Massive Action vs Passive Action
Blogs By Heidi
- December 6, 2022
Recently Steve and I held a stall at a women’s lifestyle expo. The crowds were heaving, and I realised, as a health coach, I was able to assess the people walking through the room and place them into four categories,
Category One was healthy people. People who are well, who don’t have any health issues and were just there to have a look around – maybe do some Christmas shopping or enjoy a girls’ day out.
Category Two was unhealthy people – those who do have underlying health issues. These health issues were either visible to me, or these people would tell me during conversation. But there was no real desire to address them – well, deep down there probably was, but openly they would say they didn’t need help.
Category Three was unhealthy people who had underlying health issues, and they were there to gather information. They were collecting brochures, having conversations, and they were actively seeking information and knowledge.
Category Four were those who know they have underlying health issues and were ready to take action to address them. These are the people we ended up in deep conversation with, who bought our books, and booked in for consultations.
I want to direct this message to those who may be able to identify themselves as sitting in Category Three. Perhaps there is something in your life that you are wanting to act on, and you are gathering your resources, and you are learning. You’ll be reading books, listening to audio books, watching YouTube Clips – basically you will be actively consuming information about the thing that you want to take action on. There’s no doubt this is a sensible approach, but I want to highlight the risk of getting stuck in the trap of passive action. Passive action is where you trick yourself into believing that you are actually taking action on whatever it is that you want to do, but all you’re doing is consuming information.
On the other hand, massive action is when you take all that knowledge that you have consumed and gathered, and then put it to work. Massive action is signing yourself up to do the health program, do the marathon, give up alcohol, look for investment opportunities, submit your CV for a new job, or whatever it is that you are wanting to do.
What I saw at the lifestyle expo was a lot of people taking passive action. Many of these people were aware that they had to get on top of their particular health issues, but then they’d walk away and say “I’ll think about it.” And you know full well they’ll just keep thinking about it. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with taking time to think something through. The problem comes when there’s a lot of thinking, and no action.
All this does is keep you stuck, year after year after year. It keeps you standing on the sidelines of your own life, rather than on the playing field getting stuff done.
The people taking massive action are the ones who are prepared to step outside their comfort zone and do the rough and tumble on the field. And yes, it’s uncomfortable, it can be scary and it can be confronting, but these are the people who reach their goals and achieve their dreams.
So my question to you reading this today is, where in your life do you know you need to take massive action, but you are simply taking passive action? What is that thing that you really want to do, or you know you need to do, but you are sitting comfortably inside your comfort zone, dreaming about it, thinking about it, consuming information about it, listening to audio books about it, reading books about it, or looking at brochures about it, but not actually doing it?
And what are you going to do about it?