Hey everyone. Emily Abadi here. You are listening to Five Minute Friday from Hurtle. Hope everyone here had a good Fourth of July. I myself spent it down in Washington, D.C. Nothing more patriotic than doing the nation's birthday in the nation's capital.

Got to hang out with some of my dearest friends and really just take some time off,

a little bit of time away from social media, a little bit of time away from things that feel

quite hectic right now and candidly. It really felt necessary. Something that also felt

necessary for me was a conversation I had earlier this week. I wrote about this in today's

weekly hurdle. And if you don't get the newsletter, I would love for you to do so. You can sign up

to get it for free in your inbox every single

Friday. But the conversation I had is about gatekeeping my own joy. So I'll be honest,

there have certainly been, and I'm sure many of you can relate to this, so many things that

have happened in my life that I've been really excited about

and then didn't pan out how I'd hoped that they would.

And the fact is that you don't work hard at something for it not to go as you'd hoped.

But let me give a couple examples here.

I'm talking about dating someone and it feels

really promising and you're really excited and then all of the sudden this person ghosts you.

Or perhaps you are in conversation with a brand or an individual about a really exciting opportunity.

You have multiple conversations about said opportunity.

And then after putting in time and effort and work on this thing,

suddenly the thing is no more.

Suddenly everything that was promised to you,

everything that was quote unquote hypothetical

is now a non-option. And these things happen often in a way that is beyond our control,

...