The biggest struggles I and many of my clients have had are around setting and navigating boundaries in business. The client that asks for extras–and you feel queasy inside as you say “Ok…I guess that wouldn’t be that big of a deal”. The person who wants to trade with you and you say yes…even though you don’t really want what they are offering all that much, but you don’t know how to say no. The person who asks for a discount and you reluctantly agree and then kick yourself later. The project that just keeps growing and growing, and you charged a flat fee. The client who always shows up late and you end up giving them a full hour session but part of you doesn’t want to but you didn’t know how to navigate the situation.

These situations all involve boundaries.

In every relationship, boundaries are what make it healthy and functional. Business is the same; you have to know who you are and who you are not, what you will do and what you will not. You need to know how to set, reset, and negotiate boundaries. Boundaries serve to keep your business functioning smoothly, and keep you from burning out.

Don’t underestimate how hard setting boundaries can be. A plan helps.

The clearer you can become internally, the more solid and clear you can be with your clients. I suggest writing down your boundaries in a “Boundaries Plan”.

Here are some examples of business boundaries:

• My minimum project fee is $2000.
• I customize WordPress blogs, but don’t work with other blog software.
• I’m not open to trades at this time or I only take on one trade client at a time.
• I see people for a minimum of six visits.
• I fix bugs in my software free for six months and then charge my normal hourly rate of $X.
• You must notify me 24 hours in advance to cancel, otherwise I will charge you for the session.

Your boundary plan can include more subtle boundaries as well.

• I will turn down clients who want a rush job; my project turnouround time is 4-6 weeks.
• I will turn down clients who ask me to sell myself to them; I let my work samples speak for themselves.
• I will gauge where people are in their process and suggest X if they are not at least at stage Y.
• I won’t work with people who communicate only via phone or who can’t provide a written spec for their project.

Your boundary plan can also include boundaries you make between your business and your life, such as:

• I don’t work on Sundays.
• My max client load is 3 active projects.
• I won’t answer the business phone line after 6pm, or if I’m eating lunch.
• I don’t do trade shows.

Some people will test your boundaries. Most just won’t know where they are until you tell them.

Most of the trouble people get into is not actually from someone pushing their boundaries. It’s the fear that comes before you even set them. That fear can keep you from spelling them out clearly enough to be understood. It can also lead to defensiveness when you state them–which muddies the water and makes people uncomfortable.

Sometimes people will push, but I’ve found that the stress and awkwardness of that is directly proportional to how clear you are in yourself. If you can stay neutral when you communicate your boundaries, then they will nearly always be respected.

Writing them down and really owning them for yourself will help you stay neutral and communicate them clearly without defensiveness or other sticky energy.

For tricky boundaries, create procedures and policies that you lead clients through.

When I did web design, I had a “Designer’s Readiness Checklist”. It outlined everything people needed to have in place before they contacted me. Then I had a worksheet people filled out that asked them key things about their project. In essence my boundary was, “I don’t take on strategy or organization, I just do the design part”. What my clients saw was a clear procedure they were led through that helped them get organized and think strategically.

My clients appreciated the structure and it served to weed out clients who were not organized or didn’t yet know what they wanted.

For in-person situations, practice your replies.

I spent several years learning how to say no to people who wanted to work with me but I didn’t for whatever reason. It was really hard for me, and then I got really good at it. What helped me the most was finding the right wording–the kind nobody can argue with and I didn’t have to explain:

After reviewing the details of your project, I don’t think we’re a good fit to work together. I recommend …

I had a few different wordings and list of recommendations for different occasions and I kept them stored as snippets in my email program.

Another area I practiced was not giving off-the-cuff project quotes over the phone. If someone asked how much they thought I would charge I would give my standard range (the same one listed on my website) and say I would have to review their project in more detail before I could give a more accurate quote. If they pressed, I would state that I made it a policy to not give quotes on the phone because I know from history that they are not accurate.

When you use the word “policy”, people usually get the hint. If you say in some way, “This isn’t about you, this is for everybody”, then it becomes much harder for them to take it personally.

Pay attention to queasiness, dread, procrastination: these can indicate a need for a boundary.

The more aware we are of what is going on, the more we can do about it. If you are not aware of your boundary, your unconscious will follow its usual patterns–procrastination and avoidance. These are not usually very clear or effective, and take a lot of energy.

Sometimes you have to find boundaries from the outside in. For example, I learned to notice that if I had a client inquiry email that I was procrastinating for more than a week on replying to, that meant that I probably didn’t want to do the project for some reason that wasn’t immediately obvious to me. Procrastination became an indicator to check in with myself , validate that it’s perfectly OK to be choosy, and make a decision that worked for me. (This was a much better strategy than letting it sit there for another week and have my subconscious struggle with it while I started to feel guilty about not getting back to them.) I learned to notice the early warning signs that I was feeling uncertain about setting a boundary, and then just get it over with.

Set boundaries early and often. And don’t hesitate to renegotiate.

When appropriate, work your boundaries into your website and client emails. Don’t assume people will know where they are, and don’t get offended if they assume a different boundary: just educate them in a calm, neutral way. Usually their response will be, “Oh, I didn’t know!”.

And if you forget or slip or are just having a bad boundaries day (stress can cause us to get weak about our boundaries), it’s always OK to say, “Hey, I apologize, I made a mistake when I said …. What I should have said was ….”.

Your boundaries are yours alone–they are what fit you.

Every industry and culture and family and human grouping in general has standards of behavior, and most people tend to assume they are shared. If you don’t share them, feelings of being wrong can get in the way of asking for what you need and setting up clear expectations.

It doesn’t matter what works for someone else, or what someone else expects. What matters is what works for you so you can serve your clients and stay happy. Get really honest with yourself–what do you need to feel nurtured and healthy in your business? What do your clients need to know so your work together goes smoothly and serves you both? It’s OK to ask for that.

Outer boundaries stem from inner boundaries.

Before you can clearly state to another what you want and need, you have to validate and own that your needs and wants are OK. If you don’t have that internal validation, you will not be able to communicate clearly to others.

If you struggle with this, invest in self-care, and evaluate your beliefs about what you have the right to ask for and expect from your life. Is it OK to be 100% happy and satisfied with your life and your work? Or does that make you selfish? What do you really believe, and does it support you?

Having clear boundaries will save you money, stress, and time.

Having a good niche is the first step in finding perfect customers: it’s the attractor.  Boundaries are the other side of the coin. They redirect the “not a good fit” customers and make it clearer who your ideal customers are. They provide your business with integrity and keep everything running smoothly. And they take care of the human vessel that is making all of this happen.

Boundaries also make your business more appealing, because you come across as professional, “together”, and have some structure for people to interact with. Think about interpersonal relationships–we are all wary around someone who is not clear on their boundaries. The same is true in business–the more clear, communicative, and neutral you are about your boundaries, the safer your clients will feel. They’ll know what to expect, and be able to make clean choices.

What kind of boundaries do you need to set?

Mistakes connect us all as humans.

There is always the urge in business to pretend that we are perfect. I struggle with this too. But at times when things do fall apart – and they always do eventually - what matters most is that you are honest and clear about it.

I run a web hosting business, and while I’d love to have 100% uptime (and we do have really really good uptime), sometimes stuff happens. Servers are complicated entities and eventually something goes wrong. The best lesson I got in how mistakes can build trust was this conversation a few years ago:

<phone rings>

Me: This is Emma. 

Client: Did you know the server is down?

Me: Yes, we are working on the problem. I’m not sure when it will be back up but we are working on it right now and it will be up as soon as possible.

Client: Great, I’m so glad I chose you as a host.

Me: What? Really? But…your website is down right now.

Client: Yes, but you are giving me a straight answer about it. You didn’t try to act like it wasn’t happening. You always tell me the truth about what is going on.

Me: Oh yeah. I guess I do. I never thought of it that way.

Working through sticky situations builds trust.

I read a study once that clients rate their work as more rewarding over a 6 month period within a client-therapist relationship when something goes “wrong” and the issue is worked through than when there were no interpersonal issues to resolve between the therapist and the client. Mistakes and working through them create trust, bonding, and a shared connection. There is a mutual sense of accomplishment that adds value and investment to the interaction.

So next time you make a mistake, try thinking of it as an opportunity to build trust with your client by demonstrating that you are responsible and honest – rather than using it as an opportunity to criticize yourself or hide out from your client.

You don’t need to grovel or give them tons of free stuff to apologize.

Mistakes do happen. I think you can over-do an apology which can make it seem like the problem was even worse than it really was, or it can give the other person the job of making you feel less guilty. 

Acknowledge what happened, communicate that you understand the impact on the other person, and let them know what you have done to fix the issue. This communicates that you are responsible and that you care about the quality of your service; not that you are guilty and wrong.

Sometimes this can be difficult when the person on the other end is really mad and blaming you. But the same principles apply. Sometimes people freak out when something goes wrong because of their stuff. But you don’t have to make it your stuff. Just be clear, calm, honest, and responsible. They will eventually calm down too. The most important thing is to not escalate yourself to match them and to not take their reaction personally. If you can find it in yourself, try to empathize. Think to yourself “From their perspective, they are really freaked out right now, they are scared, and also perhaps they had a bad day”. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

When all else fails, stay connected to yourself .

Sometimes it is necessary to set boundaries with clients and be clear when something is not your responsibility to fix, even if they think otherwise. Try to not be defensive, but be calm, clear, and firm instead. Sometimes it is not possible to create connection with a client right away while doing this, and the best you can do is stay in connection with yourself – you are beautiful and doing the best you can in each moment. You want to succeed and help your clients, and occassionally things do get missed. You are human. Overall, you do a great job. Don’t let someone else’s pain make you forget your own beauty.

When you can come from this place of understanding, forgiveness. compassion, and respect for yourself, you will be less likely to be defensive, and more likely to be able to be calm, clear, and compassionate toward your client. And your client will (probably) come to meet you there.

However, I noticed that my projects that were paid for in trade didn’t always go the way I had hoped.

• They would take a lot longer than my other projects.
• There would be a lot more revisions than my other projects.
• I would end up getting more of the other person’s time in trade than I wanted to or planned to.
• I would end up spending more of my time in trade, than I really wanted to.
• I would end up frustrated and unhappy.
• I would realize at the end that would rather have had cash than the trade.

Because of this experience, I stopped doing them for awhile. Why bother? Normal contracts were so much simpler. Then the perfect opportunity to do a trade came along:

• I really wanted what the other person was offering but it wasn’t something I could comfortably afford to pay for.
• The other person really wanted what I had to offer but it also wasn’t something she could comfortably afford to pay for.

I had come across the first rule of trading:

Only trade when you really want what the other person is offering. Do not do trade as a favor for someone unless you are very clear inside yourself that you are doing this and want to. Realize you are giving them a gift, not a trade.

I still had things to learn however. Because some of the same things happened:

• The project went on for months longer than I had estimated it would.
• The project involved many, many revisions.

In the end, the site was something I was proud of, I was glad to have what I received in exchange, and overall the trade was successful. But I was also tired and a little frustrated. Why did it take so long? Why was it so much more work than similar projects for other people who paid with money instead of trade?

Here’s what I’ve concluded: trades, by their nature, end up taking longer than work for cold hard cash. Here’s why.

People who trade consider their money to be worth more than their time (otherwise they wouldn’t trade).

When someone pays money for something expensive, they think hard before buying it and get their ducks in a row first. It’s not that they value your time, it’s that they value their money and they know they are paying their money for your time. I’ve noticed this is true even when I charge a flat fee. Paying a chunk of change for something makes people invest their time and energy into being clear on what they want.

When someone would rather pay in trade, it’s because they consider their time a more abundant resource than their money. And when you consider a resource to be abundant, you spend it more freely (some might say “waste” it more freely). That means more revisions, more meetings, more waffling, and more of everything else that drags a project out.

So it only makes sense to do a trade if:

• You also consider your time to be more abundant than your money.
• You just dont mind it when a project takes a longer amount of time than normal and your client takes a long time deciding what they want.
• You just don’t have the money to afford the services the other person is offering and you really want those services.

Think long and hard about doing a trade if:

• You have the money to pay for the other persons services but they don’t have the money to pay you, so you would be doing the trade as a favor to them.
• You get annoyed when clients don’t know what they want or ask for a lot of revisions.
• The trade is for something you wouldn’t otherwise purchase even if you had the money.

Here are some ideas for ways to mitigate these problems that come up in trades:

• Trade for a specific number of hours, instead of an indefinite number of hours. For instance, trade 5 hours of your time for 5 hours of their time, and anything after that will be paid for in cash. That gives them the incentive to get clear on what they want out of those 5 hours.
• If you don’t want to cap the hours, cap the weeks/months or the amount of work. Set up deadlines for each deliverable and set the number of revisions or cycles. You will want to make this clear from the start, and you may want to specify why, as in say “I want to be clear about this because otherwise I’ve found trades can take a really long time to finish and I want to be purposeful about our work together”. The more you can get them on board with that goal the more you will be working together toward it, instead of you trying to ‘get them’ to be more on task, which can end up in a power struggle.
• Make a paper contract, or anything else that you normally do for your other for-pay clients. Treat it in every way like a “real project”, because it is.

Any other ideas, insights about how to make trades work?

Sometimes you don’t realize right away. You want to give them a chance, so you let things slide that you wouldn’t if they were anyone else. Perhaps they used to do a good job but lately things never get done.

Sometimes, when personal and business relationships get mixed, it can be very, very hard to confront this situation and to truly let the person go if it’s needed. But your business suffers if you don’t.

This article, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, on Practical E-commerce details one business owner’s long road downhill with her employee who was also her best friend. It starts out:

Every business owner needs to ask the question: Are the people I’ve surrounded myself with the best fit for my company? For nearly eight years, I certainly thought I had, until I delved into the books and correspondence and found out my own business was on the brink of disaster.

She goes through round and round with this person, always hoping it will get better, never being willing to really hold them accountable.

What happens that makes it so hard to face and resolve this situation? It’s just business, right? Well, business is made up of relationships, and a lot can happen in relationships that get sticky and enmeshed.

The slippery slope

When we overlook small things, they tend to get bigger over time. Overlooking one small thing sets up an energetic dynamic where it becomes hard to draw a line…because you didn’t draw one last time. Whenever someone has an “out” with us, or we have an “out” with them, it needs to be discussed or cleared. That brings you back to a baseline of clarity each time.

When things go uncleared repeatedly, the baseline starts to shift. Lack of clarity becomes the norm.

What do I mean by “things” and “outs”? The most common are:

• broken agreements
• emotional upsets that aren’t resolved to clarity
• not taking responsibility for a mistake
• lies or withholds (not disclosing something important)

Usually when these happen, we can feel it in our bodies as the relationship being “off-kilter”.

The role of our personal history…and theirs.

If we’ve grown up in an abusive environment or one with addiction or where our boundaries were repeatedly violated (either with too much closeness or too much distance), then we can have ingrained patterns of reacting (habits) that can be unhealthy and unconscious.

These dynamics can show up as trying to change the situation by trying to get the other person to change. This sets up a parent/child dynamic where they act out or “misbehave” and you correct them. Sometimes they are a needy child, sometimes a rebellious teenager. Either way, it’s not a relationship between adults.

Part of fixing someone is trying to “figure it out” – why is this person doing this? Why are they not acting the way we want? Is it because of their childhood? Perhaps they just don’t know any better? Maybe it’s a karmic thing? Sometimes we try to work out their internal issues for them and “teach” them.

If we grew up in a home where healthy relationships were not the norm, then we may unconsciously go into these kinds of dynamics without realizing it. We may even attract people or be attracted to people who are like our family members because it feels familiar.

Getting clear and letting go.

The truth is that healthy relationships can only occur between people who are choosing to show up as adults. Showing up as an adult means being responsible for your own behavior, and your own growth. A healthy relationship (business or personal) means both people willingly take care of their side of the relationship.

If a person is not doing this, that is their choice, and there is nothing you can do about it. It is not up to you. You can’t change it, and you can’t fix it.

They are freely choosing to act the way they act. And like it or not, your choice is to change the relationship and get free, or to stick with it and be miserable. If someone is not demonstrating responsibility, then negotiating and working on it is impossible, because you cannot trust them to show up in that.

This attitude may seem harsh, or mean, or like you are “giving up on them”. But all you are saying is the truth: “This doesn’t work for me”. You don’t have to blame them or be vindictive or angry (although feeling your anger internally is healthy). What you are doing is making decisions that are in integrity with who you are and what is best for your business.

You are also accepting the person where they are at. Ultimately trying to change someone, even “for their own good”, is a violent act.

Here are some steps:

1. Decide to be honest with yourself. Accept the situation as it is.
2. Grieve the loss. This person or relationship was something you wanted to work out. It would have been good if it had worked. All the potential, the promise, the hope needs to be grieved. Also, any time you put into trying to change things to no avail needs to be grieved and let go of. Sometimes people hang on even though they know it won’t work because they don’t want to feel the disappointment. There is always a grieving period when you thought you could count on someone, when you trusted and engaged in a relationship from a genuine place, and were not met. It’s hard. But choosing to feel it is choosing to heal it.
3. Make a clear decision and stick by it. This can be hard, especially if you have responded with threats in the past and then not followed through on them. Get support if you need it.
4. Open up the space for a mutually responsible and reciprocal relationship to enter the picture.
5. Be cautious and discerning when starting new business relationships.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Having been through experiences like this, you learn. You see that your time and your life matters, and who you spend it with matters. Your business is doing good in the world, and that good won’t get done if the people within it aren’t showing up fully.

The opportunity is to get very clear that you want people in your life that can meet you and who are showing up as responsible.

When you can be that clear, and just let go of the situations and people in your life that are draining because they just don’t change, you are expanding your playing field. New people will enter, people who also want to play at that level. And that is where you want to be.

Robert Subby defines codependency as “An emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive rules.”

The term comes out of treating alcoholics and their loved ones, who developed codependent patterns to cope with the alcoholic’s behavior. Codependency is a pattern of response. It’s a habitual way of reacting that is learned as a coping mechanism to an unhealthy situation.

Researchers found that the codependency habits become so ingrained in people that they persist beyond the interaction with the addict. That is, these patterns can exist and be passed down in families over time, even when the addiction is no longer present. I think many of the patterns that are classically defined as “codependency” are actually ingrained into our culture, some as gender roles and some just as “this is how people ought to act”.

How Does Codependency Apply to Business?

Business involves interacting with people on a daily basis. If we’ve learned disempowering ways of interacting from our family history, personal relationships, or from our training to be “good girls” or “strong men”, it is likely those same patterns will play out in business relationships.

If you often feel confused, angry, overwhelmed, or hurt in your business, you may find value in looking at the issue of codependency. Looking at these patterns can lead to more ease, clearer boundaries with customers, and ultimately, making a lot more money.

My Experience With Business Codependency: Boundaries and the Right to Say No

I used to have such a hard time establishing boundaries with people that I just would avoid meeting clients in person. I disliked phone calls as well. Email conversations I felt OK about, because I could think about how to respond. It was so ingrained in me to feel bad about my right to say “no” to requests that I limited my exposure to “on the spot” situations where people might ask me for more than I wanted to give. In email, I worked long and hard developing replies that worked in situations where I wanted to say no. I created mantras for myself of “It’s OK to want what I want.”

One of the hardest things for me to work through was saying no to work that didn’t interest me. I felt I needed to “have a good reason” to turn down paying work. If I didn’t have one, I felt I ought to take it. Heck, I even thought I ought to want to take it. Who was I to have preferences anyway?

created snippets to send in response to “Request Quote” inquiries that looked boring to me, or weren’t the kind of work I wanted to be doing:

Thank you for your interest in my web design services. I’ve looked over your responses and included them below.

Unfortunately your website project falls outside of the scope of the work that I do. My niche is to work with small businesses and artists to create online stores and galleries.

I have created a list of other great providers, including other web designers in town who could be a better fit: http://www.redacorn.com/providers.html

Thank you again for your interest and good luck with your site!

I had different ones depending on why I didn’t want to take the project. “I don’t think we’re a good fit to work together” is a good standby. It took a long time to be able to accept that I want to be interested in the projects I’m working on and it’s OK to turn down a project if I don’t want it. I had this ingrained rule of “You should want to give if someone asks.”

These kinds of “rules” hamper our ability to respond to our true needs and the needs of our customers.

Here are some examples of internal rules that can get in our way:

• If something goes wrong, it’s my fault.
• If someone is angry, I’m to blame.
• If someone’s upset, I caused it and it’s my job to make them feel better.
• If someone is in trouble, I automatically should help them.
• No one else can do this work. My clients need me.

Here are some behaviors that we can find ourselves in when we are operating under the above rules:

• Responding to criticism by defending yourself or “going overboard” to fix problems.
• Responding to angry customers by making exceptions to your company policies, working beyond your stated hours, or giving refunds that are not in your policy.
• “Guessing” what might make your angry customer happy (out of panic) instead of asking them to state their needs clearly.
• Dropping everything to deal with an angry client, or someone who is in a hurry.
• Lowering your rates or charging less to avoid having to say “no” to a client that can’t afford you.
• Continuing to work with clients that drain your energy.
• Continuing to work on projects that aren’t alive for you.

How do you work through codependent business patterns?

My strategy has been to:

1. Read books about codependency and self-esteem. Understanding the underlying causes has been very helpful.
2. Pay attention to my inner dialog. I try to notice what I’m telling myself, and instead use affirmations that I’ve consciously created that affirm my worth and my boundaries.
3. Think like a bigger company. It doesn’t have to be a big evil corporation. Would Ben & Jerries offer a discount on their ice cream if someone complained it was not affordable? Of course not. That’s their business, to sell expensive ice cream. That’s that.
4. Take things much less personally. The first time I whined about my clients and how they didn’t appreciate me to someone who had been a designer for many years she said “It sounds like you want them to approve of you. You’re taking things too personally. It’s just business.” That helped me get out of the trap of “If they don’t like the design I made, they don’t like me.” That meant I could really listen better to what they needed, and more clearly ascertain if we were a good fit to work together. It’s this kind of healthy detachment.

Here are some inner mantras (affirmations) to get you started:

• Everybody makes mistakes. Every business makes mistakes. It’s OK.
• Nobody is every perfect, and no business can serve everybody.
• I am doing the best I can and that’s enough.
• I believe in my product and I do a good job.
• It’s OK to want what I want.
• It’s OK to say no in any situation.
• I am at choice.
• Someone else’s failure to plan is not automatically my problem.
• I get to choose who I work with, and I choose people who respect me and my work.
• My time and work is valuable, and I choose to provide it to people who honor that.
• It’s OK if I choose different clients.
• It’s OK if my clients choose different providers.

I have found that my emotional skills are directly transferable to my bottom line. The more I work out my emotional “stuff”, the more clear I have become in my ability to seek out the work I want, say no to the work I don’t, be clear and clean with boundaries, and charge based on the value of my work rather than on my self-worth.

Have you had experiences that resonate? What has worked for you in setting boundaries with your clients?

Hi Emma.

As an aspiring web designer, I have a dilemma, and it brings up a deeper spiritual question.

Many people are asking me to design/develop their web site for free or almost-free with the possibility of future job opportunities or income.

For example a professor friend of mine asked me to develop his site for free, with the potential of his sharing donations to his research projects or a potential job in his department. The site improvements I am considering could significantly increase donations to his research. And I would learn some valuable skills in developing the site.

The question is, how much giving without expectation is spiritually aligned with the law of Circulation, and at what point does giving become over-giving with a lack of a sense of self-worth?

N.K.

Only you know where you are coming from when you say “yes”. There is no universal rule, there is only what feels true for you moment by moment.

I used to do a lot more volunteer web work, especially when I was in the “learning” stage more. Gradually I stopped doing it so much as I attracted more projects and embraced the idea that I enjoyed being paid for my work and that was OK.

I think there is a progression there: when I was learning, I wanted experience and so just the opportunity to do work was something I wanted so that met my needs. So I wonder if you were really doing pro-bono work before out of a sense of “spiritual selfless giving”, or because it actually met your needs for learning and discovery. What you may be feeling the realization that “pure experience” no longer feeds you as much as it once did and free projects are therefore not as appealing to you. And the promise of future work isn’t piquing your interest either.

And that is OK.
I think the idea of selfless giving being this pious activity is a destructive idea. I used to feel guilty that I wasn’t in India being Mother Theresa until I realized that I’m just not. I’m me. And it’s OK for me to be me, and have the needs I have, and seek to meet them (in non-violent ways).

My sense of spirituality is about honoring what is true. When I am honest with myself and others, I am honoring the living spirit inside me and contributing to the Universe, whether I do pro-bono work or let someone else meet that need for that person.

So, I would encourage you to get in touch with what your needs truly are right now, without judgment. “Low self-worth” is a diagnosis, which isn’t necessary to realize that the project isn’t alive for you right now and you’d rather decline it. Being honest and clear with your “no” will free you up for an honest and clear “yes!” to what is alive in you.