SNS78 Dealing with the Messy Middle
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 78. Hello, my friend, this is Dr. Brad Miller from the pathway to promise podcast. If you'd like to stay inspired, to stay on your pathway to promise you can't do better than listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader.
[00:00:34] know the truth is there is no cure for going through the chaos of the middle. And oftentimes that chaos lasts way longer than we ever wanted it to. But by doing this by focusing on the gratitude by surrounding yourself with cheerleaders, you can continue through the middle. And get to the end faster than you thought possible.
[00:00:58] Welcome. And thank you for joining [00:01:00] us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you.
[00:01:21] Can impact the work.
[00:01:29] And tonight Saturday night special. I talk with you about the reality of the messy middle. I share how we like to focus on the end of the story, but less than the beginning in the middle. And I share some techniques to help us get through the messy, middle, you know, one area that a lot of folks need some help with.
[00:01:46] Is around the area of productivity, getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a [00:02:00] course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done.
[00:02:14] But actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Cause the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.
[00:02:34] But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that in productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch. You know, on Thursday of this week, I talked a little bit about comfort [00:03:00] stories.
[00:03:00] And in that I talked about how sometimes it's comforting to know the end of the story. And it got me thinking about it. There's a term that I've heard used before called the messy middle. The idea that when you're working on things, you often get to this point. Where you get into the middle of things and it tends to not be a straight line.
[00:03:22] It tends to not be very easy. It tends to not be very comfortable. It tends to be well messy. It's true. And I think in life, in general, we tend to have messy middles. You know, if an event. Happens to us. We see the beginning of the event and when we get through it and get past it and can look back on it, we tend to look back on it and have learned lessons and have some level of comfort with it.
[00:03:52] Even a devastating event, like the loss of a spouse or a child to a situation. You never really get to [00:04:00] the point where you're over it, but you can get to a point where you. Have moved into a place where you've got a relationship with it that is stable, for lack of a better word. You never really get completely over grief, but you do get to a point where you understand it and you've built a relationship with it where you're more comfortable with it, but in between the beginning and the end is always a lot of craziness.
[00:04:32] A lot of passion, a lot of messiness, a lot of fear, a lot of anger, a lot of disruption to our life. If you've been paying attention to anything that's going on around you, when I'm recording this, you know, we're still in the middle of a pandemic. We've had a recent surge in cases here in the United States.
[00:04:54] And that's another example of a messy middle [00:05:00] experience. You know, I don't think we're out of this. We definitely haven't seen the end of the story, but we also aren't in the beginning and what's true is whenever that happens, you begin to get angry. You begin to get frustrated. You started out ready to go fire it up energetic, but that just drifts away.
[00:05:22] Or maybe you've been dealing with a lot of emotion and a lot of fear. And now you're just exhausted. And tired. You've gotten to the point where it's just hard to keep fighting. I've had a lot of friends talk to me about how tired they are of this experience of being at home of wearing mask of all of this.
[00:05:45] And the truth is I think everyone is tired of so much of this thing, but there are, there are things you can do to begin to refocus and reenergize yourself. And stabilize that relationship a little bit, [00:06:00] not always and not perfectly. And there is no such thing as just this magical cure where suddenly you go from the beginning to the end and you skip all the messy stuff in the middle, but there are things you can do to make sure that you continue to get to the end as quickly as you can.
[00:06:21] The truth is those. Terms, the ideas that we have to wrap our head around is the idea that transition and change is normal, but that the good stuff comes after it, that we have to work through it. If you begin to frame things and look at, instead of have I finished this, what progress have I made in this journey?
[00:06:45] What steps have I taken? What have I learned? Find the things to be happy about. Find the things to have gratitude for. Make a list. What all have you gotten done? Make a list of all the things that you've learned or good [00:07:00] experiences that you've had? It can't all have been bad, even if so much of it has been make yourself stop and pay attention to the feeling of the messy middle, identify the anxiety, identify the fear, identify the frustration.
[00:07:18] But then remember also your strengths. Remember what you've got going for. You surround yourself with other people who can support you and walk with you as you move through the journey to oftentimes having someone else around, whether it's in person or whether it's somebody you meet with by phone or by zoom or other ways surrounding yourself with cheerleaders helps you make it way through the messy middle without giving up.
[00:07:48] You know, the truth is there is no cure for going through the chaos of the middle. And oftentimes that chaos lasts way longer than we ever wanted it [00:08:00] to. But by doing this, by focusing on the gratitude by surrounding yourself with cheerleaders, you can continue through the middle and get to the end faster than you thought possible.
[00:08:12] Thanks for listening.
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