Trusting What Emerges, a Thursday Offering

This week's practice: trusting unscheduled space, plus two more for paid subscribers

Tuesday’s essay circled around something I keep bumping into: the most alive moments don’t come from better planning. They show up precisely when we stop trying to orchestrate everything.

Here’s what I notice in myself and maybe you recognize it too: sometimes I treat aliveness like a project I can optimize. Schedule the spontaneity. Create systems for connection. Manage my way into the magic.

It doesn’t work. It never works.

Control promises safety but mostly delivers smallness. We end up with well-organized lives that feel strangely hollow, wondering why all this management hasn’t produced the vitality we’re after.

The truth is simpler and more uncomfortable: real aliveness happens in the gaps between our systems. The unscheduled Tuesday evening. The conversation that veers off-script. The moment you let yourself want something without immediately figuring out how to achieve it.

This week, I want to invite you into one of those gaps.

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For Everyone

Unscheduled Space

10–15 minutes this week

Here’s the practice: choose one block of 30–60 minutes this week and leave it completely unplanned.

I know. Your brain is already filling it in. Mine did the same thing. 🙃

When the time arrives, resist the urge to be productive. Don’t read that article you saved. Don’t finally organize the drawer. Just be available to whatever wants to happen.

If you feel like calling someone, call. If you want to walk, walk. Follow impulses without analyzing them first.

Notice what happens when you don’t try to manage the moment.

If free space feels intimidating, start with 15 minutes. Frame it as “time for whatever feels good” and see where it takes you.

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Two Deeper Practices for Paid Subscribers

I’ve included a journaling reflection and a mantra practice—both designed to help you notice and loosen those momentum-killing patterns of control we’re so good at.

Not a paid subscriber? That’s easy to fix.