Pod Insights Change Wired 3 coaching questions that end excuses and get you off the couch every time. About this episode 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 prompt...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 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 collective transformation, your executive coach 360, body, mind, work better, and just someone with a lot of passion and obsession and curiosity for learning more about discovering more human potential and helping the world, myself and you to unlock and use more of your potential. So together we can create the most extraordinary world and live the most extraordinary lives.
0:47 Speaker 00 Today, guys, I'm gonna teach you how to turn your mind around, how to get yourself from the state of flatness, unmotivation, not feeling disciplined, feeling like doubting all of the things, not feeling like doing a lot of things, how to turn your own mind around, to jump, to continue into action that actually moves things in life and your life forward versus again spending it in your head doubting, feeling flat, feeling undisciplined, not doing like much. Questions. Today, you're gonna learn three questions
1:28 Speaker 00 that's gonna help you to turn your mind around, so you jump into action, more often the action that changes your life. Because, let's be honest, action is the only thing that changes your life. And so the more you have time you spend into trying things in, figuring things out in an active way, the faster you learn and the faster you move through life. And the right questions can help you do just that, move you into action. It can give you discipline when you don't feel like it, inspire you when you're flat, motivate you when you're doubting, or completely ruin your day.
2:12 Speaker 00 And which one will it be? Well, that depends on what you ask yourself in the moments that matter. I personally believe, guys, that most of my health and life in business transformation happens when I learn how to ask the right questions at the right time. That's where most of turnarounds in my life happened. And the same for clients. I don't need to tell my clients what to do. I need to be able to give them the right question so their mind moves into the right direction, thinking about the things that move their life forward, perhaps things that they neglected.
2:54 Speaker 00 And with the right questions, the mind can be easily prompted to think more about that. And when you think more about it and something gets your attention, that's the beginning of change. So, the right questions. At a coaching session, I want to tell you a story first. At a coaching session, a client told me, it was, what, when was it? Sunday, that she felt lazy about going back to work after her leave. She just wanted to stay home, cook, take care of the family, stay in the comfort of what felt familiar and safe and easy.
3:31 Speaker 00 And first I told her that feeling lazy before starting anything, it's absolutely normal. It's the law, universal law of inertia.
3:44 Speaker 00 Before studying new exercise program or new eating program, you don't wanna do it. There is this inertia. You just wanna do things as they are. The universal law of inertia, a body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest. This statement is Newton's first law of motion, or the law of inertia, which states that an object at rest, I'm reading you a direct quote from Google Research, "An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force." This law of inertia defines inertia
4:27 Speaker 00 as the resistance of any physical object to change in its state of motion. And physics don't just affect textbooks. It applies to habits, to careers, to health, to dreams. Physics applies to humans, just like to any object in our known universe. It applies to you and me,
4:51 Speaker 00 to your morning workout, whether you do it or not, to your healthy lunch, whether you do it or not, to coffee without sugar, when you decide to cut back on sugar, or a difficult conversation with a colleague or a spouse you needed to have a long time ago. It applies to everything. When you stop, stopping feels natural. When you move, moving feels natural. But changing state requires force, requires effort, requires something else. And that's something else you feel when you don't wanna start things. And one of the most effective forces I've found to move you by moving your mind is a better question,
5:36 Speaker 00 the right question at the right time. When you feel like delaying the hard thing, that project, that exercise routine, going back to work, changing your breakfast, ask. So this is question number one, guys. And then what? And that is a very, very powerful question that we often use in coaching. And then what? You stay where you are longer, you delay work, you delay the workout, you delay the difficult conversation, you delay the healthy meal, you delay the decision. And then what? Will that problem disappear? Will life magically solve it for you? Take in most cases, no.
6:21 Speaker 00 You either give up on the goal or you have to do it anyway, just later. But so why not now? What will be different later? It usually gets harder to start, not easier. Another moment and another question. So first question to repeat, repetition is the mother of all skills. And then what, right? And then what? Like, follow the train of this logic till the very end. Will it get better? In most cases, no. Another moment and another question to move you into the right kind of action. Let's say you don't make progress with your business or with your health or with anything and you start thinking, so what's the point?
7:07 Speaker 00 That's when I have another great question for you.
7:11 Speaker 00 So now what? Are you just going to give up and die? Never try anything hard again? Just slowly shrink your life? It sounds dramatic. And that's the point, guys. In coaching, it's called amplifying reflection. Pushing the logic of your excuse to the extreme so you can see how absurd it is. Or, well, before we jump into the next question and the final one, just think about that. What's the point, trade? Or?
7:46 Speaker 00 Another like excuse that your brain is will try to create many, many times. Follow it to the very extreme. Let's say you decide to trust people less. And so now what? You're gonna be double checking and being super obsessive and looking, double checking into everything and spending enormous amount of time on double checking everything and not allowing relationships to develop because you need a certain solid amount of trust. You know why people, a lot of people who achieve a lot and have a more fun living life, you know why people choose to trust first?
8:31 Speaker 00 Because it saves them time and energy and it allows them to live their life with less restriction, with more joy, with more experiences. And the few people who disappoint that trust and perhaps, you know, you get some negative consequences, well, those just gonna be very few. And if anything, they will teach you a lesson how to maybe put better systems in place, but hopefully they will not teach you to become a more closed up and skeptic human who just doesn't trust life, right? So what? Like, it's a very, very, like, are you gonna shrink?
9:16 Speaker 00 Never try any relationship again just because somebody else didn't treat you right in the last relationship? Are you not gonna then try to work on any of your ideas because the last one didn't work and you till the rest of your life? You're just gonna do the familiar and the same thing? Like, when you really lean and follow that logic till the end, you'll understand how absurd that is. And so you might as well just move on with your life now. And now to another thought that might be stopping you when you don't feel the results, don't see the results, when you fail, when you have setbacks, when a lot of things don't work.
10:00 Speaker 00 You might hear yourself saying or feel that, well, nothing works, it pointless. Pause and ask, nothing worked? Have you tried everything? Name the last 10 things you tried that didn't work. Usually, the list stops at like two or even one, the last one you didn't try. The brain loves this vague drama, you know, nothing, absurities, black and white. And the brain hates specific evidence, like really, you tried everything. So what were the last 10 things that you tried and how did you try them for how long? And what exactly did not work?
10:41 Speaker 00 Questions, the right kind of questions expose this gap between drama and evidence. So sometimes drama, drama will help you, but sometimes evidence, evidence is also helpful. Over the years, you know, this kind of questions, guys, three questions specifically that came to my mind, created more turnarounds in my life and in lives of my clients I've been coaching for 18 years than anything else. Because ultimately, I do not have all the answers, not for myself, not for my clients. But helping them to see the fallacies, our cognitive biases, that would helps people to often understand the absurdity of a lot of our thinking
11:22 Speaker 00 and then take better actions, more action and take actions sooner. So they can actually uh move into more proactive stage over their day or week or their life and get things moving, right? To recap, uh, well, actually, let me maybe first sum up. I'm reading also parts from my daily blog on yourbestcoaching.substack.com.
11:52 Speaker 00 The thing is, your mind will always try the easy narrative first, almost all of the time, the lazy, the pointless, the why bother. You know why? Because your brain always is in the business to save energy, because energy is the currency of life and you need it to survive. And your brain just wants to double check that what you want to do is actually worth it. So your job isn't to necessarily silence it, because sometimes it's not worth it. Your job is to ask about a question, to take more actions that matter and move you where you want to go. So next time you feel stuck, unmotivated, ready to quit, don't
12:33 Speaker 00 argue with your brain. Learn to question it with the right questions. So what question will you choose the next time inertia shows up? Write it down, make a list. And to make that list, we're going to sum up the questions. But before we do that, if you learn something useful, if you find this podcast episode working for you, helping you to move forward, helping you to make the change that you've been avoiding, or it helps you to think better about life, please share this podcast episode. That's how this podcast grows and reaches.
13:12 Speaker 00 We've been in eleven thousand something cities in the world. And that's how this podcast grows and reaches more and more people, more strivers, more leaders on all levels, people who want to make a positive difference. So help this podcast to reach more people, to create more of that positive difference in people and in the world. And now, and now to the questions. Right? So whenever you want to delay something, like maybe staying home instead of going and trying moving business forward, or getting back to work, or moving your career forward, or whatever that might be, you want to delay maybe like
13:55 Speaker 00 tomorrow, next week, or next month, ask yourself, and then what? You delayed, you don't do it now, you're gonna be waiting for another month. And like, then what? The life gonna change? The universe will solve it for you? Somebody else will save you? Is that the case? In most scenarios, it's not the case. And things just gonna get worse. Like, you, let's say, you're delaying your healthy lifestyle and workouts. You're just gonna get older, it's gonna get harder to start, and there is a bigger chance that you don't start at all and you're gonna suffer more. Right? So then what? Another question. When you have a thought like, well, what's the point? You know, I did this and that, and that didn't work.
14:40 Speaker 00 And like, I'm just tired. What's the point? Ask another question. So now what? Are you going to just give up and die and shrink to non-existence or a very ordinary, safe and boring life and never try anything hard again? Right? Be the absurdest in a way that works for you. So that's the second question. And when you also hear inside your head something like, nothing works, it's pointless. Pause, then ask. Nothing worked? Have you tried everything? Name 10 things you tried that didn't work. Right? Be the objectivists. Poke the evidence.
15:24 Speaker 00 So your brain gets back to, you know, to where it belongs, to imagination and drama with this kind of questions.
15:34 Speaker 00 Nothing works. It's not true. You haven't tried everything. So what are the next two, three, four, or five things you can try? So these questions, nothing worked? Have you tried everything? Or so now what? You're just gonna give up and die and never try anything hard again? Just slowly shrink your life? And then what? Use these questions to question your mind, to move yourself into productive, effective, transformative action. So you get to live more and more of the life experience you truly want to be living. And that's it for today, guys. Thank you so much for showing up. Thank you so much for paying attention, for learning. And till next time, keep growing.
Previous Comfort or Growth? I want X but I also want Y - navigating competing priorities with 5 coaching questions. Next Lower resistance to change, beat self-sabotaging habits, and create progress that lasts in yourself and when helping others. Page updated November 10, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
