The Happy Middle: How to Create Better Results with More Balance in Business and Life - EP # 246

In this episode, Maggie talks about why so many business owners swing between extremes in the way they work, lead, market, set goals, and grow their businesses.

From going all in and burning out to pulling back completely and losing momentum, these patterns are more common than most people realize. 

Maggie shares why extremes are not sustainable, why they limit creativity and problem-solving, and why the real power lies in what she calls the happy middle.

This episode is a reminder that balance is not about doing less, lowering your standards, or playing small. It is about leading with more nuance, discernment, flexibility, and self-awareness so you can create sustainable growth and a fuller life.

In this episode, Maggie covers:

• Why operating in extremes creates burnout and inconsistency
• How all-or-nothing thinking shows up in marketing, goals, habits, and leadership
• Why a healthy relationship with goals matters for motivation and growth
• The difference between perfection and excellence
• How self-development can become unbalanced on either side
• Why the way you lead yourself affects how you lead your team
• How self-compassion supports long-term motivation and better performance
• Five ways to start operating more in the happy middle

Key takeaway

The best results rarely come from extremes. They come from learning how to assess what is needed in the moment and responding with both ambition and compassion.

Connect with Maggie

Website:  https://stairwaytoleadership.com/ 

If this episode resonated with you, share it with another business owner who needs the reminder that sustainable success is built in the middle, not in the extremes.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Most business owners are not struggling because they're not doing enough. They're strangling because they keep swinging between extremes, all in, then all out overthinking, then avoiding pushing too hard and hustling and then disappearing completely because they're burnt out and the truth is. Extremes are not sustainable.

There's no nuance in the extremes. There's no flexibility in the extremes. The solutions are limited, and business is just like life. It requires nuance. It requires flexibility. It requires multiple different solutions. So today. I wanna talk about the power of what I call the happy middle. It's not about being mediocre, not playing small, not [00:01:00] lowering your standards.

What I mean by happy Middle is the place where you stop operating in all or nothing mode, and start leading with more balance, more discernment, more wisdom, inu nuance.

Because if you do want to grow your business sustainably, lead people well and actually enjoy your life while doing it, you do have to learn how to operate outside of extremes.

I see this a lot. People go all in on something because they're excited and motivated, especially in the beginning, or because they think that this is what success is supposed to look like.

And then because that way of operating, it's really impossible to maintain long term. They swing hard in the other direction. This is what happens in marketing. [00:02:00] I see business owners, especially in the beginning, think that they need to be everywhere, on every social media platform, in every networking meeting, attending every event.

They think that they have to show up and hustle 24/ 7.

Because they compare themselves to people who are much further ahead in their business. Maybe the leaders in their industry in marketing, but then they forget to see that the person they're comparing themselves to. Might have a team. They have more resources built systems and years of momentum behind them, and that's why they're able to be so visible and be everywhere and show up in all those places.

Right.

But then the business owners forget that they're a business and IT com is in a completely different place and therefore requires a completely different [00:03:00] marketing strategy. But then they try to do it all. They push hard, they spend hours creating content, trying to stay visible everywhere, and then no wonder that they burn out, that they get frustrated, that they feel discouraged because A, the results don't match the efforts.

Then they create that yo-yo effect when they show up and then they disappear from Mant and people forget they exist, or, that doesn't build trust. And then they get discouraged totally. And say that maybe social media doesn't work for them, or networking doesn't work for them,

So that's the problem with extremes. They're very hard to sustain long term. Now, the happy middle, let's say, in marketing is not about being everywhere. It's about choosing. Just a couple of visibility strategies that make sense for you and [00:04:00] your stage of business for your ideal client, the capacity in your goals, and committing to.

The consistency of showing up that is sustainable for you. The same thing I see happens with goals. So some people, when they set goals, become so attached to them that in a way, the goal stopped being helpful and started becoming the weapon against the business owner. Because the business owner

ends up pressuring themselves to meet the goals. And very often they said unrealistic timelines for those goals. And then if that doesn't happen, they criticize themselves. They use the goal as a proof that they're not good enough. They're not skilled enough just because they haven't hit that particular goal in that particular timeline, which is most often [00:05:00] arbitrary. As business owners, we set goals and timelines, as we see fit, which is arbitrary. But then on the other side, when, especially when that happens over and over, then people go into the mindset where they avoid goals altogether because they do not want to feel discouraged. They do not want to feel disappointed or bad about themselves.

But then again, happy middle here is having a healthy relationship with goals. Goals should be there to guide you, to focus you, to help you see. What to prioritize, what is needed, what's working, what's not working?

The goals are supposed to show you what skills do you need to build in order to achieve them, right? What support you need, what needs to change in your business [00:06:00] for you to achieve them, and goals should move you forward. They should not become a tool to use to punish yourself or to burn out.

Because when you use them to punish yourself, to shame yourself, to feel like you are not good enough, yet you should have done better, you actually become the worst boss you have ever had to yourself. If you think about if I had a boss like me. And I as an employee, would I really like to work with them?

Would the work environment be conducive to me giving my best? Probably not. So of course, when you're treating yourself like that. You will lose motivation to pursue the goals and you will swing to the other extreme of not setting them at all, even though it hurts your business growth. So that brings me to [00:07:00] habits.

This is really another place where I see people go into extremes all the time.

So when I teach my clients in the beginning, for example, to do weekly planning. I'm very big on planning your actions a week ahead of time and going into a day knowing what you're supposed to do in saving yourself energy and time. So sometimes my clients decide that they're going to plan weekly, but they expect themselves to plan perfectly every single week, not to miss any week and so on. And then life happens.

They miss planning a week, or they, didn't allocate the right amount of time for certain tasks and the plan didn't go the way they wanted. So then they're hard on [00:08:00] themselves. And if it wasn't for a weekly coaching, they would have abandoned building that habit all together.

But that's not the point of building a habit, right? You're not supposed to be perfect a hundred percent of the time, especially in the beginning when you're still trying to figure out how is that particular habit gonna work with you? For you? How are you gonna. Fit that into your schedule. The same thing happens, let's say when we're, setting up routines or some health habits, like working out.

People try to work out seven days a week when before they never worked out at all.

Or they want to set up a morning routine. Of three hours in the morning or two hours when they haven't even spent five minutes, in the morning to ground themselves and do some, and do some self-care, right? Because. Life will happen always, right? Something will fall apart, [00:09:00] something unpredictable will happen.

So then it's easy to slip into an old habit if you don't stick with the new one and keep restarting if you have to. So instead of seeing that as part of just. Building a new pattern, like something normal. Sometimes people make it mean that they cannot trust themselves, that the habit doesn't work, that it's not for them, and then they stop.

And then if you do that often enough with. Different habits and routines, then you stop even trying because you don't trust yourself and you lost belief in your ability to build habits, to do something that will benefit you. But habits are not built through perfection. They're built through trialer and error, repetition, [00:10:00] fixing stuff, recommitting that is the happy metal.

The same is true when you think about self-development, and I'm giving you a bunch of examples just to see that as human beings, we actually need to work intentionally to be in the happy middle, that our brain naturally swings to the extremes in many different areas of our lives. Whether it's.

Marketing your business, building a habit, or growing your skills.

So in self development and building your skillset becoming a skilled leader of your business, I see there are business owners who do not do enough of it. They instead, they just keep chasing new strategies. And they're trying to apply it with a very lowest skillset level. So they're trying to grow their business with different strategies, but with the exact same skillset that is not creating the results or want.

[00:11:00] If you do not how to swim or you swim very poorly, unless you improve your swimming, you are not gonna become Olympic athletes and get medals as a result of your swimming. So it's the same in your business. You need to recognize that maybe.

The strategies you're applying, you are trying to implement don't work because you first need to improve the skills that implement those strategies. Like for example, storytelling and messaging or sales or your public speaking. Or understanding the psychology behind marketing, so then you can improve your messaging.

And then there's the opposite extreme to that with business owners who are over learning, who are just constantly learning, learning, learning. So acquiring information through reading, watching, [00:12:00] listening to podcasts, taking courses, but then never applying that knowledge to build the skills.

They let themselves believe that knowledge itself will grow their business, and then they have a lot of knowledge, but they still do the same thing, creating different results, and they're surprised why, being knowledgeable doesn't translate into more income, into more clients. Business grows through applied skill, not just information.

So the happy middle in your self development is identifying what skills you need to develop now to take you to the next level for you to achieve the goals you set for yourself. And then as you learn those skills. Apply in your business and then [00:13:00] through feedback, get better and better and better. So practice makes a master, but in order to practice and get better, you do need feedback. Just like every sports athlete has a coach who can, who watches them apply their skills right in the game that they're playing, whether it's tennis or basketball, and so on, and from the outside can spot those areas.

Opportunities for improvement. As they implement those improvements, they get better and they grow. That's where the real transformation truly happens in that happy metal.

And then I often see business leaders go into extreme when they start leading people. So some CEOs. Tend to micromanage because they believe that they're the only ones who can do the work well. They treat their business as a baby [00:14:00] and they're like, I'm the only one who can take care of this baby best.

So they do not trust their people who they hired. They wanna control everything. And I always say if you trust, if you are a parent and you trust the teachers at daycare or the teachers at school to take care of your child while you're at work, you should be able to trust people that you hire.

It's your decision to help you take your business to the next level. Right then if we look at the opposite directions, and some business owners who swing on the opposite direction is that they believe that when they hire people and let them be completely with no direction, no support, no training, no clarity on the responsibilities and the results that they're expecting that somehow the business will grow on its own right, and [00:15:00] somehow the employees will become owners and take the whole responsibility and will just grow the business without the owner being involved at all. And then when mistakes happen, because the team either is not properly trained or again, doesn't have direction, so they interpret what's expected of them to their best ability, then.

The CEO blames their people and then reinforces the belief that there are no good people out there,

but the happy middle in people. Leadership is helping your team members be clear on what's expected of them. What are the results? What are the important parts of their job? They need to be aware. So training, plus trust. So trusting them that they're capable enough and creative enough to come up with great solutions. To do things [00:16:00] better than you would even do them.

People need to know what is expected of them. They need to know what are the responsibilities. They also need support direction and training. Different type of training depending on, the role you are hiring for and the seniority of the person you're hiring. And they also need room to think, to create, to contribute and use their own strengths and be themselves.

And that truly starts with how you lead yourself as a person, right? Because. If you are always too hard on yourself, if you're always expecting perfection of yourself, criticizing yourself and never feeling like whatever you do is enough, you'll often lead your people the same way. And as [00:17:00] I said before; nobody wants to work for a boss like that. Nobody will be motivated by that type of leadership. Nobody will wanna do their best when they're treated that way.

Now if you swing too far the other way and create no structure, no ambition, no standards for yourself or for your people, then of course that doesn't drive results as well. There's procrastination, a lot of time wasted and energy wasted. So as you can see, the business cannot thrive in either extreme, so the business cannot thrive in extremes.

I've even coached clients on quality of their work or quality of service. And that we're going into extreme right. So I've coached people, especially in the creative industry, people who are super creative, super passionate about [00:18:00] their work, and proud of their craft. Sometimes they obsess over every single little detail.

And over details that they, let's say, their customers won't even notice over details that are not substantially improving the customer experience. So instead of obsessing about the most important part of their service and their delivery, and then making informed decisions and

Sure you wanna obsess and have very high standards over the most important parts of your service delivery and things that matter.

And then have high quality expectation, but not spend overly extremes, amount of times and resources on things that are barely noticeable or important to [00:19:00] your client.

And then of course, on the other side of the extreme is that sometimes the quality is too low. The clients are not happy. The mistakes increase and trust gets damaged because there's not enough focus. On the delivery side, it may be too much focus on the growth side. So the happy metal here is excellence, not perfection.

Excellence means you're doing things extremely well while also recognizing that improvement is always possible. Perfection, to me is very limiting because if something is perfect, whether it's me as a human. Which is not possible, but let's just say if I was perfect or if whatever what I create is perfect, then there's no room to improve it.

And if there's no room to improve it, then there's no progress. So excellence allows for growth and progress. [00:20:00] Perfection is sty.

When as a business owner, you operate in extremes. What I find happens quite often is that. Once you reach a certain point of growth and income in your business, you lose motivation to keep growing, not because you don't wanna expand your vision or mission.

You're not ambitious, but because you reach a point where you become comfortable, you're no longer in survival mode. I just coached a client not that long ago who reached that. Level, right where they're at the point where their income in the business is comfortable, they're no longer in survival mode.

So the need to survive, pay the bills and things like that doesn't push them right to working and learning new skills and being uncomfortable and showing [00:21:00] up there. So they were asking me like, why do I not feel motivated to keep. Growing because I, in a way, I do want to grow. I want to expand my business, but somehow I don't feel motivated.

And you might think that in order to grow, you need a purpose, right? If you don't have a purpose, don't have your why, then of course you'll not wanna grow. And yes, purpose matters. Having a very strong why. Why do I need to do this is critical. And I always say that because I go back to my why on a regular basis.

Because once our basic needs are covered and we are no longer, let's say, fighting to survive, we do need something bigger.

To drive us, right? We need fulfillment, mission and meaning. But even though my client had that, they were still struggling, and as we coached, what we discovered is that [00:22:00] their relationship with themselves was what was making growth feel exhausting. So the way they were treating themselves, the way they were boss to themselves.

Was the true reason of their lack of motivation. They were just too hard on themselves, expecting perfections, never celebrating progress, always demanding more without pausing and recognizing how far they've come. Always focused on what's missing, what's not there yet, right? So then I asked them what I just told you in this podcast that if you had a boss like that, a boss who is never happy, never recognized your good work, and only expected more and more.

Would that boss motivate you to do more and better? And of course they said no, I would quit. Exactly that. This is what happens where [00:23:00] you don't develop a good relationship with yourself. When you don't have self-compassion and you're just being this horrible boss to yourself. Because studies show that in leadership fear and criticism can work in a very short term, so they can push you or your employees. Where you are in a survival mode to keep going to get past that, but they do not work long term. It's a bad leadership strategy. Once survival is no longer the thing that drives you because you've reached that comfort level, that kind of leadership stops working.

So this is where research is really interesting and shows us some interesting thing. There is a self-determination theory that tells us that sustainable motivation is supported by connection with other people, with your [00:24:00] purpose, with your business. Autonomy. So having the freedom to create agency over your own decisions and competence, meaning building skills and learning.

As human beings, we do love growth, like self-development. And what's not Sustains. Motivation is definitely not constant pressure and criticize. And then research and self-compassion also shows that, when you are kinder to yourself.

It helps you with resilience. It helps you learn better. It helps you recover from mistake faster and keep going. It definitely doesn't make you lazy, right? Which is a common misconception amounts. Amongst high achievers, they're worried that if they're too kind to themselves and they recognize their achievements too much, that they'll become lazy and complacent and not want to achieve.

And I can [00:25:00] tell you, as a high achiever myself, that never happens. You'll always have bigger goals and drive to do more, achieve more, expand your mission, help more people.

And even when you look at performance psychology, there is an idea in there that shows you that too little pressure is not helpful. So when you completely let yourself off the hook and doesn't have that self. Drive but too much pressure is not helpful either. So there is that optimal middle, my happy middle where you perform best.

And this is exactly what I'm talking about here, the happy middle. Not having standards, not putting relentless pressure on yourself, but the right amount of challenge, support, awareness, and flexibility in whatever you do. And I really think this matters to [00:26:00] us, not just in business, but also in life.

Because when you do allow yourself to focus on your personal life as well as you grow your business, when. You fill your cup as a human being. So not just the income, the business cup, but also the cap in your relationships, your hobbies, your self-care in a sense where you have enough sleep, you are.

Nourishing yourself well. You have time for your spirituality reflection, and you get to experience things outside of your business that inspire you, that create wonder and joy in your life. You operate better. You'll have better ideas in your business, you'll lead better, you'll be more effective.

When we're tired, we're not [00:27:00] effective. You'll think more creatively and you'll solve problems better. So now you're probably asking, okay, Maggie, that's great. I've got you point. So how do I start operating more in that happy metal? Because maybe you are operating in extremes a lot.

So here is the three things that I find are the most important

to focus on. First, you need to build self-awareness. So you need to start noticing. Where and when You tend to swing to the extremes. Are you going from one extreme to the other? Either? Is it marketing? Is it the amount of hours you work? Is it your relationship with your goals? What are the areas where maybe you're procrastinating so much that nothing happens?

And maybe where are the areas when you're pushing yourself so [00:28:00] hard that you burn out and then you stop. So maybe social media is the place where you push yourself hard and then you stop and maybe. Follow up in your sales is something that you procrastinate them on and you lose a lot of potential clients because you never follow up with those who need a little bit of time to think about, what you offer them and go through things.

Are there areas where you're chasing perfection or where you're avoiding the growth? Maybe there are areas where you're just spending too much time and energy trying to be perfect, whether it's your service delivery or admin work. And then maybe there is areas where you're, avoiding to set proper goals because you don't wanna feel bad if you don't achieve them.

The second thing you need is honesty. You need to be honest with yourself. Once you [00:29:00] notice your patterns, right where you swing or where you're operating in the extremes, you have to be honest with yourself that you do. You wanna ask yourself, is this really helping me create the business, the growth, and the life that I want?

Or is it just a pattern of mind that I normalized and I think that's the way it's supposed to be, and I don't even entertain the fact that I can change that and I can do better. And then the third thing you need is self-compassion. Especially if you are someone who is very ambitious and leans towards perfectionism.

You do need self-compassion, not expecting yourself to be perfect, being okay with making mistakes, being okay with sometimes being at 80% of [00:30:00] your best while still holding your ambition. There's nothing wrong with being ambitious, but as you're ambitious.

You also need to be okay with making mistakes and being okay with the time that it takes to maybe master certain, practice certain skills. If you are, let's say,

let's see if you are learning new skills. Call it public speaking. You've never public speak. You've never done this before, or you've been super fearful and now you decided that whether it's you're showing up on podcasts or speaking at the events, that's one of the marketing strategies you wanna use to grow your business.

You need to be okay with your first. Appearances to be not being super good, just because you've never done that before [00:31:00] honest in the places where you can improve. So of course you want to be able to look back and say, okay, I could have done this better and that better. But not judge yourself and beat yourself up for it. Being okay with not being great so you can become great. So you can just in a non-judgmental way, analyze how you've done.

To then improve, right? You need to be okay with learning while still Dr. Be driven to create which you want while still be driven to keep going. So you do get good and you do get results you want.

And then actually there's five things that you need. I thought there were three, but there is five. Then the fourth thing you need is, especially in the beginning, the outside perspective. We all have blind spots. It's very hard [00:32:00] for ourselves to notice things that we need to improve. We all have biases, so that's why coaching works so well.

That's why all the pro athletes have coaches because. As human beings, we do need someone from the outside very often to spot the patterns that we have when we operate in the extremes. Because very often we don't realize that. And when they spot them they're able to show us and then help with improvement.

A coach can help you not only with improvement, but it help you be self-compassionate. Come up with strategies, the easy strategies to improve and practice in a different way. And then of course, the last part is practice. The happy middle is a skill. Think about as an operating mode right in your computer, your brain that needs to be practiced because our brain [00:33:00] is more designed to operate in the extremes, to keep us alive, so that survival mode and not.

To optimize the way we operate for long-term success. Okay? That's not how most of our brain has been operating in the humanity history. So we need to train our brain to do it, and the more you practice operating in that happy metal, the better you get. And then the better you get, the more you can apply it across different areas of your business and life.

So just before we finish, I wanna stress that what I mean by happy metal or balance is not doing things halfway. It does not mean just 50% of effort or doing things half us, right? It means nuance, it means wise calibration. And assessing what is needed in the moment, [00:34:00] and very rarely is the extreme.

It's asking yourself questions such as: given my circumstances and situation right now, do I need a quick solution because there's an urgent issue on the ground that I just need to fix and then deal with the root cause or do I need a stronger, long-term solution right now because it is something strategic and I can't afford a quick solution that will bite me in my butt down the line. That is leadership. So if you have been living in the extremes, maybe this episode, it's a great moment and reminder that success does not have to be built there. It can be built in the happy metal, in the nuance, flexibility, ability to lead yourself and your business with both ambition and [00:35:00] compassion.

This is where sustainable growth lives. This is where better leadership lives and. That is where we can live fuller lives as well. If this resonates with you, I would love to invite you to look at one area of your business or life right now where maybe you've been swinging between extremes or operating in one of the extremes, and ask yourself.

What would be the happy middle for me in this area? How would it look like? And then if you want support finding that in your business, your leadership and your growth, let's talk. We can talk specific details to your situation in your business during a complimentary consultation, and I'll share the link to book it in the show notes.

Have a fantastic week and talk to you soon.