By Leo Babauta

When someone sets a goal for themselves, or takes on a project, there’s a fairly straightforward way they think it’ll go. Get started, follow the plan, and be done! Voila.

But of course, it’s always messier than that. Things go wrong, we procrastinate, we get sick, we get busy, we face resistance and distraction, we get overwhelmed, other people are slower than we’d hoped, we discover roadblocks we didn’t expect, we learn new things that require more steps, etc.

It’s always like that. The bigger and more meaningful the project or goal, the more likely it is that it’ll get pretty messy.

There’s no problem with that — except that we always seem to be surprised by the messiness, and we usually wish it weren’t that way. We get frustrated, discouraged, judge ourselves, feel like it’s all pointless, want to give up, and so on.

What if we could just embrace the messiness, and even expect it? What if we planned a little more space in our timeline to accommodate unplanned messiness? What if we gave ourselves and others some grace, while not just dropping it? What if we attended to the emotions that come up around the messiness, and then practiced a little acceptance for the situation?

Messiness can be beautiful, if we embrace it and learn to work with it.