The Messy Middle: When You Realise This Isn’t It
She’s right in the thick of it - that strange, messy middle where, if you just looked at her business from the outside, you’d think she had it all together.
The clients keep coming in.
The work gets done, day after day.
People clap for her from the sidelines, tell her how well she’s doing, how impressive it all is.
But inside, she feels like she’s slowly running out of air.
She’s tired.
She’s unsure.
She’s scared.
There’s a thread of sadness she’s been carrying quietly, and if she’s honest, she feels like she’s been holding her breath for months. She’s been:
Pretending she’s okay.
Pretending she’s happy.
Pretending this is what she wanted all along.
But now, when she stops and looks around, she realises something she’s been too scared to admit: this isn’t it.
It’s all so much harder than she thought it would be.
For the first time in a long time, she lets herself ask the question she’s been avoiding: What do I actually want? Not just in business - in life. And the answers don’t come easily. They don’t fall neatly into place.
She realises she’s been stuck, going through the motions, carrying old habits that don’t fit anymore.
She’s let her boundaries blur until she doesn’t know where she ends and her work begins.
She’s been saying yes when she wanted to say no, letting others pile more and more on her plate, convincing herself that shrinking was safer, that staying small was the only way to protect herself from failing.
She’s heard the voice in her head whispering for years:
You’re just a contractor.
You’re just a service provider.
You’re just a coach.
You’re just a consultant.
You’re just doing what everyone else is doing.
And somewhere along the way, she started to believe it.
She’s followed advice that never really fit her.
She’s tried strategies that only made her doubt herself more.
And when she really looks at it, she sees the truth she’s been avoiding: she’s been building everything on foundations that don’t feel right anymore - that maybe never did.
So here she stands now, feeling stuck, scared, overwhelmed… but also, quietly, a little bit ready.
Ready to stop pretending.
Ready to figure out what makes her different.
Ready to remember what she’s good at, what lights her up, what she’s been pushing aside for too long.
She’s ready to ask herself if there’s still a place for that in the world she’s trying to build. And if there’s not? She’ll find a way to make it work anyway. She’ll figure it out.
Because she gets to choose how this goes.
She can stay where she is - stuck, safe, always wondering what if OR she can step into something new, even if it’s scary, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it means risking the sting of failure - just to see what might happen.
And maybe, just maybe, that choice is the start of everything.
So here’s the real question:
Which one will she choose?
Which one will you choose?
