Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation. Someone who's really passionate about learning more, about improving, increasing our chances to unlock more of our human potential, to use it in our life and work. So together we can create more positive impact and live the most extraordinary lives. And on today's podcast, you're gonna learn three simple questions that I gathered through years of practice, my coaching skills with my clients, uh, learning, reading hundreds of books, listening to hundreds of podcasts. Like I've been in it for a while. And sometimes you learn those like nuggets of uh wisdom, those tools or micro uh micro tips that really make a difference and save you a lot of time. And specifically today, you're gonna learn how to choose the right kind of actions to take to pursue some long-term complex goals, how to stick with those actions, how to learn better from your successes, and most importantly, how to succeed in your life more and achieve more results without having to hope for some miraculous transformation of you, but instead actually having you as you are, using the skills, the talents, the personality that you have, and at the same time reaching the next level of your goals, of your life achievement or transformation. So without without further ado, let's begin. You know, guys, in my coaching practice and in life in general, I learned that change and transformation isn't that complex in a sense that it requires only two things. It requires practice and it requires feedback. If you only practice and never get concrete feedback from someone who can name what's working and what's not and why, you'll improve but kind of slowly and you'll get stuck a lot more often and you'll repeat your mistakes and blind spots, like without feedback. You know why professional athletes, Olympic athletes, uh, people at the top of the game get a lot of coaching, mentorship, feedback from people around them. Why is that so effective? Well, because when you're told right away what to do better to achieve your goals, so to make less mistakes, to get more frustrations. As a human, you have this capacity to choose to change, and most of us do. And that's why feedback is so powerful. In fact, research shows that the faster, the more precise the feedback is, the faster we learn and adjust and get better, right? So feedback is like a super fuel for change, for transformation, for growth. And but feedback is not possible without practice. Practice comes first. Without practice, there is nothing to give feedback on. It's kind of like reflection that doesn't work without you actually living the life, doing the imperfect work first, so then you can reflect on that and adjust. So you can think and reflect, but if you don't take as much action, then guess what? You're not gonna be learning a lot because there is not a lot to learn from. And but then the most important question comes when you're trying to achieve a complex goal or improving a complex skill, like you're trying to be healthier or you are trying to get better at speaking, on writing. The challenge becomes what I start with, like what actions do I take? What practices do I approach? Even in health, you know, do I start working on health and in fitness and sleep and stress management, or I need to work on all of that all at the same time, which doesn't actually work that well in our complex and over busy life already? The same with writing or speaking, should I work on my accent? Should I work on my volume? Should I work on my tonality? Should I work on my pacing? What is it that I need to work on to start moving forward and closer to my ideal or my aspiration? And or sometimes we have this goal, like again, I want to be healthier or I want to have better relationships. How do you actually know what to start working on on Monday morning or Tuesday or Wednesday? And the next question will help you figure out what to start working on and how, which is now no less important, you can measure whether you're moving forward or closer towards your aspiration or nowhere. You want to be healthy. What does it mean to be healthy for you? Does it mean to have more energy, to sleep better, to have, I don't know, lower body fat percentage, to have certain exercise or fitness scores, right? Being able to run, being able to lift heavier, what does it mean for you? But a really good question to help you figure out what to practice is asking yourself this question: if I wave a waved a magic wand and tomorrow a miracle happened and everything you want in that goal became reality, how would you notice? What would change in your daily life, in your perception or your experience of life and self? Like, how would you know? Because then you and by answering this question, you start understanding that hey, actually there are a couple of things that are important to me, and that what it means to me to have better health or to have better fitness or to have better relationships or to become a better writer or a better coach, right? So those things, specific things, matter to me, and then you can design the practice to start moving closer towards those things that matter to you, whether that's again let's say writing, so people comment more, share more of my content, so there is more engagement, or when I read it, so it is much easier to grasp, much faster, and it's like sort of flows through your mind and from your tongue. Like, how would I know if a miracle happened? How would I notice? How would I see it? So, this question helps you to nail that those specific attributes or measurements that you can start designing practice around and start getting closer towards that more, maybe complex or more uh sort of not fluffy, but not so easy to always define and measure goal. So that's number one, the miracle question. Uh, also very applicable to work environment. When you let's say you're working on designing a leadership development program or a culture development program, like we want to have more transparency or trust or safety or diversity. Like, how would you know if you have it? Because if you can't videotape it, if you can't notice it, if you can't measure it, it's almost impossible to design any intervention that actually is gonna have the desired effect. So that's why the miracle question is so powerful and so needed. The second question will help you to figure out how to be more consistent a lot faster and a lot easier with the practice that you want to do. And the question is it's called the constrained question. I learned it from reading about uh fast food restaurants and manufacturing where they try to optimize as much as possible. So obviously, there is less waste, there is more speed, and they can create a lot more value, a lot more faster, and get more profitable. So, in high performance performance production and also in places like McDonald's where the speed really matters, they focus on one constraint and they ask a question: what is the one constraint that at the moment does not allow us to move faster? Because if we don't work with that constraint, nothing else matters. So if let's say you can't flip burgers fast enough, it doesn't matter how fast you put your ketchup on because you're always gonna be limited, or how many service you have. If you have only one oven or grill and you can only make so many burgers per minute, it doesn't matter how many people you have, you're still gonna be only able to do that many burgers. So the constraint, for example, here is flipping those burgers, more of them. In our personal lives, like when you ask yourself this question, let's say about health, I wanna eat healthy. Okay, what does it mean to first of all, you know, magic wand? What does it mean to eat healthy? How would you notice if you did it tomorrow? But then asking yourself, why isn't it happening already? Why don't I eat healthy already? Is it because there is nothing healthy in my fridge or it's very hard to get, or it's so in a unappealing, and I have to do so much work to make those meals? Maybe you don't even know how to make them, maybe you don't have groceries, maybe you have no idea how to make a balanced meal. But a very simple example from my coaching practice with a client who was trying to eat more fruit, and we did the same thing. We asked, Why don't you eat more fruit already if you truly want to do that? And he said that, well, whenever I want to eat fruit, it's like some sort of pineapple or orange, some fruit that requires work, or it's not even there, or it's hidden somewhere in the fridge, and you have to take it out of the package and you have to wash it, and you have to like do all this additional work, where it's like your snack is right there, ready to eat, ready to pop into your mouth. And when we redesigned his environment, so his fruit cut and ready to eat is right there when he opens up his fridge on the in the middle on the middle shelf. When we did that, he started eating his fruit without fail. Right? The same person, the same discipline, some same willpower, nothing changed about the person, but a lot changed about his constraint, about his environment. So the purpose of this question is what is my number one constraint and why am I not doing this already right now? The purpose is to see where you have friction and where it is not as easy as other options and redesign your system, your environment so your future self has a lot more chance to succeed and do the right thing without again reinventing yourself or changing yourself or getting more willpower or discipline. So, question number two, which will allow you to be more consistent with any practice, is asking yourself, why don't I do this already? What's in the way? What's my number one constraint? And then the third question when it is helpful when especially you can't pinpoint exactly what's in the way, but uh certain things that you want happen sometimes. Like sometimes my writing does get good engagement, and sometimes my writing does get uh people emailing me and seeing saying thank you and how it was helpful to them. Sometimes there are more comments, sometimes there are shares. Like, what happens then? Right? It's my own success example, and how can I reverse engineer that to copy some of those success principles so it happens more often? Let's say you want to eat healthy, and let's say there was a week or maybe a day when you did eat healthy and when it was easy and you accomplished that goal, or maybe you want to sleep better and you can't get to bed on time, but maybe there were a couple of nights when you actually did it and when you slept better, and we when you had this, I don't know, great day of healthy eating or exercising. What happened that? How did you make it happen? I was talking to a client of mine and we were discussing willpower, and she shared with me how she wants to stop having one drink every night and instead just limit it to social occasions. And she said, Well, sometimes I do manage not to drink it. And we started talking about when when that happens and you manage to not have a drink at night. Wait, what happens then? How do you manage to do that? And then she shared how she pays uh special attention to her routine and to not doing that and organizing her evening in a different way so she doesn't feel or uh doesn't have this urge or craving, or it's just inconvenient to have that drink. And we talked about that, and then we ask her questions okay, how can we manufacture the same environment so that happens every day? So maybe you do have more awareness, you do have more reminders, you do have more accountability, so you have the right kind of attention, and so it's also not that easy. And maybe you have a different drink to enjoy your movies with something besides alcohol. And learning from your successes, it's super powerful because also it means that it is very applicable to your life, and it can be reinvented or multiplied a lot easier than if you were to listen to someone else's advice. So, three questions that will help you again to turn your more complex, your more like nebulous, fluffy, you know, something that is harder to define, like maybe culture at work, helps you to define your goal in the language of practices and actions. So the miracle question: how would I know the miracle happened? How would I notice that I'm I've gotten closer or got to my goal? So then you can design practices that can lead you towards that aspiration. The second one is the constraint question: Why don't I do it already? Why don't we do that already? What's in the way? What's the easier or more default or more like option that gets top of mind? What is it? Like, what's in the way? What's our number one constraint? And then you redesign the system to make the desired practice, the desired action as easy, as visible, rewarding. You know, the action that you would take without thinking. And then the third question will help you to get more ideas about what can work in your situation or in your life. Like, who's already succeeding if it's a workplace and you're trying to change culture? Like, who's already doing that? Let's learn from those people. What do they do differently? Or your own self if you are designing your personal change. Where do I succeed when I do succeed? And what can I learn from my you know more successful, smarter self from those more successful in regards to my goal days? What can I learn from that more successful me? Whether that's when you accomplish eating better or sleeping better or exercising or working on your writing or your public speaking. So when you do do that, how do you do that? And then redesign your days, your systems, your structures, your practices in this way. So you have a lot bigger chance of succeeding by learning from yourself. So the miracle question, the constraint question, and the bright spot question. Those three questions again will help you to translate less easy to define goals into actions and practices, will help you to stick better without relying on your willpower and discipline and changing yourself or changing other people. If you are working on redesigning, reshaping your culture or team performance, right? That's where systems become even more powerful because you can't really change other people and you don't even know what they think about that change or how bought in they are into that change. And then the third question again, learn from your successes, from the successes of your team, from the successes of your company. Where do we succeed already? And how can we create more of that success? Or maybe history of your company, right? You did that once. So, how can we multiply, replicate that again? And that's about it, guys. Don't forget to please share, rate, review this podcast so we reach more ears, so we learn together, we unlock more human potential together. So, all around us, there are more and more people, more aware, more successful who are growing towards the future self that they want. So, share, rate, review, and thank you guys again. The miracle question, the constraint question, and the bright spot question to help you grow results in your life without reinventing yourself or trying to become a superhuman, but instead set yourself up, you as you are for success more often. Again, three questions the miracle question, the constraint question, and the bright spot question. If you have any questions, please reach questions, please reach out to info at your bestculture.com. That's my email. Connect on Instagram, Angela Brainbody Coach, all one word. And till next time, keep paying attention, keep asking the right questions, and keep growing.