You’re in good company
In autumn 2026 I ran a short survey with 20 people about creating a life that feels like their own. The answer chosen most often to “what holds you back” was a tie: “I know what I want, but I can’t act on it” and “risking what already works”. Nine people picked each.
These were not people short on discipline. Half of them ran their own business. They had shown for years that they can deliver for others. They just couldn’t move on this one thing for themselves.
Why pushing harder doesn’t work
The usual advice is some version of “just do it”: set a deadline, tell everyone, find an accountability partner, stop making excuses. Sometimes that works for a week. Then the old pattern comes back, often with a layer of self-criticism on top.
There’s a reason. Self-determination theory, one of the best-researched theories of motivation, separates motivation that comes from inside (it matters to me, I want to) from motivation that comes from pressure (I should, I’d be ashamed if I didn’t). People sustain change much longer when the motivation is their own (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Forcing yourself turns the change into one more “should”, and successful people already live with plenty of those.
Self-criticism doesn’t help either. In a series of experiments, people who treated a failure with self-compassion were more motivated to improve afterwards than people who were hard on themselves (Breines & Chen, 2012).
So the question changes. It’s less “how do I make myself do this?” and more “what’s in the way, and what would make the first step possible?”
What’s underneath: emotion, story, body
In ontological coaching, which shapes how I work, a person’s way of being shows up in three connected domains: language, emotions and the body. When someone is stuck on a change they want, all three are usually involved.
The emotion. There’s almost always fear in it somewhere: of losing income, status, the respect of people you care about, or the identity you’ve built. Sometimes it’s shame (“I should have done this years ago”) or resignation (“people like me don’t get to”). Often it hasn’t been named, only felt as a vague heaviness whenever the topic comes up.
The story. Signals have no words, so your head supplies them. The heaviness becomes a sentence: “Now isn’t the right time.” “I’d be letting everyone down.” “I’m too old to start over.” These sentences sound like facts. In ontological terms they’re assessments, judgements dressed up as assertions you could check.
The body. You can often feel the pattern before you can explain it. The chest tightens when you open the document. You get up to make coffee. You check email. The body is protecting you from something, and it’s worth knowing what.
At the Agile Slovenia conference I asked 30 people to hold a squat for two minutes, right after lunch. Within seconds the voices started. “It’s enough now.” “I can’t be the first to quit.” Those are the same sentences that stop the hard conversation and the decision you keep postponing. In the squat you can feel the link between body, emotion and story very directly.
Why the story makes sense
The resistance makes sense. It’s protecting something.
Losses weigh more than gains. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that people weigh a possible loss more heavily than a gain of the same size (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). When you have a lot that works, every change looks like a risk to it: the income, the reputation, the routine your family relies on, the person you’ve become known as.
There may be a hidden commitment. Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey found that people who don’t follow through on a change they want often hold a competing commitment they aren’t aware of, such as “I’m committed to never looking like I don’t know what I’m doing” (Kegan & Lahey, 2001). Once you see it, you can work with it instead of fighting yourself.
Waiting feels safe now and costs later. In Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec’s research, people’s short-term regrets were mostly about things they did, and their long-term regrets mostly about things they didn’t do (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995). Later research shows this varies between people, so treat it as a tendency, and ask yourself which regret you’d rather carry.
How we work with it
This is the sequence I use with clients. It takes longer than “just do it”. It also lasts.
1. Name the emotion, precisely. Ask: when I picture making the change, what do I feel? Go past “stressed” or “not sure”. Afraid of what? Ashamed of what? Precise naming helps. Putting a feeling into words reduces activity in the brain’s alarm system (Lieberman et al., 2007), and people who tell similar emotions apart cope better under stress (Kashdan, Barrett & McKnight, 2015).
2. Catch the story, word for word. Write down the exact sentence your head says. Exact matters. “It’s complicated” is vague. “If I leave, my partner will think I’m irresponsible” is something you can work with.
3. Check it. Is it something you could verify, or a judgement? Stories tend to pass for facts in four ways:
- Mind reading: you know what someone else thinks.
- Fortune telling: you know how it will end.
- Always and never: one event becomes a rule.
- A verdict about you: a signal becomes a label.
Then ask: who first said this, and when? What else could be true? What would I need to see to know?
4. Look for the hidden commitment. Ask: if I did take the step, what am I afraid would happen? What am I protecting? Write the answer as “I’m committed to never…”. Then ask whether that commitment still serves the person you are now.
5. Choose a reading you can act from. Pick the explanation that stays closest to the facts and still serves where you want to go. Something like: “My partner hasn’t said that. I’m guessing. I can ask.” Or: “It’s a risk. It’s also a risk I can test in a small way first.” Say it out loud. Notice what changes in your body when you do.
6. Take a step from there, small enough to happen. Shrink the step until it’s smaller than the risk: a version you can try for two weeks without touching what pays the bills. Decide when and where you’ll do it. Plans in the form “when X happens, I’ll do Y” substantially raise the odds that people follow through; a meta-analysis of 94 studies found a medium-to-large effect (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).
7. Read what comes back. After the step: what did you feel before, during and after? How did the world respond? Was the story right? Usually it was partly right and mostly exaggerated, and seeing that once makes the next step easier.
How momentum builds
Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer analysed nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from people doing creative work. The single biggest boost to their motivation and mood was making progress on something meaningful, even small progress (Amabile & Kramer, 2011).
The same happens with personal change. The first step proves the story wrong in one small place. That makes the next step lighter. After a few laps, you’re no longer pushing yourself to move. You’re moving because each step shows you something you want to see more of.
A composite example
Details from several clients, combined and changed.
Ana is a director at a large company. For three years she has wanted to start a consultancy of her own. She has a plan, savings, contacts and a first client in mind. She hasn’t started.
When we named the emotion, it was fear, and underneath it shame. The sentence was: “If I leave and it fails, everyone will see I was only good because of the company.” Four disguises at once: mind reading, fortune telling, a verdict, and an “everyone”.
We checked it. Who is everyone? Three former colleagues, when she thought about it. Had any of them said anything like that? No. What else could be true? That her clients came to her, not the logo.
Her first step was small: one paid project for a former client, done on two weekends, without leaving her job. Before it, her chest was tight for days. During it, she felt more alive than she had in years. Afterwards, the client asked for a second project.
That one step didn’t decide anything. It gave her a different story to act from: “People pay for my thinking.” Nine months later she left, with three clients signed.
One thing to try this week
- Write the change in one sentence.
- Write what you feel when you picture starting, in one precise word.
- Write the sentence your head says about it, word for word. Check it against the four disguises.
- Write a reading that’s closer to the facts and that you could act from.
- Write the smallest step that reading makes possible, with a day and a time. Take it, then note what came back.