I'm Natalie Lou and you're listening to the baggage reclaim sessions.

Hello hello. How are you?

I am fascinated by the pressure that we put ourselves under. I see people all the time thinking oh my gosh I am for instance 25 and I should be doing this by now I'm turning 30 I should have done this by now I'm 37 that's a very common number and I'm not in the relationship I think I should be in and what about kids? Oh my gosh I'm in my 40s What about kids or what about

what about relationship, or what about career.

And this is something that I am all too familiar with

I spoke about in the episodes about,

you know when people say to you,

why you still single, why aren't you more successful

and stuff like that, and also how I went through the experience of doing a book proposal with an agent

and then feeling as if I failed but actually discovering that I was okay and realizing it wasn't

a right fit. I'll link to those episodes in the show notes by the way, which will be at baggage reclaim.

UK.

1.44. Anyway. that you can forward slash 144 anyway something I realized actually through

something altogether different was that we I think don't always want what we want for the reasons that we think that we

want it. In actual fact it's very possible that some of the things that we put undue pressure on ourselves about

and then often barrel off down a path of painful choices are things that we have been programmed to want, not actually preferences about what we want.

So let me give an example of this.

So I am coming up to 42.

I mean, honestly, it feels like it's only the other day when I turned 40.

And from about several years ago I noticed that my

fertility was on my mind more, more in the sense of should I or shouldn't I have another child and it wasn't really

assured it was like do I want to have another one now the thing is when I

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