Hello, hello, hello

Eek! I’m excited to be moving into my new home here at Substack. I feel like I’ve just got the keys and am facing the blank canvas which I’ll gradually decorate and fill with things—writing—I love.

Two weeks ago, I announced that, after over seventeen-and-a-half years, I will no longer be updating my blog, Baggage Reclaim, and that my podcast, The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, is also coming to an end.

I knew that it was time to stop, not because anything terrible had happened but because I knew that these—the blog and podcast—were no longer a fit. They no longer met enough of my needs to make it right to continue and, much as I loved them, they’ve been very intertwined with my people pleasing, particularly around overgiving—I explain all of this in the second-last episode, Knowing When To Stop.

I’m doing a hard reset on my relationship with work, including my creativity and how I express and share it.

Welcome to On Knowing Yourself. Finding your hard passes and happy yeses. The newsletter’s premise is that I wanted to write about reaching a stage in life where you’re unwilling to continue smoking the crack that says that you have to continue to subscribe to all the bullshit, including the unrealistic expectations we and others foist upon us.

I hear “hard pass” in my head when I don’t want to do something, but I’ve also found myself saying it out loud, a lot. And time and again, I’ve learned that saying no when I need, should and want to allows me to say yes to something else… even if that’s quite simply loving myself.

Ultimately, I want to help people figure out how to own themselves and how to work with their intuition and authenticity to lead happier, more harmonious lives.

We discover who we are by discovering who we’re not. That takes some hard passes and happy yeses along the way. And I recently wrote a book about this—The Joy of Saying No (Harper Horizon/Harper Collins).

I know I’m not the only person who’s tired.

This idea that we’re all supposed to be hoeing ourselves out for money, status, to gain attention, affection, approval, love, and validation, is a crock.

It’s no wonder so many of us feel lost, bored, burnt out, resentful, frustrated, and disillusioned after spending most of our lives trying to be a Good Person who ticks the boxes of achieving the things that are supposed to make us “successful” and “happy”.

I’m done with toxic work culture, including putting too much pressure on myself through self-employment and inadvertently people pleasing through how I make my work available. This leads neatly to…

I’m starting this newsletter in this new phase of my life where I’m extra mindful and intentional about my work boundaries. ‘On Knowing Yourself’ will always have a free element, but from the get-go, I’m making it possible for you to be a paid subscriber.

If you like or even love my writing and podcast episodes from Baggage Reclaim-1900+ blog posts and 278 episodes of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions—along with what I share on the likes of Instagram, I hope you’ll consider supporting my work, which starts from $7/month or $65/year and gives you access to everything I create here.

This newsletter/Substack will be updated a few times a month, but it won’t be regimented.

I’m excited to build something new, and along with my musings, I plan to share recommendations, interviews, maybe audio versions of some of my writing, and the likes of masterclasses from my massive archive of behind-the-scenes content.