The Superpower of Massive Action, new Costco Find & A Spectacular Book-Dessert

Hi Thrivers,

I swear, get to a certain age and you spend half your life in the doctor’s office. 🙂 ♥

Pearl One is from an earlier post. I believe so strongly in this method of bringing something great into our lives.

Pearl One

“We are bleeding money.”

Over the last four years my husband and I had been — 24/7 — diapering, feeding and caring for twin infants slash toddlers. Once my boys were semi-functional, I was raring to take family-trips to Lake Tahoe, the beach, various Children’s Museums and so forth.

In short, I wanted our family to travel.

“We can afford to drive around the corner,” my husband said. “Call me when you arrive.”

Thanks to the ’08 crash, the planet was reeling. Money problems everywhere, houses not selling, belts tightening.

Even that said, Oh, the Places I Wanted to Go.

After my husband announced, “not a chance”, I didn’t argue or suggest ways we could “rob Peter to pay Paul,” or call my best friend crying about the dumb choice I’d made in a husband.

I said to myself only, “My. Kids. Will. Travel.” I felt those words into my very marrow. I had no idea how we’d find the bucks for travel; I only knew that – contrary to all of the evidence around me – we were going places.

And we did.

Here’s how it went down.

After a handful of false starts, I asked an editor-friend who produced a local parenting magazine if she’d be interested in a travel column.

She jumped at the idea and — with that email to Barb — I’d created a small job for myself. My family and I traveled and after each trip, I’d write about our experiences for Barbara’s mag. (We had a blast and, I was getting paid — not a ton — but still.)

Was it a fluke?

Back then, I didn’t have the vocab to talk about why my travel-determination worked, but I knew something – outside of the ordinary – had taken place and I wanted to figure out what it was, so that I could replicate my results.
Here’s what I learned.

Turns out, those in the coaching world – like Tony Robbins — call what I stumbled upon “massive action.” Tony Robbins didn’t invent massive action any more than
Ben Franklin invented electricity, but they both noticed a reality and pointed it out to the world.

To me, massive action is feeling — into the very fiber of my being — that something I want will happen (come hell or high water).

Before I knew the term “massive action,” I called it “leaving no stone unturned.” Quick example: Long before I had kids, I had to pass a licensing exam and I used “no stone unturned” to study for the big, scary test. I did everything conceivable to pass, and I figured, if I didn’t pass then it must be due to something outside of my control.

But I passed. (And trust me, every stone was turned.)

How Massive Action Works

Massive action is happening when you throw everything you can possibly think of at a project or a problem until the door swings open.
It’s when you’re at your most determined.

When you go massive action on something that matters deeply to you, it’s almost as if the Universe says, “Oh, brother. This mom in California will not stop knocking at the door. Just give her travel so we can get onto other things.”

Writing is Your Portal

To know what’s going on in your heart and head, write. Writing is free therapy and is always there for you. Free-write in the mornings. Free-write like nobody is going to read it (because they won’t). Free-write to discover what makes you tick.

Every morning, ask yourself these questions and see what your super sophisticated brain spills forth:

• What does future-me in six months most want?
• What are five things that matter most to me in life?
• If I had a life mission, what would it be? (Give three life mission answers.)
• What is something that matters to me that the rest of our culture tends to overlook?

Consciously Using Massive Action

Once I heard the term “massive action,” I was far more successful in wielding its power. Through the last ten or so years, here’s how I’ve added to my life using massive action:

My sister and I – who, at one-time, couldn’t talk on the phone for twenty-minutes without both of flying off the handle – are currently going on four years of a loving, argument-free relationship.

I added a recumbent trike to my life that was “too pricey to afford,” but thanks to massive action, I bought a demo model that wiped $1500 off the price tag (plus it came with a bunch of upgrades and I didn’t pay shipping).

I massive actioned us into a gorgeous home in Atlanta just eight-minutes from my husband’s job (a commute practically unheard of in Atlanta).

Your challenge:

Think massive action is too woo-woo for your life and probably doesn’t work anyway? Okay, then try this challenge: choose one thing you’d like to have in your life that’s just a tad out of reach. (Let’s start slow.)

Then apply massive action to your project:

One

Begin by writing about your project. What will you feel when you’ve brought home the new item/lifestyle? (Write about ten feelings you’ll experience when you lose twenty pounds, slide that new kayak into the river, or hand over $1,000 to your favorite charity.)

Two

Free-write ten common sense actions you can take to attain your item/lifestyle.

Three

Now free-write ten insane, totally wild actions you can take to attain your goal. (As in, “I could steal a kayak, I could build my own” and so forth. As Prince said, “Let’s go crazy.”)

Four

Now, take action from your list, all the while telling yourself that stopping is not an option. Just keep on keeping on:

If it takes longer than you’d assumed, keep going.

If it’s much harder than you’d imagined, also keep going. (Your mantra: we can do hard things.)

If the December holidays, your birthday, rain, snow, a hot summer, a bad cold etc creates more of an obstacle than you’d anticipated, keep going: no excuse to stop.

The main directive: don’t stop writing, experiencing your feelings, and engaging in action until that kayak is under your butt in the river.

That said, here’s one wrinkle in the massive action story:

Let’s say, I want to walk into my garage and find a gorgeous, fire-engine red Jeep waiting for me. But – and this is key – I don’t want the Jeep to the exclusion of my sons’ (pricey) lessons like theater, piano, and Krav Maga.

Or say I love the ocean and want to live near it, but uprooting my kids from Atlanta is a deal-killer. (The boys would be horrified to leave friends, infrastructure and so forth.)

And say I need a weekly bathroom cleaner. (Don’t we all?) But at $100 a week (or more), it’s a no-go currently because of the boys’ many lessons.

You see, I only go massive action on an item or lifestyle if I know — from my free-writing — that I won’t let a single thing stop me from achieving that change in my life. Sure, I could go all massive action and put a gorgeous red Jeep in my garage, but I know that other goals that also truly matter to me would go sideways.

Massive action can only happen if nothing will stand in our way of getting what we want like – in my case — family travel, or getting along with my sister, or buying a recumbent trike.

I massive action something that matters to me – as long as the item/lifestyle doesn’t threaten other aspects of my life that are also high priorities (like my family and animals). ♥

Pearl Two

I have a new Costco food I want to share with everyone. As you know, I’m a huge believer in the REP way of eating – breakfast like a king, lunch like a princess, and eat dinner like a pauper.

The last time I was in Costco, on a whim, I added their “organic acai bowls” to my cart (found in frozen near huge bag of frozen strawberries and blueberries).

For some reason I thought the acai bowls had a dessert element to them, but they don’t. They have more of a crunch, granola, blueberry vibe.

At first, I wasn’t impressed, but after eating all six bowls I now think, “these guys are tasty.”

They’re vegan, gluten free, and with the little packet of granola-like crunchy things you put on top of these bowls, the calorie count comes to just 180. Not bad, right?

Last week I wrote about trying to stick with only five-ingredient foods, but this bowl is way more than five.

I can’t emphasize enough that to stay on the Smart Eating Path, keeping your food fun and interesting is major-league important. Make at least one meal in your day something you really love. ♥

Pearl Three

June’s topic for the month: what cannot be an afterthought in our smart eating lives. Every week we’ll talk circumstances that require hard-core planning rather than “winging it.”

• June 2 topic: We’re heading into vacation-season, do you have a plan about how and what you’ll eat on your trip?
• June 9 topic: Do you have a plan for how you’ll handle the negative-food that “shows up” in your kitchen?
• June 16 topic: Do you have a written plan for the moments when you’re furious or super sad? If your former “fix” to these emotions was food, have you given conscious thought to how you’ll manage the overflow of feelings without food around?

I should tell you that when I was losing the final of fifty-five pounds, I was furiously determined (is that a term?) about getting down to my preferred weight. At the time I was losing, I was still attending WW sessions every week. Just as I’d lost the last five pounds, we moved to VA and WW meetings came to an end.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I understood that my coping mechanism was food and that I had to figure out better ways of dealing with bad feelings.

My go-tos. Reading, rock music, shower or bath, doing things like coloring my hair or doing my nails, listening to an inspirational podcast; my list helped me get through rough times and overwhelming emotional moments. Definitely getting away from the TV and the kitchen were part of the success too.

My mind-shifts. It was a huge shift for me to write to myself from future-me. I wrote from that evening-me, tomorrow-me, autumn-me, five years from now-me and so forth. In my journal I told current-me how much I appreciated that she did a, b, c for me (like lock-in a fantastic habit, or do things over the summer that I loved).

I also was into the idea of micro-rewards. I’d talk to myself and say, “This evening is a tough one. If we stick to our eating plan and go to bed early, have a hot shower, and read a great book: we’ll get a pedicure tomorrow.” But here’s the thing: you must follow-through. Don’t tell yourself, “Do well tonight and I’m buying those pricey earrings you liked!” (And then the next day bail on the idea because the earring are just plain too expensive. You never want her to feel tricked.)

Reasonable rewards for the next day are like a two-hour block of reading time, getting the car cleaned, or even purchasing an inexpensive pool float.

Planning your hard times before they happen is like 80-percent of the job handled. ♥  

Pearl Four

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré is a coming-of-age novel by a powerhouse of a writer. Her daughters encouraged their mom to write her first book and omg is it good. Daré has an MA in creative writing from Birkbeck, University of London along with other degrees. She’s a brain.

Her book reminds me a lot of the internist Khaled Hosseini who wrote the acclaimed novels: The Kite Runner (2003) and its follow-up A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007).

The Girl with the Louding Voice is about a poor girl growing up in Nigeria. How she learns and grows in a wealthy household is a testament to resilience and strength.

Daré’s book won The Bath Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts in 2018 and was selected as a finalist in 2018 for The Literary Consultancy Pen Factor competition.   Absolutely five-stars. ♥

Pearl Five

It is facile (something done easily without an understanding of the difficulty involved) to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patterns can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviors.”

— Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business ♥

I love this quote so much because it flies directly in the face of our world’s diet-culture who love to yammer on about how losing and preserving weight “is easy.”

Total baloney sauce.

But, I will tell you, that while it’s not easy, it is learnable. It’s doable. It sounds trite to say, “if I can, you can.” I only wish you had known me from childhood to my mid-30s. You would have met someone who always had food on the brain and never fit into most (all?) of her clothes.

I’m headed to the pool this weekend (it’s something autumn-me asked for). I love the pool, I just don’t like the work involved like putting on a bathing suit, walking to the pool, putting on sunscreen, hoping I’ll find an umbrella and blah, blah, blah.

Have a sun-block weekend, everyone!

♥, Wendy

P.S. Are you new to the Inspired Eater? Welcome!! This blog won’t make much sense until you first read the Aunt Bea post (and you’ll find Aunt Bea on this page to the right under my short bio). On your cell you’ll see it immediately following the first post. After you enter your email address, the Aunt Bea article will be sent to your email’s inbox. If it’s not there, you might check the spam folder. And always feel free to email me at Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll get Aunt Bea right to you!

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I am not an expert, a doctor, a surgeon, a nurse or a nutritionist: the information within TheInspiredEater.com is based solely on my personal experience and is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. ♥

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