I'm Natalie Lou in your listening to the baggage reclaim sessions.

Hello hello. How are you doing? A big leap in self-awareness and self-knowledge for me over the last decade or so

that's made me more mindful and in turn boundryed is recognizing that I tend to over predict negative consequences.

Being honest with myself about real and imagined and even outdated consequences taught me that it wasn't, it isn't in fact worth avoiding conflict, criticism, boundaries, saying no,

rejection 100% of the time for what is probably the 5% of occasions that meet or exceed my predictions.

Of course I still experience discomfort and this is something I've given a lot of thought to while I've been

working on my book The Joy of Saying No. And it occurred to me that we're often afraid of the consequences of, for instance, saying no, of having boundaries, not actually of saying no or saying no or having boundaries in and of themselves.

Unless we're a child right now, we grew up in what I call the age of obedience,

which is where the parenting, communicating and

interacting with children centered on obedience. It was all about teaching

children unconditional compliance. Follow this rule, do this particular thing,

or else you're going to get into trouble.

Or obey the rules, and you will be a good person,

and you will become successful.

It was often tricky to be obedient and honest at the same time

because expressing ourselves, being ourselves, could be interpreted as being disobedient and disrespectful.

And it's not as if we could express what our needs, desires, expectations, feelings and opinions might be so that we could

gain the emotional intelligence to understand ourselves and our environment.

So for a long time I struggled with honesty even though I

value honesty and authenticity because I received confusing messages. Tell the

truth and you won't get into trouble.

It's really important to tell the truth.

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