Have you ever been rocking things – I mean, really feeling confident, in-charge, handling it all – and then hit a curveball that seemed to upend everything?
I recently met a podcast listener who had this experience. She told me she really internalized massive action and practiced it and got really confident at her job. And then she got fired!
I was expecting her to need some coaching around this.
Imagine my surprise when the next words out of her mouth were “It was the best thing that ever happened to me, because now I’m working as a consultant and it’s my dream job!”
There are any number of thoughts she could have had about getting fired (and if you’ve ever been in a similar position, maybe you’ve experienced some of them!). She could’ve questioned her abilities or her commitment to taking massive action. She could’ve had negative thoughts about herself or her situation or any number of things.
But what she did instead is a perfect illustration of a powerful concept I’d like to introduce you to: massive thinking.
When we start to change ourselves, our results change too. And sometimes our circumstances change. I frequently get asked “what happens if I get confident and the people around me don’t like it?”
That’s what we all fear, right? That we’ll stand up for ourselves, get confident, stop people pleasing, and then there will be some kind of negative consequence.
My answer is always the same, and it ties so perfectly into this listener’s story: a “negative consequence” is only a negative consequence if we THINK of it as such.
If the listener had gotten fired and gone back to her old pre-massive action thoughts, that would’ve been a bad outcome for her.
But that’s not what happened. Because in learning to manage her mind to become more confident, she also learned to manage her mind about the consequences.
So when she got fired, she didn’t see it as a problem. She saw it as an OPPORTUNITY. And then she created the job she always wanted.
Note that I didn’t say she “manifested” it or the universe delivered it to her based on her vibrations, or any of that bullsh*t.
This is about cognitive bias, not “the secret.“
When you think you aren’t good enough, all you see is evidence of that. But when you believe that you’re worthy and awesome and kick-ass, you’ll see opportunities for that to play out even when you encounter circumstances that others may view as “problems” (such as getting fired from your job).
The listener could’ve gone back to an old story about herself and seen the firing as evidence to support that.
But instead, she worked on her thinking around it and saw it as an opportunity to kick ass even more boldly.
Massive action is a useful tool to go after your goals. But massive action alone doesn’t get you there.
You have to practice massive THINKING as well.
The necessity of massive thinking is especially evident to me when I’m coaching other coaches. I recently had a student who was totally rocking the advertising game. She was getting a lot of interest and booking consultation calls left and right.
But she had 35 consultation calls in a row before she booked her first client.
Why did this happen?
Because her thinking wasn’t in the right place.
Her thoughts were not aligned with her actions, and she didn’t fully believe in herself so she didn’t get the result she was looking for.
She was taking a lot of action but that alone wasn’t enough. It was only when she shifted her *thinking* as well that she started booking clients.
If your thought is “I don’t know how to get clients” or “I don’t know if I’m a good enough coach to help this person,” then that’s going to affect how you show up. Those thoughts will impact what action you take – sometimes so subtly you won’t even catch it.
I see this in dating a lot, too. I coach clients looking to grow in this area to take massive action to find a partner. But going on 25 or 50 or 100 dates isn’t enough. If their thoughts are “I’ll never find someone” or “there’s something wrong with me,” they’ll have trouble seeing opportunities for connection and will show up in a way that actually blocks connection from happening no matter how many dates they go on.
Massive action without massive thinking will only get you so far. You have to be consistently evaluating your current thoughts and working on shifting them.
I’ll take this a step further: If your thinking is in the right place, massive action will happen fairly naturally for you.
If you believe “I’m going to change the world with this work” – which is my belief about feminist mindset work – then of course you’ll take action every day to make that happen. If you believe “my partner is out there and I can’t wait to meet them” then of course you’ll take action to put yourself out there and find them.
Massive action is incredibly useful in helping train your brain to look for possibility and to normalize effort and failure. It focuses your brain on the thought “I’ll do whatever it takes to succeed.”
But the real reason massive action works is linked to why massive thinking is so important. Embracing massive action helps change your thoughts from “I failed so I should give up” to “I’m going to create this result no matter what and I’ll fail as much as it takes.”
Your action will always flow from your thoughts, not the other way around.
Your thought is the blueprint, and the action is the construction company that puts the house together.
If you’re working on massive action in any area of your life right now, your thought work has to be part of that. You have to practice massive thinking. It’s the foundation of massive action.
So if you are taking a lot of action and you don’t have the results you want yet, take a look at your thoughts. That’s probably where the disconnect lies.
Put some work into massive thinking, and you’ll be amazed by what changes.
