UPWIRE®: Unlocking Your True Potential

The brain loves big, complicated, later and never. Exceptional leaders and teams choose the exact opposite: breakthroughs and rules that are small, simple, now and next. In this UPWIRE, we'll look at how the smallest change can make the biggest difference in your life and work.

The brain is hard-wired to be stuck in a defensive "me-first" mode. It despises criticism and over emphasizes every perceived slight, ultimately leading to artificial roadblocks to your (and your team's) success. In this podcast, we'll look at how you can UPWIRE your brain to move beyond this default flaw-finding "me-first" operating system, and create a culture of growth for yourself and others.

The brain is hard-wired to shrink, not soar. But inside each of us is a quiet lifelong beckoning call which will awaken the courage to face uncertainty, grow and achieve the "impossible." In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll learn how to develop and deploy our inner NERVE to face change, loss and growing pains without collapsing or running away.

By hard-wired human nature, the brain seeks to be out of touch. Instead of engaging with and achieving your best possible future, the brain much prefers the comfort of mindless repetition, distraction, and awaiting the return of the "good old days." When you are out of touch for as little as a few days or a week, it's not a neutral state. You are already losing clients or customers who yearn for more meaningful connection with you. In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll take a look at simple strategies for staying in touch with life's larger opportunities by mastering brief and frequent connections.

The brain is largely a forgetting machine, and in today's fast-paced world, it's primed to forget what matters most faster than ever! In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll take a look at how you can structure your schedule to make sure the goals and individuals vital to helping you create your most amazing future receive at least a few moments of your best attention.

To the brain, momentum is not natural. Instead, it prefers interruptions, distractions or anything gives the illusion of activity or movement: brain circuits which are firing frequently but not forwardly. In this podcast, we'll look at how to scale momentum and consciously align our brainpower with what matters most in our life and work.

The brain loves to keep hundreds of top priorities actively floating around. The problem is the goal traffic jam which inevitably results, burning valuable mental energy and leading to reduced performance. In part two of this podcast, we'll learn how to set 1st Priorities for the brain, and how to create automatic drivers which will keep us focused on making progress on our top goals.

The brain is hard-wired to run from challenges (real or imaginary), while barely walking toward opportunities, no matter how amazing. In part one of this episode of UPWIRE, we'll learn how to implement automatic drivers which kick in at the start of every choice, action and interaction, and relentlessly and effectively prompt the brain to grow.

The brain gets hijacked by many forms of competition. Fortunately, so does almost everyone else's brain. In this podcast, we'll look at how competition negatively impacts our growth, and learn some simple ways to UPWIRE our lives to move from simply competing to truly excelling.

By instinct, the brain waits for everyone else to change. If we want to UPWIRE our lives, we must lead by example, go first, test better ways forward-upward and not wait for others. In this podcast, we'll look at some simple methods for hacking human nature which provide the catalyst that raises performance and drives new growth.

The brain is largely lost in its own labyrinth of vagueness and will choose to stay there unless you're willing to lead it out of the shadows. In this podcast, we'll learn the power of framing, and how connecting now with next fuels exceptional growth.

In part two of this UPWIRE, we'll look at some practical strategies for helping your brain keep you moving forward with greater clarity and purpose.

Left to its own devices, the brain is a go-second machine, willing to happily follow someone else. The problem, of course, is that if we're always ready to follow, how will we ever achieve our biggest goals in our life and work? In part one of this UPWIRE, we'll learn how to let our behavior and life speak for itself and propel us past our brain's hard-wired tendencies.

Clarity helps the brain move out of the blur and aim at what matters most. In part two of this podcast, we'll look at some additional techniques we can use to hack human nature and gain instant clarity in any situation.

In all aspects of our lives, chaos (either real or invented by our brains) can quickly destroy focus, leave us without direction and derail us from achieving the future we want. In part one of this podcast, we'll focus on the importance of clarity and how it propels us forward-upward out of the blur.

The brain loves "tomorrow", "later" or "never." It constantly imagines itself far into some vague but wonderful future. Unless you learn to masterfully guide your brain, it doesn't do much to make that future a reality. In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll look at a simple mechanism called WEEKLIES which can fuel accelerated growth for you and your team.

By hard-wired human nature, the brain magnifies every single negative small thing in life, consuming vast amounts of time and energy. In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll learn how we can quickly hack human nature and aim our brains toward growth. We can reclaim our time, energy and passion by learning to sweat the right small stuff and ditch the rest!

Your brain is the biggest barrier between where you are and where you want to be. It easily becomes overloaded with useless distractions, negative emotions and excess "baggage." In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll learn to recognize when the brain is creating its own gridlock, and how we can move past and transcend this barrier using a technique called streamlining.

The brain always thinks there's a big puzzle somewhere which makes sense of everything--if only it could find all the pieces. Waiting to see and understand all the pieces is what keeps many of us from pursuing and achieving our top goals. In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll look at how we can accelerate our growth by helping our brain see how today's puzzle pieces connect to our most amazing future.

Left to its own devices, the brain loves to get lost in the blur. The brain mistakes motion for work that actually matters, confusing hyper-activity with meaningful progress. In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll look at how exceptional leaders and teams work around this trap and move out of the blur.

The brain loves plans and planning. The problem is that, while these plans may be inspiring, they never amount to much. Exceptional leaders and teams understand how to turn exceptional plans into results by building simple yet brilliant mechanisms for taking action.

The brain is endlessly attracted to distractions and the "next big thing." Add in the constant worry of time, and you have the perfect recipe for missing out on what matters most in our lives. In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll learn how to actively guide our power of attention to focus on every moment that matters.

The brain is largely confounded by time. And as a result, our lives slip into "keeping time" rather than living life to the fullest. In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll learn how to turn time into an ally. It's not how well you plan your time...it's how effectively you put your attention on what matters most.

With the right momentum on their side, exceptional leaders and teams can accomplish "miracles". In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll look at how to move beyond the brain's tendency to defer and delay by structuring our actions to build momentum.

Our brains have a lightening-fast reactivity to negativity. We're drawn to the negative and the "blame game" mostly due to the ancient wiring in our brains. The good news is we can quickly overcome these hard-wired tendencies and stay focused on what matters most. In this UPWIRE podcast, we'll look at why our brains behave this way and how we can quickly stay focused when facing negativity.

Our brains are wired for distraction and not for paying attention. Distraction is just our brains having their way with us, leading us away from achieving our goals and creating the life we want. The good news is we can overcome the temptations of distraction by managing our brains (instead of letting them manage us.) In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll take a look at some simple strategies for doing this.

Think about your future. Do you want the future you deliberately create or the one that happens to you? Although it doesn't want to help, you need your brain's help to create your best possible future. In this episode of UPWIRE, we'll look at how we can change what's holding us back in our brain so we can change it.

The key to UPWIRING your brain is learning, especially when the learning is new, effortful and successful. But how do we commit to practicing the right kind of learning? In this episode of UPWIRE, I'll share some techniques to build the right process to keep this right kind of learning alive and impactful.

Every day, many thousands of new cells are created in your brain. Some die quickly, while others contribute to better thinking, decision-making, and enabling the life you want. In this podcast, we'll learn how we can guide and maximize the formation of the kinds of neurons which UPWIRE our life. You CAN build a bigger and better brain!

The brain is built with an immense untapped capacity to grow, but is hardwired to play small and clutch past habits and old routines. In this podcast, we'll explore a range of new ways to UPWIRE these default brain tendencies to achieve what everyone else thinks is "impossible."

The brain is capable of rising but is hard-wired to glide and fall. Being “in the climb” requires one of the simplest yet most powerful skill sets. In this podcast, we'll examine how to UPWIRE your ingenuity and momentum by entering - and maintaining - the climb and achieve what others consider “impossible.”

The brain often mistakes effort and motion for progress, tricking us into thinking we're getting somewhere. In this 2-Minute Friday episode of UPWIRE, we'll learn how to Build More and Run Less.

By nature, the brain waits, seeking perfect in every aspect of our lives. But no matter how skilled or diligent we get at seeking perfect, perfect never happens. Exceptional leaders and teams know that life and breakthrough successes are all about the imperfect rise. And in this podcast, we'll take a look at how you can develop and implement this simple technique to UPWIRE your life.

Exceptional leaders and teams make it look easy to demonstrate courage. It is not. It is a choice to be made again and again every day from the depths of the human heart and spirit. How much does the most amazing future matter to you? Enough to continually take significant risks – whether large or small – to grow and see it through?

"Our patterns are our prisons." My grandfather was keenly aware of the human brain's preference to play small rather than rise to meet our expectations and true abilities. In this podcast, we'll take a look at why our brain prefers to keep us repeating old habits, and how we can break through these pervasive barriers and UPWIRE our behavior to achieve our best possible future.

The human brain easily notices and magnifies the smallest perceived negative, while missing genuine acts of ingenuity, kindness, and breakthroughs. In this podcast, we'll take a look at a simple performance-elevating technique for turning every negative feeling into productive forward-upward fuel.

In order to achieve amazing results, consciously design your environment with more of what bugs you in order to drive the changes that matter.

Left on its own, the brain is hard-wired to drift away from trust, preferring to focus on fear, worry, doubt and distance. In this podcast, we'll take a look at how exceptional leaders and teams dare to trust in order to achieve meaningful relationships and productive collaborations.

Left to its own natural instincts, the brain is blissfully unaware of its level of engagement with the world and your priorities. Exceptional leaders and teams understand the risk of this non-peak-engagement: the difference between mediocre and meaningful, between “trapped in the blur” and leading and then changing the game.

The human brain imagines it has a magic crystal ball that can decipher people's motives and intentions and see beneath the surface of life. But the truth about other people and life is rarely what we initially assume it to be. In this podcast, we learn how to move beyond this trap, and how this new sense of clarity speeds the right progress sooner.

An essential ingredient for accelerated growth into your most amazing future is a clear and compelling connection between HERE and the best possible THERE. I call this The Brain’s Bridge™ and if you don’t bring it into view and feeling at the start of every interaction and choice, your brain is mostly lost, busy in details and activities, but not in significant or scalable growth. In this podcast, I'll show you how to develop and aim this vital skill to achieve breakthroughs in your life and work.

In this podcast, Roberts shares the latest neuroscience research on how a single powerful moment of memory can change our performance state and what happens next.

By nature, the human brain is a master nitpicker and poor farmer for new breakthroughs. Exceptional leaders and teams understand this, and UPWIRE their progress by applying precise doses of positive emotional energy to grow new opportunities and move beyond old thinking. In this podcast, we look at how these leaders and teams make it look easy and grow results ten-fold.

By nature, the brain lives on a treadmill of repetition. Stuck in the hard-wired past, the brain is quick to judge and run, and slow to innovate and contribute. In this podcast, Robert shows us how to incorporate the right dose of positive emotion into the precise spots in our daily routine in order to move beyond our brain's natural tendencies.

The brain is built to RISE, but wired to ROUTINE. It is ever-vigilant in noticing and criticizing anything wrong, while missing almost every positive change. In this podcast, Robert shares some insights on how we can recognize and then steer our brains away from its natural attraction to the negative, in order to UPWIRE our attitude and behavior.

Annual Gallup surveys show that nearly two-thirds of all leaders and three-forths of all employees are disengaged at work. There are countless books and training programs aimed at increasing engagement, yet we are losing that battle. In this short podcast, Robert discusses the power of Pre-Engagement (PRE) and how applying PRE can quickly and effectively increase your engagement.

In this 2-Minute Friday podcast, Robert discusses how long it takes to impact or change a life. Learn how a simple "pause" can lead to the greatest difference.

What is your mind prepared to comprehend? From jazz pianist Art Tatum's unique performance abilities to renowned psychologist Abraham Maslow's daily "choice", Robert Cooper shares insights on why our brains naturally lead us away from what is possible, and how we can apply simple workarounds by Hacking Human Nature.

How old is your brain's basic programming? Is this the right "performance code" for achieving our goals in today's hectic and modern world? In this podcast, Robert Cooper discusses neuroplasticity and how Hacking Human Nature allows us to UPWIRE and steer a better course into our best possible future.

At any given moment, we can suddenly face adversity, an unexpected challenge, or feel the drain of a negative look or comment or feeling. In that one split-second, the brain loses control. Your attention, energy and sense of perspective have been hijacked, and threaten to spiral out of control unless quickly checked. In this podcast, Robert shares insights on why our brain behaves this way, and how we can UPWIRE these brain tendencies and change our course of action with a Split-Second Turn.