This month’s little big mood: Thinking About Messiness.

After recently complaining to a friend about the messiness in my life recently, she said, “You need to make friends with mess.” I rolled my eyes. Twirled a strand of my gray hair. Really? To me, making friends means a relationship based on mutual affection, or one that aims to be based on mutual affection. The idea to establish an affection with mess was funny. I want to see myself as serious when it comes to getting things done, in control. 

But….thanks to the encouragement of my friend, I’m reminded of the benefits to messiness.  

All of us Little Big Believers know that leadership is messy; that being an entrepreneur, running a business or non-profit, wearing a multitude of relationship hats definitely means constant disarray; that making change for a better world little-step-by-little step includes feeling disheveled and blotchy, like stepping through puddles and pebbles and stumbling, getting up and starting again.

So, in that shared spirit of jumble and tangle, here is what we can tell ourselves when we perceive messiness in our lives and feel upset:

Be messy, for as long as it takes. Make a collage of the mess. Then step back and keep going.

Gayle Nosal
Founder, Little Big Fund