Daily Thought for Change

A surgeon cuts into your knee, and you feel nothing.

No anesthesia. No painkillers. No pain.

Just hypnosis.

I can hardly believe it’s possible, remembering all the times at the dentist where I couldn’t bear even a tiny bit of pain without a proper injection.

Nir Eyal writes about it in Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results, apparently it’s more common than you’d think - doing operations under hypnosis.

The amount of pain you feel or don’t is totally “up to you”, and it all depends on what you pay attention to.

Hypnosis is just a tool to help you control your attention in a more powerful, reliable way.

That got me thinking more about how powerful attention management is as a tool, as a skill for anything we want to achieve or experience in life.

If attention is so powerful, that is can modulate our experience of intense pain during surgery, how else is it shaping our life experience overall?🤔

I wrote a while back about using attention management during a 36-hour fast.

The fast became almost effortless when I stayed busy and kept food out of my awareness.
The fast became challenging the moment I started paying attention to my hunger, my energy, thinking about how many things I need my energy for to get it all done, how my sleep and tomorrow’s workout can suffer etc

Same fast. Different focus. Completely different experience.

You probably already know this. You’ve been in this flow before. Worked through lunch without noticing. Forgotten a headache while solving an urgent problem. Watched pain shrink the moment you got absorbed in something that mattered more.

Sometimes I notice how kids hurt themselves and only start crying once parents rush to them to comfort them, once their attention is brought to their pain.

Attention isn’t just a productivity tool.

It’s the dial that controls your experience of reality.

How much you suffer, how much joy you find in the mundane.

Which brings me to the 2 wolves that live inside each of us at any moment.

“The Two Wolves: Inside everyone is a battle between darkness (envy, lies, ego) and light (joy, peace, love, humility).

The Choice: The “wolf” that dominates is the one nourished by your thoughts, actions, and attention.

The Lesson: It is a powerful lesson on self-discipline, mindfulness, and taking responsibility for your mental state and life’s direction”

What starts it all?

Attention.

The simple, repeatable act of choosing what you keep looking at in your mind’s eye.

In any challenging situation - whether you are trying to lose weight, grow your business, go through a rough relationship patch at home or at work, or simply function well, while there’s no running water due to a burst pipe - you have a choice to “feed” the wolf of frustration (which doesn’t change much), or to “feed” the wolf of peace and staying effective where you can move things forward (like your work).

Which one grows? Well, as the parable goes, the one you CHOOSE to feed.

Is it easy to do?

No.

If it were easy, rumination wouldn’t be an epidemic. Anxiety and worry wouldn’t be the defining mental health crisis of our time.

But is it doable?

Absof*ckinlutely!

The research on mindfulness, meditation, and CBT is overwhelming. The mechanism in all of them is the same — learning to notice where attention is going, and choosing to redirect it to where it serves your life.

Eyal uses my favorite question to help you choose the right attention point: Is this thought/belief/story you tell yourself useful?

Not: is it true.

Not: is it justified.

Just: is it useful?

If not, what else could you pay attention to right now?

That’s the wolf for you to feed.

Over to you, dear reader,

Where does your attention go most often? And does it make your life better?

Because if not, the shift is available right now.

Right now.

Someone at my coworking space looked at my lunch the other day,plain yogurt, blueberries, protein powder, and said,

"Why are you eating this? Cold food is not good for you."

I almost fell off my chair.

I was proud of that lunch.

I got curious. I asked why.

They launched into something about Ayurveda and digestive fire and how cold foods disrupt your system.

I listened.

Then I said,

"There is no scientific evidence, by that I mean, no randomized controlled studies, nothing peer-reviewed, showing that eating cooler food does anything to me worth worrying about."

Will it cool off my "digestive fire"?

Maybe.

Do I have reliable evidence that matters in the big picture of my life?

No.

Most of it was unreliable.

And honestly? Quite frustrating.

That's when I fell in love with the scientific method.

Which stopped all my yo-yo dieting, got me into the best shape of my life, which I've been maintaining for a decade now.

It doesn't have all the answers. Who does?

But when it comes to if you do this, that result tends to follow — it's the most reliable tool we have.

People like Dr. Layne Norton have made it their life's work to blast through claims that sound compelling but haven't been confirmed by a single controlled study.

The scientific method, in a nutshell:

A systematic, iterative process for investigating the natural world through observation, experimentation, and analysis. Ask a question. Form a testable hypothesis. Run experiments. Gather data. Draw conclusions — then accept, refine, or reject.

That's it.

Want to figure something out?

Pose a testable theory. Experiment. Gather data across different contexts. The more data, the more reliable your conclusion. Apply and enjoy results.

That's why I meditate, and recommend it to clients, to sharpen focus and create more awareness.

That's why I talk to myself in the third person when I need clearer thinking or need to dial down emotions. (It works. The research backs it.)

That's why I eat my protein and 800g+ of fruits and vegetables daily like my life depends on it. Because evidence suggests it kind of does.

That's why, when a client complains about "stubborn" fat loss, we go back to calories first,  because energy deficit works more consistently than anything else out there, across all kinds of people in randomized controlled studies.

There's something else I love - applying scientific thinking is calming.

In a world shifting faster than most of us can process, knowing that some things are genuinely consistent — that journaling, light hygiene, regular sleep timing actually work, night after night — is grounding in a way that no trend, no guru, no protocol can replicate.

I sleep well most nights. Not because I got lucky. Because science tested what works and I keep doing it.

Instead of hoping for miracles, guru advice, or blaming the Universe for my troubles when I can't even show up for the basics.

Over to you, dear reader,

In a world full of noise, confident but often empty claims, and advice that sounds good but hasn't been tested, where in your life and your advice, could you apply more scientific thinking?

Where could you stop taking someone's word for it, run your own experiment, and start building certainty from evidence?

What would change if you treated your own life as the most important study you'll ever run?

We say we want to grow. Then we open Instagram.

“We need a mindset that goes beyond the existing passive mentality whereby we see ourselves having to adapt to technological changes. … It is in our control to shape the future of work. It can be positive or negative depending on what we make of it.”

~ Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters.

There's an old idea — beaten up from overuse but still true — that it's not what happens to us that defines us. It's how we respond.

So. How do YOU respond?

When stress shows up — at work, at home, in relationships — do you reach for the drink, the scroll, the Netflix spiral? Or do you downregulate, do your yoga nidra, get to bed an hour early, and wake up fresh enough ready to face it and make it better?

When a relationship hits friction, do you go — screw it, I'll do my own thing — or do you learn to sit inside the discomfort and have the harder, more productive conversation? Not to win. Not even to find a perfect "win-win." But to find something that actually respects both people, both perspectives, the contradictions in the room?

When you see the way your team communicates, the way work gets done, clearly not working — do you shrug, because it's kind of fine and you've got other things — or do you lean in? Do you lead by example? Do you do more than your job title asks of you on paper?

It's the same phone.

Given to two people, one builds something — reads, learns, connects in ways that matter. The other scrolls into sleepless nights, arguing with strangers, stressing about worldly things outside their control.

Same tool. Different choices.

That's what the book reminded me of.

At every level — in technology, in relationships, in the culture of a team — we're either building on what we've been given, or we're participating in a slow downward spiral and calling it circumstance.

Will AI take our jobs?

Will WE let it?

We can't control everything. That's not the point.

The point is: we can choose what we build with what we've got, where we are, as who we are.

Over to you, dear reader,

The frustration sitting with you today, what's one thing you could do to make it better?

I wanted to get back to my 4AM wake-up and 8PM bedtime.

But it kept not happening.

Something would get in the way.
Dinner would run late. A study session would stretch. One more task. One more message.

And then the morning would start later…
Which meant the evening shifted later a bit too.

You know the loop.

And then magic happened.

I moved into a new household. Someone in the house goes to bed at 8PM sharp every night.

Watching them do it.
Talking about it.
Sharing the same rhythm in the same house.

Suddenly it became easy to… just do it.

No heroic discipline.
No complicated system.

Just social gravity pulling things into place.

A friend of mine was struggling with something similar. He wanted to work on his side hustle consistently, but life kept getting in the way.

So I said I’d check in on him.

And then magic happened again.

He started doing more than he committed to.

Life didn’t suddenly become easier. But somehow it started getting in the way less.

I wanted to post more videos on LinkedIn. Consistently.

But somehow something always came up.

So I asked a friend to make a pact with me.

We check in.
We keep each other accountable.

And I suspect next week… magic will happen again.

The magic of social accountability.

I recently heard high-performance psychologist Michael Gervais talk about habit formation.

His first piece of advice?

Don’t try to do it alone.
Get someone to keep you accountable.

Behavioral science has a well-known framework for creating change developed by the Behavioural Insights Team.

It’s called EAST.

If you want people to change behavior, make it:

• Easy

• Attractive

• Social

• Timely

Social. Here it is again.

Humans are deeply relational creatures. We calibrate our behavior constantly based on what others are doing around us.

And often, the fastest way to change your habits…

…is not more willpower. Not even more systems.

It’s more right kind of people.

As I plan my week ahead, I’m asking myself one question,

If something is important enough to deserve my time, energy, and focus, who do I need to invite onto my accountability team?

Over to you, dear reader,

Who's on YOUR accountability team to check on you with the change that matters?

Pick one doing goal. Pick one accountability partner.

This confused me when I heard it from one of the top high-performance psychologists, Michael Gervais,

“I need to be more and let the doing flow from there.
I need to be more creative, more present, more connected first.”

I don’t think I can follow this model.

In fact, if I approached my coaching clients this way, we wouldn’t go very far.

How do you just be more?

You want to be more creative?
You expose yourself to more ideas. You put more experiences on your schedule to open up your mind. You rearrange your calendar to sit down and create.

That’s when creativity grows. And you become more creative.

I’ve heard the same story from almost every bestselling writer. They didn’t try to be a writer.
They committed to showing up at their desk every day for years.

Then the writing happened.
And eventually, they became writers.

How do you become more present?

You practice pauses.
You pay attention to what’s happening right now.
You block time to reflect.
You notice your breath, your thoughts, the conversation in front of you.

And over time, you become more present.

I’m yet to see a Zen master who simply decided to be enlightened without thousands of hours of meditation.

You do, and a new state of being evolves.

You want to feel more connected?

Spend time with people.
Lean into difficult conversations.
Listen carefully.
Look beyond surface-level talk.
Ask deeper questions.
Show up when people are vulnerable.

Do that long enough, and connection becomes who you are.

You can’t just order yourself to be a different person.

Different being evolves from doing different things consistently.

I don’t have to declare that I’m a healthy person.
But if I consistently do healthy things - I become one.

Interestingly, in another video, Dr. Gervais spoke about developing focus in a noisy world. His recommendation?

Meditation.

In other words, doing the practice before becoming a focused person.

And to be fair, I don’t think he meant that “just being” is enough. Knowing his work, and having taken one of his courses, that would surprise me.

But it reminded me of something important:

Telling someone to “just be” isn’t helpful.
Telling someone to “just do” isn’t helpful either.

What helps is understanding that action shapes identity.

You practice the behaviors first.
And the state of being follows.

Happiness is an inside job they say.
But it’s still a job.

A job of training your mind, reframing your stories, and practicing the things that make life meaningful.

Over to you, dear reader,

Who are you trying to be?  And what doing needs to happen to create this state of being?

You don’t know how much you can change until you actually do.

When I work with clients for a year or two, and we look back, it often feels like we’re talking about two different people.

Their thinking is different.
Their habits are different.
What used to be hard is now easy.
What once felt impossible is simply… normal.

I’ve seen the shift over and over, and over again.

From couch potatoes who never stepped into a gym
…to people I sometimes have to convince to take a recovery day.

From “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”
…to recommending sleep to everyone, where seven hours is now considered a “bad night.”

From potatoes being the only vegetable on the plate
…to enjoying kale chips as snacks and traveling with roasted edamame and apples just to make sure they get enough fiber.

From “I don’t have a minute for myself — meditation is out of the question”
…to “I want to get really good at this mindfulness thing so I have that unfair advantage of being calm and seeing more options when everyone else is stressed.”

From burnout after burnout
…to weekly yoga, clear boundaries, sauna sessions, getting sick less often, and actually moving meaningful things forward in life more not less.

It’s remarkable to witness and reflect on.

And it never happens overnight.

The ABCs of Change

I've just learned a coaching tool that describes this process beautifully. I will now use it with clients as they move through different levels of self-mastery.

The ABCs of Change.

When I was a kid, my vegetable consumption looked something like this:

A-list: potatoes and carrots🥔
Anytime. Easy.

B-list: tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce🍅
Sometimes. Not my favorite, but acceptable.

C-list: onions and anything green
Best avoided. “I’d rather stay hungry.”

When clients work on introducing new habits into their life - exercise, better nutrition, meditation, communication skills - we map their own ABCs.

What can you confidently do right now? (A)

What could you do with some effort? (B)

What feels like “not now… maybe never”? (C)

Instead of forcing massive change, we work with the lists.

As progress happens, something interesting occurs.

The lists start shifting.

C becomes B.
B becomes A.
And entirely new possibilities appear that weren’t even imaginable before.

Identity shifts.
Capacity expands.
The person evolves.

Just like my kid food preferences evolved over time. Today I regularly eat — and genuinely enjoy — things my younger self would have refused completely: Brussels sprouts, sardines, even natto.

Change works like that too for most of us.

What once felt impossible becomes familiar.
Then easy.
Then part of who you are.

So don’t get too attached to your old self.

You might accidentally block the new one that’s trying to enter through your ABCs.

Over to you, dear reader,

What change do you want to make right now?

And what do your A, B, and C lists look like today?

Maybe it’s time to start exploring the next letter?

I was watching a webinar on how to run discovery calls so potential coaching clients actually want to become your clients.

John, the presenter, pointed out 4 simple questions every client’s brain is trying to answer before saying yes.

Whether you say them explicitly or not - the answers got to be there.

1. What results will I get on the other side of this?
What’s in it for me, exactly?

2. How will I know we’re getting there?
What will we measure to see progress?

3. Will it last?
Or is this just another thing I’ll forget about in a month?

4. Are you the real deal?
Who else did you help? How? Why should I trust that you can help me too?

The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became how true it is.

When I make purchase decisions, what book to buy, what course to take, even what food to eat — I run through the exact same sequence in some form in my head.

Maybe not consciously but definitely every time.

Very often, because of rush… insecurity… or assuming “it’s obvious”… we skip one or two of these questions when we present our work.

And then we lose the chance to help someone.

Not because we couldn’t help them.

But because their brain never got the answers it needed to say yes. (And they don't know that either - something just felt incomplete)

When I look at many of my failed sales, I feel a bit like a dummy - I was asking people to make big purchases and commitments, hoping for success WITHOUT putting fundamentals in place that our brain needs for certainty.  

It also reminded me of how many approach their health journey.

Sometimes you skip what everyone already knows works.

Regular exercise.
Enough protein.
Fruit and vegetables.
Good sleep.
Water.

We skip it and hope things will somehow still work out.

Sometimes they do. Just like some smokers live their entire life just fine.

But if you want to reliably increase your odds of living a disease-free life for longer, you follow what’s proven to work consistently.

Sales works the same way.

There are no guarantees.

You can follow a perfect process and still lose the sale.
You can live a healthy lifestyle and still get a terminal illness.

But if you ignore the process, you have a guarantee of worse outcomes more often.

Not always. But often enough.

Over to you, dear reader,

Which bet would you rather take?

Google.
Most leaders think pressure and control creates performance. Google built an empire proving the opposite.

I’m reading Work Rules by Laszlo Bock about how Google built, and protects, its culture.
Culture that innovates, performs and makes Google one of the best places to work at.

The first chapters start with something freedom.

A surprising thing happens when you give people a clear mission, take care of their needs, and then give them freedom to figure out the how.

They do more.
They do better.
They exceed what’s expected.

Not because they’re controlled.
Not because they’re pushed.

Because they’re trusted, they'll figure it out.

I notice the same thing in my coaching.

I rarely get resistance anymore. Not because my clients are superhumans. But because we don’t start with “Here’s what you should do and why you should care.”

We start with clarity.

Why does this matter to you?
What would success actually look like?
What would change in your life if this worked?

Then we look at support.
What do you need?
What’s in the way?
Where do you want to begin?

And then - choice.

Not my plan.
Their plan.
Their way.

Take a leader working on sleep.

We dig into why it matters to them. We draw a vivid picture of what rested, sharp leadership looks like. We design support around their real life. And they choose where to start.

Then something interesting happens.

They don’t just improve.
They outperform their old self, their own expectations.

It makes me think.

Whether you’re coaching one person, leading a team, running a company the size of Google, or shaping a country, maybe the path to performance is the same?

Clarity.
Purpose.
Support.
Freedom.

Not control.
Not pushing.
Not pressure.

Over to you, dear reader,

What goal are you working toward right now? Have you given yourself enough clarity?
Enough purpose? Enough support?
And enough freedom to choose your way forward?

Or are you still trying to force yourself into compliance?

Pick one goal. Write down the mission. List one support you need. Decide one way you’ll approach it.

PS They say people respond to control and pressure in only 2 ways. Compliance or defiance. Compliance can only last and do that much before it turns into defiance.

The right question can move you into action.

It can give you discipline when you don’t feel like it.
Inspire you when you’re flat.
Motivate you when you’re doubting.

Or completely ruin your day.

Which one will it be?

That depends on what you ask yourself in the moments that matter.

At a coaching session, a client told me how “lazy” she felt about going back to work after her leave. She just wanted to stay home. Cook. Take care of the family. Stay in the comfort of what felt easy, familiar, safe.

First of all, feeling “lazy” before starting again is normal.

That’s universal inertia.

“A body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest.”

This statement is Newton's First Law of Motion, or the Law of Inertia, which states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force. It defines inertia as the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion.

Physics isn’t just for textbooks. It applies to habits. Careers. Health. Dreams.

Physics applies to humans. 

To you and me.

When you stop, stopping feels natural. When you move, moving feels natural.
But changing state requires force.

And one of the most effective forces I’ve found to move your mind to move everything else?

A better question.

When you feel like delaying the hard thing, ask:

“And then what?”

You stay where you are longer.
You delay work.
You delay the workout.
You delay the difficult conversation.
You delay the healthy meal.

And then what?

Will the problem disappear?
Will life magically solve it for you?

No.

You either give up on the goal…
Or you have to do it anyway.

So why not now?

What will be different “later”?
It usually gets harder to start, not easier.

Another moment.

You don’t make progress with your business or your health.
You start thinking, “What’s the point?”

That’s when I have another great question for you:

“So now what? You’re just going to give up and die? Never try anything hard again? Just slowly shrink your life?”

It sounds dramatic.

And that’s the point.

In coaching, it’s called amplifying reflection, pushing the logic of your excuse to its extreme so you can see how absurd it is.

Or when your brain says:

“Nothing works. It’s pointless.”

Pause. Then ask:

“Nothing worked? Have you tried everything? Name 10 things you tried that didn’t work.”

Usually, the list stops at like 2.

The brain loves vague drama. It hates specific evidence.

Questions expose the gap.

Over the years, these kinds of questions have created more turnarounds in my life than any motivational quote ever could.

Sometimes I even joke with myself:

“Angela, you got too good at questioning yourself. Maybe you need new ones to let yourself chill a little.”

Your mind will always try the easy narrative: lazy, pointless, why bother - to save energy, just in case you need it to survive, double-checking that what you want to do is actually worth it.

Your job isn’t to silence it.

Your job is to ask a better question to take more actions that matter and move you where you want to go.

So next time you feel stuck, unmotivated, ready to quit, don’t argue with your brain - learn to ask the right questions.

What question will you choose the next time inertia shows up?

t just dawned on me that many of us have it backwards.

We make the wrong things easy.
And the right things too hard.

A friend offered to give me a lift on her way to the supermarket.
She was going that way. I was heading that way too.

I said,
“Walking IS the point.”

Not everything that can be done easier should be.

Getting your steps in?
That’s the “hard” we should keep.

I often tell my clients: incentivise your walking. Attach it to errands. Create reasons to leave the house. If your life doesn’t demand movement, design it in.

But take another goal: eating healthy meals.
Here, ease wins.

The less thinking.
The fewer decisions.
The more prepared the fridge.
The more automatic the outcome is - more healthy meals eaten.

If you want yourself — or your team — to do deep work, think hard, innovate… make it easy to do the hard thing.

Block the calendar.
Create protected time.
Build accountability.
Design special spaces.
Give fun tools.

Make the right behaviour the default.

But if you want people to build collaboration skills, trust, or have better conversations - keep that hard.

Don’t automate interpersonal growth.
Don’t shortcut the discomfort of getting out there and talking to people.
Don’t replace real dialogue with digital convenience.

There’s something close to a universal law here:
What shapes you must stretch you.

You only really learn a skill when you need it to survive something. When we go through hard sh*t - that's where we REALLY learn.

You don’t get better at sales because referrals keep landing in your lap, or you are lucky, or you have a good network.
You get better, when you have to sell cold. From zero. No safety net.

Once you can do that, you’re free. You can create results anywhere.

Neuroscience tells us something similar about learning.

If we struggle to retrieve an answer, wrestle with a concept, search for a solution — it sticks.

If we outsource all thinking to AI — it doesn’t. YOU do not change and learn.

Another “hard” worth keeping.

Over to you, dear reader, think of how you want to develop yourself, your craft, your life, and ask yourself,

What is the hard I need to keep to shape that person?
Where do I need to introduce ease to make the right things happen consistently?