Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 0:01
PH, are you like most women, caught in an endless loop of over giving and giving yourself away? There are five lies that keep women over giving, and I'm going to cover all of them in this episode, as well as ways to break free from each of them. Now this is the second in my mini series on the over giving recovery protocol. So if you missed the first one, go back and listen. But if you are ready to bust through those five myths, let's begin now. Welcome to the satisfied woman podcast. I'm your host. Alanna Kaivalya. This podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and rediscover the power of their feminine gifts. We take a look at what it means to be a modern woman and how we can live a satisfied life on our own terms. Visit the hub at the satisfiedwoman.com or pick up your copy of the way of the satisfied woman. And for you my podcast listeners, I've created a three part feminine reset series that I want you to go snag at the satisfiedwoman.com this is both audio or video, so you can take it on the go with you, and it's a three part series designed just for this to stop over giving to push reset on your femininity and center yourself in that graceful, creative energy that is the essence of who you really are, who you really are. So go grab the feminine reset series at the satisfied woman.com and I'll definitely see you on the inside of that. Now, it is no mystery that women in this culture are trained to give themselves away to a fault, to a deficit. We are actually really raised to believe that we should say yes to everything, that we should never deny anyone that our jobs are to just continue to do everything for everyone else and ourselves at all times, and to do it better than everybody else. And you know what, ladies, it's gotta stop because it's actually not doing anyone a service when we give ourselves away, not only are we depleted of our own energy, we are betraying ourselves. We're betraying our own needs, and we're teaching those around us that that's okay, that it's okay to put our needs last, that we don't matter, that our voice doesn't need to be heard. Well, it does, and as soon as you stop the over giving, you'll inspire and support other women around you and the younger ones coming up after you to do the same thing. It's not just self preservation, it's literal preservation of all women everywhere. I know that sounds like a heavy burden, but it's not. Let's lighten it up and lift it and stop the over giving, because that weight doesn't need to fall on us anymore. So I've uncovered five lies that we are told all the time. I mean, from you know, you'll probably know that in the core of who you are, that these lies started for you really early. It's just general cultural training and look, quick disclaimer, guys, there's no one to blame here. The culture is what the culture is. It is the patriarchy. It's been around for anywhere between three and 8000 years. It's ingrained within us. It's embedded into our psyche. It's just alive everywhere. There's no one to blame. It's nobody's fault, right? Most people don't even really know that they're participating in it. So let's just give everyone some grace. And part of the work that we do here at the satisfied woman is number one. Certainly give ourselves grace, but also give ourselves the support in rewriting those patterns, changing those underlying belief systems that have been imbued into us, and alerting those around us that they can change too. They won't know it in a vacuum, and I get that it's even more emotional labor on our part to try and alert them to the fact but the people that love us, they will want to support us if they know that we are absolutely burning ourselves out and that we're dysregulated and that we're more prone to autoimmune disorders and inflammatory diseases because of the constantly applied low grade stress, they're not going to want to perpetuate that. So it starts with us, and then it starts by influencing those around us, because truly, everybody benefits when women thrive. Those are facts. They just are. Research is actually starting to show that because women are the emotional reg. Laters of their households, their families, their relationships, when we are unhappy, when we are stressed out, it trickles down and outward. The greatest predictor of a person's ability to have resilience and emotional intelligence was the happiness of the mother in the household when they were growing up. Now, that's wild. That's wild. That literally brings to life that old saying, If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. Okay, well, Mama, you're listening. So for all women everywhere, this level of self care is critical. It actually influences everyone around us. If we constantly do everything for everyone else, it teaches them that they don't have to do anything. And we have a generation of people that believe that they can just sit back and the woman will do it for them. We're training this burnout. We're training this over giving so look, it stops here. It just does. It stops here, and it stops with you, and it stops by recognizing these lies. Okay, so the first lie, the first lie, is that saying yes, keeps you safe. Now, if we think back in a long history of human beings, women were kept safe through belonging, belonging to their tribe, belonging to their community, as long as they belonged, then they were protected and cared for. Now I know women are badass and we can hunt, we can take care of ourselves and protect ourselves, but it is an exhausting effort for a woman of any age in any time or place to hold 100% of the space of trying to protect herself and also be a feminine woman. It can be done. We can be we can do it for short spurts, for sure, but women throughout the ages have learned that there is great benefit for us in belonging and that keeps us safe. So it's turned into this performance, this over giving that if we just say yes, then we'll be needed. And when we're needed, we're not discarded. When we're needed, we belong. When we're needed, we're protected. So as long as they need us, as long as we keep doing things for them, whoever they are, and really it could be anybody and everybody that we will be indispensable. Unfortunately, that's actually not true. You know, as well as I do, that over giving and depleting yourself drains you, and at some point you miss the beat. And if you've trained the world around you to only need you because you over give the moment you miss the beat, the moment you drop the ball, the moment you don't do the thing, the moment you shut down, burn out, become tired, fly off the handle, because you just can't take it anymore, you will be discarded. If you've shown the world that your only value exists in your yes, then no one around you will understand the power and the value of your no. So let me tell you about the power of your No, because that's going to bust this lie, that's going to bust through this lie. So a woman's no is the most valuable statement she can issue. It's what keeps her boundaried, and it's what creates the container for her receptivity. Femininity is receptive. It's meant to take in. It's meant to take on. It's meant to receive with gratitude, what is given, what is provided. That's where we get abundance. So I talk about business a lot. I do a lot of one on one coaching, particularly for people women specifically, I only coach women building small businesses, building their own sovereign businesses, primarily online. Women make money differently. Women run businesses differently. We just do. We just do? We ask for abundance. We call in abundance. We use our creativity to create something that was never there before. We monetize our magic, and then we call in the abundance. We don't go chasing after it. When those around you see your value, because you are in your feminine power, because you are a sovereign woman, and you bring value that way.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 9:58
You hold your nose. Oh, and they say yes to you. They say yes to you by offering that abundance, or by buying your online course, or whatever you're creating. They say yes to you by saying, Gosh, Mom, I can see how much you do already in your life or in this house, I'll start doing the laundry. You know what, baby, you look tired. I can see you're exhausted from all the creative effort you put forth today. Let me make dinner. Your value is built when you are boundaried and issue your clear. No, it if you're always saying yes, it's it's not just a watering down in a dilution of your energy, but it's essentially putting holes in your receptivity container, and you are drained, and then you are no good to anyone. So saying yes does not keep you safe. Saying yes is one of the fastest paths to burnout, and it devalues you to the world, to your family, to your community. So we gotta shift that and start really holding our No. And if you want to know how to say your No, I have an embodied no practice that I teach to everyone in my rooted membership and all my coaching clients, but I'm giving it to you in that feminine reset series. So make sure you go snag it at the satisfied woman.com it's for you. It's free. Grab it. Remember it's audio or video. So you can take it on the go. I know you're busy, but I've made it so that you can really consume this important information, because if no one's ever told you that your value lies in your no and your job is to be receptive. My friend, welcome to The Game Changer. All right. Lie Number two, right? We got five total. So number one, saying yes, keeps you safe. It does not. It's actually incredibly dangerous. Lie Number two is that you have to earn your rest. Earn your rest. So I remember when I got my first job, and my grandmother, and y'all know how important my grandmother is to me, right? I dedicated my book to her the way of the satisfied woman. She came to this country in 1956 she only knew two words of English, and someone was graceful enough to give her a job. She had no she had no education. I don't even know that she made it through like third grade, and her job was to keep the coffee and the break room clean at the American crystal sugar factory and to make copies, because before there were Xerox machines, there were people like my grandmother who ran the coffee machines. So that was her job, and she took such pride in her job. It was her one sovereign space in the world, and that break room was sparkling, and the engineers loved her so much that every time a new factory was built, they would come to her and say, Maria, we finished another one, because she would have made all the blueprints. Now this was a 1950s and 60s work ethic, and my grandmother was working for I think she started at 25 cents an hour, and she was due to arrive at work at 8am and she would leave at five, but she would arrive every day at 730 and she would stay until everyone else was out of the office, because somewhere along the line, my grandmother did not learn that she didn't have to earn her rest, that her job is not to give herself away, that eight to five is exactly what was needed of her more was not required, and in those additional hours she put at work, my mom was left home alone to take care of her sister. Now I don't judge obviously my mom or my grandmother or any part of this story. I share it because it's woven into the belief system of our culture that these things are okay, and this is just what women do. We don't need to earn our rest. Women need to rest and again, I don't mean check out. I don't mean sit around on the chaise lounge eating the bonbons. Okay, but I do love that we have a lot of work to do, but we can't do the work if we're over tired. We can't do the work if we're constantly burnt out. We can't do the work with a dysregulated nervous system. When we have a dysregulated nervous system, which I talked about in the first episode in this series, it's going to cut off our. Creativity, the feminine woman can really only tap into her creativity when she is in her full feminine power. She can only tap in her creativity when she has a built when she's able to feel pleasure, when you are under a constantly applied low grade stress that is not available to you. You cannot force creativity. And if you are stressed out, you are going to try to force creativity, and nothing good comes of that. So you must rest. You don't need to earn it. You don't have to work harder than everybody else in order to finally have two seconds at the end of the day to give yourself, I don't know, a bath or a face wash. You do that first. You do that first, because everyone in your world needs you rested so that you can issue your creativity. You pH rest first. In the first episode in this series, I recommended an after work Shavasana. I love that I'm a recovering yoga teacher. So shavasana is that corpse pose that you do at the end of a class for 10 minutes. Do it at the end of your day. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Lay on the bed, do nothing. Shut yourself off from the world. Give yourself a chance to just breathe. Rest first. Don't earn it. Let everyone else earn your effort. Okay, Lie Number three, boundaries make you a bitch. You know what? As part of my rooted membership for women, I give you access to all my online courses, and one of my online courses is called, stop calling us crazy, because there are some things that this culture constantly calls women in order to try to keep us small and devalued. One of them is crazy. We have any kind of emotional response, we're illogical, we're irrational, we're crazy, and we're immediately invalidated. Another is bitch. When women have ideas, when women have energy, when women show up, when they push back, that's uncomfortable for people. We have been taught from a very early age to absorb the bad behavior of those around us, and particularly the unhealthy masculine. Oh, they didn't mean it. Oh, that's just locker room talk. Oh, it's fine. Boys will be boys. And as soon as we push back and we say, That's not acceptable, actually, I have needs. No that's not okay with me, we're shut down with harsh words like bitch or crazy boundaries. Don't make you a bitch. They make you boundaried. And you know what boundaries do? They keep everyone safe. Here's a visual for you. Imagine children in a schoolyard, and there's no fence. There's busy streets all around now, the kids have some sense that on those busy streets there are cars, and cars can be dangerous, so they don't want to go near those but there's no fences, so they don't know where they can play or where it's safe. They don't know who's going to come into the space. They don't know who's going to go out of the space. And so they all just huddle in the middle, and they don't play, they don't rest. And one day, somebody comes along and puts fences up, gives boundaries to their space, and now they know they're safe. No one's going to come in. That's not unwarranted. They know they won't wander out onto the dangerous streets, and because of those boundaries, they actually are able to explore that entire playground and express themselves fully boundaries keep everyone safe. For the feminine woman, your boundaries are created through your clear no and your clear yes, but absolutely your clear, no, no will make others uncomfortable. It's okay, not for them. That's their issue. Their discomfort is not your problem. They want to call you bitch. I know it hurts. I remember when I was a little girl, there was that saying Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I remember I had a bully, actually a really horrible bully. In seventh grade. I missed so many days of school that year because of the bully that my parents got a warning, actually, luckily, I was a high achieving student, so it's not like I was slipping back grades wise, but words do hurt. They hurt.
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 19:59
So if. Someone thinks it's okay to say these things to you, then I invite you to heavily curate your life, which I often do for women. Please curate. If people cannot step up and into the boundaries that you create, it might be time to fire them, or at least create even stronger boundaries around how much time you spend with them and what kind of energy you give. Okay, Lie Number four, if you don't do it, it won't get done. Now, this one, I'm definitely talking to the mothers out there, but I'm also talking to all the women who overdue for everyone else in order to be needed? This lie, this lie is interesting. If you don't do it, it won't get done because what it is is control. Now we typically think of being controlling as like a negative thing, right? That control is power. It's malicious. But for the feminine woman, control is often safety. Again, it's a way to control the space in order to make sure it's safe. So one of the examples I use often because, honestly, it was just such a successful example with one of my private coaching clients for her safety came in cleanliness around the house, and I understand that when the house is clean, you feel safe, you feel comfortable. She worked from home. She needed it to be decluttered so that she could do her work properly. And her husband, of more than 10 years, just wasn't on board. He wasn't he wasn't clean, and he didn't clean. So she did, and I told her, I said, this is a way for you to keep control. You won't even let him clean, you know? So we went through the scenario, what's the worst that could happen if you just don't clean. And she said, like, the lie states it won't get done. If you don't, if I don't do it, it won't get done. And I said, Okay, well, what happens if it doesn't get done? Well, you know, I'll be stressed out. I'll be anxious. What will really happen? And for her, the consequence of an unclean in this case, kitchen, would mean that she wouldn't feel safe to go in there and cook dinner that evening. And I said, Great, get Domino's on speed dial. You're not cooking dinner. If that kitchen's not clean, dinner's not up to you, there will be, I guarantee, growing pains. As soon as you stop overdoing, for everyone else, they expect you to do it, and your level of control means that you're going to keep doing it. I need you to stop. Just stop if you don't have in your body a clear yes, and I mean a fully regulated Yes. Okay, we often say yes from dysregulation, out of fear, if it feels like fear in your body, if doing the thing, if saying yes to the thing feels tense, compressive, oppressive, suppressive, if it feels heavy, if it gives you that tightness in your body, that is not a yes, that's fear. That's Oh my god, if I, if I, if I don't do it, if I let this go, I will be unsafe. Something will happen. They won't see me as valuable. I won't be included. I'll be discarded. Let it happen. Stop picking the socks up off the floor. Well, then they won't have any socks. No, they probably won't have any socks. Honestly, at some point, they'll either just go sockless or they'll finally do the laundry. But it is not your responsibility. You actually take away the ability for others to step up and in for you, if you just do it all for them. And one of the things about femininity is receptivity. We want to receive for the feminine. Receptivity is gratitude. We feel gratitude when we are receiving and for the masculine that providership is generosity. They feel generous when they provide, but if you just do everything, there's nothing to provide. It's one of the things that puts women into a hyper masculine state, and I talk about this in my book, The Way of the satisfied woman. A lot the donning the mask of the masculine. If you want to stop, then you got to start by stopping. You got to drop the mask. There are just things that you no longer do. They don't serve you, and they don't serve them. They can be done by someone else. And look, if they're not. Done by someone else, and they're just not done that's also okay. So this brings me to lie number five, that asking for help equals failure. Sister, I feel this one with you, because I was raised in that era of believing that as women, not only can we do everything and anything we want, but we should, and we should also do it for everyone else at the same time and better than everyone else you know. Don't let anything stop you. You can be anything you want. You don't need anyone else. Look it's a it's an exhausting narrative, and it actually does us a disservice, because as human beings, we're wired for connection. We're wired for mutuality, and particularly the feminine woman. We need connection. We need collaboration. We need mutuality. We need reciprocity to thrive. Remember that old evolutionary model is still ingrained within our DNA, within our biology, within our psychology, that belonging equals safety. Now that's true for every human on the planet. I'm saying it's extraordinarily true for the feminine woman, and that belonging comes with that connection, that we actually have support, we actually have collaboration. Again. The feminine is receptive. Help is receptivity. We are actually failing ourselves by thinking we have to do it all ourselves. Now I'm not just empowering anybody here. Okay, some of the best advice I ever received as a young woman was make sure that you live alone for a few years so you know how to do it, so that's never held over your head, so that you know you can take care of business, you understand what the world needs and is and how to navigate it. That was amazing advice. I just took it too personally and stayed alone for far too long. Aloneness wasn't the point sovereignty was the point independence was the point confidence was the point aloneness wasn't. Aloneness isn't power. Aloneness is isolation and disconnection. I don't recommend it, asking for help means inviting people into your world, opening up that container of receptivity and allowing them to support you. It feels good to them. Feels good to you, and it actually for women, creates greater abundance and more success. If you look at how feminine businesses are run, and I know I've spent the last 10 plus years coaching women one on one in building their online sovereign businesses. Then you know that when a woman is sovereign, when she is running a thing, doing a thing, and asking for help, everyone benefits sovereign. Women, successful women, their businesses aren't so low endeavors. They're collaborative. They're connective. I know without a shadow of a doubt, and the research shows that when I help a woman build a business, she's going to be helping other women. She's going to build a business that supports others. She's going to build a business that is fair and thriving within her community. She's going to ask for help. She's going to raise other people up and in that everyone succeeds. So ask for help. Receive the generosity, receive the abundance, receive the support. So those are our five lies. These are the traps that keep us in this over giving that keep us diminished, tired, burnt out, dysregulated. Let's stop believing them. Lie. Number one, saying yes, keeps you safe. Nope, you are powerful. No, creates boundaries and keeps you safe. Line Number two, you have to earn your rest. Nope, you start with rest so that everyone in the whole world can earn your creativity. Line Number three, boundaries make you a bitch. Boundaries keep everyone safe, including you. Line Number
Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 29:28
four, if you don't do it, it won't get done that's probably true, at least for a while, but stop doing it anyway and let them rise. Line Number five, asking for help equals failure. No asking for help is the source of your success, and if you want to start stepping into your success, if you want that help, come join me in my online membership rooted. That's where women like you and me are learning to thrive, to succeed, to stop over giving, to end the cycle of burnout. We. Have daily prompts that keep us in our feminine flow. We have a community of women just like you. I go live in there several times a month with talks like this. Do Hot Seat coaching, have Q and A and I help you with what you're going through now. And it starts with that feminine reset series, which you can get for free at my website, the satisfied woman.com I hope to see you on the inside of one or both of those things, and I definitely hope that whatever you do that you walk the way of the satisfied woman. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
