Have you ever tried to accomplish a big goal in one day? Did you succeed or did you just burn out and give up? I believe big long term goals require consistent action for the goal to be successful. That consistent action is called “collective action”. It’s a series of small goals that are completed that ultimately contribute to the bigger goal. Thus collective action is necessary for anybody to complete a goal that has any significant impact or changes No one has ever heard of Martin Luther King Jr, changing the views of racial segregation in one day. It was a huge goal that changed the views of an entire country, and it required consistent action from everybody who was interested in the cause. I will explain why collective action is so important for anybody trying to complete a goal that has any real significant change or impact Long-term goals need short term goals to be accomplished.
What I mean by this statement is that every little action you contribute to your real goal, contributes into you actually finishing this goal. For an example a starting rally that has only 4 members protesting. if these rioters continuing showing up everyday to protest, spread awareness, and to inform the public, they will eventually garner up support for their cause. Losing weight is another example. If you consistently take action to watch your diet, exercise, and eat healthy, the body itself will change. You cannot change your body from fat to skinny in one day no matter how hard you try. The point to make is that, every goal you set your eyes upon must be met with consistent action for that goal to be completed. Collective action is necessary because it helps you build momentum into finishing your goal. When you use collective action, you will find yourself consistently working on the goal until it feels like an actually habit.
That habit turns to momentum because you will start to see small success in your goal. For an example losing that 20 pounds after 2 months of dieting and exercising. People will start to take notice in you and give you compliments, which in turn will start to motivate you and give you more momentum into completing your body transformation. Eventually your mindset will change as you progressively act onto your goals. The very first start to any goal is extremely hard, but as time progresses you will find it gets easier and easier. Next thing you know it will feel as though taking little consistent actions everyday will feel like a habit. That’s because your mind adapts to the stress and emotional distress you feel when you first start out.
That’s why collective action and little consistent actions at first are so important, they will not overload you with stress and eventually burn you out, like how finishing a big goal in the shortest time possible will. Before you know it, taking consistent actions will complete your long term goal. Have you ever tried to do a project in the shortest time possible? It is very stressful because finishing a big goal will overwhelm you and actually set you back. I say it will actually set you back because trying to finish a big goal in one day will mentally and physically drain you. That drained feeling you get will sap your motivation, and actually set you back. It is not a productive way of finishing projects because your projects will lack the attention and time it needs for it to be special. This goes for changing ideas also. Ideas take time to change and constant reinforcement.
Changing America’s views on racism does not take one day. In fact it took over 400 years. Collective action is necessary if you want to achieve any big long term goals. The reason that it’s necessary is because long term goals need short ones, collective action builds and creates momentum, andjust trying to finish a long term goal is just going to drain you physically and mentally, America didn’t change overnight, losing weight in one day is impossible, and ideas aren‘t easily as persuaded; so collective action is the missing answer for how all these changes came about.