Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, and just someone who's really passionate and obsessed with human potential. Learning more about it, unlocking more of it, and using more of it in our daily life so together we can create the most extraordinary world and live the most extraordinary lives. Today, guys, you're gonna learn another coaching tool that I kind of knew but also learned and became more aware of recently. At one of the coaching sessions, I'm going through a couple of coaching certifications, and so we are learning all these new tools and exercises, and then we can use with our clients to help them change better, more consistently, faster, and most importantly to stay in that changed state and constantly keep building on it, constantly keep evolving. So, what will that tool, which is called spoiler alert, ABCs? Uh, what will this tool allow you to do? A personally to in encounter less of this personal resistance to change and self-sabotage, and you're gonna learn more about like why that self-sabotage happens in the first place. Also, it will allow you to help others to change when giving advice or helping them to move through something, blocking them, whether it's your family member, your kid, your spouse, your parent, your co-worker, someone you lead, someone you are friends with, it will allow to help people better to go through change as well. It will also give a little bit more joy, add a little bit more joy and pleasure into the process of change, whether self-change or you changing others. So it's a very beautiful and very simple tool, really easy to learn, just like learning your ABCs, and then you can keep it for life, and you'll be surprised how actually effective it is. And actually, it is not something like new and fancy that haven't been used before and was just invented. No, in other forms and shapes with different names, this tool has been used even in industries like Toyota industries, who really perfected the optimization of manufacturing, so they get to do a lot more work and outcomes with less time. So this principle works so well because it's a principle that is ingrained in human psychology almost, maybe even in the whole universe. Maybe that's how we change. We really change through revolution. More natural is a way of evolution, and that's what you're gonna learn today: how to evolve yourself. And I always like to bring up this image or this metaphor of how most people approach change. Like throwing folk into this boiling water. You probably read it or heard it when you throw a frog into boiling water, she jumps right back. But if you put it in a warmish water and warm it up further gradually, it actually stays there and you can almost cook it. But we also, all of us guys, think about your experience. You probably are familiar with this, like what you could tolerate or couldn't tolerate before. If you do it little by little, let's say you're trying to quit sugar, maybe you are going through this process. If you try to do it cold turkey, you feel it immediately, like the change, this abrupt change of state, and your almost inability to manage your state, maybe your metabolism with this abrupt change. But if you introduce it gradually, even though sometimes it feels harder, the change actually has a lot more potential to last, to stick with you, and not feel like a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice. But I want to start also with a little bit of reflection on my own work with clients. Especially with clients I work for one, two, sometimes three years. Through our work together, we go through this process of gradual change. Most of the time, the clients who come to me are people who are ready to take it step by step, small iteration on their change efforts at a time, and they need someone to keep them accountable, to track and measure their progress so they don't uh slide back into the old behavior and they remember why they started in the first place. So, with those clients that I get to work for one, two, three years, there is this amazing thing that happens that the person on the other side is almost the opposite, or very it's like two different people. They think different, their habits are different, what used to be hard is now easy, what once felt impossible is simply normal. I've seen the shift over and over and over again, and this reflection like just always blows my mind, like how profound this change can be, and how, as one of my clients shared, how effortless it actually feels in the process when you take it step by step. So, from couch potatoes, and these are real examples through my coaching practice, who never stepped into the gym to people who I sometimes have to convince to take a day off. From I'll sleep when I'm dead to recommending sleep to everyone when when seven hours becomes like a bad night. From eating your vegetables from potatoes as an only considered vegetable to enjoying kale chips or snacks and not having a day without a salad and traveling with roasted adamami and apples, just to make sure they get enough of their fiber. From I don't have a minute for myself, meditation is out of the question, like I don't have time to just sit and do nothing, to I want to get really good at this mindfulness thing, so I then have this unfair advantage of being calm and seeing more options and having more perspectives when everyone else is stressed, is just jumping all over the place. From burnout after burnout to weekly yoga, clear boundaries, sauna sessions, getting sick less often, and actually moving meaningful things forward in life more consistently and more often, not less. It's remarkable to witness and reflect on. But that's how overnight change happens. It usually takes one, I don't know, one year, two years, three years, depending on the change that you are trying to do. But the most important thing, guys, when you approach it in this way, it feels again almost effortless, as my clients share. And it also, if you're trying to help someone else to change, it also decreases a lot their resistance. It also gives them the feeling of autonomy, like they are choosing it, and it makes again change feel doable and desirable and something they can keep. If another story before we jump into the tool, the ABCs of change from my childhood. I remember when I was a kid, like you wouldn't you would think it was you know a different kid because now I eat four or five hundred vegetables, a lot of them are green vegetables like Brussels sprouts and I don't know, broccoli and all kinds of green beans and all kinds of Swiss church and spinaches. When I was a kid, and we are gonna be introducing this A B C tool in the story as well. When I was a kid, on my A list of accepted vegetables, anytime easy, were basically two things potatoes and carrots. Those are the only things I would accept. On my B list, sometimes not my favorite but acceptable, were things like tomatoes and cucumbers, lettuce and cabbage. And then I had a C list. Best avoid it, and I'd rather stay hungry. So if I if I saw onions or anything green on my plate, I would say I'm not eating it, or I'm staying hungry, or give me something else. Alright, so those were my list. And if I was a parent back then, I then would try to incorporate more and more of the billest vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce and cabbages, and also maybe mixing in, studying mixing in more onions, but you know, in smaller portions, then something green, maybe like green peas that were kind of you know, probably okay. I don't remember how my parents did it, but I do remember that the first time I tried broccoli was when I was maybe like 25. And since then I'm you know gradually increased my vegetable consumption, and I started to love brussels, sprouts, and a lot of other vegetables that a lot of people consider like yuck. No, I just love them, I would eat them every day. But again, that didn't happen overnight, and when my clients work, when we're together, we work on introducing new habits into their life these days, whether that's exercise or better nutrition or mindfulness and meditation or communication skills, we map out their ABCs first, right? So, A list. What can you confidently do right now, which is moving you towards that aspiration that you have? Like, what's on your A list? B list, what could you do with some effort and support, and maybe in smaller amounts, but uh usually you know A B C's, the reason why we have different actions is because different actions produce different degrees of change, right? So let's say running high-intensity interval sprints or doing some heavy squats and deadlifts that might produce change faster. But if you are just a beginner into exercise, that will feel unapproachable. Not only that, you're probably not gonna be able to do them well and not probably gonna be recovering well, and you're gonna feel exhausted and it's gonna almost ruin your entire day after that kind of workout. It would be just challenging, something you will most probably quit. But if we introduce maybe bodyweight squats and maybe you know, bodyweight lunges, and then we introduce a little bit of weight, a little bit at a time, and maybe we're gonna do not such a high-intensity of sprints, but some acceleration in that running, or maybe that would be jumping or walking, whatever that might be again, depending on the level of fitness of a person. I'm using exercise is just one example, right? And yes, my clients also used to a lot of them used to start with what I call kids' nutrition, just like potatoes and maybe carrots, and as fruit, maybe some apples, and then gradually we would explore all these different other options in the easiest way possible, cooked in the way they might like it, with the spices and herbs, and also maybe mixed in more with something, just they recommend to uh start kids on green vegetables, maybe mixing them into some really delicious uh morsly fruit smoothie. So, this ABC tool, right? On the A list, what you can do right now confidently and consistently, and what you like, but it's still moving you towards that maybe better nutrition or exercise or better speaking or better communication, then be list what you can do with some effort, with some support, with some dressing, so to speak, mixing it in, right? But that has to like has a tendency to produce more results and be more effective. Like eating spinach is more effective than eating, I don't know, potato or lettuce. Green vegetables have these powerful nutrients, antioxidants that you don't really find in a lot of other vegetables. But for a lot of people, it's you know an undeveloped skill of cooking them or finding how to make them convenient and consistent. So very often it's either on the B list or on the C list. And then C list, what feels like not now, maybe never. But realizing that that is actually a temporal condition. These days I do all kinds of training with weight and I I uh squat more than my body weight, and I do pull-ups, so like today I did I did four four sets of eight pull-ups with pretty good technique, and I used to not being able to do like two, right? And so pull-ups for me were on the not now, maybe never list, but now I do them this four sets of more and more repetitions every week, at least once a week. So, this list, the powerful concept and why they work so well when especially you use them in coaching, is you create your list, let's say, for exercise or for nutrition or for communication or for different projects, and you put things on A list, on B, again, what can be done with some support and some effort on your C list, and you start working on your A list more consistently. Something on that list that you can do that moves you again towards that aspiration, that improvement of a skill, whether that's nutrition or exercise or fitness or communication or stress management or sleep. So you do more of an A-list, but then you also throw in maybe once a week, maybe a couple of times per week, the B list items, and you spend maybe less time on them and you work on them of maybe less intensely, but you still incorporate them on a regular basis, and then after a while, maybe you incorporate them. Like with my clients again, we start sometimes with once a week exercise, and then they gradually transition to two days, and then three, and then four, and then like I'm gonna be exercising every day. I'm like, Well, you also need to take some days off, right? So that's how your B-list becomes your A-list, and then what was impossible for you, like that high-intensity sprinting, now might become possible, and now you might start squatting and doing pull-ups or eating those Brussels sprouts. Right? So this beautiful thing starts happening almost effortlessly, and that's the beauty of it. C becomes B, B becomes A, and entirely new possibilities appear that weren't even imaginable before. So your identity shifts from non-excider to accessider, from non-speaker to a regular frequent public speaker. Uh, your capacity expands, the person that you are evolves. And again, the beauty of it is that it feels like it's effortless. You also, you yourself will start feeling like you're giving yourself autonomy and choice instead of pushing yourself into change that produces resistance, that raises stress hormones in your nervous system, and that actually what causes a lot of self-sabotage. That's what actually causes other people to resist what you say. You are introducing too abrupt of a change too much too fast. Instead of creating this list, you might even do it as a team, and then asking people to change, to choose something to put on their A-list, on B list, on C list, and do mostly A-list, but then introduce some B list activities and you track and measure and start shifting things from one list to the other little by little. And just like with my kid food preferences, they evolved over time. Today, again, I regularly eat and genuinely enjoy things my younger self would have refused completely. Like Brussels sprouts, surgeons, even Nato, which is a fermented bean thing popular in Japan. But a lot of people say it tastes like dirty feet, which I actually don't think so, but anyhow. So change works like that too for most of us. What once felt impossible becomes familiar, then easy, then part of who we are. So the and the key concept here, or something I want you to understand, is that don't get too attached to your old self, thinking that your C list is gonna always be your C list. No, you can transition it with regular practice into B and then into A, and then you might discover a whole different alphabet, many more letters to explore. You and by being too attached to our old self, we might accidentally block the new one that's trying to enter through those ABCs. Right? So, over to you, dear listener, dear change partner. What change do you want to make right now in your life? What do you wanna do more, become more, get more of? And what can you put on your A list of practices? B list and C list. Make that list again. A anytime I love doing that, I can totally see myself doing that consistently. B list is well, with some support, some effort, not that frequently. I need to pace myself there. What is there for you in terms of practices? And then C list. Like, no, I really don't imagine myself doing that. I'd like the idea of that, but not not right now. Again, it might even feel like never. So create this three lists and put on your calendar practices mostly from A list, and then some B again with some support, some effort, make sure that the systems of support are there, some encouragement, some accountability, perhaps even some coaching and some feedback is really really good for B items. And then put again things on your C list somewhere. Put your C list somewhere, maybe a note on your calendar, and maybe an email scheduled in advance. So with some cadence, maybe once in a couple of weeks, once a month, you look at it and try it again. You know, I'm gonna be getting into handstands at some point, and for now, for me, this is like C list. But I know that I can transition to B list and A-list, just like right now. I stand, I can stand for a couple of minutes on my hands by the wall, which was at some point also on my C list. So now it's my B list. Well, it's probably even A-list. So things are will always be shifting. The challenge when you do it yourself without a coach or any accountability, is you need to create that accountability so you actually remember to work on A-list, on B list, and looking at your C list and shifting items so you actually progress towards that ideal state that you're trying to create, whether that's health state, fitness state, relationship, your leadership, your work skills, so whatever your occupation is. ABCs as a tool is very powerful. Toyota industries used a similar principle, which they call Kaizen, which is gradual change that creates this effortless transition, which then creates transformational results. And ABC as a tool is something we can easily all of us relate to. You can teach it to a kid, you can teach it to a spouse, you can teach it to a parent, and most importantly, you can start practicing it yourself. Before you jump off, guys, don't forget please to share this episode, to rate, review anywhere you find your podcast on so we can reach more learning and eager to change here. So together we can create more positive change and we can improve the world, create more positive impact, and spread the right vibe of gradual but consistent, persistent change around. So do that, and to sum up again, choose an area of change. I recommend starting with one where you have a clear vision of who you want to become, and then on a sheet of paper, create three columns: A list, B list, C list, A list, practices you can do consistently and comfortably towards that change state, that vision of yourself. On a B, in a B column, you write down things that you can do with some support less frequently, uh where you actually might need a little bit of a help. And on a C list, things that right now are not doable, but you want to move towards that list. At some point in terms of practices, and put on your calendar A items, some B items here and there, and then C list. You check in with that every couple of weeks, every month to see when you can start actually transitioning C items to B list and B to A list, etc. And it never stops. That's the beauty of change, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for listening, and till next time, keep growing.