The Messy Middle: What Reinventing Yourself Actually Looks Like Day to Day

Let me tell you what my ideal day looks like.

I wake up early, get a workout in, drink my coffee, eat a good breakfast, and then spend a couple of focused hours working with clients. In the afternoon I run errands, get groceries, take care of the house, make a really good dinner, and spend time with my family. I go to bed feeling like I did something that mattered.

Now let me tell you what today actually looks like.

I got up, made my coffee, ate breakfast, and logged on to work on my blog. It is 9:15 in the morning and I am sitting here writing instead of working out, instead of seeing clients, instead of doing the version of this life I am trying to build. And somewhere underneath all of that is a quiet hum of guilt that follows me through most of my days right now.

This is the messy middle. And nobody really talks about what it actually feels like to be in it.

The Gap Between Where You Are and Where You Want to Be

When you make a big life change, there is this assumption at least there was for me that once you make the decision, momentum follows. That clarity leads to action, action leads to clients, clients lead to income, and income leads to the life you imagined.

What nobody tells you is that there is a gap between the decision and the momentum. And that gap can feel enormous.

I am a few months into building Sandra Adams Wellness and I do not have a full roster of clients yet. I know that is normal. I know businesses take time to grow. I know I am still in the building phase and that September, when the kids go back to school and I have more focused time and energy to network and market and put myself out there, things will start to shift.

I know all of that logically. And yet the guilt shows up anyway.

It shows up when I am sitting at my desk at 9am working on a blog post instead of seeing clients. It shows up when my husband leaves for work and I stay home. It shows up in the quiet moments when I ask myself what exactly I am doing and whether any of it is actually working.

I spent 27 years as an earner. My whole adult life I have had a paycheck, a title, a measurable output that told me I was contributing, that I had worth, that I was pulling my weight. And now I am in this strange in-between space where the work I am doing does not yet have a dollar amount attached to it, and some part of me does not quite know what to do with that.

The Moments That Keep Me Going

Here is what I have learned about the messy middle though. The clarity does come. Not always, and not on a schedule, but it comes.

It comes when I finish a blog post and feel that quiet satisfaction of having created something that might actually help someone. It comes when I talk to my friend Sam, who is in exactly the same building phase with her own wellness business, and we remind each other that we are not doing this alone. It comes when I think about the women I want to work with and the conversations I want to have and the impact I actually want to make.

In those moments I think this is going to work. It has to work.

And then just as quickly as the excitement comes, so does the fear. Because I have always been an earner. I have always contributed financially. And learning to redefine my worth outside of a paycheck is turning out to be one of the hardest parts of this entire transition. That is probably its own blog post entirely, and honestly it might be one of the most important ones I ever write.

What I Want You to Know If You Are in Your Own Messy Middle

If you are somewhere in the middle of a big life change right now, I want you to know that the gap between the decision and the momentum is real and it is normal and it does not mean you made the wrong choice.

The guilt is real too. The fear is real. The days where you feel like you should be further along than you are, those are real. All of it is part of the process, even when the process feels messy and slow and nothing like the highlight reel version you had in your head.

What I keep coming back to is this. The women who make it through the messy middle are not the ones who never doubt themselves. They are the ones who keep showing up anyway. Who write the blog post even when no clients are reading it yet. Who have the scary conversation. Who choose to believe, on the days when belief is hard to find, that the thing they are building is worth building.

I am choosing to believe that. On most days anyway.

And I think if you are reading this, you might be choosing it too.

If you have been following along with this series, you can catch up on the first two posts here: Why I Left a 27 Year Career to Become a Health Coach at 43 and Why So Many Women Feel the Urge to Reinvent Themselves After 40.

And if you are in your own messy middle and want someone to talk it through with, I would love to connect. Book a free discovery call here.