Daily Thought for Change

About a decade ago, I had a motorbike accident. Six broken ribs, a shattered shoulder blade, punctured lung. I couldn’t walk for 2 weeks. I almost died.

As soon as I could walk again, I started exercising.

It was painful. I’d get out of breath from just walking. Doing bodyweight squats nearly made me faint.

And yet, I kept going.

Not because of willpower. Not because I’m especially disciplined. But because of the story I told myself.

"If I wanted to live normally again sooner, I needed to move. Demands of the environment drive adaptation."

Within a month, I was back to training clients (I did fitness coaching back then).

Now imagine if I had told myself a different story.
“It’s pointless.”
“My life is ruined.”
“I can’t do anything until I’m fully recovered.”

That story would’ve kept me stuck. I would’ve stayed in the hospital longer, taken months more to recover, maybe even slipped into depression.

We are just our stories

I want you to see with me something here: every single one of us can CHOOSE our stories. (I didn't know it back then)
What story are you telling yourself about your health? Your work? Your age? Mondays? Opportunities? This upcoming week?

It’s all just a story.

And the story you choose today will shape your week far more than what actually happens.

Over the past few months, I’ve realized something, really leaning into clients' narratives: if you want to master yourself - what you do or don’t do, whether you stay stuck in old patterns or grow every day - you first need to master the narrative in your head.

Step #1: realize you have a choice.
Step #2: put in the reps💪

Every time the old story pops up and you swap it for a better one - that’s a rep. Just like training a bicep.

Nietzsche famously said:

“He who has a strong enough why will figure out any how.”

Reminders, rewards, accountability - all of that helps. But if the story in your head is weak, none of it sticks.

So if your motivation keeps coming and going, if habits don’t stick, old patterns keep coming back, start here: what story is your mind telling you? And is that story strong enough to carry the weight of the person you want to become?

Over to you dear reader,
Is the conversation in your head helping you move forward or holding you back?

Is "I'm too old", "life is unfair", "somebody always gets ahead", "I just don't have the credentials", "nobody will support me", "I don't know enough", "I don't have what it takes", "I've always been that way", "Mondays always suck", "I hate doing this, why can't it be just easy?", "they are all against me",... working for you?

If not - you can change this record. 

That’s where “self-sabotage” lives. In your stories.

PS. A simple way to start rewiring your stories:
Try a Thought Audit exercise.

For a day, or a week, write down the conversations in your head when you feel disempowered or about to do something you’ll regret, or right after it. After a week, review your stories: Which stories serve me? Which ones don’t? How can I reshape the unhelpful ones into narratives that move me closer to who I want to be? (I walk you through the exercise and give you additional tools on Change Wired podcast)

“What’s that as…le that just cut us off?”
My friend blurted out as we drove to a flower show. Then, laughing, she added, “I don’t think he is, just expressing my sentiment”

Self/other-aware people understand that most behaviors are very situational - they are a response to what happens, not an indication of how someone is in their entire life permanently.

And what is also true - if you respond the same way to the same trigger all the time, often, without realizing it, you allow your situational response to become your mindset, your character trait… your culture?

Harvard Business Review put out something brilliant about organizational culture:

“Culture doesn’t shift because a new narrative is introduced. It shifts when systems change. When leaders take personal risks. When norms are not just declared but demonstrated. New research shows how culture doesn’t fail because it’s forgotten; it fails because it’s misunderstood. It’s treated as branding, not behavior.”

Or as Seth Godin reminds us,
“Culture is what we repeatedly do.”

That’s not just true for companies, it’s true for people like you and me.
You might not care about “culture,” but you probably care about who you’re becoming. Your fitness. Your career. Your character. How the world sees you.

And if you do, then here’s the lesson: don’t obsess about identity, of who or how you are. Focus on behavior. On the things you do. On making the right actions easier, more rewarding, more obvious and visible.

You can’t change who you are in one leap.
But you can change what you do consistently.
And what you do, over time, will quietly change who you are.

So how do you change what you do? Behavioral science, behavioral change, coaching seem to agree -
By shaping the context (what's around you). By tweaking the triggers. By aligning incentives with what actually matters to you.

That’s your leverage. Not your willpower.

Over to you dear reader,

Who do you want to become?
And what would that person do - consistently, reliably, on autopilot?
How can you shape your environment so those behaviors are the simplest, most obvious, most rewarding moves you can make?

"Our research found that across companies that had launched formal culture initiatives since 2022, 72% showed no meaningful improvement in employee trust, engagement, or retention one year later. Despite the visibility and investment, employees perceived these efforts as surface-level — more performance than practice.

The reverse was also true. In companies where senior leaders changed how they led—how they ran meetings, gave feedback, made decisions, and responded to challenge—trust scores rose by an average of 26%, even in the absence of a branded campaign. As one executive told us, “We didn’t write our values—we reverse-engineered them from how we wanted to behave.”

“When people say no to paying full price now, they usually are totally okay paying it over time. I still don’t understand how it works. But it does.”

Hormozi said this in his Money Models course, while explaining down-selling.

I realized, this is exactly what behavioral scientists use when they try to help people save more - same exact principle. Same human brain.

There’s a study called Save More Tomorrow™ by Richard Thaler and Shlomo Benartzi.

Instead of asking people to start saving right now (which for most is too painful), the program asks them at the present moment to commit to increasing savings from future raises. The “pain” of giving up income now is delayed, so it’s less painful upfront. Over time, saving rates rose dramatically. In one of the implementations, rates went from about 3.5% of salary to ~13.6% over 40 months.

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What’s really going on in the brain / decision-making, the “biases” at play:

• Present bias: We overweigh what happens now versus what happens later. If saving or paying something now feels painful, we put it off, even if future benefit is much bigger.

• Future discounting (or hyperbolic discounting): Related to present bias, this is how we “discount” rewards (or costs) the further into the future they are. Something tomorrow matters much less to us than something today.

• Naivete vs. sophistication: Some people realize that they tend to procrastinate or defer costs, others don’t. If you’re naive, you don’t even believe you’ll act differently in the future; if you’re sophisticated, you see the bias and try to plan around it. 

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So Hormozi’s “puzzle”, it turns out, has a simple, human-bias-based explanation.

It works in sales just like it works for savings, or anything else.

1. For my business
   How can I lower the entry barrier now (make the full cost feel small or delayed), so clients can say yes with less friction, and accept the same “price tag” later?

2. For myself personally
   How can I use this to make myself take on hard things? For example: commit now to doing something later (so the harder part feels further away). Begin with minimal effort and escalate, rather than trying to force big change immediately? But then, put guardrails in place to not procrastinate further? (Clients sign agreements to follow through, as do people saving)

3. For you, dear reader
   Are you asking people (clients, partners, yourself) too much up front? Could you make the first “ask” lighter, and defer the rest in a way that still works?

And what if we reframe the question not as how to make people accept "price" now, but how to meet people where they are today, and guide them gently into the “future self” that will benefit them even more?

I recently followed the advice of Alex Osterwalder, one of the world’s top strategy thinkers, and asked ChatGPT a question:

What in my business is going to become irrelevant or free in the next 5–10 years? And what new opportunities should I prepare for?

The session was eye-opening.

What became clear is this: advice without context is just cheap noise nobody needs or benefits from.

We now live in a world where anyone can generate expert-level “how-tos” at the tap of a keyboard. Expert-level knowledge is literally at your fingertips. The instructions are everywhere.

The real question:
When and how do you apply it?
What invisible obstacles show up in implementation?
How do you adapt it to your unique situation, your team, your life?

That’s not in the manual. That’s where the gold is.

Take fitness.

Every diet, every workout program, every shortcut is already published. But do you know which one is going to work for you? Do you know how to make it stick when your calendar is insane, or when your energy dips, or when travel keeps pulling you out of routine?

That’s where real experts earn their keep - NOT by handing you steps, but by guiding you through transformation.

The same is true in business and careers. Lists of “10 steps to success”? They’re free. And mostly useless!

Frameworks? Strategies? High-level audits? - all free.

Steal all my ideas!

What’s priceless is having someone who can help you:

• Apply frameworks and strategies to your actual context.

• Spot risks and opportunities you didn’t know were there.

• Make the right call at the right time with confidence.

That’s where premium value lives. Not in knowledge, but in guiding you through transformation.

So how am I acting on this?
I’ll happily share frameworks, high-level audits, strategies - steal them all. They’ll soon be in books if not already.

But if you want change? Real, lasting, measurable trasnformation? That’s a premium service.

It requires depth, experience, and a process of decision-making that adapts to you - not a copy-paste recipe.

AI will take care of the shallow stuff, the fluff, the easy answers. That frees us, the humans, for deeper thinking, sharper judgment, and meaningful transformation.

The best use of AI is not outsourcing your brain. It’s outsourcing the noise so you can finally do your best thinking. And help others put it to use.

Over to you dear reader,
Have you asked ChatGPT to give you a true risk-and-opportunity analysis of your business or career over the next 5–10 years? What did it reveal? And more importantly, how will you act on it?

Go deep. Shallow is free.

“Let’s see how you gonna feel after the workout!”
Said the woman I know in the gym.
To which I thought, well it’s all only up from there!

YOUR HEALTHY FLYWHEEL
In behavioral science they call it priming, or the primacy principle.

“The ‘primacy principle’ refers to the primacy effect, a cognitive bias where the first information or experiences encountered have a greater influence on later impressions and memories than subsequent information.”

Health coaches noticed long ago, it's an often used strategy: morning workouts and your first meal have an outsized effect on everything you do the rest of the day (and often week). So get this one right!
You exercise, you eat a solid breakfast… you feel good about yourself, your thinking sharpens, you make better choices, and you end up doing better overall, which makes tomorrow more likely to be stellar, too.

The wheel collapses on itself and keeps on turning.

That’s why, even if my afternoon performance might be “better” on paper - I still train in the morning. My thinking and doing are better afterward.

That’s why I also ask clients to start the day with one key habit that gets the wheel turning.

AMAZON’S FLYWHEEL
I’m finishing Jim Collins’s short monograph Turning the Flywheel (an idea he introduced in Good to Great). Jim Collins and Jeff Bezos actually met in 2001, post dot-com bust, and worked through Amazon’s flywheel on a whiteboard: lower prices → more customer visits → more sellers → broader selection → better experience → lower cost structure → even lower prices. Feed any part of the loop and it accelerates the whole thing.

And the wheel keeps on turning.

Now I’m thinking about the same. What’s my business flywheel?

It’s easier to think in linear terms: do X, then Y follows. Full stop.

Then you figure out a new X for the next result.

But most viral, compounding things don’t work like that. They’re engines - perpetual motion fed by its own momentum.

Facebook did it early: get people to sign up and invite friends. Friends invite more friends. Everyone feels the pull to join, and on and on and on it goes... (still turning)

The book shows examples in education (attracting great teachers and giving kids great results), festivals, and more. And it applies to your health just as well.

Health flywheel:
Go to the gym → get the right breakfast → feel good the whole day → get compliments and build community (feed motivation) → sleep well so you wake up fresh for the workout… and the wheel keeps on turning.

Over to you, dear reader,
How can you build your flywheels in health, relationships, career, and business, so once they’re on, they just keep on turning?

Alex Hormozi has a course on money models - essentially, a masterclass in how to use human biases to drive sales.
As I’m working through it, I keep having these aha moments.

Because the very same principles show up in coaching. I use them all the time to drive results for clients. And they might also explain why so much change - whether personal or organizational - gets resisted.

Hormozi teaches:
If you want to reduce resistance to your offer, don’t ask for a yes/no.
Instead, ask: Do you want option A or option B?
It’s the menu upsell.

That works in coaching too.
A bad coach tells clients what to do.
A good coach says: Does option A or option B sound better?
(And even better if those options come from the client, nudged gently in the right direction.)
They call it client-led coaching.

It works in change management as well. 
Brainstorm individually, evaluate together, and then ask people to choose between two workable paths.

The bigger picture:
Change - whether we’re leading others or trying to lead ourselves - is messy and complex. Humans are infinitely diverse.
And yet, beneath the variety, there are predictable patterns. Our common biology and psychology shape us all. When we design with those patterns in mind, resistance eases and results become more reliable.

Over to you dear reader,
Where could you apply this principle? Where could you co-create the course of action instead of dictating it, demanding it, stealing someone's right to be free?

Try it in small ways with yourself first:
Apple or pear for dessert?
Protein shake or bar for your afternoon snack?
Write this report or that analysis first?

See what happens when you stop asking for a yes or no and start asking which way forward feels best?

PS. This is why I love learning from different disciplines - the red threads of human behavior weave through sales, coaching, and change management ... - giving you confidence that it'll work everywhere else. When the patterns repeat across fields, that’s when I know: I can trust them. I can design for them.

“When you get tired, don’t quit. Take a day off.”

That’s the mantra I’ve been repeating to a few of my clients recovering from burnout.
It sounds simple, almost too simple. Yet it’s the missing skill so many of us never learn: the ability to pause before we break.

We all are told we need more accountability for getting things done. But it feels like what is actually a lot more relevant to our times - accountability to rest, recharge and recover properly. - The "stop button" kind of accountability we rarely ask for.

Burnout isn’t just physical.

It’s mental. It’s emotional.

And often, it shows up in your head long before your body gives in.

One client said to me recently:

- I just don’t want to see clients anymore. I start hating my work. I just want to quit and become a full-time housewife.

When we unpacked it further,

- Now that I think of it, I realize I did many stupid things. Sending a presentation to a client at 11pm even though next morning would be just fine. Agreeing to have a call at 9pm often because I didn’t want the client to go to someone else. Never asking for more flexible schedule, even though nobody told me I couldn’t. … And then I started hating it all and then I quit.

- Do you think having a bit more “human” schedule might have worked to prevent that?, I asked.

Your brain and body are not two separate machines. They’re a team. They evolved together to support each other function. They are 2 pieces of 1 thing - YOU.

When your body gets run down, your mind changes the story. Suddenly, you don’t just feel tired, you feel like you hate your job, your clients, maybe even your whole career.

That’s not truth, that’s survival mode ON.

I’ve noticed one thing, when climbing mountains. Push too hard, and I start hating the climb. But if I pause, 2-3 minutes to catch my breath, to take in the view - the joy comes rushing back.

Life is no different it seems.

So with that client, we’ve been building a schedule that lets her pursue her dream career without sacrificing herself this time. Together we’re creating rules for work hours, breaks, and client boundaries with THIS exercise (you can use it as well). And we’re practicing body-mind awareness, through body scanning, so she can hear the signals earlier, before her mind rewrites the story into “I hate this, I need to quit.”

Burnout is 100% preventable.

It’s not a sign you’re weak. It’s a sign you are human.

You’ve pushed past your body’s signals for too long.

The real skill of sustainable, fulfilling achievement is learning to rest before your mind forces you to stop.

Over to you dear reader,

How strong is your body-mind connection? And if you’re working on something hard right now, could it be that you don’t need to go hard on yourself to achieve AND enjoy?

What’s the origin story?

It’s my new favorite question (gratitude to James Healy). Because without it, we might end up doing some truly ridiculous things.

Whether you are trying to go keto, do more Zone 2 cardio, or use change management and behavioral science in the workplace, the origin story makes all the difference.

Elon Musk calls it “first principles.”

When he couldn’t buy a rocket cheap enough, he didn’t just accept the price. He broke it down, he questioned every piece of it, he asked where the numbers came from, and ended up reinventing the process. Years later - SpaceX, the cheapest way to go to space on repeat.

The origin story tells you the context. The problem it was built to solve. How it evolved into what it looks like today. And THAT gives you a much better clue where it's more likely to work.

Take keto.

Originally designed to treat epilepsy. Not weight loss. Not athletic performance. Not building muscle or make you a superhuman. Burning more fat sounds good for weight loss. Until you realize most of the “fat burning”, in studies, meant fat from food, not your body. Of course, that part never made it to your favorite article on weight loss.

In applied behavioral science, the caution is clear: test, test, test. Never assume a solution will transfer. Context is king. Change the context, behavior changes (they call it Field Theory). What works at Tesla under Elon Musk’s leadership may fall flat inside Microsoft.

Same goes for diets. Just because your friend swears by this plan says nothing about how your body, or your life, will respond.

James Healy’s book BS at Work is full of examples where organizations, cultures, people created a mess simply because no one stopped to ask: where did this method come from, and why?

That’s my new habit now for better thinking and better results: before adopting any new advice, I check the origin story. Who created it? In what context? What problem was it built to solve?

If somebody gives me advice, I'll ask - where's your logic coming from? (What's the origin story of your thinking?) Very often we give advice, assuming that everyone comes to their conclusions from the same place. Which is never the case.

Over to you dear reader,
What are some things you’ve accepted without ever asking where they came from, or whether they were designed for your context in the first place?

Ruthless elimination is my new priority.

“Our default is addition. We add meetings to calendars, layers to organizations, features to products. But the real genius often lies in removing — in creating space, clarity, and focus.”

The more people we try to meet and stay in touch with, the less time we have to nurture deep bonds.
The more “well-rounded” our fitness is, the less likely we are to excel in any one sport.
The more projects we take on at work, the less of our best energy and brilliance each one receives.

Cal Newport, in Slow Productivity, warns about “pseudo-productivity” and “work around work.” The illusion that keeping busy means making progress.

“‘Pseudo-productivity’: the use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort.”

When humans worked in factories, productivity was clear: the more units produced, the more productive you were. But knowledge work? We’ve never truly defined what productivity was. We defaulted to “more hours = more productive.” Which was never true.

If I’m not moving my projects forward, no matter how many emails I send, events I attend, or courses I take, I’m not producing value.

The trickiest part of our times is realizing that thinking deeply about things that are worth doing is what defines productivity in the knowledge economy. And yet, on the global level, leaving “thinking time” in your calendar, is still considered some weird quirk of your nature that even a few leaders dare to admit publicly that they do.

Over to your dear reader,

Are the things you are busy with the ones moving YOUR success metrics forward? Do you know what those are to begin with? AND does your calendar have thinking time?

PS Absolutely loving reading “BS At Work: Why so much of modern work is bullshit and how behavioural science can make it better” by James Healy (who we’ll have on Change Wired podcast very soon of course).

"Excitement can only get you so far.
You can decide to ramp up your fitness, but if you never block time in your calendar, don’t buy decent shoes, and make no good plan for it - you won’t get far. Enthusiasm burns out fast without a system to sustain it.

Innovation works the same way."

Yesterday, I recorded a podcast with Alex Osterwalder, one of the world’s top strategy and innovation thinkers. He’s helped companies like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Mastercard, and Intel among others to rethink how they stay adaptive in a fast-changing world, becoming stronger than ever.

One key takeaway that Alex kept coming back to: everything needs a system and a process. Managed. Measured. Reinforced. Otherwise, it fails.

Telling people “be more innovative,” “adopt AI,” or “bring new ideas” only gets you a short burst of activity. What delivers meaningful results are the systems you build to support innovation, learning and creativity.

Useful questions to keep in mind:

• Do you have a clear process for when, where, how, and by whom innovation happens?

• Is it actually on the schedule, measured, and tied to specific, innovation KPIs?

• Are people incentivized and rewarded in ways that align with your business innovation priorities?

• Do you track innovation against outcomes that matter, not just activity or "more AI"?

• Is the path made simple and clear - what to do, how to do it, and why?

Alex also reminded me of this subtle but critical point: exploration (trying new things) and exploitation (scaling what works) are not the same. Each needs its own success metrics, it's own process. Mixing them up is the fastest way to kill a promising innovation strategy before it even has a chance to pay off.

Over to you dear reader,
Do you have a system that gives your ideas a real shot at survival? Or are you still hoping innovation will “just happen”?