THIS WEEK IN FOUND:

A coworker who never learned how to say no, and what watching her break taught me about my own. Plus your weekly reflection question and one step worth taking before Sunday ends.

I've always found that interesting, absorbing so much and trying to be there for everyone else, and then slowly, slowly you lose yourself and who you are. You're raising your hand for other people. No one's raising their hand for you. And you wonder why. In her situation, she's wondering why things don't necessarily work out.

I don't want to call her out by name for this, but I speak about her because there are concerns. I could see that she breaks at times when the pressure is really there, and that's because there's no buy-in for her. Who's there for me? She is a little bit younger, I'm not talking about extremely young, I would say about thirty, and compared to me, fifty, it's just knowing that you get a no, you get a no, justifying your no, and then providing solutions sometimes when somebody comes to you and says, hey, can you do this? It doesn't mean you're not there for somebody else, but you have responsibilities, you have things that you need to do. You can't be everything for everyone.

And I think she doesn't get that, because she gets so overwhelmed, inundated with everybody else's tasks, because she holds her hand up. Then all of a sudden she's expecting everyone to come to her rescue too.

So this is what this piece was all about, just kind of that, taking it slow and seeing things for what they really are, and how to do that and not make it seem like you're being selfish, that you're not a team player, because people know if you're there for them and if you've got their back or not. But what happens if you don't? You end up spreading yourself thin, and that's where the real problems lie. And that doesn't just go for work, that goes for life too. Even if you have kids, and you can dedicate as much time as you can, and we know you will, but you have to find time for yourself too.

Otherwise you will break, you start to fragment, and those pieces of yourself start to separate, you start to lose who and what you are.

Where do you start? It honestly is easier than what most people give it credit for, because you just have to start small somewhere. That little disagreement, that contrast you put between yourself and the world, is the part that starts to ground you a bit. So it's not so much about overhauling overnight. You just want to make those little notices, awareness of the things that you want to align yourself with.

It's going to take a little bit of being aware of things that you want to do, where you could just have those no's for other people and start saying yes to yourself.

This week's reflection:

Where do you start? Where, this week, is there a no waiting on you to give it?

Hit reply and tell me what came up. I read every one.

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Find your fit. Find your balance.

Terencio FOUND by Initial Finds