You know the type. Those people who stomp on the seed of the vision rooted in your heart, or who water it with a “well-meaning” dose of reality.

Here’s the thing, realistic is really only someone else’s take on their experience. What they have decided emotionally, intellectually, and usually not spiritually, has nothing to do with you. That is unless you accept their reality as your own.

That vision you see in your head, the one you keep holding off while you stubbornly insist that you’re the only one who can handle it, is where your life and business get really good.

But that vision is asking you to let go of what isn’t working now, the struggle. That vision is asking you to grow (and trust me when I say you’re not interested in the opposite) and growth requires that you master a skill you’re not comfortable with: receiving.

They’re not new, these conversations we’ve been having about Houzz and online design services and fees. Nor is it new that some trade vendors, on the defensive, have undercut designer pricing because they can’t figure out their place in the market and because they’re afraid. Everyone deserves to earn a living. But there is definitely a new kind of undercurrent in the ether. Can you feel it? A tipping point that has a lot of designers saying, enough.

A designer recently told me that she wasn’t interested in more business; that she had enough business and that she didn’t need to build a list to market to her ideal client. She knew where her ideal client was. Some designers are determined to get in their own way. But here’s what I’d like to remind you.

Customization is not a new trend. Research shows that millennials expect to be treated as individuals and are looking for brands that offer personalized products and experiences. As the marketplace shifts to cater to them, manufacturers are shifting too. At least some of them are and depending on your audience, that’s a good thing.

You may be quoted in the New York Times and get a flow of eyeballs to your website—maybe if the quote was that good—but was it in the right context? Will the right client invest in your services because of it? Or is it a fluff piece that diminishes your credibility? Similarly, not all online referral hubs and blogs are created equal.

Have you ever considered that your plans, strategies, way-of-getting-things-done are what are holding you back from getting what you want? Wait, what?

You’ve made the decision to go after something. You have a plan. You start to execute said plan and then something goes wrong, very wrong. In fact, it seems like that thing you want is even farther away than when you started.

Research shows that it doesn’t matter what your values are. The point is that you have them, because when your entire company is aligned around those values, it becomes more powerful.

Are you working at a pace that is making you numb to the consequences of your choices? Or worse are you unaware that the majority of your decisions are unconscious? Are you comfortable taking breaks during the day? Do you feel a strong sense of purpose at work? Are you in integrity with your calendar when it comes to keeping appointments with yourself? When you’re not in the performance zone, where do you spend your thoughts? Survival energy has been normalized in much of the culture of work but it is not sustaining.

I arrived home to a box from my publisher. Inside was a bottle of wine and a galley copy–my first–of my branding book Branding + Interior Design. As I’ve said before, this book wasn’t the book I originally started to write but it is the book it was supposed to be. It also represents the culmination of a lot of work, change, growth, and all that I’ve learned in supporting so many clients.