What if I told you that the most important part of your journey isn't when you graduate or when you land a job or when you finally feel successful. It's this part, the messy middle, the part nobody warns you about. The part where you wonder if everything you did even mattered. The part where you doubt if you'll ever get where you'd hoped you'd be by now. If you're stuck there right now feeling lost, frustrated, even angry. Stay with me because today we are not just going to talk about how to survive the messy middle. We're gonna talk about how to grow through it.

Have you ever wondered, is this it? That question is the beginning of Your Next Success. I am Dr. Caroline Sangal, and this podcast is your space to pause, reflect, and create the career and life you were made for. We explore real stories, intentional transitions, and practical insights to help you step into alignment, purpose and peace. Tune in and begin your Next Success.

You spent years doing what you were supposed to do. You stayed focused. You gave up nights, weekends, parts of yourself believing it would be worth it, and now instead of standing at the finish line, arms raised in victory, you are stuck in the in-between, in the messy middle. You have the degree, you have the skills, you have the experience, the drive, the dreams, and yet the opportunities you imagined, the clear next steps you worked so hard for. They're not showing up in the way that you thought they would. And if you are wondering, if it was all for nothing, stay with me because you are not failing. You're just in the part that no one talks about. You've been told to follow the path, get the degree, build the resume, do all the right things, and success will follow. But if you've done that and you still feel stuck, disoriented, or unfulfilled, that's not your failure. That's the failure of the narrative that we were sold. See, here's the truth. Graduation isn't the finish line. It is the starting block of a whole new race, and no one prepares you for how disorienting that race can feel. The goals you chased suddenly don't satisfy you, and the clarity you expected vanishes and the confidence you thought would come with achievement. It feels fragile at best. So what do most people do? They double down. They work harder. They try to prove their worth by doing more, but doing more of what doesn't align only gets you more misaligned. So here's the breakthrough. Success isn't about getting to the next milestone. It's about learning how to navigate the space in between the part where you are no longer who you were and yet not yet who you are becoming. This is the messy middle. This messy middle is not failure. It is not a detour. It is the transformation. You don't need to be fixed. You're unfolding. And when you start seeing yourself through that lens, you stop fighting the season you're in and start growing through it. Honestly, nobody even talks about the messy middle. And why don't they talk about the messy middle? Because they just as soon forget it and think that it never happened. When you went to grad school, or you chose to start and enter on that journey, you did it because you wanted the end goal. You wanted the PhD, the MBA, the advanced degree, and you chose that because you had seen others who had it, or you had heard about others who had that accomplishment and you viewed them as successful and they were doing well. They had a good job, they had a good title, maybe they had a great house, maybe they had a wonderful family, and they were able to provide for the life that you thought you wanted. And so you embark and you enter into that journey, and then you graduate or you finish the thing and then you try to go look for your next job, your role, the one that you should be able to get with a PhD. And it's hard. It's really hard. And then you start questioning yourself and you're thinking, wait. Was this all a mistake? Was this all for nothing? And now I've got that thing, but I'm not getting the result that I wanted. Why is it, and how is it that I have the PhD now and I'm not getting the job? And then not only am I not getting the job, but as I look for jobs and I'm very thorough and analytical about what the job says that it wants, and then I think I have to have that exactly. And it says. They want somebody with three to five years experience and you're coming fresh out of school and you think, oh gosh, they wanted somebody with three to five years of work experience, industry experience, and I don't have that. So either you don't apply for it or you do and you get passed over because you didn't have three to five years experience. I remember this part. And I remember when I finally did get an interview for the job, I ended up getting, it had said, yes, we want three to five years experience. And when I was talking with the HR professional on the other end of the phone, I asked her, Hey, can you help me understand how is it that every job is asking for three to five years of experience? But then how is anyone ever supposed to get that experience if someone doesn't hire them and give them the opportunity to gain that? I literally don't understand because honestly, I was in grad school and while I don't have industry experience, I tell you what I do have, I had to take a problem that no one had solved before. And I had to quickly come up to speed with the historical literature and take my classes and do my own independent research solve problems, overcome challenges, deal with the interactions and the territorial nature of certain people using certain instruments, and me trying to get my time to do my work. Getting my results, analyzing the results, writing them up, presenting them, answering questions, refining my approach, writing all of that up and defending. And now I've earned a degree where I am now the foremost expert on this subject. And so if I've done it in academia as a newbie, the first time I ever did it. Surely I can do it again in industry. I've already proven I can study a subject and I can quickly become an expert. So you need somebody to, for example, that one was fatigue and fracture of structural adhesives. You need someone to understand fatigue and fracture of structural adhesives. Awesome. I can do that. I'm confident I can do that. All I need is the opportunity. All I need is the chance. So what happened? I stopped focusing on what I wanted. I wanted a job. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to have made all of that time worth it, and I started focusing on what they needed. This was a company. Wanting to embark in a new direction, wanting to level up, wanting to all of a sudden do fatigue and fracture mechanics, and they had never done it before. And so I became the bridge from my past to their future. I had to speak in a language that they needed to hear to give them the confidence that I was a safe bet. See, companies aren't trying to hire somebody if they're risky. They aren't trying to hire somebody who makes it very clear that it's a temporary stopping point on their larger grander scheme of life. Oh yeah, I wanna do this job until I can go back and get my MBA and then I can really do the job that I want. No, they don't wanna hear that. The company doesn't wanna hear any doubt about what you want. Sure, you do need to figure that out for yourself. But when you are putting yourself in a position in front of someone who has the ability to say, go or no about you and your potential to possibly work there, you need to fill the need and fit the mold of the role they're looking for. That's what you need to do to get the opportunity. Now, do you have to stay there forever? No. It is not a marriage. It's not till death do us part. It's till 30, 60, 90 days. Your performance review, the next review, every annual review after that, or whenever the company decides that it has to lay off people, then you may or may not be on the chopping block. You get to do you. And they get to do what's in the best interest for them.

Imagine what your life would be like if your career aligned with who you are, what you do best, and actually fueled the life you want. At Next Success, we support all ages and stages through career transitions from students exploring majors or careers to job seekers actively searching or re-imagining their next move to professionals committed to self-awareness and leadership growth. Stay connected and explore what's possible at nextsuccesscareers.com and follow nextsuccessmethod on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. You are listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Let's continue the journey to your authentic success.

When you are in the midst of a transition and you're ending one thing and you're wanting to get something else in the future, but that isn't clearly defined, you're doing yourself a disservice if you're getting frustrated by looking at somebody else who is a few years ahead of you and then judging yourself because you're not there yet. You're not there yet, you're not. You're exactly where you need to be, and you're here with this opportunity on purpose, but you're starting. You're at the start of the race they are in the middle. You will get to the middle, but you have to get past the start. You have to get past this unknowing. You have to get past this, what I like to say, the messy middle in between who you were and who you are becoming. In between that is the messy middle. But if you're at the beginning of your career or you're at the beginning of the next chapter of your career, give yourself some grace. Let's think about what you do have. Let's celebrate where you are because you are already successful. What you've done in the past to get you to today, that's already a success, but your next success, that's what we are here to work out, your next success, and part of getting to your Next Success is getting through the messy middle, so let's talk about that. Recently I went to the American Chemical Society spring meeting in San Diego. Now, firstly, this was so cool because the last time I had been to a big full meeting for American Chemical Society, it was like 20 something years ago, and it was also in San Diego. So the fact that I was getting to go back to San Diego, it was such a full circle moment for me. But I tell you when I went there the last time in the middle of grad school in my early twenties with a huge ego and thinking, I had everything all figured out, and I was the greatest bestest person ever. And that I was gonna have such a wonderful future and I was gonna be CEO and quickly rise to the top, and everybody would just be celebrating and clapping me all the way. That's what I thought I was gonna have. And now what has my life actually done in between then and now? It's not like I planned at all. At all it all, it is not like I planned what I thought I wanted isn't what I got, and honestly, what I got was better than I could have ever imagined even with the struggles, even with the challenges. I got to go back to that ACS meeting as a career consultant. A career counselor, I got to meet with many, many people at all different stages of their career and sit across from them face to face and listen to what was happening in their lives in that moment. And I got to be present with them. And in some cases I got to shift their perspective a little bit. And I got to help them see beyond the struggle that they're currently facing. There were so many people that were stuck in the messy middle, that this is what I chose to talk about for my first podcast episode. It's that. I'm thinking about each one of those lovely, amazing individuals, full of hope and opportunity, and also, let's be honest, a bit of terror because they just spent all this time, and grad school is coming across so many hurdles and it's an obstacle course, and just when you get over one, the course changes. It shape shifts, and then you have to shift and overcome and adapt. And when you're in the midst of that, like knock you down, knock you down, knock you down, and you keep getting up and getting up and getting up, and now here you go to try to find the job. And all you keep doing is getting rejected and rejected and No's. It's really, really easy for someone in that fragile state to take it personally and instead of thinking, okay, this is just not my opportunity. Cool. Next. Then you start taking it internally and you start thinking, maybe I am a failure. Maybe something's wrong with me, because why is it that this is so difficult? And the reality is maybe something just needs to be tweaked about your resume, or maybe it needs to be tweaked about the way that you're showing up, or maybe it needs to be tweaked about your internal mindset and chatter of what's happening. And I quickly tried to gain rapport with these wonderful individuals that I only had in front of me for a short period of time, and I gave them a safe space. And honestly, some of them being actually seen, heard, valued, understood. Some of them, it was a safe place to finally release some of the emotions and the stress that they've been holding and carrying. Some cried, okay. I made people cry. No, I didn't make people cry. All right? I didn't make them cry. I allowed them the safe space to do that. Because it's hard whether you are going from grad school to your first industrial job, whether you're going from being laid off to your next job, whether you're going from having to take away time from your family and then wanting to go back and reenter and refind out you after you've dedicated so much time to others, it's hard. Let's acknowledge that it's hard. But you can get through it. And anybody that you've seen on the other side that you do admire, they had to get through it too. And so what can you do? You can start asking people a little bit more about their journey, a little bit more about what they went through. And if they're kind and nice and open, then they'll share with you a little bit more. And then you'll start to get it normalized and you'll start to realize that everybody's journey has obstacles. Everyone's. How many people, how many celebrities have we seen that outwardly look successful? And we thought that they were so great. And we didn't actually understand their internal struggle until it was too late. And so I'm here to help normalize a few things. Life is hard, transitions are hard. Questioning your career, what you're doing, who you are, what you do best, what you even want to do. It's normal. And for everything that's hard. There's also challenges that you overcome that are amazing. You are becoming, you are becoming who you are, who you're meant to be. You have a purpose. You were put on this earth on purpose for a purpose only you can do, and the longer that you're settling, or the longer that you're sitting defeated, or the longer that you're questioning and doubting what you've done to get to today, you're keeping yourself from your better tomorrow. And so what we're going to do is work on what can you do in the middle. And so one of the things we said you can do in the middle is you can. Normalize questioning. You can acknowledge that you are in a spot and it's a little bit tricky, and you can also trust and do all the right things to try to get to your next step and your Next Success, and so let's talk more about how that is. So let's talk about what you can do when you are in the messy middle. I want to leave you with more than just perspective. I wanna offer you a path forward, because once you realize you're not broken, you're just becoming. You need something to do with that clarity. So here are three steps to begin shifting from confusion to confidence. Number one, clarify who you are. Take a step back. Use tools such as assessments, journaling, or coaching to reconnect with your natural abilities, values and vision. That is the foundation for making aligned decisions. Number two, connect with others. Don't do this alone. Informational interviews can help you learn about what different careers actually look like and people love to share their stories when asked the right way. Number three, craft your story. Your story is more than a list of experiences. Think about the themes that run through your journey, the curiosity, the persistence, the ability to adapt and solve problems, connect those threads to the work you want to do next, and speak from a place of clarity and alignment. You are not broken, you're not behind. You are not a failure. You are in the process of becoming. If this episode resonated with you, subscribe, share it with a friend, leave a review. It helps others find the show and reminds them that they are not alone either. If you want extra support, feel free to grab the free Navigating Career Transitions workbook linked in the show notes or reach out. Let's figure this out together. Until next time, keep going. You're not done yet. My name is Dr. Caroline Sangal. Thank you for being part of your Next Success.

Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.