Daily Thought for Change

Mixed signals are what keep us stuck choosing today’s easy road over tomorrow’s future we say we want.

I’m reading a book "Mixed Signals: how incentives really work" - about how different kinds of rewards send very clear signals about what’s valued and rewarded around here.
And those signals shape behavior far more than intentions ever do.

If you say you want innovation but reward consistent performance,
you’ll get safe bets, not experiments that fail most of the time and occasionally pay off 10x.

If you say you want great team performance but reward individual wins the most,
you’ll get a bunch of stars pulling the cart toward whatever benefits them.

If you say you want a beach body but only get joy from pizza nights and late evenings,
guess what you’ll get more of?

You don’t get what you say you want.
You get what you incentivize.
What you reward.
What you make pleasurable.

This is why my clients who truly shift into fitter, healthier, more intentional lives don’t just “do the right things.”
They become people who enjoy the work.

They enjoy waking up fresh more than late nights.
They enjoy the sweat, not just the mirror.
They enjoy recovery, sleep, and nourishment, not just "busy days".
They enjoy seeing friends and family adopt their habits, not just planning another movie night.

For the human brain, the strongest reward is joy and pleasure in the here and now, not some distant payoff a year from now.

The real long-term switch of habits happens when you stop enjoying the dreamer on the couch and start enjoying the person who shows up for work.

Over to you dear reader, where in your pursuit of your best self are you still running on “have to”?
And where could you redesign the work so the reward is built into the doing itself?

There’s a better, and a worse way to run a marathon🏃‍♂️

You can sprint into it with no prep, no strategy, no pacing…
and collapse long before the finish line.

Even the best of the best don’t do that.
They train. They pace. They plan.

Goals work the same way.

We now have years of solid research on real humans showing what actually helps people stick with long-term goals. And one big reason the right coaching works so well is this: it helps you set the right kind of goals, in the right way so you keep going long enough to either succeed or pivot successfully.

So let’s talk research-based goal setting 101, so you actually have a better shot at making 2026 different.

1. DO NOT SHOOT BIG.

Stretch goals beat leap goals.

Consistent motivation, the kind you need to keep taking action, comes from goals that are challenging but believable. Your brain has to genuinely think: Yes, this is possible.

Have a big vision, absolutely.
But set goals that are within reach.

Want your fittest self?
Envision the total transformation. But aim for the next 5–10 pounds. Or a routine you can actually keep.

You can always set the next goal once you get there.
Self-belief grows from evidence, from seeing yourself succeed, not from falling short over and over again.

2. DO NOT BE A POSITIVE THINKER.

Visualizing success sounds nice.
But it’s often demotivating.

Why?

Because real life will not follow your mental movie. "Man plans God laughs". And when things unfold differently (they always do), your brain reads that gap as: wrong plan, wrong path. Motivation drops fast📉

Worse, you’re completely unprepared for obstacles and they hurt you a lot more!

A better approach?
Visualize everything that can (and will) go wrong.

Then think through:

• how to reduce the chances,

• how you’ll respond when it happens,

• how to adjust without drama.

This is called mental contrasting, and it’s one of the most effective tools we have for consistent follow-through. Less emotional damage. Faster recovery. Way more momentum.

3. DO NOT CELEBRATE SUCCESS.

Reward action.

Acknowledge every rep. Every attempt. Every step taken.

You can’t fully control outcomes.
You can control effort, frequency, consistency, and your reps💪

Luck might show up or not.
But consistent growth only comes from putting reps in.

Track progress, yes, to adjust your strategy.
But tracking, watching your goal itself isn’t what moves the goal closer.

Forward motion does.
Mastery does.

And mastery is built rep by rep.

TL;DR

Have a big vision but set achievable goals.
Believe in yourself but plan for obstacles.
Acknowledge progress but be obsessive about rewarding reps.

Over to you dear reader, where could your goal process use an upgrade in 2026?

"Energy is the potential for change."

I heard this on Huberman Lab podcast a few days ago.
After coaching hundreds of clients over the past 18 years, I can confirm it from the field:
the more energy people have, the faster they change.

Isn't after that great night of sleep that you want to change the world and do all the things?

Yesterday on the mountain, someone asked me:
“So are you saying that when we don’t generate enough energy, because we sleep poorly, eat badly, don’t move, that’s when motivation drops? And that to get motivation, we actually need energy first?”

Exactly that.

Motivation, your up-and-go, your willingness to engage with life, is a signal that things are working in your body.

Think back to the last time you were sick.
Your body was pouring energy into fighting an infection.
How motivated were you to do… anything?

Even my most hard-working, disciplined clients admit that when they’re sick, everything requires force. Push. Friction.

I have a simple formula for motivation that I use to help clients get things done, get things started:

Energy to act + Reason to act = Motivation

Yes, a strong enough reason can get you out of bed.
But full batteries will do it faster.
For longer. Consistently.
And for many more things.

That’s why when clients struggle with consistency, procrastination, or starting new habits, we don’t begin with mindset hacks or productivity tools.

We start by fixing the habits that drain energy, like a leaky bucket:
sleep, food, movement - you know, the essentials to maintain "the machine".

Because if your up-and-go isn’t charged, no reason, no matter how noble, will last long enough to get you somewhere meaningful.

And as Professor Huberman and his guest pointed out, if you want to change, adapt, grow - energy isn’t optional. It’s foundational.

Over to you dear reader,

How’s your energy balance right now?
And what needs fixing to keep your battery topped up every day?

I’ve had six-pack abs for over a decade.
Before that, I struggled with my weight for a decade.

One of the biggest shifts that made the difference wasn’t my willpower.
It was a simple principle I learned early in nutrition coaching: displacement principle.

Right stuff in - Bad stuff out.

“I like this displacement theory, I’m going to give it a try,” a client said, attempting to eat less chocolate.

It’s one of those meta principles.
It doesn’t just get you abs.
It gets you a meaningful, fulfilling work-life integration too.

In nutrition, displacement principle means this:
focus on what you need to eat.
The more good stuff goes in, the less space there is for the rest.

What helped me get, and keep, abs that get compliments every day, wasn’t obsessing over what I can’t eat.
It was planning what I must eat every day:

• ~150g of protein (about 500g of food)

• at least 1kg of fruit and vegetables

• fish with omega-3s

• 2–3 eggs

• nuts and seeds

By the time you’ve eaten all that, you’re full.
No hunger.
No chewing capacity.
No mental energy left for much else.

What you focus on grows🌱

So when I focus on seeking out all these healthy foods - I have no time thinking about much else. And the same goes to my fridge - it’s all filled with healthy groceries for the week ahead.

More good stuff in.
More bad stuff out.
Your stomach has a limit.

So does your calendar.

That’s also why I never watch Netflix or TV.

Not because I banned it.
Because it had nowhere to fit it in.

One day I asked myself, “Who do I want to be by the end of this decade?”
My answer: one of the best in the world at what I do.

That decision had consequences.
It meant regular studying.
Reading.
Thinking.
Creating.

Those things went into my calendar first.
Netflix didn’t survive the squeeze.

Good stuff in.
The rest gets displaced.

Want to feel more fulfilled in your daily work?

What activities actually matter to you?
Put those on your calendar first.
Let everything else fight for the leftovers.

Want more fitness?
Schedule it like a meeting.
Life adjusts.

This is why I run a time-budgeting exercise with clients as part of work-life integration design process.

I give them a budget update.

You have 168 hours each week to spend.

What are your priorities?
What parts of yourself, your work, your life do you want to fund with that budget?

We allocate the hours.
Whatever doesn’t make the cut… doesn’t get funded.

The right stuff in.
The wrong stuff out.

Tony Robbins has a saying:
“Where focus goes, energy flows.”

I’d add:
and results follow.

Displacement principle.

Good for abs.
Good for impact.
Good for designing the life worth living.

Over to you dear reader,

What do you need to add more of, so the wrong stuff no longer has room to fit in?

Do you worry? What do you worry about? Because everyone does.

In my 18 years of coaching, I’ve helped at least 500+ people eliminate worry.
No. I didn’t help them live stress-free lives.
And no. I didn’t turn them into some zen monks who stopped caring, or became disattached.

What I helped them do was more practical - learn how to deal with worry so it no longer dictates the quality of their life or their decisions.

And today, I want to share with you my favorite, and I’d argue most effective, tool for that.
I learned it from Tim Ferriss.

On any given day, I worry about things:

• Whether I’ll ever really “make it” with my business.

• Whether my parents and sister will be okay, given war, age, financial pressures.

• Whether I’ll meet my life partner (or whether I should stop worrying about that).

• Whether my health will hold up.

• Whether I’ll make the impact I want to make.

I worry.

But those worries don’t stop me from taking action, from swinging big whenever I can.
They’re barely noticeable.

I can put them aside, the same way I turn off notifications on my phone, so they don’t interfere with doing meaningful work or being present for my meaningful life.

The thing about worry: it brings no value. Except as a signal.

A signal that you care.
A signal that there might be an action you can take.

But unchecked, worry makes decisions heavy.
It steals your sleep.
It keeps you small.

When I’m facing daily decisions, career risks, new projects, or even my biggest existential worries, I ask a simple set of questions.
The same ones I’ve taught my clients. I"m yet to see it not working, when used.

They come from Tim Ferriss’ fear-setting exercise.

DEFINE

What’s the worst that can realistically happen?
Be specific. Detail it fully.

Fear is a mile wide and an inch deep, until you name it.

PREVENT

How can I reduce the likelihood of that happening?
Focus only on what you can control.
What guardrails can you put in place to make what you worry about less likely to happen?

REPAIR

If it does happen, how would I recover?
List real ways, 1-3, or more, you’d get back on your feet👣

Is the worst case survivable?
If yes, why not build a safety net, and keep living fully?

You worry.
I worry.
We all worry.

Our brain is excellent at keeping us safe that way.
Sometimes too excellent, protecting you right out of your extraordinary life.

Over to you dear reader,
What are your biggest worries right now?
And are they in the way of your biggest life?

Why do most people fail to follow through on planned actions?

Behavioral science is quite clear on this.
It usually comes down to one (or more) of these reasons:

• We don’t specify enough. We don’t truly know what, when, or how to act.

• We aren’t incentivized enough. Motivation is weak, misaligned, or abstract. We don't know our WHY.

• Something is in the way. Friction, missing resources, competing priorities, or some emotional blockers.

Think about a recent moment when you intended to do something and then didn’t.

You wanted to eat better or sleep on time.
Finally start regular exercise.
Ship a project on time.
Have that tough conversation.

Something else happened. Or nothing happened at all.

Wasn’t it because of one of those three?

I recently watched Alex Hormozi talk about training high-performing teams, and about how to make sure things actually get done. On time. With momentum. Without constant chasing.

The same mechanics that drive personal follow-through drive team performance.

Alex calls it the Management Diamond💎

For consistent performance, 5 things must be in place:

• WHAT - crystal-clear expectations

• HOW - the skill is learned and practiced, not assumed

• WHEN - deadlines and accountability are explicit

• INCENTIVES - rewards and consequences are aligned

• BLOCKS - friction and obstacles are actively removed, all resources are present

Miss one, and the system leaks.

And the value here is 2-fold:

If you struggle with consistency yourself, walk through the list.
Which piece is missing?

If you struggle with performance in people you lead and manage, do the same.
Where are you assuming instead of designing and communicating?

The intention–action gap is rarely about laziness.
It’s almost always about poor design and communication on the 5 points above.

Over to you dear reader,

Where is the gap for you right now?
And which piece of the diamond do you need to close?

Zone of action. Zone of influence. Zone of outcomes.
Zone of control. Zone of some control. Zone of no control.

What you can plan.
What you can observe fairly reliably.
What you think is going to happen, what you strategize and dream about.

In coaching, big part of my job is to bring clients back to the level of action. And empower them to set themselves up for more consistency, more leverage, more alignment with each step.

In the workplace, high performance comes back to the exact same principle.

You give clarity on the outcome.
And then you empower and enable the everyday actions that might lead to that outcome.

Might.

And this is where so much damage gets done.

You never beat yourself up.
You never evaluate your team.
You never judge the progress of a client for not achieving an outcome that was never fully in their control.

That’s not just unfair.
It’s deeply disempowering. (In fact, the opposite, measuring progress one CAN control, is the most motivating force out there)

Outcomes are not commands.
They’re guideposts.
A North Star.
A compass🧭

They help us choose better actions.
Measure whether we are on the right track.
Adjust strategy.
And decide where to place the next bet.

Not judge how well we did.

Yesterday, I noticed something interesting.

I went through a coaching lesson.
Then I read about product strategy.

Different domains.
Same idea came up.

Zone of action. Zone of influence. Zone of outcomes.
Zone of control. Zone of some control. Zone of no control.

It matters that we understand the difference because when we don’t, we pick the wrong battles.
And waste enormous amounts of energy trying to control things that were never ours to control.

You can’t control what mood you wake up in.
But you can put things in your calendar that reliably shape your good vibes.
You can also choose the story you tell yourself about what happens, and that alone will reliably change your emotional state.

You can’t control the number on the scale.
Or your health outcomes.
Or your sleep.

But you can control your daily habits.

You can’t control whether your company succeeds.
Or how fast.
Or to what degree.

But you can choose a strategy.
Build systems.
Design incentives.
And make the right actions more likely to happen.

The only truly dumb move?
Trying to control the uncontrollables.
Getting frustrated that life, or people, won’t obey your orders.
And wasting time and energy that could have been spent designing for better actions.

Over to you dear reader, where does most of your time, thinking, and effort go right now?
The zone of action, or the zone of uncontrollables?

“It isn’t discipline if you like doing it.”
— Alex Hormozi

The guy started 10 years ago with $1000 in his bank account sleeping on his gym's floor, and recently broke Guinness record for selling the most non-fiction books in a day. I think he made $6 000 000 in that weekend.

Anyone can do hard things when they feel like it.

That’s not the skill.

The skill is doing them consistently when you don’t.

I’ve spent well over 10,000 hours studying self-development - research papers, biographies, podcasts, books, coaching.

Different domains. Same conclusion.

The ability to act without desire is the difference-maker.
In achievement.
In transformation.
In change that actually lasts.

That’s the skill I help my clients to build, while building my own as well.

Here’s the part most people miss: motivation isn’t one thing.

It has 2 parts.

Motive — the reason to act. (Simon Sinek talked a lot about it)
Motivation as feeling, the inner drive, the “up and go”, the one you can physically feel. (The one that coffee brings up)

They fuel each other🔄

If you want to do hard things consistently, especially when it gets uncomfortable, you need access to both.

When the feeling is gone, lean on the reason.
Ask yourself:
Why does this matter?
What does this unlock for my life?
Who or what do I care about enough to do this for?

And when everything feels pointless or heavy, do the opposite.

Start acting.

Behavioral Activation is one of the most effective tools in CBT for depression and avoidance that works on a simple principle: action comes first. Feelings follow.

Your brain releases chemicals, like dopamine, to give you energy to act, once you start.

You don’t wait to feel motivated.
You do things that create meaning, mastery, or even small moments of joy.
And motivation shows up after you begin.

So when you’re stuck, ask yourself 2 simple questions:

Do I lack a strong enough reason?
Or do I simply need to start?

Motivation isn’t a mystery that visits some people and skips others.
It’s a system you can fuel and recalibrate.

Whose achievements inspire you?
I’d bet on this without hesitation: they mastered the motivation skill.

Not luck.
Not talent.
This.

Over to you dear reader, what’s missing for you right now to give IT your absolute best?

Do you know when I feel the worst mentally and emotionally?

When I expect some results and I fall short even with all the hard work done.

Do you know what sabotages in my clients high performance, consistency, grit, and the ability to do hard things more than almost anything else?

Unmet expectations.

This was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn.
It’s also one of the hardest things for my clients to navigate.

The good news?

Once you learn how to work with your expectations, very little in life can defeat your spirit.

Here’s how unmet expectations quietly derail us.

We see a business succeeding. From the outside, it looks obvious. Logical. Almost easy.
So we think, I can do that too.

Then we start.

And very quickly we discover there are hundreds of things that can go wrong, things we didn’t know existed, couldn’t have predicted, and weren’t warned about. There’s a reason most businesses take years to take off. And that’s before you count the years of experience people bring into them.

That gap, between what we expected and what reality delivers, is where the biggest frustrations live.

And that frustration is the biggest reason for quitting.

But what if we expected the journey to be hard from the start?
What if we assumed it would take far more effort, time, and failed attempts than we initially thought?

A) We might think twice before starting.
B) But once we did start, we’d last much longer, without constant disappointment, because we’d know exactly what we signed up for.

Take your health goals.

If you expect to lose 10–20 pounds easily (as most people do), you’re setting yourself up for a lot of frustration, and usually quitting, by about January 21st, back to your “normal life.”

If you expect it to be hard.
To take at least twice as long.
To not work on the first attempt.

You suffer less.
And paradoxically, you give yourself a real chance to get there.

I often come back to this thought from Alex Hormozi:

“All your goals are possible, just not on the timeline you think.”

Most of the biggest successes you see today aren’t overnight wins.
They’re a lifetime of work. YOU just learn about them overnight.
A lifetime of skill acquisition.
A lifetime of adjusting expectations without lowering standards.

A note to self from this morning’s weekly reflection:

Think and plan negatively.
Assume things will be harder than you want them to be.
Then act like you can bend the odds in your favor.

Do that consistently, long enough, and reality starts bending for you.

Over to you dear reader,

Are you hoping for luck?
Or are you prepared to work so hard that, even in the worst-case scenario, it would be unreasonable to expect you to fail?

Or maybe the simplest move of all is to extend the timeline.

I’ve had my six-pack abs for over a decade now.
365 days a year.

Not for a season.
Through Christmases, New Years, summer family vacations.
Picnics, weddings, birthday celebrations.

Some people think it’s discipline.

I’ve just found out, that instead, I’ve been using time and research-tested decision-making frameworks from some of the best decision-making scientists and advisors.

PREMORTEM

Instead of telling myself, I’ll resist temptation, it'll be different this time, I'll try harder, I asked a different question:

“Imagine you failed, Angela. What made it happen?”

Annie Duke (poker champ, decision-making scientist) suggests listing 5 things in your control and 5 outside it.
Same idea as another technique, mental contrasting, imagining the obstacles before they show up to make a plan to deal with them.

Once you see the failure points, you design around them. You design your path to avoid them. You create barriers to the wrong decisions and actions. You lower barriers for the right ones.

Late-night overeating?
Tempting foods don’t live in my house.

Low energy → bad decisions, more hunger?
Sleep becomes non-negotiable.

Urges creeping in?
I shower. I change state. I interrupt the pattern.

You don’t fight behavior.
You redesign the environment that produces it. Or have a plan of action when the worst happens.

CATEGORY DECISIONS

People ask me all the time,
“What do you eat to get abs?”

I joke: I don’t eat sugar or gluten.

What I actually mean is this:
Most foods that wreck my willpower contain one or both.

So I don’t negotiate. I don't seek out gluten-free options. My life is just objectively better without bread, pasta and sweets.

No scanning menus.
No “just this once.”
No inner debate.

Automatic no.

Not because those foods are evil but because decision-fatigue is. No willpower stands a chance against it.

This single rule eliminated decision-making creep.
That slow slide of “one time won’t matter” that, repeated often enough, changes everything.

The upside?
I feel and look great every day with almost no effort.

The best part?
After enough reps, urges disappear.
Not through restraint. Through clarity.

PRE-COMMITMENT CONTRACTS

This is my clients’ favorite because it allows real-life flexibility.

Before a tricky situation, a wedding, birthday, party, you decide in advance.

2 drinks, then sparkling water.
No starches. One dessert🍦
Or whatever fits your goals and the occasion.

When the moment gets “hot,” your brain doesn’t improvise.
It executes the plan. So make one!

Pre-decided behavior beats in-the-moment willpower every time.

These frameworks didn’t just give me abs for life.
They gave me, and my clients, effortless consistency, where before were years of willpower struggle.

And that’s what most people are missing.

Everything you’ll ever do, build, or become is a product of your decisions.

And just like with eating, just because you’ve been deciding your whole life - doesn’t mean you have a good decision-making process.

Over to you, dear reader, 

Where are you still trying to willpower your way through when a better decision model would make it effortless?