Have you ever had two important moments collide?
One you've worked towards for months. The other you never asked for.
In January 2023, thirteen fellow authors and I were launching our book, "Ennobling Business for Success: Inspire, Ignite, Influence".
It was my first published chapter.
I watched the launch from a hospital corridor while waiting to see my specialist.
That bench became a place between the known and the unknown.
I knew exactly what was happening at the book launch. I had no idea what was waiting behind the specialist's door.
For a while, I felt torn between celebrating one chapter of my life and fearing another.
Looking back, I've realised the corridor wasn't the important part of the story. The important part was what it taught me.
Because most of us will have our own version of that corridor.
Perhaps yours wasn't a hospital.
Perhaps it was sitting outside a boardroom before a difficult conversation. Making a decision that would affect other people's livelihoods. Receiving a difficult phone call. Supporting someone you love. Navigating a relationship ending. Leading a team through uncertainty while carrying your own questions.
Life has a way of interrupting our carefully planned timelines.
The promotion and the diagnosis. The celebration and the grief. The opportunity and the setback.
Sometimes they arrive on the very same day.
We rarely get to choose those moments. What we do get to choose is how we meet them.
That afternoon, I couldn't change where I was. I couldn't join the celebration. I couldn't fast-forward through the uncertainty.
What I could do was notice what was happening inside me.
I could slow down. I could stop my mind from racing too far ahead. I could decide that my uncertainty didn't have to overshadow everyone else's joy.
That small decision has stayed with me far longer than the book launch itself.
Not because it was extraordinary. Because it reminded me that agency often looks surprisingly ordinary.
It is rarely found in dramatic moments. It is found in the next breath. The next conversation. The next choice.
Perhaps that's true for you today as well.
Maybe you're standing in your own "corridor" right now. Not knowing exactly what comes next. Feeling caught between what was and what might be.
If that's you, here are three reminders I'd love to leave with you.
You don't have to control the situation to influence your experience.
You may not be able to choose what happens around you. You can still choose how you respond within it. That choice is where your agency lives.
Your emotions deserve acknowledgement, not the steering wheel.
Fear, disappointment and uncertainty are real. Let them have a seat. Just don't let them drive.
Ask yourself one simple question:
"What does staying true to myself look like in this moment?"
Not tomorrow. Not once everything is resolved. Today.
Often the next right step is much smaller than we imagine.
You don't have to avoid life's hardest days to burn bright. You simply have to keep returning to the person you want to be while you're living through them.
Because your trajectory isn't shaped only by the milestones you celebrate. It's shaped by the choices you make in the corridors no one else sees.
Till next week,
Mary