Wondering how to stay consistent with goals?  If you’ve ever set a goal you genuinely care about and still struggled to follow through, you’re not alone. It can feel confusing when you know what you want, you know what to do, and you still can’t seem to do it consistently or follow through on your plan.

A lot of women assume that inconsistency means they lack discipline, motivation, or willpower. In reality, there’s often a deeper driver underneath the behavior. Your nervous system plays a bigger role in motivation and follow-through than most people realize.  When it’s dysregulated, it can push you toward patterns that look like procrastination, perfectionism, overworking, avoidance, or shutdown.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand why pursuing goals can feel harder when your nervous system is dysregulated, what that looks like in real life (overworking, procrastinating, freezing), and how to support yourself in a practical, skills-based way so you can keep making progress toward your goal.

A quick note on what I mean by consistency

When I talk about consistency, it doesn’t mean:

• Always getting it “perfect”
• Never missing a day
• Sustaining constant momentum
• Never need a reset

Instead, consistency means you recenter and refocus yourself as often as needed so you can return to the goal. In my world, consistency is about building a pattern you can repeat, even when:

• Life gets busy
• You feel discouraged
• You don’t love how things are going

Why goals feel harder when your nervous system is dysregulated

When your nervous system is dysregulated, your brain is more likely to interpret ordinary goal-related stumbles, challenges, and emotional discomfort as signs of a threat. That emotional discomfort may be in the form of emotions like:

• Uncertainty
• Vulnerability
• Fear of judgment
• Fear of failure
• Discouragement
• Disappointment
• Overwhelm at the effort it will take to do something new

If your system reads those stumbles, challenges, and discomfort as unsafe, it will try to protect you from them. That protection can show up in a few common ways:

• Overworking: You push yourself super hard, maintain a tight grip, and try to control every detail in an effort to prevent negative outcomes.
• Procrastination: You delay the task, avoid related decisions, or find “productive” distractions that keep you busy but don’t move you forward toward the goal.
• Freeze or shutdown: You feel foggy, stuck, unmotivated, or unable to get started, even when the goal matters to you.

None of these patterns make you lazy. They’re actually protective patterns your brain and nervous system are generating because they’re trying to help you – even when you don’t actually need that “help.” These protective patterns can be deeply ingrained, highly practiced, and feel very convincing in the moment.

If you want a deeper explanation of nervous system regulation and how to work with fight, flight, or freeze modes, check out this article.

How nervous system dysregulation disrupts follow-through

Even if you’re smart, capable, and used to achieving excellence, dysregulation changes how your brain operates.

Motivation becomes unreliable

When your system is in protection mode, motivation often feels inconsistent. Some days you can push yourself, get things done, and generally kick butt.  On other days, you avoid, procrastinate, or shut down. That doesn’t mean there’s something “wrong” with you. It means your nervous system is sensing what it perceives as a threat and responding accordingly.

Thought patterns and focus shift

You might notice:

• More all-or-nothing thinking
• A tendency to focus more and more on what could go wrong
• You’re getting stuck trying to plan the “perfect” approach

Inconsistency often looks like a time-management problem on the surface, but underneath, it’s often rooted in a dysregulated nervous system.

Self-trust is diminished

When you make plans and don’t follow through, it’s easy to start believing you can’t rely on yourself. When you set future goals, you do so with an initial excitement that often melts into stress and disappointment, because you’re carrying the mental weight of past inconsistency into your present efforts at pursuing a new goal.

That’s why the solution is rarely to just “try harder” or “take action.”  That’s terrible advice for someone whose nervous system is telling them, subconsciously, with every fiber of their being, NOT to take action. The solution is usually “support yourself differently so that you can take action.”

Confidence vs self-confidence in goal pursuit

This distinction is important, because many women confuse the two and end up targeting the wrong problem.

Confidence is based on your past

Confidence grows through skills, experience, and evidence you’ve already collected. That’s why you might feel confident in some areas of your work or life, but not confident in areas that are new to you or where you have less experience.

Self-confidence is based on your future

Self-confidence is your capacity to trust yourself to navigate whatever comes up.

When self-confidence is low, goals feel higher-stakes than they need to, because you aren’t trusting yourself to navigate the outcome if things don’t turn out how you want.

You might think you’re afraid of failing.  However, what people are usually actually afraid of is:

• How they will feel if they fail
• What they’ll make it mean about themselves
• How they’ll handle it if things don’t go the way they want

This is also why “just take action” advice doesn’t land (or work) for everyone. Sometimes “not taking action” is not the issue. Your nervous system’s response to the perceived risk of action is the issue.

A practical framework: Regulate first, then build follow-through

You don’t need a complicated system to further distract you from making progress on your goals. Instead, you need a repeatable sequence that helps you move away from protection and toward progress.

Step 1: Identify the pattern you’re experiencing

Start by being honest with yourself about what’s happening, without judging yourself.  Remember, this is a protective pattern your nervous system is using to try and protect you – it isn’t a character flaw.  In terms of the pattern, ask yourself which you’re experiencing:

• Overdrive: Pushing yourself hard, gripping tight, trying to force results
• Avoidance: Delaying, distracting, “I’ll start later”
• Shutdown: Feeling foggy, stuck, numb, hard to initiate

This is not about labeling yourself. It is about recognizing your nervous system state so you can respond effectively.

Step 2: Learn to support yourself during a stress response

When your stress response is active, fight, flight, or freeze modes might be running the show. Self-regulation is what helps your thinking brain come back online. It helps you shift into a state where you can respond thoughtfully instead of reacting out of fear.

Use the nervous system regulation practices that work for you. If you need a refresher, start with this article.

Step 3: Expect to feel emotional discomfort and work with it on purpose

This is where most advice around achieving goals falls short. Even when your nervous system is better regulated, pursuing goals still involves emotional discomfort.

You might feel:

• Uncertainty about the outcome
• Vulnerability about being seen
• Disappointment if progress is slow
• Embarrassment about being a beginner
• Frustration when things are more difficult than expected

You don’t need to eliminate those feelings to move forward. Instead, build your capacity to experience them and keep going anyway. That capacity is what I call resilient discomfort.

Resilient discomfort is an emotional state where you’re willing to face and experience some types of discomfort because you recognize that doing so supports your growth and your goals over time.

If you want to go deeper on this skill, I’ll be publishing a cornerstone resource on resilient discomfort later this month. Link it here once it’s live: [Resilient Discomfort Cornerstone – add link].

Step 4: Make a decision on the next best step, then take a small action

This is where consistency is built. You make a decision on one next step that is small enough to do without negotiating with yourself for two hours.

A good place to start is a step that might take 5–15 minutes. It’s not a grand plan or a huge leap forward. Instead, it’s a small concrete move you can do today to get moving and start building momentum.

Examples:

• Open the document and write one paragraph.
• Put on your shoes and walk for ten minutes.
• Draft the email and send it.
• Outline the first slide of the presentation.

Small steps build evidence. Evidence builds self-trust. Self-trust supports consistency.  All of those build confidence AND self-confidence.

Step 5: Close the loop so self-trust grows

After you take a step, take thirty seconds to reflect.

• What helped me follow through today?
• What made it harder than it needed to be?
• What’s one adjustment I will make next time?

This is not about self-criticism. It is about building awareness and creating a personal playbook that supports you over time.

Three real-life examples

Here are some examples to help you imagine how this might look in real life.

Example 1: The work presentation

Let’s say you have a presentation coming up. You’re capable and you know the material. Still, you find yourself overworking the slides, rewriting every sentence, and staying up too late preparing.

If your nervous system is activated, overworking can feel like a responsible choice. Underneath, it’s often an attempt at self-protection in disguise. Your brain is trying to prevent judgment, criticism, or embarrassment by overworking and trying to guarantee perfection in you performance and presentation.

What supporting yourself can look like:

• Regulate your nervous system first, even briefly, so you aren’t building the presentation from a fear state.
• Decide on the next step: “I’m going to finalize the first 3 slides and move on in the next 10 minutes.”
• Expect discomfort: “It is normal to feel vulnerable before presenting. I can feel that and keep going.”
• Close the loop: “What helped me stop at a reasonable time? What boundary will I set for myself next time?”

Example 2: A health goal that turns into an all-or-nothing cycle

Maybe you have a goal to exercise consistently, and your worried that your struggle with how to stay consistent with your goals could be an impediment. Here’s a common pattern:

• You start strong
• Due to circumstances or motivation issues, you miss a few days
• You end up feeling discouraged
• You stop following through and end up giving up on the goal

A dysregulated nervous system can push people toward intensity, then avoidance. That swing doesn’t mean you can’t be consistent. It’s usually a sign that you need a plan that supports your nervous system, not just your calendar.

What it can look like to support yourself in this scenario:

• Regulate your nervous system first if you’re already stressed.
• Identify a step that is small enough to do:  Decide that even 5 or 10 minutes counts, and do that much.
• Expect discomfort: “I don’t need to feel motivated to do this. I can do it while it feels inconvenient, difficult, or pointless.”
• Close the loop: “What made it easier for me to make some progress today? What did I do that supported me best?”

Example 3: A visibility goal (posting, applying, being seen)

Maybe you want to post content consistently, apply for a role, or put your hat in the ring for a new opportunity. You believe it could be good for you. Then you find yourself delaying, rewriting, second-guessing, or avoiding.

That’s often a nervous system response to perceived social risk. Your brain is trying to protect you from judgment or rejection.  However, that “protection” often stops progress in its tracks, stunts your personal growth, and convinces you that pursuing your goal is too risky.

As you consider how to stay consistent with your goals in this kind of scenario, here’s what supporting yourself can look like:

• Regulate your nervous system first so you aren’t trying to “think” your way out of a protective response.
• Choose a next step: “I will write the first draft and take a 30-minute break.”
• Expect discomfort: “Being seen can feel uncomfortable. I can tolerate that feeling and still take action.”
• Close the loop: “What part of this felt hardest? What did I do anyway?”

A coaching-fit reminder

If you’re functioning day-to-day but you notice your nervous system and self-doubt get activated in specific situations, this is the kind of work coaching supports well. You can build skills for self-regulation, self-trust, and self-confidence, so you can apply them in real life situations like decision-making, boundaries, visibility, feedback, and follow-through.

How to stay consistent with goals: Conclusion

If you want to stay consistent with goals, start by supporting your nervous system. Then work with emotional discomfort on purpose. Finally, take one small next step and repeat the whole process over again.

Consistency doesn’t mean you have to become a different person overnight. Instead, consistency means building a system of self-leadership you can come back to, even on hard days.

If you want help applying this to your specific patterns, book a Coaching Consultation here: https://www.amyschield.com/book.