Why "New Life from Monday" always fails. What Fresh Start Effect got wrong - and how to fix it.

Monday motivation is one of the most expensive lies we buy.

It feels like a reset, a clean slate, a brand new you, but nothing about your skills, schedule, or stress load upgrades overnight. So when reality hits, the plan collapses and we wonder what is wrong with us.

I walk through the behavioral science behind the fresh start effect and explain the missing piece: psychology can spark action, but it does not create capacity.

We get practical about what actually works for sustainable behavior change and habit formation.

Then we zoom in on sleep.

As an executive coach and certified sleep coach, I see the same three mistakes again and again with leaders and high performers: they never make a real decision to prioritize sleep, they do not create systems that protect bedtime, and they unknowingly work against their biology. We talk about sleep hygiene and circadian rhythm basics that change everything, including bright light at night and melatonin suppression, late meals, alcohol close to bedtime, caffeine timing, bedroom temperature, late workouts, and stressful tasks that keep your brain switched on.

If you want better sleep quality, stronger recovery, and high performance that does not burn you out, hit play.

Subscribe, share this with someone who keeps “starting over,” and leave a quick review if it helps.

What is the one habit you keep restarting every Monday?

Transcript

Welcome And What You Will Learn

SPEAKER_00 0:08

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 and transformation, executive coach 360, health, sleep, stress management, high performance, living a meaningful and fulfilling life, and changing and growing and doing our best to unlocking more of our potential in ourselves, in people around us, in the world, so we live the most extraordinary life experience and create more positive impact. Today, guys, by the end of this podcast, you're gonna learn a couple of very important things for the process of your personal evolution, growth, and development. Number one, you'll understand why, even though things like I'm gonna start new on Monday or 1st of January or April or May or from new quarter or from new season, even though those things are helpful to start new things with this clean slate, with this you know, fresh start effect, what's called in behavioral science, you'll understand why it's helpful to start more consistently new behaviors. Uh it's it's actually also makes you fail a lot more than you'd like to. Why is it you know it's helpful to start, but why can't most of us continue this fresh start? Why we fail? Why new you starting from Monday or new life does not work? And what you can do to make it work a lot better. So you're gonna you're gonna understand this. The second thing, you can understand why you might be failing at sleeping better, more consistently. Three mistakes that my clients all over the world make all the time. One has to do with mindset, the other one with the systems, the third one with your biology. And you'll understand why bringing those three together is so essential for helping you to have great sleep consistently almost every night, or at least very close to that, and why you might be failing with starting so many new habits, whether that's in your lifestyle, in your work, or in your relationships. So let's dive in. First one, you know, yesterday it was Monday. So new week, new you, right? Well, not so fast. Actually, starting where you are instead works a lot better. And here is what I mean by that. You gotta start where you are to move forward, like really where you are, not where you wish you were 10 years ago, not where you imagine some more disciplined, more together version of you would already be, but exactly where you are. Getting really, really honest with yourself, writing about that. Like, what skills do I have? Where do where do I fail? Where do I fall short? And why? What do I miss? Like in my psychology, in my mindset, in my skill set, in my uh support, in what I have financially or your other resources-wise, maybe your team, your support, like with your technology, uh anything. Like, where am I? Where am I really? Like, really. Behavioral science research shows that when people align new behavior with a natural beginning, like new week, new months, new chapter of life or career, they are more likely to stick with it, right? But that's only partially true. There is this real psychological reset happening, a sense of the state is clean, the slate is clean. But that's again not the whole truth. The fresh start gives you psychological permission almost to begin again. It makes it feel easier, like there is new you, new hope, a new energy, new motivation. It gives you this permission, this energy, but it doesn't give you uh new capacity, new skills, new resources. You have exactly what you had before that. You have exactly what you had on Sunday, on Monday, you have the same damn thing. All new and your old life. Confusing psychology with capacity is exactly why most fresh starts actually fail, and why most people forget their new diet resolution by the week three. Only when people are very honest about where they actually are starting from, there is a chance for new you to actually survive the impact with reality. Here's what I see in my coaching, and often in myself, I have to remind myself that as well. Example, someone decides to get healthier starting this Monday, but they don't change much about their schedule, they don't change much about their kitchen or their fridge, they're stuck sort of with the same routine, same foods, and same couch and Netflix when their motivation runs out. Right? Same result. Someone gets serious about building their business, but they didn't change a lot about how their calendar is designed, new way of making decisions, new non-negotiables. And guess what? Six months later, same spot. I've been there just quite recently. So I'm changing that. I can tell you that is exactly how it is. Someone decides their relationships are getting to be different from now on with their, I don't know, friends or loved ones, their romantic relationships, their work relationships. Maybe they want to become a leader, but you know they're not perceived as one. So they want to change that. That, like, okay, Monday I'm starting new. But then they don't write or brainstorm with Chat GPT new scripts, they do not rehearse, they do not set new boundaries, they do not plan for what they're gonna do when the old dynamic shows up and people treat them exactly as they treated them before. Because why wouldn't they? They don't know you started all new, right? Guess what happens? Same decade of patents playing out again and again and again. You see, there is no new you magically appear ready to go on Monday morning. There is no skill upgrade downloaded while you slept, Matrix style. Like none of that. It's science fiction. Maybe at some point it will be reality, but not right now. There is only you, old you, perhaps hopefully building better systems for your future self to follow new tracks, to make new choices, new decisions that over time will upgrade your skill set and capacity so the new you is becomes your reality and you get new results in life. Right? So that's the whole truth. Truth fresh starts make it psychologically easier to do a different thing, but they don't change what you have to work with. Your capacity, your skills, your deeply ingrained habits, those are exactly the same. Which means if you want to actually grow into the future version of you consistently and sustainably, here is what needs to get done instead. Three things where I see most of people fail. And I've worked for 18 years with people around the world, hundreds of people. Focus on getting a little better, not drastically different. Leap thinking is where most people why most people quit by the week three. A little bit better every day, starting where you are to where you're going directionally, but skills improve little by little. You don't go from lifting 30 kilos to 100 kilos. And believe it or not, it doesn't work in any domain of life. You don't go from zero to hero. You kind of have to travel the whole journey. Build the second thing, build systems like you would build scaffolding. A new tree doesn't survive the wind without support. Neither do you. What holds you, what will hold you up when the motivation disappears and life will bend you down? Like what systems of support do you have? If you have none, there is a huge probability you're gonna end up exactly where you are, where you were. And the third thing, when you fall, get specific about how you'll deal with the same thing that made you fall the next time instead of spiraling into what the hell effect. Like what went wrong? What do you need to scale down? What support is missing? What skill is missing? Your old self is the one who has to grow the muscle for you to make the lift. Every failure is feedback for a better next rep, right? So think big about new things, but start embarrassingly small. So that is the whole truth about fresh starts and why most of them fail a lot sooner than you'd hope for. It's because again, psychology does not translate into immediate capacity. You can start thinking differently right away, you cannot acquire skill in in a nanosecond. That's just not how life works. You might think, you know, I wanna get I wanna, I don't know, start playing musical instrument and play guitar or saxophone or whatever, but you know it's gonna take months and often years to actually master to where your dream is. Life is a it's kind of like that. It might sad, but it also makes the journey a lot more exciting. So that's that, right? It's a fresh start. New psychology, new thinking does not give you new capacity. You kind of have to land into the idea, you will have to build your skill set one rep at a time. And the second thing is about sleep. I worked again with people all around the world, capable people who take on a lot, leaders on all levels, CEOs, business owners, just people who take on a lot in life. And they often can't figure out, they come to me working on things like sleep or recovery, and they're like, I don't understand why exactly it doesn't work. And it doesn't work for three reasons. And that you can also apply to actually a lot of skills in life, not just sleep. So three reasons, and we're gonna have mindset, we're gonna have systems, we're gonna have biology. Reason number one, mindset. They never really make a real decision. So they say, Yes, I want to sleep better, I want to recover better, I wanna make sure that I don't burn out, that you know, I don't get sick, etc. They they say they warned us, but they never make the real decision that now, from now on, they're gonna prioritize sleep in their schedule, in their commitments, and they're not gonna take on more work that they have to do when they are supposed to be sleeping, that they're not gonna say, you know, yes to just to certain commitments late at night. So they kind of want it, but they never made the decision that they will stick by it, like they do in their business, when they decide, here's what I stand for, and I'm committed to getting no less, whatever it takes. So, step number one, the mistake number one, those highly capable people do, and a lot of us do as well. You're like, I'm gonna eat better. Really? Are you committed to go through the pain it will require you to change your habits to saying no to a lot of things in your routines? Are you committed? Did you make a decision? So without that, nothing else will work, right? Are you committed? Are you willing to pay the price for the prize you want? The second thing, systems, no new system. So, yes, okay, you decided I'm gonna do this thing, sleep better or eat better, or exercise better, whatever that is. But we are talking about sleep. But then you did not create new systems, you did not adjust your calendar, you did not adjust how you're gonna book flights so you get a better chance of not, you know, having red-eye overnight flight. You did not adjust what social commitments you're gonna say yes to and no to. You did not adjust again how much workload you're gonna take on, so you get more chance of getting that full, I don't know, let's say seven or eight hours of sleep at night. You did not adjust your again, social commitments, all of that. You did not put boundaries in place, so nothing has the capacity or have very little capacity to make you go to bed later than you intend to, right? You did not change the systems. Every time whenever my clients say, I want to go to bed earlier, I'm like, okay, let's set up the alarm for half an hour before where you're gonna commit to shut everything down and say bye-bye to the world. There is another day and I'm gonna go to bed, right? When they are not willing to do that, I'm like, yeah, you you're not really committed, are you? And then we're gonna go to step number one, like, are you making this decision? Or just sort of wishfully thinking about that, right? So no new system. And if you're not ready to commit to system, again, back to step one, mindset, did you actually make a real decision? And now step number three, which is equally important. Okay, you're committed and you redesigned your systems, sort of, because you still did not think through how you need to support your biology in order to create a state of sleep. What I mean by that is we know that eating late at night, later than two, three hours before bedtime, will make your sleep crappier and it's gonna be harder for you to sleep. Yes, you can sort of eat a lot of carbs and pass out, but your sleep is gonna be not that good, and actually, in most cases, it's not gonna be that easy to fall asleep, anyhow. Right? So you eat too late, or you drink alcohol right before going to bed. And we know that that might make you unconscious faster, but also your sleep is gonna be creepy. So you drink alcohol too close to your bedtime that does not support your sleep. You view bright light too close to your bedtime. Being in the environment of bright light before going to bed destroys quite a lot of your melatonin that is designed to make you fall asleep, and that is why you go to bed or you don't even get to go to bed because you don't feel sleepy. Well, the reason why you don't feel sleepy is because you're sitting under bright light that tells your biology to not release melatonin. It tells your biology it's daytime, time to do stuff, and that's why you can't fall asleep. You do not work with your biology, and by your biology does not work for you, right? So bright light. Another one, coffee. It is also has been shown that you know, for some people it's more, for some people it's less, but it has been shown that caffeine does affect your sleep. And so if you get caffeinated stuff, not just coffee, but there is like, I don't know, dark chocolate, caffeinated drinks, tea also has quite a lot of caffeine. So if you consume caffeine close to your bedtime, it's also gonna be super hard for you to have good sleep and fall asleep. So those are just a couple of things, right? Another one is having high temperature in your room or doing some sort of workout close to bedtime, which increases your core temperature, which which is not supposed to have to happen for your biology before going to bed. Another one having more social commitments, something is more work, right, before going to sleep that uh wakes your brain up because it often would release certain stress hormones, certain hormones and brain chemicals that promote wakefulness for you to deal with stuff, right? So all of that will make your biology not cooperative when it comes to creating beautiful sleep experience that you want. So you do not work for your biology, maybe you don't know a lot of things about that, and your biology does not work for you. There is the sort of potential for you to have good night's sleep, but you cancel it by doing all of these behaviors that we now know of. So, three most common mistakes, and obviously there are a lot of smaller sub-mistakes in all of this, but yeah, not making real decisions, not having systems to support that decision, and three working against your biology. So when you put all of this together, you create the state of I can't get good quality sleep, I don't know what's wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you, it just is what it is. These are the things that are in your way when you're trying to change your behavior and the results that you get in life, and there is no right or wrong thing you should do in life, but just if you make a decision, this is how you make a real one that actually works. And a lot of people come to coaches, so there is someone who will give them very often better knowledge in the areas where they are not as experienced. And the second thing is keeping them accountable and making sure that all of these pieces are in place and they finally succeed with the behaviors that they truly want to uh get consistent at. Hope this helps, guys. If you have any questions, if you'd like to work together, have a free session, uh, which is always available to you as a listener of this podcast. Please do reach out. Info at your bestculture.com, info at your bestculture.com, or any social media you find me on. I'm Angela Shorina on LinkedIn, quite active there as well as on Instagram. Besides that, guys, don't forget to share this podcast episode with someone who might be struggling with, you know, starting fresh, starting new, and not really starting, but failing and quitting and not sure like what's wrong with me, why can't I move things forward consistently and reliably so they stick? So share this episode with them. And somebody who's struggling with sleep, share this with them as well, making them aware that that is why they might be struggling, like hundreds of my clients that I work with all around the world. And plus, I'm a certified sleep coach, so it's not just me speaking, it's experience and research and data from a lot of research and science. So, share this podcast episode with two kinds of people struggling to begin and stick with it, and somebody who's struggling to get great quality sleep so their performance is sustainable, not burning them out and helping them to build a high quality life. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening, and till next time, keep growing.