Change Wired

Quitting isn’t always a character flaw. A lot of the time it’s a belief problem. When I see people stall on a healthier diet, regular exercise, better sleep, a bold career move, or the messy work of improving relationships, the pattern is the same: they stop when they no longer believe their effort will pay off.

Today I share a practical framework inspired by Nir Eyal’s work, the book Beyond Belief: a 3-part motivation triangle. Remove any side and consistency collapses.

If you want more discipline  -this episode will help you get it.

Subscribe for more conversations on motivation and human potential, and if this helps, share it with one person and leave a rating or review.

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

What does it truly take to change what we do — for yourself and at scale, sustainably in the real world?

In this episode, Angela sits down with Hengchen Dai, Associate Professor at UCLA Anderson and co-director of the UCLA Nudge Unit, to explore the science behind why people do what they do, and what it takes to shift it.

Hengchen brings rigorous academic research published in Nature and other notable publications, and field experiments run inside hospitals, university health systems, and national pharmacy chains with millions of participants. What emerges is a practical toolkit for anyone trying to create lasting change — whether you're a leader, a clinician, a policymaker, or just someone trying to get better at your own habits.

Key Takeaways

  -  Behaviour change is not one-size-fits-all — someone who skipped their flu shot this year (but got it last year) has a completely different barrier (forgetting, procrastination) than someone who has never been vaccinated (belief, scepticism). Targeting interventions based on past behaviour dramatically improves results.

  🗓 The Fresh Start Effect — people are more motivated at temporal landmarks: New Year, birthdays, work anniversaries, the start of a new quarter. Framing a retirement savings sign-up as "after your birthday" vs "in five months" increased sign-up rates — same date, different psychology. Time your change to ride this wave and boost motivation.

  ⛰️ Friction kills adoption — a 2-click detour in a patient portal was enough to reduce cancer screening rates. If your process, tool, or habit requires even slightly more steps than what people already do, most people won't follow through.

  ⏱ Timing beats content — a voter registration pop-up immediately after a charitable donation had near-perfect engagement. A text sent two minutes later, after people left the platform, had virtually zero. Meet people where their attention already is.

  🎉 Find the short-term fun — long-term benefits rarely motivate day-to-day action. Help people identify immediate enjoyment in the behaviour (learning a new skill, the satisfaction of progress) and sustain engagement far better than selling abstract future outcomes.

  👥 Social accountability works — people were more likely to go to the gym when the incentive required bringing a friend, even though that made it harder to earn. Build buddy systems into any change you start.

  📢 Close the communication gap — managers assume employees notice what's changed. They don't. When UCLA Health explicitly told physicians "we changed X because you said Y in the 2024 survey," attitudes and participation improved significantly. Don't assume people will notice. Tell them.

... and so much more!

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Links 🌐

Hengchen's website: www.hengchendai.com

BIO

About Hengchen Dai

Hengchen Dai is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Behavioural Decision Making at UCLA Anderson School of Management and co-director of the UCLA Nudge Unit. Her research on motivation and behaviour change has appeared in Nature, PNAS, and Management Science, and been featured by the NYT, WSJ, Harvard Business Review, and Freakonomics. She received the 2026 Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences and has been named one of the World's 40 Best B-School Professors Under 40 by Poets & Quants.

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Proof changes everything.  

When the world serves you endless "hot takes" about health, habits, and mindset, we need to slow down and build on what actually holds up—methods that work across people and across time.  

Today we unpack why evidence-backed tools make personal growth more predictable, less stressful, and far more sustainable, and we put 3 practical techniques in your hands so you can start reshaping your limiting thinking and story-telling right away.  

You’ll learn how to build a confidence stock—an ongoing log of small wins and improvements that counters your brain’s negativity bias and grows self-efficacy. We then pressure-test the stories you tell yourself with a clean filter: does this belief serve you? If holding it for a year shrinks your action and your world, it’s time to rewrite it toward utility, practice, and progress.  

Finally, we explore self-distancing—third-person self-talk that lowers emotional heat and boosts clarity. This simple shift moves decision-making into a calmer part of your brain, so you can see options, choose a next step, and act with less friction.  

Along the way, we highlight how modern, science-backed approaches deliver the predictability you need to navigate fast change without drowning in noise. The result: fewer yo-yo fixes, more consistent outcomes, and a sturdier path to the future self you’re building.  

If this resonates, share the episode with one friend who’s stuck in a limiting story, then subscribe and leave a quick review to help others find us.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Big transformations don’t come from heroic sprints; they come from steady steps that respect how our brains and bodies adapt to change.

We unpack the ABC coaching tool, a simple, repeatable way to make progress effortless and consistent, making it feel less like a war with yourself and more like a rewarding collaboration.

If you’re ready to evolve on purpose - this guide is your blueprint. Subscribe, share with someone who’s hungry for change, and leave a review to help more people find a gentler path to lasting growth.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Feeling flat, unmotivated, or stuck in your head?  

We walk through a simple, science-backed way to get moving again:  3 precise questions that flip inertia into momentum, replace vague drama with evidence, and turn discipline into something you can do on cue. Starting with Newton’s first law, we connect the physics of motion to the psychology of habits, showing why starting feels hard and why it gets easier once you cross the first minute. No pep talks, no clichés—just clear prompts that work on Mondays, during setbacks, and when doubt is loud. 

Along the way, we share a client story, practical micro-steps, and ways to keep these prompts visible so they interrupt hesitation in real time. You’ll learn how the brain conserves energy with easy narratives, how to counter with better questions, and how two focused minutes can flip your state and protect your identity as a person of action. If you’re ready to spend less time arguing with yourself and more time taking steps that compound, this toolkit is for you.  

If this episode helped you move, share it with a friend who needs a gentle push forward, subscribe for more mental models and tools, and leave a review to help others find the show. Which question will you use first?  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Ever feel split between the warm safety of what you know and the cold thrill of what could be?  

We unpack how competing priorities like comfort, growth, belonging, ambition, and health can collaborate instead of collide. 

Then we hand you a simple, powerful toolkit: 5 coaching questions to illuminate what each option protects, what the conflict says about who you’re becoming, how each path serves comfort and growth, and how to design decisions that honor more than one value at a time.  

Expect practical, usable examples, how to keep the hike and the blanket, the ambition and the recovery, the treat and the training—without drifting into all-or-nothing thinking. This is about building a wider container for a whole life, where focus sharpens because you stop wasting energy denying parts of yourself that matter. 

If you’re ready to make choices that feel aligned instead of adversarial, press play, take notes, and try the questions this week. If the episode helps, share it with a friend who’s standing at a crossroads, subscribe for more tools, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

What if your goals didn’t need more willpower, just better engineering?  

We break down a practical, client-tested system that helps hundreds of people to achieve the best shape of their life and keep it, a system that shifts you from just planning to the right kind of preparing so your intentions survive real life. Using Navy SEAL-level readiness as a metaphor, we map the 5 moves that make change stick.  

You’ll learn how to define “done” so clearly you can describe it like a movie, then reverse-engineer steps from that finish line. From there, we draw a hard line between planning and preparing. Planning is the checklist. Preparing is the logistics: what you’ll eat, when you’ll shop, where food will be stored, how you’ll handle late meetings, travel days, and mornings that go sideways. By stress-testing your plan upfront, you remove excuses before they appear.  

Next, we show how systems outperform discipline.  

You’ll hear simple ways to make the right action easy and the wrong action hard—staging tools where the behavior starts, preloading meals and shakers, and stripping out friction points that derail progress. We also get tactical about accountability, from enlist-your-team check-ins to light public commitments that raise the stakes just enough to double adherence, a pattern supported by health research. Finally, we walk through measuring what matters, reflecting on obstacles, and adjusting fast so momentum never stalls.  

If you’ve ever watched a goal wither after day 3, this conversation gives you a repeatable framework to protect your plan from chaos of daily life.  

Subscribe, share with a friend who’s stuck, and leave a review to help more people build systems that make success the default. 

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

What if your habits didn’t rely on willpower at all?  

We dive into the overlooked superpower of behavior change. Instead of forcing motivation, we focus on removing friction: the tiny barriers that keep you from starting. Along the way, we unpack real stories that show how visibility, proximity, and preloaded steps consistently beat discipline.  

Angela shares how a 25-year exercise streak survives busy seasons and travel by relying on zero-friction options.  

We look at how a single choice transforms eating habits without any extra effort. Then we jump to the desk: a client’s under-desk treadmill gathers dust until we this, turning intention into daily miles. Another leader’s “progress and purpose” team check-ins finally happen once we write a short script.  

Same people, same goals—new environments that make action obvious.  

You’ll learn practical ways to make good choices inevitable. 

By shrinking the setup and clarifying the first move, you eliminate decision fatigue and let systems do the heavy lifting. The result is consistency that feels natural, not forced.  

If you’re ready to trade heroic effort for smart design, this conversation will give you the playbook: reduce friction, set gentle defaults, and build surroundings that pull you forward.  

Listen now, try one change today, and tell us what you removed to make your next good choice automatic. If this helped, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who’s striving for better habits.  

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

Big goals are easy to write and hard to live.

When strategies promise transformation but leave people asking what do I do on Monday, momentum dies and the execution gap widens.

We sat down with Andrea Olson -  behavioral scientist, Harvard Business Review contributor, TEDx speaker, and founder of a change agency that works with companies from $300M to $36B. She's helped some of the biggest organizations in the world figure out why their strategy looks great on paper and dies in execution. We unpack how to move from lofty visions to daily behaviors that actually change outcomes.

We'll chat about:

• Why "getting the right people in the right seats" is nearly meaningless without a definition of right
• The mistake most companies make at the top with their strategy that cascades down into chaos
• What Andrea calls a "Rosetta Stone" — a simple tool to translate high-level strategy into real behaviors for every person, from the CEO to the janitor
• Why SMART goals aren't the answer at the strategy level (and what is)
• The 2 things that actually change behavior at work: confidence and belief
• Why culture and strategy aren't two separate things, and why treating them that way is costing you
• How to help your team make better decisions in uncertainty without just telling them what to do
• The Undercover Boss move every executive should be making right now
• What AI adoption really requires, and why "everyone just use it" is not a strategy
• ...

This one is for every leader, business owner, and striver who's tired of watching great plans go nowhere. 

Expect concrete language, role-level guidance, and a step-by-step way to cascade strategy without crushing initiative.

Subscribe, share with a leader who needs a clearer path from plan to action, and leave a review telling us the one behavior you’ll change this week.

Connect with Andrea:

• Personal website: andreabelkolson.com
• Pragmadik: pragmadik.com
• LinkedIn: Search Andrea Belk Olson 

Andrea's work:

• Articles on Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc. Magazine, and World Economic Forum — just Google "Andrea Belk Olson" or check out one of my favorites, "Jargon is Hurting Your Strategy"
• Her book What To Ask: How To Learn What Customers Need but Don't Tell You — available on her website and everywhere books are sold
• Her upcoming book Execution Drift: The Invisible Forces that Derail Strategy Implementation and How to Fix It — available for pre-order at andreabelkolson.com

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Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.

We unpack a simple, revealing contrast - the same person, the same goals, and the same low-energy, being sick week produced 2 outcomes: 1 habit failed, 1 succeeded - and the difference came down to this.

Our goal is to help you build habits that work when life doesn’t. If you design the path so the right action is the easiest action, consistency stops relying on willpower and starts relying on structure.

If this conversation helps you see change through a systems lens, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s stuck, and leave a quick review to spread the word. What’s the one habit you’ll redesign this week?

Text Me Your Thoughts and Ideas

Support the show

Brought to you by Angela Shurina  

Certified Health, Sleep, Performance & Executive Coach 360 with 18 years of experience helping people change to feel, be and do their best.