When You Know Exactly What to Do… But Still Can’t Do It

I don’t often share the stories of my clients (confidentiality). But sometimes, with their permission, I like to share glimpses of the journeys that they go through. I feel truly inspired by the hard work that they do - digging deep into themselves, facing uncomfortable realizations, making hard decisions - and the transformations that unfold in their lives as a result.

So this client, let’s call her Alice (not her real name), came to me with a challenge, that might seem very simple from an external perspective. Alice had a dream. She wanted to relocate to another country and to find a new job. Both at the same time. I know, ambitious. She actually had a full plan worked out, she had done a lot of research about her dream destination and about the job possibilities.

The challenge was not with the plan itself. The challenge was with the execution. Alice could spend hours on collecting information online, on talking to other people who made a similar move, on collecting the documents needed. But whenever it came to doing the actual steps - reaching out to a recruiter, updating her CV, making an appointment with an agency that could support with the visa process (needed for her destination), she just froze.

Before coming to me, Alice tried different things. She tried working around a tighter schedule, better planning of her routine. She tried asking her partner for help. She knew exactly what needed to be done, so why couldn’t she just do it? She started thinking that something was wrong with her. Maybe she was just lazy, or she lacked some skills, or maybe it was just not meant to be.

In case you wonder, Alice is a very capable woman. She is used to being in a demanding job, she relocated twice, and she takes care of her family. So there is no doubt about her capabilities. Most often it has nothing to do with capabilities.

We started the coaching journey with Alice. After a number of sessions, self-observation, connecting the dots, Alice realized that she was almost running on empty. Her daily life was so demanding, and she was already pushing herself so hard, that adding one more demanding project on her to-do list felt like an impossible task to her nervous system. Finding information, dreaming about it - no problem. But actually doing the necessary work was not acceptable to her body. And of course there were signals that the body was sending (getting sick more than usually, annoying pain in the neck, among others). But she would habitually disregard them, consider them unimportant and move on.

Don’t we all do that at some point? The problem is there is only so much one's nervous system can take. The resources are not endless. And if we don’t replenish them on time, we run out of energy, motivation, desire, creativity. I’ve been there. And it took me a very long time to come back from it.

Luckily for Alice, she noticed the signs, even if not the first ones. She could have pushed further and maybe she would have even succeed, but at what cost? Realizing that her nervous system was asking for a break, Alice changed her priorities. More self-care, more quality time with herself and her family, more time in the nature, more time for hobbies. She still has her ambitious project in mind, and I’m sure she will manage it brilliantly, once she refills her energy - physically, emotionally, spiritually. My journey with her is not over yet, and I am very excited to see how things will evolve in her life.

I wonder if there is anything in Alice’s story that resonated for you? Maybe you recognized yourself a little? If you did, I invite you to evaluate your levels of energy, very honestly to yourself. A very simple exercise is to compare input and output - the sources of energy you currently have and how much you receive from them, and where you put your energy into, and how much. It’s simple math - you cannot give more than you receive, not sustainably anyway.