You set the intention. You start strong. And then – somewhere between week two and week four – it falls apart.
And you tell yourself the same story: I just don’t have enough discipline. I want to stop you right there. Because that story isn’t true.
If you’ve been wondering why you can’t stay consistent even when you want to – the answer isn’t about willpower. It’s about how habit change actually works. And most people have it completely wrong.
Why You Can’t Stay Consistent Even When You Want To: The Science
Here’s what most people don’t know. Research shows that 40 to 43% of our daily behaviors are driven by habit. Not conscious decision making. Habit.
Think about your morning drive to work. You’re not actively deciding to turn at each light. You’re on autopilot. And some studies suggest up to two thirds of our daily actions work exactly the same way.
So when you try to build a new habit, you’re not just making a decision. You’re trying to override deeply ingrained patterns that your brain has been running automatically – sometimes for years. That’s not a you problem. That’s a biology problem.
Add to that: over 88% of people fail to maintain behavior changes long term. Only about 19% of people sustain changes beyond two years. And habit formation doesn’t take 21 days like everyone says. It takes 59 to 66 days at minimum — and often 100 days or more.
Only 23% of people in some studies reach full habit automaticity. Which means most people quit right before their brain actually catches up. You are not failing. You are stopping too soon.
The Real Reason You Can’t Stay Consistent
The reason you can’t stay consistent even when you want to isn’t lack of discipline. It’s that you’re treating behavior change like a one-time decision instead of an ongoing experiment. Nearly half of what we do every day is automatic. So when you try something once and it doesn’t work, and you assume you failed – you haven’t failed. You just haven’t run enough experiments yet.
As a fourth generation entrepreneur, I say this all the time: entrepreneurs are professional failures. Every failure is data. Every experiment teaches you something. That’s how they eventually succeed.
Habit building works the same way. And it’s exactly what I cover in the Consistency Culprit chapter of my book, The Five Overwhelm Culprits™.
How to Stay Consistent Even When It Feels Impossible: The Framework
Here’s the exact process I use – and that I’ve used to build habits that now run on complete autopilot. Including finally getting consistent with working out, which took me two to three years to crack.
Step 1: Identify the Specific Pattern You Want to Change
Before anything else, you need to get specific. Not “I want to be healthier” or “I want to be more productive.” Those are too vague to act on.
What specifically are you trying to change? Name the exact behavior. For me, the pattern I was trying to build was around my physical health. I had spent years struggling to make movement a non-negotiable. I was commuting 20 hours a week at one point. Finding time to exercise felt impossible.
So I got specific: I want to consistently move my body for a minimum of 30 minutes a day. Not sometimes. Not when I feel like it. Every single day.
That clarity is what makes everything else possible. You can’t experiment your way to a habit you haven’t defined.
Step 2: Run One Small, Controlled Test
This is not a full life overhaul. We are not talking about changing everything at once. We are talking about one small, controlled change. That’s it.
For me, the test was simple. Every single morning, before I did anything else, I would wake up, roll out of bed, and move my body for 30 minutes. It didn’t matter what it looked like. Peloton, walk around the block, something on YouTube. Just move.
The reason you keep the test small is because a big overhaul gives you too many variables. If five things change at once and something breaks, you have no idea which one caused it. Small tests give you clean data.
Start there. Just one thing. Commit to it. Then watch what happens.
Step 3: Observe What Breaks — Don’t Just Abandon It
When the habit starts to slip, get curious. What specifically is breaking down?
There are five common culprits:
Time — Are you trying to do this at the wrong time of day for your schedule or energy? Energy — Are you a morning person or an afternoon person? Work with your body, not against it. Environment — Is your setup making this harder than it needs to be? Boundaries — Are you protecting the time you’ve committed to yourself? Support — Do you need someone else to help make this happen?
For me, time was the first variable that broke. I tried the 5 AM club. It didn’t work. I pushed it to 6 AM — and it started to stick. That’s not failure. That’s data. Environment was another one. I tried the gym. I tried running outside. What finally worked? A Peloton in my basement. No commute. No excuses. I wake up, go downstairs, and get it done. Support came into play after we had a baby. Morning interruptions were breaking my routine. I had to ask my husband to cover the morning shift so I could protect that time. That ask made the habit sustainable.
Step 4: Adjust the Variable — Then Repeat
Don’t throw the whole habit out. Adjust the one thing that broke.
Wrong time? Try a different time.
Wrong environment? Change the setup.
Missing support? Ask for it.
Then run the experiment again.
Repeat this process until the habit becomes automatic. Until you’re not thinking about it anymore. That’s the goal.
Today I work out five days a week. Monday through Friday, without fail. It took me two to three years of experimenting to get here. It might take you less. But it will take time – and that’s completely normal.
Still Wondering Why You Can’t Stay Consistent Even When You Want To?
Here’s the reframe I want you to take with you:
Consistency isn’t repetition. It’s refinement.
You’re not inconsistent because something is wrong with you. You’re inconsistent because you haven’t run enough experiments yet. And every time something breaks, that’s not a sign to stop. That’s a sign to adjust.
The data is clear: struggling with consistency is the norm. You are in very good company. The only difference between people who eventually build lasting habits and those who don’t is that they kept going past the hard part.
So keep going. Adjust the variable. Run the experiment again.
Find Out Which Overwhelm Culprit Is Holding You Back
Consistency is one of five Overwhelm Culprits that could be quietly keeping you stuck. The others are clarity, confidence, community, and conditioning. And most people are dealing with more than one at a time.
I created the Overwhelm Culprit Quiz™ to help you get clear on which one is running the show for you – in just six questions and about three minutes. No fluff. Just a clear answer and a concrete next step!
Take the free Overwhelm Culprit Quiz here.
Go Deeper With the Book
Everything I covered in this post – the data, the framework, the experiments – is just one piece of a much bigger system.
In The Five Overwhelm Culprits™: Strategies to Save Your Sanity Without Sacrificing Your Success, I go deep on all five culprits – including a full chapter on consistency with even more strategies, case studies, and tools to help you build habits that actually last.
This is the book for the high-performing woman who is done letting overwhelm run the show. Who refuses to slow down – but needs a smarter strategy to keep moving forward without burning out.
Launching May 12, 2026. Available for pre-order now. Grab your copy here.
CLICK FOR TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] What are some ways you could stay consistent when you want to change a pattern that is so internal to you? This is a question I received during a recent private event Q&A, and it is just so relatable and you’ll never guess the real reason why this even happens to begin with.
If you’ve ever struggled with being consistent, whether that be with your habits or your routines. Then you’re gonna wanna stick around because by the end of today’s episode, you’re gonna know the real reason that your habits aren’t sticking and what to do instead.
If you’re new here, my name is Corrie LoGiudice, otherwise known as Corrie Lo, and I’m a professional keynote speaker, facilitator, executive coach, and author who helps leaders transform overwhelm into confident action even in times of crisis.
So this challenge is so common and reason for this is because most of what we do on a day-to-day basis is automatic. So research shows that 40 to 43% of our daily behaviors are [00:01:00] actually driven by habit. They’re not driven by conscious decision making. Think about when you drive in a car and you go to work every day. A lot of times you’re not actually thinking about, “Hey, I need to make a right at the light up ahead.” You’re just kind of doing it on autopilot, and there are so many thousands of these decisions that we make every single day that we do based on habit or an autopilot. Some studies suggest that it may even be higher with up to two thirds of daily actions triggered by habit.
So what exactly does this mean? What this means for you is that you are not inconsistent. You’re trying to override patterns that are literally running on autopilot. So yeah, it’s gonna be very difficult to overcome that.
Then from there you have to add to this that most people struggle to sustain change. Over 88% of people fail to maintain behavior changes. So when you look at things like New Year’s resolutions as an example, only about 19% of people sustain their behavior change long term, like two years plus. So this means for [00:02:00] you is that struggling with consistency isn’t the exception, it’s the norm.
Habit change takes so much longer than people think. And habit formation typically takes 59 to 66 days on minimum, and oftentimes a hundred plus days on average with huge variability. This is a far cry from what everybody has said that it takes 21 days to form a habit. It’s actually much longer than that.
And add to this, only 23% of people in some studies actually reach the full habit automatically. So you are not failing. What this shows is you’re quitting at a point where your brain hasn’t caught up yet to the habit. And this early drop off is extremely common because a large percentage of people abandon new habits within the first month or two.
So, if it feels hardest at the beginning, that’s not a sign to stop. That’s the predictable part of this process. It’s going to happen like that. So I’d love to know, do you struggle with consistency too? I know I have. Drop a comment below because there’s truth in numbers. You’re gonna see you are not [00:03:00] alone.
So the truth is, the reason that you’re struggling with consistency isn’t because you lack discipline. It’s because you’re treating behavior change like it’s a one-time decision instead of an ongoing experiment.
Nearly half of what we do every day is driven by habit, which are automatic patterns that have been reinforced over time. So when you try something once and it doesn’t work and then you assume that you failed. You’re not failing, you just simply haven’t run enough experiments yet. So in order to overcome this, you’re gonna have to get comfortable with experimentation.
I joke all the time, I say this on podcast, it’s quoted everywhere. But as a fourth generation entrepreneur, I know this to be true. All entrepreneurs are literally professional failures. They have failed so many times that they’ve eventually made money doing so, because every time they fail, they’re learning something, it’s an experiment.
So how exactly do you replicate this kind of experimentation in your own habit development? So here’s how you do it.
First up is you gotta identify the pattern. [00:04:00] What specifically are you trying to change? So great example for me that I’ve used, when it came to consistency were things like my physical health.
So I was trying to build habits over the last year or two where I was just an autopilot that I didn’t have to think about waking up to work out, I didn’t have to think about what it was I was eating. So let’s just use the working out as an example for this case study. So what specifically are you trying to change? For me, I wanted to be able to consistently. Move my body a minimum of 30 minutes a day.
From there, you run a small test. So we’re not talking about a full life overhaul, you’re talking about one small controlled change. So for me to start this, I was like, all right, I’m gonna try to move for 30 minutes a day, whatever that looked like.
So I committed that every single day in the morning before I did anything else. I would wake up, I’d roll outta bed. And I would either do Peloton or go for a walk or do something and move my body for 30 minutes.
From here while you’re running this small test, you’re observing what breaks. Is it things like [00:05:00] time, energy, environment, boundaries, support?
So let’s take time as an example. I had a lot of difficulty waking up super early. I would try like the 5:00 AM club thing. That didn’t work. When that didn’t work, I pushed it up to six and when I was able to do it at six o’clock, then it started to stick. That, or maybe it’s your energy. For some people working out, you might be better off doing it in the afternoon that you’re more of an afternoon and evening person energetically. For me, I have most of my energy first thing in the morning, so repeating that pattern was helpful for me. That, or it might be your environment. I’ve tried everything from working out at a gym to getting in the car and going to the gym, to running. I did marathoning for a while where I was just running outside in my own environment.
What works best for me today through experimentation is I have a Peloton, I love Peloton. There’s no excuses. It’s in my basement and I wake up, I go downstairs, I get it done. I don’t have to think about it. So the environment can play a big part. Also boundaries. Are [00:06:00] you able to protect the space that you’re trying to utilize to create this habit?
Are you keeping boundaries with yourself that you’re staying consistent with it? If you say you’re gonna do it five times a week, are you doing it five times a week? Support might be an area that breaks. Is it something that you need help? There is a point in time when I was trying to figure out my routine for my physical health.
Where we had just had a baby and I could not get that time in the morning that I needed to be able to work out because I kept getting interrupted with things with my kids. So it required me having to ask my husband and being like, “Hey, could you cover the morning shift so that I could get this done?”
So you’re constantly identifying what’s popping up as a roadblock and accommodating it by shifting your strategy slightly. We’re shifting from not just abandoning it, like, “oh, this didn’t work because stuff just keeps popping up.” No, we’re tweaking whatever the variable it is that failed.
And from this, you just repeat the process. So like I mentioned, it’s taken me years of repeating this process. Now I am very locked [00:07:00] in. I work out five days a week. I’ve determined that for me, doing like Monday, Wednesday, Friday doesn’t work. I need to keep it consistent with my work schedule. ’cause I’m committed to doing things for other people, including myself during work hours.
So I do it Monday through Friday. I take my days off on the weekend. I’m able to keep that very consistently. It took time for me. It took me like two or three years to get to this point. For you, it might take less time, but it’s just repeating the process and trying things and failing things and seeing what sticks that you could do easily and repeatedly.
Remember, consistency isn’t repetition. It’s refinement.
So to recap what we chatted about today. It is far more common to be inconsistent than it is to be consistent in your habits and routines, and data actually supports this. To get your desired habits to stick the only shift you really have to make is that you need to experiment. You need to identify the pattern it is that you wanna be able to implement.
You need to run short tests. You need to observe what’s breaking down. And from there, you don’t abandon it. You [00:08:00] adjust. You adjust, you pivot, you make minor changes and you repeat the process until it is actually autopilot and it’s not something that you have to think about anymore.
So hopefully you found my sharing this today helpful. If you have a follow up question or even a question independent from this topic that you would like for me to answer. Feel free to leave the comment below. You could also send me a DM on LinkedIn or even send my team an email. We just may feature your question on a future episode, so feel free to send those in.
As I mentioned, I cover this question in detail with so many more strategies in my upcoming book, the Five Overwhelm Culprits™ Strategies to Save Your Sanity Without Sacrificing Your Success. It’s coming out on May 12th, 2026, and it is available for pre-order in the show notes.
You can also learn about more ways to work with me, whether that be one-on-one through coaching or with your team or organization via keynotes and workshops. And we share all about that in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for being here, and I can’t wait to see you on the next episode. I’ll see you there.
Thanks for checking out the next step with Corrie Lo. If [00:09:00] this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a review. Together we’ll transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next time.