Psychology Updated: how to program your brain 101. Follow through on what you said you would do.

Ever notice how big goals melt into "some day land" when the day gets messy?  

On today's episode, we break down a simple, evidence-backed tool that turns “I should” into “I did,” replacing fragile motivation with clear cues and automatic actions. Instead of relying on willpower, we show how to script your behavior like software: a specific trigger, a concrete next step, and a defined finish line that delivers a quick reward your brain actually remembers.  

Who does what, when, where, how often, and with whom?  

A fundamental question to answer if you want to get good at programming your brain for challenging, consistent action.  

You’ll hear a practical running example that moves from vague hopes to precise routines: when to act, what to wear, where to go, and how to know you’re done. We layer in environment design to remove hidden friction and temptation bundling to make new habits feel rewarding right away. The goal is less decision-making in the moment and more doing on cue. 

Then we add the secret amplifier: WOOP—Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. By naming likely blockers upfront - low energy, surprise tasks, bad weather - and writing alternative if-then plans for each, you keep momentum even when the day doesn’t cooperate. You’ll learn how to apply the same structure to leadership, feedback, learning, and communication, so your next move is already decided when it matters. Fewer negotiations with yourself, more consistent action, and a system that sticks. 

If you’re ready to trade hope for a reliable plan, press play and build your first brain program today!  

3-minute blog this episode is based on: The simple trick that 2X your chances of doing what you said you would. Programming your brain to follow through 101  

Transcript

Coaching’s Timeless Foundations

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello 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 and transformation. Your executive leadership coach 360, and just someone who is obsessed with the process of change, of personal and collective evolution and unlocking more of our human potential through intentional design of environments, choices, and our habits. Today we're gonna learn one tool. By the end of today's podcast, guys, you're gonna learn a tool which in research allows you to achieve your goals that require doing 2x double or more with the probability of achieving those goals and taking consistent action, 2x double or more chances of doing so. You know what I love about the arena of coaching as a craft, as something I'm mastering. I love coaching because it's based on timeless principles that we are discovering and deepening our understanding of. So coaching is based on something timeless. You know, compared to technology, let's say AI or or any other technology, but specifically AI, which is literally evolving in front of our eyes sometimes. It's like, oh, ChatGPT could do that, but then now it can. And obviously, I'm not an AI builder or expert, and there are you know, ChatGPT is just one outcome of AI as developing technology. But what I'm trying to say here, what I love about coaching is that it's based on timeless things like human biology, like human psychology and human brain. And yes, they changed that's what we know from evolution, and we had different species and Homo sapiens as species developed as well, and probably we are keep developing, but it seems that we are developing in a way that's gonna deepen or enhance what we already have, not fundamentally change it. What I also mean is I love coaching, whether that's health coaching or coaching for high performance or leadership or executive mindset coaching. What I like about those disciplines, and again, coaching as a methodology, as something as a craft, is that they are based on timeless principles like biology and psychology that just don't change that fast. And we are developing new tools and strategies that are getting more and more effective at getting the best out of us humans, and because they are fundamentally based on evolving research, and because they're based on something that doesn't change that much at all for the last you know few hundreds of years. So we've had this timeless themes in humanity which we just keep exploring, like for example, this conflict between what we want now and what we want long term, like our need for convenience and ease, and our necessity to make complex decisions, or better say, decisions about complex world in a short period of time, and that's why we go for biases and shortcuts, otherwise, we just wouldn't be able to interact with such a world of complexity, right? So, coaching as a methodology is just built on this uh fast of knowledge accumulated by decades and centuries of research and observation and studies, and it's an amazing field to be in because we are getting more and more effective as a field coaching, but what we are learning about doesn't change that much. Human biology and psychology they don't evolve that fast, and so we can kind of catch up really well with new methodologies, tools, and strategies, and we can and will struggle less and less with some fundamental human problems, like for example, wanting one thing long term, but ending up doing other things short-term that undermine our ability to achieve that long-term aspiration because our short-term needs and our bias, present bias, seem to be more essential, or they seem to be more important and urgent, and that's how, again, a lot of us end up not doing much for our decade-long goals, satisfying our short-term needs, and that can be changed and that can be different, and that's what coaching as a field learning and which is based on what psychology research does. And today you're gonna learn right now, you're gonna learn a very simple tool that when you apply it, right? Nothing works until you actually do it, just like with I don't know, if you are working on some sleep routines or exercise or eating routines, like they don't work unless you do the work. And so the tool that you are about to learn helps you to do the work because it works with how your brain is designed to trigger or to implement automatic responses to the cues or different what you call it, like reminders in your environment. So, what am I talking about here? Let's say uh, well, in one of my recent masterclasses, a person, the masterclass was actually about mindset and resilience and emotional regulation, but I always bring up some stuff around physiology and how exercise, for example, is important for our emotional regulation again, based on data and research. And then somebody will, of course, ask, I think, like, well, yeah, I know, kind of understand that exercise is really good for my psychology and my emotions, but I struggle to make it inconsistent still. So, what do I do? And I asked the person at the masterclass, like, what do you usually do? What how how is it not working? What makes it not work? And she said, But it seems like that I lack motivation, and then also I just uh don't follow any routine, which were two separate problems, and I talked a little bit about motivation and the reason how she can improve your motivation for exercise in the first place, because without that, like if you don't have her any reason that you actually believe in, it's gonna be hard to impossible for you to do anything, especially something that is more challenging, like exercise. But besides that, I asked her, Well, how do you plan your exercise? So, what are you trying to do for exercise? And she thought for a moment and she's like, Well, I'm kind of trying to run. And from the way she said it, I could hear that there was no routine set up for her to actually give the running a fair chance of surviving in her life. And what I mean by that is I ask her, well, when do you want to exercise? For how long? And is it easy enough? Like, do you actually have time for that? What do you do? Are you trying to do it in the best time for you physically? Like when you feel energized? Do you do it in the best time of your day when you are not rushed by other things in your day already? Like when, how and what success looks like for you, let's say for the next week to start training. I should like, well, um, I kind of think I want to run maybe in the evening um after work and and everything. And then I asked her to walk herself through a precise routine that she could stick with. So, what I mean by that is when I finish work, let's say you work from home, when I finish work, I'm gonna put on my shoes, and my shoes are gonna be right there, and I'm gonna go for a 20-minute run around the block. And in psychology, in research on human behavior, they call this technique, which again have been shown to double or more your chances to follow through with the actions required to achieve your goal, like, for example, getting fitter, healthier, and improve your emotional regulation. In the meantime. So, implementation intentions are highly effective, as research shows, they can double the chances of achieving goals by turning vague plans like I'm gonna run after my work somewhere there, into specific actionable if-then statements. If then, when I finish my work, it's kind of like in programming, guys. If you did any programming in your life, you know this if-then cycles. If like this happens, then this has to happen. And you write a lot of those if-thens to make the software adjust to different scenarios, different user inputs, etc. But the same, actually, your brain works quite the same. It just if is the situation in your life. So she finishes her work, and let's say she turns off her computer, and then she puts her on her shoes and goes for a 20-minute run. Right? So, actionable if-then statements. The strategy works by automating responses again, just like a software program. When you push a button, it does this. When you click that menu option, it does this. So your brain works exactly the same. When I close my computer, I'm gonna put on my shoes, I'm gonna go for a 20-minute trend. Right? So, when a specific situation is encountered, the desired behavior is triggered automatically, like this, like a push of a button, do this. Reducing the need for willpower and conscious decision making at that moment. And if you think about that, when you try to implement something more or less challenging, what stops you often is that decision making and thinking that occurs. So you need to eliminate that as much as possible by automating decision making and creating these if-then scenarios, which are very similar to how you would program a computer. So eliminating conscious decision making at that moment by predetermining the when, where, and how of goal-related behaviors. Individuals can better handle distractions and self-regulatory problems. And I wrote a blog about it on Daily Thought for Change. The link is gonna be in the show notes for this blog. It's very short, it's like a three-minute read. The title of the blog was The Simple Trick That To Axe Your Chances of Doing What You Said You Would, Programming Your Brain to Follow Through One On One. And it is really programming your brain one-on-one. Your brain works to some degree like a computer. Computers actually were made in an image of the brain, and we only now start understanding how there are so many more similarities between how computers work and how your biological machine, your biological computer, your brain work. So at the beginning of this blog, I wrote this question that I actually sort of learned from taking a behavioral science course that I'm taking right now. And the question goes like this who does what, when, where, how often, and with whom? And this question, what behavioral scientists learned when you need to change someone's behavior, and that's what behavioral scientists are trying always trying to do, doing research around that. When you're trying to change someone's behavior, yours or someone else's, you need to be very precise about what it is you're trying to change and how will you know when it's changed in the way you want it. And that's why you need all of these details. Like who does, you know, this woman wanted to go exercise, what she wanted to go for a run when after she finished her work and switches off her computer, where outside around the block, how often, every day, let's say, with whom or Monday to Friday, with whom by herself. And I would always add, and using this technique in coaching practice, I would always ask, how would success look like? When do you know when you're finished? And that is also important because the full program, your brain cycle, looks like this: you have a trigger, some event or something in your environment that triggers the action. So then you have the action, like going for a run, which also, by the way, consists of several steps, which you ideally need to predetermine beforehand. So what you're gonna wear, how you're gonna go out, where you're gonna run, all of these details, right? It's a complex behavior still. So the trigger, the action, and then the reward. And the the reward in the case of human behavior is very often just accomplishing the thing, knowing where the end is, like, for example, going for a 20-minute run, which is defined as success in this case, and feeling, yes, I've accomplished. And just this feeling of accomplishment is already quite a good reward. But even more so, if you wanna enhance the or speed up wiring of a new habit of new behavior, you wanna enhance the reward even more. Maybe you give yourself a delicious electrolyte drink. Like I love drinking electrolytes, they have no calories in my case, and they taste amazing, and it's something sweet, something I really enjoy after a workout. Or you can have maybe some smoothie, or maybe a piece of uh snack, or an orange, or something you enjoy, maybe a good shower, if a hot shower with some music, that is also very rewarding for the brain. So, the whole point here is your brain's programming works like this: trigger action reward. And in order to make this cycle happen, in order to write this program into your brain, you need to specify it very clearly. What is the trigger finishing my work, turning off my computer, what is the action, putting on my shoes. That again, ideally, because of the way your brain works as well, should be right there, and should be and there should be no thinking about like what I wear. Your your clothes also should be ready of and everything should be just ready to go and be as thoughtless as possible, right? So the trigger, I finish my work, I turn off computer, I then go for a 20-minute run outside, and then then I feel the accomplishment. That is my success. And then ideally, if you want to speed up the wiring of the habit, you do something nice for yourself, even if it's a smile and high-fiving yourself in the mirror that you're such a good person that you just did what you said you're gonna do. And that is with repetition gonna become an automatic thing that requires no willpower at all. And the more you can automate this process at the beginning, eliminating as much thinking and decision making as possible, the more you can do that, the more successful you're gonna be with actually uh wiring this habit or creating this program in your brain a lot faster, which will lead you, for example, towards your goal, closer towards your goal of becoming fitter, holier, more self-confident, more emotionally balanced person. So implementation intentions, if then scenarios. And don't run away yet. There is a secret amplifier which has been discovered later after if then scenarios were originally discovered and tried and researched their effectiveness. There is an addition to this framework, which I believe actually was added by the spouse of the person who did the initial research on the Eve then scenarios. But before we jump into this hack that amplifies even more the probability that you're gonna stick with heart actions that need to be repeated in in a repeated fashion, not in have a fact. Before that, guys, don't forget to rate, review, share this podcast episode with anyone who might need some more effective method of wiring or programming challenging behaviors so they do reach their goal instead of never ending the frustration cycle when they set the goal, decide to do the action, and never last long enough to actually get to the goals. If you know this person, then please, or you just want to help more people to be in a state of success, not in a state of frustration, then please do share this podcast episode. Maybe on your WhatsApp status, on whatever social media you use these days, on your uh story on Instagram, in your TikTok, uh show off your knowledge and share good stuff with people. So, that being said, let's get into the hack. So the hack was challenge. And what I'm talking about here, what they also learned is very often there would be like different challenges on our way to creating these new habits, these behaviors. A lot of times it would be something internally, like I'm just feeling lazy, or sometimes it would be something external, like something comes up and you need to take care of this, maybe before you run, like what do you do then? You know, somebody just disrupted your program, either you or somebody something else. So, what they found is when you create this if-then scenarios, if you think through in advance the challenges that can come up, like for example, there is some urgent thing at work that you now need to take care of in your running time, and maybe there is something else scheduled after, right? Or on the days when you're like, Yeah, I just don't feel like doing that. What do you do? When you walk yourself through those challenges in advance and you have solutions in advance, for example, if I'm feeling lazy, I'm just gonna put my shoes on and gonna go for a walk listening to my favorite book that I'm only allowed to listen to when I'm out there on the run. So you made it easier, you're still doing the thing, and there is a high probability you're gonna start running once you're out there. And also there is some something pleasant for you to do while you are on your run or on your walk, which has also been proven a really great strategy is when you bundle something that you enjoy doing with something you don't enjoy doing as much. And then maybe for external obstacles, like if something comes up, what is your alternative for for that scenario? Maybe it's running right after, maybe it's running like closer to your bedtime when the whole thing finishes, maybe it's uh doing additional run, maybe it's walking more towards maybe someplace you need to walk. What is your alternative scenario? And maybe figuring out hey, maybe that is not the ideal time, and maybe I'll do my run in the morning where it is much less likely to be disrupted. But what the research found is, and they put it also in a nice framework as well, which is called whoop wish or the outcome, the goal, objective what is it, objective outcome? Need to look it up, but the whole purpose they enhanced this if-then scenario with this thinking about possible obstacle, yeah, wish, outcome, obstacle, and then plan. Yes, so the whole framework was enhanced into whoop wish, outcome, obstacle, and plan, where you think about the goal, where you think about the outcome of this specific action, then you think about objection or you think about obstacle, and then you plan for everything. So the whole idea here is when you think through this if then plus obstacle scenario, you kind of do extending extended programming. So now your brain, instead of having one option, it has also options for all the possible scenarios, which then just triggers different automatic programs when you encounter the obstacle, whether it's external or external, and that also doubles or more your chances of sticking with the behavior, even when those obstacles occur. Obviously, as you go, you learn, and there may be obstacles that you never thought of that you can adjust and put in your programming after you encounter them. I hope, folks, this was super useful, and from now on you're gonna use it instead of just trying to do it, like trying to eat better, or trying to exercise, or trying to become a better leader, or trying to communicate more clearly, or trying to give better feedback, or trying to learn a language, or whatever that is. Now you know that this method works better. And so don't do it the dumb way, adjust your methodology as you know a better one. If you're interested in actually doing it and achieving the goals that you say you want to achieve. Hope again that was useful, insightful, very practical. Don't forget to put it into use because if you don't work it, it's not gonna work for you. And till next guy, till next time, guys. Have keep changing, keeps keep learning, keep growing.