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

Hello hello.

How are you doing?

I'm back after an impromptu break because last week was the

deadline for my next book The Joy of Saying No, so the deadline for that first draft of the

way of saying no so the deadline for that first draft of the book and I realized I really needed to let go of some things in order to birth this thing so I was absolutely

wrecked but it did get done and thank you to those of you who reached out

over Instagram or over email it was lovely to feel like I was being cheerleading along the way.

Anyway, let's get into today's topic.

So I've been thinking about gratitude

and how we talk about unwanted and painful experiences being blessings in disguise.

These do with the benefit of self-awareness and self-knowledge, with the benefit of the 2020 vision of hindsight do indeed

contain healing and growth and learning. But let's be real at the time they suck

and sure maybe they don't suck

quite as much as we're telling ourselves that they do

and yeah sometimes actually they suck even more than we're allowing ourselves to recognize that they do.

But either way they suck. I do believe that gratitude so having an appreciation of what you have rather than

focusing purely on what you don't have or having an appreciation of what you get to be, do and

have as a result of something and want it happening is crucial.

I believe that allowing ourselves to have this perspective where we're willing to

recognize what something

gave us the grace to no longer have to continue experiencing

...