What to Do When You Have Big Dreams But Struggle to Make Them a Reality

You know what you want. You might even know exactly what you need to do to get there, but you still feel stuck, and you don't know why!

You’ve got the ideas, the Pinterest boards, the notes app full of plans. A business you want to start, a relationship you’re ready to call in, or a vision for your future that’s been playing in your mind for years. You manifest, visualise and plan but you can’t seem to get going, no matter how much you psych yourself up, the action never quite follows.

Something is getting in way.

Sound familiar?

So what is this thing thats holding you back?

And what if its you?

Overthinking, making excuses and lacking self-belief.

Becuase when it comes to chasing your goals, the biggest blocks often aren’t time, talent, or even opportunity, they’re internal patterns your brain uses to keep you emotionally safe.

This is far more common than you think, and it starts with your brain and nervous system, not your willpower.

Here are the 10 most common psychological and emotional reasons people don’t achieve their life goals and why they’re way more fixable than you’ve been led to believe.

1. Fear of Failure

The big one, the classic,"but what if I fail?"

Fear of failure is that sneaky voice in your head that tells you you can't do it, that if you try everyone will watch you fail, and cringe.

At its best fear of failure is your brain’s attempt to protect you from emotional pain, it wants to save you from shame, social rejection, or being kicked out of the metaphorical tribe. It’s not out to ruin your dreams, it just doesn’t want you to get hurt.

The specific part of your brain that is wired to scan for threats doesn’t just worry about walking home alone at night, it reacts just as strongly to the possibility of launching a business, posting a Reel, or saying “I love you” first.

Failure = danger. And danger = don’t move.

So if you:

• Procrastinate on things that matter most to you

• Feel stuck at the starting line

• Avoid taking action, just incase things go wrong

• Feel like you always need to be 100% ready to start (which by the way nobody ever is!)

This might be your problem.

And if it is? So what?

So what if you fail?

Nobody successful gets it right the first time. The first draft of everything is usually awful, whether it’s a business, a book, a song, a design, or even an idea. You will make mistakes, and you will fall, but every time you fall and get back up, you build two things your nervous system really needs; resilience and evidence that you can survive discomfort.

The prefrontal cortex (your decision-making HQ) literally learns from your mistakes. Each time you try again, it updates its internal model so you’re less likely to repeat the same pattern and more likely to grow from it.

So start failing, we love to see it, because it means you are one step closer to success!

And if tough love is not for you, you absolutley don’t need to be fearless to start, and it's ok if you feel the fear, you just need to be willing to do the thing anyway and maybe get it wrong. Simply knowing that getting back up is where the real magic happens, tells your brain that failure isnt scary, its valuable and you can handle it.

Add in nervous system support such as breathwork and watch the grip loosen. Over time, you’ll start to feel the fear and still go for it anyway, with confidence and excitement.

2. Low Self-Efficacy (Lack of Belief in Self)

If fear of failure whispers “what if I can’t do it?”Low self-efficacy shouts back: “Of course you can’t. Who do you think you are?”

Self-efficacy is a term coined by psychologist Albert Bandura, and it simply means your belief in your ability to succeed at something.

Those with high self-efficacy, take action and trust themselves to figure it out on the way, bouncing back when things go wrong.

On the otherhand if you have low self-efficacy, you overthink, under-commit, and stall before you’ve even started.

Neurologically, low self-efficacy often means your brain is busy scanning for everything that could go wrong, instead of focusing on how you could actually handle it.

Its your brains way of trying to protect your self-worth. If you never try, you never fail and if you never fail, you never feel shame.

So if you:

• Know what you want to do, but talk yourself out of it constantly

• Get stuck in the “I’ll wait until I'm more prepared or qualified” loop

• Feel like your past failures are proof you’re not cut out for success

• You doubt whether you’re “allowed” to take up space or be seen trying

This might be your problem.

Don’t wait to believe in yourself before you act. Act and that’s what builds the belief.

That first awkward post, the tiny launch, the uncomfortable conversation, that’s what rewires your brain. Action creates evidence, and evidence becomes belief.

This is where nervous system support comes in big, because your body needs to feel safe trying before your brain will believe it’s safe to succeed.

Instead of stalling or making another excuse try pairing action with reward, do the thing, celebrate it and repeat.

Remind yourself “It’s okay to be new at this” while connecting with your body by placing your hand on your heart and imagine you just did the scary thing and survived, visulise what it feels like in your body

Every time you try, your nervous system gets new data to incorporate

“We’re okay. We did it. Maybe next time, we can do even more.”

3. Lack of Emotional Regulation / Nervous System Dysregulation

Even with clarity and intention, if the body feels overwhelmed, unsafe, or emotionally dysregulated, action shuts down. You’re not lazy. You’re not flaky. You’re not inconsistent. You’re probably just dysregulated.

And that’s not an insult, it’s your nervous system doing exactly what it was wired to do - keep you alive.

When your nervous system senses emotional threat (judgement, failure, rejection, visibility), it flips into fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode. Your heart races. Your focus scatters. You suddenly can’t post the thing, write the thing, launch the thing, or you do, but immediately spiral into shutdown.

If this happens often, your system is likely running on chronic survival mode, and every goal feels like a risk to your safety, not a step toward your future.

So if you:

• Start strong, then crash and burn with no clear reason

• Feel overwhelmed by small tasks that should be doable

• Procrastinate not because you’re lazy, but because your body is tense and frozen

• Need to time“recover” from even minor social, work, or emotional stressors

Before you self-help your mindset, you have to regulate your body.

Trying to build a dream from fight-or-flight is like trying to write poetry in a burning building. Your brain needs safety first.

Start with daily nervous system regulation, like:

• Box breathing to bring your body back to baseline

• Vagus nerve activation (singing, humming, cold water splashes)

• Orienting response (name what you see, hear, feel to re-centre)

• Self-soothing touch (hand on heart, grounding pressure, gentle swaying)

Consistency lead to intensity, regulate regularly, especially before moves and your system will slowly learn that there is no threat.

When your nervous system feels safe, the rest of your life opens up.

4. Overwhelm and Poor Goal Structuring

If big goals feel too abstract or out of reach, it can lead to task paralysis.

You’ve got the vision but every time you try to start, your brain says, “This is too much. Let’s lie down instead.”

This is overwhelm, and it usually rides sidecar with poor goal structuring.

Your brain isn’t built to chase vague, future outcomes like “be successful” or “have my dream life.” It’s built to chase concrete, achievable, time-bound actions that feel doable today.

When you stare at a giant, unstructured goal, your brain struggles to map it. The task feels unsafe, ambiguous, and endless which triggers avoidance, shutdown, or procrastination. Hello, doom scrolling!

It’s not that you can’t do big things. It’s that your brain needs a clear route to get there.

So if you:

• Say things like “I just don’t know where to start” a lot

• Make big to-do lists, then feel instantly paralysed by them

• Feel guilty for not making progress, but secretly dread doing what is required to move forward

• Bounce between ideas because committing to one feels overwhelming or boring

Its time to Break. It. Down.

Your brain loves clarity and closure so give it digestible, achievable steps, not a mountain to climb.

• Set one goal per week and define a single next action (just one)

• Use the “Now / Next / Later” method to oganise your goals by urgency and ease

• Break each task into 5-minute actions you know your nervous system won’t resist

• And add a reward loop. Pair small wins with something positive so your brain starts associating momentum with pleasure, not pressure.

  
  

You can do it, you just need structure, accountability and a clear plan

5. Imposter Syndrome

You’ve got the credentials, the talent, the means but there is a part of you who is just waiting for everyone to realise you have no idea what you’re doing.

This is Imposter Syndrome, where competence and confidence are in a long-distance relationship.

Despite being one of the most capable people in the room, you still feel like a fraud, like you got lucky, fooled everyone, or that you have to keep proving yourself to justify your seat at the table.

But here’s what’s really happening, when your self-perception hasn’t caught up to your actual success, your brain’s internal narrator, keeps pulling up outdated scripts. It’s referencing old wounds, past criticism, or childhood conditioning that told you “not to get too big for your boots.” So when you step into something new, your nervous system treats it like a threat. Cue the fear response.

So if you:

• Downplay compliments and over-apologise

• Attribute wins to “luck” or “good timing”

• Fear being “found out” or exposed as inexperienced

• Delay launching or showing up because you’re “not ready yet”

Then its time to remind yourself that you don’t need to feel like an expert to start acting like one.

Imposter Syndrome thrives in silence and isolation, so your job is to build internal validation and create safe evidence that you are who you say you are.

By evidence journaling, or writing down what you’ve done well everyday. Successes, kind feedback, things you overcame you help build your case.

When doubt hits, place a hand on your chest and say, “I’ve done hard things before. I can do this too.”

Imagine your confident, calm, expert self leading the way. Step into her shoes, and live like her, even if it feels like dress-up at first, you will eventually stop feeling like you are pretending and realise this is who you have always been. Imposter Syndrome loses power when you voice it. Share with a coach, mentor, or trusted friend, not for reassurance, but to create space between you and the lie you've created about yourself.

Real imposters don’t have Imposter Syndrome. You feel this way because you care. You’re expanding. Your brain just hasn’t caught up yet, but be brave and do it anyway and you'll mind will quickly catch up.

6. Lack of Consistent Habits or Follow-Through Systems

So, you brought the new notebook, wrote the to-do list, felt super inspired and then never looked at it again.

If this is you, you’re not alone, lack of follow-through isn’t always a motivation issue but a system issue.

Big goals require small consistency, not random bursts of energy, if you’re relying on mood, motivation, or moon phases to carry your dreams forward, your brain will default to what’s easiest, the path of least resistance (aka scrolling TikTok, over-researching, or just re-writing the plan again).

From a neuroscience lens, this is your dopaminergic system chasing short-term reward (comfort, validation and easy wins) over long-term goals that require delayed gratification. Plus, if your already overloaded by decision fatigue or stress, habit-building feels like climbing Everest in heels.

So if you:

• Start projects with a bang that quickly end with a slow fade into the void

• Over-plan and under-act

• “Forget” to follow through on the habits you know help you

• Rely on pressure or panic to get things done

You don’t need more willpower, you need a better system.

Try:

• Habit stacking: Anchor new habits to ones you already do. (E.g. After I make coffee, I write 1 sentence of my pitch/email/offer.)

• Implementation intentions: Be specific. Not “I’ll work on my business,” but “At 10am, I’ll work on my offer for 20 mins at my desk.”

• Calendar block your dreams: If it’s not scheduled, it’s optional. Your brain loves structure more than it likes to admit.

• Celebrate micro-wins: Every action is a vote for your future self. Notice it. Name it. Reinforce it.

Consistency isn’t about being perfect every day, it’s about coming back to the plan even when you fall off. You’re training your nervous system that follow-through is safe, repeatable, and worth it, because self discipline isn’t punishment, it’s the love language that will lead you directly to your dreams.

7. Negative Core Beliefs / Limiting Identity

If someone subconsciously believes they’re “not the type of person” to be successful, loved, or wealthy, they’ll unconsciously sabotage or avoid opportunities to reinforce that belief.

The brain loves to be right and if you have negative core beliefs the brain will seek out ways to validate them. These are the silent rules your nervous system operates by and if you’ve been trying to build your dream life while secretly believing you don't deserve it that’s like trying to sprint through quicksand.

These beliefs are stored in your subconscious mind and reinforced through the same part of your brain that narrates your identity when you're not actively thinking. If you’ve lived for years in environments that fed you shame, scarcity, or self-doubt, your brain coded that as truth and your nervous system will always resist becoming something that contradicts who it believes you are, even if thats not who you want to be anymore.

So if you:

• Want more, but deep down feel like you don’t deserve it

• Sabotage good things “before they go wrong anyway”

• Struggle to receive compliments, support or opportunities

• Feel discomfort around success, like it’s not for you

You need to do the indentity work to update your story

• Start by naming the belief, get it on paper. Awareness is step one.

• Look for the source and figure out where the belief came from? A parent? A teacher? Society? Often, it’s not even your belief, its just one you've adopted.

• Create a new core truth. This isnt about toxic positivity or lying to yourself, but finding something that stretches your identity gently.

• Say it with your body, Use affirmations and movement to peak it out loud while breathing deeply, walking, or tapping. This helps lock it in on a nervous system level.

• Finally start showing up as her: Choose one small way to act in alignment with this new belief, even if it feels a little fake at first. That’s rewiring in action.

  
  

Beliefs aren’t facts, they’re habits of thought, and habits can be changed.

8. Perfectionism and All-or-Nothing Thinking

If it’s not amazing, why bother and if you can’t do it perfectly, just don't do it at all?

That’s the voice of perfectionism, and she’s usually dressed up as “high standards” but underneath, she’s just fear in a really good outfit.

Perfectionism isn’t about being excellent. It’s about trying to avoid discomfort, judgement, or failure by being untouchable. It’s control in disguise, and she tends to be with her toxic best friend All-or-nothing thinking, the idea that if you’re not doing everything, you’re doing nothing.

This is your brain struggling with cognitive flexibility (the ability to see grey areas), and flagging anything less than perfect as a potential emotional threat that comes with rejection, shame, or criticism. This combo creates paralysis. You either obsess over getting it right, burn out trying, or never start at all.

So if you:

• Spend hours tweaking things that don’t need tweaking

• Abandon goals as soon as you “mess up” once

• Feel like there’s no point doing something unless it’s flawless

• Procrastinate not out of laziness, but out of pressure to perform

Start romanticising imperfect action.

• Do it badly on purpose. Seriously. Set a timer and allow yourself to create something B-minus — and post it. You’ll survive.

• Reframe “mistakes” as reps, every time you show up imperfectly, you teach your nervous system that imperfection is human and isnt something to be ashamed of.

• Use “done is data” as a mantra, every finished thing, no matter how messy, gives your brain proof that momentum lead to mastery.

• Break tasks into ‘minimum viable effort’: What’s the smallest version of this goal that would still move it forward?

Perfectionism tells you to stay small until you’re certain. To make sure you are the most qualified on paper but you can be messy and still move and you can make mistakes and still be a success.

You don’t need to get it perfect. You just need to start.

9. External Validation Dependence

When your goals are tied to being approved of or liked, you lose intrinsic motivation so the moment feedback disappears or turns negative, your momentum collapses.

Say you create something you are super proud of but don't get the response from others that you expected. You post on Insta and then spend 45 minutes refreshing to see who liked it. You make a brave move, but you only feel proud of it when someone else validates you. You have a great idea, until you ask a friend for their opinion and their lukewarm response makes you question everything.

This is external validation dependence, where your confidence in yourself is basically rented from someone else’s reaction. At its core, this isn’t vanity or insecurity, it’s survival wiring.

Humans are wired to seek approval from the group because, once upon a time, rejection literally meant death. Your brain still sees social disapproval as a threat to safety, and your nervous system treats it accordingly, so when you don’t get the feedback you hoped for, your body tenses, and your dopamine reward system crashes, leaving you feeling anxious, rejected, and unsure of yourself, even when nothing’s gone wrong.

So if you:

• Feel emotionally rocked by low engagement, slow replies, or silence

• Delay decisions until someone else gives you the green light

• Feel unsafe sharing things unless they’re already “liked” by others

• Constantly ask for opinions, then ignore your own instincts

You need to rebuild your internal validation and teach your nervous system that you are the authority on your life.

• Start by naming your wins before others do, after every bold action, write down what you’re proud of before you check for praise from others

• Practice micro-boundaries: Post the picture, send the email, launch the offer, without telling anyone until after you’ve done it

• Use nervous system tools to self-soothe post-visibility. Using breathwork, grounding, and positive self-talk after putting yourself out there can interrupt the feedback obsession loop

• Ask yourself “what do I think?” before you seek external input and honour that answer first, your opinion matters.

Not all external input is bad. In fact, sometimes constructive feedback is the key to growth in business, creativity, and relationships and if you’re so wrapped up in people-pleasing or afraid of rejection, you’ll avoid the very feedback that could propel you forward.

That’s the real danger of validation-dependence, it makes you fear the wrong opinions and miss the right ones.

Interestingly, research shows that people in secure, supportive relationships are more likely to succeed in career and goal pursuit, because they feel emotionally safe enough to take risks, fail, and try again. When your nervous system knows someone’s got your back, your brain is freer to focus on growth and not survival. Thousands of years ago, survival depended on the tribe and being alone didn’t just mean loneliness, it meant danger, so our brains evolved with one goal, stay connected to stay safe.

If your system is stuck in hypervigilance, always guessing what others think, fearing rejection, or bracing for criticism, your body stays in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, which means your energy gets spent managing perceived danger, not building your dream life.

Adults with secure attachment styles, who feel emotionally safe and supported are more likely to take healthy risks, pursue big goals, and bounce back from failure. When your brain knows someone’s in your corner, it feels safer to make big moves.

So yes, your nervous system needs connection to thrive but it starts with you becoming a safe space first, so have your own back and then build the relationships around your own unshakeable self-worth.

10. Lack of Internal Alignment (Pursuing Inherited or ‘Should’ Goals)

If a goal is driven by expectation from family or rooted in social status, rather than intrinsic desire, resistance shows up as lack of motivation or self-sabotage.

You say you want it… but you don't feel it. You’ve got the goal, but no drive to chase it. You keep thinking you don't have the ability when really its the heart thats missing.

It could be that you’re chasing a goal that isn’t truly yours. Whether it’s the job that sounds impressive, the lifestyle that looks good on Insta, or the relationship timeline society says you should follow, so many women unknowingly build their dreams from inheritance, not intuition.

And when you’re out of alignment, your nervous system knows. You can't lie to yourself no matter how hard you try, because you'll end up you’ll feeling resistant, unmotivated and disconnected. This is because your brain’s reward circuit doesn’t activate in the same way when you’re working toward a goal that doesn’t emotionally resonate, and the part of your brain that processes identity and future vision, flags a mismatch.

You mind literally won’t invest energy into goals that feel fake or disconnected from your true self.

So if you:

• Set goals that sound “right” but don’t light you up

• Feel drained or uninspired even when things are “going well”

• Feel shame for not wanting what you’re supposed to want

• Notice you’re way more motivated when it’s for someone else

You need to check in with yourself and the reason behind the goal.

• Track back to when you first starting wanting this thing, where did it come from? Was it your parents, your culture, your friends, your 16-year-old self? If it’s not what you want now, it might need a rewrite.

• Do the ‘Why x 5’ test and ask yourself “why do I want this?” five times. If you don’t hit a soul-stirring reason, it’s probably surface-level.

• Body cue journaling: When you think about your goal, what happens in your body? Expansion or tension? Spark or shutdown?

• Rewrite the vision, ask yourself if no one else was watching, if no one would judge you or have an opinion, what would you want?

  
  

Your nervous system responds to your truth. When your goals are truly yours, your energy rises, your focus sharpens, and momentum feels natural, not forced.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve read this far, let’s be real, you’re not lazy or uncommitted. You’re likely just running on subconscious patterns, nervous system defaults, and inherited stories that were never yours to begin with.

The good news is everything we’ve talked about, fear of failure, perfectionism, low self-belief, overthinking, validation-seeking — all of it is changeable.

Your brain is plastic and your nervous system is trainable.

And your identity? Yours to rewrite.

But first, you have to stop blaming yourself for being stuck, and start supporting yourself like someone worth rooting for, because you are.

You don’t need a better morning routine. You need nervous system safety.

You don’t need a 5-year plan. You need internal alignment.

You don’t need to do more. You need to get out of your own way

Start small. Pick one block that hit close to home and work on that, not perfectly, just consistently, and the more safety you create inside yourself, the louder your dreams get.

They’re not too big. They’re just waiting for the version of you who finally believes she’s allowed to have them.