There's No After Picture: A Year in the Messy Middle (Season 3 Finale)

A year ago I sold everything, organized my whole life into a 5x8 trailer, and moved across the country. There's no after picture to show you — and that's exactly the point.

In this Season 3 finale, Megs looks back on a year of navigating the messy middle: rebuilding a life in Massachusetts, decluttering an entire home in fight-or-flight mode, learning to interrupt hyperfocus before it turns into burnout, and letting go of the Pinterest-perfect kitchen for pink countertops that are exactly enough. If you've ever made a beautiful plan, watched it fall apart, and decided that meant something was wrong with you — this one's for you.

In this episode:
 • Why the "before and after" picture is a lie, and what growth with ADHD actually looks like
 • How to catch yourself in fight-or-flight (even mid-oven-scrub) and come back to the present
 • The "shallow holes" problem: what happens when dopamine picks all your projects — and the treasure you find when you keep digging one
 • Why half-assing it beats no-assing it, every time

Plans change — that's not failure, it's data. If you want to build a flexible fall plan that works with your ADHD brain, join me for the Plan Your Fall Before It Plans You workshop on August 30th: Sign up here

Season 4 launches in September — with episodes on YouTube and big community news coming. Follow the show so you don't miss it. 💛

Related episode: Half-Assing It with Russ from ADHD Big Brother 

02:09 Finding joy and learning to play with ADHD

05:24 When your plans fall apart (and why that's data)

08:21 ADHD fight or flight: regulating in real time

14:52 Hard days, self-belief, and why community matters

19:58 Getting out of debt with ADHD

21:52 Why there's no perfect "after picture"

25:13 Shallow holes, dopamine, and half-assing it

Would you like to learn more about hiring Megs as your ADHD coach? Start here> The Perfect Place to Start

The Community is OPEN! Join right here: Organizing an ADHD Brain

You can also learn more about the community HERE> OrganizinganADHDBrain.com

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants 0:40

Hey, beautiful people. Welcome back to the show. I thank you so much for tuning in today because today is the season finale of "The Messy Middle." I started this season last August when I had first arrived in Massachusetts from Colorado. My husband and I had left all of our belongings, sold everything, and sold our home, and moved across the country, and we built a new life over the last year in the state of Massachusetts. I'm ending this season not because "The Messy Middle" is over. It is far from over. In fact, there never really is an endpoint, and that's the point. What I wanna take this episode to do is take some time to really share what I've learned throughout this last year, not only through the podcast, but in my own life. Sharing some stories, some insights and some things that stick with me, and to remind you that this theme will continue to come up in future podcasts to come, because this is life. There is no such thing as a perfect before and after picture without all of the steps that come in between. And of course, the after picture, after all, is simply just posing for a picture. And after the picture happens, all the makeup comes off, all the things get scattered, and it certainly doesn't look picture perfect any longer, at least for a time What the messy middle does is gives us a chance to grow and evolve into the person that we are becoming. And that, my friends, is my word of the year: becoming. I have been working for a long time now on becoming the version of me where I get to show up authentically exactly who I am. And I know some of you have told me that's why you tune in, and I appreciate that, and feel like that journey is never really over. So you'll see that continuing to evolve as I do become the woman I imagine myself to be

Finding joy and learning to play with ADHD

Audio Only - All Participants 2:48

One of the episodes I did recently was finding joy and having the opportunity to play a little bit more in life. Now, if someone had told me years ago when I was still in the, like, cutthroat world of corporate, trying to go all day long and letting everybody else's schedules dictate mine, I would've scoffed if you told me I needed to find more joy in life. I would've said, "Yeah, of course I do, but in what time? I don't have time." But this season of my life, I continue to reflect on what it actually looked like to pause, what it actually looked like to interrupt my hyperfocus of trying to get things done and trying to be the most productive version of myself to actually enjoy life. Something I replayed over and over again was the fact that people on their deathbeds wish they didn't work so much, wish they didn't spend so much time just grinding and trying to be as productive as possible. They wish they spent more time with their loved ones. And one of the things that came up for me this year was finding more adventure and being able to spend time with my kids where they are now. At nine and seven, they're growing, and they're learning, and they're evolving into these real human beings who are so far beyond complicated and intriguing, and I get to support them. What a cool relationship I get to build with them. Also, I'm talking about this in a dreamy sense. It's also very hard. It's very hard to be a mom. But when I talk about finding joy and being able to pause and being able to play in life, it makes my heart happy. It allows me to take more risks because I know that actually failing or, not failing, but making a mistake, quote unquote, is actually okay. It gives me the opportunity to start things I probably would have never started previously because it's okay that I'm not good at it right away. I'm just playing. Most recently, I just started making more shakes in my life. I really wanna drink more protein shakes with spinach and things like that. I tried adding chia seeds to it, and the first couple shakes I've made were awful. I either made too much ingredients or then they were too thick, and then I was like, "What is this consistency?" But as I continued to make them, I started to notice how many ingredients I was adding and what made it turn to this type of consistency versus that. I'm just learning, and I'm growing, and I'm intrigued at what is happening at the same time. That is a great gift that I have evolved into as I continue to navigate the messy middle of understanding how I want to enjoy my life, enjoy and play and in maybe having some more experiments. Maybe there's some things I don't finish, and that's okay. Maybe that's the point. Maybe I don't shame that, and I have a little bit more self-compassion when it comes to all of the things I am doing.

When your plans fall apart (and why that's data)

Audio Only - All Participants 6:03

The messy middle of this last year has really taught me what it looks like to have a plan and then actually seeing how some of the parts of the plan just didn't make sense the more action that we took, and the plan had to change. Like, have you ever had to get your kitchen remodeled or if you're doing a project at work, right? This is project management 101, but you have a goal at the end. You ask a ton of questions to understand what that final result really looks like. But as you're going along, you realize that, well, okay, those cabinets that you really wanted, they're gonna take two more months to get here, and that kitchen is now gonna take two months longer to complete because it's waiting on this one specific thing. But when it comes to organizing, you had this really grand plan of adding this specific cabinet to this space, but you didn't measure it, and now it's not fitting the way that you wanted it to, and it's not as aesthetically pleasing as you wanted. Or maybe you finally started on getting rid of your emails, but you realized how much longer of a process it actually is Or maybe you came up with this elaborate plan to, put your photos in a specific order and do this and do that, and the time that has come with it is very time-consuming, and oftentimes you forget that was an intention that you had at all. It's so interesting how we come up with these amazing plans, and they're full of dopamine at the beginning. We get so excited about the new, shiny, beautiful things that we get to do. But then something else catches our eye, and without regulation or pausing or understanding that this discomfort over here is actually really good and there's this greater reward on the other side, we keep looking for these other things that have led our brains for so long. But it's okay to pause. It's okay to have a plan, and then it's okay that that plan doesn't go the way that you planned. That's actually part of the point, 'cause when you have a plan, you get to see what your intentions are. And when it doesn't happen the way that you want it to, if you're able to reflect on that, it gives you evidence as to why not or what the reality of the situation is. Having a plan is amazing. It's so good. And then understanding what to do when that plan doesn't go the way that you set out for it to go is also really awesome. Side note, I'm hosting a workshop on August 30th called Plan Your Fall Before It Plans You, and I'm so excited. It's delicious time together to talk about what actually having a plan means for someone with ADHD. And it is not rigid, because we are not rigid people. We love to be able to be flexible, and also it's so important to know what's coming, to have a little foresight. And you are able to do that with ADHD

ADHD fight or flight: regulating in real time

Audio Only - All Participants 9:01

Another thing I've learned this year is the messy middle of regulation. We, as ADHDers, tend to react much more and we live in a state of fight or flight most of our lives. But when we can interrupt that fight or flight and start to bring ourselves back into the present moment a little bit more, it is an incredibly more peaceful way to live, especially with ADHD That's part of what I teach in my coaching, and it is what I practice to live a more peaceful life The messy middle showed up for me truly when I was trying to get all of my stuff ready to leave my home back in Colorado. We had garage sales, and I sold things on Facebook Marketplace, and I gave things away, and I donated so much stuff. It is outrageous. But I did all of that in fight or flight burnout mode. I went so hard that by the end of the day, I was so exhausted that I didn't know how to connect with my kids, I was just so tired. I needed to sleep. And the whole time I would tell myself, "I just need to go to sleep, and the next day it will be better." But then I would do the same thing all over again. And as that deadline of leaving our home got closer and closer, it felt like I didn't even have time to sleep anymore. And it taught me a really valuable lesson, partly that I can't go back in time. So many of us experience that when we first get diagnosed with ADHD. There's so much grief that we experience with this diagnosis that we wonder, what would it have been like if we could've gone back in time and experienced life again knowing what we know now? and part of the reality is that the world didn't know what we know now back then, partially. And also, we are exactly where we need to be, and it's not about what if, it's about what now? What do we do with the time we have? So when I look back and see that I decluttered and got rid of so much stuff in my home in fight or flight mode, I also had a really strong foundation I was building off of because this was something that I did in real life. And I'm also human, so I can't coach myself. But as I think about regulation coming into the forefront of my brain now, I see how fight or flight shows up in my life more often. Sometimes I'm able to interrupt it and come back to the present moment, check in with myself, check in with what my body needs, check in with what are my actual next steps, instead of letting my brain lead me on a journey that I sometimes regret at 1:00 AM. But it is not a pretty picture. It's not just about now that you know this, this is how you get to live your life. No, it's about yelling at your kids and then realizing, oh man, that is not what I wanted to do in that moment, and understanding how to come from a place of repair and learning how to say I'm sorry when you might have been more dysregulated. It's over-scheduling yourself because you get so excited about things even though you do have boundaries, and then saying, "Wow, I really need to find a way to breathe through this day or find ways to take care of myself because this is a really clear path to burnout. it's about recognizing those days and It's about being in the situation of fight or flight, and I'll give you a really good example, is the other Sunday, my girls were gonna be home from camp that week, and I was so nervous. But instead of talking about it, I got caught in cleaning my kitchen, not angrily, but, like, hyper-focusedly. Normally it used to be an angry clean for me, and now it was just a, I'm anxious, and so in order to take control of the situation, I'm going to clean. I even got a knife out and I was cleaning the oven, But it wasn't until after three hours of not drinking anything, not pausing to go to the bathroom or having a bite to eat, that I was washing my windows and I finally paused. And I asked myself in that moment, "How would I show this to my clients? How would I show them how to interrupt this, this hyperfocus that I am in to come back to the present moment so I can take care of my body?" And I was like, "Oh, well, what if I just took a deep breath?" And I reminded myself that I'm actually not in imminent danger right now So I did, and then I walked back into my house and went right back in to hyperfocus mode. But the next time something came up for me to do, I took another deep breath and recognized that as something I could say no to. And that was really powerful. That night, the data that I collected was that I was really exhausted. I didn't wanna put my kids to bed, and we have this really fun routine at night where we play a little game, and then we read books, and then we listen to really calming music so that they can go to bed. This is something that we implemented about a month and a half ago, and it's just such a great way for us to connect and to wind down together. I wanted nothing to do with that. And so even though I've been practicing regulation and interrupting myself for so long, this was still a true experience of a way that I don't wanna live anymore. But it showed up in real time, as I was reflecting back, it made so much sense why I was where I was at that Sunday night. the messy middle is real because it's real life, and it is messy. Just because we know something doesn't mean that we can do something. We actually have to take action on it, which is- is genuinely uncomfortable but this regulation stuff, oh, it's so real, so good and it does not mean being calm all the time it means connecting your thinking brain to your emotional brain and letting them work together instead of reacting to everything all the time and it takes a lot of practice

Hard days, self-belief, and why community matters

Audio Only - All Participants 15:32

The other thing that comes up in the messy middle is continuing to believe it's possible when it's hard. Like on those really hard days where you wake up and things are still disheveled, or maybe there's a project over here where you were sorting papers and you haven't finished it yet, and maybe your kid's room is a mess, but you already helped them try to find spaces for everything. But then also things are crumbling around you, and the system you thought you had set up over here isn't working, and all you wanna do is cry. It's on those days that you still have to get through and believe that it is possible. That you understand and recognize that, oh, okay, this is just a really hard day and I can get through this too. Those days are excruciatingly hard, and the more we practice regulation, and the more we practice understanding that we can believe in it, even when the light becomes a little bit more foggy at the end of the tunnel and we can't see it as clearly, that just an inkling of a belief is okay to hold onto. That's also where community comes into play. I really, you know, one of the interviews we had where we talked to Kendall, and she talked about being on the beach and having her husband say the things that she herself didn't have the capacity to say in those moments. But on a good day, she would've told herself those things all day long. Is having a community to be able to say those things to you. In fact, just this morning, I was singing in the shower, which is great. I don't always sing in the shower, which is interesting 'cause I sing everywhere. And then my husband brought in the speaker and just started playing. And I peeked out, and before I could even see him, he had already shut the door and started playing music, and it was really awesome. I w- wasn't having a bad day this morning, and I felt so seen in that moment and so supported, and got to continue to sing in the shower. And it was a really beautiful thing. But it's those types of things that we need on our worst days. That's why community is so important I think my favorite thing about the Organizing an ADHD Brain community is seeing the people that are a part of that community grow so much and support the people who are just joining who don't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel. But they are just showing them that they are capable and showcasing, like, "Hey, look at me showing up. This is a month I can do it," versus the other people who don't have the capacity to show up that month Something that's come up for me a lot over this last year is looking at the messy middle of our country, looking at the messy middle of the world, and so much of the experiences that we are seeing on a regular basis that are impacting us, our brains, the way we live our lives, our emotions. There's an episode that I did about that is choosing hope instead of avoidance in this world, and I would really encourage you to go listen to that. But this messy middle is real, and things are not perfect. Things are so far from perfect. And When it comes to looking at our country, it It feels like we're incapable of doing anything. It feels like, you know, we're a little lost sometimes. Those are the hard days, right? I just talked about that with organizing. But when it comes to this, like, existential threat of things that we can't even possibly control as humans here, we can still do things in the minuscule, the baby steps. We can still show up in the minimal ways that we can by making an impact. And I will tell you, I've truly started to understand my impact on this world a little bit more. And one of the things that I'm really passionate about is understanding overconsumption, understanding where it starts and why we continue, and why ADHD has so much to do with that in our finances, in our emails, in our stuff, in our excitement about everything. Also, there's nothing wrong with it. There's no judgment there. And are there ways that we can continue to be educated so that we can start to understand where those boundaries are and we stop the overconsumption a little bit more? But my goal as an individual with ADHD is to help people understand and meet them where they're at. it's not about, like, burning it all down and going and living in the woods, although some of you may have aspirations to do that. But it's more like, what's one step, one baby step that would allow me to get a little bit closer to not consuming as much, to not spending as much money, to feeling like I didn't have to go through 10,000 emails in my email inbox? There are baby steps you can take, and it is messy, and it's so worth it. It is so

Getting out of debt with ADHD

Audio Only - All Participants 20:37

worth it I learned a ton about the messy middle of money, and I loved one of the episodes I did with financial therapist Lindsay, where we talked about her messy middle. And she is certainly not in debt as, as I have been practicing getting out of over the last year, but she has her own messy middle that she's navigating through. And it gave me perspective because f-for me, I'm still getting out of this mindset where we do have to get to the end of something for another thing to begin. And I'm sure many of you are like that too, but that's not the case. As soon as you've done something, it's just getting you closer to where you wanna go. And when you set that destination in the GPS, there's gonna be a lot of wrong and right turns along the way. And I hesitate to say that because they're just, ways that you might see the trees over here or a back road over here that's maybe not as paved because you're actually forging your own path. Regardless of how many self-help books or how many systems or, you know, methods you adopt, it's still yours. Whatever you adopt is now yours and your life and your story to tell. And that was really good information to gather along my own getting debt-free journey and what that looks like. Because, contrary to popular belief, I am not independently wealthy and moving across the country was not something I did just because it was, chump change. It was possibly a plan that didn't necessarily go as planned as I had hoped or thought, and that's okay because I kept my faith throughout the process. That belief, right? That belief that we came back to.

Why there's no perfect "after picture"

Audio Only - All Participants 22:32

I will tell you that I did it. I organized my whole home. I decluttered. I got things in spaces. Everything had a label or a bin. It looked very Pinterest perfect. I had sparkly countertops, and my kitchen was beautiful. We picked out the backsplash that we wanted and even matched the stone that we had put on our fireplace in our home. Everything had a home. And then we decided to move, and we let go of so much stuff. We sold things, and, we gave things away, and we donated things, and eventually we got all of our stuff down into a trailer. It was five by eight, and we fit two dogs and two cats in the back of our car, our two girls, and we drove across the country. And after I did it getting rid of everything or organizing everything or having these curated spaces, there's no after picture to show you because it's life. I'm just living life still. I'm now having to decide where things go in this new home and create homes for things, and it takes time. Everything simply takes the amount of time that it does, and that's been really interesting to see. I'm in no rush anymore to get somewhere because I'm not getting anywhere except for possibly the vision I have in my head. I'm just taking tiny steps to get there along the way Which is allowing me the gift to pause a little bit more and enjoy some of those steps that I am taking. That I'm not out of debt, but gosh, it's so cool to see how far we've come and some of the decisions that we've been able to make along the way. That we don't have our dream home, but we're living in a home that is so amazing and just good enough. And while I had sparkly countertops in my home in Colorado, and everything had a place, and it was beautiful and could've been magazine worthy, that now I have pink countertops and white cabinets that are not out of a magazine. And it is, it's exactly where I want to be right now. It's exactly where I need to be, and I'm very grateful for this kitchen with pink countertops. And does my brain still take me on a journey of what could be done, and have I demolished it and replaced everything in my head? Absolutely. And I'm renting, and so that is not my responsibility at this part of my journey. And that's been an interesting part of this messy middle to let go of, is that it's not my calling in this moment to redo the kitchen, even if it's happening in my head. So no, I'm still organizing. I'm still going, and I'm still enjoying, and I still have really hard days, and I still have really good days, and I'm really proud of what I'm building and what I keep growing toward. This stuff gets easier as you go along, too. It's still hard. There's still uncomfortable moments. But the more you sit with that discomfort, it's really cool on the other side.

Shallow holes, dopamine, and half-assing it

Audio Only - All Participants 25:53

There was a woman in my community the other day, we were talking about, you know, seeing all these like seeing all these shiny objects and being like, "Ooh. Ooh, look at this. Ooh, squirrel. And kind of digging all of these holes all over. Like, I can even picture it in my mind of a person digging a ton of shallow holes over this entire desert, and that's what it feels like with ADHD, right? Like, "Well, what's over here? Well, what's over here? Let me see what's over here, too." And it's all exciting until it's not. And so what if we stopped letting the dopamine dictate what we do at every whim? That's part of what regulation is, is pausing and saying, "Okay, that looks really good over there. But also, what if I dug here just a little bit longer? What if there's treasure at the bottom of one of these holes? What if there's treasure at the bottom of all of these holes, but I only have the capacity to dig through one?" And what if that's where we become truly extraordinary, where we sit with one thing for a longer amount of time because it truly allows us to reap these rewards that we never could've thought possible if we continued to chase all of those shallow holes This is an analogy, and this is not what real life is too, but it gives you some good perspective on pausing before you make the next best decision for yourself. And the evidence for me showed me that I just didn't have the capacity to scrapbook anymore, and so it was okay for me to let go of that stuff. And that it's okay that I love watercoloring and I only get it out once or twice a year because I have a space for it. But it's also okay that, that one time I wanted to be a professional cake decorator and bought hundreds of dollars worth of cake decorating stuff and then returned it back to the store because I started to realize how much of this stuff I had no idea how to use, I just wanted to be perfect at it right away, was okay. It's okay to pause. It's okay to not do the thing that you said that you were going to do. It's interesting And the messy middle reminds me of coming back to an interview I did back in September with Russ from ADHD Big Brother about half-assing it. Because some days there's not a lot of effort that you can put into things, and so how could you go about half-assing it instead of no-assing it? Because if you half-ass it's easier to get to the whole-assing of the thing. Those are his words, I repeated that to myself a lot and shared that with a lot of my clients and my community because it's okay to half-ass it, because perfection is only steering us away from doing any of it, which means that we're not making the progress that we want to. So half-assing it is actually a great opportunity here 'cause we're getting things done and we're moving forward. The messy middle has been very interesting because While I might be coming to the end of one messy middle, I'm in the middle of 30 others. But as I am in the middle of these things, I realize what a very strong foundation I am building off of because of all of the messy middles that have come before. All of the different things that I have experienced that were so uncomfortable that brought me to this space to be able to share with you what that discomfort has taught me. Not to say that it's going to be easier for you or to take away that discomfort, but just to simply know that the discomfort is okay. It's okay to sit with something a little bit longer, and it's actually incredible to recognize it as discomfort instead of running away because that's a strong pattern that we've followed for so long, and it's not just how we are or who we are with ADHD, it's just one of the patterns that shows up if we've never been given the tools to work with our brain. We just let our brain take over, and guess what? Our brain actually lies to us a lot. I am reading right now a book that I read earlier in the year called How to Make Your Brain Your Best Friend, and I'd like to read you a quote from it. Rachel Barr, the author and neuroscientist, says, when we skip the journey and jump straight to the curated endpoint-" We miss all the unexpected detours and discovery along the way So the messy middle is going to continue to be a common theme that you'll hear on this podcast because you have no choice but to go through it. There is no hack for this. There is no quick fix. There is no perfect journal or planner that is going to make your life easier. Throughout every new endeavor and new plan that you make for yourself, there will be discomfort. And that's why when we try to do 20 things all at once, we can fail miserably, 'cause can you imagine being uncomfortable about 20 different things all at once? No wonder we forget about things after five seconds of trying it because we're trying to do so much. But it's uncomfortable and it's so worth it. I just wanna thank you again so much for tuning in. I'd love to connect with you further. If you wanna stay in touch with everything that's happening with Organizing an ADHD Brain, go to my website, organizinganadhdbrain.com, and you can download the free dopamine menu that shows you how to find joy in the itty-bitty pieces of your life that can support you with motivation and living your life to the fullest, staying present in these moments. But even more so, you can find other ways to work with me so that I can support you and give you some of the tools that I talked about having in this episode. Organizing an ADHD Brain community is right now open and undergoing some changes. Stay in the loop with some of the information there. And of course, one-on-one coaching is available to individuals. If you'd like to know when the next spot opens, please get on the waitlist, and that's at organizinganadhdbrain.com/coach. Season four of Organizing an ADHD Brain will launch in September, including more episodes loaded directly to the YouTube channel. Oh my goodness Thank you so much for tuning in. I will talk to you soon. Have a beautiful rest of your summer