The Messy Middle

I recently posted about The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, an Episcopal priest who is currently serving as the head of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (District of Columbia) and her 2023 book, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments of Life and Faith.  Bishop Budde made several great points in the book that I thought were worth sharing.  Today I wanted to introduce a concept that she learned from a book by the American author, entrepreneur, and early-stage investor  Scott Belsky.  Belsky was named one of Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business" in 2010.  The book is called The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture.

Bishop Budde used Belsky's definition of the "messy middle" with a direct quote from his book:

"What's in the middle?  Nothing headline-worthy yet everything important: Your war with self-doubt, a roller coaster of incremental successes and failures, bouts of the mundane, and sheer anonymity.  The middle is seldom recounted and all blends together in a blur of exhaustion.  We're left with shallow versions of the truth, edited for egos and sound bites.  Success is misattributed to the moments we wish to remember rather than those we choose to forget. Worst of all, when everyone else around us perpetuates the myth of a straightforward progression from start to finish, we come to expect that our journey is meant to look the same.  We're left with the misconception that a successful journey is logical.  But it never is."

In other words, we often see the successes (and the failures too, of course) of individuals, teams, and organizations.  What we don't see is the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears that are behind the success.  Failure to see and appreciate the work that goes into any successful endeavor can create anxiety, stress, and fatigue when we don't experience a similar degree of success.  Others have referred to this concept as the "Iceberg Illusion" (the figure by the illustrator Sylvia Duckworth below explains this well):

Don't forget about the "messy middle"!