Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Who is Sick of Being a People Pleaser？

00:00:00.000 Hey all, Joe here and you are listening to Under the Influence.

00:00:11.760 As 2024 is winding down, and thank God that it is, I keep thinking about what I want my 2025

00:00:19.820 to look like. Now I'm not going to do some janky list of New Year's resolutions like

00:00:26.880 run more, make your bed, lose weight. Those are dumb. But I do want to think about what I want 0.99

00:00:37.200 more of in my life and what I want less of in my life. Who do I want to be? How do I want to act

00:00:45.580 in the world in 2025? And one of the things that I've realized about myself is that I am intensely,

00:00:55.820 intensely overcommitted because I am a desperate and pathetic people pleaser.

00:01:03.400 I am always offering to help way more, way more than anyone ever expects. And then when I do it, 0.75

00:01:11.100 I do a damn good job because I'm not going to fuck up. Okay. So then people want me to help 0.99

00:01:16.640 even more and it just creates this vicious cycle. I think that this is true of a lot of us. I think

00:01:25.260 that women are conditioned to be people pleasers, to offer our help, offer our unpaid labor,

00:01:34.220 and I just want to check myself with this a little bit more in 2025. My guest today,

00:01:43.580 Amy Wilson, has always been an ultimate helper. She describes herself as a big sister, a Girl

00:01:50.020 Scout, a faithful reader of Teen Magazine's personal assistant, sitcom sidekick, and mom of

00:01:55.680 three. She's always kind of thought that it was her destiny to be a people pleaser, to put other

00:02:02.300 people first, to do what she was told, and just to look like she had everything under control, 0.99

00:02:09.540 that she could handle everyone else's shit even when she couldn't, when it was too much. 0.97

00:02:16.560 Amy recently released a book called Happy to Help, Adventures of a People Pleaser. 0.98

00:02:21.720 And it's not self-help. It's more about self-realization. It's more about just noticing

00:02:28.720 if you are this person, and if maybe, just maybe, you need to stop.

00:02:35.760 so Amy I want to open this podcast with with a what I think is a very provocative question

00:02:50.380 what if all women just stopped helping right like the Lysistrata isn't that the play yeah

00:02:58.780 what if we just want to went on a helping strike if we were like you know what not gonna do it 1.00

00:03:04.120 anymore. I think it's a pretty clever trick that we have been sold over time that we have to do

00:03:12.400 all the helping. And when we say somebody needs to help us, it's there we go again, griping,

00:03:18.960 complaining, making things harder than they need to be. Our overwhelm is fed back to us

00:03:26.320 as proof of our own insufficiency. Totally, totally. And I mean, that is one of the reasons

00:03:31.500 that you wrote this book, that you wrote Happy to Help,

00:03:34.000 is because women from very, very early ages

00:03:38.040 are conditioned to be helpers. 1.00

00:03:42.380 Right, right.

00:03:43.420 They really are.

00:03:44.140 What did you learn about that while you were writing this book?

00:03:46.480 I mean, I sort of figured it out as I was writing, right?

00:03:48.860 You write the book to figure out what it is you want to say

00:03:51.060 and you learn along the way.

00:03:52.280 So I was sort of, I started with this idea of

00:03:55.040 I am a total over-deliverer and I have been.

00:03:58.020 Same.

00:03:58.380 throughout my life. You know what one of my New Year's resolutions is? I want to start

00:04:02.040 under-delivering. Yeah. Yeah. And I like to deliver and complete and show up, but have there

00:04:09.880 been times in my life that I pushed too hard and stayed too long? Yes, there have. And so what was

00:04:15.360 that? And I realized as I really started to excavate, well, because I was told to. I was

00:04:20.340 told to stick it out, to stay the course, to believe in myself, to never give up, all of these

00:04:25.280 things. And I talk about in the book, like in the 70s, the stuff that my mother was consuming that

00:04:31.440 I remember. And then in the 80s, by the 90s, I was in college and watching Oprah. And then by the

00:04:38.700 2010s, it was lean in. And it's all this different advice that is just different versions of just

00:04:44.460 fix yourself and then you won't feel so frustrated or overwhelmed. And I realized that it just kind

00:04:51.580 of completes a circle over time and you circle circle back to maybe it's you maybe it was you

00:04:56.860 all along and none of that worked because I am an over deliverer so I I read these books and tried

00:05:03.300 very hard to do everything in them right this the secret I read the secret I'm just gonna manifest

00:05:07.640 I've read I've read all of those self-help books yeah it's like you you were fixable my friend you

00:05:12.740 were definitely fixable right it must be me it's not them it's me it's not the world it's me I just

00:05:17.800 have to get up earlier or care less or something, or maybe book at the same time.

00:05:21.600 Or make my bed. I have to make my bed every day.

00:05:22.800 I have to make your bed.

00:05:23.540 Yeah. Yeah. If you just make that bed, you're going to be so freaking happy.

00:05:27.400 Right. This next thing you try is what is going to be what unlocks everything instead of maybe

00:05:33.560 you shouldn't be doing all of your work and half of other people's as well.

00:05:38.440 Exactly. Exactly. So, all right, let's back up a little bit. Like you said,

00:05:43.280 you wrote this book happy to help adventures of a people pleaser i mean it's it's a series of

00:05:50.180 stunningly funny essays i mean like a lot of this hit heart hits hard a lot of it is a gut punch

00:05:56.940 but at the same time you make me laugh amy you do you do uh but and you wrote this as you said

00:06:04.400 as a way to explore this part of yourself yes you know what like who was this person that set

00:06:11.860 out to write this book? I wonder, and I still wonder, I'm still asking this question, I think.

00:06:18.560 Like, you know, I was the second grader at the Brownie meetings, the Girl Scout meetings, saying,

00:06:24.320 on my honor, I will try to help other people at all times. I look back on that and I'm like,

00:06:29.320 what a bonkers thing to sell a grade schooler to do, right? To help other people at all times.

00:06:34.100 To be fair, they tell this to the boys as well. All the scouts say this. And yet, not everybody

00:06:40.000 grows up to think they have to forever fix everything for everybody around them in the

00:06:45.020 same way that I did. So there was just, there was some reason that this messaging really

00:06:48.800 connected with me, right? That it became how I saw myself. And I think part of it is that we

00:06:55.400 receive it as girls. And I think part of it is that I'm the oldest daughter of an oldest daughter

00:07:01.940 and- Oh, the eldest of an eldest.

00:07:04.680 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I say in the book, like, I'm not sure, like, is there a superlative? I'm the

00:07:09.700 oldest of six kids my mom is the oldest of eight kids and it's just this big you know Irish Catholic

00:07:15.840 family um Irish American um where the the generations just bleed right into the next one

00:07:22.260 and so they just were always I always had little siblings around and helping and being good at it

00:07:28.580 and being good humored about it was just was just the assignment and I never stopped and thought

00:07:33.840 about whether I liked it or not you know I didn't like seethe with resentment that I needed to change

00:07:38.780 my sister's diaper. I enjoyed it. It was part of who I was. But it just became very much my sense

00:07:44.700 of self. And not that that's always a bad thing, but it kind of catches up with you eventually,

00:07:48.580 I think. When do you think it caught up with you? Well, the version I tell in the book is that I

00:07:55.900 all of a sudden had vitiligo showed up one day, which is that non-dangerous but damaging to your

00:08:04.400 self-esteem, you know, the skin thing where your melanocytes start dying and your skin just bleaches

00:08:10.460 out. It just showed up one day on me and it started getting bigger and crawling up my arm.

00:08:15.820 And the advice that I received at first was like, well, I don't know where this came from,

00:08:22.780 but try not to worry about it too much because worrying makes it worse. And also there's probably

00:08:26.040 nothing we can do about it and it might spread to your face. We'll just have to wait and see.

00:08:29.860 Oh my gosh. No, but don't worry. You can pay a lot of money for Botox.

00:08:32.820 right right yeah well I will say that I mean I'm a very compliant patient so I did a lot of

00:08:38.560 ultraviolet light treatment and now there's a cream you can use now there's an FDA approved

00:08:42.800 cream that totally reverses it and so my vitiligo now I still have it I still have it a little bit

00:08:47.240 but it's it's well controlled but I think that was the moment and again it's not it's it's an

00:08:53.980 autoimmune disorder it is a mild one but it was still like my doctor was said have you been in a

00:09:00.040 car accident like there's this is strange that this would have this sudden rapid onset in somebody

00:09:05.160 your age because it usually like you get it when you're a kid or you're born with it or you just

00:09:09.160 don't kind of don't have it and I it was the pandemic so I said well it's been a rough couple

00:09:15.100 of years and he said you know not like that I mean something real and you know I sort of said

00:09:21.000 oh ho ho silly me but inside I was thinking like yeah like all of it it makes sense it's caught up

00:09:25.200 with me the the last 10 20 years of my life and now my body is saying like this is too much

00:09:31.500 this is too much yeah and and I think a lot of our bodies are saying this is too much

00:09:37.760 I think a lot of our brains are saying this is too much and almost every woman that I know

00:09:44.540 wants to just say is finally saying I'm just gonna say no more I'm just what if I just start

00:09:51.560 letting people down and that's okay and that's that's the headline of a piece that you did

00:09:57.960 that you worked on with the new york it's a headline of the piece that you were interviewed

00:10:01.840 for with the new york times um you know how how can you let people down and be okay with it have

00:10:09.780 you gotten to a place where you can do that because i'm still trying to get there yeah i i

00:10:16.180 definitely still get stuck on them like but then they might be mad at me or disappointed in me and

00:10:22.080 I feel like I can't let the um the interaction end until they understand that I really am a good

00:10:28.520 person and I really did do everything I could and they walk away like feeling good about me not

00:10:33.480 doing the toy drive this year whatever it is um understanding that you don't have to do that part

00:10:39.420 and even harder like this is the part that I really get stuck on there really might not be

00:10:44.120 a toy drive this year, right? Or a Christmas Eve dinner if you don't do it anymore. Like it isn't

00:10:50.500 like somebody else magically appears to take it up. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes nobody's

00:10:56.180 particularly interested in taking things over from you. And that can be hard to swallow. But

00:11:02.000 that still doesn't mean that you have to keep doing it. That's where I get a little stuck still.

00:11:06.240 It still doesn't mean that you have to keep doing it. And I really think that the holidays are such

00:11:10.600 a great time to be talking about this because I do feel like as women, we constantly believe we

00:11:16.700 have to do all of the things or the holidays will fail. Right. Like our family, they will be terrible

00:11:23.380 for our families. There will be no magic. Right. And none of that is true. Right. None of that is

00:11:28.900 true. We just did an episode on the What Fresh Hell podcast where we asked our listeners, I thought

00:11:33.600 this was great advice. Like, what do you do to make it all a little easier at the holidays?

00:11:37.080 and somebody said she asked her kids we're just going to do the three things that are most

00:11:42.080 important to us as a family let's figure out what they are and her little kids thought about it for

00:11:46.420 a while and one of them was watch the muppet christmas carol and another one was put our

00:11:53.420 pajamas on on christmas eve and dance in the kitchen like two out of three were like oh my

00:11:57.880 god so easy nothing so easy right it isn't it isn't make 14 kinds of cookies it's dance in the

00:12:04.540 kitchen on our Christmas jammies that I think sometimes what kids are willing to accept as

00:12:09.740 magical is a lot less than what we think. But we don't think that because we needlessly complicate.

00:12:16.700 Like, I just want to keep coming back to that, right? It isn't like, so you, dum-dum, should

00:12:20.540 stop overthinking things. It's like, no, so you should reject the messaging that you're receiving

00:12:25.440 every time you open your phone that you need to be doing something more or different.

00:12:29.180 Well, I got to say, I think the phones are a big part of every problem in our life.

00:12:34.120 to be honest. Yes, it's just the phone. It's just it's just the phone. But it's true because

00:12:40.680 every time during this holiday season, every time that I open up a social media app, I'm seeing

00:12:47.500 someone else do something so over the top for the holidays that I feel like a failure. And I'm a

00:12:54.460 person who understands probably better than the majority of people how these social media platforms

00:13:00.060 work yep that's true right like you you know that it's um it's trying to influence you to buy more

00:13:06.820 right do more feel bad about yourself and and and yet it's still yeah it's still hard not to fall

00:13:13.220 prey to it every year i say because my kids are getting older now yeah how old are we thinking

00:13:17.980 it this year my kids i have two kids in college oh my gosh they're grown-ups now they're grown-ups

00:13:21.820 and one in high school and so i am correct when i start saying you guys are buying each other

00:13:26.320 presents now no more of of you opening a sweater from this one and neither of you have any idea

00:13:31.800 what's in the present or how it got under the tree we're not doing that anymore and then it's

00:13:35.820 two days before christmas and you know i'm like making sure the piles are even i do kind of

00:13:39.780 backslide often into um into overdoing but you know yeah so i guess am i am i partly responsible

00:13:49.340 for the ongoing uneven distribution yes but it's not because i secretly like it that way or that

00:13:57.360 all i need to do is ask and it'll change that's that's the step one right that's true you know

00:14:02.440 because something we hear a lot of and and this is what i want to explore after a quick quick break

00:14:09.040 we hear a lot that oh just ask for help right and that is number one really great advice we

00:14:15.720 shouldn't be asking for help also um who am i gonna ask that's the thing all right let's take

00:14:23.560 let's take a quick break i want to leave listeners with the poem that's in the beginning of your book

00:14:28.280 that i love from rose cook uh that says be still sometimes be still sometimes let it all fall

00:14:36.500 sometimes. Okay, we're back. I think we hear all the time, you have to ask for help. It's

00:14:52.580 important to ask for help. And that's something that I've learned as being a mom. I ask for help

00:14:56.240 now more than I ever have in my entire life. But with a lot of things, it's also not enough

00:15:03.540 because who are all these helpers?

00:15:06.600 Who are all these people that are just raising their hands?

00:15:08.960 And I feel very lucky that I have great friends

00:15:11.220 and I have a community in my life,

00:15:12.700 but there's still some things

00:15:13.840 that no one's ever going to help me with.

00:15:15.720 That's right.

00:15:17.160 And so sometimes you think like,

00:15:19.020 who is going to help my mom who just broke her hip

00:15:22.900 and somebody's going to have to,

00:15:24.200 and your sibling lives in California.

00:15:27.020 Like you're not making that up.

00:15:28.620 It is a situation in which you are going to have

00:15:30.720 to take on a big thing.

00:15:32.020 And sometimes you ask if somebody else wants to take on this thing and nobody answers you because nobody does. And so then you either keep doing it or you leave it undone and are left with that. And sometimes I think, as I have found in my own family, it's not that my family doesn't want to help me be a happier, more self-actualized person.

00:15:55.240 And it's just they're disincentivized.

00:15:57.620 And they, like all this talk about the invisible workload, like I kind of think it's kind of true.

00:16:01.920 Like you get very good at it and making it seem not hard and invisible.

00:16:05.340 And so when you say, like, I need help with all the stuff we have to do, and they don't see it.

00:16:12.360 No, of course, because you've done such a good job of making it invisible.

00:16:16.700 Right, right.

00:16:17.580 It really is invisible.

00:16:18.400 And so, I mean, that might sound old fashioned, but I do think it's true that in my case, it was like, well, just give us a list. Like, nope, I'm not going to make you a list. You're just going to look around and you're going to notice that we need more milk and then go get it.

00:16:32.720 And we very much have changed that in my house, that the writing of this book and living through it, it made me, of course, very motivated to try to make this work, to try to see change.

00:16:45.500 And I did, but it wasn't all I had to do was ask for help and then everything magically fell into place.

00:16:51.680 It took like two years of really talking about this and asking again and saying, I'm going to keep asking this for people to start to come around.

00:17:02.720 In what other ways have you changed your life and your household through writing this book?

00:17:11.780 I had a great sort of testing ground for this, which was the death of somebody close to me recently.

00:17:18.640 And it was the perfect ground where in the past I might have over-delivered, right?

00:17:25.740 That I might have, we're going to take care of this.

00:17:28.780 Don't worry, everybody.

00:17:29.760 I've already written the eulogy and the programs are stacked in the back and I stapled them you

00:17:35.040 know that kind of thing and and just sort of really conscientiously stepping back and waiting

00:17:43.180 for other people to bring something up or think about it or to say to somebody hey so do you need

00:17:52.040 help changing that bank account over I can go to the bank with you if you want and then dropping it

00:17:58.520 right and then not and then offering it and then backing off or maybe not offering it and so or

00:18:06.360 maybe not offering or maybe not offering it right or maybe being like if if they know i'm pretty

00:18:12.000 dependable and if they want to go through the bookshelf they know where to find me right um

00:18:19.340 really sitting on my hands not in a resentful way right not in a um well i'll show them and then

00:18:27.440 Also them. It's the helping version of the silent treatment.

00:18:30.740 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that at all. It's just like let me very gingerly and carefully step back a little bit in this moment where there is a lot to do and let's see what happens.

00:18:43.500 and um it isn't like and then everything was perfect and I really saw that I am such a

00:18:51.340 workaholic it's not that at all it just was some stuff kind of sits in the middle of the road until

00:18:57.220 you say hey has anybody thought about this yet some stuff did get handled by other people and

00:19:01.560 none of it uh required me to be like well I'm guess I'm doing this all myself again and and

00:19:09.680 You know what I mean? Like jumping up on a soapbox and handing out jobs. That was not required. And so it was a really interesting test case, I would say, where it worked well.

00:19:21.420 You know, the amount of times that I say, why am I doing everything in my house? I would be so rich if someone had to pay me for the number of times that I say that.

00:19:35.600 I don't feel like I'm alone. And my husband's answer is you like doing it or you take it on. You choose this. And I think that's both partially true and also partially not true.

00:19:49.520 That's right. I mean, it works pretty well for everybody else, right? Let's be honest. It works pretty well for everybody to be like, well, I can't load the dishwasher because you have mom as a way she likes it and so nobody else is going to do it.

00:20:01.660 And so I think, like, in a house with a parenting partner and kids, this can particularly come into play.

00:20:09.120 But I think it rears its head, even for women who aren't parents, that this, the things we participate in, it's just sort of assumed we're going to do the work and be like, well, you like doing it.

00:20:20.920 You always do it.

00:20:22.320 You always do it.

00:20:23.160 You do it so well.

00:20:24.020 You do it so well.

00:20:25.100 You always remember those things collated.

00:20:28.320 You do it so well.

00:20:29.220 And you do do it well.

00:20:30.540 You do.

00:20:31.660 Um, and it's nice to be recognized for it. It's just, the better you are at doing the things that you are assigned and the things that you take on, the more likely it is that you will also be assigned the next thing that comes in. That whole, like, if you want something done, give it to a busy person.

00:20:50.620 Yeah, no, exactly. It's true. I think about this all the time because all of the class moms at my school and it is universally class moms at my school. Nick Astor was a class dad at one point when Charlie was in kindergarten. And you know what? He kind of felt strangely alienated and left out by all of the class moms or so he said.

00:21:14.720 Yeah. So he is no longer a class parent. They're all the busiest women I know. They're running VCs. They are Ivy League law professors. They're the people who have the least amount of time. And it's always dads, parents of other classmates. They're like, you guys should totally do this. And it's like, oh, thank you for the suggestion. Gentleman who has not volunteered at a single child event.

00:21:41.060 The email, the group email that I just got this week.

00:21:45.760 Like, are there any next steps on this?

00:21:48.420 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:49.340 I know what they mean. 0.76

00:21:50.420 They mean, do any of the women CC'd on this email want to say, okay, I'll start a committee

00:21:55.660 and I am definitely trying.

00:21:59.120 People will ask me if I'm doing this.

00:22:01.000 So yes, I did not answer that email.

00:22:02.620 Are there any next steps that anyone sees here?

00:22:05.440 Says the guy who just figures me or the other one will do it.

00:22:08.640 Figures someone's going to tell me the next steps.

00:22:10.240 someone's going to tell me these next steps to do.

00:22:12.500 Yep. Yep. And it's hard. It's hard to not be like,

00:22:15.160 to either say, yes, here are the next steps and it's so obvious and I'll just do it. It'll take

00:22:19.500 five minutes or to respond with a long list of why I can't do it. I hate those emails. Like,

00:22:26.420 just do it or don't do it, but don't tell me why you're so busy. You can't do it.

00:22:28.720 Don't tell me why you can't do it. I never actually want to hear that anyone is busy.

00:22:32.620 I really don't. I'm like, yeah, me too. I get it. I get it. Okay.

00:22:36.440 Exactly.

00:22:36.700 Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you you don't frame this as a guide to, you know, just stopping. Right. Like we're not we're not going to, as I said in the beginning of this episode, just quit. You know, this isn't we're not just going to start slacking off. That doesn't work for me. You know, what I got out of this book is that it's more about picking your moments.

00:22:59.900 mm-hmm yeah it's about picking your moments it's about realizing i really did have to realize as a

00:23:07.400 grown-up i really wanted the people i loved the most to be happy and of course who doesn't want

00:23:12.880 like literally everybody wants that right who doesn't want that but what i was kind of missing

00:23:17.200 sociopaths don't want sociopaths don't want that they hate that their least favorite thing or they

00:23:22.200 don't know they don't they want the people around them to they don't they don't get that other

00:23:25.720 people have emotional states. Yeah, exactly. Do you even exist? Just me out here. Of course,

00:23:33.360 I want the people around me to be happy. But there is when the people who I love the most

00:23:37.040 aren't happy, there's no part of them that's like, oh, I was really counting on her to make me happy.

00:23:42.920 They didn't have that expectation for me that I was going to remove their sadness and they get to

00:23:49.980 be loved by me, even when they're sad or angry or mad at me. These things can exist. And so you can

00:24:00.540 rest before that is accomplished because that part was never yours to do at all.

00:24:06.300 Exactly. Exactly. All right. Let's take one more quick break here and we'll be right back.

00:24:19.980 okay now because this book is coming out the first week of january everyone can pre-order it now

00:24:28.960 um i actually you know i get people pre-orders for christmas presents oh that's a nice idea

00:24:35.820 it's not a crazy idea okay like i know that people are probably so totally sick of authors

00:24:40.980 being like pre-order my book but it helped and it matters and what you do is you you know print

00:24:47.960 out the receipt for it and you put it in a nice little card with another gift so i i've actually

00:24:54.040 had a lot of people tell me last year they pre-ordered sicilian inheritance uh which you

00:24:58.580 can order for real now people uh and gave people a bottle of sicilian wine oh that's a great idea

00:25:03.760 right um or with this book what i was thinking is you could write your friend a fun card

00:25:10.100 with an IOU to help out with something.

00:25:14.440 Help me help.

00:25:15.620 Yeah.

00:25:16.360 This book is very much not,

00:25:19.360 here's how you can stop being such a people pleaser.

00:25:21.440 It is not that at all.

00:25:22.720 It's sort of like maybe the idea that,

00:25:25.540 like of course we're people pleasers we were told to be

00:25:28.200 and maybe there's nothing wrong with you.

00:25:29.600 That's the point of the book.

00:25:32.800 And I hope that that was what I aimed for,

00:25:35.560 that it's about feeling seen and be like,

00:25:37.380 are you great?

00:25:38.540 And not here's another way to fix yourself, because I think that's where we get stuck.

00:25:42.480 That's where we get stuck.

00:25:43.600 We get stuck in that.

00:25:45.060 But I do.

00:25:46.300 I think it's a nice book.

00:25:49.040 You know, I hate New Year's resolutions.

00:25:50.640 Right.

00:25:51.220 But but I like I do like the idea of, you know, unsticking myself in certain areas of

00:25:59.100 my life, you know, when because, you know, New Year's do offer kind of a new start in

00:26:03.540 some ways.

00:26:04.100 So I think this is a really nice book for that to get off on the right foot when it comes to excessive people-pleasing, excessive helping.

00:26:16.360 So, yeah, I've been pre-ordering it and gifting it for the holidays to my friends.

00:26:21.720 It's so nice of you, Jo. Thank you.

00:26:23.060 You know, the funny thing about New Year's resolutions, there's an essay in there about my eighth-grade diary.

00:26:28.160 The only diary I ever kept was in eighth grade.

00:26:30.520 Oh, me too.

00:26:31.640 It's a big year. There's a lot to say when you're in eighth grade.

00:26:34.100 here. There's a lot to say. Yeah, I kept notes from eighth grade, too. And like, my friends were

00:26:40.860 bitches. They were just nasty, nasty, mean little bitches is what they were. It is like the most 1.00

00:26:45.840 technicolor year. My friend just said it's like the most you year, like the you that you were in

00:26:50.960 eighth grade is the most you. I'm like, yeah, that's kind of true. Totally true. So anyway, 1.00

00:26:55.660 I made New Year's resolutions in my eighth grade diary, and they're depressing to look at now

00:26:59.920 because they are the same one it's it's exercise more yeah 13 year old me exercise more um tell

00:27:09.260 people when i'm mad don't keep it bottled inside um and do everything i can to make the people i

00:27:15.800 love happy that was the last one um oh and try skiing try something that that challenges me

00:27:21.180 those are my my god i would pick i would write these same things down now i really should take

00:27:26.820 a pickleball. I really should exercise more. I really should, you know, try to be honest with

00:27:32.400 people and I should, I should make everybody, maybe not to make everybody happy, but the rest

00:27:36.420 of it. I'd say the same thing now, which makes me think that, yes, that's the problem with New

00:27:40.740 Year's resolutions is that they're the same year after year for a reason. You're the same person.

00:27:46.000 You're the same person you were in eighth grade. Can you ski now? That's the really important

00:27:49.780 question. I also talk about that in the book. I didn't try learning to ski until I was in my 40s

00:27:54.660 And that is too late to learn to ski, as you will find in the book.

00:27:59.740 My kids were like, you know, three and five and I was 41 and it was a disaster.

00:28:05.460 Yeah, no, I I think there's certain things that you do in life at certain ages.

00:28:10.020 I say this all the time about new drugs.

00:28:11.680 I'm like, I'm never going to do mushrooms.

00:28:13.140 Probably not going to do Molly because I haven't done them.

00:28:15.940 Never did them before.

00:28:17.360 Yeah. And if you haven't learned like if you haven't learned to ride a bike, you might not learn to ride a bike.

00:28:22.620 Yeah. Yeah.

00:28:23.360 Yeah, there's an age, right, there I was on, you know, the bunny slope with my three-year-old taking lessons, and she's not scared, but I am, and it just was, it was, and I was going to keep going.

00:28:36.400 I mean, I hated it, I hated it, and I was going to keep going until I learned to ski, and then finally my husband was like, you don't have to keep doing this.

00:28:43.040 You don't have to keep doing this.

00:28:44.420 I don't, and I quit.

00:28:46.300 But I didn't, I don't think if he hadn't said that to me, that I would have let myself quit.

00:28:51.420 I would have kept going forever.

00:28:53.100 I think that too often we need permission to quit.

00:28:55.840 We need permission to say no.

00:28:57.500 Yeah.

00:28:58.180 Yeah.

00:28:58.940 We do.

00:28:59.660 We do.

00:29:00.700 And yeah, I didn't want my kids to see me quitting something because they should learn that you never give up.

00:29:08.020 What they should learn is you don't have to keep doing things you hate.

00:29:12.240 You don't have to keep doing things you hate.

00:29:14.200 Exactly.

00:29:14.760 I don't finish books I don't like anymore.

00:29:16.900 Ah, see?

00:29:17.540 Yeah.

00:29:18.640 Because why?

00:29:19.520 I've done that.

00:29:19.660 It's not going to get better.

00:29:21.740 TV shows, I will do that.

00:29:23.100 TV shows.

00:29:23.940 The majority, I'm going to make a bold statement, bold statement here.

00:29:27.320 The majority of TV shows are the best in season one, and they don't necessarily get better.

00:29:33.300 I was watching For All Mankind, which I really like, the show about space exploration.

00:29:40.060 And season two was so effing boring that I just skipped it.

00:29:44.280 I just skipped it, and I read the synopsis, and now I like season three.

00:29:47.420 I mean, yeah, when you write a TV series, I think you're so excited. First, you write an amazing pilot. And you know ahead of time, if it gets picked up, here's the story of season one. And then you get to end of season one and you get picked up. And then it's like most bands, their first album is their best album because they thought about it for like five years, right?

00:30:07.580 Absolutely. It's why a lot of people's debut novel is sometimes their best, right? Because

00:30:12.860 they don't have another novel in them. My debut novel sucked. My debut novel never debuted. It's 0.95

00:30:19.280 in a drawer. Like a fine line, I'm just getting better with every book. That's good. I did love

00:30:24.960 The Sicilian Inheritance. Oh, thank you. Remember we talked about when you were on What Fresh Hell

00:30:30.300 that my husband's family is from Cultabalota. Which is insane. It's the most insane coincidence. 0.99

00:30:37.580 of all time and proof that the world yeah i was just in scranton and at my mother's house there

00:30:43.540 was a water bottle that said like piazza law firm on it or something yeah yeah those are my cousins

00:30:47.680 right those are my cousins so we're cousins basically we're cousins yeah clearly my my

00:30:51.900 cousins uh they're lawyers in scranton and they have a billboard um on the on the freeway going

00:30:58.360 up to scranton for the law firm where they kind of look like you know the sopranos um it's truly

00:31:04.520 you should keep an eye out for it yeah yeah uh so tell everyone where they can find you

00:31:13.120 um and where they can find this wonderful book what is the plan for for getting it out there

00:31:18.560 in the new year well you know the new year's tie-in is a good thing so so um there'll be

00:31:24.540 some articles i'm working on for the new year about like things not to do in the new year five

00:31:28.660 things to say no to in the new year that i'm sending around and doing some tv don't tell me

00:31:33.240 I'll tell you all five, but tell me two things to say no to.

00:31:34.980 Oh, my gosh.

00:31:35.620 I literally have to look them up.

00:31:37.160 Can I look them up?

00:31:37.840 Yeah, look them up.

00:31:38.800 Okay, let's see.

00:31:41.260 Say no to the thing you're still doing, mainly because you dread saying you can't do it anymore.

00:31:46.920 There are things that I have definitely kept doing because I really didn't want to call the person in charge to say I wouldn't be able to join them anymore.

00:31:54.560 To say you don't want to do it.

00:31:55.680 I have one of those right now.

00:31:57.280 Mm-hmm.

00:31:57.900 Yeah.

00:31:58.120 So say no to that thing and say no to the thing your kid hates doing anyway that you're driving across town to do once a week.

00:32:05.420 Oh, yeah.

00:32:06.320 No, I think about this all the time.

00:32:08.420 I'm like, I'm not because my kids are just starting to do the activities and I'm all for them trying it and don't quit.

00:32:15.540 But also, no, no, no, no. 0.98

00:32:17.540 I'm not going to invest so much time in carting your butt around for something you are miserable doing. 1.00

00:32:23.200 Right. 0.99

00:32:23.760 I mean, they can't quit everything.

00:32:25.220 They can't quit everything.

00:32:26.400 The best advice I got on this was from my own daughter who said, like, you can't quit on a hard day, but if every day is a hard day, then you should be able to quit.

00:32:35.360 If every day is a hard day, you should be able to quit.

00:32:37.440 That's really good.

00:32:38.480 Yep.

00:32:39.040 That's really good.

00:32:40.120 That was it.

00:32:41.200 So the book is called Happy to Help, and you can get it wherever you buy books.

00:32:44.340 And my website is amywilson.com, and there's all kinds of bonus material on there.

00:32:49.560 And then my podcast is What Fresh Hell?

00:32:52.060 Laughing in the Face of Motherhood, and we've been around since 2016.

00:32:55.020 and we talk about parenthood but now as our kids get older we're branching out into talking about

00:33:00.020 whatever we feel like talking about sometimes and those are kind of my favorite episodes now

00:33:04.520 which is kind of like this podcast to be honest because sometimes we talk about influencers

00:33:08.460 sometimes right and sometimes we just talk about being women in the world

00:33:14.140 i loved your ozempic uh discussion oh thank you it was really good and like that that's what i

00:33:20.580 mean like you get to use this platform to talk about the things that matter most to women to

00:33:27.280 women yeah and and that is such a privilege and i love doing it and yeah i know same i loved that

00:33:32.980 discussion we got so many good responses from that discussion of women saying no one is talking

00:33:39.980 about this in a way that doesn't involve shame somehow and this is the first time that i've

00:33:46.060 an honest conversation about it. So thank you. I thought it was really good and really, you know,

00:33:52.340 just well thought out. And yeah, I loved it. And so getting to do that and getting to pick something

00:33:56.300 and explore it or read a book I love and then interview the author. I mean, it's just so much

00:34:01.240 fun. I love it. So much fun. I know. I love it. We're very lucky, ladies. And that is all we have

00:34:06.720 for today. Grab yourself a copy of Happy to Help for you, for your friends. This book rings so true

00:34:14.520 for so many of us. I really have ordered it for so many of my girlfriends, and I'm hoping that

00:34:21.600 we will have a rousing discussion about it in the new year. Go have a wonderful, wonderful day.

00:34:30.240 Go have a wonderful day, friends. I'm going to binge some Call the Midwife. I've never watched

00:34:35.280 it before, and everyone else in the world apparently has. It's like I'm the last person

00:34:40.800 to watch The Sopranos or something. And yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna curl up in bed and do that

00:34:46.800 because I'm checking out. I'm checking out a 2024 baby. It's over. It's over.

00:35:10.800 Thank you.

00:35:40.800 You

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - December 26, 2024

Who is Sick of Being a People Pleaser？

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