Ed Mylett

I realized a long time ago that if I say yes to something out of guilt, because maybe they've asked four times before and I haven't been able to do it, or yes out of fear of missing out, it's an opportunity.

Every time I said yes for those reasons, I regretted it because I'd get to that day and my kid has a soccer game.

I'd get to that day and goodness gracious, I could have taken a vacation that week with my husband, but now there's something planted in the middle of the week that I didn't say yes to for pure reasons.

So that happens enough to you and you have that feeling of remorse that you didn't say an honest, genuine yes, then it starts to not be worth it anymore.

So I appear far more busy than I am.

I appear far more busy than I am because from the outside looking in, it looks like I'm everywhere doing everything, and I'm really not.

I'm home most of the month.

If I'm gone twice a month because I've said yes to those two things, then that's going to be two 24- to 48-hour periods that I'm away.

Other than that, I'm at home.

Me too.

I will say that it occurs to me.

That there's always the possibility there that if you're not saying all the yeses and you're not doing all the things, there is a cost to that.

There is a loss to that momentum.

I don't know that it worries me.

I am grateful for the reality.

And again, this is something that I don't want to sound like I'm a master at it.

No, it's something that I have to kind of regulate constantly because you're watching other people that look like their thing is growing faster or more exponentially.

I look forward though to the fact that when I have said no to something, for whatever those reasons are, I have actually opened up a window of opportunity for somebody coming up behind me that if I'm too insecure,

to open up that gap, that I'm actually standing in the way of somebody else who might be coming up behind me and just needs a place to be.

But I'm so insecure that I keep showing up in the spaces that are now meant for them.