The Messy Middle

Learning navigation lessons for the journey through the Messy Middle

The other day I came across an interesting book, called The Messy Middle. It’s a book that helps guide you through the crucial period of project, the part that is neither the beginning nor the end. It’s written by Scott Belsky, founder of Behance.

Learning to Navigate The Messy Middle

Today is my first day with the book. I’m only a couple of pages in and I can tell that it’s going to be a good one. Right now, I’m in the Middle. And I’m taking a moment to be introspective; about myself as an entrepreneur, about my business, and about my clients. Where they are in their journey.

In the first couple of pages, Belsky lays it flat out and calls us on our fluff. We’re obsessed with the starts and finishes, the beginnings and endings. We focus on the conceptions and culminations of our projects or businesses. We try to forget what is in the middle. We forget the grueling work, the highs and the lows.

As I said before, this is where I am right now. I’ve started my business and it was exhilarating. But I’m no where near the end. This is where my clients are. We’re in the Messy Middle, that upward journey full of pitfalls and triumphs.

McKeating Solutions Is Smack Dab In the Messy Middle

In reading these first couple of pages, I learned something important about myself. It’s as if Belsky has pulled a veil from over my eyes, took down a partition separating me from my past.

My focus has been on the excitement of new beginnings and dwell on the emotional energy of the endings. In every job, everyone I’ve ever had , I’ve had explosive starts full of productivity, creativity and excitement. But when I get to the middle where the endurance is required, I falter a bit.

Energy, passion, the willingness to do the hard work, to be uncomfortable and risk failing…I’ve never been able to muster that for someone else and their dream for very long.

(Well, this coupled with negative personalities and caustic work environments. And so I’ve had job after job, start after start.)

I once had an uncle, looking at the three colleges and multiple jobs, told me that I run from things when they grow arduous. He labeled me a runner.

Running Through the Messy Middle

I thought about it. His negative connotations didn’t fit, they didn’t feel like me. Yes I had left or moved on from some bad jobs, and bad environments, but I was moving to something. I always had another job. I rejected it.

You might wonder, why I was so unsettled by this.  Why not just shirk it off and let it go.  Words matter to me.  (You can get more of my thoughts on this here.) So it was much more than a word thrown at me.  It was new meaning applied to me.  It stayed with me for a bit.

In reading Belsky’s words, I realized, I’m not running from, I’m running to – running to something where I can find my passions which fuel my energy. It’s not that I don’t want to do the hard work, or that I can’t. It’s that I never found anything I was passionate enough about to fuel me through the middle.

Just las year, I had another revelation, a new self discovery. I connected with a Dutch entrepreneur, an entrepreneur coach actually. Barbera Schouten specialized in helping highly sensitive people realize their potential and become successful entrepreneurs.  I strongly suggest that you check out her site and social media.

Highly sensitive people – I had never heard of anything like this. I had always been told that I was emotional, another label. It was like this was a bad thing, some kind of diagnosis of a disease that I would have to learn to live with. Barbera opened my eyes and helped me to see myself in anew way. I feel things very intensely which makes the highs higher, but the lows more difficult to bear. Negative energy affected me and drained me. I needed to get out of someone else’s middle and into my own in order to really thrive and enjoy the hard work.

To those who think that I am a runner, I am.

But I don’t run from. I run to. I run to new ideas, new challenges. I’m passionate and hard working. I was running all those years. I was running to my middle, my gloriously messy middle. I’m still running. But short sprints have turned into an endurance run.

This journey started three years ago. It’s the longest run I’ve had to date. It’s the most enjoyable run I’ve had to date. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been tough, stressful, had moments of doubt. But those are my moments, within my journey.

I’m excited to continue reading Belsky’s The Messy Middle and see what else there is to learn about this journey. I’m looking forward to learning about how I can help my clients through their middles.