Gears, Pressure & Decisions

Why You Do What You Do When Life Feels Heavy

By the time you reach this point in the Mind Works journey, you already know that your health is supported by four Pillars:

• Psychology

• Physiology

• Physical health

• Environment and relationships

This page brings those pillars together and answers a very human question:

“If I understand all this, why do I still struggle to do the things I want to do?”

The answer is not that you are weak or broken.
The answer is that your pressure level, your energy, and your nervous system are constantly shifting.

To make sense of this, we use three connected ideas:

• The Pressure Gauge – how much stress your system is under

• The Gears of Motivation – what is realistically possible at that pressure

• The Scales of Decision – why short-term relief sometimes wins over long-term direction

When you understand these, your patterns stop feeling like personal failure and start to make sense.

The Pressure Gauge

How much pressure is your system carrying today?

The Pressure Gauge represents your overall load. It includes:

• stress and emotional strain

• sleep quality

• recovery time

• life demands

• nervous system state

• your Tower Block level across all four Pillars of Health

Sometimes this load builds slowly over months or years. Sometimes it spikes in a day.

You might recognise these three pressure zones:

High pressure
You feel overloaded, exhausted or on edge. It is hard to think clearly or care about long-term plans. Your system is just trying to get you through the day.

Moderate pressure
You can function, but it feels up and down. Some days you feel in control. Other days you snap, overeat, shut down or abandon your best intentions.

Low pressure
You feel more rested and steady. You can think ahead, regulate your emotions and follow through on things that matter to you.

The key idea is simple:

The higher the pressure, the less capacity you have for long-term change.
The lower the pressure, the more capacity you have.

This is where the Gears of Motivation come in.

The Gears of Motivation

Different days. Different gears. Different possibilities.

Your mind and body move through three gears, which are closely linked to your Tower Block level.

You do not choose your gear through willpower.
Your gear reflects how stressed, resourced and supported you are.

Gear 1 – Survival and Stabilisation

This is the lowest gear. It is linked to the basement and lower floors of the Tower Block.

Here, your system is focused on one thing: staying afloat.

• You may feel burnt out, numb, anxious or shut down

• Simple tasks can feel huge

• Your mind looks for comfort, relief and escape

This is not laziness. It is self-protection.
Pushing hard in this gear often leads to more burnout.

Helpful focus in Gear 1
Rest, nourishment, sleep, breathing, gentle structure and support. In Mind Works language, this is where we help you move up through the Tower Block and stabilise your Pillars of Health.

Gear 2 – Regulation and Relief

In this mid-level gear, you are not in crisis, but you are not fully grounded either.

• You might have good days and bad days

• You start new routines, then “fall off the wagon” when life gets stressful

• You can make healthy choices sometimes, but it is not consistent

Many people judge themselves harshly here.
In reality, your system is still spending a lot of energy just managing stress.

Helpful focus in Gear 2
Simple, repeatable habits. Small steps. Better recovery. Emotional regulation. Reducing pressure where possible, rather than demanding perfection.

Gear 3 – Direction and Growth

This is your higher gear, linked to the upper levels of the Tower Block.

Here, you have more:

• energy

• clarity

• patience

• emotional bandwidth

You can think ahead, hold your long-term direction in mind and act in ways that support it.

Helpful focus in Gear 3
Direction. Rhythm. Fuel. This is where deeper work, bigger projects and sustained changes become realistic.

The Scales of Decision

Relief vs long-term direction

Even when you know what you want to do, every decision still has a quiet tug-of-war inside it.

On one side of the scale is short-term relief
Things that soothe, distract or comfort you right now. For example:

• eating to calm down or numb out

• pouring a drink to relax

• scrolling instead of starting a task

• avoiding a difficult conversation

On the other side is long-term direction
Behaviour that supports the changes you want over time. For example:

• following your eating rhythm

• going to bed instead of watching one more episode

• doing ten minutes of movement

• choosing a more honest conversation

Both sides are understandable. Both are human.

What tilts the scale one way or the other?

• your pressure level

• which gear you are currently in

• how much energy and emotional capacity you have at that moment

When pressure is high and you are in Gear 1, the scale will almost always tilt toward relief.
When pressure is lower and you are in Gear 3, the scale can tilt toward long-term direction much more easily.

This helps us make an important distinction:

Many people do not choose comfort because they “won’t” do better.
They choose comfort because, in that moment, they cannot access a higher gear.

Once the pressure is reduced and the system is supported, long-term decisions become more available.

Why this matters for you

This model is not here to give you another way to judge yourself.
It is here to:

• explain why your behaviour changes from day to day

• help you see patterns with more compassion

• guide you to work with your current capacity, not against it

• show you what is realistic at each level of the Tower Block

• support you in moving gently towards Gear 3 more often

When you understand your pressure, your gear, and your decision scales, you can:

• stop calling yourself lazy or weak

• notice when you need stabilisation rather than more pressure

• make the most of the times when your system is in a better place

• build change in a way that respects your nervous system and your history

From here, we can go a level deeper.

Next step – The Map of the Subconscious

Gears, Pressure and Scales help you understand how your system responds to load in real time. They explain why your motivation changes, why your capacity shrinks under pressure and why protective behaviours come forward when life feels too heavy. But they do not fully explain why some reactions feel so fast, so deep or so difficult to shift.

To understand that layer, you need to look at the subconscious.

Many people have been taught to think of the subconscious as something mystical or unreachable. Even within hypnotherapy, it is often described in vague terms, as if it were a mysterious force you simply have to “trust” or “tap into”.

At The Mind Works, we take a very different view.

Your subconscious is not magic.
It is understandable.
It follows rules.
And it is doing a job.

When you look at the subconscious through a protective and nervous system lens, it becomes much clearer. Your subconscious holds the patterns, emotional memories and rapid responses that developed across your life in order to keep you safe. It learns what feels dangerous, what feels comforting and what helps you get through difficult moments, then it runs those patterns automatically.

In the Mind Works model, we describe the subconscious as having multiple functions, each focused on keeping you safe, stable or prepared. Some store emotional memory. Some shape your beliefs about yourself and other people. Some manage habits and automatic behaviours. Others govern how quickly you react, how strongly you shut down, or how intensely you feel certain emotions.

None of this is random.
None of it is “mystical”.
It is your system doing exactly what it learned to do.

The Map of the Subconscious is our way of bringing this into the open. Instead of treating the subconscious as a black box, we break it down into clear, understandable functions that link directly to your lived experience. When you can see how these functions operate, your reactions stop feeling mysterious and start to make sense.

This makes change possible.
You are no longer trying to “fix” yourself blindly.
You are learning how your internal map was drawn, and how to redraw it.

Explore the next concept to see how the Map of the Subconscious explains your patterns and how you can begin to work with them, not against them.

👉 Continue to the next core concept: The Map of the Subconscious.