have bought his books. Robert effectively combines two fields that seem completely unrelated—neuroscience and business strategy—to help elite performers and top leaders get the most out of their brains, their time, and their performance.
I asked Robert to deliver the keynote address at the third annual Bulletproof Biohacking Conference and sat down with him afterward to talk about how to hack the hardwired habits that can limit performance and build new habits that will burn better programs into the structure of the brain. Robert says that the brain has an embedded performance code for the world of two thousand years ago. You can ignore this outdated programming and hope for the best, or you can upgrade and reprogram (or rewire, in neuroscientific terms) the brain to become compatible with the reality of today’s world.
First, you have to become aware of the brain’s default settings. Our instinct is to do things the same way we’ve always done them. This is helpful on a day-to-day basis, such as when you drive to work using the same route as always without even thinking about it, but constantly reverting to automatic behaviors can shut down innovative thinking. Robert calls this your “hard wiring.” Your “live wiring,” on the other hand, represents your ability to grow and change—the “plastic” part of neuroplasticity.
Robert says that even when you are relying on your hard wiring, your brain is constantly changing. The question then becomes: In which direction are you changing? When you settle in to your default mode and rigidify like a grumpy creature of habit that gets mad if someone takes his or her favorite seat at the table, you are “downwiring.” Many people downwire as they age, but it doesn’t have to be that way. When you lean into possibilities and become different with the intention to get better, you are “upwiring.”
The key to upgrading your performance is to spend the majority of your time upwiring rather than downwiring. Yet, to conserve energy, your brain’s instinct is to downwire. It likes repeating the same things it’s done before and keeping you the same person you’ve always been. This is why for many people it is more comfortable and less scary to stay the same. In many ways, your brain is a scared, dumb organ that fears change. (No offense.) Upwiring requires more effort and more risk. You have to aim your brain away from its comfortable default mode and instead steer it toward intentional choices that support the kind of growth you want to achieve.
To do this, Robert encourages you to identify moments when you can prevent an automatic response and instead guide yourself in a better direction. Many mindfulness experts refer to such a moment as a “meta moment”—a sliver of time between a trigger and a response. For example, when someone says something that bothers you, instead of reacting with anger as you normally would (downwiring), pause to consider why the comment upset you so much and then choose with intention how you want to respond (upwiring). With practice, finding meta moments will eventually become a habit like any other.
It’s exciting to know that your brain, your beliefs, and your reality are incredibly changeable. You decide who you are, and you can also choose your own truth. That is a powerful game changer.
Action Items
Chose one of the methods from this law to figure out which of your beliefs about yourself are actually true. Be extra suspicious about any belief that suggests you “should” be some way or do something, any belief that says you “have to” or “need to,” and any belief that paints people or the world in terms of good and bad. Write down the first three that come to mind:Belief 1: __________________________________________Belief 2: __________________________________________Belief 3: __________________________________________Meditate on things you believe to be true about yourself and the world around you. Do it either in the morning or at night.Journal about the things you believe to be true for a half hour once a week. Start today.Schedule a recurring monthly or weekly appointment with a coach or a therapist who can point out when you believe your own story.
For one week, as you meditate or when you wake up, experiment with repeating and focusing on this phrase and actually summoning the feeling of gratitude: “I’m grateful that there is a conspiracy to make things happen the way they’re supposed to. The universe has my back.” You don’t have to believe it, but do your best to feel it—you’re tricking your nervous system.
Build the habit of listening. The programming most of us have is to think about what we’re going to say next instead of listening to what the other person is saying. The story that drives this habit is one you learn as a child—that when adults are talking, no one will hear you unless you talk right away. The reality we live in now is that if you listen and then speak, everyone will hear you. Choose a friend or colleague who usually has something good to say and commit to consciously not planning what you’re going to say the next time you chat with them. You’ll be surprised by what you learn and what you do end up saying when you don’t plan ahead. Who is the person near you most worth listening to?
Recommended Listening
Vishen Lakhiani, “10 Laws & Four-Letter Words,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 309
Robert Cooper, “Rewiring Your Brain & Creating New Habits,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 261
Gabrielle Bernstein, “Detox Your Thoughts to Supercharge Your Life,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 455
Recommended Reading
Vishen Lakhiani, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed on Your Own Terms
Robert K. Cooper, Get Out of Your Own Way: The 5 Keys to Surpassing Everyone’s Expectations
Gabrielle Bernstein, The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith
Law 5: A High IQ Doesn’t Make You Intelligent, but Learning Does
Your IQ score measures your crystallized intelligence, the sum of your learning and experience. You can raise it, but it doesn’t matter as much as fluid memory, your ability to learn and synthesize new information. Most scientists still believe that fluid intelligence is fixed, but it’s not. So hack it. There are specific techniques to drastically increase your fluid memory that are waiting for you to use them. You can waste your time learning slowly or set yourself free by changing your brain and upgrading how you learn.
Jim Kwik is a superhero. He is a widely recognized world expert in speed-reading, memory improvement, brain performance, and accelerated learning. He’s humble about it, but he’s trained countless Fortune 500 CEOs and dozens of A-list actors and actresses, including the cast of the X-Men movies. He actually trained Professor X! Jim often appears onstage doing speed-reading demonstrations and memorizing hundreds of people’s names. But he doesn’t do this to impress or show off. He does it to show what is possible not just for him but for anyone. When we have dinner, Jim memorizes the name of every restaurant employee who comes to the table because it makes people feel good when you refer to them by name.
Jim was not born with these abilities. In fact, when he was in kindergarten, he had a very bad accident that resulted in brain trauma. He was left with learning challenges and poor focus, and he constantly struggled to keep up with his classmates. When Jim got to college, he was sick of always lagging behind. He wanted to start fresh and make his family proud, so he began working so hard that he neglected things such as sleeping, eating, exercising, and spending time with friends. Instead of fueling his performance, this left him passed out in the library from sheer exhaustion. He fell down a flight of stairs and hit his head again. When he woke up in the hospital two days later, he was down to 117 pounds, hooked up to a bunch of IVs, and deeply malnourished. He thought to himself, “There has to be a better way.”
A moment later, a nurse came in with a mug of tea. The mug had a picture of Albert Einstein on it with the famous quote “The same level of thinking that’s created the problem won’t solve the problem.” The universe had Jim’s back that day, because the mug helped him realize he had always thought the problem was that he was a slow learner, so he had tried to solve the problem by spending all of his time learning. Now he asked himself if he could think about the problem differently: