Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place. Today, how to say no. Guys, I think we need this one.

I really think we need this one. So many of us find ourselves people pleasing and not setting boundaries.

We need this. I think about boundaries as limits that you set around how you

allow other people to engage with you. I have my boundaries with my parents. I know what I can

take and how I can deal with them for my own, you know, mental and physical well-being.

Running a company, you can't have a certain amount of boundaries because if it needs you,

it needs you. But I also think that you can't use that there's an excuse to not set any boundaries the rest of the time. Now I don't go anywhere and that is through choice. I like doing what I like to do

and I like being at home. Right. How good are you at setting boundaries and saying no to things?

Some of you might be brilliant at it and if so, well,

you might not need to listen to this or you might find it interesting anyway. But I'm sure

there are many people out there that like me have struggled with this. It's a topic that I talk

about a lot, but particularly around this time of year, when work can feel really busy,

there's lots of festive social events going on and you may well

be spending extended periods of time with your family over the holidays, which can be lovely, but also,

of course, challenging. So yeah, Christmas time. It, you know, it can be gorgeous and smelling of

cinnamon and twinkly lights and all that jazz, but it can also

be really tricky because we are sort of forced into these situations that we might not

otherwise be at other points of the year. And that might mean having lots of members of the family

together. Sometimes that can cause conflict or sometimes you know that two family members, you might be in that dynamic, don't particularly rub along well together.

And that can be really tricky at this time of year. Maybe you've got a blended family like I have. So there's all sorts of towing and throwing as to who's going to be doing what each year at Christmas.

It's bloody complicated.

Also, when you bring work into the equation, I can be a right workaholic and I can definitely find it hard to switch off when I do have downtime.

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