Why You Don’t Do What You Know You Should

There are a lot of interesting things you notice when you start paying attention to what’s playing out inside of you at a subconscious level.

Take this, for example: have you ever wondered why you can think about needing to do something, know exactly what you need to do, but then still not be able to get yourself to actually do it?

The thought of taking action might have even been whirling around your mind for quite some time. You know you'd feel better if you just did the thing, but still, you keep putting it off, distracting yourself, and doing anything and everything other than what you know you need to do.

So, you’re left with a kind of “bookmark” in your mind, with thoughts of that “thing” in the background constantly taking up a chunk of your attention, making it so that anything else you do feels less enjoyable.

So, why do we do this to ourselves? Why can we know exactly what needs to get done, know we’d be much better off if we just handled it, but then still not be able to get ourselves to take action?

From a subconscious perspective, this all makes perfect sense. It has to do with how your conscious mind and your subconscious mind are relating to one another, and how that relationship turns into action.

The difference between thought and action

A great way to understand this is to separate the part of you that consciously thinks about taking action from the part of you that actually gets you to act.

Your conscious mind is the part of you that does the active thinking. It’s the “you” that deliberately thinks about the task, reminds yourself that it matters, plans out what you’re going to do, reasons with yourself, pressures yourself, judges yourself for not starting, and tries to figure out why you still haven’t done it yet.

Your subconscious mind, on the other hand, is the deeper part of you underneath all of that. It’s the part that reads and responds to things instantly, before your conscious mind has had time to think things through. It "speaks to you" through what you experience automatically inside of you.

Things like feelings, impulses, sensations, automatic images, urges, reactions, resistance, pressure, tension, and the sudden sense that something feels safe, unsafe, important, uncomfortable, necessary, etc.

Here’s an example to help show you what I mean: imagine you’re walking down a path in a forest, and a snake suddenly appears out in front of you. The instant you see it, you jump out of the way to escape potential danger. While that’s all happening, you don’t need to consciously think through what you should do first. You don’t need to tell yourself to move. Your body just reacts out of necessity, well before your conscious mind has time to fully understand what’s happening.

This is an example of how your subconscious mind "speaks" to you. You don't need to consciously talk yourself into moving when your subconscious mind wants you to act. You just move. Instantly.

This is why it’s important to understand that there’s a difference in what these two “parts of you“ do. When you try to get yourself to act by talking yourself into it, you’re attempting to “move” by using the part of you that thinks.

But thinking about taking action and taking action are two very different things.

You can consciously think about doing something, logically understand why it’s important to do, and know you’d feel much better if you just did it, but still end up just sitting there, unable to start.

Conscious thought can point you toward the action you need to take, but it doesn’t necessarily create that action by itself.

There's a lot more to it.

The snake example points out something important: action doesn’t need conscious thought to happen. You can act without thinking. And on the flip side, you can also think without acting. 

This shows us that there’s another layer underneath conscious thought that can have a much more direct impact on what you do.

So when you keep trying to get yourself to act by thinking, reminding, reasoning, or pressuring yourself, you’re putting all of your effort into the part of you that can point you toward what needs to happen, but not necessarily the part of you that makes it happen.

The force underneath action

As you can see, conscious thought doesn’t always have force behind it, so relying solely on it to get you to act is a lot like pressing the gas pedal down in a car that isn’t in gear; unless you put it into gear, movement won’t happen.

In the snake example, if we slow things down and look a bit deeper at what was really taking place, we’ll see that there was a sequence to what happened: 

You saw the snake → your subconscious mind read it as a threat → it sent you the feeling of fear as a signal to get you to move → you jumped out of the way. 

That fear was what caused movement. 

Our emotions are one of the biggest forces that move us, and they come directly from our subconscious mind. 

If you think back to a time when you couldn’t get yourself to act when you wanted to, but then finally did. What changed? Maybe something in the outside world changed, and that prompted a feeling to show up inside of you. Maybe a deadline got close enough that fear came up. Maybe someone asked for an update on your progress and intense pressure appeared. Maybe guilt, dread, urgency, or the worry of possible pain started to get strong enough that you couldn’t ignore the task anymore. 

When you slow things down and look deep enough, you’ll see that there was some kind of emotional prompt that finally got you to move. 

That’s what emotion does. It prompts action. It gives it force. 

Emotion is the force that turns “I know I need to do this” into “I need to do this now.” 

As soon as you feel fear, pressure, guilt, dread, or the sense that something bad could happen if you don’t act soon, and that feeling becomes intense enough to push you toward the task, it’s like your subconscious mind is knocking on your door saying “Danger!” From that point onward, taking action starts to feel like the only thing that can get you out of the internal discomfort you’re in.

That’s why you can put something off for days, weeks, or months, thinking about it constantly, but only act when something shifts, and the feeling inside of you changes. 

What your subconscious mind is really trying to do

So, now you know one side of how this works: emotion is one of the major subconscious prompts that gives action its force. 

But there’s another side to what’s going on.

Think of it like this: There are some things in life you can get yourself to do without any issue. You think about doing them, decide to take action, and then you act. You don’t need a big emotional "push" to get yourself moving.

So why is it that, with certain things, you have the issue of wanting to act but not being able to, and then with other things, you can take action with ease?

The reason comes down to internal resistance.

One of your subconscious mind’s primary goals is to keep you safe. It’s constantly trying to protect you based on what it’s learned from your past experiences. That typically means pulling you toward things that feel safer, more familiar, or less painful, and pulling you away from anything it sees as a potential threat. 

So, when you have situations where you consciously want to move toward something, but can’t get yourself to do it, it’s very likely that your subconscious mind has something negative associated with doing that thing.

For example, maybe if you start a certain project, there's potential for you to fail, and failing could lead to embarrassment. Or maybe there’s a chance that someone could judge you, or you’ll have to face intense pressure, uncertainty, potential disappointment, or the possibility of doing things wrong. Or maybe stepping outside of the comfort of what’s familiar and into something less predictable could lead to pain.

Ultimately, if staying where you are feels more familiar, safer, or less painful than what might happen if you move forward, your subconscious mind might not have enough of a reason to push you toward doing it yet.

It’s just focusing on keeping you safe.

Because of this, there’s a type of balancing act that happens underneath the surface of everything you choose to do.

Your subconscious mind is weighing the possible discomfort of acting against the current discomfort of not acting. So even if you consciously want to move, your subconscious mind won’t create movement toward something that it reads as more painful or more risky than staying where you are.

But then on the flip side, if the discomfort of not acting suddenly becomes strong enough to tip the scales in the other direction, that balance changes.

When a deadline gets closer, or the consequences of not doing the "thing" start to feel more real, taking action can suddenly feel like the safest option.

That’s why you can know what you need to do for a long time and still not move until the emotional balance changes. Your conscious mind is looking at what makes logical sense to do. Your subconscious mind is looking at what feels safest, easiest, or least painful, based on what it’s learned.

What to do instead

So if you know that talking yourself into action doesn’t work, but you still can’t get yourself to act, what do you do instead?

Start paying attention to what happens inside of you when you try to take the action. Instead of focusing on all the reasons you should do it, turn your attention inward, toward what’s happening underneath those conscious thoughts.

That’s where you can start finding the subconscious block that’s getting in the way. If you want a practical way to start doing that, I created a simple exercise in my article "What Subconscious Blocks Look Like (In Real Time)". It'll help you slow the process down and get a clearer look at what’s happening inside of you when you try to move forward.

And once you have a better idea of what’s happening, you can go a little deeper and look at how that resistance got there in the first place.

My article "How Subconscious Beliefs Form (& Why They Stick)" goes into that in more detail. It explains how your subconscious mind learns through experience and how those associations can continue affecting the way you think, feel, and respond later on in life.

Because once you understand how your resistance is playing out and why it's there, you have something much more useful to work with than continuing to tell yourself what you already know you should be doing.

Until next time,

Nikki

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About the Author

Nikki Nicholas is a subconscious mind coach who specializes in removing the subconscious patterns, self-sabotage, and nervous system responses that keep people stuck. Her work integrates NLP, hypnotherapy, EFT, and strategic intervention coaching to help clients get past their negative thoughts and emotions that have been running on autopilot. With 17+ years spent studying the subconscious mind and over 10,000 hours in meditation, Nikki helps capable, self-aware people move past the internal patterns that are holding them back.

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