Speaker 1: Okaday, Welcome to healthy Ish, your podcast from body and Soul.
Speaker 1: I am your host for listening, Harley Yes. To celebrate
Speaker 1: summer and the festive season, we're dropping our top Healthish
Speaker 1: episodes of twenty twenty four. This one is a goodie
Speaker 1: and listeners, you loved it, so we're giving it to
Speaker 1: you again. I was joined by a psychologist, neuroscientist and
Speaker 1: co founder of Future Minds Lab at UNSW in Sydney,
Speaker 1: Professor Joel Pearson. Now, he says when we're too emotional,
Speaker 1: it can cloud our intuition, so he joined us earlier
Speaker 1: in the year to discuss how managing your emotional state
Speaker 1: can help build your intuition and in turn help you
Speaker 1: make better decisions.
Speaker 2: Now, as you know, we keep.
Speaker 1: Our Healthish episodes quite short, so if you want to
Speaker 1: hear more from Joel, listening to extra healthy Ish, where
Speaker 1: he talked about how to well better trust your intuition,
Speaker 1: and that's something we all need advice around, don't we. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you can search for Extra healthy Ish wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Joel, thank you for coming on healthy Ish
Speaker 1: My pleasure Now you are an intriguing mix and you're
Speaker 1: a scientist as psychologist written a book about intuition. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty compelling mix.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, keep going. I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 1: Keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean intuition.
Speaker 1: Well, I suppose, because intuition is you know, and you
Speaker 1: say it in the book. It's traditionally wo woo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's some degree right. And that's one of the
Speaker 3: things I try and clear up really early on, is
Speaker 3: how I'm defining it. I'm not talking about the spiritual side,
Speaker 3: the magical, the blueprint of the universe. I'm taking a
Speaker 3: very scientific approach, and that's the I think that's the
Speaker 3: exciting thing. We can explain intuition with all the science,
Speaker 3: the way we understand the brain already. We don't need
Speaker 3: to learn new things. We will learn a lot of
Speaker 3: new things, but we can explain it already.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I think that I think I agree
Speaker 1: with that because you know, I've been in media for
Speaker 1: a while now, and perhaps you know, fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: i'd interview people about the whole intuition thing who had
Speaker 1: no science.
Speaker 2: Oh it's just you know, that feeling. But what does
Speaker 2: the science say about it?
Speaker 3: So it says it's a real thing that we can
Speaker 3: So it's research we've done in the lab in my
Speaker 3: lab here in Sydney about ten years ago. So we
Speaker 3: can tap into unconscious information in the brain and we
Speaker 3: can use that for better decisions or actions. Right, and
Speaker 3: we're like getting into the nerdy detail what our bodies.
Speaker 2: Actually Okay, we don't nerdy details.
Speaker 3: I can go there, don't let me do it. So
Speaker 3: what our body is doing, it's our body has access
Speaker 3: to the unconscious information. So we don't know what's there
Speaker 3: in our brain, but our body can access that. It
Speaker 3: can pick up on the emotions and that's what we're
Speaker 3: feeling in this gut response that people talk about. That's
Speaker 3: why it's called the gut. The gut feeling. Some people
Speaker 3: in the chest, some people the fingertips, and so our
Speaker 3: brains are free tips. Yeah, some people feel on their
Speaker 3: sweaty palms or their fingertips, shoulders, chest, but normally in
Speaker 3: the body. So that's called introception, an internal perception of
Speaker 3: the internal state of the body. So all the information
Speaker 3: you're processing you go into a cafe or a restaurant,
Speaker 3: you're processing thousands of different things. The temperature, the music,
Speaker 3: the style, the type of tables, the type.
Speaker 2: Of love, our bodies and bodies, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: But it's a lot of that's unconscious. You're not really
Speaker 3: aware of it. And so your brain's learnt that some
Speaker 3: things predict good outcomes, good food, good coffee, other things
Speaker 3: in the cafe predict bad food to bad coffee. So
Speaker 3: your brain's picking up on that's triggering these red flags.
Speaker 3: But it's unconscious, but you're feeling it in the body,
Speaker 3: in the gut, and that's the gut feeling.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I just it's phenomenal, isn't it that
Speaker 1: our this is all happening and always thinking about is
Speaker 1: that we need a latte?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we just feel it. It's automatic, happens in
Speaker 3: a second, bang, all done very quickly.
Speaker 1: So you talked to us about emotional intelligence and the
Speaker 1: importance of this in nurturing. How do you describe it
Speaker 1: nurturing or intuition? Getting more in touch with that, What
Speaker 1: sort of terminology to use?
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean I have these rules around it to
Speaker 3: a and the number one the most important is really
Speaker 3: to not practice intuition when you're highly emotional, positive or negative.
Speaker 3: That's important. And the reason is that you get flooded
Speaker 3: with these strong emotions and that just washes out. You
Speaker 3: can't pick up the more subtle feelings of intuition. So
Speaker 3: if you're in this state, we need to find a
Speaker 3: way to bring ourselves back to a baseline, right again,
Speaker 3: if it's positive or negative, get that sort of calmer
Speaker 3: a state. And there's lots of different ways of doing that,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, emotional awareness is a huge part of that.
Speaker 3: So you need that, which is a part of emotional intelligence. Right.
Speaker 3: So emotional intelligence is a larger sort of category which
Speaker 3: involves emotional awareness of yourself of other people. Right. So
Speaker 3: it's a big thing in the workplace. If someone's really
Speaker 3: grumpy in your team, you need to have noticed that.
Speaker 3: You can't just you know, bulldoze them and not even notice.
Speaker 3: But also it involves ways of controlling your emotions, you know,
Speaker 3: not to bring it back when you are very emotional.
Speaker 2: How can we do that?
Speaker 3: That's a million dollar question. Yeah, So first up, we
Speaker 3: know that emotional intelligence in general predicts all kinds of
Speaker 3: things from academic success, entrepreneurship, you know, advancement in the workplace.
Speaker 2: Having better relationships, yeah, friends.
Speaker 3: Better well being, healthy, healthiness, or all the It just
Speaker 3: predicts so many good, interesting, good things. So what we think,
Speaker 3: at least in terms of your own self awareness, is
Speaker 3: to practice labeling the feelings you have and linking those
Speaker 3: labels and words to the physiology, the physiology in your
Speaker 3: body the feelings you get. So if you feel your
Speaker 3: heart rate growing up, or you feel a bit sweaty,
Speaker 3: or you the idea is to get used to noticing
Speaker 3: that early and putting a label on that. And the
Speaker 3: more you do that, the more familiar you'll be and
Speaker 3: the better self awareness you'll have of your own emotions.
Speaker 1: So a label being I'm feeling anxiety or frustration or.
Speaker 3: So we can start with very simple and then we
Speaker 3: might get more specific, like I'm feeling excited and a
Speaker 3: bit nervous, and then you try and add more and
Speaker 3: more detail to get more nuanced, to to really tap
Speaker 3: into that feeling.
Speaker 1: Often it's hard, though, when you're in the height of emotion.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're in an argument with your partner,
Speaker 1: if you're you know a lot of our listeners overwhelmed
Speaker 1: with the mental load, and you know you're all up
Speaker 1: here and oh my gosh, I can't like, how do
Speaker 1: we bring it back down so we can actually become
Speaker 1: more in tune with what's happening in a gut.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's two things. There's general things we can
Speaker 3: do each day just to sort of you know, from
Speaker 3: your sleep to your eating habits. Exercise. I'm a fan
Speaker 3: of exercise. I'm a fan of sauna. Hot and cold.
Speaker 3: Sauna is one of the things that really if I'm
Speaker 3: in a grumpy, bad mood or stressed, getting my heart
Speaker 3: rate up in the sauna on top of exercise does
Speaker 3: amazing things for me. And then there's the things in
Speaker 3: the moment. Right, So, if I'm sitting here, I'm going
Speaker 3: to nervous, I'm freaking out. I can feel attention. I
Speaker 3: can start controlling my breathing. Being aware of my breathing.
Speaker 3: I can do what's called box breathing, which is breathing
Speaker 3: into account, holding it for account, breathing out for count.
Speaker 3: So it's very controlled, that square shape breathing. There's a
Speaker 3: physiological sigh which has become very popular, which is a
Speaker 3: breathing in and then breathing out much longer and more slowly,
Speaker 3: and that has particular effects on heart rate and physiology.
Speaker 2: You're any number on the box breathing that you should
Speaker 2: aim for.
Speaker 3: I like to go for five count of five. But
Speaker 3: it depends on people's lung capacity. Yeah, you don't want
Speaker 3: to stress yourself out those kind of things off or
Speaker 3: just going for a walk, just movement, I think, just
Speaker 3: moving the body, stretching. Even so, those things that you
Speaker 3: can do in the moment, you probably can't, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're in that board meeting on some important meeting,
Speaker 3: drop the phone when you could. We could do all that,
Speaker 3: but you know.
Speaker 2: The workplace is the body and soul offices.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 3: But I think there's that acute things you can do
Speaker 3: right in the moment, and then there's the daily maintenance things.
Speaker 3: And i'd break it into those two categories.
Speaker 1: So when you are perhaps two emotional, as you say,
Speaker 1: why is it detrimental trusting your intuition in that moment
Speaker 1: as opposed to when you're flatlining?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so two main reasons. So there's something called arousal misattribution.
Speaker 3: And the book I go to I love these academic
Speaker 3: but in the book I go to this story. It
Speaker 3: was a first date and we went rock climbing, right,
Speaker 3: and you know it's indoor rock climbing gym. We're falling
Speaker 3: off the wall climbing or sweaty and it's full of adrenaline,
Speaker 3: and we're like, oh, looking towards each other's eyes, We're excited,
Speaker 3: we're feeling the chemistry. Oh my god, it's amazing. Turns
Speaker 3: out not so much. We weren't that suited for each other.
Speaker 3: What was happening. I didn't realize this till actually a
Speaker 3: few years later that when you're in that situation, we
Speaker 3: confuse the arousal, the adrenaline, the heart rate, the sweating
Speaker 3: between the rock climbing and the person. So we think
Speaker 3: it's the actual the effect of the person's having on us, right,
Speaker 3: we think it's you know, I'm getting my heart rate's
Speaker 3: gone up. It must because I'm falling for this person.
Speaker 3: But it's the rock climbing, yeah, right, right, And there's
Speaker 3: lots of cool experiments looking into this. Producers of shows
Speaker 3: like The Bachelor or a Bachelor, these kind of reality shows
Speaker 3: were off and manipulate people a little bit using tricks
Speaker 3: like this. So that's one reason we don't want to
Speaker 3: confuse one emotion for something else. In Otherwise, we don't
Speaker 3: want to confuse our fear of flying with something about
Speaker 3: intuition about a plane, right, and too just think about
Speaker 3: like like I said before, the general amount of emotional noise.
Speaker 3: If you're like in the system, you're at a party
Speaker 3: and it's noisy, you can't hear yourself talking to someone else,
Speaker 3: you can't hear them talking either, And so having just
Speaker 3: a lot of emotion, the system will just wipe out
Speaker 3: the more subtle feelings that are part of intuition. So
Speaker 3: for those two main reasons, Yeah, we don't want to
Speaker 3: you practice intuition when we're highly emotional.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Joel, thank you for coming on Healthy My pleasure.
Speaker 1: Well, I know you are probably intrigued to hear more
Speaker 1: from Joel well Grabby's new book.
Speaker 2: It is out now.
Speaker 1: It is called The Intuition a tool Kit. If you
Speaker 1: did enjoy this chat, make sure you rate and review it.
Speaker 1: Of course, you can subscribe to this a podcast, share
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