You know exactly what your business needs. The strategic pivot. The delegation plan. The boundary with that one client. You’ve mapped it out, maybe even put it in your quarterly goals. And yet, three months later, you’re still operating like the building is on fire.
This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s not that you lack vision or commitment. What looks like inconsistency is actually your nervous system overriding your strategy every single time it perceives threat. And in survival mode, everything registers as threat.
The Real Problem Isn’t Poor Execution
After 15 years in clinical practice, I’ve watched brilliant business owners berate themselves for what they call “not following through.” But here’s what’s actually happening: your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for strategic thinking, literally goes offline when your sympathetic nervous system is activated.
You’re not choosing to be reactive. You’re experiencing cortisol driven decision making. Your body has decided that right now is not the time for strategic planning. Right now is the time to respond to the immediate, the urgent, the threat in front of you. So you do. Over and over. While your strategic plan sits untouched.
The gap between knowing and doing isn’t about willpower. It’s about nervous your system state. You cannot think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. Strategy requires regulation first.
The Regulation Before Strategy Framework
State Check First
Before any significant decision or planning session, pause and assess your current nervous system state. Are you physically calm? Can you access creative thinking? Or are you running on adrenaline and calling it productivity? Cortisol convinced you it was urgency. Regulation shows you it was reactivity.
Create Predictable Regulation Anchors
Your nervous system needs to know when safety is coming. Build non negotiable regulation practices into your week, not as rewards after the work is done, but as prerequisites for doing your best work. This might be a 20 minute walk before strategy sessions, or starting client calls only after a grounding practice.
Separate Reactive Decisions from Regulated Ones
Track this for two weeks: mark every significant business decision with an R (regulated) or D (dysregulated). Notice the pattern. Reactive decisions feel urgent and like you only have two options. Regulated decisions feel like you have room to think, even when they’re hard choices.
The Turning Point
I worked with a founder who’d built a seven figure company while perpetually operating at a 7 out of 10 stress level. She hired well, built systems, read all the leadership books. Still felt like she was one emergency away from collapsing.
The shift came not in a strategy session, but in a moment of recognition. She’d just snapped at her team over a minor scheduling conflict, then immediately moved into a client presentation where she was perfectly composed. Afterward, she sat in her car and said out loud: “My body doesn’t know the meeting is over.”
That’s when she understood. Her nervous system had been in sympathetic dominance for so long, it had become her baseline. She wasn’t leading her business. Her threat response was.
The Question That Changes Everything
This week, before you open your strategic plan or quarterly goals, ask yourself this: Am I trying to execute strategy from a nervous system state that’s designed for survival, not growth?
Notice what it feels like in your body when you sit down to do strategic work. Tightness in your chest? Shallow breathing? The urge to check your email one more time? That’s not procrastination. That’s your nervous system telling you it doesn’t feel safe enough yet for the kind of expansive thinking strategy requires.
Reactive leadership isn’t about who you are as a person. It’s about how your body works, and you can fix it by working with your body. You already know what your business needs. The real question is: what does your nervous system need so you can actually make it happen?
Jonathan Riley is a Survival Mode Specialist who helps founders and executives exit chronic survival mode by resetting the nervous system keeping them stuck. With 15 years as a licensed counsellor, he brings clinical depth to leadership performance that most coaches cannot. Book a Survival Mode Diagnostic at mypracticeleaders.com.au