Beat Your Internal Resistance with 6 Questions: what winners do when they feel like quitting.

Motivation is a terrible plan and most of us keep learning that lesson the hard way. When you’re tired, stressed, or not “feeling it,” the real challenge is not willpower, it’s the story running in your head and whether you know how to work with it without sliding into burnout. We get extremely practical with 6 questions you can start using in the moments when your resistance to do the work shows up. Write them down. Put them on a sticky note. Put them on your phone's screensaver. We unpack...

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  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, someone who is obsessed with doing our best every single day. And by our best, guys, to give you an understanding, I don't mean to put pressure on ourselves to do 100%. For any human being, it is just not possible. By doing our best, what I mean is what a lot of high-performance coaches, like really

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  good ones actually mean, is taking into consideration your circumstances, your health state, how the day started, how much rest you've gotten, how, just all of your circumstance and environment and everything, and asking yourself honestly, like, what is the best that I can give to you? Not what is my absolute best with perfect conditions, going all my way and being in the best physical, mental, I don't know, work-wise shape, not like the absolute best, but what is the best that I can give today?

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  And sometimes, in those rare moments, it is gonna be your 100%, but most of the time, it's gonna be, I don't know, sometimes 10, sometimes 30, sometimes 50, sometimes 90, and everywhere in between.

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  And the most important question, and that is what we're gonna be talking about today, is learning how to honestly ask yourself, is this the best I can give? And is this worth it, giving my best and pushing my hardest? And what I learned in 18 years of coaching high achievers, ambitious people, driven people, is it is in this mastery of learning how to differentiate between pushing yourself through burnout and injury and really not good state to be pushing, is differentiating between

• 2:38Speaker 00

  that and our own excuses and resistance and doubts and limitations that we put on ourselves. And when you learn how to work with yourself and objectively and subjectively differentiate when it's worth to push, when it's worth to hold back, and where you're working through, again, burnout and injuries and things, moments where you need to back off and stop, and moments when you need to push through that internal resistance and get it to another level, like

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  differentiating between that and learning how to work with that is what I learned, the mastery in high-performance field.

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  But besides that, today, guys, we are having a really good topic, what winners do when they feel like quitting? How to work with internal resistance to do what you don't wanna do every time? And again, that's keeping in mind that I don't mean here to push through every time. Sometimes, it is a very good idea to recover and stop, but also, in your own history, reflecting on how you go about achieving your goals and what usually gets in the way, you need

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  to learn also the moments when you don't feel like doing it and you need to still do it in order to get yourself to break through to the next level and to progress. And there are gonna be a lot more moments like that for most people than moments of working through burnout and injuries and that kind of resistance or obstacles that you need to consider stopping in front. But besides that, let's talk about that resistance, that internal narrative that stops majority

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  of people from reaching their potential or their highest aspirations for their life and themselves. And we're gonna talk about questions and mindset shifts, shifts of your focus and attention that I learned in 18 years of my coaching, in multiple certifications, in working with high achievers, in working through a lot of my own cycles of being stuck. Like, these are the questions and shifts of mindsets that I learned are very effective to break through your own excuses and do the work and do the work consistently, so you

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  get to unlock more of your potential in this life. Very often, my clients would come to me after failing to do the work that they need to do to get to their next level, to get closer towards their goals. Very ambitious, very successful people, but we all go through the moments of being stuck and not getting ourselves effectively to the next level. Like, no matter where you are in life, no matter how successful people you admire are, we all have our current state, which we need to work through to get to the next level.

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  And it's never easy for anyone, no matter how successful you get, everyone gets their next level and their next challenge. And so, a lot of clients would come to me with this, like, thought, I go through the cycles of consistency and falling out of it, I go all in and then I stop, I lose motivation, I guess, even though, again, I usually talk to quite successful people, so for me, sometimes it's funny, like, do you really still believe, like, in this motivation thing? And I would challenge them, I would ask them, so what? So does everybody who never gets what they want? Is that what you want? I'd often ask my clients.

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  And guys, if you made a decision, not a wish, a real decision, to build a habit or hit a certain result, here is what I've learned matters the most, the plan that you need to think of in advance. You need a plan for what you'll do when you have no desire, no energy, no motivation, no time, nothing going for you, and everything seems to be going against you. That's the kind of plan you need to get yourself to the next level every time. That's the most important plan, not another diet or exercise program or a business plan. Anyone can show up when they feel good.

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  Winners are defined, winners are defined by what they do when everything's working against them and they feel like doing it the least. I love this phrase from Leila Hormozzi, she is a young woman, leader, entrepreneur, wife of Alex Hormozzi, who just, just an amazing entrepreneurial leader, author, who grew his fortune from, maybe not from zero, but from a lot less and being kind of average, and nobody knew about him, to the place where almost everyone knows about him, especially in the world of entrepreneurship. So, the phrase, fuck the mood, follow the plan.

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  And I do even, you know, I'm reading right now from my blog, just a side note, and I don't know why I have different letters, but fuck the mood, follow the plan, Leila Hormozzi's line. And from my perspective, it's the best one, to help you understand that you don't need to feel anything to do the plan. You see, like, in my life, my younger self thought that in order to do the thing, I needed to feel something, like I needed to feel good. And then, as I matured, I realized, and going through those moments when I didn't feel like anything and I still did the work and I still got the results, I realized, no, actually,

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  yes, it's worth working on making yourself feel better and shifting your mood by shifting your attention and your environment and what you focus on, we're gonna talk about it in a moment as well, but also, it is very useful to understand that what you feel emotionally has very little to do with your, with what you're capable of doing. You can feel good, you can feel bad, you can feel tired, you can feel like it's not working, and you can still do the work. Again, there is a fine line between pushing through exhaustion and burning yourself out, and sometimes it's worth it, and you need to evaluate the stakes, you know, between

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  that and pushing through a bad mood, which we'll have often throughout our life. You have to learn to tell the two apart, burning out, exhaustion, you know, injuries and just bad mood, bad vibes, not feeling it. Objectively and subjectively, you gotta figure that out.

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  But what I notice more often than not, we struggle with overcoming this internal resistance. What I also learned is right before a breakthrough in my personal professional life, I always, in my fitness as well, I always get this urge to quit, not to slow down, but to stop entirely and just move backwards. Maybe my mind feels like, yeah, you're about to get to the next level. It's uncomfortable. I didn't know what's coming, so let's keep this person at their comfort level. And over time, I learned to read that feeling as a green light. Push harder. You're about to hit the next level. You know, like in the Super Mario game, before you get the dragon and you overcome

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  the dragon and you get to the next level, you start feeling this like, I don't know, itchy almost on the inside, like, ah, I gotta back off. No, you actually need to keep going. And very often, just steady pace is what's gonna get you to that next level, not even pushing your hardest, but just keep going. A good quote from Mike Tyson, I love. "I don't count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting because they're the only ones that count." So very often, what we think as this pain, a signal to stop, actually a signal that

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  you are about to smash your previous level and get to the next one. And again, it's often, it doesn't even require that much push, it just requires to keep going. And the most important thought of this podcast is it all comes down to your internal narrative that you decide to choose. That's the difference between the people who keep going and the people who quit on their goals. It's all in your heart and that you can change. Today, I want to share with you something, guys. Six questions from 18 years of coaching clients, a stack of coaching certifications and more than a few yo-yo cycles of my own.

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  These questions, they taught me how to turn quitting into pushing through every challenge. Still them, they are very effective. Since I mastered those questions, I stopped getting yo-yo with my dieting. I got my six pack abs and I never lost it. 365 days a year, I never feel anymore that I self-sabotage myself. I just keep going, sometimes slower, sometimes faster. And results start really giving me good ROI, right? That momentum, that steady pace, it's really something special.

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  And that's what winners learned how to do. Question number one. When I want to start tomorrow instead of today, when I hear myself saying something like, and I still hear that, I just know how to deal with that. I'll indulge today and I'm gonna start tomorrow. I'll go all in. I hear myself say it in my mind. And then I ask myself, really? What changes tomorrow? Will you be a different person? Will the lazy moments disappear? Will it be any easier? Isn't it smarter to keep going to build on today instead of losing it? What's actually so special about tomorrow? I never get a good answer.

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  It's like, yeah, just another excuse, Angela. Keep going. The second one. So the first one, what is so special about tomorrow? Really? Are you gonna change? Like, what's so different, right? To get through your own excuses. The second one, when I don't feel like doing the hard work, when my energy is low, I ask, what if you didn't have to do a good job? What if you just had to show up a little bit? 20%? 10%? 5%? What's the smallest thing you could do toward the goal you care about right now, not tomorrow? 20 minutes of exercise? A five-minute walk? Five outreach messages instead of 50? What's the minimum viable rep?

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  If you didn't have to be a maximizer about it? Almost every time, I run out of excuses not to do that one rep. And that one rep usually turns into more because your body, your brain starts releasing dopamine and you get going. Dopamine motivation is actually more consistent a result as a result of action, not you thinking about action. So take action and motivation will follow. Question number three, how can I make it more enjoyable? It's a really good one. When I'm dreading the work called outreach, hard workout or hard conversation, I bundle it with something I love. My favorite songs playing while I work, cup of skinny hot chocolate right before, five

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  minutes of stand-up comedy before I start. And then my brain starts grooving. I feel somewhat decent or sometimes even good. And then the work doesn't feel that much work anymore, or at least not as hard. Behavioral scientists call this temptation bundling, pairing something you need to do with something you wanna do. My clients do it with cardio often. They only let themselves watch their favorite show of their favorite series while they're on the treadmill. So how can I make it more enjoyable? This is question number three. Question number four, what I need to focus on so I actually want, want to do this? How can you shift your focus from this like hard thing you gotta do, not wanting to do it, not having energy?

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  What can you think of instead? I remind myself, every rep in moves me toward my goals and every rep skipped moves me further away, or at least it makes it longer to achieve. And I'm an impatient person, believe it or not. I don't want to be further away. I don't wanna wait longer. That's usually enough to make me want to do it because I want the prize faster. Like, I wanna right now. So I gotta put as many reps as possible to get it moving faster, right? I remind myself, Gary Vee said it's sometimes, somewhere, but be patient with the result, be impatient with action. And that's what I'm trying to do with this question.

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  What I need to focus on so I actually want to do this right now? And that usually reminding myself that the longer I wait with action, the longer it's gonna take to achieve the goal that I want so much. Question number five, what do I need to think about to get myself moving? Kind of similar, or who do I need to think about to get myself moving? Kind of similar on what I need to focus on. And for me, it's I wanna go my goal faster, so I need to take more action faster. Five is about who? Someone I want to prove wrong? Someone who inspires me to be my best? Whose voice, whose voice do I need to hear in my head to get off the couch right now? Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, you know, we are so lucky to have all these podcasts and videos.

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  Like, whose voice do you need to hear right now? Put it on. Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Leila Hormozzi, Alex Hormozzi, everyone who told you I couldn't, maybe you couldn't put them on your YouTube, but you can play it in your head. The person I'm trying to become, right? These are the thoughts, the voices I reach for whenever I feel the pull to skip the work that's building the life I want. And lately, the, and this leads me towards question number six. What's been really helpful to me is imagining two futures, the one I want and the one I want to move away from. And I ask myself, what do you want?

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  Like, what do you really want? And what action gets you closer to that right now? Hey, guys, there is no tomorrow. You can act only in the now. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. You're not guaranteed to live to a certain age, to have certain amount of days, to have certain luck and opportunity. The only thing you have is right now. So what are you gonna do with that? Right? What do you want? And what action gets you closer to it right now? It gets me moving every time. Most of what you want is sitting on the other side of your internal resistance.

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  What thoughts are you going to reach for the next time it shows up? Right? What thoughts are you gonna reach for the next time that internal resistance shows up? And it will show up every time you're about to cross some finish line. A quote from Tom Brady, a really great athlete. "Every hard choice is a brick in the path toward the life you want. And every excuse is a brick in the wall that will stand in your way." Right? So every hard choice that you make, that you say yes to, is a brick in the path toward the life you want.

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  And every excuse is a brick in the wall that stands in the way. Very powerful quote that you can also find on my Substack, which is linked in the show notes. So, guys, what is gonna be? What the future you want? And what is the action step that's gonna lead you there? Check out the post with all of these questions written down for you to use to get back to to save whenever you need a reminder that what separates you from what you wanted this life is nothing more, nothing less than your inner narrative, that what you choose

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  to think about and focus on in the hardest moments of challenge. Hope this was useful, guys. Don't forget to check out the link in the show notes to my podcast or to my Substack blog with all these questions. Don't forget to share this episode with at least one other person who's, who seems like they're struggling with what's happening in their head and they keep yo-yoing, whether that's their business journey, relationships, or their fitness, or whatever that might be. Share this podcast episode. Sharing is caring. It's helping each other to get through more of those hard moments so all of us get to

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  live our most extraordinary life that we have in our heads. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Check out the questions in the Substack blog linked in the show notes. And till next time, keep going.