Your Wellness Goals Aren't Failing Because You Lack Discipline—Here's What's Really Happening

There’s a moment that happens when trying to make positive changes in our health and wellness that many of us know all too well: you’re sitting there with a brand-new plan—a fresh habit tracker, a new routine, maybe a hyper-organized calendar that practically radiates “new me” energy. 

For some, this moment feels exciting and energizing. 

For others, the feeling is more of a cautious, “Alright… here goes nothing.” 

And sometimes the vibe is more of a practical inner voice that sounds like: “I don’t exactly want to do this, but I do want what it might lead to.”

As a coach, I’ve seen all of those starting points and more, and they’re all absolutely valid. Because the truth is that change doesn’t require fireworks or excitement, all it requires is a beginning.

Usually, that beginning carries you through a few good days. 

You do the plan, you feel like things are moving forward in the direction you want them to go. Because of this, your brain actually gets a tiny dopamine hit from the novelty of it all, and things start feeling hopeful. 

There’s a sense of “Maybe this time I’ve cracked the code!”

Then, life does what it does best… keeps on happening. 

A stressful week pops up out of nowhere. You’re not sleeping as well as you usually do. Your good mood takes a downward turn. 

Or, maybe nothing dramatic happens at all; it’s just that the initial energy you started with slowly gets lower and lower, and sticking to the plan becomes more of an effort than it was at the start. 

Before you even realize it, you’re drifting away from the routine you were just so committed to.

This is usually the part where most people turn on themselves. 

Not necessarily in an intentional way—it’s often more like a quiet, shaming voice in the background saying, “I should be better at this… Other people manage this… Why can’t I just follow through?”

It’s almost like your brain goes hunting for someone or something to blame, and unfortunately, you’re the closest target.

If this loop feels familiar, you’re not alone—and you’re definitely not broken. 

This exact pattern happens to so many of us: busy professionals, parents, high achievers, and, honestly, anyone trying to create lasting change in our very human nervous systems.

I call this the Hidden Self-Blame Loop. 

It’s hidden because the reasons things fall apart don’t typically announce themselves. 

The unraveling usually starts long before you consciously notice it—beneath the surface, in the layers of our subconscious mind where motivation, stress, habits, and identity all intermingle.

But here’s the good news: 

Once you understand how the Hidden Self-Blame Loop works, you can start to change the story.

The story you tell about yourself stops being about your lack of willpower and starts being about understanding how your brain is actually designed to navigate change. 

And the moment you see it clearly, you unlock a much kinder—and far more effective— inner voice, and a realistic way forward toward your goals and desires.

Let’s break this process down and find a solution together.

Mapping the Hidden Self-Blame Loop

Before we talk about how to start breaking out of this repeating pattern, we need to actually see and understand it—I mean really see it, though. 

A lot of people assume they’re struggling because they chose the wrong plan, didn’t try hard enough, got derailed by other people, or simply don’t have the mysterious “discipline gene” everyone else in the world seems to have.

But, as you can probably guess, that’s almost never the real issue. 

What’s actually happening is that when you try to make changes, even if they’re positive, you immediately start bumping into an internal belief system. 

This system is the interconnected mix of your identity, your nervous system, your automatic habits, the ways you’ve learned to protect yourself (also known as coping mechanisms), and the stories your brain has repeated so often that they’ve graduated from “opinion” to “absolute truth.”

If you’ve ever had the experience of genuinely wanting to change while simultaneously feeling unable to take the next step, that tension comes from the tug-of-war between the old identity your brain trusts and the new strategy you’re trying to layer on top of it.

It’s important to note that this system isn’t a bad thing. It doesn't have a vendetta against you. It’s just your brain doing what it believes is safest and most familiar.

Think about it another way: Trying to make a major change in your life without understanding your current operating system is like trying to use your GPS without letting it know your current location. 

You can have the best plan in the world… but if the starting point is incorrect or unknown, the directions won’t make any sense. You’ll get turned around, frustrated, and eventually convinced that something must be wrong with you.

So, before we start talking about how to make new habits stick or using proven strategies for change, we need to identify where we’re actually starting from. 

Then, everything begins to make more sense—not because you’ll suddenly be more disciplined, but because you’re finally understanding and working with yourself instead of strong-arming your way to your goals.

Let’s take a closer look at how the Hidden Self-Blame Loop actually operates.

The Four Stages of the Hidden Self-Blame Loop

1. Strategy Implemented (aka: The Honeymoon Phase)

The first stage starts the moment you set a new plan in motion, and depending on how familiar you are with making and sticking to positive changes, this stage can come with a whole spectrum of feelings. 

Some people start with a genuine spark of excitement. Others feel a kind of cautious hopefulness. And plenty of people begin with something closer to dread, hesitation, or a very neutral, “Alright… let’s just get this over with.”

Remember that all of those starting points are completely normal. They’re simply different emotional doorways into the same experience, which is trying something new.

Regardless of how you enter it, this first stage often brings a sense of possibility. 

You can see some version of your “ideal you,” whether that’s someone who wakes up early without taking a hammer to the alarm, someone who finally builds a consistent workout rhythm, or someone who manages to keep their space feeling peaceful instead of chaotic for like, a whole day (kudos to you, my organized friend). 

Now, behind the scenes, your brain is responding to the novelty of the change. 

Neurologically, anything new you do releases a little burst of dopamine—not the “reward” dopamine you hear armchair experts talk about on TikTok—but the dopamine that orients your attention and perks up your motivation. 

Novelty sharpens your focus, makes things feel doable, and gives the whole experience a sort of fresh-start energy.

This stage tends to feel light, energizing, and hopeful because nothing has truly challenged your operating system… yet. 

You haven’t run into the old patterns or the familiar friction. You’re running on the momentum of “maybe this time it will be different,” and that momentum is real—but it’s not going to carry you to the finish line.

Now that you understand why the beginning feels the way it does, you’re already in a better position for what comes next: resistance.

2. Resistance Emerges

This is the part nobody enjoys, but almost everyone experiences.

You’re moving along with your new plan—maybe confidently, maybe cautiously—and then life happens: You get tired. Work gets messy. Someone needs you. Your mood dips. Your schedule gets thrown off. You have a day when you feel overwhelmed for no clear reason.

Nothing catastrophic happens. It’s just the usual mix of responsibilities, stress, and emotions you didn’t pencil into your planner.

This is where things start to quietly shift without you being aware of the true cause.

Your brain, which cares deeply about keeping you alive and conserving your energy, notices the extra effort you’re putting into this new plan. It doesn’t care or note the idea, intention, or desire behind the effort… only the physiological cost of it. 

Any change, even a positive one, requires more energy from our brains than simply staying the same. This is because the brain has to pay closer attention, override old habits, and literally create new neural pathways to implement that change.

So when your brain senses your workload increasing, it sends little warning signals to the rest of your body that sound like:

• “This is getting hard. Resist.”

• “We don’t usually do this. Resist.” 

• “Maybe today isn’t the day for this. Resist.”

Remember, the brain likes things to be efficient.

The brain and your nervous system prefer the familiar because it feels safe. Even if that familiar pattern isn’t helpful, it requires less energy than building something new. So this system tries to pull you back toward what it knows, and you feel that pull as resistance.

This resistance often manifests as procrastination, fatigue, brain fog, or the sudden conviction that reorganizing your entire closet right now is somehow more urgent and important than anything else on your to-do list.

3. Self-Blame Kicks In

This is where the loop tightens. Most people assume this resistance is personal failure. So, instead of the narrative being, “This plan is incompatible with how my brain currently works,” what you hear instead is, “I’m the problem.” 

Ouch.

But here’s what you don’t know: that self-blame has its own energy cost. This is because self-criticism actually turns on your stress response. It makes you more hyper-aware, more overwhelmed, and even less capable of trying again tomorrow.

The irony is almost comical if it weren’t so exhausting: we blame ourselves for being overwhelmed… and in turn, that actually creates more overwhelm. 

4. Negative Identity Is Reinforced

This is usually the moment where everything starts to feel real personal.

When resistance shows up consistently, most people don’t recognize it as a normal nervous-system response. Instead, you assume something must be chronically wrong with you. 

This is not because you’re being dramatic, but because the brain loves simple explanations.

So, instead of thinking, “Maybe this plan doesn’t match how my system is wired right now,” the internal story you tell about yourself becomes, “I should be better at this… Other people do it, why can’t I?... I’m the common denominator here.”

And the tricky part is that self-criticism isn’t just a script we rehearse in our heads. It carries a very real physiological price tag.

When you turn that frustration inward, your stress response kicks it up a notch. 

Cortisol nudges higher. 

Your internal alarm systems become more alert, more tense, more preoccupied with scanning for threats.

And that mental state—the tightened, overstimulated, overloaded mindset—is the exact opposite of what helps you stick with new habits.

It’s like trying to learn a new skill with an overbearing boss breathing down your neck, pointing out every mistake and misstep. Except in this scenario, unfortunately, that overbearing boss is you.

This is the moment in the loop where people often think they’ve failed. 

So what happens next? 

Because you’re a human being with a finite amount of emotional bandwidth—not a machine that can just pump out progress—that built-up pressure eventually becomes too much to handle, and your internal protection systems start doing their jobs. 

Your brain starts down-regulating, or reducing the intensity of those strong emotions, in order to lower its energy and effort cost. 

Your plans get dropped. 

You fall back on familiar routines and actions because it feels easier to manage for your brain and nervous system (those well-established neural circuits), even if it’s not what you truly want.

But this is not failure. 

It isn’t you intentionally “sabotaging yourself.” 

It’s just your internal wiring trying to maintain safety and equilibrium.

Put simply, it’s the predictable next step in a pattern you were never taught to recognize—until now.

Understanding this Hidden Self-Blame Loop is powerful because once you stop personalizing resistance, you can finally work with your systems instead of fighting against them.

How to Break the Self-Blame Cycle

So how do you untangle a loop that feels so automatic, like it’s running on autopilot? The first move isn’t discipline. It’s not about “trying harder,” either. The real shift starts with awareness. It’s seeing your system clearly, understanding what it’s doing and why. 

You can’t change what you don’t understand.

When you recognize that this loop is actually a nervous system protection strategy, you can start using it as information—data about how your identity, your habits, and your energy interact with the strategies you’re trying to implement.

Instead of, “What’s wrong with me?” You can start asking yourself, “Where is my system resisting, and why?” 

That subtle shift dissolves shame and opens the door to real change. 

You stop fighting yourself and start studying yourself. And that distance, that perspective of a gentle observer, is what lets you see your patterns, notice your triggers, and make adjustments without collapsing into self-criticism.

In this article, you learned that your brain is built to conserve energy. 

Identity, habits, and emotional patterns are all shortcuts that save mental fuel. 

When you push against those shortcuts, the system flags it as “unknown” and marks unknown as costly. Costly equals threat. Your nervous system isn’t being dramatic; it’s being efficient.

So here’s the good news: real change happens when you shift your identity first—in tiny, digestible ways that your nervous system can handle. 

Not in heroic, all-or-nothing efforts, but small, survivable nudges that build the foundation for a new version of you.

Want to feel more consistent? Start with one task you can actually complete, even on a low-energy day.

Want to work out regularly? Begin with two minutes of movement that your body recognizes and welcomes.

Want to eat healthier? Choose one meal or snack to change, instead of overhauling the entire kitchen.

Over time, these small shifts communicate to your system: “Hey… this new direction is safe. It’s becoming familiar. Let’s keep going.”

Your resistance eases. The self-blame quiets. The loop loosens. And eventually, you’ve shifted into your new identity in a way that feels natural, supportive, and sustainable to maintain.

Ready to Break the Loop?

If you’re tired of trying harder, blaming yourself, and still feeling stuck, it’s time to work with your identity and nervous system instead of against them. 

If you’re ready to trade in the self-blame for real, usable information about how your system works, I invite you to join my course, Identity Lab.

This program will guide you through 

• Mapping your personal Hidden Self-Blame Loop

• Spotting exactly where resistance shows up for you, and 

• Building micro-shifts toward your new identity that your brain and nervous system can handle

Enrollment for Identity Lab is typically $97, but I’m currently offering it FREE for 26 people in 2026.

To get 100% off your enrollment, click here and use the code change100in26 at checkout.

Remember: you don’t need more discipline. You need a sustainable system that actually works with who you are.

Here’s to breaking free from the Hidden Self-Blame Loop and building systems that stick. 

Until next time,

Brandon Jennings, CWC, CPT, WLS