New Year morning.
The weather changed. The experience didn’t.

I began the first morning of 2026 with a simple plan. Drive to the beach in Chennai. Watch the sunrise. Sit quietly with the year ahead. But when we arrived, the sky had other ideas. It was pouring. Relentlessly. The kind of rain that makes stepping out of the car pointless. No sunrise. No walk on the sand. Just rain, streaking down the windshield.

For a moment, it felt like a disappointment. The picture in my head did not match reality. But then something changed. We stayed inside the car. My wife, my son and I sat in shared silence as a family. Watched the rain. Listened to the rhythm of it hitting metal, glass, and ground. The world slowed down. The plan fell away. The moment didn’t.

That’s when it struck me how often leadership mirrors life. We prepare for one outcome. We visualise a clean beginning. And then reality shows up differently. The conditions change. The timing is off. The view is obscured. What determines the quality of the moment is not whether things go as planned, but whether we can adapt without resistance.

The new year did not begin with clarity on the horizon. It began with uncertainty, patience, and presence. And perhaps that was the lesson. Leadership, like life, is not about forcing the sunrise you expected. It’s about noticing the value in the rain you received. Nimbleness is not speed. It is letting go of rigid expectations and making meaning from what is actually happening.

So as this year begins, here’s a thought worth carrying forward. When the moment doesn’t look like you imagined, pause before labelling it a setback. Sometimes the experience you need is not the one you planned for, but the one that invites you to see differently.

Wishing you a rewarding 2026, filled with clarity and perspective. Happy New Year.