We Play Full Out with Bart and Sunny

Playing Full Out with Your Emotional Power: Why Feelings Drive Every Decision You Make

• Bart and Sunny Miller • Season 1 • Episode 92

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What if your smartest decisions depend on feelings you’ve been told to ignore? We unpack the story of Elliot, the famous neuroscience case that kept IQ intact but erased emotion...and with it, the ability to choose. From there, we map how stress, resentment, and fear wire the body for survival and tunnel vision, while gratitude, curiosity, and courage shift your biology toward growth, clarity, and connection. The goal is not to suppress feelings; it’s to lead them so your choices line up with what matters most.

Along the way, we share real-life moments that show how fast a reframe can change outcomes: a freeway mishap that becomes gratitude, a pricey trailer dent that becomes a memory, and a smashed thumb turned into a lesson in curiosity. We dig into emotional energy and why we synchronize to the people around us, then show how mantras, breath, and simple rituals re-anchor charged topics like money. You’ll learn three practical tools to use today: the 90-second rule for emotional surges, name-it-to-tame-it to recruit the prefrontal cortex, and curiosity to turn heat into information you can use.

If you’ve been stuck in decision fatigue, regret loops, or the habit of bracing for the crash after a win, this conversation offers a steady path back to center. Expect a blend of neuroscience, everyday stories, and steps you can practice on the spot to expand your window of tolerance and keep your best self online under pressure. Tune in, try one tool during your next spike, and tell us what changed. If this helped, follow the show, share it with a friend who leads with heart, and leave a review so more people can find it.

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SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to We Play Full Out with Barton Sonny Miller. Take it away, Sonny.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Bart. I want you to imagine just for a minute that you're waking up every day with zero emotion.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

No excitement, no sadness, no frustration, no joy, just neutrality.

SPEAKER_03:

Alright.

SPEAKER_01:

First, it might sound peaceful. Right? But stay in that world for more than a few minutes, and I think you would find it would feel pretty hollow.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, you would feel like you were dead, no life.

SPEAKER_01:

Without emotion, nothing would really matter. You wouldn't care what you ate, where you went, or who you loved. You'd basically be a spectator in your own life.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

It's pretty crazy to think about.

SPEAKER_03:

Honestly, it's really crazy to think about because a lot of times we want to take out the emotion and things, but reality is it's what keeps us alive and ticking.

SPEAKER_01:

Really is. So there was this really crazy case about a man named Elliot. There was a neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio. And this this man, Elliot, was a successful, intelligent professional whose life was completely upended when he developed a tumor on his frontal lobe.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So brain tumor. The surgery saved his life, but it also damaged the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which happens to be the region that connects emotion to decision making. Which is interesting. Really interesting. What shocked researchers was that Elliot's IQ remained unchanged. His memory, reasoning, and vocabulary were all perfectly intact, but emotionally he went flat. So he's experiencing this neutrality that we were just talking about. He could no longer feel anything. He had no enthusiasm, no fear, and no preference. And as a result, he became incapable of even the simplest decis decisions like which pen to use, what to eat for lunch, or even how to plan his day. Wow. So without emotion, obviously his life unraveled. He lost his job. He made poor financial choices, even though he's very logical. Right. And his marriage fell apart. Not because he lacked intelligence, but because he had lost the emotional signal that tells us what matters most. This was really brown groundbreaking research. Um because Damasio concluded that emotion is not a luxury, it's actually essential to reason itself. Which you wouldn't I don't know. I wouldn't go there. Yeah, you wouldn't have to do that. I would think logic would be the key determining factor in making a decision.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, you you think that for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Right? But apparently, without it, logic is paralyzed. Every rational quote unquote decision you make is driven first by an emotional cue. It's giving you safety, belonging, excitement, fear, or love. So emotion is basically the hidden CEO in the bedroom of your brain. Wow.

SPEAKER_03:

So cool to know.

SPEAKER_01:

It is cool. So then we start to dive into emotions, right? Yeah. Because it can be a roller coaster things happening in our lives. Yeah. I recently came across a reel from Alex Hermozzi and he said the single greatest skill you can develop is being in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. Because I mean most people don't question someone who's in a bad mood. They're like, well, I'm just in a bad mood. But if you can be in a bad mood for no reason, you might as well be in a good mood for no reason because that one at least serves you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Now we could go really, really, really deep on how this could serve you, but we're going to kind of hit a surface level here.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Any thoughts so far?

SPEAKER_03:

No, just uh it's just, you know, an aha thing to really think about your emotions. And I know that you can see people's emotions on their face, you know, all that kind of stuff, which I'm assuming was gone for him because he had no emotions. So you, you know, a lot of times when you're going to talk to somebody or they're anxious or whatever, you can read their face, but obviously that's being neurally triggered by their brain because of the emotional state they're in. So it's fascinating to uh understand that when you have zero emotion, no ups, no downs, neutrality is just like, wow, you're going. I mean, and neutral means neutral. You're going no forward or backwards, which is just something I hadn't really dove into.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it is fascinating. If we take what Alex said just a step further, the fact is if you are living mostly in low frequency states like stress, fear, resentment, depression, you know all the ones, you're not just having a bad mood. You're literally reprogramming your cells for survival, which means that you're in fight or flight, you're shrinking your field of vision, and you're broadcasting incoherence into your relationships.

SPEAKER_03:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

But when you raise your frequency into gratitude, play, courage, or love, which we could call good moods, your biology, your body is shifting into growth, your perception opens, your energy attracts harmony, opportunity, and collaboration, and you turn yourself to higher outcomes.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But here's the thing, it's hard to stay there. It is, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

I don't know why. It's, you know, you'd think it'd be easier to be happy than it would be to be sad or frustrated or emotionally like overwhelmed. But for some reason, we're taught, or there's something in the brain that we're taught, uh, you know, and we go into these really uh energy low frequency emotions.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think honestly, I've probably said this a million times, but it's not a skill set that we're taught when we're younger. It's like we just kind of take emotions as emotions, but we never really learn how to become masters over them because we don't maybe you're from a home where you just did not discuss emotion, or maybe you were in a really emotional, turbulent home and that's just how it was. But nobody really just like sits you down, says this is how you gain emotionally mass emotional mastery over your life.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and that's why it's so big, it's so big, and that's why we cover it in our in our North Star program, is because this is something I didn't realize in so many ways, you know, how emotions can be ragey, emotions can be so loving. I mean, they can be all over the board, but they affect every aspect of our life. And even when we get our emotions so high that we're out of our mind, that's an emotional, you know, response. And those emotional responses can affect our life so much. I know when I've lost a gasket, that's when I have a lot of regret. There's a lot of emotion when I've sat in depression and thought, oh my gosh, like why am I here and why, you know, why, why, why, why, why, you know, all the big things. But also, I've been in bliss and that emotion. And I'm much rather choose that emotion. Right 99% of the time, but for some reason, I like to go to the others.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's an energy, and we're gonna talk about that. Yeah, but I think like just dialing back into like these constant emotions, I think, you know, there's times when let's kind of relate to maybe people who are listening into ourselves, you have constant tension. Yeah, like why do you feel like you're always on edge and you're bracing for something to go wrong or mental exhaustion? How about waking up tired because you've been running mental and emotional marathons all day? And then there's the relationship friction. Yeah, small things turn into big arguments or silent resentment, all because of emotion. Yeah, decision fatigue. Can't make clear decisions if your emotions are clouding your logic. Um, you have your regret loops, the emotional looping roller coaster that just keeps going around and around and you can't seem to get off of it. And like you said, regret loops, replaying conversations or reactions we wish we would have handled differently, but you can't take it back.

SPEAKER_02:

Totally.

SPEAKER_01:

You know? Um, loss of presence, like you're physically there, but you're mentally checked out.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

If any of these sound familiar, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

They uh, you know, we've been watching a show called Chad Powers, and in there it's really funny because first and foremost, I think it's a really unique show for business and a lot of what we teach.

SPEAKER_01:

And I, you know, I watch it from the way we teach, and it blows my mind because I know because it goes like right in line with everything we say.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, you know, even stepping into a magnetic self to reinventing yourself to tokens. I mean, all the things that we teach is in Chad Powers, but he has a moment when he sits there and he literally looks at the guy he's with and he's like, Chad powers is signing footballs, he's he's so powerful. It moved us into this new house. And the first thing that Chad said was, I'm waiting for it all to crumble because all bad things happen when Chad has success. And I was like, Oh, geez, oh geez, you know, like yeah, it really is that emotional thing that so many of us go through in our lives of like, no, I can't, I can't enjoy this because as soon as I enjoy this success, there's gonna be something that's gonna happen. As soon as my marriage is on a high and everything's gonna be great, something's gonna, you know, like we we we instantly go to that. I can't even enjoy the moments.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And what do you think about that actually? Because as you say that, I think about the pendulum swinging.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, it seems like if you have a real emotional high, there is bound to be an emotional low, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think it's it depends on um honestly, you can you can even a lot of that out versus, you know, and there's I mean, let's all have those huge highs. I mean, I'll never forget the first time I won a saddle. I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_01:

First time you gave me a kiss is what I thought you were gonna say.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, that too. Amazing, right? But I also remember the real, you know, getting my butt bucked off.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, literally three weeks later. You know, it's like, whoa, this animal, you know. So, like, there is gonna be that. And I think it's uh in how you react in the motions saying that, oh my gosh, just because I want to saddle, now I'm gonna get my finger cut off. You know, that's that's a big dramatic case scenario. Do you know what I'm saying? You go too far instead of just saying, No, I'm gonna enjoy this emotion for as long as it goes. And whatever happens, happens. Maybe I'll have five more good things that'll happen. You know what I mean? But yeah, just carrying that emotion as long as you can and not even thinking, not even considering that something else could happen.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I like that. Um, so just a couple more sudden triggers can throw us off our feet. Um, reactive moods can hijack our best intentions, right? Welcome to the world of being a human. Yeah. But this podcast really isn't my intention to be about all the emotional storms. It's more about using our emotions as leverage to make the good choices and the good relationships and all the things happen that we want to have happen.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Well, I mean, let's give you an example of you know, I was driving home the other day from Pocatello and uh my Mercedes, and there was a tire tread in the middle of the road. And that tire tread flipped up from a car in front of me, and it was a big semi-tire tread. Therefore, it smacked my car so hard, broke out one of the front, you know, and emotionally, my whole emotion was like, oh my gosh, rage, all these. And then I'm like, huh, maybe that happened for a reason. I'm just gonna love that. I'm grateful it happened to me instead of my teenage daughter. Because I don't have a teenage daughter, but you know, somebody else that maybe wouldn't have been ready for something like that, I guess. And I'm not saying I'm better than or anything, but I'm just saying, like, I'm glad it happened to me, not somebody else. And it really put me in a really good mood, you know, it was because it was like, you know what? I can handle this, I'm stable enough to handle this. Yet another emotion was I was on a big trip and we were hauling this huge horse trailer and gonna pull into this location. We backed up, and it was it was my buddy's truck and trailer, and uh, he happened to back into a dumpster while we were there. And my emotions on that were like, oh my gosh, how's he gonna react? How horrible is this? This is a crazy moment. This is a$280,000 horse trailer. It's you know, da da da. He got out and was just like laughed about it, thought it was so funny. Just, you know, he's like, man, this makes for a memory. This is so cool. I'm gonna talk about this for the rest of my life. It's so, you know, and I was like, that's the kind of emotion I want. That's cool. Because my normal reaction would have been, oh no, why me? Oh my gosh, this is like, why did you do this to me now? I don't want to fix this. I don't want to go through that struggle. I don't want, I don't want to. Instead of, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be telling my grandkids this one day when something happens and just make their day lighter, you know? And I just thought that was really cool. And it was a really good learning moment for me again to re-anchor what you're talking about, the nervous system in when things happen, how you react to that is the biggest thing because now I can react to things that are just lighter and lighter and lighter, and it's like, oh, that's not so bad. And the highs are like, yeah, that's great, that's awesome. Let's keep them going. But everything can almost turn into a high if you want to be instead of a real freaking low.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and let's be clear, the situation doesn't change either way. No, either way he reacted, other than just a lot lighter, and there's no emotional heaviness to it.

SPEAKER_03:

We had so much fun just playing around with it, joking around with it, and we still do.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. So emotional mastery is really not about suppressing feelings, it's about leading them. Just like you were saying, it's about finding calm in the storm, being able to return to center faster, and living in emotional frequency states that generate clarity, creativity, and connection. We really can get off that train wreck and become masters of our motions so that we can find that calmness.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And even playfulness.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, that doesn't mean we're not gonna have a bad day here or there, that something's not gonna come up that you know rocks our world a little bit. I mean, let's be clear, life happens. But we will be able to reground quicker and live our daily lives in higher states that allow us to make better choices and have much better relationships. So back to emotions are the leverage point that determine behavior, right? If that is the case, which I believe it is, then mastering emotions becomes key to mastering your choices. And I can't remember, I think you had it pulled up the other day and maybe showed it to me, but the it was like a reel or something, and it was saying how it's really our choices in life that make our life.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

If we're not choosing it, it doesn't happen. If we are choosing it, it does happen. So if emotions are a big part of that, you can see why they're important to kind of learn how to guide.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and those around you, if they're not emotionally stable, will affect your emotions. And so you've got to be strong in who you hang out with, what kind of energy they bring, the things that they that they get wound up over versus not getting wound up over, because that'll affect your daily emotions and how you go about it. So I think emotionally mastery is so key and uh really, really, really a necessity to spend time on.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I love that you said that because emotions are energy. And as soon as we walk into the emotional field of somebody, we do start to synchronize, whether we realize it or not. So true. So it is important to really be aware and pay attention to those things. Um, in her book, Energy Rising, the neuroscience of leading with emotional power, Dr. Julia De Ganji describes how our emotions operate as neuroelectrical energy. So that means she's saying that this energy is running through the brain. She says that your emotional power rises or falls with the way you work with your brain energy, not just thoughts. Kind of mentioned that earlier. So think of every emotion as a current of electricity flowing through your nervous system. Fear is going to contract, love expands, anger accelerates, and peace harmonizes. Now, most people try to think their way out of emotion. And I do this sometimes, like, what do I choose? What do I choose? But sometimes my choices don't win. And that is because the brain doesn't speak in thoughts, it speaks in energy. When you learn to align with that current rather than resist it, you stop fighting yourself and start leading with the coherence, clarity, and calm strength that you really want.

SPEAKER_03:

So good.

SPEAKER_01:

So again, it comes down to the body. It seems like all of our podcasts all come down to the nervous system and the body at the end of the day, don't they? Lately?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think so. And I think another good example for you guys out there that I've loved is when Sunny goes to the grocery store and it used to be would write out a check versus the way we are today. So this is telling you how many years she's done this. But she always had a statement and a saying that she related to that when she was actually doing that transaction. And it was always really good for me because I would watch her really say her mantra. Do you want to say your mantra at all?

SPEAKER_01:

I am abundant in every good thing. There's always enough and plenty more, and I am grateful for what I have.

SPEAKER_03:

So when she would say that, her emotions would always have a smile around the abundance, a smile about what that was going to do, a smile about, and I think that's energetic emotion ties to everything that she was doing at that point in time of creating abundance for herself, for our family, for the people that were gonna receive that money. And I think that's how you start to anchor and create emotions is that everything you see and you do, if you can watch the emotional attachment that you have to, let's say, finances, to something else, and if they trigger you in any way, shape, or form, create a mantra that you can say to re-anchor that emotion to no, this is the best thing I could possibly do. It's an honor to buy these groceries and they're gonna feed my family, but it also blesses the farmer, it blesses the cashier, it blesses the, you know, all these things. This is what abundance is for, you know, and I think that's a really cool emotional way to get get a hold of your emotions if you're struggling with your emotions right now.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, another thing that you've been adamant about with me recently is expressing my emotions. Why is that?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I I just first and foremost, for you, I had a download that it was one thing to really help you re-anchor your voice, who you are, and it releases that trapped emotion instantly versus anchoring the trapped emotion that can stew on and take time. So that was the big thing for me is is just starting to reteach you how to lower your nervous system, how to really face that right then and there, how do we just express it good or bad, yell, scream, punch, doesn't matter, but let's just let it go because we are playing full out. And emotionally, I think that's one way that really, really helps us do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because we know the energy is neither created nor destroyed, so it's got to go somewhere. So it's either gonna be locked in the body or it's gonna be expressed and released or allowed to pass through. Amen. So, and here are some ways that you can do that. Also, along with what Bart just said, there's three tools that begin rewiring your emotional circuitry so you can start mastering your emotions in real time. First is the 90-second rule. So neuroscience shows that emotions last only about 90 seconds unless you feed them with thoughts. If you feed your emotions, they're gonna grow and they're gonna anchor. When you feel triggered, set a timer, breathe, and let the wave pass without judgments. Most storms dissipate if you stop fueling them. The next one is name it to tame it, labeling an emotion like I'm anxious, I'm irritated, I'm grieving, actually activates your prefrontal cortex. Now, if you activate that area, then you're no longer in fight or flight. Um, so that lowers the intensity of the feeling. So language restores your leadership because you're no longer inside the emotion, you're now observing it. And then the last thing to do is add a word of curiosity. So once you have named what is true, bring curiosity in to create movement. We want movement. Instead of stopping at I'm angry, expand it to I'm curious about why I'm angry. Curiosity invites understanding rather than judgment. So it transforms emotion from something you have to manage into something you can learn from. This gives you choice instead of that reactive thing that becomes a habit in your life.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, these micro shifts are how emotional mastery begins, not through control, but through conscious connection with the energy moving through you. Your mind is the architecture of your life, but emotion is the electricity that powers it. So when the current's running low through fear, stress, or resentment, your system flickers, decisions stall, and everything feels dim. But when you raise the voltage with gratitude, curiosity, and love, the whole house lights up.

SPEAKER_03:

So good. Yeah. Yeah, so good. So another thing on that is just uh, I don't know why it popped in my head, but I smashed my thumb the other day, and for some reason I looked at it and I'm like, man, I'm really curious who else has felt this and what they felt at the same time and how long this pain's gonna last.

SPEAKER_00:

You sat there and thought that. I don't know why, but I'm slap your thumb.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow, that's amazing that I get to feel that. And I'm just so curious of like why that hurts so bad, but what else, you know, and it just it was so funny, like it worked through the pain so differently than before. It'd be like, oh mother trucker, you know, just running around, flipping it around, not even thinking about it, but being curious about why I did it first and foremost, why I needed to feel that, what I was feeling, how it really did feel versus just ignoring it, and then just honoring that pain and trying to find pleasure in the pain was really cool. And that came from some other training that we've done. I think that's what triggered that. But I was like, I don't know what you need to get into that here, but it was like, no, I can find pleasure in this by trying to figure out how others and what can I do to move this through my body differently. And it was fascinating how different it was for me to experience it.

SPEAKER_01:

And did you find pleasure in it?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, actually, I did at some point. It was like, and the reason here here was the pleasure connection for me is I'm so grateful I have a body that can feel because that was so pleasurable for me because so many times I get hurt sometimes, and I've taken something for granted, like my thumb or my feet or whatever it might be. And right then and there I'm like, no, no, this is gonna go away, but I'm so grateful for my body and that I can actually feel where somebody else doesn't even get the opportunity to smash their thumb.

SPEAKER_01:

That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, that's kind of a wrap unless we want to do some life updates. We did just get done with our couples retreat. Yeah. We were absent last week in our podcast and newsletter because we were off having some fun.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. We were off having a really cool experience. And if you're interested in the things that we talk about, which is, you know, your body, your mind, your soul, all these different things, one of the big topics that we're super, super passionate about is couples and how to really, really get control of your relationship.

SPEAKER_01:

I would say consciously connecting.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's a really good way to put it.

SPEAKER_01:

Really high level.

SPEAKER_03:

Consciously connecting and then learning how to foster that and expand it. And so I was so grateful for our retreat. We had some people, maybe just like you, that are like, I would never do that. I would be so scared, I'd be so embarrassed. But reality is they came, they played full out, and they had such amazing conscious connections. And they're like, when are you doing the next one? We've got to be part of this, and we're gonna invite our friends because this is the next level of expansion, and we've never been taught these things. And I was like, oh my gosh, what a gift for us to be able to give to other couples and and relate with them and understand. You know, in 30 years, we've gone through a lot, and there's a lot we've seen, and a lot of things that we've we've challenged in our beliefs and our marriage and all these things, and to be able to really have heart to hearts and for us to to talk about hard things and let them see us, really see us, because that's the thing we don't get today in the world is to really see in behind the curtains, and we give them that access, like see us. We are we are here to be, as you say, stand in my danger. I will protect you until you can support yourself. But but understand that I had to fight to get here myself so that I could do this, and I thought that was really beautiful. And you showed up like an absolute champion. It was absolutely beautiful to watch you be the queen that you are and to lead at such a high, high level.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. It it was absolutely amazing. And you know, for anybody interested, since you're not well, how do I say it? Go to just send an email to Sonny at iduepic.com. Let me know you're interested, and we will reach out to you because we do have another one coming up that will be on the books soon.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep. So, with that, you guys, we're so grateful for you, the listener. If there's anything uh or any way that you can share this, we would be so grateful for you. And thank you for once again spending your precious time with Sonny and I at We Play Full Out. And this segment brought to you by I do Epic.

Head Shot

Bart Miller

Host
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Sunny Miller

Host