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

Hello hello hello hello. How are you doing? I am super excited because as mentioned in fact as promised a few

episodes back today I'm sharing an exclusive episode from my forthcoming book

The Joy of Saying No. As a podcast listener you are the first people outside of people I'm working with about the book who gets to hear it.

You're getting an exclusive first look, well, first listen.

And so my hope is that after listening to me

read the introduction from this book,

that you are going to feel the nudge to go ahead and pre-order because pre-ordering is super important in the book buying process because it signals to publishers that people are excited looking forward to the book.

So yes, I do hope that listen to this introduction gives you that nudge.

And if you have already pre-ordered, thank you very much, I'm also hoping that listening

to the introduction helps you to feel super excited about it coming out. Okay, let's do this. I'm Natalie Lou and I'm a recovering people pleaser.

Suppressing and repressing my needs, desires, expectations, feelings, and opinions to try to influence and control other

people's feelings and behavior was as natural to me as breathing.

I thought it was normal to tell people what they want to hear, read lie, to make them feel better.

I believed I was taking the boxes of being a good person, by being kind, generous, hardworking, conscientious, loving, eager

to help, attractive and intelligent, and doing what others needed and wanted.

It baffled me though that, well, I felt like shit most of the time.

It didn't make sense to me that I devoted so much time, energy, effort and emotion to trying to do the right thing,

you know being a good girl making sure others were pleased and sacrificing myself, yet I did not feel good.

I saved no four 911 occasions where my back was against the wall, expressed it in an over-apologetic fashion

that suggested I was doing wrong, or set it belatedly in an eruption of pent-up anger and frustration. I thought that saying no because you wanted to,

whether it was out of necessity, desire, or even obligation, was something other people did, you know, the ones who'd earned the right

...