Ever feel like you’re doing so much and getting nowhere?
Welcome to the messy middle. It’s that time when you’ve started something new that comes after the initial excitement and building trajectory, but before the payoff.
It’s the up-and-down roller coaster of ‘yay’ and ‘ugh’ and ‘OMG I get to do this’ and ‘what the hell was I thinking?’ It’s the self-doubt and the frustration and the boredom and the shiny object syndrome.
Every step forward reveals something else that has to happen or change.
You know when you pack up your house to move, or you start a big tidying job, and there’s that bit where there’s stuff everywhere and it’s all in disarray and you don’t seem to be making any progress?
That’s the messy middle. It’s the sorting-out stage.
And it’s so important, because it’s where we begin to untangle all our assumptions, our options, perhaps make changes to what we thought we were going to do, reexamine our beliefs and values, and make the adjustments we need to make.
It’s a necessary part of the process, even though it often feels uncomfortable and disheartening.
If that’s you, keep going. Don’t stop. Keep working away at whatever you’re working at, bit by bit. Remind yourself what it was like before you started.
You’ll get there. It might not be where you thought you were headed at the start, but you’ll get there.