Some mornings arrive heavy. The tea tastes ordinary, the phone has bad news in it, and the day feels decided before it has begun.
It is worth remembering that the day has made no such decision. A morning is not a verdict. It is the first few pages of something that has not been written yet.
We treat our early mood as a forecast, and then we live down to it. The meeting goes badly because we walked in expecting it to. The conversation stays short because we had already decided it would.
Try the smaller, stranger thing instead: notice the mood, name it honestly, and then refuse to let it hold the pen. Not cheerfulness — that is exhausting to fake. Just an open verdict.
Most good days do not start well. They turn somewhere in the middle, usually because somebody decided to let them.
