Growth can look like leaving the party at ten because you’ve got plans for the morning.

Leaving early is usually read as missing out, when it is often just a decision about which part of your life you want to go well. The night is finite and so is tomorrow, and choosing the morning is a preference rather than a moral position. It only feels like a loss because the cost is immediate and the benefit is not.

Decide before you go out what time you are leaving and why. Then go when it arrives, without a speech about it. Nobody minds as much as the part of you that is reluctant expects.