What Else Can Go Right Today?

Every morning, before I know what the day has planned for me, I open the blinds.

Then I say:

"God, my eyes are open. What else can go right today?"

Sometimes I say it playfully.

Sometimes I mean it with my whole chest.

And sometimes I say it because that is simply what I do when I wake up, even when my feelings have not caught up yet.

One morning was like that.

I was not particularly inspired.

I was not standing at the window radiating gratitude while birds gathered outside to affirm my spiritual enlightenment.

I just was not feeling it.

But I opened the blinds anyway.

"God, my eyes are open. What else can go right today?"

Maybe five minutes later, my phone rang.

It was about a job.

A good one.

The kind of call where the money makes you sit up a little straighter.

I remember thinking:

Oh shit.

Okay then.

Now, let me be clear.

This does not happen every morning.

I do not believe I discovered some divine vending machine where I insert one positive thought and God dispenses employment opportunities before breakfast.

That is not what the ritual means to me.

I do not open the blinds because I know something good is about to happen.

I open them because I do not know.

That is the point.

I Actually Like Not Knowing

I love variety.

I love the spice of life.

There is something exciting about waking up and having absolutely no idea what might happen between opening my eyes and putting my head back on the pillow.

Uncertainty can be scary.

And uncertainty can be fun.

Sometimes it arrives as an unexpected phone call with an opportunity you could not have planned.

Sometimes it arrives as a conversation you absolutely did not intend to have that day.

I had one of those recently too.

A coworker and I had been concerned about another member of our team.

She was new, frequently absent, and struggling to keep up with parts of the work.

My coworker and I had quietly been filling the gaps.

We were making magic in the fold.

Unless someone was paying close attention, it probably was not obvious that anything was missing.

But we knew.

And eventually, filling those gaps began creating pressure because we had lives and responsibilities of our own.

We agreed that a conversation probably needed to happen.

I considered talking with a friend of mine who is a coach first.

Maybe I would get some insight into how to approach it.

Then I decided against it.

She had her own life going on.

The conversation could wait.

Apparently, God had other scheduling preferences.

Oh. Apparently We're Doing This Today.

The next day, all three of us were on a call.

During the conversation, our coworker said something about wanting to focus only on the tasks she had specifically been assigned.

There it was.

The opening.

And internally, I was somewhere around:

Oh. Apparently we're doing this now.

I had not rehearsed.

I had not consulted anyone.

I did not have beautifully organized talking points waiting beside me.

But I knew what needed to be said.

I explained that on a team, sometimes the work requires us to move beyond the boundaries of our individual assignments.

If I say I am going to send something and I do not do it, my coworker should not have to sit there unable to move because technically it was my responsibility.

If she has capacity, she may pick it up.

If I have capacity, I may pick up something else.

Not because responsibilities do not matter.

Because the team does.

The conversation became uncomfortable.

She got defensive.

And for a moment, I felt myself beginning to move there too.

That familiar human reflex.

You defend.

Something in me wanted to defend.

Except this time, I noticed it.

I paused.

And I remember thinking:

Why am I getting defensive?

I do not have anything to defend.

So I stopped.

I returned to the facts.

No extra heat.

No need to win.

No need to make her wrong so I could be right.

Just the truth of what was happening and what I believed the team needed.

Afterward, I sat with what had just happened.

Not because the conversation had gone exactly the way I wanted.

It had not.

I sat with it because I realized:

I had been ready.

I just had not known I was.

Maybe That Is Another Kind of Certainty

I used to think being prepared meant knowing what was coming.

Plan the conversation.

Think through the possibilities.

Have the language ready.

Know what you are going to do.

There is value in preparation.

But life does not always send a calendar invitation before it asks you to become who you have been practicing to be.

Sometimes the moment simply arrives.

And maybe the deeper kind of certainty is not:

I know what is going to happen.

Maybe it is:

I do not need to know what the day will bring to know who I want to be when it arrives.

That feels different.

I can create certainty without demanding certainty from life.

I can create rituals.

I can walk.

I can pray.

I can keep promises to myself.

I can practice pausing before reacting.

I can build systems that hold the things I do not want my brain to carry all day.

I can know what I value.

I can know how I want to treat people.

I can know how I want to treat myself.

And then I can leave some room for life to be life.

What Else Can Go Right?

I have started thinking differently about the question I ask every morning.

Because right does not always mean pleasant.

Sometimes what goes right is the phone call offering you more than you expected.

Easy to recognize that one.

Thank you, God.

I will take it.

But sometimes what goes right is being handed a conversation you did not want yet.

Sometimes what goes right is noticing yourself becoming defensive and choosing not to stay there.

Sometimes what goes right is discovering that the version of you that you have been working to become is no longer theoretical.

She showed up.

Without rehearsal.

That conversation gave me evidence.

Not that I can control what happens next.

I cannot.

Not that every difficult conversation will end beautifully.

It will not.

It gave me evidence that when uncertainty knocked on the door, I did not need to know who was standing on the other side to know who would answer it.

Me.

Here Is What I Keep Coming Back To

There are things I want to be certain about.

There are also things I hope remain wonderfully uncertain.

I do not want every day scripted.

I do not want every surprise removed.

I do not want to know every turn before I reach it.

Where is the fun in that?

What I want is enough certainty inside my own life that uncertainty does not have to become an enemy.

The blinds.

The prayer.

The walk.

The practices.

The pause.

The things I choose often enough that they begin choosing me back.

Maybe that is what my routines have quietly given me.

Not control over life.

A place to stand inside it.

Tomorrow morning I will open the blinds again.

I have no idea what will happen five minutes later.

Maybe the phone will ring.

Maybe nothing remarkable will happen at all.

Maybe life will hand me something I would never have chosen for myself.

That is the deal.

My eyes are open.

The day is not promised to me in advance.

And somehow I think that is part of what makes the question so much fun.

God, my eyes are open.

What else can go right today?

Invisible Crown leadership begins within.
Authority is not declared. It is embodied.