Daily Thought for Change

I got excited about this supplement company. I decided to partner so that I could recommend some great supplements to my clients.

I love their product. The quality is superb. The kind of thing I’d put my name behind to help my clients, friends and family to build the foundation of health with the right nutrition, The right supplements help to cover the gaps and improve quality of one’s energy and life by a lot.

I signed up as a partner.

Then came the fine print: no e-commerce capability.

The only way for me to benefit from the partnership? Order the supplements myself. Then physically hand them to clients.

The catch?

My clients are all over the world. I don’t see them in person.

Deal. Breaker.

And this isn’t just a supplement story. This is a pattern I was reminded of that I still need to master. And maybe you do too.

We get excited. We jump ahead. We’re already picturing the outcome — the results, the revenue, new work project, new career opportunity, the relationship of a lifetime — before we’ve asked the most basic question:

Does this actually work in the real conditions of my life?

Before you commit to the new fitness program, ask if it fits into your actual week — not the ideal version of your week, the real one.

If right now all you can realistically do is add a protein shake and swap the cookies for apples, then the “perfect diet” might as well not exist.

If you want your perfect sleep score but you are a new parent - without being a fortuneteller I can tell you, it will not work.

Before you say yes to speaking at that exciting conference and start planning the content and all the opportunities, check if you can get a visa there.

Before you get deep into a new work opportunity, look at the time zones. If the collaboration happens while you’re asleep, it might as well be on another planet.

And before you invest emotionally in a new relationship, look at your schedules, hobbies, world views and your aspirations. Opposite rhythms don’t just create friction — they starve a connection before it has a chance to take roots and flourish.

Excitement is good. Excitement is fuel.

But excitement without logistics, the ability to maintain the fire is like the best seed dropped into dry soil.

The boring stuff — the paperwork, the platforms, the practical reality of time and geography — that’s not the enemy of the dream. It’s the structure that lets the right dream land.

There are more opportunities than the stars in the Universe these days. And you’ll save yourself a lot of time and frustrations if you eliminate the ones that never had a chance to survive reality of your life and reinvest your energy into the ones that could.

Logistics.

Before you fall in love with the outcome, do you check them?

That feeling you can’t shake off.

Something shifted. And now you’re living in the gap between who you were and who you’re becoming. Not quite here but not there yet.

It’s uncomfortable in here.

That feeling of being unsettled — not quite rooted yet in the new job, the new city, the new version of yourself.

The quiet grief of an injury that benches you from the thing that kept you sane and smiling.

The particular ache of a relationship that had all the ingredients to be
the one” but still didn’t make it.

The bittersweet weight of leaving a place you loved for something that might be better.

Frustration when you gave everything — and it still wasn’t enough.

Disappointment when someone broke their word.

Sadness that the simple life you once had quietly slipped away the moment you chose more.

These feelings don’t mean something’s wrong with you.

They mean you’re alive.

I was talking to someone recently. The realization of where their life actually is — versus where they thought it would be — had finally landed.

Hard.

She felt sad.

I’m a big believer in reframing. In finding the positive in the negative, the silver lining in the darkest cloud.

And also, I like to say often,

“Life doesn’t owe you sh*t. And the pain that comes with being alive isn’t a bug. It’s part of the deal.”

That’s often the permission we need sometimes to feel the feeling.

Permission to stop fighting what’s “negative” and bad.

To stop trying to logic your way out of it or paste a positive affirmation over it like wallpaper over a crack.

Here’s what most of us get wrong about hard feelings: we treat them like unwanted intruders.

We resist them. Rush them. Suppress them. Try to eliminate them before they can do their work.

The work of showing you something that happened, something that mattered.

Feeling positive all the time isn’t life. It’s performance. It’s like sitting in a cold plunge and pretending you’re not cold. The cold is real. The pain is real. And if you’ve ever done one, you know — the only way through is to stop fighting it.

You breathe. You sit. And eventually, it passes. As the cold plunge does too.

Most of the suffering we carry doesn’t linger because life is unbearably hard all the time. It lingers because we won’t let our feelings finish their job.

A feeling’s job is to bring your attention to something. And when you let it — really let it — it delivers its message and moves on.

When you don’t, it camps out.

So when life hits hard — and it will — try something different.

Sit with that uncomfortable feeling like you’d sit with a friend going through it. Don’t fix. Don’t reframe. Don’t fast-forward.

Just acknowledge it. Let it be for a moment.

Then give it a hug.

And move to the next adventure.

When sadness, frustration, or disappointment shows up — do you have a practice for letting it move through you? Or are you still trying to outrun it, pretending it’s not there?

I often say gym is my therapy. I only half joke. You don’t want to meet a non-exercising Angela. Trust me on this.

On the mornings I skip, I feel it.

More self-doubt. More automatic negative thoughts crawling in (ants).

A little bit more reactive. A little less confident. A lot more in my head.

So I go. Every morning.

Not to become an unstoppable athlete. Not to hit some performance goal.

I go because it’s the most consistent feeling of peace I’ve found, no matter what I’m walking into that day.

I was telling my sister this yesterday.

She said,

“Yeah. I probably need to do something like that too. I always feel better after.”

She already knew. She just wasn’t doing it.

Most of us already know.

We know what makes us feel good. We’ve felt the difference. And yet somehow, knowing isn’t enough to get us doing.

That gap — between knowing and actually doing — is where most people lose their happiness, their best lives.

So why not close it? Why not treat the things that consistently make you feel better as non-negotiable?

I do.

Sleep. Exercise. Food. I schedule them like my wellbeing depends on it. Because it kind of does.

I also hike a mountain every week with a group of entrepreneurs. Not for fitness, but for perspective. For big thinking. For awe. For the particular kind of clarity that only arrives when you’re moving through something bigger than you.

Somebody might call all this obsessive. I’d say, “Whatever man. I’m happy🙂”

Research on on human flourishing and happiness says we’re not just psychological creatures. We’re not just biological ones. We’re both. And social too. Biopsychosocial in one word.

That’s what makes us thrive!

Body.

Sleep, movement, food. The basics. They’re boring to talk about and foundational to feel and do your best.

Mind.

The quality of your inner voice. Whether the way you’re living lines up with what you value. The environment you’re choosing, or not choosing, to design.

People.

The interactions that fill your cup versus the ones that empty it. Belonging. Feeling like you matter.

Figure out the right mix that feels all 3 buckets - and you are on your way to living a pretty damn awesome life.

What’s on your “make me feel good 101” list?

You probably already know. The question is whether it’s on your calendar. Is it?

Not Just What. How.

I asked a friend to weigh in on an idea.

He was direct. I agreed with his point. But the way he said it landed like an icy-cold comment from a impartial critic, dressed up as honesty and being blunt.

I reflected that back to him.

He gave me the context behind his words. And just like that, the whole aftertaste changed. The lasting feeling was more kind and human. The sweet in bitter showed up.

Same message. Completely different effect.

You know this feeling. The words can be identical, but the framing, the tone, the context — that’s what defines what you receive. That’s what you carry with you afterward.

It’s not WHAT you say, it’s HOW you say it.

Here’s another version of the same idea, from biology:

1,000 calories in cookies aren’t 1,000 calories in broccoli, potatoes, and salmon. Same number. Completely different health outcome.

And yet, somehow, we still don’t apply this same logic to human behavior change.

You know what to do. Eat better. Move more. Sleep on time. The information isn’t the problem. But you’re not doing it, and somewhere along the way, you decided that means something is wrong with you, your life, or the world.

Maybe it’s the process? The how?

Research in behavioral science, psychology of change found the same thing: the process — the HOW — is the game changer. It doesn’t improve your ability. It gives you a better chance of success.

Here’s one I’ve used with hundreds of clients over 18 years. It comes from Precision Nutrition, and it applies way beyond food and fitness.

1. Ask yourself WHY. Not just to feel motivated but to prioritize how you implement. Improving your nutrition for heart health and improving it for weight loss aren’t the same plan. Know the difference before you start.

2. Name your top priorities. If you don’t do this consciously, your brain will do it for you in the background, and you’ll keep being surprised by the “wrong” choices you seem to keep making.

3. Keep a time diary. Even for one week. You’ll see where time is disappearing into things that don’t matter, and where there’s room to invest in what does.

4. Increase in 15-minute increments (or any small amount). Consistency before intensity. Habits form through repetition. And consistency is far easier when you’re doing less than you think you should.

5. Make it easy. Then make it easier. Stop hunting for the best diet or the perfect routine. Ask instead: What could I start with that’s impossible to fail? Then ask: How do I make even THAT more convenient and easier?

6. Schedule meal prep and fitness. “Like a meeting you mean?”, one client laughed. Then she started doing it. If you plan to do it, why won’t you calendar it?

7. Review. Adjust. Repeat. Everything you start is built on assumptions. Doing the thing reveals them and teaches you where your skills match the task, and where they don’t. Yet. You’re not failing. You’re finding out what works.

That’s 7steps. Not foolproof. But a sure path to better.

Where in your life right now could a better process change everything?

Goal: quit sugar.

Better goal: eat more fruit. Let your body get the sugar it needs from better sources. Feel fuller from the fiber, the volume, the chewing, the vitamins. Stop being hungry. Stop wanting sugar.

Goal: snack less.

Better goal: eat more protein, more vegetables, more fiber. Get genuinely full. Watch the snacking disappear on its own.

Goal: build a consistent exercise routine.

Better goal: remove what’s getting in the way of the routine you already almost have. Find the timing that fits your actual life not the life you think you should have.

This is reverse causality fueled by FAE.

We assume failure is a character flaw. That we’re lazy. That our discipline isn’t wired right. That if we just tried harder, got a little bit more discipline, we’d finally get the results we want.

Psychologists call this the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE).

We explain our behavior by pointing inward at our deficiencies, when we should be pointing outward at our systems.

The real culprit isn’t you. It’s the structure around you. (That you can change)

You are working harder than you should by working against yourself, your biology, your wiring where you don’t have to.

The overeating happens because there’s no system for eating enough of the right things.

The missed workouts happen because other routines are crowding them out.

The bad sleep happens because of everything you’re doing in the hours before bed that makes good sleep impossible.

The behavior you hate is a symptom. You’re fighting the smoke, not the fire.

And this is the bias, FAE at work: we spend enormous energy trying to change what we see — the behavior/the person — while completely ignoring what’s creating it in the first place.

Change the system. The behavior follows.

Not because you became more disciplined. Not because you finally found your willpower. But because the environment stopped working against you and started helping you.

The question that changes everything isn’t “why can’t I just do this?”

It’s “what is actually causing this?”

Follow that train of thought. Trace the causality chain back far enough and you’ll find a system, or a gap where one should be. Fix that, and your so-called “flawed self” gets a lot better, a lot faster, without more discipline and all the guilt tripping.

Look at one behavior you keep trying to change.

Now ask, what’s causing it? What system, or absence of one, is producing this as a side effect?

Change that.

It was 7pm. Friday night.

I was sitting in front of my computer, waiting for a strategy call about my business. The person was late.

I started getting grumpy.

I could hear my own inner monologue start up,

“Why do I have to wait here on a Friday night, in front of my computer, instead of enjoying some well-deserved rest?”

I caught myself.

And then I asked myself (using a technique called self-distancing — stepping outside your own head by speaking to yourself in the second or third person),

Angela, who made you schedule this call?

I did.

Why?

Because I want to build a great business. Because I want to help a lot of people.

So why aren’t you excited? You’re about to learn something that matters. You’re working on the thing you actually care about.

Indeed, why aren’t I excited?

I started smiling.

I get to do this! I’m about to learn how to build the business I want.

The person jumped on the call. It was a completely different conversation. Because I was a completely different person in it.

I went to bed very happy and proud of myself that Friday night. I didn’t need for anything to change for me to feel good. I needed to remind myself why it mattered, what it was all for.

There are 3 emotional regulation techniques that I used there to help me shift my internal state/feeling and be the most effective for the task at hand:

1. Self-distancing self-talk.

Talk to yourself in second or third person.

Angela, what are you doing? Why does this matter?

It sounds weird and insignificant. But it’s not. It creates just enough space between you and your reaction to see more clearly, think more logically, and stop spiraling in the unhelpful story.

2. Reframing the narrative.

You don’t change the situation. You change the meaning you’re giving it.

Grumpy waiting becomes excited anticipation — same Friday, different frame. The meaning you assign drives the emotion you feel. The emotion drives the action you take and how you take it.

3. Temporal distancing.

Pull your mind out of the present moment and into the future.

That call wasn’t an interruption to my Friday night. It was an investment in the business I’m building. Zoom out, and the irritation gets smaller. The purpose gets bigger. Your actions get better.

Together, these 3 work like a system.

Logic meets emotion. Perspective meets intention. You stop reacting and start choosing what to do.

The most important move is catching it — noticing the moment when you want to escape or shrink or complain, and pausing to ask:

Is there a different meaning I can give this?

Not toxic positivity. Not pretending things are fine when they’re not. Just recognizing that you have a choice about how you experience a hard moment, and that the meaning you pick shapes everything that comes after.

There’s no good or bad.

Just perspectives. Your goals. And what serves you well.

Today, notice the moments when you want to check out. When resistance shows up. When the grumpiness starts.

And ask yourself, what meaning am I giving this right now, and is there one that serves me better?

Solving the Wrong Problem

For years, I tried to fix emotional eating with willpower.

White-knuckling it. Telling myself to “get over it.” Trying harder. Telling myself that “next time” I’ll definitely do it better.

It didn’t work because food was never the problem. Food was the symptom.

What I actually needed to learn had nothing to do with food.

It was how to manage stress. How to sit with discomfort without reaching for something to numb it. How to calm my nervous system through breathwork, through other soothing tools like music, walking, connection. How to observe a feeling without becoming it. How to separate me from the craving moving through me.

I’m not my thoughts. I’m not my feelings. And I can make decisions that serve my long-term self even when I don’t feel like it.

Once I learned, practices and mastered those skills and I finally became the person I’d always admired. The one who eats well without obsessing. The one who isn’t white-knuckling it through every meal, feeling like missing out on something.

The problem was never about eating. So trying to willpower my way through it wan’t the solution.

I see this constantly with clients.

They come to me asking for accountability. Motivation. Discipline. They’re convinced that if they could just try harder, have someone watching them, everything would click into place.

Here’s what I’ve learned after 18 years of coaching very accomplished, high-performing people - discipline is not their problem.

What’s actually missing?

Systems where they’re struggling. Structure where there’s chaos. Skills they were never taught. Clarity on what actually matters. And alignment between who they are, what they value, and what ends up on their to-do list.

When we address that everything falls into place.

Not through grinding harder - through working on the root cause.

I stopped believing in discipline a long time ago.

Anything you consistently fail to do isn’t a character flaw. It’s a signal.

A signal that one of 3 things is missing:

The skill of managing your emotions.

The right systems around the desired behavior.

Alignment between who you are and what you’re doing.

What are you struggling with right now? And what would you work on if discipline wasn’t the answer?

This week I felt it coming — that low-grade “something’s off” feeling.

Instead of powering through, I swapped longer workouts for 3 sauna sessions. I scheduled extra sleep even though my calendar already felt overstuffed. I slowed down to stack the odds in my favor.

I could have told myself I was too busy. That there were priorities. That I’d be fine.

Instead, I asked: what increases my chances of getting better sooner?

It’s Wednesday. I’m almost 100%. No workouts skipped. No work commitments missed. And I didn’t “tough it out.”

I didn’t have a guarantee it would work. I just worked towards better odds.

Life is a game of odds, tradeoffs, and managing your responses when things don’t go as planned.

It’s not a game of certainties, perfect balance, having it all going as planned.

Most of our frustrations comes from never seeing the actual game we’re in.

Impact, agency, achievement — these are my top values.

Because of that, I don’t socialize much. I’ve let some hobbies go. I’m genuinely okay with not having balance. Sometimes I’m a little lonely. I don’t always have “a perfect life resume”. I don’t always feel “fitting in”. And that’s ok. These are intentional tradeoffs. And they make my life feel exactly right — even if someone on the outside thinks I’m missing out.

I’ve been a planner since I was a kid. I love knowing what I’m doing and how it connects to something bigger. But somewhere along the way, I learned something essential to my inner peace:

My perfect life is not the same as my “perfect plan”.

What works out, what I need to learn, the path I was meant to walk — it all unfolds while I’m busy planning.

That unfolding? That’s the best plan.

Most people I work with want more peace. More alignment. More fulfillment.

And what’s usually standing in the way isn’t a lack of effort or intelligence. It’s not seeing the game of life clearly.

3 rules life actually runs on:

1. Life owes you no guarantees.

No matter what you do, how much you do, how perfectly you do it — you increase chances. Certainty was never part of the deal.

2. Balance is an unsatisfying illusion.

“Having it all well balanced” sounds good until you’re eating a bland meal where nothing sparks your feelings. Nothing too spicy, nothing too bold, nothing that actually does anything for you. It’s safe. That’s why they serve it in hospitals.

Everything you really want lives on the other side of tradeoffs you’re not willing to make yet.

3. The plan is a draft.

Life writes the final copy.

Look at your life right now. What you’re trying to build. Where your frustration lives.

Are you playing the right game?

The best thing about change in our lives?

You can only do 4 things about it.

Start something.
Stop something.
Continue something.
Accept things as they are, making peace with no change.

That’s the whole menu.

Isn’t that almost too simple?

Whatever you want right now — better health, a better job, more peace, more clarity, relationships that nourish you, fulfillment — it all fits inside one of those 4 moves.

Ask yourself: What do I need to start, stop, continue, or accept to get there?

I promise you. The answer is inside this framework.

Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top executive coaches in the world, calls it Wheel of Change.

But don’t make the common mistake of stopping there. The work has just begun. You need to keep the wheel turning.

Most people get the answer and treat it like a to-do list item. Check the box. Move on. Wonder later why nothing changed.

That’s not a strategy. That’s wishful thinking dressed up as a plan.

After you get your answers, as a coach, I’d ask you,

“Why do you want it? And why so? And why is that important?”

To make sure you’re building toward something meaningful in your life. Because chasing a goal that doesn’t belong to you, means very little to you is one of the most exhausting and frustrating experiences you’ll have.

Once we’ve established the why, then we get practical.

How does this happen consistently? What systems do you need? What resources do you have? When exactly will this fit in your life calendar, and what will remind you of it when life gets busy?

Because life will get busy. Count on it.

And then comes the part most people skip entirely - the obstacles. (Also known as mental contrasting)

Why didn’t this happen before? What will delay you? What will get in the way? What’s your plan for when Plan A meets your actual life and doesn’t succeed?

Plan A is for perfect conditions. Perfect conditions are your fantasy.

You need a plan for Tuesday at 6pm when you’re exhausted, behind on 10 things, and your motivation has completely disappeared.

That’s the plan that defines your success.

Finally, and this is where the whole thing either holds or falls apart, how will you measure progress? How will you celebrate the wins, even the small ones?

Your brain is ruthless about efficiency. It wants to save energy all the time!
If something stops feeling like forward motion and progress - it will talk you out of it, it’ll find the right story. Tracking progress and acknowledging milestones isn’t some superficial rule, it’s neuroscience of reliable motivation! This mechanism keeps your brain on your side.

This kind of change design takes longer than writing a goal on a sticky note “to manifest it”.

It slows your ambition down just enough to make it actually happen.

It’s the change that works. Consistently. And it lasts.

Isn’t that the whole point?

What goal are you working on right now? And do you have a process you can count on every time?

The part that hurts you the most in life isn’t failure.

It’s the moment we decide failure means stop.

I’m under the weather today. Cape Town rain, cold apartment, the whole thing got to me.

Someone might say — “What’s the point of all that healthy living if you still get sick?”

Here’s the point: you get better faster. Symptoms hit lighter. You bounce back sooner. You get sick less often.

The point is better.

Not perfect. Not some idealized version of health you’ve constructed in your head. Just consistently, measurably, undeniably better.

We do this everywhere.

We abandon our entire plan because it didn’t deliver the perfect fantasy.

You can’t land the perfect job, so why bother building the skills?

You can’t get to the perfect relationship, so why keep working on the one you have?

You got sick once, so what’s the point of eating well? May as well order pizza.

That’s not logic. That’s your brain’s blind spot.

The all-or-nothing fallacy that stops you from getting the best out of your life.

“Taking vitamins like Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Zinc can potentially shorten the duration and reduce the severity of a cold if taken early. Regular, long-term Vitamin C intake may shorten colds by ~10%, while zinc lozenges taken within 24 hours of symptoms are most effective.”

Ten percent shorter. That’s the return on investment for Vitamin C. Not a cure. Not immunity. Not perfection. Just 10% better odds.

I’ll take that. Will you?

At some point I made a decision: I’m not waiting for life to hand me perfection. I’m going to stack the odds in my favor at every step. Work every angle. Close every gap I can close. And accept that imperfect outcomes, well-managed, beat perfect fantasy that never arrives every time.

Better is always available. Perfect almost never is.

Look at your goals right now.

Where did you quit not because it was over, but because perfect didn’t show up on time?