without running yourself into the ground so much. And this could apply at work, this could be with a family member or a family situation, whatever it is. So I guess that’s what I’m trying to get across is that there are quantifiable benefits and money is a very easy thing to quantify. You can make more money quantifiable benefits to this nervous system thing, to this feeling of feelings thing. Okay?

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The question is, how do you get started? How do you actually develop this interoceptive capacity? It’s a very good question, and it’s funny you asked me that. I can hear you asking me that. It’s funny you asked me that, because here at Ray Jart, that’s exactly what I do. I teach people how to get into their body, how we can say, get into their body, how to connect with themselves, how to feel their feelings, how to regulate their nervous system. But if I was to use the language from these studies, which I’ve just shared with you, I would say that rage art is basically a step-by-step guide to cultivating your interoceptive capacity. Lemme say that again. Rage art, these videos, the newsletter, the course, the coaching, all of it. One way to look at it is it’s just a system, a systematic way of developing your interoceptive capacity.

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And the more that goes up, the better your performance goes up in every area of your life. Okay? So how do you do that? Number one is starting to understand some of the, we could say the theory of your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system, how it responds to stress and threats, why you feel certain things. Why is there anger? What is the purpose of fear, shame, sadness, guilt. Why do they arise? I could explain this right now, but since the video is going to be a bit long if I do, the point is it’s important to understand what your nervous system is doing when you’re feeling certain things, when it’s giving you certain feelings, certain sensations, what that means, the theory goes a long way. You can learn that from these videos, from these podcast episodes. You can learn it from the email [email protected].

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You can learn it from books, other podcasts, things like that. But the theory is a critical piece so that when things do come up, when there are feelings that arise, you don’t freak out. You don’t disregard them either. You understand them, you work with them. Okay? So the theory is one piece. Another piece is, well, the other piece is really just learning how to feel, learning how to connect with the body and the body as distinct from the mind, the mind and the body. It’s a bit blurry. Where’s the line between each one? But a simple way to think about it is the mind is thinking thoughts, and the body is sensation. So a thought about whatever, a story, a narrative, that’s the mind. You can have a story from the mind about a sensation, but the sensation itself is not the narrative. So I can be feeling something and going, oh, this is anger and I’m angry about this thing.

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Well, that’s the mind aspect. The body aspect is just the heat, the way that the chest is tightening or whatever. It’s okay. So it’s the techniques you want to get started with this. The first thing you can do is start to ground yourself in your physical environment. So look around with your eyes here with your ears. Just start to pay attention to what’s happening around you right now. And you can even look away from the computer screen or I don’t know if you’ve got this in headphones. You’re not looking at the screen, looking around at your environment, noticing what you notice, neutral things, trees, birds, walls, floors.

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Notice, noticing the ground as well, bringing that in. So your connection through touch. Again, the ground is a great one. Again, because it’s neutral, we can go into pains and aches and discomfort in the body. That’s certainly part of it, but it can be a little bit of a smoother entry if we start with something that’s neutral like the ground. So see if you can feel the ground beneath your feet or the chair beneath your butt, the pillow beneath your head. If you’re lying in bed right now, can you notice your breath? That’s another fairly neutral, fairly obvious one to feel you really quiet down and pay attention.

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Can you feel your breath right now?

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And then if you wanted to use the heartbeat detection task, you could tune in and say, see if you could feel your heartbeat right now. I am going through this really quickly. This is not meant to be a guided exercise. This is a podcast, this is a video, right? If you want a free lesson, a free guided version of this, go to rage heart.co. That’s like Braveheart rage art dot go sign off for the email newsletter. There’s a question at the bottom of the first email. If you reply to that question, I’ll send you the first lesson from Inside the Rage Art Academy, completely free. And it’s a 20 minute guided version of this exercise to help you develop better, deeper interceptive capacity so you can make more money, be more creative, have more fun in your life.

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So that’s some of the things. Environment, learning to bland, learning to see what’s happening around you, learning to hear it, feeling the ground, noticing your breath, noticing your heartbeat without actually touching one of the veins on your body. What else? Noticing when you need to go to the bathroom and not overriding that. Not like when you’re hungry eating, when you start to feel like you’re hungry. That’s an interoceptive thing right now, if you get in the habit of ignoring that, right? You’re hungry, but you distract yourself with your work, you’ve got to get something done. You could distract yourself with video games or movies or whatever it is. You’re practicing disconnecting from these sensations. So if you’re hungry, eat if you’re thirsty, drink some water.

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If you are tired, take a sleep nap. If you’re sick, rest, start to pay attention to these more. We could say obvious signals of tiredness, hunger, thirst, needing to go to the bathroom. You gradually start to get as your capacity or ability, your skill at sensing these feelings, these sensations inside you. Your interoceptive capacity will develop to the point where you can then start to sense more subtle feelings, like a subtle bracing in the shoulders that happens when you get stressed. That means you end up holding onto all that stress, and then you get home at the end of the day and you wonder why you can’t sleep. So developing, kind of like at first, as you get this, you might be like, you’re either in your body or you’re not. You either need to go to the bathroom or you don’t, but as your ability, you’ve got two speeds, I suppose you could think about that at some point. That range expands and you can start to sense, oh, there’s a hundred different shades of this feeling. And as that improves, then your ability to navigate and work with what’s happening in your body through your interoceptive capacity improves and keeps improving and keeps improving. And those studies say you make more money, right? You’re more creative. You last longer at whatever you’re doing. Less likely to get burnout, less likely to struggle to sleep, less likely to get a chronic illness better, more available and present for your family, a better leader. Okay?

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So that’s it theory. If you want to learn how to build your interoceptive capacity, it’s a theory which you can learn in these videos in my emails. And there is the techniques, like I said, environment, ground, breath, heartbeat, learning, not just following your impulses like these physical things inside you, but when you’re hungry, feel it and eat thirsty. Feel it. Notice what sensation is it in your body that tells you when you’re thirsty, what sensation tells you, what feeling tells you that you’re tired, so on and so forth. If you do want to learn more about how to do this, like I said, you can go to rage heart.co and sign up for the free newsletter. That’s like Braveheart, the movie, but rage heart.co sign up for the free email newsletter. And in the first email, there’s a question at the bottom where you can basically ask a question, and if you reply to that, I’ll send you a free exercise. It’s the first lesson from Inside the Rage Heart Academy, and that’s a guided version of what we’ve done here. It’ll give you a really good taste of what it’s like to be more in your body, to be more to more connected to your interoceptive ability. Okay? If you enjoyed this, please subscribe. Hit the like button, leave a comment. If you have a question or some hate mail or just whatever, some joke, that’ll be cool. I hope you enjoyed this, and I will see you next time.