Thank you for joining us for episode 507 of Live Happy Now.

We know that helping others is a good thing, but what happens when it goes too far?

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I'm talking to Amy Wilson, author of Happy to Help,

Adventures of a People Pleaser. As you're about to find out,

Amy, who co-hosts the What Fresh Hell podcast, is a lifelong helper who spent most of her life

putting others first. In her new book, she gives us permission to stop trying to take care of everyone

else and tells us how we can start living our lives for ourselves.

Let's have a listen. Amy, thank you for coming on Live Happy Now. Thanks, Paula. Thanks for having me.

This is such a fun book that you've written and it is so relatable. So before we talk about what you tell

us in Happy to Help, can you talk about what led you to write it?

Yeah. I have a podcast of my own. It's called What Fresh Hell. It's been around since 2016.

It's a parenting podcast, but truly along the way, as our kids have gotten older, my co-host and

mine, we started to talk about our lives and the issues for the

woman, not just for the kid and being our favorite selves. And so lots of content there.

And we had sort of circled this idea that when you're struggling with a frustrating issue in your life, so much of what it was offered

were invitations to fix yourself, that you're not getting enough help around your house

because you don't let people help you, right?

Or you're...

Somehow your fault is.

Right.

Things are hard in your life because you're such a perfectionist or whatever.

And I started to think, like, I'm not sure I agree with any of this. And yet, I've lived long enough that I've chased all these different versions of advice. And I had that sort of acts to grind. And then coupled with it was this realization. I was asked to write something about the times of my life that I really needed to pick up the slack. And as hard as I could, I couldn't think of times of my life where I had not gone the extra mile. All I had done was gone the extra mile, even when things were dead end, thankless. Anybody could see it but me. I kept going anyhow. And I thought, oh, that's what the book is going to be

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