#298 - BREAK FREE FROM THE FORCES THAT LIMIT YOUR POTENTIAL with Megan Dalla-Camina

 

Hey there! 💫

In this episode of Your Dream Life, I’m joined by the inspiring Megan Dalla-Camina—bestselling author and award-winning empowerment expert. Megan’s new book, Women Rising, is packed with insights on how to break free from the forces that limit us.

So take a front row seat and dive right in with us as we explore key paradoxes of power that often hold women back, like the perfectionist, the people pleaser, and the “good girl” narrative.

Megan also shares tools to overcome these obstacles and practical strategies for success, on your own terms.

Whether it’s overcoming the inner critic or navigating the workplace with confidence, Megan’s wisdom will help you create the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Here are just a few of the gems you’ll learn:

1. Identify and overcome the “inner critic” that keeps you stuck.
2. The six paradoxes of power that every woman needs to understand.
3. How to build purpose—because it’s not something you find, it’s something you create.
4. Practical strategies for achieving success on your terms, not someone else’s. 

If you’ve ever felt held back by fear or self-doubt, this episode is for you. Tune in to learn how to rise above and truly thrive.

Let’s step into our power together!

As always, I’d LOVE to hear what resonates with you from this episode and what you plan to implement after listening in. So please share and let’s keep the conversation going in the Dream Life Podcast Facebook Group here.    

Have a wonderful weekend… and remember, it all starts with a dream 💛

Enjoy! 

Dream Life Founder  

SHOW NOTES:

• Megan’s new book, Women Rising
• Join my virtual book club GROW for November where we meet weekly on Zoom to discuss and squeeze the learnings from this brilliant book, The Way of the SEAL by Mark Divine - which offers a fresh perspective on mental toughness. Perfect for navigating the chaos of modern life, with practical tools to strengthen focus, overcome self-doubt, and push beyond comfort zones—empowering you to step up as the confident, resilient leader of your own story.
• Join my Platinum Coaching Program - where in November the focus is on SETTING YOUR MINDSET FOR 2025. Learn more here.
• Dream Life Community Facebook Group: Connect with like-minded dreamers.

RESOURCES:

• Sign up to our email list here to hear about upcoming workshops.
• Take your first step to getting clarity on what you want from life with this free bonus dreaming exercise here 101 Dreams Audio Guide 
• Buy Kristina's book, Your Dream Life Starts Here

 TRANSCRIPT:

Hi there, and welcome back to another episode. Today I got another inspiring guest, the best selling author, an award winning, an award winning empowerment expert, Megan dullah Camina. Meghan has just come out with a new book called Women Rising, and today we are talking about how you can break free from the forces that limit your potential. You'll discover the paradoxes of power that hold us back, and you will unravel the types of that in e critic, such as the perfectionist, the people pleaser, and the good girl that feed the stories keeping you stuck. Plus, you will find practical test tools and strategies to help you craft a future where you succeed on your own times. It is time to rise and step into your power. So let's get right into it. Well, Hello, Meghan, and a very warm welcome to my podcast. I am thrilled that you are here.

 

00:02:35

Megan: I'm thrilled to be here, so looking forward to this conversation. So thanks for having me Ah.

 

00:02:40

Kristina: Me too. Isn't it funny how we can reconnect it after I don't know fifteen twenty years on the first stage and then reconnected.

 

00:02:50

Megan: I know it was like synchronicity. Just coming together on the Forbes Women's Summit. So yes, so good to be back together.

 

00:02:59

Kristina: Yeah. Absolutely So there is so much to talk about today. But before we get into everything, I wanted to ask you a question that I ask all my guests, That is, did you have a dream as a child, something you wanted to do or have or become.

 

00:03:14

Megan: I did. I only had. I had one big dream when I was a child that I wanted to be an actress and I wanted to move to Hollywood and yeah, be in movies. That was my dream my whole childhood.

 

00:03:30

Kristina: Ah, and did you get there?

 

00:03:32

Megan: I didn't. I had one of those life pivoting moments in my early twenties and just really surrendered because I was an actress and a dancer my whole childhood, from like three months to as soon as I was walking whatever that was, until like twenty three. And then I had a car accident and I had one of those moment, like one of those sliding door moments where I'm like, do I go to LA And I had an opportunity to go over there and sing or do I get a real job? And you know, I go and work in marketing and I let the universe decide, I ended up in ended up a ge in marketing, and that was that. That was, Yeah, the next eighteen years of my life.

 

00:04:14

Kristina: Yeah, exciting. So we are going to talk about your book, but I love to you You've already given us a little bit of your journey, but I love for you to just give us a bit of a snapshot of your journey until today, just because we've got listeners from all over the world that might not know of you yet.

 

00:04:32

Megan: Yes, of course. So well that was my early life. So you know, growing up, I spent all of my time singing, dancing, acting, writing music, singing in bands. I was the creative, you know, rebellious teenageer doing all of those amazing things. And you know, writing was a big part of that, writing songs and all the rest of it. And then this period of sort of my early twenties where I was in between worlds, you know, I hadn't quite yet moved into my marketing career and just trying to work things out. And then I ended up in Ge and spent five years working for their electronic commerce business, like before a business was the thing, so that was really exciting, And spent five years in Asia basically and traveling around the world setting up companies and marketing joint ventures for GE. Then I went to PwC and I was at PwC for a number of years director of Marketing. It was there that I had my baby, my well my baby's twenty three, had my had my son again. You know, I traveled a lot and then went to IBM through acquisition, and it was at IBM that I had my major burnout, reassessed my life for the the first time but a really significant time, became a single mother, and yeah, just really transformative years in those like in my thirties then about how do I and how do women survive and thrive doing what they love to do and being a parent or you know, having interests outside of how do we be well? And I was so passionate about that. I went to the Master's of Wellness degree and wellness and positive psychology and really went on this big heroine's journey around yeah, just life and work. And became an first time author with my first book, Getting Real a Bet Having It All, which you published you did a limited edition in kikki.K. And then eleven years ago I started my own company, So I left my corporate career that I never thought I would ever do, and started up my own business which has had many iterations of my business, and then for the last four years running Women Rising, running more books, and now doing my pH in women's spirituality. No.

 

00:07:02

Kristina: Wow, what an incredible journey. And you know so many even like just that alone we could go deep into. But I wanted to talk about your book, Women Rising, the forces that holds us back and the tools to help us Rice. So I'm super excited about that. But why did you actually write this book?

 

00:07:22

Megan: I waited a long time to write this book. This is my fourth book, and I wrote Simple, Soulful Sacred in twenty nineteen. It was a beautiful, deep, spiritual, soulful book for women. And shortly after that I founded Women Rising, and so I was deep in what you know in the startup journey for the last couple of years in women's leadership and development, and I knew there was another book coming, and I knew that I wanted this book to address some of the big questions that I had not seen answered around, like why are we still here? Why are we still here in such an uneat call world and an unequal world of work? You know, how is the patriarchy really impacting women on a daily basis and what do we do about that so that we can be fully empowered as women and like chart our own course, be sovereign, create success on our own terms, whatever that looks like for us. So I spend a lot of time really thinking about how do I do that and not just add more noise and not just say the same thing that has been said before, but really put this journey together in a way that is unique and that will cut through these reasons why we are still where we're at. So that's why, you know, that's why I've written, and my mission is really to create that next big conversation in the women's empowerment leadership space. Like that's my hope and my dream for the book.

 

00:08:53

Kristina: Yeah, I love that. And because I came to Australia, you know, twenty seven years ago or whatever, and I don't know, I grew up in Sweden and I never really thought about equality. I was obviously young, so maybe this didn't come part of my journey in Sweden, but it was kind of a really different approach when I came to Australia. So maybe that was just because I was, you know, not into the world yet back in Sweden, or I just grew up with different kind of way of looking at it because I never actually felt like any issues being a woman or felt less equal to anyone. And I obviously understand that that's, you know, not everyone's case and also not everyone's you know, depending on where you are and where you work and who you surround yourself with. But what I loved about your book was that we instead of which I think has been going on for a long time, is that not really taking it in our own hands, which I think is so important. So your book, really I felt like it was really a book for each person to take action versus kind of waiting for someone else to fill that gap or do it for us.

 

00:10:01

Megan: Yeah, that's I love that mirror that you've just given me and so interesting right because I was the same as you like I until I hit the middle of my corporate career, I never saw an issue with gender. My high school was a really small school that had twenty two boys and five girls in my whole class group. For the five years of senior school, you know, I spent all of my time around boys and the bands that I used to sing in and like the first fifteen years of my career, I just didn't think there was an issue. Like I never had a gender lens and I never felt that I was disadvantaged by that until I hit like my mid thirties and I hit IBM where you know d and I was really part of their DNA, and I had my burnout and then I started to look around and go like, why is this the way that it is for women at work? And that was you know, it's nearly twenty years ago in it now, like that's been my journey, so yeah, you're not alone in that. I was the same. I didn't know what I didn't know.

 

00:11:06

Kristina: Yeah, yeah, And I feel like that's a little bit how I feel because I never worked in corporate and when you create your own business, you kind of create it on your you know, your own terms, and and you know, we were the other way around. We were majority of women, so and for me, it was always just about who is the best for the role. I never thought do we need a woman or a man? I always felt like who is the best? So just just an interesting but I felt like when I read your book, I was like, this is so good because instead of just waiting for someone else to help us create an equal world, we actually take that into our own hands. And your book is just perfect for that. So let's get into the book. I love to talk about the forces that's really holding us back and all the paradoctors that you have, So let's get started with that. We can talk about that for the whole episode, but let's just skim skim some of it so we get through maybe every part of the book.

 

00:12:01

Megan: So Part one of the book is the Paradoxes of Power, and this is, as you say, the forces that hold women back. And the reason this part of the book is important is because what I see. You know, in our Women Rising program, we've had about ten thousand women in four years from sixty three countries. So I have the privilege of seeing and working with so many diverse women, all ages, all stages, all of these different countries. And I see this through line that when something goes wrong or when we don't feel empowered as women, the first thought that we have is typically it's my fault. I've done something wrong. Yeah, like the problem is with me. So the first part of the book is really important because most of the time that's just not true right most of the time, particularly in our working lives, but also just society generally, when we hit up against barriers. It is one of these paradoxes of power that I outline in the book, and they are just briefly. The empowerment paradox is the first one. We expect women to be empowered in systems that disempower them. The leadership paradox, where women get told we want you to lead, but not like that, don't do it like that, do it like this, do it how it's always been done, which is really challenging for women to line up their authenticity against old models of leadership. The motherhood paradox, so where society tells women mother like you don't have a job outside the home, and work like you don't have children. It's just this impossible race we can never finish, right, like, you can't possibly succeed in both of those areas, it's a paradox. The confidence paradox, like be confident, but don't be too confident, and the gender norms and biases that women hit against when they are assertive when they do speak up for themselves, and like the world really still doesn't know what to do with strong, powerful, outspoken women. The success paradox creates success, but in a sea of expectations and all of the expectations that get projected onto women about what their careers and lives should look like in all aspects of their lives. And the visibility paradox be visible, but don't be too visible? What happens when you really are visible and speaking up for yourself and everything else? We want to cut you down because again we're going against these gender norms of what we expect a good woman, and there's so much research on this what we think a good woman looks like, and it doesn't look like a lot of that, you know, leading and assertive and your own doing it your own way. That's going against the patriarchal construct. So they're the paradoxes of power that we start with so that women can really understand the landscape that we're living in with tools of course as to okay, what do we do about this so that we are truly empowered and can chart our own course.

 

00:15:11

Kristina: Yeah, I absolutely love that. So let's talk about part two of the book, which is all about the stories that keeps us stuck. And I see that a lot in my own dream Life coaching program where people just have their own stories because when they come into my program, they have these amazing, big dreams, but they have all these stories arounded why they can't achieve it or why it's not possible for them. And because I don't have those stories, I'm just like, I have not seen one dream that I don't think is possible. So I love for you to talk about how we can kind of change those stories, and then we can talk a little bit about the inner critic, but we can do that after talking about how we can stack our stories.

 

00:15:52

Megan: Yeah, so the stories for people listening, like, that's the narrative that's constantly running in your mind. And for the vast you may be the anomaly, Christina, but for the vast majority of women particularly, we have, you know, this narrative and this story, whether it's saying you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you're not pretty enough, you're too old, you're too young, all of the reasons why we can't take the action that we want to take. And in all of the research that I've done at Women Rising and in other research that I've seen as well, like the inner critic is the number one self declared barrier that women face, the internal barrier that women face that stops us from living the lives that we want to live. So Part two of the book goes really deep into this in terms of, you know, firstly, how do we internalize the patriarchy, which becomes our inner dialogue and our inner narrative about you know, what we can, what we can't, what we should, what we must, what we have to do, and shapes our lives. And then the particular form of that around the inner critic and what we do about it. And as I was writing this, I've been teaching and coaching on the inner critic for gosh fifteen years. I wanted to go deeper into how does this actually manifest in my life, in your life, in everybody's life. And I created these thirteen archetypes of the inner critic, and was so funny when I came up with it, I thought, Oh, surely someone's done this. Surely someone's done archetypes of the ana critic, like it's so perfect. Did my research no one had done it, so I was very excited. And they're things like the perfectionist, the people pleaser, the good giral, the overachiever, that's my personal lens, the ideal mother, the EmPATH, the comparer, and these are like you could think of them as personality types, but they are really the particular nature of the stories that you tell yourself. And what we do is we go through and look at what it is, what does it sound like, what are the actual questions and the stories? Where does that come from, Like when we look at that link between the patriarchy and the paradoxes of power, what's the link to the stories that we tell ourselves as women. What's the light side and the shadow side? So the light side being if you're a perfectionist, there's some really good things that will come out of that for you, like tension to detail and you're always going to get it done, you're going to be reliable, and you're going to deliver great results. But there's a shadow side, right burnout, two higher expectations, et cetera, et ce. So, how do we understand that so that we can then move through How do we manage that? How do we transform that in a critic so that we have tools for action and ways that we can move forward and we're not stuck. It's the biggest thing, and I'm sure you see this with your women. I see this with the women in our as well, is that if you've got a really loud in a critic, you can just stay paralyzed and ruminating around the stories that you're telling and you never get to take the action, You never get to the dream that you want to bring to life because you're just really stuck in this paradigm. So this work is all about how do you understand the story, challenge the story so that you can get to do the things that you want to do.

 

00:19:30

Kristina: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean I see that over and over and over. And it's so interesting because in the beginning when it kind of came up over and over, I was like, this is just this is just fascinating because and I do a lot of journeying exercises with a coaching program for all sorts of different things. But often when I think about how I want to change, I always look at, you know, where am I today? So being aware and then I'm just like, what do I want to get to? What are the steps? Versus trying to always think about, you know, being aware of the past, but not well on it too long because I think we can often get stuck. So there has been some great journaling practices or journaling sessions in your books. Can you talk a little bit about how we can change those kind of stories by practicing journaling and kind of rewrite our pathways.

 

00:20:26

Megan: Yeah, so that's exactly what we're doing. And that's why your work is so important, you know, one of the many reasons why your work is so important because that level of self understanding and self awareness and the role that journaling plays in that and that self reflection is part of shifting those neural pathways and then those behaviors and the actions that we take. As you know, I'll tell you the really simple process, and then if people want to get the book and they can go through and work out their archetype and then it gets really nuanced. But the really simple process that I teach around the inner critic is number one. Start to catch the story or the stories that you're telling yourself. And I love specificity, so and this is where the journalink can come in. So you know, think about a situation that's come up saying the last two weeks, or think about something right now that you really want to take action on but you haven't, and tune into what is you're in a dialogue? What's your in a narrative? What are the stories? And you can do us like a stream of consciousness journaling exercise, just around that one question, you know, like maybe you want to start a business. So if you sit there and think about, Okay, I want to start this business, and da da da da, you will have stories that will instantly come up for you around oh I can't do that, someone else has done it. I don't have the money, I don't have the time. Yep. Write them all down. So that's step one, catch the story. The second step is to challenge the cognitive dissonance that we experience when with all of these narratives going on in our mind, so that we can interrupt this pattern and interrupt the rumination. And like I'm a simple person, the really simple way of doing that is just by asking the question is that true? Is that story true? And in some cases it may be true, great, write it down. In a lot of cases it won't be true. But it's keeping you stuck in this place that you don't want to be. And as we challenge that, we can really start to unpack and unravel what's actually going on here if I want to start the business, well, maybe I don't have the skills, but maybe I can learn, you know, the three that I really need or whatever it is, so that we can then get to step three, which is reframe interaction. And we've sort of unpacked that in a critic we really understand what's actually going on, not just the story that we're telling ourselves and we're not good enough, not smart enough, et cetera. And we can get to the action and then take the step. So that's my really simple it's deceptively simple because it's harder than it sounds, but it is that second piece around challenging. Is that true is completely life changing when you really work that model.

 

00:23:23

Kristina: Yeah, absolutely, because most of the time you can just change that story and regardless if it's true or not, you can actually then say, well, it is true, but then this is what I can do about that, because you know, you can't change the past, but you can certainly change the future, and then it's just kind of rewrite what would that look like now, even if it is true. So it's kind of always an art to move forward in my opinion.

 

00:23:46

Megan: And look, it gets easier as well, right like when I first started doing this work probably fifteen years ago, Like it would take me quite a long time to go through those three steps and like catch really like what's actually what's the narrative and dah da da dah go through it. Now I can mostly do that in thirty seconds or less. So last couple of weeks ago, I've just started my PhD. I'm doing it in the US, so it's fully virtual, but the classes are like three or six am because that's so much fun for me, because the tigers of being in Sydney. And I showed up to my first class and it was the night after my Melbourneook launch, so you can imagine finish that at eleven get you know, have like two hours sleep, get up at three am. And thirty percent of the grade is participation, like you have to have done all the readings, be able to analyze them, all the scholarly themes. So I'm sitting in this class listening is fifteen people listening to all of these brilliant people, and I just went quiet, and my inner critic is like, what are you doing here? You're not smart enough to be here. Don't say anything, You're going to sound so stupid. Like common narratives that women have. And because I've done this work, Like before, I would have just sat in those stories and I wouldn't have said anything. But because I've been, you know, doing this work for so long, I could Number one, notice, oh catch the story that I'm telling myself is that true? Well, yeah, I don't know everything, but I know enough. Reframe into action, speak, contribute to the class like you're here, so you know. It is a tool that you can practice, refined, practice refined, and then apply to any situation that you're in.

 

00:25:26

Kristina: Yeah, and I think so many people who are thinking of starting their own business is exactly the same. It's like you get excited and then when you actually get into reality. I felt exactly the same when I started my first business, and even the second business, the one I mean now, because then I had an amazing team that it was so much better than me in every level. So I was just like, starting it again was kind of hard. Even people said, well, you can do it ease, and I'm not really because I didn't do all of this. I did what I was good at. So but it's also a really great way of having that kind of growth mindset and that curious mind and you know I might not know it yet, but you know, all of us can learn if you want to. So yeah, love love that. So thank you for sharing your real life experience there, because you know it's so easy for everyone listening thinking that you know you have that special source, but you just demonstrated and it comes to all of us, which is to all.

 

00:26:25

Megan: Of us now. Yeah, like the world's never done, right, it's never done. We but we get better and we get more tools, and we have a greater level of self awareness and we know, well, if I this has happened, if I do this, this will work, and we cultivate that growth mindset and we get curious and yeah, it gets it gets better. But yeah it was I I was observing myself and just laughing on the inside, going oh, okay, yeah this is interesting.

 

00:26:53

Kristina: I love your comment with you know, it's never done. And that's why I love personal growth and personal development and working within that field because I always found something new to work on. There's always new dreams and new habits. I want to change and add and remove, etc. As I evolve as a person, and it's just so much fun. And if you have that mindset it's like just a fun lifetime to learn as much as we possibly can and enjoy the journey. And I was actually coaching last night and I was sharing how I after a morning walk the other day, I was thinking about that, it's never the destination. So when you get your PhD, that will be a nice tick off in terms of getting your life back, But the journey there is what's going to be the most rewarding. The ups and the downs and the hard, hard days and the good days and you know all those in between. But once you take it off, you feel great, But it's not going to be the highlight. It's going to be the journey and the people you meet and the things you learn and the mistakes you make.

 

00:27:50

Megan: Yeah, it's fascinating actually because I started a PhD ten years ago and back then because I did two master's degrees and I'm like, Okay, what's next, And because I love learning, it's one of my core strengths. And I'm curious and I yeah creative and you know all of that. And I started. I did about eighteen months and then my professor at the time said to me, Megan, like, you really just want to go write books like you don't need this. You don't need this PhD. Like, go write your books and do you're already a boyd, but you know you're already an expert. So and it just wasn't feeling right for me. And I was really doing it for the piece of paper back then, and so I stopped. And then I went and wrote a couple more books and founded a couple of businesses. But now it's not about the it's not about the PhD. I don't care about the PhD as the you know, three letters after my name. I'm doing it for the learning and the experience and the growth and the fascination that I have in the coursework and all the rest of it. So, yeah, you're one hundred percent right. It is about what is happening. And how like I in seven weeks, I've already changed, Like my perspectives change, my world's opened up. And that's seven weeks. That's what it's about for me. It's a beautiful thing.

 

00:29:10

Kristina: I love that. I want to talk about something else that comes up all the time when I speak to people, and that is the path of purpose. And I loved your I'm going to just read it quickly, so I read it so I say it in your way. There's a common misconception about purpose that comes up with women. I serve. They often think that we find our purpose, but the reality is something different. Purpose is something we built. And I absolutely love that because so many people ask about the purpose and it was just so good. So let's talk about that.

 

00:29:46

Megan: I love that. You love that so much? I love that too.

 

00:29:50

Kristina: Yeah.

 

00:29:50

Megan: I you know, since the Finding your Why came into the Zeigeist many many years ago, I have seen so many women and who are completely paralyzed by the discussion and the thought and the pressure and the overwhelmed that they feel because we haven't figured it out yet, you know. And in all of the research I've done on purpose, like that is the key underlining finding, which is we don't find it, we build it, and we do it by you know. The analogy that I use is picking up the bread crumbs, and that we see something that's interesting to us or that we're curious about, or we have a spark about, or we want to know more about. That's a bread where's the bread crumb? Right, pick it up? Where's the next bread crumb? Pick it up? And either we continue to spark that interest and excitement, or we decide, oh that's not the thing, or I got what I needed. We drop the bread crumb and then we go on to the next and that's how we build. And we build and we build, and we change and we shift, and we can have multiple purposes going on, and our purpose can be absolutely nothing to do with our day job as well. So I'm really trying to demystify and pull apart some of this so that women feel less pressure that well, if I haven't woken up and I've heard the booming voice that says, this is your purpose, like you're not missing anything. We need to be awake, We need to be curious and be really tuned into ourselves so that when we get that spark of oh, that's interesting to me, or oh I'm really curious about that. Oh I just got a flutter in my stomach because there's something there for me that we're tuned in enough to feel it, to hear it, and then we go take what that next right action is, and it.

 

00:31:51

Kristina: Can be really small.

 

00:31:53

Megan: My first bread crumb on my path to becoming an author was being in New York around the back streets of Soho, completely lost, stumbling upon back in the day, a big, beautiful bookstore, and the whole front window was all of these books around being a nonfiction author, right, there are no accidents. I was put there and I just I'd never thought about writing a book, and I got this flutter and I was like, oh, that's interesting. I wonder what that's about. And I walked in. I think I spent like three hours in that book store, and I was looking at all these books for nonfiction authors, and I bought a book how to Write a Nonfiction Book. And that was a breadcrumb. I could have just as easily walked past, you know, But that was like I didn't even know all of this back then, but that was the Ah, there's something there for me around this. Go take a small step toward it, and then see what happens. So that's the building piece that I think so important.

 

00:32:58

Kristina: Yeah, I absolutely, It's not like we just wake up one day and just have it served. I think that bread crumb theory is a really good one because that means that we can look at so many different things. And for me, like I often pinch myself because I have a book club and we're going to read your book in the book club next year. But I always think, gosh, I get to do this for work, read you know, personal development books, and then discuss it and call that work. And that's why I want to inspire one hundred and one million people to write down three dreams, because you know, I started a business there has nothing to do with books, and now I'm kind of doing and I'm doing multiple things. I still have a stationary brand. I still do so many different things. But and even with my podcast, having to read your book, which is like having to it's like I choose to do, but calling that work, like I have a whole pile of books that I want to read for the podcast specifically, and I just find that absolutely amazing and waking up and getting excited. But what you get to do, I think, you know, that's what a purpose should be all about. And you know that can mean so many different things, and as you said, we evolve over over the years and it changes.

 

00:34:10

Megan: I love that the way that you express that. And the thing I also love about building your purpose rather than finding your purpose is that we have agency over that we're in control, and we may not be in control about when things happen and how they happen, and you know, there's you know, the universe will deliver what the universe delivers. But it is absolutely within our power to be tuned into ourselves to watch and to listen and to what do I think about this? What do I feel about this? And to follow the things that interest and excite us and that we're curious about. That is all within our power. And I love that for us.

 

00:34:54

Kristina: Love it, Love it. The other thing that I love is you talk about prioritizing in your career.

 

00:35:02

Megan: How do we do that? This is one of the big questions. And I didn't realize what a big question this was. I thought it was a throwaway question. In the first lesson of my Women Rising program, which is like a four months really deep journey, and one of the questions I put in there around the life vision work was if you followed the joy in your life and your career, what would you do next? And it was one of like twenty questions. Like we've now had nearly ten thousand women go through this program, and it is the question that stumps women more than anything else. Twenty seven lessons, It's the question and it has been the same for me. Right Like I think we just were so busy all of the time, and we're doing the doing, and we're taking care of people, and we're following our purpose and we're doing all of that these things. And one of the things that I think gets lost unless you're specifically wired for joy things are very small percentage of people, is we lose those moments. And not only do we lose those moments, but we don't actively cultivate those moments of joy in our days, in our weeks, in our rituals. And so it were just on the treadmill, you know, treadmill running, running, running. So I think the work around this is number one. Ask the question, and we can ask this ongoingly, like anytime you're doing any type of visioning or purpose work and I'm about to go through a whole wave of this myself going into a new season, is yeah, Like, if it was all about the joy, what would I choose? What would I choose in my personal life? What would I choose in my business? Rather than just well, this is the way it is, we can interrupt that pattern by saying, well, what are the ten things that would bring me joy? What are the two things that would bring me joy? What if I and just like sit in the space and the possibility of that. So I think it's a really powerful tool. And then how do I cultivate that? You know, where is the joy where? And where is the joy right now? And how do I cultivate more of those moments so that they build into a joyful life, not just a life that's on repeat.

 

00:37:32

Kristina: Yeah, I so agree with that. I am. One of my joys is spending time in nature. So I love walking because when I walk or run, that's where all my ideas come. They never come just sitting done at my desk ever, And and it's amazing because so many people do not take time for whatever that is. It might not be walking, am I just being having a coffee? Even my I have these rituals. I have a morning ritual, but the around eight o'clock on kids have gone to school and their house is empty. I love quiet, So I then sit down because I do all my morning which you're like running or walking, and then my journeying and all those kind of things early, and then I come home and I do my kids lunches and all those kind of things, breakfast, et cetera. And then when they when the house is empty. I sit down for five minutes and I have my coffee. I love coffee, so I get so excited to look forward to that. And I sit for five minutes, no phone, no journal, no book, and no podcast, nothing to silence. And those five minutes seems very long, because it's when you do nothing. Five minutes seems very long. But it's one of those things where I just kind of flooded with gratitude. I just feel like this is the best and seems so simple. Sometimes people say, well, you know, what did you do today that brought you joy? And I'm like having my coffee on my own room, But because you have time to think, And I think so many of us are so busy, and we feel and if we're not busy, we feel our quiet moments like that with the phone or watching the news or checking emails. And you know, I'm guilty of that as well. But I am sticking to my five minutes in the morning for sure, because it just give me so much joy. And also that those nature walks and I always make time because I like to walk a couple of times a day, but just because all my ideas come, so it's kind of I've I did a podcast called My One Million Dollar Walk because I come up with a million dollar business ideas on my walks and it's amazing. So I so agree with finding that joy, whatever that is, but not just in work and in business, but also in our lives because I love reading. So for me, like having a whole day in bed reading, especially on a rainy day, that's like brings me joy. And some people will be like, that's the most boring thing that I've ever heard of.

 

00:39:53

Megan: Yes, I'm the same. If you could see my desk. The best thing about doing my study is like the reading is it's ridiculous, like too much reading, but fifty if it's the best excuse to ever buy books and just sit around and read all day. I love what you said about the five minutes because I think another misconception that a lot of women have is that these rituals and practices that we want to cultivate have to be these big things. You know, it's got to be, Oh, you need an hour to meditate and you need you don't five minutes. For me, it's my chi. So five minutes with your coffee and my chi is an absolute moment of joy that can change, Like we know, it changes our biology, our chemistry, our brain, everything. So I'm always looking as well for like, how do you shrink the change? And what's the smallest step. What's the smallest thing that you could do to cultivate whatever it is that you want joy or peace or gratitude. Gratitude's a great pathway to joy. Yeah, small small things. I love your five minutes. Yeah, perfect, great things. So the other thing that obviously you were very much into well being already, but in the book we talk, you talk about how do we create intentional wellbeing? Do you want to just give us some ideas on how we can do that? Yes. So the first the first piece around intentional wellbeing, and I've learned all of this the hard way, so it's all tried and true and tested lessons are now tested with thousands and thousands of women, is to tune in. You know, I think for a lot of us, wellbeing can be a cognitive experience, Like it's a cognitive exercise. Well, I know I need to sleep, and I know I need to drink water, and I know I da but it's not embodied. And when it's not embodied, it's very hard to practice to motivate to make you know something sticky so that we actually do it. So the first question I always love to ask is like how do you feel right now? And you notice I just put my hand on my heart just instinctively, like how do I feel right now? And what do I need right now? And like this morning, I got up, I was awake very early, not by choice. I just woke up just before the sun came up, and I was like, okay, I'm going to go for a walk, put my you know, because I was walk in the mornings and I was just feeling tired, like bodily tired. So I was like, no, no, no, I'm not going to do I'm going to go sit on my yoga mat and I'm just going to do some really gentle like what do you need? Not you know, on route, like what do you need right now? And then what are the things that are going to make the most difference for you around your well being? Because you don't need fifty things, you probably need three things. You know. Is it more sleep, is it more hydration, is it more greens in your diet? Is it more laughter with your girlfriends? Yeah? Like is it? It's certainly meditation that's my big thing, like what do you need? And then how do you make that happen? How do you break it down so it's small enough to fit in to what are very busy lives and do it consistently Because I remember when I was back in my corporate days in my mid thirties, single mom, doing my first master's degree, I completely burned myself out, like I had no tools, and it like wrecked me completely on all levels of my well being. And then I overcomplicated it for a long time as well. And now it's I have a very deep spiritual practice, but I also have very simple wellbeing rituals. There's some things that just happen every day. Sit and meditate, do your careers, you know, go for walk, do those things. But it's really based on like how do I feel and what do I need? And that can be challenging for us as women. Really I would selfish and it's this and I don't have time and all of the things. We have to make space for ours ours.

 

00:44:02

Kristina: Yeah, And I always say the more we focus on ourselves, especially in the morning, because that's often the time where we don't get to interrupt it. If we're up early, enough that the especially if you have young kids, et cetera. If you're just really focusing on you first thing, then you're such a so much better for everyone else around you, not just your family, but your friends and your community and your work and even the world. So I think focusing on ourselves is a is a vital component to be a good human.

 

00:44:31

Megan: Yes, I think we overestimate how long it takes. So sitting down for five minutes of meditation, even if you don't call it that, sit someway, close your eyes, scent to yourself, on your body, put one hand on your heart, another hand on your belly, feel your body and breathe. That will change your energy for the entire day, just by doing that for five minutes. So yeah, shrink the change, Shrink and shrink it. Find find something that works, and do it early. Yes.

 

00:45:01

Kristina: Yeah, I have a habit club because I just always love changing habits and adding and removing and challenge myself on things that I find difficult. And I used to drag all my friends into Messenger group and no one really wanted to be there. So now I have an official group that anyone can join and we are doing one hundred days. So from the twenty third of September, we were doing one hundred days just focusing on one habit, one small habit that we will do daily to finish the year strong. And it was funny because my big goal for this year is to get one hundred and four keynotes, so a lot. But I like dreaming big. So even if I do half of that, I'm going to be kind to myself and see that as success. But I just don't want to. I don't like dreaming what I can achieve because then I just don't make the efforts the same way versus if I do a big one like one hundred and four, which feels impossible, I just think outside the square and I love that challenge anyway. I then decided I need to finish this year strong to have some bookings for twenty twenty five, and so I decided to do seven outreach to businesses. I'm miss speaking by default, never being a keynote a focus keynote speaker, but I am going to do that now. So then I thought, I'm going to reach out to businesses and previous places I've spoken up seven a day, and then I was like seven a day was too much, so I kindot, you know, I said to everyone, break it down, break it down, and then I was like, actually, I should listen to my own advice. And now I do two a day and just feels. And then once you've done it those two and the importance of breaking it down is just absolutely vital because it needs to be so easy that you can keep up with it even on your most busy days, and then you can always add to it, like meditation the same. It's like you can do meditation for two minutes and fear amazing, and then you can just add to it if you feel like you need longer.

 

00:46:50

Megan: Yes, yes, I love that, And I love that you lowered the bar for yourself because often we're like, oh, no, I said it, and I'm going to keep it and I'm going to do it, and then it's too hard so we quit, right. I love that. I love that you brought it down to two genius.

 

00:47:08

Kristina: Yeah, and that's really manageable. And we speak about this in the in the habit club all the time just to kind of what do we need to do? You know, consistency is more important and intensity, and once you've got the consistently kicked off, you can then add to it and make it more intense if you if you need to and want to.

 

00:47:26

Megan: Yeah, it's so true. And it builds out confidence, right, which low was our inner critic.

 

00:47:31

Kristina: It was the same when I started running. I you know, I just never really liked running, and then I just started with running one minute and then I added and then all of a sudden, you can run. You get the confidence, and then you get the obviously the fitness for it, and then just added to it, added to it. So yeah, love that way of looking at it. This has been so inspiring. I want to finish off with a couple of quicker question. One is do you have a morning ritual? And if yes, body is it?

 

00:47:58

Megan: I do? So. My morning ritual is typically get up, obviously, and it'll be some form of meditation mantra to a lot of like jupp Art practice with my mala some creers which is a particular type of action yoga and a walk and a bit of gentle stretching restorative yoga in there as well. And in summer, every morning at the beach.

 

00:48:27

Kristina: Yeah, yeah, beautiful, beautiful, And this will be a very difficult question for you, but I'd love to know have you got a favorite nonfiction book, or if that's too hard, a book that had a very big impact on your life.

 

00:48:45

Megan: So the one that comes to mind is A Woman's Worth by Mary and Williamson, so that I read that when I was like twenty three, and it was the first spark that I had around women, women's empowerment, goddess. She was the first time I'd ever heard someone speak about the goddess and you know, women as goddesses. It's still one of my favorite books, but also had a really profound, subtle and long term impact on me and you know, my work and my views in the world.

 

00:49:16

Kristina: Ye love that. Thank you for sharing that.

 

00:49:19

Megan: It is hard. That's a hard question. I could have gone fifty different ways with that, but yeah, that one.

 

00:49:27

Kristina: You can give us one more if you want to. Most people say I can't do one, I'll do two. So if you have another one in mind.

 

00:49:33

Megan: The other one that's coming up is The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdoch. So she's a Youngian analyst and psychotherapist who created this journey of the Heroine's Journey. Mostly we hear about the Hero's Journey from Joseph Campbell. They were colleagues, and she said, your journey does not address women's lives and women's spiritual journeys. So she came up with that with the Heroin's journey like back in the eighties, and I write about it in most of my books. It's such a profound way of looking at women's journeys and the feminine and the masculine and yeah, how just how we are made up. So that would be my one.

 

00:50:12

Kristina: Beautiful thank you for sharing. So knowing what you know, now, what kind of advice would you give to your younger self, say your late teens or early twenties.

 

00:50:25

Megan: Oh my goodness, what would I say? I would say keep writing, because I had this break from like my late teens to about forty. I didn't write a word other than PowerPoint presentation. Yeah, yeah, that's one thing I would say, keep writing, And yeah, just trust yourself more. I think as well, like tune in and trust yourself rather than just following whatever the path is.

 

00:50:56

Kristina: Yeah. Love that. What and to this super inspiring conversation, Thank you so much first for writing this incredible book. I'll obviously link to it in the show notes. And I have added to my very long list of books for the book Club for Growth, so I'll let you know when that happens. And thank you so much for coming. I know you live a very full life and they've got lots going on right now, so thank you for taking the time to come on my podcast today.

 

00:51:26

Megan: Thank you so much. I love our conversation. I love everything that you do and who you are, so thank you for having me on.

 

00:51:31

Kristina: Thank you. Wow, that was so inspiring. Highly recommend reading her book so you can go deeper. We will link to it in the show notes. As always, I will be back on Monday with a new Monday Morning Motivation episode. I'll see you then.