Daily Thought for Change

What if the part of your job that makes you irreplaceable is the part you haven’t practiced enough?

We all fear being replaced. By AI. By automation. By someone faster, cheaper, more optimized.

And yet, the parts of work that are staying human, the ones that won’t be automated, the ones that require YOU, are you working on getting better at them, figuring them out?

I'm on a trip to Russia to renew my passport.

There’s an online system to process the documents, it didn’t work. So, like many others, I had to show up in person to fix what the system couldn’t.

Eventually, they’ll probably patch the tech. Make it seamless. Remove the human altogether.

But… should they?

While I waited in line, I noticed a stream of older people confused, frustrated, overwhelmed. They weren’t just battling forms, they were battling fear. Uncertainty. Systems that weren’t designed for them, for their world understanding, their skillset.

They needed someone who could help, not just click buttons. Someone who could see them as fallible humans.

That moment triggered another.

At an ATM in Cape Town, a younger guy in front of me stood still, looking lost. I thought he was just slow… until he turned and said, “Can you help me?”

I was confused, what could I help him with?

He didn’t understand how to make a deposit. Not because he wasn’t smart. Because the interface was unfamiliar. The pressure of messing it up was real. And there was no one around to ask. No human.

Yes, AI could’ve helped. Maybe.

But it can’t always understand what you are too ashamed to say out loud. The hesitation. The fear of clicking the wrong thing. The quiet panic when it still doesn’t work after you follow the steps. Plus with real money on the line and the machine that can "eat it"

Back in Russia, my situation turned out to be a “special case”, I didn’t fit the dropdown menu. That’s how I ended up in a queue to speak with a person. A human. Someone who could say, “Ah, okay, I see what’s happening.”

That moment made me ask, in a world where systems keep getting better, faster, more automated…

What’s the part of my work that won’t be replaced?
And am I getting better at that part now before it’s the only part left?

P.S. I created a post on LinkedIn curated by TOP AI voice (2M followers). If you want to explore your human edge before the world decides it for you, check it out,

“6 Career-Design questions to use with chatGPT to help you win with AI (while others are being replaced).”

Your brain wants easy. Your life needs systems.

“The law of least effort, also known as the principle of least resistance, suggests that organisms and systems will naturally choose the path of least resistance or the option requiring the least amount of energy to achieve a goal. This principle is observed in various fields, from evolutionary biology and information science to everyday decision-making. Essentially, people tend to find the easiest way to accomplish tasks, even if it means taking a less optimal route or using less efficient methods”

Translation?
We’re wired to go for “easy". Even when it's wrong, harmful, or self-sabotaging.

In a manmade world of engineered temptations, nature won't save you. You must design systems to protect yourself from yourself.

My sister asked, “Why does nature let us eat ourselves to death? Shouldn’t there be a shut-off mechanism?”
My response, “Nature didn’t see the modern supermarket coming.”

Nobody ever ate themselves to death in apples. Not a single person got super overweight eating bananas🍌

It's the ultra-processed food, engineered by humans, food that’s been designed to make you eat more of it. Why are we surprised it does just that?

It’s not just food.

It’s phones that hijack our attention.
Cities and Netflix that override our natural sleep rhythms.
Work cultures that reward busy over meaningful.

We’re great at inventing new things.
We’re not always great at installing the guardrails to protect ourselves from those inventions.

Yes, we’re getting better.
There are more tools than ever to help us stay focused, grounded, healthy, and aligned.

But are you choosing to use them before it's too late? What systems protect you from ... you?

Nature won’t stop you from binge-watching garbage or scrolling past your life.
Nature won’t close the fridge or silence your notifications.
That’s your job.

You have to build the right systems:
– systems that make it easy to eat well, move, sleep, and think.
– systems that make it obvious to do the work that matters.
– systems that put friction around distraction.

Same with AI.
It can sharpen your genius or dissolve what's left of it into nothing. 
It’s not the tool, it’s your systems.

So ask yourself today,

What systems have you built to keep you well, focused, and working on what makes your life meaningful?

Cause if you have none, nature won't save you.

Start from the end (reading a book with this title)

I was reading an article on why so many leadership development programs fail to deliver business results MIT Sloan

It came down to 3 simple things:

1. They don’t start with the end goal.
   What are we actually trying to achieve?
   Learning for the sake of learning? Or are we trying to improve innovation? Boost engagement? Break down silos?
   If we don’t know the outcome we’re designing for, how do we even begin to measure success?

2. They don’t design training to get better at the thing that matters most (which isn't even known often).
   Even if there is a goal, the training isn’t built to hit it.
   There’s no well-designed practice, no integration into real work, no tracking.
   It’s like reading a business book but never scheduling and designing for its application. Hoping insight alone will somehow shift you.

3. They don’t measure impact.
   There’s no system in place to check whether all that time and money actually moved the needle.
   It’s like trying to lose weight, eating “healthy,” but the scale never budges. Nice effort, but no meaningful result.

Now, why does this matter for you and me?

Because this isn’t just about leadership programs.
This is about life.

We say we want something: more growth, better health, stronger relationships, a thriving business, inspiring career.
But we don’t design our lefforts to achieve that.
We just do things. Randomly. Repeatedly. Hopefully.

We read books, but the wrong ones, or with no application follow-up.
We exercise, but in a way that makes us hungrier.
We work more, but not on the things that bring in revenue.

The problem isn’t your effort. It’s the design.

Start with the end in mind.
Then reverse engineer the experience to match.
And measure your effort against that end goal.

Are you doing that?
Or are you just doing things?

You can work all your life and never actually get what you want, wouldn't that be a waste and frustration?

The conversation you are not having

We were walking down the street.
A friend of mine was talking. And talking. And talking.

Relationship drama.
Who did what. How they responded. How it made her feel.
Then the complaints started.
Tiny things, disappointments, expectations unmet. On and on and on.

I sped up, hoping we’d get there sooner, so I could escape the conversation, wondering, could she do the same?

I get it. Life is hard.
Stuff happens. To all of us.
But is this really what you want to give your greatest gift to? Your attention? Your thinking?

Your mental energy that creates your emotions, your actions, your future?

What you focus on, grows.
So, what are you growing?

When I wake up and my thoughts are off-track, I tune them back UP.
Podcasts. Books. Conversations.
With people who are building.
People learning, improving, showing up.
People who want to create something that matters, something beautiful, inspiring... better.

I make time for those conversations.
I start those conversations - I schedule zooms, coffee chats to make sure my mind tuned to the right radio station.
I love reading books because they hold the clearest, smartest thoughts distilled over decades, and they shape my mind as I go along.

Choose your radio station.
For the version of yourself you want to grow into, not the one you’re trying to outgrow.

Start the conversations that light you up.
That build. Solve. Empower.
And when you’re stuck in a draining one? Don’t feed it. Let it go hungry. Eventually, it'll stop.

Of course, we all feel things. We all have bad days.
Acknowledge the emotion. Process it. Then choose the next move and move on!

You have a whole life to live, to create, to move, inspire, experience, don’t let your past become a record that you force yourself to dance to.

"Two monks came to a river. A young woman needed help crossing.
The elder monk, despite their vow, picked her up, carried her across, and moved on.
Hours later, the younger monk blurted out,
“How could you carry her? We’re not supposed to touch women.”
The elder replied:
“I put her down hours ago, you are still carrying her.”

Which "pen" are you?

In Russian, the word for a door handle and the word for a pen, the one you write ✍️ with - are exactly the same. You only know the difference by the context.

Same thing in English.
Think of “live”
You can go live - launch, be online, show up.
Or you can live - as in, to be alive.
Different meaning. Same word.

Or “wind.”
The wind that blows in your face.
Or to wind something around your finger.
Same letters. Whole different world depending on how you use it.

I had a chat with another coach who works in the same company as one of my clients. I was curious, what does she actually do? Why are they bringing someone else into the team?

Turns out, she does the thing I don’t.

She coaches people on how to manage, lead, upskill - hands-on, on-the-job development. Practical, day-to-day execution. She does it her way. A great way. Just not my way.

I realized, that’s exactly why they hired me.

Not to overlap. But to bring a different perspective. A different type of support. A different kind of solution.

In a world where you’re constantly surrounded by “same-sounding” professionals, coaches, consultants, strategists, salespeople, entrepreneurs etc, what really sets you apart is not what you call yourself, but how you do what you do.

It’s worth asking,
Are you a pen to write with?
Or a pen to open doors?

The clearer you are about what you do differently, the easier it is for the right people to find you, trust you, and choose you.

You don’t need to be the loudest. Or the most experienced.
But you do need to be clear on what kind of pen you are.

Start here, with these five questions, to find and own your edge:

1. What result do you help others achieve, that they deeply care about?
   Not just what you do, but what changes because of you.

2. What do you do differently from others in your field?
   Is it your process? Your pace? Your lens? What makes you… you?

3. What do you always notice, that others tend to miss?
   That overlooked detail? It’s probably your secret sauce. After all, you can eat the same pasta, the key is the sauce :)

4. If someone shadowed you for a day, what would surprise them?
   Something that feels normal to you but is rare to others?

5. What do people come back to you for, again and again?
   Patterns are proof. Look at what sticks.

Get curious. Get specific. Get focused.

Then speak from that place.

What kind of pen are you?

Should you stop using your muscles just because you can get everything delivered to your door?

Silly question? Maybe. We see where it gets some people.

But what if we’re about to ask the same thing about our minds?

A recent MIT study points to something we already intuitively know, using AI for everything may have a “dumbing” effect on the brain. (The article, The original study abstract)

“If you don’t use it – you lose it.”
That’s biology. And it applies to the brain too. Just like it applies to your bicep or stomach.

Every time I speak with people who don’t read much, who don’t write or practice expressing their thoughts clearly, I feel the difference. It's not about intelligence. It’s about clarity, nuance, depth. It’s a quality of thinking.

You’ve probably felt it too.
That moment when a great speaker articulates something, and suddenly… you understand yourself better. That’s the magic of clear, developed, nuanced thinking.

Now imagine a generation that outsources all of that.
Outsources thinking like some outsource their fitness. Or purpose. Or presence.

We still teach kids math even though calculators have been around for over a century. Why?
Because doing the work develops the person.

What kind of person develops with no reasoning skills?

We train our minds not just to solve equations but to:

• Think clearly

• Make decisions

• Recognize patterns

• Strategize

• Connect dots

• Question

• Understand meaning

AI can help, sure. I use ChatGPT to clean up my grammar, refine my structure, suggest better flow. But the first draft? The thinking? The ideas? That’s mine. Everything's here is an ingrained part of me.

And that matters.

I’m not romanticizing cave drawings. I am saying, don’t outsource the parts of life that make you… you.

Reading. Writing. Reasoning.
These are not obsolete. They’re the foundations of YOUR depth, meaning, and creativity.

Research shows, the best writers, are the best readers. You can't chatGPT the depth of a book. 

So here’s the question I’m sitting with, and maybe you will too,
If we stop seeking our own answers, if we hand off the thinking, the reflecting, the creating... who do we become?

Track inputs. The outputs are a side effect.

Everything you have in life is a side effect of actions you took.

We forget that when the goals get big. When the vision gets blurry.

The truth still stands.

Set the goal.
Set the reps.
Forget the goal.
Master the reps.
Check in occasionally with the goal.

Whether it's fitness, business, or culture change, every outcome must be broken down into visible, measurable, repeatable actions. That’s your only job. Reps.

Ask yourself, "What kind of work do I need to put in consistently to make the result naturally appear?

I’m now tracking my business reps:

• Hours spent on client outreach

• Messages sent

• Conversations started

• Calls booked

At the end of the day, if those reps don’t happen, nothing else matters.

Same with weight loss. You can know everything about macros, metabolism, biohacking… but if your calorie reps aren’t tracked, the scale won’t shift.

Same with change leadership. Digital transformation. Innovation culture.

If you want a new result, somebody has to show up and do something differently. Every day. Until results show up.

No reps, no gains.
True in the gym.
True in business.
True in life.

So what are your reps today?

Nothing like someone asking you, "How did you do all that?" to boost your self-esteem and make you believe you can push through anything, even this boulder in front of you that seems immovable.

An old friend called me today while I'm visiting my home country.

He asked, “Angela, you’ve lived in all these countries, it just dawned on me, how did you do that? It’s probably a whole skillset you’ve developed, right?”

Then I shared my strategy that's worked in every one of the 16 countries I've lived in. (A blog for another day perhaps).

I was also interviewed for a podcast yesterday.

The host asked, “Angela, you coach many people. Are they all successful, or do you also coach people who fail and need to get back on their feet?”

Fundamental truth of life,

Everyone struggles with something you know nothing about. Every single person. If not right now, then consistently over time.

We all experience moments of failure, then success, and then swing at new goals only to land back in another valley of failure. That's life's journey. That's how growth works.

The key skill I coach people on, across every shade of success and failure, is getting through this cycle quicker, bouncing back faster. That's what they call resilience.

When it comes to mindset, there are three fundamental skills I help people build,

• Temporal Travel: Zoom out from this moment of "failure" and notice all the challenges you've navigated before. Look at how far you've come, how much you've grown - look at all the past challenges that you survived and kept going, you can probably laugh at most of them. Then look ahead see all the opportunities your future holds to succeed (and these are increasing even faster now with AI). And this moment, a month from now, a year from now, will it matter? Or you'll find a way and will be smiling at the beauty of life? Maybe you can start smiling now? :)

• GAIN vs. GAP Thinking: Stop focusing solely on how much you still lack or what you haven't figured out yet. Instead, regularly acknowledge your milestones. Look at the past 5-10 years - you've hit so many growth milestones, overcome so much, learned so much, and lived through a lot. Today's "failure" is actually a milestone of upcoming success in disguise, a challenge indicating how far you've come and the mountain you are climbing. Aren't today's challenges harder than before? Isn't what's now easy something that once felt impossible?

• "So What?" Socratic Questioning: You're in a pit, you feel like you blew it, and you're convinced nothing will ever work again. So what? If you keep thinking like this, how does it help you? Is it serving you? Are you going to give up, feel miserable forever, try nothing, achieve nothing, and believe you're worthless? And then what? Life just stays dull until you die? Is that your choice? Or, realistically, given your experiences and the increasing opportunities around you, isn't it logical to assume you can succeed? If you give it your all, isn't it likely that you'll build something amazing?

So what are you waiting for?

Start moving sooner. Your turnaround will follow.

Failure is inevitable. How you navigate your way out—that's what makes the difference.

When did you last think about the goal of your work?

You spend most of your workday typing on a keyboard, reading off a screen.

Emails. Slack messages. Notion or Asana for planning. Canva for designs. Zoom or Teams for meetings.

If I were an alien watching you work, I’d just see you typing, clicking, dragging things around, occasionally talking to other people on your screen.

But is that your job?

Is that the value of your work, typing, reading, talking?

Of course not.

The real value is in the outcomes you create. The problems you solve. The results you deliver - to your team, your employer, your clients, your customers.

A friend asked me today, when I asked for a few introductions,
“What’s your value proposition?”

A fair question. One we ask in business all the time.
Why should someone hire you?
What problem do you solve?
Why you?

In a world where job definitions shift fast, tools change weekly, and AI learns quicker than we do, this isn’t just a sales question anymore.

It’s a career question. It's YOUR future job question.

What’s YOUR value proposition?

What outcomes are you hired to deliver?
What do you make better?

Why does your job exist?

Answer that, and then design your work, your learning, your time, your tools around it.
That’s how you stay relevant. That’s how you keep your job in any future. By understanding what value you deliver and constantly reimagining how you do it based on the best tools available.

And that's the solution to the upskilling problem in a nutshell.

You didn’t fail the diet.
The diet failed you.

I’ve coached people through keto, vegan, low-carb, carnivore, detoxes, you name it.
And over and over, they’d come to me and say:

“It worked for a while… then I crashed. I just want to eat in a way I can sustain.”

This happened because they were thinking in diets.

Rules. Formulas. Short-term outcomes.
They weren’t thinking like a nutritionist.

Thinking in diets sounds like,
“I’ll cut carbs. I’ll drop the weight. I’ll feel amazing. Done.”

Thinking like a nutritionist sounds like,
“Carbs feed your brain, regulate hormones, support energy. If I cut them, where will I get what they provide? What’s the trade-off? Can I sustain this?”

A nutritionist thinks in first principles.
What does your body need to thrive?
What must be present in your meals, no matter the diet label, so your biology keeps humming long-term?

I can make any diet work.
Because I stop thinking in rules and start thinking in needs.
The person’s needs.
The body’s needs.

This isn’t just about food.
This is about your business. Your relationship. Your entire life.

You chase a formula, and it might give you results for a while.
But if you don’t know the why behind the formula, it’ll break when life shifts.
And it always shifts.

Before you follow someone else’s plan, ask,

• What’s this built on?

• What’s it assuming about me, my life, my goals?

• What are the non-negotiables for my health, work, energy, growth, relationships?

The internet doesn’t know your past.
A coach on Instagram you've never met doesn’t know your values.
Even ChatGPT doesn’t know the full picture (or you have to do a heck lot longer prompts).

So stop thinking in diets.
Stop thinking in hacks.
Stop thinking in rules and shortcuts.
Start thinking like a builder. Like a strategist. Like a nutritionist.

Start thinking in first principles.

🧠 Micro-Practice: Build Your Own “Life Nutrition Plan"

1. Pick one area: Food, Work, Relationships

2. List what’s essential for you to function well in that area (e.g., for work: focus, autonomy, collaboration)

3. Ask: Is the current strategy meeting those needs, or just following some rules I don't really get?

4. Adjust the approach not to follow trends, but to meet your needs.