TheUPside Podcast

When you're late, it's because traffic was terrible. When someone else is late, it's because they don't respect your time. In this episode of TheUPside Podcast, Theresa Flood unpacks one of the most common habits that quietly damages relationships at work and at home: we give ourselves context, but we give other people labels.

Theresa explains the fundamental attribution error, the tendency to explain our own behavior through our circumstances while judging others by their character. Because other people's context is invisible to us, we fill in the blanks with stories, and those stories turn into labels that shape how we treat people.

Drawing from her experience teaching the Six Types of Working Genius, Theresa shares how often we mistake someone's natural wiring for laziness, negativity or a lack of care. She offers one simple question that can shift you from judgment to curiosity: what else could be true?

In this episode you'll learn:
 ✓ What the fundamental attribution error is and how it shows up in everyday life
 ✓ How behavior gets turned into identity, and why only the behavior is a fact
 ✓ Why we tend to moralize our differences instead of getting curious
 ✓ A three question practice to separate fact from fiction
 ✓ Why extending the benefit of the doubt comes back to you

Whether you lead a team, run a business or are raising a teenager, this conversation will help you trade a little certainty for curiosity and a little judgment for grace.

What if the way to increase is not by adding more? In this episode of TheUPside, Theresa Flood flips the usual growth question on its head. Instead of asking what else we need to add, whether that's a new strategy, a new habit or a new system, she asks what we need to subtract.

Theresa explains why more often leads to dilution instead of growth, and why every yes we give carries a cost. Drawing on conversations with her daughters about sports, choir trips and full calendars, she shows why our yeses are precious while our nos are unlimited. She shares why you cannot organize clutter, what pruning a plant teaches us about redirecting resources, and why sometimes the thing we need to cut is good but not best.

Theresa closes with a simple Subtraction Audit built on three questions. What do I need to stop doing? What do I need to say no to? What do I need to let go of? Whether you're a business owner spread thin across too many priorities or a leader looking for your next level, this episode will help you create capacity for what matters most.

Invest in your growth every day and it will yield you great returns.

Theresa Flood believes every lasting change in life and business starts the same way, from the inside out. In this solo episode, she breaks down five anchoring questions that separate people who chase external circumstances from people who build something that lasts.

Theresa walks through the identity question, the belief question, the focus question, the vision question, and the character question, drawing on a teaching from John Maxwell that winning generates momentum but character sustains it. She explains why new behavior never comes from a new plan, it comes from a new identity, and why the stories we repeat to ourselves eventually start to feel like facts.

This episode is a practical framework for anyone heading into year end planning or thinking ahead to 2027, whether that means leading a team, building a business, or working through a personal season of change. Theresa challenges listeners to stop obsessing over the fruit and start tending to the root.

If you have ever felt like you were doing all the right external things without the internal shift to match, this episode gives you the questions to ask instead.

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In this episode, Theresa Flood sits down with Brindley Tucker, a Six Sigma certified coach and systemic constellation facilitator, to unpack why the same problems keep resurfacing in organizations even after leaders change the people or the process. Brindley shares the three systemic laws that quietly shape every business, family, and team, and explains why the real fix usually isn't more effort, it's more alignment.

They talk through how personal family patterns show up in professional leadership, what actually defines a healthy organization, and a simple two question habit Brindley uses to open every coaching call. Brindley also opens up about her own journey through addiction, a life altering turning point in 2012, and how that experience became the foundation for the deep, systemic coaching work she does today.

If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right and still hitting the same wall, this conversation will change how you think about leadership, culture, and what's really driving the results in your business.

In this episode of TheUPside, Theresa Flood unpacks what it actually means to pursue mastery, and why most people misunderstand it from the start. Mastery isn't a finish line you cross. It's a path you choose to stay on, one rep at a time.

Theresa breaks down five truths about mastery that apply whether you're leading a team, building a business, or trying to get better at your marriage, your health, or your craft. She talks about why focus matters more than chasing the next new strategy, why self mastery has to come before skill mastery, and why repetition without reflection will never get you there.

She also challenges the idea that maintenance exists at all. You're either sharpening a skill or letting it dull. There is no neutral.

This episode closes with a challenge: stop trying to master ten things and pick one. Learn it. Live it. Teach it. That's the real path.

In part two of this Mega Camp AHA series, Theresa Flood sits down with Seth Mills to unpack the ideas that hit them hardest from this year's event, pulling insights from Gary Keller, Shaun Johnson and Andrew East, and Simon Sinek. They start with Gary Keller's distinction between doing and becoming, and why the version of you that feels most natural is often just the version that has run the longest, not the truest one. From there they dig into why motivation is a myth, why action has to come before momentum, and why fear capable beats fearless every time. Theresa and Seth also talk through the idea that changing your environment will outlast changing your willpower, and why the metrics you choose should protect your mission instead of becoming the mission itself. The conversation closes on something bigger than business. Purpose and people will always beat metrics and quotas, and the friendships you invest in might be the most undervalued multiplier in your life. This episode is a reminder that growth is rarely about information. It is about applying what you already know.

Theresa Flood kicks off a new two part series with co host Seth Mills, breaking down the biggest takeaways from Mega Camp's session on social media and AI. In Part 1, they unpack why so many experienced professionals are completely invisible to AI search tools, even when their offline reputation is strong, and what it actually takes to be found by ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity.

Theresa and Seth talk through why followers were never the goal and your database is, how narrowing your focus actually grows your business instead of shrinking it, and why systems and consistency matter more than one off viral moments. They also dig into the idea that timing and delivery can make or break a message, and why proof will always beat a polished pitch.

This episode is a practical, no fluff look at where marketing is headed and what to actually do about it, without losing the human connection that builds real trust. If you have ever felt like you are working hard on social media with nothing to show for it, this conversation will help you see what has been missing.

Part 2 of this series is dropping next week.

Challenges are usually treated as something to avoid, survive, or get past as quickly as possible. In this episode, Theresa Flood makes the case that hard times are not just obstacles. They are opportunities in disguise, and learning to see them that way can change the entire trajectory of a season.

Theresa walks through six specific things that challenges have the power to build in us: resilience, personal growth, confidence, problem solving, adaptability, and stronger relationships. She shares a personal story about giving herself an unapologetic three hour pity party, talks about the difference between a bad moment and a bad day, and explains why courage always comes before confidence rather than the other way around.

This episode is for anyone currently in a hard season who is tempted to just white knuckle their way through it. Instead of rushing past the pain, Theresa offers a different question to ask: what is this challenge trying to give me?

Listen in for a mindset shift that can turn your hardest moments into your greatest growth.

For years, Theresa Flood believed multitasking was one of her greatest strengths. In this episode, she breaks down why that belief was wrong, and why it is wrong for most of us. Pulling from a Stanford University study that separated self identified high skill multitaskers from low skill multitaskers, Theresa unpacks a surprising finding: the group that considered themselves great at multitasking actually performed worse across the board. What we call multitasking is really activity switching, and the cost is steep. Research shows we lose nearly 28 percent of our day simply moving between tasks, and that switching leaves us with unfinished projects, distorted time estimates, more mistakes, and higher stress. Theresa introduces the concept of flow, the state where focus deepens and time seems to disappear, and lays out the three conditions required to get there: a task that challenges you without overwhelming you, a clear goal, and uninterrupted time. She challenges listeners to pick one task this week, remove the distractions, and protect real focused time to experience the difference for themselves. This episode is a practical reset for anyone who has ever worn multitasking as a badge of honor and wants to trade it in for real productivity and less stress.

Have you ever felt like a failure because you cannot seem to say no to what is not serving you? 

In this episode of TheUpside, Theresa Flood breaks down the real reason willpower feels so unreliable, and it is not what you think. Drawing from the bestselling book The One Thing by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller, Theresa unpacks the famous marshmallow experiment and what it revealed about delayed gratification and long term success. 

She also shares research on how mental fatigue affects decision making, including a striking study on Israeli parole board judges that shows how much more often parole was granted earlier in the day than at the end. Theresa explains that willpower works like a phone battery. It drains throughout the day, but it is also renewable if you learn to manage it well. 

She walks through practical steps for auditing your own energy, including how to identify your peak focus times, protect your highest energy hours for your most demanding work, and set yourself up in advance for the moments when your willpower is running low. This episode is a reminder that discipline is not about being a stronger person. It is about being a smarter planner.