Daily Thought for Change

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?

(Subtitle - Comfort or Growth? Comfort blanket or mountain at sunrise?)
Every Friday at sunrise, we climb a mountain.

And every Friday, 2 forces pull me in opposite directions.

Stay under the blanket.
Or get up, drive in the dark, meet new people, climb hard, breathe deep.

Comfort or growth?

Stay in your home country and follow the familiar path.
Or go explore the world, build something new, let life's path with its challenges and rewards unfold over time in its unique way.

Eat the ice cream because the week didn’t go as planned.
Or go to bed early, hit the 6am workout, and face what needs adjusting.

Competing priorities.

Or as I learned in yesterday’s coaching class — inner conflicts.

“I want X… but I also want Y.”

Most people think this tension is a bug. Something to eliminate.
Many of my clients come to me hoping we can “fix” it. Remove the conflict. Choose once and for all. Build the ideal self where all the shoulds become dones.

But that’s a fantasy. An illusion.

The tension isn’t a flaw.
It’s a feature of being human.

The goal isn’t to make one value win — comfort over growth, belonging over self-expression, achievement over health, success over family.

The real work is a bit harder.

Integration.

Learning to walk the tension.
To honor the parts of you that want safety and the parts that want expansion.
To build a life where your values don’t fight but collaborate.

Here are a few useful questions you can use with clients, or with yourself, when you feel stuck in that pull:

• Why is X important to you? What value does it express?
• Why is Y important to you? What value does it protect?
• What does this conflict actually mean to you about who you are becoming?
• How do these values relate to your need for comfort and your need for growth?
• How might you design your life to honor both, instead of sacrificing one or the other?

When you explore these with an open mind, something interesting happens.

You realize both sides are trying to serve YOU.

Joy and discipline.
Adventure and loyalty.
Ambition and health.

A piece of chocolate with morning coffee — for joy.
Learning moderation — for health.

Exploring the world, while calling your family daily, showing up when it's meaningful and important.

Climbing the mountain at sunrise, knowing your blanket will still be there at night.

The tension doesn’t disappear.

You just get better at holding it, walking your path in-between.

Over to you, dear reader,

What is pulling you in 2 directions right now, and how might you design a way to honor both sides of yourself instead of choosing only one?

Have you ever made a plan — start eating healthy, exercise every day, get more consistent with bizdev or content creation — starting March 1st… and then the plan didn't work? Or you didn't work for the plan. Life got in the way. Stuff happened.

Most of my clients have been there many times before our work together.

Heck, I've been there many times myself.

And here's what we now do differently that sets the plan for success every time.

First, we don't stop at planning. We go straight into prepping for the plan.

Think about it: imagine Navy SEALs heading into a mission with zero prep, just a goal, an intention, winging it when they wake up Monday morning. Sounds ridiculous, right? We'd never accept that for a high-stakes mission with a team. But when it comes to our own goals, the things we're doing solo for our own stakes, that's exactly what most of us do - winging the plan. And it's exactly why we fail.

This step-by-step process below, that I use with my clients will make your follow-through as reliable as a Navy SEALs mission:

Intention: Why are we doing this? What's the goal? How will you know you're doing it? What's a movie of you doing it, so detailed that I can see it in my own head?

Plan: What's the exact step-by-step, from prep all the way to full execution?

Prep [where most plans go to die]: What needs to be in place so that when the day comes, execution just falls into place? Just slides into your unfolding day effortlessly?

Let's say your plan is to improve your eating starting March 1st. Before we begin, we walk through everything:

What exactly are you going to eat? When? Where will you get the food? When? How will you prep it, and when will you cook and prep it for easy eating even if it's on the go, so that on March 1st all you have to do is eat it? What happens on your busy mornings? What do you eat when you're out? When you're running late and have to sprint to a meeting or catch a bus? What are your go-to emergency snacks? What do you order when you're at a restaurant?...

We poke as many holes in the plan as possible before we start, so that just like a Navy SEAL, no matter what life throws at you, you're prepared to keep going.

Accountability: Who's going to keep an eye on you? Who can you "enroll" to help you execute, so you don't feel like you're on this mission alone?

People show up differently, and do a lot more when the right accountability is in place.

Research from the NIH shows: 

“Accountability significantly increases adherence (e.g., in health treatments, it has been shown to increase adherence by over 100% in some cases)”

Measure / Track / Reflect / Adjust… and keep going.

Life won't follow your plan.

Some things you were sure would work won't.

Some things won't give you the result you expected.

And that's okay.

You learn. You adjust. You prep again. You do better. You repeat.

And eventually - you get what you want.

Over to you, dear reader,

As we're heading into March and you're doing some new season planning, ask yourself: what step might I be skipping that's making my plans fail more than they could?

PS If you lead a team or a family unit and want to help them succeed with their plans, take a look at whether you have a similar process in place for them. Help set them up for success.

I used to argue with my dad a lot.

About how to live a good life.
About what I should be doing in my business.
About what he should be doing about his health.

It felt like we were on opposite sides.

Until I realized something simple:
We actually want the same thing.

He wants me to do well in life.
I want him to stay well for as long as possible.

Then, before each conversation, especially when things got heated, I started reminding myself of that.

We’re on the same team.

That small mental shift changed everything. Almost overnight.
Not because I changed his mind. (Or mine)
But because I changed my starting point.

I became more receptive. More curious. More willing to listen.
And when I listened better, my tone changed. The outcome changed. The relationship grew stronger.

In behavioral science, and in Presuasion by Robert Cialdini, this is called priming.

a psychological phenomenon where exposure to an initial stimulus (word, image, sound) unconsciously influences a person's response to a subsequent, related stimulus. Operating through implicit memory, it activates specific mental representations, shaping perceptions, behaviors, and decisions without conscious awareness.

Priming is the idea that what you are exposed to first shapes what comes next.
The first thought.
The first word.
The first action.

It influences what you see, how you interpret it, what you decide, and how you act, most often without you noticing it at all.

What you remind yourself of becomes your lens through which you see the rest🔎

At the coaching class yesterday we talked about Crucial Conversations, and how the first step to having a good, productive difficult conversation starts with shared purpose, with setting the intention to create more good. The goal isn’t to “win it” - it’s to create a better relationship. Just like it happened with my dad.

Not “How do I win this?”
But “What are we trying to build together?”

Once that intention is set, your behavior follows.

This works in coaching too.

The clients who transform the most are the ones who enter with a clear intention:

I’m here to learn.
I’m here to grow.
I’m willing to be uncomfortable.
I’m playing the long game.

They surprise themselves with how much they can change (and how fast).

The ones who struggle?
They never really pause to ask:

Why am I doing this?
What’s the deeper purpose?
What do I want this to mean?
What do I need to remind myself of daily to keep improving?

In agriculture, priming is soaking seeds before planting so they sprout stronger.

In humans, we miss this completely.

We focus on strategy.
On tactics.
On winning arguments.
On outcomes.

But we skip the mental warm-up.

The inner orientation.

The "seed treatment".

Over to you, dear reader,

Before your next hard conversation, your next negotiation, mentoring session, feedback or review, your next big decision —
what do you need to remind yourself of so you act from shared purpose and clear intention?

What seed do you need to pre-soak today for a better sprout tomorrow?

25 years of consistency.

I started my first gym membership at 13. I only went to support a friend. Many friends later — I’m the only one who never stopped.

A gym friend asked me recently,
“25 years! How did you do THAT?”

Not willpower.
Not discipline.
Not some superhuman trait.

I told him,
“I gave myself my word that for the rest of my life I’ll move my body for 30 minutes every day. Ideally in the morning.”

He said he’s made similar promises to himself many times.

So what made mine stick?

A) I built an MVP version of my exercise habit for the days I don’t feel like it.

When I don’t want to lift weights, I do yoga.
Or a martial arts workout.
Or mobility drills.
Sometimes I just dance.

He replied,
“I should probably schedule some yoga classes.”

And that’s where most people go wrong.

That’s also where my approach, the one I teach to my 1-1 clients and B2B teams working on performance - is FUNDAMENTALLY different.

B) Make it really easy. And I mean REEEEALLY easy to start.

I do not sign up for more classes.

I saved one yoga video on my phone. And on my Google Drive. A routine I can do in the smallest hotel room - it was handy, 15 years of digital nomad life, mountains, beaches, jungle gyms, remote locations and all.

I also have a workout app I can use anywhere.

That’s how my fitness survived Covid lockdown in a room with 2X2m space.
I lifted weights then too. Sometimes water bottles.

And THAT is the gold you are looking for🍯

The secret to lifelong consistency.

EASY.

And by easy, I mean so easy to start you almost slide into it without thinking.

Can you see the difference between:

“I need to schedule more yoga classes”

And:

“I have a video on my phone”

?

THAT kind of easy.

The kind I’ve done in the dark, naked, barely awake, before a 24-hour flight.

Over to you, dear reader,

Are you sure you tried easy before willpower?

PS: If you lead a team and you’re wondering why people struggle to adopt something new or stay consistent, I can give you a 100% guarantee you haven’t thought through the “easy” part well enough.

The human brain is lazy and defaults to conserving energy. Daniel Pink, who's studied human behavior for the last 30 years, says it’s the #1 factor everyone misses.

Where in your life (or organization) are you still overcomplicating and blaming it on a lack of consistency or the wrong people?