The guilt you feel after saying no isn't a sign you were wrong. It's the ache of a boundary that's still new.

The thought behind it

The work here is precision: calling the thing what it is instead of what it has been politely mistaken for. In Quiet Power restraint is the whole discipline, and it pays in a currency nobody else can see. Read it again for “boundary”. That is the point at which observation turns into a decision.