How to reprogram your brain to make the right choices. Implementation intention.

TUNE IN TO LEARN:

Have you ever felt frustrated by your inability to follow through on things you genuinely want to do?   

That gap between intention and action isn't a character flaw - it's neurobiology at work. 

What if you could reprogram your brain to automatically do the things that align with your goals and values?  

In this episode, we dive deep into implementation intentions, a powerful psychological tool that creates neural pathways for better follow-through. This isn't about willpower or motivation; it's about understanding how your brain works and leveraging that knowledge to your advantage. 

I share my personal struggles with consistency in podcast recording, language learning, client deliverables, and presentation preparation - and how implementation intentions transformed these areas of my life. 

What makes this approach so effective is that it works with your brain's natural tendency toward efficiency rather than fighting against it.  

What important action have you been struggling to take despite knowing its value?  

Try implementation intentions and experience the difference between hoping you'll do better and actually programming yourself for success.  

Share this episode with someone who could benefit from this research-backed approach to personal transformation, and let me know how it works for you!  

Transcript

Welcome and Today's Core Topic

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, I'm your executive coach, 360 Change Leadership and Culture Transformation Consultant. But here we simply get together three times per week to learn how to grow better, faster and more true to ourselves. Today we are talking about one of the I don't know core topics in coaching and core theme for anyone who is committed, who is interested in growing, in developing themselves. Today we're going to talk about how to get better at doing what we know we should do, and I'm not talking about something that somebody else told you to do or from the perspective of society, it's what you should do, but something that is aligned with who you see yourself becoming in the near or longer future. And you know that these are the things that you truly want to start implementing in your daily life, but somehow it just always gets away from you. Life gets in the way. You get busy, priorities, something, but you never seem to get to doing these things that you know will contribute to growing the future itself that you're absolutely excited and proud about. For example, as a coach in health and nutrition and wellness and recovery, I help a lot of my clients to dial in their eating habits and a lot of them, most of them, know what they got to do, what they got to eat, and they know that they feel better and they're going to look better and they just almost everything's going to get better and still they didn't do it and they're like Angela why? Why don't I do what I know, what I should do, and I really enjoy doing that, but somehow I get back to eating takeout and ordering stuff in restaurants. That doesn't really work for me.

The Habit Problem Explained

Speaker 1 2:09

And the why is the habit and the systems that make it easier to do what you usually do, the habitual thing. It's not that you're not capable of doing something different, or not even that it's harder capable of doing something different, or not even that it's harder. What is true is that you developed habits and habits like automatic programs for your brain. There is a trigger, a situation in your life and it jumpstarts this automatic response, this program, which is so much easier to implement than thinking about something new. And even though it might not be that much more difficult like making different choices in a it might not be that much more difficult like making different choices in a restaurant. There is not much more work involved. Whether you choose to order your fish and vegetables or you choose to order pasta, like everybody else does, there's not much more work involved on your part. It's just a different choice outside of your habitual, of your programmed response, and it takes a little bit of work to start choosing a different neural pathway, to start making a different choice. But once you do and you put the reps in, it's going to become just as habitual. Plus, you're going to look and feel better.

Implementation Intentions: The Solution

Speaker 1 3:21

But what is the underlying mechanism that you can start using a tool that will help you to do more of the things that you know you should be doing if you're truly committed to growing this future self that you're absolutely excited and proud about? There is a tool. It's called implementation intention. What it basically is learning to reprogram yourself in advance to do the right action, to do the action that you should do. That you must do, that you feel like this is aligned with who I want to become. So implementation intention it's who I want to become. So implementation intention how does it work? You can also Google it, chat, gpt. It's a quite popular, well-researched term and tool in behavioral psychology and used in different therapeutic and coaching practices and modalities. So implementation intention is creating if or when plans in advance and rehearsing it in your mind.

Speaker 1 4:29

So let's take the same situation in the restaurant. So, before going to a restaurant, you're going to sit down and writing down makes it even more powerful, make it even stickier in your brain and it's easier and faster to program it. So you rehearse in your brain or, even better, write it down. When I go to a restaurant, I will ask a waiter what do they have for fish and veggies? What can they offer to me with this or meat and veggies? I'm just using this as an example. So what is it they can offer, instead of looking at the menu, as I usually would do in choosing pasta or choosing what everyone else chooses, and I'm just going to go with it, and it's usually not the optimal choice. So implementation intention when I go to a restaurant, I'm going to ask the waiter to suggest something that has vegetables and that has fish or that has meat, something along these lines, and you close your eyes and you sit down and you relax and you rehearse it, rehearse it, rehearse it. You write it down. The more reps you do in advance, the easier it's going to be to do it once you're in a situation. It's reprogramming your mind in advance, putting the reps and what you actually do on a neurobiological level.

Speaker 1 5:50

You change your neural pathways. You literally build new neural pathways, those connections between your neurons. So when you are in a situation, the signal and therefore the action and the choice is going to go a lot easier. It's kind of like imagine you walk through the forest and imagine walking through the path that might not be the main road, but it's a little bit clearer, there are a little bit less, fewer leaves and it just seems a little bit more pronounced. It's going to be so much easier for your brain to think oh, this is the way, this is the path that I'm supposed to be taking, or this is the path to walk along. So the same happens in your brain. You kind of like create this weak but present path for your neurons to get the signal across. So when again you're in a situation, the signal already has a path and it's so much easier to make this choice and it feels more comfortable.

Real-Life Examples and Applications

Speaker 1 6:55

Some other situations from my personal life I noticed that I would never find the time to do podcasts on Friday morning. There is this walk, and then I just get into work and there are all these things that I got to finish at the end of the week, and so I sit down with myself. I'm like I want to deliver this podcast on time and Friday is not a good time. So I sit down and I said to myself from now on I'm going to record this Friday podcast on Wednesday, and I'm going to record three podcast episodes on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, when my mornings are more relaxed. And here we go. I'm doing exactly that and I pre-recorded it over the weekend with all my previous frustration, and I rehearsed it, rehearsed it, rehearsed it. And so Monday, tuesday, Wednesday today is day three when I'm recording my podcast, so you get your podcast on time.

Speaker 1 7:53

The second one I never seem to have time for my language learning anymore, and that is because I always try to do it at the end of the day, when I'm already tired and fatigued. And it's not the time issue, it's this mental state issue Just not great time for my learning at the end of the day, and I'm already not in the state to be able to absorb all this language learning. So I sat down with myself and I said from now on, I'm gonna at 12 pm when I see it's 12 pm and I usually take a lunch break Before that I'm gonna do a little bit of my Italian language learning. And guess what happened? I rehearsed it, rehearsed it, rehearsed it, and that's exactly what I'm doing. And now I don't have a problem with sticking with my intention to get better with my Italian and language learning and consistent with my language learning, language learning and consistent with my language learning.

Speaker 1 8:55

Another one I'm always seem to be behind my promises to my clients. Shame on me. But what would happen is I would tell my clients I'm going to send to you this worksheet by the end of the day, and then I would know that I already have my schedule packed for the day, and so I would send the next day or the day after, which isn't the end of the world, and my clients would probably only get to it on the weekends anyhow. But in my heart it felt very uncomfortable, because I pride myself on being the person who says they're going to do the thing and I'm going to do the thing, and nobody rushed me in the first place to say that I'm going to finish it by the end of the day. I could equally say I'm going to deliver it the next day or the day after. But what actually felt even better? For me to leave 15 minutes in my schedule to do that work that usually I have to do after each client session. So that's exactly what I did. I sat down with myself and I rehearsed. So now, for each session with my client, I'm going to leave additional 15 minutes after the session to do the work that I will promise on the session to do for my clients, and I put it on my schedule. I went ahead and put it on my schedule and I rehearsed it, rehearsed, it, rehearsed it that every time after my client's session I'm going to do this work, to deliver the worksheet or whatever tool we talked about. And I did exactly that and it's working. Implementation intentions are very powerful because, again, of the simple fact that well, a number one you rehearse it and you create a new program, so it is easier for the brain to implement what you wish or should or must be doing. And then the second big part of it is you build the systems to make it simple, to make it easy to make it happen, like me, putting in my calendar 15 minutes for this additional work for my clients, or scheduling and putting that in my calendar language learning at 12 pm and some reflection work as well, or another one.

Creating Systems for Success

Speaker 1 11:06

I always feel and that was a little bit back, maybe a few months back again I always felt like I was unprepared, underprepared, for my talks and for my workshops and it never felt good, like I'm not showing up as my best self. And so I told myself well, next time, for my next talk, for my next workshop, I'm going to schedule additional two hours in addition to the work that I usually do to prepare, to do the slides or to come up with the content, etc. I'm going to schedule additional two hours just for the prep. It doesn't matter when they're going to happen, but I'm going to schedule additional two hours. And I did that and guess what? I felt better prepared than ever and I feel so much more confident on stage or on Zoom in front of my clients, because that's what I felt was needed for me to deliver my best performance, my best work. And so I just sat down again with myself and I closed my eyes and I said next time when I'm going to have a workshop or a talk scheduled to my additional prep time. I'm going to add two hours and put them on my calendar to do the reps, to do the walk through, to do the actual rehearsal of the things that are already done the presentation, the final talk additional two hours. And I started doing that and the more I repeated to myself, the more I imagined, the easier it gets to actually get that done. And then again I always think about the systems okay, where, when on my calendar is going to be, how exactly it's going to go. So I rehearsed again with this talk example.

Speaker 1 12:56

I would imagine myself sitting down and getting my next gig, getting my workshop, getting my talk, and then right away scheduling the time for preparation, including those additional two hours to rehearse it, ideally with other people or at the very least with myself in front of the mirror. And to sum it up so what is it, guys? What is it that you know you should do, you know you must do, you know you want to do it because you want to grow this next version of yourself, but you never get to doing it. So sit down and ask yourself this question what, when, how will I need to do differently in order to make that happen? What are the systems that are not working and what are the systems that I can install. What is the run through, what is the procedure? What is the run-through, what is the procedure, what is the flow that I need to have in order for this to make happen? And once you decide on what exactly, it is like me scheduling additional two hours of prep before each workshop and talk.

Speaker 1 14:00

Now you start imagining that every time I'm going to get my assignment, every time I'm going to get my workshop, every time I'm going to get my talk, I'm going to sit down and book the prep time with those additional two hours. So I feel confident, well-prepared and I deliver, if not excellence, then my best. At that moment, and you run it through in your mind again and again, and again. Or when I get to a restaurant, I'm going to ask a waiter to give me their best options for fish and vegetables, some sort of fish and vegetables and you run it through your mind again and again, and again, and again. And then, obviously, when you're in a situation, just take a deep breath and do the thing that you said you're going to do, and it might feel uncomfortable, not like your usual self, but again, you don't have your usual self. You have your habitual self. You have habitualized certain choices and routines and you can just as easily well, maybe it's a little bit more work to make other things habitual. That's going to, after some reps and time, going to feel just as natural.

Speaker 1 15:09

So if you choose the thing that you never seem to get going and then sit down with yourself and run yourself through the script I'm going to do this, when, when and how, just again, create the whole situation and I did research the more of this recipe, so implementation intentions, people run through the stickier the behavior going to become and it becomes almost impossible that you're not going to do it.

Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Speaker 1 15:37

So sit down with yourself, do the 10 repetitions in your mind and see how much better you actually get things done. Hope this helps. Guys, don't forget to share this podcast episode with at least one other person, maybe your kid, maybe your relative, maybe your entrepreneur friend who don't forget to share this podcast episode with at least one other person, maybe your kid, maybe your relative, maybe your entrepreneur friend, who don't seem to get this specific routine or thing done. Share that with them. It's a legitimate psychology, research-based tool that will help you to get more right things done to get your growth personal growth, professional growth, business growth going and just do more of the things that you know you got to do to be the person you're proud of. Stay tuned, keep growing and, till next time, always ask yourself what is it in my way of living as my best self, and what systems can I put in place to make that happen? Stay tuned, keep growing and we'll chat very soon.