Why Can't I Follow Through on the Things i Really Want?

Have you ever decided that you want to enhance your life with a new job, an online course, a new habit, and something stops you from taking action?  You know this thing will be so good for you and you'll feel better or have more skills.  Your cognitive mind KNOWS this to be true.  It's logical.  It makes sense.

Perhaps you bought the course but can’t get yourself to sit down and do it. Or you got a request for an interview and you can’t bring yourself to schedule it. You committed to doing a new workout and you’re great for the first week and then you can’t stay consistent. You feel like you're a procrastinator, you don't have what it takes, and you can't follow through.

Me too!

I want you to know this also makes so much sense and I can really relate to this. 

Let's look at it from a nervous system perspective. 

One of the main jobs of your nervous system is to keep you alive by looking to see if the situation you're moving into is safe or dangerous.  AND it records safety and danger from every situation that you have.  This is happening below cognition, in your body brain.  Your body brain stores all of this information in a storage facility.

So, let's say in the past you had an experience where you moved towards something new, something that was good for you, and that experience was not safe for some reason.  Perhaps you were made fun of or new people or situations were dangerous in some way.

Fast forward to the NOW experience.  You want to move forward with this new habit or course.  So, your nervous system goes to the storage facility and checks to see, "does anything in this new situation match the danger of an old situation".  If it does match danger, your very reliable smart Autonomic Nervous System will turn on one of its defensive responses to stop you from moving towards the perceived dangerous situation. (typically a freeze or dorsal state)

Now you're in a conundrum because your mind wants to move forward but your body won't let you.  You can't talk yourself into it and the more you try the more frustrated you feel.  Not to mention the shame and guilt of not feeling like you can take action to improve your life.  This can create an inner battle and a very frustrating state of being.

How can we move forward from this pattern?

First, understanding why this is happening is so so important.  One of the ways the nervous system can feel safe and lower its defenses is through context.  When you can't move forward it means that your nervous system is doing an A+ job of taking care of you by keeping you safe from the "perceived threat" of this new thing you want to move towards. 

Second, once you understand that this is your nervous system taking care of you, it turns down the volume on the guilt and shame of the pattern.  When the shame and guilt lower a little bit, you can recognize that your nervous system is in a defensive nervous system state.

Third, knowing your states and how to move from defended into ventral or regulation. Once you recognize what state your nervous system is in you can start to work with it.  Go to your toolbox of regulation tools and begin to use them to slowly come back to regulation.  Tracking your sensory experience the whole time you can gently guide your body into a place of feeling present, awake, and a little safer. 

Fourth, take the next smallest step forward.

When you take a tiny step forward towards the new thing from a place of regulation, you're shifting the pattern from feeling dangerous to feeling safe enough to take that small step.  You can regulate before, during, and after that next tiny step to help your nervous system to FEEL into the new thing in a safe way.  This is how you can start to slowly teach your nervous system new patterns and move towards the things you want in your life. 

Your nervous system learned these old patterns and it can learn new ones.

It's so depressing to want to grow and feel like you can't. 

Let me know how this goes for you

And if you're ready to step into 1 on 1 support, click here to schedule a 30-minute consult to shift from feeling "I can't" into feeling "I can".

OR

Join a Somatic Movement class this week to build some regulation skills and add healthy movement to your life.