Imagine this: You’ve finally decided to clear out that one closet with all the junk.
You start by pulling everything out.
Soon, the whole living room floor is completely covered in crap you forgot you even had in there.
A single ski boot. A tangled nest of cords from electronics you don’t even own anymore.
If you were to evaluate the success of the project at this moment, it would probably look like a disaster.
It’s WORSE than it was before.
There’s a huge mess that used to be contained. You’re dealing with stuff you hadn’t thought about in years.
It would be easy to think…
- This was a mistake.
- I should never have started this.
- I’m such a mess!
Luckily, a closet reorganization is only likely to take a few hours.
Most of us have enough of a vision of the reward at the end (glorious labels!) that we can keep going through that messy middle.
But what about when you decide to reorganize and clean up some significant aspect of your life?
Your marriage.
Your business.
Your career.
How you handle emotions.
With any new capacity, there’s going to be a “closet-all-over-the-floor” moment.
With a big one, it might last months.
You could be in a place where you took apart the not-that-great version of your coping strategy that was working…kind of…
And the next thing hasn’t kicked in yet.
For example:
💫 You’ve learned to feel your stress in your body in a new way, but haven’t mastered how to avoid the stress in the first place… so it all seems worse than it did when you were just ignoring it.
💫 You’re no longer willing to override your subtle No, but you haven’t gotten great at setting boundaries around requests, so you end up changing your commitments at the last minute and people get frustrated.
💫 You’re finally feeling your anger about the way you were mistreated in your past, but you haven’t learned constructive ways to move it through your body, so you just feel like a crazy person all day.
These are all examples of Deskilling.
Deskilling is the temporary dip in competence that happens when you dismantle an old strategy before the new one is embodied.
You let go of the crutch.
You haven’t fully built the muscle.
For a while, you’re extra clumsy.
In the business world, people talk about “jumping S curves.”
An S-curve describes how growth works: at first you struggle, then you gain momentum, then things level off as you master the curve you’re on. That feels nice…but now there’s nowhere else to grow.
Except if you jump to a new S-Curve.
Here’s the trick: when you outgrow one curve and jump to the next, you don’t start at the top.
You start at the bottom again—and you actually get worse for a little while.
Back in learning mode.
Back in awkwardness.
Back in uncertainty.
No matter what, the pattern is the same:
When you let go of the old way of doing things (the messy closet), there’s a stretch where it feels and seems worse before you get to savor the fruits of the new thing (the clean closet).
This is normal.
It’s uncomfortable…
But it’s normal.
And just because you might be in a moment of deskilling does not mean that you’ve failed, you’re doing it wrong, or you should turn backwards.
It means you’re exactly where growth requires you to be.
It might also mean you could use some support while you build the new skillset.
Closets are easier when someone helps you sort.
Lives are, too.
If you’re in the middle of reorganizing something meaningful in your life—your relationship, your work, your sense of self—and it feels like the contents of the closet are all over the floor…
You don’t have to navigate that alone.
This is the kind of transition I help high achievers move through every day in my 1:1 coaching practice. I help them to:
- Tolerate the dip
- Stay steady in the uncertainty
- Build the new muscle instead of running back to the familiar
You can wait for a crisis to force clarity.
Or you can choose growth on purpose.
The messy middle doesn’t mean you’re lost.
It might mean you’re leveling up.
If this resonates, I’d love to see you at my free masterclass next week:
It’s Ok to Want More: 3 Shifts for High Achievers Ready to Love Their Lives
Thursday, March 12 | 9:30–10:30 am MT
We’ll talk about what actually needs to change (and what doesn’t), how to relate differently to dissatisfaction, and how to move forward without blowing up everything you’ve built.
To your deskilling,
Rachel
