Daily Thought for Change

A friend came back to the gym after a long break. She was frustrated.

“It’s like I didn’t do anything before.”

We want progress to be permanent. Like once we earn it, it should stay.

But every skill you learn, every muscle you build, every trait you develop, it’s like installing a program on your computer. It takes space. It uses resources.

And just like your laptop or phone, you don’t have infinite storage.

Your brain and body are in constant motion. They reshuffle resources all the time. They optimize. They clear space. They ask one simple question:

Is this still needed?

My phone asks for permission to optimize memory.
“Delete unused apps?”
“Shut down background programs?”

Your brain doesn’t ask. It just does it.

What you don’t use, you lose.

Not because you’re unlucky. Not because you failed.
Because your brain works as it's designed to work.

The only signal your brain respects is demand.
Aka practice.

So don’t get frustrated when your speaking skills feel rusty.
When your abs disappear.
When your emotional regulation isn’t as sharp as it once was.

That’s not misfortune. That’s biology, trying to keep you alive, adaptable and ready to dedicate resources to what's most needed now.

Ask yourself better questions insead:

What trait do I want to keep?
What skill do I want to strengthen?
What kind of person do I want to remain?

And what practice will send my brain the signal:
“This matters. Keep this”?

You can say all day you want to become a powerful speaker.
You can dream about strong abs.
You can wish for calm under pressure.

But if there is no practice time on your calendar, your brain will optimize for something else.

Magic doesn’t apply.

And just like with a shower, if you want to stay clean for life, you got to take it daily.

My mom asked me the other day,
“So do I have to take this magnesium every day for the rest of my life to feel great?”

Kind of.

Maintenance is not a punishment.
It’s the price of lasting capacity.

Over to you,dear reader, 

What are you practicing daily that tells your brain who you are committed to be every day?

The biggest mistake we all make when building new habits or trying to change what others do?

We underestimate how much our environment decides for us.

Not willpower.
Not motivation.
Not discipline.

What's around us. And what we can design.

I bought cocoa powder to mix into my yogurt-protein-berries lunch.

The week before, I’d finish a pack easily. Chocolate lover. No problem there.

This time?
I didn’t touch it.

Why?

Because I put the closed bag in a drawer I rarely open. The “dry goods graveyard.” Out of sight. Out of mind. Out of action.

The following week I put an open bag next to my protein powder.

I finished it in 7 days.

Same person.
Same love for chocolate.
Different system = Different result.

Do you know #1 reason why people don't take medications that their health (sometimes life) depend on? 

They forget because it's out of sight, out of mind, with no triggers to jump-start the routine.

Behavioral science shows that environment exerts more control over behavior than willpower or intention, with environmental design increasing desired actions by up to 300%.

Another client bought a small treadmill for under his standing desk.
He didn’t use it for 2 weeks.

Lazy?

No. It was still in the box.

He “didn’t have time” to set it up.

We spent 20 minutes unboxing it together during our session. Plugged it in. Positioned it.

He’s been walking 2–5k a day ever since.

Same person. Same willpower.

Thoughtful design = Different actions.

Another leadership client couldn’t “find time” for short Purpose-and-Progress check-ins with his team.

Busy?

We picked a time slot during our session.
Wrote the script.
Built a simple tracking sheet.

He ran the first round the following Monday.

Same schedule. Same intentions. Same person.

Different prep = Different outcomes.

The lesson:

It’s almost never - the person, the laziness, not even not having the time.

It’s almost always - the tracks you lay in advance to make the action you want to do ride along those tracks easy.

We blame character when we should redesign context.

If you want to build a habit, don’t start with motivation.

Start with friction.

Where is the action hidden?
What’s still in the box?
What requires 5 tiny decisions before it even begins?

And if you’re leading a team, the same rule applies.

Are you asking for behaviors that are buried in the pile of tiny and bigger effort?

Or have you made the right behavior the easy ride along laid out tracks?

Your future self is not stronger.
But you can set her up for more wins.

Before you close this tab, dear reader — what can you unbox, open, place, script, or schedule in the next 10 mins to make the right action obvious and easy for the future you?

And if you’re responsible for others, what tracks are you laying for them?

How do you know if a recipe is too sweet or too salty?

You add a little more.
You taste it.
Pinch by pinch, you adjust until it feels right.

Turns out, some of the best coaching works exactly like that.

Not with perfect recipes.
Not with fixed answers.
But with careful probing and tasting.

Someone asked me the other day:

“How do you know when to push a client toward growth… and when to give them more self-compassion, more grace, more rest?”

Exactly like you would cook an unfamiliar dish.

You don’t throw a whole chunk of salt in it.

You probe.
Question by question.
You taste until you hit the sweet spot.

The best coaching tool isn’t advice.

It’s questions.

Questions are your tasting spoon. Your calibration device. Your way of finding the next "perfect" action.

When I see a client being stuck in the mud, spinning the wheels, in indecision - choosing their next business or career move, where to draw the boundary between self-care and achievement, or simply not sure whether they need to change it's good enough,

Here are 4 questions, that are often used in coaching and therapy, I use, especially when someone feels stuck between changing and staying where they are:

• What could be good about changing?

• What could be good about not changing?

• What could be hard or bad about changing?

• What could be hard or bad about not changing?

These questions slow the rush. They surface ambivalence. They reveal truth without being forced into it. They give choice. They give awareness and understanding.

Another great one:

On a scale from 1 to 10, how ready/willing/able are you to take this next step?

Then ask:

• Why that number and not lower?

• Why not higher?

That’s where the gold is.

Just like with the recipe, where the perfect saltiness isn’t defined by the chef but by the eater, in coaching, the perfect next step isn’t defined by the coach but by the one living it - the client.

We all want the recipe. The plan. The certainty. It feels safe to believe there’s a clean path from here to there.

And the life is anything but a clean path.

So you poke.
You probe.
You try something small.
You reflect.
You adjust.

Pinch by pinch🧂

Over to you dear reader,

If you’re facing a need for change right now, are you waiting for someone else to hand you the recipe, where asking yourself the right questions is what you actually need?

I went to another #WGW this morning, a mountain hike with local entrepreneurs.

And once again, I almost didn’t go.

Early rise. Long before sunrise.
A long drive.
The day feels “off schedule.”
Fewer work boxes ticked.
An hour uphill. Not exactly a walk in the park.

I could feel the excuses lining up nicely.

Then the first people arrive.
First conversations start.
We begin walking.

And almost immediately I think, how ridiculous that I almost skipped this.

The people. The movement. The laughter. The ideas mid-climb.
That subtle but powerful shift in my state that lasts till next Friday.

It changes my whole day.
Often my whole week.

And I caught myself thinking: I need to do a better job remembering this feeling. Remembering how holistically good this is for my life - socially, mentally, emotionally. How it expands and inspires me. How it reminds me I can do hard things. How it inspires me to try bigger things.

This is behavioral activation in action. You do the thing - you get the feeling.

In coaching and therapy for anxiety or depression, behavioral activation is a simple, effective, and often-used tool. When someone feels stuck, anxious, low, withdrawn, flat - we don’t start with “fix your thoughts.” We often start with: do something different.

Specifically, do something that might bring joy, meaning, connection, energy, fulfillment.

Before the activity, you write down:

• How you expect you’ll feel.

• Whether you think you’ll like it.

• Your “doom and gloom” forecast.

After the activity, you write down how you actually felt.

2 things usually happen.

First, you see how unreliable your predictions can be. Especially in the fun. The mind says, “This will be exhausting. Not worth it. Stay home.”

Reality says, “That was exactly what I needed.”

Second, you build data. A reference library of lived evidence about what (and who) genuinely makes you feel better.

Over time, you stop treating your mood like weather, like majority of people do — random, uncontrollable, something that just happens to you.

You start treating it like a craft.

What you feel each day is not only chemistry or circumstance. It’s also the sum of activities you choose to put on your calendar.

A painting doesn’t become bright by accident.
It becomes bright because you chose the colors.

Living your life is your ultimate masterpiece.

And the best part?

YOU choose the colors to paint with.

Over to you, dear reader,

What’s on your list of things that always make you feel better, even though you resist them at first? And when will you schedule the next one?

Nothing beats learning from your own experience.

A client of mine got sick. When he came back, we looked at what habits stuck with him, and what fell aside. And it became obvious to him that habits have a lot more to do with the systems he puts together than with his discipline or motivation.

One habit stayed solid: eating enough protein.
One habit collapsed: drinking enough water.

Same person. Same goals. Same level of discipline.

Different systems = Different outcomes.

He kept hitting his protein target because the weekend before, he had prepped all the chicken for the week. Bought it. Cooked it. Put it in containers. So when lunchtime came and he thought about snacking, he remembered: there’s chicken waiting. Ready. Easy. Already prepped. Plus he didn't want to waste it.

So he ate it.

Water didn’t survive the disruption.

His usual trigger, workouts and being out and about, vanished when he got sick. He was home. No gym. No structured breaks. No bottle in sight. No cue.

Nothing was “wrong” with him.

The right system wasn't there.

When we unpacked it, he saw something important: his daily behaviors had far less to do with motivation than he thought.

Protein worked because it was prepped and easy.
Water failed because it wasn’t properly designed for times like this.

So we redesigned it.

We stacked water with meals, the one rhythm already working. Bottle always visible. Always filled. No thinking required.

Same person. Same goals. Same level of discipline.

Different systems = Different outcomes.

If you plant the same seed in 2 kinds of soil —
One with sun, water, nutrients.
One in dry, shaded ground.

Do you expect the same plant?

We love to blame the seed.

But most of the time, it’s the soil.

Humans aren’t plants but most of our behaviors are surprisingly environmental.

Over to you, dear reader,

Next time, when you question your discipline (or someone else's), ask a better question:

What system does this behavior need to succeed?

What habit keeps “failing” you right now, and what would change if you stopped fixing you and started designing the soil?

But what do you do when you’re accountable for the result and you can’t control the process? How do you shift your attention then? Do you need to? Can you?

A sales team leader asked me this at a Mindset Gym workshop I did yesterday, where we learned some cognitive skills to deal with life's challenges better.

“YOU have to hit the numbers. But the work that drives those numbers isn’t done by you.”

That’s a tough one in life.

You want to raise a child well but you can’t control what the child does.
You want your business to grow but you can’t control the market, the customer, or even your team.
You’re responsible. But not in control.

So what do you do then?

You shift your attention to the only place where your power lives:
your ability to change your attitudes, your effort, your actions.

If I can’t control the outcome directly, I upgrade the inputs I can influence.

You learn how to motivate better.
How to teach more clearly.
How to delegate with clear expectations.
How to model the behavior you want to see.

You can get better at reading the market.
Better at listening to customers.
Better at building systems that make the right action easier for others.

Instead of burning energy being frustrated that people, markets, and children don’t follow your plan.

Frustration feels justified.
Focus on doing better is more useful.

I’ve helped many clients lose weight after years of struggle. One of the biggest shifts we accomplished wasn’t discipline. It was attention - what they stopped focusing on and what they started working on instead.

There’s no point getting angry at the scale.
No point getting angry at yourself for not following “the perfect plan.”

A better question is:

What can I learn?
What can I adjust?
How can I redesign my systems so next week works better than this one for the person I am and the life I have?

When you can’t control the entire process, you work on improving what you can, while letting go of the rest.

That’s harder work.
It demands skill building, reflection, humility, acceptance of the imperfect self and the imperfect world.

And it’s exactly what accelerates your growth🌱

Shifting your focus to what you control doesn’t reduce responsibility.
It increases it.

Because now the question becomes:

If you can’t change them, how will you change what you do?

Over to you, dear reader,

Where are you still spinning your wheels, frustrated at outcomes and people, when you could be upgrading the actions and systems that can shape them (and you)?

A very common sentence to hear in your head.
A very common sentence to hear in a coaching session.

And a very reliable way to hand your emotional life over to circumstances you don’t control and be forever unhappy with something.

You know the phrase, “Happiness is an inside job.”

Nice on a mug. Harder to practice in real life.

In those moments, when things you don’t want land on your plate, and you can’t change them - that’s where you’ll see whether it’s a skill you have, or just a phrase you like.

Sometimes life looks like this:

A lawsuit many things depend on dragging on for years.
A promotion you didn’t get, a job you lost.
A business idea crushed by new regulations.
A diagnosis that changes how you have to live your life from now on.
A job you are stuck in with people you don’t enjoy working with.
A place you don’t love living in.
Someone walking away and leaving a hole in your chest.

Things happen.
Things you don’t want will happen. Many times.

And it’s in this exact moment, not in the easy seasons, that you find out whether “happiness is an inside job” is a skill… or just a phrase on a mug.

This isn’t about putting a fake smile on your face.
It’s not about pretending you’re fine when you’re not.

It’s about learning to separate things you can and can not control, things you can change and things you have to accept, and then honestly asking yourself this question, that I stole from one of the top coaches out there,

“Did I do my best to make myself happy today?”

Not once everything is fixed.
Not once the lawsuit ends.
Not once the person apologizes or changes.
Not once the diagnosis changes or you get better (sometimes you don't).

But now.

With all the mess still on the table.
Without escaping reality.
Without denial.

Did you move your body?
Called someone you love? Somoneone you're grateful for?
Shifted your attention for 20 minutes to music and projects you're excited about?
Did one thing that gave you strength and belief instead of draining you?

Inner peace is not the absence of problems.
It’s the presence of choice inside them.

Over to you, dear reader,

What’s stealing your peace today?
And is it a battle worth fighting, or something to accept so you can redirect your energy toward what can bring more joy?

“God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can and Wisdom to know the difference.”

Even elite leaders, top CEOs struggle with consistency of improving their habits. That's something that blew my mind and didn’t surprise me at the same time.

“And so over the course of a year, everyone, the entire cohort, got better and stayed that way. So then we did two things. We… half the cohort dropped out, and were no longer called by me, and half continued. Well, six months later, guess what happened?
The six… the people who continued [asking daily questions prompted by Lisa's daily call] with it stayed better, and the people who did not continue with it got worse. They did not stay that way.”

This is what Lisa Broderick, a senior executive, a data scientist, a co-author of the book “Permanence: become the person you want to be and stay that way” shared with me on our podcast episode that just came out on Change Wired.

Leaders, top CEOs, high achievers struggle with new habits just like anyone else without a system!
People with resources, intelligence, ambition.

Not because they lacked willpower or were lazy.
Not because they weren’t serious about the change.

Because they have a human brain.

A brain that:

• Forgets what matters when the urgent gets loud, when cognitive capacity is overloaded.

• Conserves energy unless there’s positive, consistent reinforcement or immediate negative consequences.

• Defaults to old habits unless the new ones are easier, visible, and tracked.

Leaders struggle with consistency just like everyone else.

The difference between doing and not isn’t motivation.
It’s structure.

What I’ve learned from Lisa and her research with Marshall Goldsmith, asking some TOP CEOs every day questions that start with “Did I do my best to…[important area of improvement]?

One of the best ways to help a human do their best, despite all the circumstances, is helping them reflect on their personal mission and their capacity to create change.

This 2-minute practice of asking the right, meaningful, engaging questions, what Lisa Broderick and Marshall Goldsmith call “The Daily Questions Method” is designed to do just that.

Remind strivers, achievers, leaders of their capacity to put effort into something important and see it grow, changing their life, work and people around them. When done daily, it creates change that stays.

Over to you dear reader,

Have you tried using some daily reminders or reflections to keep your desired change top of mind?

PS Change Wired podcast episode with Lisa Broderick and more details on the Daily Questions Method is available now on all podcast platforms and here

Most often you fail at change because you start at the middle.

Sometime ago I realized why my sales weren’t clicking.

I was listening to Alex Hormozi talk about “the bridge of skills” The idea is simple: for most complex goals, like sales, you don’t get results until all the pieces are in place. You don't cross the bridge if you miss a brick in the middle.

Sales isn’t one skill. It’s a chain.

Prospecting.
Opening the conversation.
Building rapport.
Doing real problem discovery.
Positioning yourself as an expert.
Proposing the right solution, in the right way, at the right time.

...

Miss one link and the whole thing wobbles. Maybe it works once but it won’t work consistently.

Yesterday, while studying the stages of change in my coaching course, I saw the exact same pattern.

Change is not one act.
It’s a sequence.

Each stage requires its own tools, mindset, and skill set. When the conditions for every stage are met, all bricks are in place - change happens and you get to the other side transformed.

One of the most important roles of a coach is helping a client to move through those stages faster and more prepared, more strategic, from pre-contemplation (not even sure change is needed and there's a problem) all the way to maintenance.

I called it:

THE BRIDGE OF CHANGE 🌉

If you want lasting change, you don’t leap.
You build every step.

Brick by brick.

1. Precontemplation

You need awareness.

Awareness of the problem.
Awareness of the cost of staying the same.
Awareness of how it affects your future, your work, your relationships.

This is the “why bother?” stage.

Without this, action is like a passing cloud, comes and goes as the winds change.

Why do you want to get healthier? Why do you want to get better at writing or sales? What "fitter" will do for your life? What will be negative about your life if you don't do this change?

2. Contemplation

Now you weigh the pros and cons.

Do the benefits of changing outweigh the discomfort? (For you)
Is this aligned with who you want to become?

Change has to feel like identity building, not punishment.

If it’s not personally meaningful, you won’t sustain it. Your brain is always asking, "What's in it for me?"

Are you ready to pay the "price" of getting there? 

3. Planning

Here’s where you design.

Small, concrete steps.
Tools. Goals setting.
Environment adjustments.
People who support you.
First visible moves.

This stage builds confidence, committment and preparation. You start seeing yourself crossing that bridge. You get all the building material, learn about the construction process.

No vague intentions. Specific moves. Your mean it this time! You set yourself up for success.

4. Action

Now you practice.

Not once. Not when you feel like it.

Consistently. For months.

You eliminate triggers for old habits.
You design rewards for new ones.
You manage urges and cracings, you learn from mistakes as a part of your journey.
You shape your environment and social circle to support the new identity.

This is where most people try to start.

Without the earlier bricks.

And then they crash.

5. Maintenance

The behavior becomes automatic.

It’s not a struggle.
It’s just who you are now.

No constant temptation. No daily internal debate.

Just do it :) It's part of your life. This is how my clients wake up doing all the right things feeling like no work at all.

There's power in understanding this process:

You stop trying to jump to Action when you haven’t built Awareness.
You stop forcing discipline when you haven’t built Meaning or Tools and Systems.
You stop blaming yourself when what’s missing is structure.

...

At each stage you build skill.
You build systems.
You learn.
You grow more capable.

The bridge gets stronger. And then you make it to the other side and the land of happily ever after.

Over to you, dear reader,

What are you trying to change right now? What stage of change are you in? And what brick do you need to put in place to cross that bridge to lasting transformation?

We talk a lot about how terrible our attention spans have become.

How we can’t focus.
How we forget things.
How everything slips our minds.

We know our attention is fragile. We know it can be hijacked in seconds.

But what I find interesting that we rarely use that fact on purpose.

Rarely use it to shift our emotional state.
To interrupt an urge, the craving. To stress less about difficult people or something challenging in our life.
To zoom out and act from the long-term instead of chasing short-term relief.

Yesterday a client asked me:

“How do you shift your negative feelings when you have to spend time with people you don’t necessarily like? Or when you’re stuck in situations you can’t escape? Situations that stress you out?”

I told him my dentist story.

When I’m at the dentist, no matter how you frame it, it’s not pleasant.
And yes, mindfulness is powerful. Presence matters.

But in that chair?
Mentally and emotionally, I don’t want to be present. I want to be somewhere else.

And I can.

You can time and space-travel anytime you want.

Attention management isn’t just about focusing on the here and now.
It’s also about deliberately focusing somewhere else when “now” isn’t serving your wellbeing.

So when I’m in that chair, I imagine the beach.
A sunset.
Ice-cream.
Good company.

I train my visualization muscle.

The discomfort feels more distant.
Time moves faster.
My body relaxes.

It’s not denial of the present.
It’s re-direction of my attention to where it serves me best.

You can do the same with difficult people, or that challenging transition in your life or work.

Think in 10 hours.
10 days.
10 months.

This will be over.

Feel how fleeting it is. Feel the future relief in advance.
It shrinks your present irritation.

If in less than an hour, or even a few days, this will be over, perhaps, you can start feeling like it's over right now.

Or if you’re in a hard transition — career, life, identity — borrow strength from your past.

Remember the times you figured things out.
The times you survived.
The times you made things better.

Let the past support the present self, borrow that confidence to take the next step.

There was a moment that made this very clear to me.

I saw a child crying hysterically because the parent said they would get ice-cream later🍦

I caught myself thinking, “Why are kids so dramatic about so many tiny things?”

Then I remembered: a complex understanding of time develops around age four or five. Before that, “later” barely exists.

For a child, now is everything.

Just like for cats and dogs.

We adults aren’t that different either.

We call it Present Bias.

We overvalue now.
We overreact to now.
We forget that later is coming and it's not the end of the world.

Optimal mental health isn’t always about being fully present.

Sometimes it’s about self-distancing, a very effective emotional regulation technique.

Zooming out.
Spatial travel.
Time travel.
Imagining how a wiser friend would view this moment.

Checking out strategically can reduce stress, regulate cravings, and help you choose differently now for a better future to come.

Over to you, dear reader,