Daily Thought for Change

Nothing frustrates the brain more than effort with no ROI.

Here’s the peculiar part: often, the return is there. You just never looked for it.

Someone on the mountain today asked me how hard it is to sell human development to companies.

“Quite a battle.”

Because most people development isn’t designed to measure the ROI that companies care about. So leadership spends the budget because there’s budget to spend. They sit through the training. They nod. Six months later, nobody remembers what changed.

Because nobody tracked the right thing.

Was the ROI there? Productivity. Retention. Performance. The bottom line that moved?

Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.

But if you don’t measure it, you’ll never know either way. And not knowing makes the next time so much harder to “buy”. And everyone loses.

When you believe your effort was a waste, even when it wasn’t, your motivation to try something similar will go waaaaaaay down. And the next time someone offers you a program, a coach, a protocol — you’re a hard sell. Good luck changing your mind!

This is why, before we do anything else, I get obsessively clear with every coaching client on what they actually care about. What does better look like? What does winning look like? In your work, your health, your life?

Name it, picture it, describe it before we begin.

Because if we don’t name it, we won’t design for it. If we don’t design for it, we won’t measure it. And if we don’t measure it — we can do real work together, meaningful work, work that changes something — and you’ll still walk away thinking: what was even the point?

The measurement also makes the tools’ choice more precise.

You want to lose weight? Track the calories. Not as punishment. As information you need to adjust the most important lever for the progress YOU want. Without the number, you’re guessing. You might get stronger, sleep better, feel lighter in your body — and still feel like you failed, because the thing you said you cared about didn’t move. So next time someone offers you a path, you shake your head. Already tried that - didn’t work.

But could it?

Before every sales cycle, every business development push, every new health protocol I consider — I ask myself 2 questions,

Why am I doing this?

Am I measuring the right thing to know if it’s working?

So I don’t end up working hard and feeling like it all was a waste.

Over to you, dear reader,

What are you working on right now that you’ve never actually defined success for? And what do you need to start measuring to feel like your efforts aren’t a waste?

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The Both/And

Humans aren’t great at the middle ground.

We don’t do “something is better than nothing” well. We don’t do well with “imperfect consistency” over inconsistent “maximum perfect effort” — that unglamorous practice of showing up at 70%, again and again.

And the swing is almost always what kills us - our fitness aspirations, businesses ambition, diet that we couldn’t sustain.

I’ve been reading about polarity management. One of the examples that stood out to me: organizational performance — the tension between rewarding teamwork and rewarding individual effort.

You need both.

Reward only the team and your highest performers go quiet and quit. Individual creativity gets jammed. Some people coast. Reward only the individual and collaboration dies — everyone optimizing for themselves, the whole organism stops working.

The perfect solution?

You don’t pick a side. You hold both. Dial one up, dial the other down but you never abandon either pole that need each other to keep the whole thing going.

The both/and.

It shows up everywhere once you see it.

Some time ago I was a “January gym member” in my own business.

Hit sales hard at the start of the year, burned bright, stalled out, results vanished. Rinse and repeat. I thought I had a knowledge problem. I didn’t. I had a self-management problem — I kept treating effort like an ON/OFF light switch, bright or darkness, instead of a dial, slowly adjusting as the days went.

Now, on the days it feels unmanageable, instead of quitting, I ask myself,

Not the perfect, maximized, heroic, over-caffeinated version. Not the version worth posting about. Just the version I can actually do today, and tomorrow, and the week after that.

The research on behavior change showed long time ago, starting at a pace you can maintain beats swinging from couch to CrossFit every time. But we keep swinging. Because the swing feels like commitment. It looks like “real effort”.

It just doesn’t last.

The pattern that doesn’t work: go hard, crash, kill the momentum, and usually the desire to ever try again.

The pattern that works: start with the intention to still be going for as long as it takes.

Adjust the dial. Don’t use the switch.

Where are you treating effort like an ON/OFF switch right now, and what would it look like to use the dial instead?

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36 pull-ups today. Heavy squats. Some solid back work.

It felt great!

And also it got me thinking about all the times it didn’t feel great. Visa stress. Moving countries. Work piling up. Life being life.

I showed up anyway. And the results? They followed what I did not how I felt.

That’s the thing about results. They don’t check in on your emotional state first. They reflect what you do every day.

I got this insight this morning, gearing up for another round of cold outreach I had zero desire to do. It dawned on me:

I’ve been showing up at the gym for 25 years. I didn’t feel like it half those times if not more. The results didn’t care.

It’s kind of harsh. But also kind of liberating.

I don’t have to wait for my feelings to cooperate. And my feelings are like Cape Town weather. Several seasons in a single afternoon, depending on which way the wind of luck turns. Not exactly a reliable GPS for getting things done and getting things moving.

I can decide to wake up, show up, do the thing, knowing that results don’t care how I felt on any particular day.

Wake up. Show up. Do the thing.

A month from now I won’t remember how I felt on any given Wednesday. But I’ll know exactly what I did, and what I built because of it.

Over to you, dear reader,

Where are you letting mood decide how many reps you do, and is that working for you?

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There’s a book I’m reading right now — The Jolt Effect.

It’s about sales.

But really it’s about human nature.

The authors found that what kills most buying decisions isn’t price, or even status quo bias. It’s not competition. It’s not even doubts about the product.

It’s the fear of making the wrong choice.

And the worst mistake?

Giving more information or more choices.

There’s a famous experiment. Researchers set up a jam-tasting table. Some days, 24 flavors. Other days, 6. When given 24 choices, 3% of people bought. When given 6? 30% bought.

10X more decisions made and actions taken — with less options on the table.

Why does this happen?

Because more choice creates more chances to be wrong. More mental work. And somewhere in the brain, that extra friction translates into: This should be easier. Maybe this is wrong.

And people walk away.

Let’s think about your own growth goals.

Eating better. Moving more. Using AI at work. Getting better at giving feedback. These things are already hard. They require effort, real consistency, discomfort.

Are you also making the choosing hard on top of that work?

Nutrition

You could track macros, go keto, try intermittent fasting, cut sugar, go plant-based, count calories, do Whole30, add protein, cut processed food, meal prep Sundays…

Most people who succeed long-term start with one thing: eat more protein at every meal. It’s concrete. It crowds out junk naturally. It makes you feel full. You don’t need an app. It’s simple and easy to start.

Exercise

You could do HIIT, lift weights, run, swim, cycle, do yoga, try Pilates, walk 10,000 steps, join a class, follow a program, buy equipment, train for a race...

Most people who actually stick with exercise start with one thing: go for a 20-minute walk every day. Not because it’s optimal. Because it’s simple and moves things forward. And movement compounds.

Using AI tools

You could explore ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Notion AI, Copilot, AI for email, for research, for strategy, for writing, for scheduling…

Most people who integrate AI meaningfully start with: pick one task you do daily and run it through one tool for a week. Not the whole workflow. One task at a time.

Giving feedback

You could learn radical candor, try the SBI model, practice nonviolent communication, read Thanks for the Feedback, work on your listening, get a coach, join a workshop…

Most people who get better at feedback fast start with a simple recipe: after every hard conversation, write one sentence about what you wish you’d said differently. That’s it. One thing. One rep. One improvement.

The pattern is the same every time.

Give yourself some direction. Give yourself a simple starting point. A couple of clear options to choose from. Repeat.

You still have freedom. You just have fewer places to get lost. And make mistakes.

The thing most advice misses: the work is hard enough already. Hard enough that most people quit before they improve. The last thing you need is to burn your energy deciding where to start, and if it's the right choice.

Save that energy for the doing.

Ove to you, dear reader,

Where in your self-improvement journey are you making the choosing harder than the doing — and what’s the one simple thing you could commit to starting today?

I’ve slept 7.5 to 8.5 hours a night for almost a decade.

At some point I looked at the science, felt the difference a full night made in how I felt the next day, and decided: this is non-negotiable. My life has to run with my sleep, not against it.

Same decision with nutrition. Same result. Nearly 10 years of consistency.

One decision made once, that keeps on giving.

Yesterday in my Self-Actualization coaching training, we worked with a tool called Polarity Mapping. which helps you explore and integrate very often seemingly opposite desires, priorities, things that we want in life more of that tend to contradict each other.

More meaningful work and more life outside of work.

Excellence in your craft and more presence with the people you love.

Deep professional ambition and a rich inner world, that doesn’t get compromised.

When you push hard toward one, the other seems to suffer.

Polarity Mapping doesn’t ask you to pick a side. It asks you to consider: what would it look like if both sides were genuinely integrated — not perfectly balanced, but right for you, at this stage of your life?

You map the positives each pole brings. You look honestly at what breaks down when you overindex on one and starve the other. And then, this is the part that matters, you ask: what’s the ideal proportion of each that would make me feel good about my life right now?

Not your mentor’s answer. Not some productivity guru’s framework. Yours.

Because someone else might need more work than life. Or more life than work. Or something in between that doesn’t have a name yet.

The real work isn’t in finding the perfect ratio. It’s doing what I did with sleep and nutrition — deciding your standard, then building your calendar and your resources around it. Not waiting for “the obstacles” to disappear from your life. Not wishing for more hours in your days and more days in your weeks. But working with what you actually have.

Most of us are waiting for ideal circumstances before we decide it’s time for a change. But ideal circumstances aren’t coming.

The constraints of your life are the canvas to draw a picture of your “ideal” life.

Saturday. It’s a good time for me now to spend some time and ask myself,

What areas of my life need to become non-negotiable like sleep? Where do I feel unfulfilled and why? And where do I need to create deliberate space, time, and resources so those things can grow the way my health has grown?

The question isn’t whether you can have it all. It’s whether you’ve decided what your “all” looks like.

Have you, dear reader?

If you knew it would work, would you try harder?

I actually know the answer.

Even mice do.

Nir Eyal, in Beyond Belief, describes this famous experiment on learned optimism. Researchers took wild mice and dropped them in water. Left alone, at first, most gave up within 1 to 15 minutes. But when the researchers pulled some mice out, dried them off, let them recover, then put them back in, those same mice swam for up to 60 hours.

60 hours!🤯

The researchers replicated this.

Different animals exposed to different kind of suffering kept fighting when they had reason to believe rescue was possible. Or that their own effort could save them.

Humans are no different.

When we believe our efforts can actually work — we try harder. We last longer. We push through the moments that would otherwise make us quit.

It gets a bit more interesting for us humans, though.

We don’t need the direct experience of making it that the mice needed.

We don’t need to be rescued first before we’ll believe rescue is possible.

We can choose what we believe by choosing where we direct our attention.

All the people who succeeded before us with fewer resources. Or all the people who failed.

We get to decide which story we’re gathering evidence for.

Nir’s Motivation Triangle makes this very clear.

To get motivated — and stay motivated — 3 things need to line up:

1. knowing what to do,

2. knowing what benefit you’ll get,

3. and believing your efforts can actually get you there.

Remove any one of those 3 legs, and the whole thing collapses.

So if you’re struggling to keep going — 2 days into a diet, months into a business with no traction, weeks into trying to sleep better or improve your self-talk — ask yourself, Do I actually believe this can change things for me?

Not “do I hope.” Not “do I wish.”

Do you believe?

Nietzsche famously said,

But I think the quote is missing something important.

The why only carries you through if you also believe that how can help you reach it.

Over to you, dear reader,

What story of disbelief are you telling yourself, the one that makes you drown in minutes when you have what it takes to go for hours?

Systems. Structure. Schedule. Support.

It’s hard to not get things done when you have all 4 in place.

When did you last fail with some behavior? Were all 4 in place?

18 years of coaching taught me something that fundamentally changed how I see human behavior and my own life: the things we want to do are seeds. Full of potential. But seeds don’t grow in dry soil🌱

They need the right conditions.

This sounds obvious. And yet — on every scale, personal or organizational, entire humanity — we keep ignoring it.

We run workshops. Announce strategic priorities. Swear off sugar and commit to 6am workouts. And then we drop those seeds straight onto unchanged, unprepared, dry soil of our lives and wonder why nothing takes root.

The soil is the problem. Almost never the seed.

Early in my coaching career, I started noticing something.

Every goal, every aspiration a client brought me — I couldn’t let it stay in the abstract, if I wanted to help my client make it happen. I needed to see it planted into their real life.

What’s the concrete behavior? What does it actually look like, Tuesday morning, when life is loud and busy?

And then, what supports it? What structures, tools, scheduled time? What’s holding this up when motivation fades and your energy tanks?

Sometimes we realize the goal, the seed is too big, not a good fit for the garden today.

A client wants to eat more vegetables, hit their protein target, overhaul their sleep. But with their schedule, their current skill level, their real life — they can maybe do one thing. On some days.

So we scale down. Not as failure. As strategy.

We create the conditions first, we build capacity at the current level, then we grow from there as opportunities open up.

Business leaders do the same thing.

Backwards.

They launch wellbeing initiatives, culture programs, performance interventions — and then quietly hope people will figure out the rest, grow into new demands without built-up capacity.

It’s the New Year’s resolution problem as well.

The issue is almost never the person. Or the goal.

It’s almost never weak intentions or missing willpower.

It’s almost always the same 4 things: no system, no structure, no scheduled time, no support.

Change the conditions. The seed will take root.

Over to you, dear reader,

If you designed your environment to make your goal’s success almost inevitable, what would that look like? What’s the one thing missing that’s been keeping your seeds from taking root?

“Bring your full self to work.” “Feel your feelings.” “Listen to what your emotions are telling you.”

Good advice. Until it isn’t.

We don’t talk about this often enough: sometimes your feelings are not serving your best interests. Sometimes they’re not messengers, they’re disturbing noise. And if you let every feeling vote on your next move, you will not move. At least not where you want to go.

Many clients come to me struggling with feelings that get in the way of them doing the right thing — asking for a promotion, having a hard conversation, making the cold call, showing up on the dating scene bruised and imperfect, hitting publish, putting themselves out there. Stopped or delayed not by circumstance.

By feeling.

Shame. Inadequacy. Not enoughness. Too pushy. Too needy. Too unqualified. Too much like an imposter who’s about to get found out.

The feeling shows up. The action stops.

I share with them the insight that changed everything for me, and for a lot of the people I work with:

You can have the feeling and do the thing anyway.

You don’t have to listen to what it’s saying, just like you can leave the room when someone speaks to you disrespectfully.

The feeling doesn’t get a voting voice on your actions.

There’s a technique from trauma therapy called Emotional Containment. It’s one of the most practical, effective tools I know for self-transformation beyond your perceived limits.

Here’s how it works:

1. Locate it. Where does the feeling live in your body? Chest? Throat? Gut?

2. Give it form. Visualize it as an object. A heavy stone. A dark, tangled knot. What color? What texture?

3. Name it. “This is fear of rejection.” “This is shame.”

4. Box it. Imagine a container — a vault, a chest, something solid. Open it. Place the object inside. Close the lid. Lock it up if you need to.

5. Make a deal. Tell yourself: “I see you. But right now I’m doing the call / the meeting / the task, and you are not helpful here.”

6. Take the action.

You’re not suppressing the emotion. You’re not pretending it isn’t there. You’re creating a small gap between what you feel, who you are, and what you do. That gap — that tiny, deliberate space — is where your choices for change live.

After the task, you can go back to the container.

Or not. Let it collect some dust.

Sometimes the feeling has already shrunk. Sometimes it’s gone entirely, replaced by something better — momentum, pride, relief.

This isn’t magic. It’s neuroscience in action.

Neural circuits are like muscles: use them or lose them.

Every time you feel the fear and make the call anyway, you’re weakening that fear circuit. You’re building a different one.

Which is very good news if your current circuits are driving unhelpful thoughts and emotions forward.

Over to you, dear reader,

What’s sitting in the way of your next move, what feeling? And what would change if you put it in a box, just long enough to take the action?

“So how do you keep yourself calm with all this happening in the world?”

Someone asked me that at an HR and culture breakfast this morning.

The war in Ukraine. The Middle East. The difficulty of getting home, communicating with people you love. (Being half Ukrainian half Russian, living in South Africa, traveling back home through the Middle East)

“I do the same thing I teach my clients to do — I practice focus control.”

When my mind goes into the worry space, I ask myself this question: Is this something I can actually control or influence right now?

No.

So I visualize my attention — my focus — like a ball of spotlight inside my head. And I deliberately move it.

Away from the worry. Toward my agency.

Toward the things I can actually work on, improve, build. The things that move my life forward.

Away from war and how I’m gonna fly back home to here, now, doing the work that grows my business, creates more opportunity and positive impact in the world.

“Yes, I do this, but my mind still worries, even when I know all of that.”

Yes. It does.

And then you shift your focus again. And again. And again.

And then you get better.

You spend less time worrying and more time in your life. Where you can do and experience things.

Just like experienced meditators.

Their minds still wander.

Every single time.

The difference is they’ve gotten good at catching it and returning. To here. To now. To what is.

At breakfast, my new friend and I kept circling back to the same thing: the knowing-doing gap.

We all have it. In different areas of our work and life. To different degrees.

But nowhere does it cost more than in leadership and organizational development.

Workshops get booked. Frameworks get learned. Thousands of rands and dollars spend. Insight happens in the room. And then Monday arrives, and very little of it makes it into consistent behavior.

Knowing ≠ doing.

And all the results live in the doing.

You can know everything there is to know about nutrition. Read every book. Follow every expert. And still just marginally change your health.

Same with leadership.

Understanding what great, people-centered leadership looks like gives you almost nothing. Unless it becomes a daily practice people adopt. Something people do daily, in the room, in the moments that matter.

Over to you, dear reader,

Where in your life, or your work, do you keep chasing the next insight, the next course, the next framework... when consistently doing what you already know would bring you far more?

Belief: an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.

I just finished another Nir Eyal book — Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Extraordinary Results — and it made a couple of things even clearer to me.

Beliefs, no matter how strong, are a choice of lens.

Like tinted glasses — some rose, some blue. The glasses don’t change reality. They change how reality looks to you.

And that changes your actions. Which changes what you experience. Which reinforces, or slowly rewires, your beliefs.

Believe → Anticipate → Feel → Confirm.

Round and round it goes.

Belief is not reality.

And that doesn’t make it useless. Just like prayer, which has positive psychological effects, regardless of whether you believe in some higher power or doubt it a lot.

It makes it into a powerful tool to curate your life experience, your growth and what you get out of life.

If you believe failure is feedback — that it shows you where your skills don’t yet match your goals — you become someone who bounces back faster. Does more. Learns more. Gets more chances at what you actually want.

If you believe failure is proof of permanent inadequacy — that you should quit, stay in your lane, don’t even try — that belief will keep you exactly where you are. Stuck.

How useful is that to you?

How useful is it to believe you’re not good enough for what you want? And that the condition is permanent?

Not very.

Because in most cases, with enough work and enough reps, you can get there. And in the worst case — you’ll get much further than you would have standing still.

Two more things from the book that I think are useful for anyone trying to grow:

1. There’s evidence for and against every belief you hold.

About yourself. Your worth. Your work. Other people.

Right now, multiple truths are available to you simultaneously. So it’s worth asking — especially when you’re stuck somewhere you don’t want to be — is this belief actually serving me? Or am I sacrificing the quality of my life because I was conditioned to see only one side of the evidence?

2. Building beliefs is like building muscle💪

It takes practice. Feedback. Adjustment. Reps.

A lot of my clients want to change their self-narrative. Many arrive with this quiet assumption that knowledge alone will do it.

It won’t.

Knowing exercise is good for you doesn’t make you fit. Knowing which thoughts serve you doesn’t make them your default.

You’ve got to put in the reps to experience the difference.

Over to you, dear reader,

What belief about beliefs do you need to upgrade to start spinning your wheels in place and get moving?