Nothing worth pursuing is free.

I finished Morgan Housel's Same as Ever, and one line has been following me around: nothing worth pursuing is free.

His point is that we treat the cost of good things as a malfunction — the stress, the bureaucracy, the hard conversations, the tears — as if something has gone wrong. It hasn't. That's just the fee, and it's non-negotiable. The grass looks greener on the other side mostly because it's fertilized with someone else's hidden costs. Every team worth building I've been part of came with a price I didn't want to pay.

The cost isn't a sign you chose wrong — it's the receipt for something worth having. Decide what you're willing to pay before you decide what you want.