Welcome to Healthy Ish. Thanks for joining us on the daily podcast and Body and Soul. I'm your host, Felicity Harley. Meghan Dalla Kamina is a renowned expert in women's leadership. She's founder of the Women Rising Leadership program, also the name of her new book, Women Rising. She has an impressive list of academic credentials, and today we're delving into a concept from her book called Well the Inner Patriarch.
Have you heard of this before? It could be actually impacting your well being, and she's going to talk about how to redefine our inner stories. It's a very empowering episode. Listening to Extra Healthyish as well. Couse Meghan is on there and she discusses how your inner critic impacts your future choices. You can search for extra healthysh she ever get your podcasts. Meghan, Welcome to Healthish.
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Yeah. Well, firstly, thank you for your book, No congratulations, thank you. I think there's words in there that, particularly those of the female gender need to read and listen to.
Thank you for that, I hope so, I hope it serves.
Now we know about the patriarchy, but what's the deal with the inner patriarchy and how does it impact how can it impact our mental health and wellbeing.
So we hear about the patriarchy, you know, a world the way that I describe it, a world that was designed by and for men to succeed in that doesn't just hurt women, that can also hurt men and all genders.
The inner patriarch, which we talk much less about, is how we take that patriarchy that is outside of us and internalize it, and how that internalized patriarchy becomes the voice in our head and becomes the stories that we tell ourselves that guide our life, all of our actions, how we feel about ourselves, the choices that we make, and those actions that we take or don't take.
I mean this is when I was reading this in your book, it was almost like a light bulb because I thought this, we are so many of us have these the cycles of thought that feed into the inn patriarchy, and we don't even realize and they are things like as you write about shoulds and have two's and muss unpacked the shoulds for us.
Yes, So I mean many of your listeners will have heard this, like we should all over ourselves and how
many times a day. Are the things that you do because you think you should do it, not because you want to, not because you're called to do it, not because you know your heart's longing to, you know, to take a certain action, but because it's something that you think you should do, whether that is because your parents have told you to do it a partner, you know, all of the gender special society, definitely people on social media while they're doing it, so I should do it,
or I should be at this place by now, or I should take that next job to get to you know where I'm going to. And if we really start to tune in to those inner narratives, you will be shocked by how many shoulds are coming up for you every single day, and how many of your choices are being directed not because of what you want, but because of what you think you should do. How do we.
Determine the difference between what we genuinely want to do and what we feel we should do.
If we tune in to our bodies, which is harder than it sounds. And by that I mean if you can create some space, get quiet with yourself, and that can be five minutes. It doesn't need to be three hours in a cave, you know, in Himalayas, which I just came back from, by the way, did I did?
Okay, let's book that.
Okay, you spend three hoursn't it?
How long did you spend in the cave?
Oh? Hours and hours? Yeah? And different places and different caves in the Himalayas on pilgrimage.
Wow, Okay, that's a whole other point.
That's a whole other thing, right, we'll talk about that. But it can be a short amount of time where you just create some space between all of the business and yourself and tune in, like what is it that
you really want? You will get a hit in your body and you don't actually even have to do that because you can be sitting in a meeting at work and someone will say something and there's a gap in between what they've said and your response where you will feel when you are tuned in, that's the answer, and often it's a no. And then what do we say, Sure, I'd love to do that, I'd love to help out.
So we need to learn how to get quiet with ourselves, how to trust the feelings that we get and the thoughts that come up for us that are out side of those projections or what everybody else wants for us.
And you know, a lot of your work is around building confidence, because I think you know we know what we want. We say sure, how do can we say no?
No? No is a skill on a practice, and so often I hear women say, oh, I'm just not good at saying no. One of the reasons we don't say no is because we don't understand what's my agenda? What is it that I want for myself, my life, my career, my relationships, whatever it is. And when we haven't done that work first, that clarity work, we don't know what we're giving up, we don't want, we don't know what we're sacrificing to do the thing that you ask over
the thing that I really want for myself. So building clarity number one and then knowing how to set boundaries, and that's the no. And one of the great tools that I teach is learn how to respond, not react, because so often we say yes. In the moment we walk away and we go, oh, why did I say yes? I really don't want to do that. I don't have time, blah blah blah blah blah. And if you can learn to pause, breathe, and have some standard answers like let
me get back to tomorrow. And that's a way of saying no without saying no, And we can ease ourselves in, soften it up, and build our muscle of doing what we want over what other people want for us.
What about the hatos and musks? How do these impact us and our wellbeing? Yeah?
Look, they can have such a negative impact on our wellbeing, on all aspects, particularly our mental and our emotional wellbeing. And that resentment builds. I think we've all felt it where you know we're or that pressure that we put on ourselves when we think I have to do this, I must be like this, and we become this shell of ourselves. And we talk a lot about authenticity, but
the shoulds mustn't have to's really what they're doing. They're taking us away from our authentic selves and what we feel most aligned to, and that builds, and it builds, and it builds resentment, and it builds more negative self talk that then stops us from doing the things that we you know, that we really feel are the right thing for us. And as we start to tune into those stories that are happening inside of our minds all
the time. We have sixty thousand thoughts a day. We start to tune in, we get to understand what is actually going on, and then we can take steps to start to tame that voice.
You talk about redefining our inner stories, how did you redefine? Well, how have you done this? And well, other than God into a cave in.
The frequently it's a good cave too, by the way, like this has been a long process for me. I didn't just wake up one morning and go, oh, it's going to.
Run my stories today.
Oh, if only it were so, you know, for me, this started about fifteen years ago when I was working in corporate, really felt like I'd come to the end of my journey in corporate, but never thought I'd do anything else, and also single mom, financial responsibility for my kid, and having to unravel why I was still on this same path when really I wanted to have a path over there, you know, running my own business and doing work in the women's space. So that's when I was starting.
I was doing my master's degree positive psychology, really starting to get into what's actually going on, what's driving my actions, and that's when it was like, oh, it's a voice inside your head. So the stories you're telling yourself. Okay, great, let's start to detangle and unravel from those stories. And then just more work, more research, more work, more research, doing my own work, coaching thousands of women, you know
around this. I get to a place now where I can hear the stories really quickly and move through it. But it takes time, like we have to again build the skill for how do we recognize the story?
So you're much better for it. Do you have anything like a daily practice that you do that, Yeah, to make sure you're well still fine tuning it.
Yeah, absolutely, So. Meditation is incredibly important. And again it can be five minutes. Like people don't freak out. You're not meant to dissolve all of the thoughts in your mind when you sit to meditate. Just keep coming back to your breath. And then the really quick three step process that everyone can follow around their stories. Number one, start to catch the stories. Just really start to notice and write them down. Oh, I was in that meeting.
I'm not smart and to speak. That's a story. So step one. Step two is that true. Stick it on a post it note, put it on the app in your phone and continually remind yourself to question your stories, interrupt that pattern of cognitive dissonance so that you can then get to step three, which is reframe the story. How do I create a better story for myself? Like it's that simple, and it's that difficult because you have
to do that work. But once you really start to work that process, you will be amazed at the control you start to have over your mind.
And that's what we want. More control, that's what we want. Down with the patriarchy. I probably shouldn't say that down with the inner patriarchy, you can say that. Megan, thank you for coming on Healthy You.
Thank you so much.
Hey, thanks for tuning into this chat with Megan. Very inspiring, isn't she. Her new book is called Women Rising and it is at now and make sure you jump on her site and take her inner critic quiz all able linked to that in the show notes. We're talking about that an extra healthy ish as well. For anything else, head to Body and Soul dot com dot you follow
us on socials. You can DM me at Felicity Harley if you have any feedback, grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow, Stay healthy ish