Massive Action vs Massive Consistency (Part I)

Massive Action = Massive Results

This so called formula is something that I see everywhere especially in the world of personal development. If you are into any kind of personal growth, I am sure you would have come across this. Nowadays, every fitness coach, business coach, marketing coach and all other kinds of coaches on Instagram and YouTube have bombarded us with this quote and their stories of how they went from being really bad at something to then achieving great success by taking MASSIVE ACTION which got them MASSIVE RESULTS. Theoretically I don’t think there is anything wrong with this idea. Even in the practical realm, I am sure that if one takes massive action in any particular field or endeavour, they will see massive results. I mean it’s completely logical and the world around us is replete with examples of people who achieved great things by exerting great amounts of effort. But the difficult part is the process of taking that massive action that is spoken about all the time. The answer that most gurus give in their motivational rants, is mustering up the determination and motivation to force yourself to do what requires to be done. But unfortunately that kind of unwavering motivation and determination is not something that is commonly found in most of us. I believe that some people can become possessed of this kind of extreme determination as the result of an epiphany or some sort of life changing or traumatic event that one encounters or as a result of having hit rock bottom or faced extreme hardship in their lives. We as humans, naturally avoid pain and move towards pleasure. In fact, given an option between seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, most of us would choose the latter as our brains are first and foremost aimed at helping us survive rather than thrive. So for the majority of us who have not faced these kinds of extremely challenging circumstances, mustering up the determination and motivation to take massive action is extremely hard and sometimes close to impossible.

Another aspect of the concept of massive action is the fact that it refers to taking massive action in a short period of time in order to get results as soon as possible. Now, when we hear this, in all of the motivational videos we see from coaches all over social media platforms, it sounds very attractive. Get motivated, push yourself, put in massive effort and then the rewards will come thick and fast and your life will transform very soon. So we make a plan, based on this idea of massive action and set a very ambitious target depending on what our goals are such as doing a 2 hour workout 3 days a week and eliminating all junk food from our diet, starting a YouTube channel and putting out 2 new videos every week, or writing 1000-2000 words every day so that we would have our new E-book out in a month etc. It feels great, we now have an ambitious goal that we are shooting for, and there is a new purpose in our lives! Motivation is coursing through us and we get our first session of taking action out of the way and now it feels even more amazing. We keep it up maybe for a few more days, and then we wake up one day and the weather is gloomy, we have a fight with one of our parents or a partner, we had a not so great day at work, the motivation that was coursing through us 3-4 days or a week ago seems to have disappeared and the prospect of a long workout, writing or creating content sounds too daunting, our brain is closed off and refuses to generate any creative ideas and screams at the prospect of even attempting the huge task that is in front of it and then we skip doing the work we had promised ourselves that we would do. And there it is within a fortnight, week or a few days from deciding to take massive action, we fail to keep our word!

That feels bad, so we reach for that bar of chocolate or that bottle of wine to get away from this bad feeling and then from the next day, every time we look at that chart or reminder where we had written down our ambitious plan, we get this uneasy feeling of having failed at it. To now get back to that activity would entail looking at our plan accepting that we failed and then making another plan and starting over again but since this is too uncomfortable we do not go back to it for a while and before long the activity is forgotten. In addition we now have the belief that we are incapable of taking massive action and hence incapable of improving. The motivational speakers had all said that if we wanted it badly enough, if we were strong willed enough then we would take massive action and reap the rewards, but we could not, so there must be something intrinsically wrong with us and therefore maybe we are not meant to succeed!?

This cycle of planning to take massive action and then failing has happened to me more times than I would care to count. And each time it happened, with the various things I tried to do, it eroded a little more of my confidence in myself and my abilities. I had unconsciously started to build an identity that I am the kind of guy who makes big plans but rarely executes them or sees them through until the end. Since all the coaches on YouTube had said that in order to change your life you need to take massive action, I was left with the hopeless feeling that I maybe was not capable of changing or improving myself. But you see, there is one very glaring gap in this whole malarkey. How do you expect to go from a person who has neglected a certain area of your life, to taking massive action at the flick of a switch? If change or rather drastic change was that easy, wouldn’t almost everyone be able to do it. If motivation was the answer, aren’t most people or quite a lot of people genuinely motivated and want to change something about themselves? This simplistic view makes it seem like motivation and determination are the only two factors at play when it comes to changing behaviour which is far from the truth.

I understand why coaches and trainers stress on massive action. Nowadays, all of us live in the world of instant gratification and fast results. We want the 2 minute noodles, the instant coffee, the 30 day plan to get the amazing body and in this world of fast results, no coach is going to stay in business if he is pushing a “How to get a great body in 3 years” program. But while some people are able to take massive action and transform their lives, there is a large majority of people who cannot go from 0 to 100 in a short period of time and I am definitely one of them. But I feel that there is another way, in fact maybe a more powerful and long lasting way to bring about change and achieve our goals albeit a little more slowly. It requires more patience, a more gradual approach and is something that older generations before we became this instant gratification seeking society knew and employed very well. I am sure you already have an idea of what this other approach might be, based on the title of this article but stay tuned for the next part in which I will delve into it in detail. Until then……