Change Academy

All of us will experience our share of challenges, disappointments, and hardships as we go through our lives. We may go through things that are quite traumatic. Our ability to recover and transcend these things depends a lot on how we tell the story of our lives. In this episode, we’re exploring the power of narrative psychology and how we can each use it to cultivate more resilience. Takeaways  L...

In this episode, Monica Reinagel turns the tables and interviews her usual co-host, Brock Armstrong, all about his new podcast called Second Wind Fitness . Monica and Brock chat about the impetus behind some big life changes that he made in the last year how middle-aged and older people are often misunderstood (and under-served) by the fitness industry why Brock is no longer willing to help people...

There’s an important distinction to be made between top level goals and lower level tactical goals. Often, getting fixated on achieving your tactical goals can lead to being tenaciousness for the sake of being tenacious. We certainly don’t mean to suggest that tenaciousness is not a valuable trait.  Being committed to doing what it takes or sticking it out when the going gets rough is definitely a...

We often talk about the importance of planning ahead–and sticking to the plan. But we also advocate for mindfulness: being attuned to your experience in the present moment. But what if being in the moment means you don’t feel like sticking to the plan? Which should you honor?  In this episode, we explore the pros and cons of sticking to the schedule vs. going with the flow. It all comes down to fi...

Everyone has lapses – small slips, moments, or even brief periods of time when you fall back into old habits and old patterns. Lapses can be an opportunity to learn something useful. But all too often, a lapse leads to self-defeating and catastrophizing thoughts, which lead to further lapses. Before you know it, a series of small lapses has snowballed into a full-blown relapse–or a return to an ol...

Our guest on this episode is Dr. Nicole Byers. A self proclaimed neuroscience nerd, mom, and leadership/productivity coach, Dr. Byers helps busy professionals build confidence and get more done. Dr. Nicole Byers is a psychologist who specializes in neuropsychology. A few years ago, she left her dream job working in a top hospital and teaching at a university to become an entrepreneur. Now she help...

It’s been well over a year since we first talked about unmet goals and we thought it would be a great time to revisit this topic. If you’ve already listened to Episode 6, this is your chance to revisit this topic with fresh ears. If you haven’t... let’s dig in! Takeaways: Unmet goals get heavier and heavier the longer you carry them around. An unmet goal can be a barrier (or an excuse) to achievin...

In this special extracurricular episode, we are sharing a little peek inside the year-long Weighless Program ( https://weighless.life/enrollment ) that you often here us talk about. What you’re going to hear is actual content from that program that we thought would be a great complement to the stuff we do here in Change Academy. This content is part of a year-long curriculum in which we help peopl...

We encourage you to identify things that aren’t working (or could be working better) and design solutions. But sometimes, we end up designing solutions that are unnecessarily complicated or costly. We may even lose sight of our original objective and end up designing a “solution” that doesn’t solve the original problem at all. In this episode, we teach you how to notice when you are losing focus s...

The things we do on a routine basis impact how we see ourselves. And the opposite is also true: How we see ourselves can influence how we act. In other words, our habits and our identity are closely tied to one another. In this episode, we talk about how to make sure that connection between our behavior and our identity is working for us and not against us. Takeaways  There’s an important differen...

In this extracurricular episode, we’re sharing a preview of an upcoming workshop on incorporating more movement and fitness into our daily routines. Even if you’re an avid exerciser, it’s still easy to end up sitting for long stretches of every day. And finding those hidden opportunities to sneak more movement into our daily routines can make the difference between ending the day stiff and cranky...

This episode was suggested by a listener named Liz:  “I have clients that I fear will let go of their habits when they don’t have me there to hold them accountable. How do you coach someone to create that accountability for themselves or hold themselves accountable?” Takeaways  Being more accountable to someone else than you are to yourself can be a red flag that either your goal is off or your re...

Molly is the host of the Breaking the Bottle Legacy podcast, in which she shares her own experience with changing her long-standing drinking patterns and creating a healthier and more peaceful relationship with alcohol.  As you’ll see in this episode, Molly’s approach to behavior change aligns perfectly with what we talk about on the Change Academy, and can be applied to all kinds of behaviors and...

The Serenity Prayer (“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference”) counsels us to accept the things that we cannot change. But often, the things that we say we cannot change are actually 100% within our control. In this episode, we explore whether something is truly out of our control or if we just prefe...

We all have those tasks or projects that, despite our best intentions, we find ourselves procrastinating.  It might be a new behavior or practice that we want to create a habit around, like exercising or meditating. Or it might be a personal or professional project that we want to accomplish, like writing an essay or report or creating a program or product. In this episode, we offer a practical st...

In this episode, we depart a bit from our usual format and welcome a guest to the show. Heather Hutchison is a singer/songwriter and author of the new memoir Holding On by Letting Go . Heather has been blind since birth and one of the things she hopes to do through her music and writing is educate people about disability and mental health. One of the concepts she explores in her book is this idea...

Coping mechanisms are not an inherently bad thing. If we can’t avoid or escape something unpleasant or even harmful, figuring out a way to cope with it is a good survival strategy.  But sometimes we use coping mechanisms to tolerate things that maybe we shouldn’t be tolerating. In this episode, we explore the difference between helpful and unhelpful coping. Takeaways: - Using external pleasures to...

To-do lists, checklists, scorecards can be great tools to keep us on track. But they can also seem like an overwhelming task themselves. Or worse yet, they can become yet another way that we judge our own abilities or self-worth. In this episode, we show you how to create a list that suits you and your goals. We also explore how to structure that list so it can keep you on track without being a co...

Some of our goals or objectives require us to master a range of different skills. You’ll probably be naturally stronger in some areas than others. And sometimes, in order to reach our goals, overcoming or strengthening a weakness is essential.  But it's not just about forcing yourself to work on the things that are hard for you. In this episode, we focus on identifying areas where you need more su...

In this episode, we’ll teach you how to identify and dismantle unhelpful cues and also build some helpful ones. We all have cues in our lives that prompt us to carry out certain behaviors, like putting a seat belt on when we get in a car, grabbing snacks when we sit on the couch to watch a movie, or pouring a glass of wine when we change out of our work clothes. Some of our cue responses are good...

Having a firm grip on reality is usually seen as a sign of good mental health.  But social scientists have discovered that happy and successful people routinely overestimate their skill, talent, and chances of success. In fact, that may be one of the secrets to their success. In this episode, we explore why being overly optimistic is not a cognitive defect that needs to be overcome but a construct...

Monica and Brock are taking a brief Spring Break but we will be back in May with brand new episodes.  In the meantime, this is the perfect time to go back and relisten to some of our previous episodes - in particular, the series about the "Eight Things to Make Changes that Last." You may also find it helpful to download the Lab Notebook at https://changeacademypodcast.com/notebook See you all soon...

A year ago, virtually every aspect of our lives changed profoundly: How we eat, shop, work, socialize, exercise, etc. These weren’t changes we chose but changes that were forced on us.  Now that we are beginning to imagine life returning to something more similar to pre-pandemic, we have some decisions to make. Are there new habits that we’ve adopted that we might want to keep? Old habits that we...

Behavioralist Schlomo Benartzi defines a default as “what happens if you do nothing.“ If we’re too busy, distracted, or fatigued to make a choice or decision, the default wins the day. And because we’re often busy, distracted, or fatigued we want to be careful and intentional about which defaults are operating on our lives. In this episode, we’ll show you how to do that. Takeaways  Some default me...

In this extracurricular episode, we invite you to listen in to a group coaching session that we held recently with members of our year-long Weighless Program. The strategies and insights that came up in this session can be applied to any change you are working on.  And if you think you might like to work with us in the Weighless Program, details are here https://weighless.life/enroll .) ★ Support...