“If you’re going through hell…keep going!”
Winston Churchill
Are you frustrated because things suddenly aren’t going as planned? It happens to all of us. No matter how perfectly we think we’ve planned, no matter how well things seemed to be going, at a certain point, ‘something’ happens and they get off track. Sometimes we see it coming. Often we don’t. I call this the ‘messy middle’. And no matter what project we’re working on, big or small, at work or at home, there’s always a part that’s the ‘messy middle’. And that’s frustrating for us, because, as human beings, we have a tendency to want things to be easy, to make constant, forward, straight-line progress. The problem with the ‘messy middle’ is, if we mistake this natural part of every process as the ‘end’, instead of working through the situation and using our creativity to try different approaches, we might give up entirely. Every morning, at about the 3,500 step part of my 10,000 step workout I think to myself “I don’t think I can keep going.” Then I think to myself, “It’s okay, it’s just the ‘messy middle’, keep going and the feeling will pass.” So, remember, no matter what you’re doing, working on, or working towards, there’s always going to be a messy middle. And when you get there, as Winston Churchill so wisely reminds us, don’t stop. Just keep going, because it’s not the end, it’s just the ‘messy middle’.
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