Feel Lost In Life? Here’s Exactly How to Find Your Purpose (For Real) | Kirsty Gallagher

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 What is purpose?

Kirsty Gallagher 0:01 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:01 And what is it that gets in the way of us finding our own?

Kirsty Gallagher 0:06 So I always come with a really big kind of spoiler alert when I talk about purpose, because your purpose, honestly, is to be you. It's to be who you came here to be. And so I think we've labeled purpose as some big elusive thing out there that one day we might find, and when we finally find it, we'll be happy and our life will be the way that we want it to be. And so we constantly search for purpose outside of us. So we look for it in our job, or in status, or in relationships, or in money, or houses, or cars, or whatever it may be. We look for it in the material world, and we're never gonna find it out there because none of that is who we truly are. So your purpose is to be the you that you came here to be, to offer to the world what only you can offer. So the biggest thing that gets in the way of purpose is, is you. Because the whole time we're trying to be someone that we're not, or we're trying to act in certain ways that we think we should, we're kind of strangling the very life force energy that makes us who we are, and therefore gives us purpose in life. Now, the other things I like to mention with purpose is that we also think our

Kirsty Gallagher 1:06 purpose needs to be our job. Your purpose doesn't need to be your job. Your job is allowed to be somewhere that you go to earn money, to pay the bills, and then you can find purpose outside of that. So your purpose may be to be a parent-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19 ... to raise the next generation. Your purpose may be to do charity work or work with animals. Your purpose may be to tend to a beautiful garden so that everyone that walks past that garden gets joy and upliftment and smiles because they see something so beautiful.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34 Mm-hmm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:35 It's likely that you may start to do your purpose down the line, because when we find what it is that we're here to do, we want to share it and teach it, and that's also part of our purpose. That everything that we go through in life is leading us to more and more purpose. So if we could view purpose as, rather than being this one big thing out there, if we could view the way you go to your job as your purpose, the way you navigate difficult times in life as your purpose, the way you show up every day-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:01 Mm-hmm

Kirsty Gallagher 2:01 ... is your purpose, that in itself would help us to find more purpose.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:07 Yeah, I love that. There's so many really beautiful options there to help people think about purpose, I think, a little bit differently.

Kirsty Gallagher 2:15 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:15 I think one of the things that I've observed over the last few years is there's more awareness of purpose and how important it is.

Kirsty Gallagher 2:22 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:22 And, you know, I've looked at the research on purpose and, and, and, and it's very clear that people with a strong sense of purpose are happier, they're healthier, they live longer. But I think it does feel quite elusive to many people.

Kirsty Gallagher 2:36 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:36 It's like, yeah, but my... I'm, I'm just busy with work and just keeping a roof over my head, you know, how can I possibly find time to find my purpose?

Kirsty Gallagher 2:44 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:45 Right? So I, I really like the way you broadened it out there. As you were talking, I guess the follow-up that came into my mind was, is purpose then something we do or something that we are?

Kirsty Gallagher 2:58 Something that we are. For me, purpose is something that you are. You, you have to find it within you. The only thing that's gonna give you true meaning and purpose in life is when you're doing things that feel purposeful and meaningful to you, and that's gonna be different for all of us. And so for me, the more you can become who you authentically and truly are, the more you will then live a life of purpose. And then as I mentioned, you might start to do more of that by teaching it or sharing it. And so a prime example is that my purpose right now is to show up as part of this podcast, fully, truly, authentically me, and give you every part of me that I've got. That's my purpose right now. If I was sitting here now trying to say to you what I thought you wanted me to say, or what I thought your audience wanted me to say, I wouldn't be being all of me, and therefore the words I'm speaking, they wouldn't land in the same way. Whereas, if I can show up now, and I can be fully me, and I can give you everything I've got, and I can share my experiences with you, that's how then it's gonna land. And if I touch the hearts of one or two people today who make one tiny change in their life because of something we've said, that's my purpose. I'm here to serve and to help people. So I've then fulfilled my purpose by being me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:10 You said your purpose is to be here and serve people. Okay. It's ki- kind of interesting for me to unpick that.

Kirsty Gallagher 4:17 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:19 Is there a danger perhaps that if we say that our purpose is to serve people, that we can inadvertently be doing things for external validation, right? Because it could be... You were saying some really beautiful things there. So you were saying that, "If I say to you, Rangan, things that I think your audience want to hear from me," in some ways, you would actually have met the goal of helping those people, right? You might have said something really insightful that then helps them, but you may have changed who you are in order to do that. There's a, there's a subtlety there, isn't there?

Kirsty Gallagher 4:58 There is. And then would I have landed the goal? Because everyone knows when we hear words that aren't authentically true. We all know. There's a part of us that knows when someone is trying to say something-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:09 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 5:09 ... that they think we want to say, or when something isn't coming from a depth of experience and embodiment. We all know when someone's just a wordsmith and just saying all the right words, but there isn't a depth that has been lived and fully experienced. So a lot of our purpose comes through our lived experience, where we go through certain things in our life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:27 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 5:27 And I believe that everything we go through in life is helping to take us to more purpose, because I can only sit here now and share with you things from my own personal experience, what I've experienced, how I've learned and grown and evolved on my journey of life that's then taken me towards more purpose. Now, my purpose is to serve others. That might not be yours. It might not be anyone else who's watching this. So that's why it's important that we find our unique individual purpose and what makes us feel most purposeful and alive.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:57 Yeah. I love that. That... And I guess the reason I pause on that, um, and sort of try to explore it, is because I was chatting to my team last week about this podcast.

Kirsty Gallagher 6:06 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:06 Okay? The, the team who help me put this show out every week. And-There was just a, a throwaway comment from someone about, you know, you're doing this to help people. You know, what, what is it the audience wants, okay? Um, let's think about how we can or how I can give the audience what they want, and I said, "Well, hold on a minute. I get what you're saying, but the way I serve the audience best is by selfishly choosing the guests who I wanna speak to."

Kirsty Gallagher 6:36 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:37 Right? And, and it-

Kirsty Gallagher 6:38 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:38 ... and it's something I don't think a lot of people fully appreciate.

Kirsty Gallagher 6:41 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:42 If I choose guests that my audience want me to speak to, right, there's nothing wrong with that necessarily, but if I'm not feeling it, if I don't feel like I wanna sit opposite this person for two hours and go deep, then it's the wrong choice, and I've done that before.

Kirsty Gallagher 6:58 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:59 Okay? But I've learned over the years, no, the way I serve the audience-

Kirsty Gallagher 7:03 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:03 ... is by serving myself, which I think-

Kirsty Gallagher 7:05 Exactly

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:05 ... kind of speaks to what you're saying.

Kirsty Gallagher 7:07 It exactly does, 'cause it, you've just... Everything that we've spoken about so far is there in that. If you had a conversation that wasn't necessarily true for you because you thought it's what the people wanted, you'd still show up, 'cause you do, that's who you are, but your full heart wouldn't be in it, and your full soul wouldn't be in it, and you wouldn't then give in the way that you give or show up fully in the way that you show. You'd maybe have a list of questions, and you go through them, and you'd more tick off the questions-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:32 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 7:32 ... than being genuinely interested and bouncing the conversation back and forth and being like, "Tell me more about that. I wanna know-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:38 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 7:39 ... more about that." And that's when it lands with your listeners, because we listen to you and we can hear the passion, the interest, the enthusiasm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:46 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 7:46 And the way that you then spotlight the other person, because you're genuinely interested-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:50 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 7:51 ... in that. So all of that adds up to, that's, your purpose is to be you and to do things that are interesting to you, and therefore-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:59 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 7:59 ... that lands with everybody else.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:01 Yeah, so there's one of my favorite bits in your new book, which is called Your Cosmic Purpose, is on page six. Um, so early on in the introduction, you said this. You said, "This may be a good time for me to say that if anything I say in this book doesn't resonate with you, that's not your truth. That's more than okay. Instead, take what lands for you, and leave the rest. I'm not here to teach or tell or convince you of anything."

Kirsty Gallagher 8:30 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:31 "I'm here to help you to remember the depths of wisdom, knowing, and truth that, that are already within you."

Kirsty Gallagher 8:37 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:38 Now, I love that. I underlined it, because one thing I've always liked about you, Kirsty, since I met you maybe three or four years ago at Carfest for the first time, and we've become really good friends since then-

Kirsty Gallagher 8:49 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:49 ... is this warmth and humility, and you're very open in this book at various times. You talk about how when you first discovered all the things that you talk about, you wanted everyone also to believe that.

Kirsty Gallagher 9:01 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:01 Right? But I think as you become... Certainly my experience has, I think, echoes yours. I was the same when I really got into the power of lifestyle and how it can affect us, our health, our happiness. I wanted to convince everyone. And now I'm not here to convince anyone of anything.

Kirsty Gallagher 9:17 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:17 I just share, and if you like it, great, and if you don't, that's fine as well.

Kirsty Gallagher 9:21 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:21 I don't need you to believe in this also-

Kirsty Gallagher 9:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:25 ... for me to feel good, and I really like that. There's this sort of... I don't know. Would you say that as people start to discover who they are more and live in that alignment with their values-

Kirsty Gallagher 9:38 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:40 ... do you think there is more of this, um, this trust, this humility, and less of a desire to convince others?

Kirsty Gallagher 9:49 Absolutely, and I think it goes, I think it goes both ways. So first of all, for me, I, I, I'm not here to convince you of anything. All I'm here to be is an embodied example of living in this way in the hope that then it gets someone's interest, and that's what I've done in all the work that I always do. We can never shame anybody into making change. We can never convince someone to change that doesn't want to. The only thing we can be is become that embodied example of what it is to live in truth and authenticity and honesty and trust in the hope then we can inspire other people along the way. And I do think particularly in this spiritual journey, I think in the beginning there is... And, and to be fair, in life nowadays, we live from the, the outside in. So often we're constantly looking to the outside world, "Tell me what to do with this. Fix me. Help me. You tell me." When I presume I know what's best for you, I strip you of all your power, and if you're looking to me to tell you what to do, you're always going to need me there to tell you what to do. And therefore, you have no power of your own. So I want to actually help people to find your own power, to find your own truth, to find your own purpose. That might be completely different to mine, and that's okay. And the more I think we live as the embodiment of who we are and the life that we want to live, the less then it matters whether anybody outside believes it is also doing it. So as you mentioned, in the very beginning, I would need you to also believe everything I believed in, 'cause I didn't fully believe it myself. So if you also believed it, then it must be true. Okay, Rangan believes it, too. Must be true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:20 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 11:20 Over the years though, I know my own truth and my own purpose like the back of my own hand. It's become a part of me, and it helps me to live a life that, for the most part, is meaningful and true and happy and purposeful and abundant, and where I wake up every day being happy to be here. And so that, that for me is true purpose, and so it doesn't matter whether or not anybody else believes what I believe, because for me, it helps me to live that life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:46 Yeah. I really like that. There's a, there's a phrase there you mentioned, right? You know your own truth.

Kirsty Gallagher 11:53 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:53 And you write about that quite a bit i- in this new book as well, and I agree with it. I love that as a concept, um, your own truth. But I imagine some people are gonna hear that phrase and go, "W- wait a minute, Kirsty.

Kirsty Gallagher 12:08 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:08 What are you talking about, your own truth? There is truth-

Kirsty Gallagher 12:10 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:10 ... and there is false, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 12:11 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:11 What are you talking about, your own truth?" Can you just expand on that a little bit? 'Cause I think it's a really key point.

Kirsty Gallagher 12:17 Mm. So living my own truth means living a life that's true to me.And so maybe some people may judge that as being, as you mentioned before, a selfish thing of choosing what I want to do every day or choosing how I want to live every day. But for me, if I can move through every day in a way that feels true to me, as in it feels meaningful, it feels like I'm showing up in a full way, it feels like I'm being very true to who I am, it feels like I'm being able to speak up and share who I am, it's not avoiding certain things, it's not being afraid, that is for me living in truth. And it's about discovering what, to bring it back to purpose, what on a daily basis can I do that helps me to feel purposeful, meaningful, alive, and connected to something greater? And that to me is living a life of truth, where I know who I am, I know what my beliefs are, I know what I'm here for, I know what brings me joy, I know what gives me meaning and purpose, and that then enables me... Most of all, I think I know who I am. And that's one of the big sticking points to finding your purpose is when you don't know who you are. And so I often advise people in the first stages, spend time with you, get to know who you are.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:34 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 13:34 And that's how you're gonna establish your own truth, because again, in the spiritual world and in every world, you know, you spoke about this so beautifully even in your last book, we've got so many experts. This is the right way. This is the right way. This is the right way. This is the right way. This... If we did everything we're meant to do in a day, we wouldn't have a single moment left from doing ice baths, and meditating, and journaling, and running, and all the myriad of things we- we've- we've got to do every day. Knowing your truth means knowing, "I get that. That's beautiful. If that helps you, I'm so happy for you, but that's not my truth. That doesn't resonate with me. I don't need to do that every day for me to also feel meaningful. If you do, beautiful." So we've got, like, this pick and mix now in the world, and I think too many people try and take all of the stuff and then don't do anything with it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:21 Yeah. It's, it's outside in-

Kirsty Gallagher 14:22 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:22 ... not inside out.

Kirsty Gallagher 14:23 Exactly. So finding your truth is, who am I? And in this moment, am I being fully, authentically true to me, who I am, what I desire, what I want to say? Am I filtering myself? Am I censoring myself? Can I just show up as all of me in the world?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:38 Yeah. I mean, what you said around purpose, we can superimpose on health.

Kirsty Gallagher 14:47 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:47 Right? It's the same principle-

Kirsty Gallagher 14:48 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:49 ... as you sort of just touched on there in terms of diet.

Kirsty Gallagher 14:53 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:53 Right? The reason why there's so many fights about the right diet is because, in my view, most of those fights or debates are predicated on the upstream belief that there is one perfect diet.

Kirsty Gallagher 15:11 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:12 Right? But if you never believe that there's one perfect diet, the question wouldn't be, "What's the perfect diet?" It's, "What's the right diet for me-

Kirsty Gallagher 15:20 For me

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:20 ... at this stage in my life-

Kirsty Gallagher 15:22 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:22 ... for my current goals?"

Kirsty Gallagher 15:24 And that's your truth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:25 And that's your truth.

Kirsty Gallagher 15:26 That's your truth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:27 I believe that people have lost, as I think you do, have lost that confidence and that trust in themselves-

Kirsty Gallagher 15:33 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:34 ... to actually back themselves on that. It's more about, "Let me listen to the latest podcast with the newest person. I know, actually, what I'm doing is wrong, even though I feel great."

Kirsty Gallagher 15:43 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:43 "Even though I feel absolutely fantastic, my skin's clear, my energy's good," whatever it... But because that expert told me about that trial in that part of the world. Again, like you, I'm not saying ignore experts-

Kirsty Gallagher 15:56 Nope

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:57 ... but you- you gotta start trusting yourself more. So, so Kirsty, you're talking a lot about people trusting themselves more, listening to their own truth, but some people are gonna go, "Kirsty, I don't know how to do that." So for someone who doesn't know how to do that, and has never done that before, and is that person-

Kirsty Gallagher 16:15 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:16 ... who's trying to meditate, journal, affirmations-

Kirsty Gallagher 16:19 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:19 ... like, just name the list, and, and just say, "I don't have any time to do this," what do you say to them?

Kirsty Gallagher 16:24 So I'd, first of all, start off by saying, just to your beautiful point then, that we have so many experts, but we've forgotten the main expert, which is you. You are the expert in your own life, because nobody else is living in your body, having your lived experience. Nobody else in the entire world has lived the life that you have with the experiences that you have-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:43 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 16:43 ... in the way that you have. So you're ignoring your own expert, which, which is you. Now, one of the first things I ask people to do is just to start to really, and start really simply, because again, if you've spent so much time looking outside of you or taking care of everybody else and putting everybody else's needs above your own, and this happens a lot when we move into things like working with nature and the moon and things, and people will often say to me, "But I don't know what I want." And that's where we need to begin. And so it may be that at the start of every day, and I try and encourage everyone to do this as much as you can, put your hands over your heart, tune in, and just say to yourself, "What do I need today?" I used to work with women who had been so busy being moms and taking care of everyone else, they didn't even know what they wanted to eat, because all they'd done is pick the scraps off the kids' plates. They didn't even know what they wanted to eat.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:31 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 17:31 They'd got so disconnected from themselves, even if you said, "What do you want for breakfast?" It would be, "Oh, well, I'll just have a little bit of what everybody else is having." And we don't really serve anybody in that way. So it begins by spending quiet time with you, and then time going inwards and just feeling into what makes me feel good. And I think what we've tried to do a lot in the world is we've tried to logic everything. So everything needs a logical answer, a logical explanation. If we can't put it in a spreadsheet, it doesn't exist. It's rubbish. And so we've forgotten this whole wisdom that we have in our own bodies.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:04 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 18:04 So when we start to just tune back into, and rather than making a snap decision, if you can pause and just feel into, "How does that feel for me? Did that make me feel good? Scared? How did I feel when I heard that?" If you don't know what to do today, imagine doing A, how does that feel for me? Imagine doing B, how does that feel for me? And we want to start to follow more of what feels purposeful, what feels meaningful, what feels like it's gonna bring us some joy. So begin by just getting to know you. Sit with yourself. Ask yourself questions.You know, what would I like to do today if I could do anything? What makes me happy? When's the last time I felt truly happy? How did that situation make me feel? How did that way I responded make me feel? Get so curious about yourself that you almost start to, like, track yourself through a day and watch yourself. Get to the end of the day and replay it, and not in a way to beat yourself up and go, "God, you did that wrong. You were so terrible when you did that." But get curious, "Oh, why did I do that? Why did that thing bother me so much? Why did I say yes when I really meant no in that situation? Why did I abandon myself there?" And the more you get curious, the more you'll start to uncover all this conditioning and layers that make you behave in a way that's out of alignment and integrity to the truth of yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:16 Yeah. No, I love that. I mean, it reminds me of, uh, one of the chapters in the second half of the book called, uh, I think it's called Radical Responsibility-

Kirsty Gallagher 19:24 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:24 ... which I, which I really loved. I mean, I think it's so important. We'll, we'll, we'll get into that in just a moment. You know, it's interesting that you said some of the women you've worked with are so disconnected from themselves, they don't even know what they want to eat.

Kirsty Gallagher 19:40 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:42 And I would imagine there's people who heard you say that and would be going, "Yeah, that's me."

Kirsty Gallagher 19:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:46 "Yeah, that's me."

Kirsty Gallagher 19:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:47 Okay. And so if we spent our life listening to the voices outside of ourselves-

Kirsty Gallagher 19:55 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:56 ... and disconnected from what we actually want-

Kirsty Gallagher 19:59 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:00 ... it's not gonna necessarily happen straight away, is it?

Kirsty Gallagher 20:03 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:04 It's a bit like running a marathon, right? You... If, if you sign up to do a marathon, uh, we... I, I think with the physical, with, you know, with, with kind of physical endurance, we intuitively understand that-

Kirsty Gallagher 20:14 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:14 ... oh, if I wanna run a marathon and I've never run before-

Kirsty Gallagher 20:19 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:19 ... I'm not gonna do it in a month.

Kirsty Gallagher 20:21 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:21 I need to start slow, walk, maybe run 1K and follow a plan, and then over maybe two years-

Kirsty Gallagher 20:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:28 ... I'll build up to be able to run, I don't know, a half marathon or a marathon.

Kirsty Gallagher 20:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:33 But I've always found with things like meditation, for example, people don't see it in the same way. They try it once or twice, "Oh, it's not for me."

Kirsty Gallagher 20:39 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:40 But if you try and run a marathon, no one's going out and try one run and go, "Oh, running's not for me." They're like, "Oh yeah, I need to get trained and conditioned."

Kirsty Gallagher 20:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:46 And so I guess trusting yourself and listening to yourself or what you call throughout this book whispers from your soul-

Kirsty Gallagher 20:53 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:53 ... um, it's gonna take time, practice, and patience, isn't it?

Kirsty Gallagher 20:58 Yeah. It totally is, and the, the thing with a lot of the work I do, and a lot of the more, kind of, let's call it spiritual, is that you don't notice the difference it's making until you stop doing it. That's what I find with a lot of things because you're making these little differences all the time. So it's like if you have a yoga practice every day and then you don't practice for a week, you go back and you're suddenly like, "Oh, this, this doesn't feel as easy anymore." Or you're meditating every day and you've got up to doing 13 minutes, and then you miss it for a week and you go back, and six minutes in you're doing that thing where you're like, "Oh, this feels like I've been here forever." And it's often in the times that we don't do it, that then we're suddenly a bit less able to deal with our kids having an argument in the back of the car, and our patience is a little bit shorter, or we're not quite as able to deal with things.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:44 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 21:44 Our tolerance gets a little bit less. So for a lot of the work I do, I think it's almost like the proof is in the pudding, that it's only when you've, you've done it consistently. And a lot of it also happens with kind of a hindsight whereby you will... As we know, setting a boundary for the first time, one of the hardest things in the world to do. We want to immediately call them back and go, "Actually, I didn't mean it. I will do it." But the more and more we do it, we get to the stage where all of a sudden we set a boundary, we don't think twice. There isn't the voice then that follows us around all day saying, "You're such a horrible person. You're not this. You're not this." And then we go, "Oh, had that same thing happened a month ago, I'd have dealt with that really differently-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:22 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 22:22 ... but wow, look at how I did that."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:26 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 22:26 And I think one thing that's really important as well is to really, again, keep that constant checking with yourself every day of, what did I do well? We're so quick... If I ask most people, "Tell me five things you did wrong last week," they'd immediately go, "Oh, you're not gonna believe what I did. I did this, I said this wrong." If I said to people, "Tell me one really amazing thing you did last week," they'll go, "Well, you know, mm, kind of, mm." If you can, again, at the end of a day, start to sit with yourself and go... I do it in every moment. If I do something really well, and it's been really hard for me 'cause I'm a natural, um, a doubter and I'm quite critical. But I try even at the end of this, I'll try and take a moment to go, "Well done, Kirst. You did that. You did really, really well. You tried your best. You showed up." And then the more I do that, the more I start to show up for myself, be there for myself, and therefore trust myself to do big-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:12 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 23:12 ... brave, bold things in the future. So it's something that happens very slowly, but I feel like the main problem we have in the world at the moment is that we just wanna Amazon Prime our life. We want next day delivery on everything. So I want to meditate once and be enlightened. I wanna go to one yoga class and be able to touch my toes. I want to run once and be able to do a marathon. Because we're so used to everything coming quickly nowadays, that we don't want to necessarily put the consistent effort in to be able to get to somewhere that we want to go. And finally, I don't think we notice the d- when I used to teach yoga, I'd love this. I would see the difference week on week, but other people wouldn't. Because they would go from not being able to touch the top of their thighs to wanting to touch their toes the next day. They wouldn't see what I saw, that every single week there was a tiny difference, and I'd be so proud as a teacher and I'd look around the room and I'd be like, "Look at what you're doing now." But all they could see was what they couldn't do, "But I still can't touch my toes." And it's like, "But look where you have come."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:11 Yeah. That's such a great point, and it's, I think, something I mentioned a couple times on the show before with, with, with patients in the past, that the focus is rarely on what got better, it's what's still not good.

Kirsty Gallagher 24:25 Still, yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:25 Right? And, you know, for, for many years I would specialize in seeing chronic complex conditions who were really struggling. I was... And I loved trying to put it all together.

Kirsty Gallagher 24:36 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:37 And I very quickly learned, oh, wow, [laughs] people are getting way better, but, you know, they're 80% better, but they're still down in the dumps over the 20% that's not better.

Kirsty Gallagher 24:46 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:46 And so a simple way, you know, I used to do it and, and s- other clinicians do it, is with what's called an MSQ, a medical symptom questionnaire.And it's brilliant because it's, it's a long questionnaire, you know, it does take a while to fill in, but it allows you to map progress.

Kirsty Gallagher 25:02 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:02 So when a patient would come in after two or three months and their life is literally transformed, but they're still saying, "Oh, yeah, but I can't do this, and I can't do that," you could objectively go, "Hey, listen, I get that, but let's just see where-

Kirsty Gallagher 25:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:14 ... you were two months ago. You were scoring 80 out of 100, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 25:18 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:18 That's how many, um, symptoms and things were going on in your life, right? Now, you're only scoring 20. And you would see the whole body language change. It'd be, "Oh, yeah."

Kirsty Gallagher 25:28 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:29 "Oh, yeah, I don't have all-- I don't have those 60 things anymore."

Kirsty Gallagher 25:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:32 "Yeah, sure. I... And I... We got these 20. Look, we're gonna work on that." But let's just take a moment to go-

Kirsty Gallagher 25:37 Celebrate

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:37 ... look at what... look what's gone.

Kirsty Gallagher 25:39 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:39 You know, it's pretty incredible, isn't it?

Kirsty Gallagher 25:41 Yeah. I don't think we celebrate ourselves enough either as humans. I really don't. I don't think we celebrate what we achieve and how well we do anywhere near enough. And so that's a beautiful-- That's why I think things like journaling are so powerful because then you get to track where you've been and how difficult something was. Because as we know, when we're in the depths of something, we're there, we're in the despair, we're in the depths, when we come out the other side, we kind of forget what it was like to be there. And so sometimes if you can even look back on journal entries from that time, we get to look and go, "Wow, I was there, and now look at, look at where I am, look at where I've got to."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:14 You said we struggle to celebrate ourselves.

Kirsty Gallagher 26:16 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:16 Do you think that is something that everyone struggles with, or would you say it's a uniquely British trait that we struggle to celebrate ourselves?

Kirsty Gallagher 26:26 Perhaps it is more uniquely British. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:29 I always think back to, um, the first time I met Professor BJ Fogg, uh, from Stanford University. BJ's one of the world's leading experts in behavior change and how do we form, uh, and how do we create lasting habits in our life.

Kirsty Gallagher 26:44 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:45 And it's really interesting. I remember one of the first things he shared with me is, you know, there's many, many things to try and do, and he has this whole concept called Tiny Habits. But he says, "What a really important part is once you've done something that you were hoping to do, take a moment to celebrate it."

Kirsty Gallagher 27:04 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:04 And he said, for example, uh, you can say, you know, "I'm awesome." And I said, "BJ, this may work in America."

Kirsty Gallagher 27:11 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:11 That, that... You know, there's very few Brits who are gonna do something and go, "I'm awesome"-

Kirsty Gallagher 27:15 Awesome [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:16 ... afterwards, right? And so it made me think, you know, are certain cultures-

Kirsty Gallagher 27:20 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:20 ... better at this? And, you know, related to that is, is something he told me, which was, it's not repetition that creates the habit, it's emotion.

Kirsty Gallagher 27:27 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:29 And I, and I think for BJ, this celebration piece is really, really important.

Kirsty Gallagher 27:33 Important.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:33 So it's interesting to me that you're also talking about that, that-

Kirsty Gallagher 27:36 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:36 ... it's important, and you were saying you weren't good at it-

Kirsty Gallagher 27:38 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:39 ... but you've now trained yourself-

Kirsty Gallagher 27:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:41 ... to get good at that celebration part.

Kirsty Gallagher 27:43 Yeah. Yeah. And to find something good, again, we can, we can look at fifteen things that are gonna go wrong, or we can find the one thing that might go right. We can look at the five things we did wrong today, or we can find the one thing that we did well. And those choices we make in life of which way to look, they start to shape our reality and shape the way that we move through the world and shape who we are and shape our experience. So I, I feel it is really, really important to always be looking at the more positive. And that's not to say a fake positivity of trying to make things wonderful when they're not, because I'm a huge fan, actually, of being with our deep, deep emotions and really feeling our emotions. And you just mentioned then that feeling of joy and celebration, which is very, very important. But I think it's equally important to feel those deeper emotions when we're hit with the grief or the loneliness or the loss or the frustration or the anger, because they're the emotions that really teach us. So when we're skipping through life and everything's wonderful, we're not really facing anything. And it's in those moments where we get hit by those deep emotions that we get taken in, and we get to really sit with and learn about ourselves, and we get to learn about where we are still getting in our own way or what's happening in our lives that we're not happy with or where boundaries are being crossed or where we're self-abandoning. And so for me, it's equally really important to give an honoring. I think for me, one of the biggest kind of disservices we've done in the modern-day manifesting world is like this high vibe. High vibe, high vibe, high vibe all the time. And I'm not saying we should ever stay stuck in kind of the... And exactly like you, I, I think we've labeled emotions good and bad. It's good to feel happy. It's good to feel joy. It's good to feel this. It's really bad to feel angry. It's bad to feel this. Whereas emotions are all messengers. They're there to show us where we're in or out of alignment in our lives and where we are showing up in our truth and authenticity or not. And so I feel it's so important to go both, to do the celebration and to feel the wonder, and then also to sit with and be with and hold ourselves in the moments that we're struggling as well.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:43 Like many of you, I want to preserve my health, mobility, and strength as I get older. And for me, the most important thing to do is to focus on what I call the four key pillars of health, food, movement, sleep, and relaxation. That being said, certain supplements can play a useful role, and one of those supplements is Mitopure from Timeline Nutrition. Mitopure is a supplement that contains a precise dose of the postbiotic urolithin A. Okay, so a postbiotic is something that is made by our gut microbiome when it interacts with certain compounds in our diet. And urolithin A has been shown to have quite a profound impact on the way in which our cells age, and one of the things it does is recycle and clear out damaged mitochondria. Now, I think that's probably one of the main reasons why taking Mitopure can have potential benefits on all kinds of different things, including our strength, endurance, immune system, and something called age-related cellular decline. Now, I wanna remind you of the key levers to turn for your short-term and your long-term health are food, movement, sleep, and relaxation. And on this YouTube channel, every week, I put out lots of content that helps you understand how to do that completely free of charge. But for those of you who do have the budget and the resource, I'd highly encourage you to give it a go.To get 25% off your Mitopure order, go to timeline.com/livemore. For over six months now, I have been regularly consuming Ketone IQ, a clean shot of high-performance energy. Ketone IQ contains exogenous ketones, basically ketones that we consume as opposed to ones that our bodies make, which basically means all of us can experience their benefits without needing to go on a ketogenic diet. There is mounting research on their ability to improve athletic performance, focus, metabolic health, mental clarity, and recovery, and I myself take it before I work out, before each conversation on this podcast, when I need some extra focus, and more recently on my national UK theater tour, where I took it immediately before going on stage. I've been really impressed, not only with its taste, but also how it makes me feel and perform. To get 30% off your subscription and to get a free gift with your second shipment,

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:18 go to ketone.com/livemore. One of the chapters that I really enjoyed reading was Trust the Timing.

Kirsty Gallagher 32:28 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:29 Okay? And in that chapter, you, you mentioned what you just said about wanting to Amazon Prime our lives, which I thought was just a, a really beautiful way of describing what's happened to us as a species, how impatient-

Kirsty Gallagher 32:46 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:47 ... people have become. How... I don't know. I think a lot about... I'm thinking a lot about goals at the moment.

Kirsty Gallagher 32:54 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:57 And I'm coming to the belief that goals, [laughs] for many people, are problematic-

Kirsty Gallagher 33:03 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:03 ... because I believe the focus on the goal is an externality.

Kirsty Gallagher 33:08 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:09 So, you know, and this is why people are never satisfied even when they reach the goal, 'cause too much of the focus was on the goal-

Kirsty Gallagher 33:17 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:17 ... as opposed to the process that got you to it.

Kirsty Gallagher 33:20 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:21 And so I, I sort of, at the moment, thinking about goals as a way of maybe giving you a bit of direction, pointing a compass at what you might wanna start doing. But I guess what I'm trying to get to is this, this impatience that, that many of us have now, right? And y- you talk in that chapter about it's really important to trust the timing.

Kirsty Gallagher 33:45 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:46 Right? So there will be people listening, Kirsty, to this podcast at the moment who are feeling impatient. They're feeling stuck, they're feeling lost, they're feeling unmotivated, and they want some sort of insights through listening that are gonna help them change their life immediately.

Kirsty Gallagher 34:02 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:02 But it doesn't always happen that way. And in that chapter you wrote about an earlier part of y- your life when you were in a corporate job-

Kirsty Gallagher 34:10 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:11 ... and I, I think you'd either decided you wanted to go and be a yoga instructor or go to India-

Kirsty Gallagher 34:16 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:17 ... and there was initially a frustration that things weren't happening at the time that you wanted them to. And then the line that I underlined was when you say at some point that you chose to believe that everything was happening to help you get to where you wanted to go-

Kirsty Gallagher 34:32 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:33 ... which I think is a really interesting point. So could you first of all just paint a picture-

Kirsty Gallagher 34:38 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:39 ... of that part in your life, what was going on, and then I think we can speak about why it's important to trust the timing of everything.

Kirsty Gallagher 34:46 Yeah. So I think I've been on a real spiritual journey for a really long time, trying to discover what more of my purpose was, and I'd done regressional therapy and become a Reiki healer and a crystal healer, and aromatherapy, and studied all these different things, and none of it quite gave me that, that sense of like, "This is it." And then I know it sounds so cliched, but I did one yoga class, and it was suddenly like everything dropped into place, and the more yoga I, I practiced, the more I realized that yoga's got this beautiful, rich philosophy, and yoga gave me an answer to every question, and it changed me so much. I was like, "This is what I want to share with people." But I wanted to go to the source. I wanted to go to where yoga came from. I knew I wanted to go to India. I just had this call deep in me that said, "You need to go to India and live this, breathe it, really study it." And I was working in a corporate job at the time, as you mentioned. Didn't have a huge amount of savings behind me. In fact, I didn't have any savings behind me at that time at all. And the corporate world never made an awful lot of sense to me, I've got to be honest, because the whole 9:00 to 5:00, why not 10:00 till 6:00? Why not 8:00 till 4:00? Why not 11:00... I just couldn't understand some of the arbitrary rules that would happen in the corporate world. They felt really restrictive to me. So I'd never particularly felt a resonance with that world. I worked in marketing and PR at the time, which was a wonderful job as far as jobs went, but I felt like I would spend a lot of time embellishing hotels to get people to go there, and so I'd never get home at the end of a day and go, "Wow, I feel really purposeful today. I really did something today."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:21 Do, do you mean you had to do things as part of your job that weren't fully in alignment-

Kirsty Gallagher 36:25 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:25 ... with who, who you-

Kirsty Gallagher 36:26 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:26 ... knew yourself to be?

Kirsty Gallagher 36:27 Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:28 So there's... This is really interesting. So on the, on the surface, you've got a good job.

Kirsty Gallagher 36:34 A wonderful job.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:34 A wonderful job, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 36:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:36 A job that many people might potentially want, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 36:38 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:38 So you're doing that job, but as part of your job you're having to do things-

Kirsty Gallagher 36:44 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:44 ... that don't sit right with you.

Kirsty Gallagher 36:46 That weren't my truth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:47 Yeah, so there's a-

Kirsty Gallagher 36:47 That were not purposeful to me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:49 Yeah, so that, there's an internal conflict there, isn't there?

Kirsty Gallagher 36:51 Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's a very, very brave thing. So I think, just as a side note there, when I realized when I wanted to quit my job and go to India, my grandad in particular, God love him, at that generation you didn't do that. You got a job in marketing and PR, you stayed at that job for the rest of your life. They thought I was absolutely crazy to want to quit an amazing corporate job. The day I quit that job-Everyone looked at me like I was slightly crazy, but I know deep down so many people in that building wished they were brave enough to do the same. And I've had so many messages since then of people I worked with back then who said, "You quitting that job," when what I should have been doing at that age is wanting to climb the corporate ladder, get to the next level, the next level, the next level, and instead I was like, "I wanna go and live barefoot in India and be a yoga teacher." So many people have written to me and said, "You inspired me."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:41 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 37:41 "You inspired me to follow a dream. You inspired me to be brave and to trust that stepping into the unknown would really, really-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:49 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 37:49 ... help me to find a, a life of purpose and meaning." And sometimes to find that life of purpose and meaning, we do have to go against the grain, because if there's no, if there's no challenge, if there's no uncertainty, there's no growth, there's no evolution, and it's through that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:05 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 38:05 ... we grow into the version of us that can hold that purpose when it arrives. So back to the story, I was-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:10 Well, let's-

Kirsty Gallagher 38:11 ... working in corporate-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:11 Well, before we go into the story-

Kirsty Gallagher 38:13 Okay

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:13 ... can we pause the story there?

Kirsty Gallagher 38:14 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:14 Okay. So, um, firstly, can you remember that first yoga class you did, where was it?

Kirsty Gallagher 38:23 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:24 Uh, it wasn't in India, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 38:25 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:26 So it was in the UK, I think.

Kirsty Gallagher 38:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:28 And what was it about that class? What, what was the lesson? What was the thing that at the end of that class you thought, "Now this is what I need to do"? Can you remember?

Kirsty Gallagher 38:38 I remember everything about it. It was in a little village hall, and the reason I, I knew that this is what I needed to give was because, I won't say the whole way through that class, but by the end, when you lay in Shavasana that you do at the end of a yoga class, I felt so connected to the part of me that is infinite, expansive, wi- It's like I touched bliss for the first time. It's like I knew what life was all about for the first time. It's like I really felt happiness and joy in who I was for the first time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:18 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 39:18 And it was that feeling at the end of, of like, I'm floating. And this is one of the things I'll also say. I've, I've practiced meditation for 20 years now maybe. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have become everything, everything yet nothing, touched the divine, been in that blissful state. But those one or two times make every other day of sitting there, when 10 minutes feels like four hours, worth it. Because that feeling I get when... That, that to me is knowing the truth. That moment of feeling what it feels like to be everything yet nothing, and experience what I consider to be my soul, that's worth every other moment of hardship, because I remember that feeling in every-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:03 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 40:03 ... cell of my being.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:05 Yeah, it's not just that your mind remembers, that your body remembers-

Kirsty Gallagher 40:07 My body remembers it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:08 ... that feeling. That, you know, for people who do meditate, um... And I, you know, I can be really, uh, regular with my practice and I can be really sporadic-

Kirsty Gallagher 40:17 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:17 ... for months, and that's okay. Like, the older version of me would, uh... Well, older as in when I was younger-

Kirsty Gallagher 40:24 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:25 ... um, would definitely beat myself up about that sort of stuff. But now I just, I let it go with a... I go, "Oh, that's-

Kirsty Gallagher 40:29 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:30 ... interesting. You, you were doing it regularly, and now you're not. Okay."

Kirsty Gallagher 40:32 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:33 Great, and what is the consequence of that? But occasionally, and I tend to experience this a lot more these days than I ever have done before, you sit in meditation and there's just this stillness-

Kirsty Gallagher 40:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:45 ... this sereneness-

Kirsty Gallagher 40:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:47 ... internally.

Kirsty Gallagher 40:48 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:48 And I guess this lack of thought.

Kirsty Gallagher 40:51 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:52 I had this really wonderful chat with a, uh, a doctor, a psychiatrist in America called, um, Dr. Kanojia. He goes by the name of Dr. K. And at the end of that conversation, we really explored the true nature of happiness, and one of the things he was talking about, 'cause he's been and studied to be a monk i- in India, and is also a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, really interesting combination-

Kirsty Gallagher 41:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:15 ... and one of the things we were talking about at the end of that conversation was how happiness is a inner stillness-

Kirsty Gallagher 41:22 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:23 ... when there is a complete lack of thought. So that's one element-

Kirsty Gallagher 41:26 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:26 ... of it. So you're saying that you experience that-

Kirsty Gallagher 41:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:28 ... from time to time. It's pretty... It is incredible, isn't it?

Kirsty Gallagher 41:31 It absolutely is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:31 And you want it... It's not that you necessarily want it again. You do initially. You're like, "Can I-

Kirsty Gallagher 41:35 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:35 ... I want that again."

Kirsty Gallagher 41:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:36 But then you, I guess you, over time, you just learn to trust and go, "Just keep showing up. Some days it will be there, some days it won't-

Kirsty Gallagher 41:42 Totally

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:42 ... but it's okay."

Kirsty Gallagher 41:43 Yeah. And it's like in those moments that we get a glimpse of what life is really all about. And again, that's not, it's not tangible. It's not something we can necessarily explain. It's, it's felt. And so anything, for me, when we start to look at the spiritual realms or the divine or higher consciousness or whatever labels we might give it, it's not something that can necessarily be logically explained. It's something that's a felt experience, that each one of us has to experience for ourselves. But when you have that moment of bliss or complete emptiness, there's nothing like it in the world, and that's what that first yoga class gave me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:20 Right.

Kirsty Gallagher 42:21 And I was like, "This, if I can give people that for just two minutes once a week, that's gonna help the rest of their week." And when I went into teaching yoga more full-time, I'd teach corporate and private yoga, because I wanted to go to the people that really genuinely needed it, and I'd go into a lot of law firms and a lot of big firms like that, and they'd all come in with, like, their forehead scrunched and everything stressed and their shoulders up around their ears, and they'd come at lunchtime, and they'd come a bit begrudgingly, 'cause they're like, "Oh, yeah." And by the end, those little thinking lines would soften, and their shoulders would have dropped, and it was beautiful to witness. And I was like, "That's, that's what I want to give."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:00 How often do you practice yoga?

Kirsty Gallagher 43:01 I practice yoga in, in a certain form most days. So w- speaking about meditation, I, um, I think one of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that we're trying to stop our thoughts, and we're not. If we stop thinking, we're not alive anymore.It's about not becoming attached to the thoughts, because as we know, very often even in life, it's not what's happening in life that's really problematic for us, it's the thoughts that we have about what's happening, and the judgment that we have about whether it should or shouldn't be happening-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:31 Mm-hmm

Kirsty Gallagher 43:31 ... and the story we tell ourselves-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:32 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 43:32 ... about what's happening. It's very rarely the actual thing itself, it's the stories that we tell.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:37 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 43:37 I mean, it's incredible the amount of times over my life I've made up stories in my mind and hurt myself, with a story. It's not even true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:43 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 43:43 It's never even happened, but that story has sent me through so much drama, catastrophe.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:49 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 43:49 It's untrue. So when we, when we meditate, we learn to detach from the stories, and there's a chapter in the book about you're not your thoughts, and it's to help us to see that that constant commentary all the time is not necessarily true. So when we meditate, it s- it, it simplifies it, but it's like clouds passing across the sky, and we wanna just allow the thoughts to be there and to come in, or to notice the ones we attach to. "Well, I'll think that thought 'cause it's a good thought, but I won't think that one." Again, we wanna let them all just fade through. But when we do kind of the more seated meditation, that's what I call more like top-down meditation. So we need to just talk a tiny bit here about kind of masculine/feminine energies-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:25 Sure

Kirsty Gallagher 44:25 ... which isn't men and women, it's masculine/feminine. The masculine is the doer, the fixer, get things done. It's the logic. The feminine is the intuitive, the creative, the flow. So when we're sitting in meditation and we think we have to be in lotus position with our hands in a certain position, and we have to sit there for 10 minutes and not move, that's more like a, a masculine form of meditation, where we're doing the meditation. I prefer moving meditation, which is what yoga's become for me. And so when we do a moving meditation, what we're actually doing then is getting into the true wisdom, which, for me, lives in our bodies. And so when we check in with ourselves, and we talked about this a little while ago, of, "How am I feeling today?" We very rarely do that, because very often we don't wanna hear the answer. Because the answer is, we're not in the relationship that we should be in, we don't like our job anymore, and we get afraid of listening within because then that gives us a weight of responsibility-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:17 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 45:17 ... that we have to do something about it. So we constantly make ourselves too busy to check in with our inner world. And o- on a little side note there, that's why I honestly believe one of the most asked questions I get is, "How do I listen to my intuition?" And my answer is always... Well, I give two answers, but they're the same. First of all, you have to first of all feel your emotions, 'cause I believe our emotions, our intuition sits deep within beneath our emotions, and we have to first of all feel everything we've avoided feeling, because we can't selectively-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:47 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 45:47 ... feel emotion. I wanna feel all the happy stuff and the intuition, but I don't wanna feel the grief and the bad stuff.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:52 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 45:52 So first of all we have to go through all of that to get to the well of wisdom. But the reason we ignore our intuition is because our intuition tends to be the inconvenient voice of truth in there that says to us, "This isn't the right job for you." "But I'm scared, I don't know what..." "This isn't the right job for you. This isn't the right relationship for you. This isn't the right thing for you." So then we try to shut down that voice of wisdom within us. So when we can start to sit with ourselves on a daily basis and maybe check in at the start of the day, "How am I feeling today?" And what normally happens then is an unexpressed, maybe emotional, c- when we feel a little bit of sadness and we'll go, "I don't wanna feel it." So we'll open our eyes and we'll quickly get up and we'll go about our day. "I'm, uh, too, too busy, I won't think about that." If you can sit and go, "I feel sad. Okay, Kirst, you feel sad." Doesn't need a story, don't need to know where it came from, don't need to know when it happened, I just need to feel sad. If that sad had a voice, what would it say to me? If that sad could move, how would that sad move? And then as I start to move, I start to allow those things to be expressed through my body and through me, and I give them a voice and I give them movement, and therefore I can get to the wisdom that's beneath them. And that was a really long answer to how often I practice yoga. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:01 No, I love it.

Kirsty Gallagher 47:01 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:01 There was so much gold there. Actually, it, it's really interesting 'cause that phrase you just used there, the inconvenient voice of truth.

Kirsty Gallagher 47:10 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:10 Right? That's a, that's beautiful. It's so evocative, right? And one of the things I was gonna pick up on in your story was when we talked about internal conflict.

Kirsty Gallagher 47:20 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:20 Right? When you were in a great job... Well, let me-

Kirsty Gallagher 47:24 Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:24 In, in inverted commas, you-

Kirsty Gallagher 47:26 The world, the outside world

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:27 ... the outside world says-

Kirsty Gallagher 47:28 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:29 ... "Kirsty, you're in a great job."

Kirsty Gallagher 47:30 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:30 "What the hell are you doing quitting this job?"

Kirsty Gallagher 47:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:32 Right? But you would come home each night, or maybe not each night, but regularly, there was this whisper from within you that, "I don't like what I'm having to do-

Kirsty Gallagher 47:43 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:43 ... in order to justify my position or as part of that job," right? So we're talking about the internal conflict, which kind of speaks also to this inconvenient voice of truth, because what I was gonna ask you was, okay, so you knew that something was slightly off.

Kirsty Gallagher 48:01 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:03 And you didn't ignore it. Maybe you had previously ignored it, right? Because it's easier to ignore, and keep going-

Kirsty Gallagher 48:08 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:08 ... and picking up the paycheck, and going out on a Friday night with your mates-

Kirsty Gallagher 48:11 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:11 ... and just cracking on with life, until you can no longer ignore it. It will come out at some point, it's just a case of-

Kirsty Gallagher 48:17 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:18 ... when, right? But the question is then, for that person who says, "Actually, Kirsty, um, I don't like m- many elements of my job, but that is how I feed my family."

Kirsty Gallagher 48:33 Mm. Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:33 "That's how I pay the mortgage."

Kirsty Gallagher 48:35 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:35 Right? What's that person meant to do with what you've said?

Kirsty Gallagher 48:40 So first of all, make that your choice. When we're-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:44 What does that mean?

Kirsty Gallagher 48:44 It means make it your choice to stay in the job. So let's, let's take this apart bit by bit. You know you don't like the job that you're in. Stage one, start to figure out why. Where is this role out of alignment? Because to your point before, and I wanted to jump in and I didn't want to interrupt you, you said, you don't like what you have to do to be in that job. I didn't like who I had to be either. I didn't like who I had to be, because I had to be someone that wasn't authentically true to me. So stage one, if you're saying to me, "Can't stand my job," start to figure out why. Is it the hours that you don't like? Is it the boss that you don't like? Is it the role itself that you don't like? Figure out what you don't like about that job.Start to flip that into what you would like, what you would like from a role, what you would like from a job. What would my ideal job be if there were an ideal world? That's gonna start to give you an indication of where your soul, to use, to use my language, is calling you to be. Because every time we feel a niggle of discontent, a niggle that we're not in the right place, that's our soul calling us forwards into a newer version of ourselves. So it's saying, "This isn't the role for you." The fact this isn't the role for you means there is another role that is for you. So start to figure out what that role could be and would be. You might say to me, "But Kirst, I'd love to retrain as, uh, to do reflexology, but I've got young kids, and I just can't right now, and it feels like a very, very distant goal." Beautiful. Let's again take this step by step. First of all, make that your choice. So rather than say, "Well, I'm stuck in this job, and it's awful, and I can't do anything," no. "I'm choosing right now to stay in this role because right now, staying here and helping me to feed my family is better for me-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:25 Mm-hmm

Kirsty Gallagher 50:25 ... than it would be to quit the role-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:26 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 50:26 ... and go out there into the unknown." Anything where you're in indeci- indecision is one of the most disempowering places to be in life, where you don't know what to do. It's so disempowering, and I, I call people out on this. When you tell me you don't know what to do, you absolutely do know, but what you know you need to do scares you. We always know. But when you stay in indecision, and then I'm gonna come to you, "Hey, Rangan, I don't like my job, but what do you think I should do about it? I'm gonna ask my friends."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:53 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 50:53 "I'm gonna ask my parents. I'm gonna ask the internet. I'm gonna ask AI."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:57 External, external, external.

Kirsty Gallagher 50:58 "I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna ask everybody." And then what we're going to find, and I say this with love, is that other people who are also stuck in jobs they don't like, they're not gonna tell you to quit your job and go to India 'cause they're not brave enough to do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:09 Well-

Kirsty Gallagher 51:09 So they're gonna tell you to stay in your job. You're not meant to like your job. Don't worry about it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:13 Well, that comes to the third point I stopped you for, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 51:15 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:15 So you're actually, uh, yeah, it's really interesting, you're addressing all of them, right? Without me even saying what they are. The third point I was gonna make is when you said before that when you decided to quit, people pushed back all around you. You know-

Kirsty Gallagher 51:30 Oh, yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:30 ... they thought you were stupid, right? It's not that, you know, maybe some of your colleagues thought, "What is she doing? Crazy. She worked hard to get this role, and she's leaving." And I think we often do that. We put... Th- this happens online all the time. We push back, and we get annoyed at people speaking their truth-

Kirsty Gallagher 51:47 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:47 ... because on some level we wish we could speak our truth-

Kirsty Gallagher 51:51 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:51 ... like them. I love what you said about, um, indecision. I think it makes me think about, you know, caring for others. It, it... There's a s- sweet spot, isn't there? It's not always about tiptoeing around them.

Kirsty Gallagher 52:05 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:05 Like, you can be, you c- you can have compassionate honesty.

Kirsty Gallagher 52:08 Mm. Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:10 That was compassionate honesty.

Kirsty Gallagher 52:11 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:11 Right? You do know what to do. You're just not listening.

Kirsty Gallagher 52:14 Yeah. And we don't do anybody any favors either when we tiptoe around them. Like, what we do need is we need radical responsibility for our lives, but then giving everyone else radical responsibility for theirs as well, and the understanding that we aren't necessarily responsible for anyone else's lives or happiness, as much as we try and make ourselves responsible for that. We can be caring, compassionate. We can do our best. We can show up for everyone around us, but we're not responsible for anybody else's life in the same way that they're not responsible for our life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:44 Yeah. I, I really like that. Um, a- and as I say, that chapter on radical responsibility I, I think, is so, so important. Do you mind if I read the end bit of that chapter back to you?

Kirsty Gallagher 52:55 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:55 'Cause I, I thought it was really powerful. It really speaks to what you just said. "I want to end this chapter with a little reminder that you are not responsible for anyone else's life, problems, or happiness."

Kirsty Gallagher 53:07 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:08 "Everyone is on their own individual journey, and each one of us is only responsible for our own lives. You cannot fix, heal, or rescue anyone as much as you might want to. You cannot change anyone who doesn't want to be changed. You cannot save anyone from their own life experiences or rock bottoms or dark nights of the soul. All you can do is be there to support and love them when they need it."

Kirsty Gallagher 53:36 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:36 "Sometimes this also means knowing when it's time to set boundaries, put yourself first, or walk away and love someone from afar. Taking radical responsibility for your own life also means giving everyone else radical responsibility for theirs." That is gorgeous, Kirsty.

Kirsty Gallagher 53:56 Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:57 There is just so much wisdom in those eight or nine lines.

Kirsty Gallagher 54:01 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:02 You know, you cannot change anyone else.

Kirsty Gallagher 54:04 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:04 You cannot change anyone who doesn't wanna be changed. There will be so many people listening who have a, a partner, a sister, a brother, a parent who they want to change.

Kirsty Gallagher 54:14 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:14 They're like, "Oh..." You know, I get this question all the time at my live events. "Dr. Chatterjee, I have followed the things that you put in your books. I feel great, but how do I change my boyfriend?"

Kirsty Gallagher 54:24 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:24 "How do I change my husband? How do I change my mum?" You can't, can you?

Kirsty Gallagher 54:29 No, and all we can do, and we touched on this before, is become the embodied example of what it is to live in this way, in the hope that someone then will watch us or watch this conversation and say, "Okay, I, I, I wanna be a bit more like this. I, I, I... I wanna gonna try this." That's all we can do, is be that embodied example-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:50 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 54:51 ... of this is what it means to live a life like this. And, and back to my story being the embodied example of this is what's possible when you quit a job in the corporate world, and you sit here 16 years later on this podcast, on one of the biggest podcasts in the world, you know? This is what it means to follow the road less traveled and to do the things that everybody else thought was absolutely nuts, and to go against all the kickback and to be brave in the moments when it was s- scary and terrifying and made no sense. It's hard to keep putting one foot in front of the other when you can't see the next step and everything looks dark ahead, but it's so worth it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:27 Yeah.Before we get back to your story, just to close the loop on something you said about that person who doesn't like their job-

Kirsty Gallagher 55:38 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:39 Right? What I really love about your explanation was that it just speaks to intentionality and making conscious choices. So, you know, please correct me if I've not interpreted this correctly, but what I think you were saying is basically, it's okay to be in a job that you don't love-

Kirsty Gallagher 56:02 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:02 ... but be aware that that's what you're doing. Don't kid yourself that you're loving it, or this is the only option you've got, right? It might be the only option you have at the moment.

Kirsty Gallagher 56:12 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:12 But take that time out from your day-

Kirsty Gallagher 56:15 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:15 ... maybe it's that question, you know, "What do I need?"

Kirsty Gallagher 56:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:19 Maybe it's five minutes of journaling, maybe it's a little bit of meditation, some time out where you can reflect-

Kirsty Gallagher 56:24 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:24 ... and go, "Yeah, you know what? I don't like this. I do wanna learn to be a nutritional therapist-

Kirsty Gallagher 56:30 Yep

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:31 ... but I can't right now."

Kirsty Gallagher 56:32 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:33 "So at the moment, I'm doing this because it feeds me and it feeds my children."

Kirsty Gallagher 56:37 Exactly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:38 'Cause you're still going to the same job, but you're changing the way in which you're going to that job, aren't you?

Kirsty Gallagher 56:43 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:43 And I think that's the key thing.

Kirsty Gallagher 56:44 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:44 That's the start of change.

Kirsty Gallagher 56:45 Yeah. Yep. And, and so a couple of things on that. I then, like, I call it, I call it, like, soul school. Go to soul school. "Okay, what can I learn about myself when I'm in this job? What pushes my buttons? What irritates me every day? How can I learn more about myself?" See it as, like, a little bit of an exciting adventure or something, like, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna explore myself while I'm still here." Then also have that longer term goal, so don't just give up on the dream, but look at, "Okay, when could I make this a possibility?" And then look at, "What can I do now to help me to get there one day?" Because if you don't start now, you'll actually never, ever, ever, ever get there. So that might be, if we take your point to being a nutritional therapist, you start to read books on nutrition every day. You start to use yourself as the example of a nutritional therapist, and you really look at your own nutrition.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:34 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 57:34 You might start to help your friends around you, with their permission, of helping them with their nutrition. So you're doing everything that you can do now, within the confines of your current life, that will mean when you're then able to quit the job because your kids have grown up, you've already got all these steps behind you-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:51 Or-

Kirsty Gallagher 57:51 ... and the confidence to do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:52 Yeah, or you might find out that you thought you wanted to be a nutritional therapist, but maybe-

Kirsty Gallagher 57:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:59 ... you wanted to just learn more about nutrition.

Kirsty Gallagher 58:01 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:02 Right? So maybe, again, going back to the goal idea, you have this goal. You think, "Yeah, you know what? I don't like this job. I think I wanna be a nutritional therapist. Can't do it right now because of A, B, and C. Okay, let me start taking courses and start reading about nutrition." You may find in two years' time, "Actually, you know what? The job's not so bad, actually. Like, I've learnt loads about nutrition, I've changed my own health-

Kirsty Gallagher 58:25 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:25 ... uh, I can help my family around me eat better, they're feeling better." It's not these binary things-

Kirsty Gallagher 58:32 No

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:32 ... either/or. Sometimes it's the, you know-

Kirsty Gallagher 58:35 Um-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:35 ... along the journey to try and get somewhere, we learn actually we don't even wanna go there.

Kirsty Gallagher 58:38 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:39 You know, we thought we wanted to go there-

Kirsty Gallagher 58:41 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:41 ... but actually no, we just wanted... That, that, again, that goal helped shift us out of where we were so we could start experiencing something different.

Kirsty Gallagher 58:50 And that's part of purpose, that there are so many little purposes in your life that lead you to where you want to go. So learning nutritional therapy was a purpose. That might have led you to discovering that's not what you wanted to do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:00 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 59:00 That might have led you to something completely different. And what we're all deeply searching for, and I would, I would kind of argue the reason most people don't like their job, is because they don't feel purposeful. Find things every day that make you feel on purpose, even if that's just for five minutes. So again, your purpose then gets to be outside of your job, and you get to do something every day that feels meaningful for you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:22 Right, back to your story now.

Kirsty Gallagher 59:24 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:24 Okay, so we're- we're in the corporate job.

Kirsty Gallagher 59:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:27 We've been to the village hall, and we've experienced something really special-

Kirsty Gallagher 59:32 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:32 ... in a yoga class.

Kirsty Gallagher 59:34 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:35 So you had this calling inside of you that you wanna go to India, you wanna go to the source and learn about yoga, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 59:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:43 But you didn't make that leap straight away, did you?

Kirsty Gallagher 59:45 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:45 So, so what was going on there? 'Cause w- w- you know, this is all in the context of trusting the timing.

Kirsty Gallagher 59:51 Mm. And I tell this story very, very often. It took me about two and a half years, and they were some of the hardest and most difficult and challenging years of my life, yet they were also some of the most profound years of my life. So I used to lock myself in the toilet every day in that corporate job. In the same way I can tell you the, what that village hall looked like, I can tell you what the toilet cubicle looked like. I would lock myself in there every day, and I would cr- when I say cry, you know that guttural cry that comes from somewhere deep within? I would cry my eyes out every day. And I would beg the universe, and I'd say to the universe, "Why are you not helping me? I wanna do something that's, like, gonna be good for everyone. Like, why? Why? Why? Why?" Was my, like, plea to the universe. And I really in that time used to sit with, is it better to have a dream and not be able to achieve it, or to not have a dream at all? I didn't know which would be worse. I'd sit with that so often and go, "I don't know which would be worse." Because my dream would kept me so alive, but it was so painful that I couldn't get there. And then I decided, similar to what I've just said to you now, "Let me use this time. Let me use this time to, to hone my craft. Let me practice yoga as much as I can. Let me read books on the philosophy of yoga. Let me also put that into practice in my corporate job." So when I was being bullied at the time by a colleague, b- it, it... Then I turned it back on me. So rather than saying, "If only she were nicer to me, I'd like the job more," "What is it about her that bothers you? What is it about her behavior? Where are you playing a part in this?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:27 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:01:27 I used it as a way to really get curious about myself-I handed my notice in three times. Each time, I got a promotion and a pay rise, which helped me to start to save money to be able to go to India. And as I say, my family all thought, especially my grandparents, I mean, my goodness, my grandparents thought I was... I mean, my granddad used to be like, "She's crazy. There's something wrong with her," 'cause it just was not done in those days that you quit.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:51 And, but that's okay, isn't it?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:01:53 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:53 Because, you know, so-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:01:55 That was his reality.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:56 Exactly.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:01:57 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:57 And presumably, when your granddad grew up, this would've been the, the most ridiculous and wildest thing to do, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:02:04 And he worked very hard to get to where he got to in his corporate job. So for him, it was almost, I guess, slightly disrespectful that you would then get to somewhere and then-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:11 Yeah, but, okay, if we can just pause on this point, 'cause I, I actually think there's something really profound here that, that, that we really should talk about-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:02:19 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:19 ... which is this idea that when you've been listening to that internal voice-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:02:26 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:27 ... and you practice it, and you go, "Actually, you know what, I do need to make some changes in my life." You know? This happened in, you know, in, in COVID times.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:02:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:34 This happened for people. They got a real awakening.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:02:36 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:37 And many people, you know, okay, I... It's amazing how many people stop me in the street, bump into me, and will, will, will talk to me about, you know, a podcast they heard which prompted them to leave their job and start something different, and now they can't even imagine doing the job that they used to do.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:02:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:54 Right? Which is, which is really interesting. I'm like, wow, you know, [laughs] it's, it's kind of... Although it- 'cause it can feel scary for people, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:02 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:02 But the point I'm trying to get to is when we decide internally we wanna make a change, as you've already acknowledged, there will be many people around you, or there may be many people around you, who don't understand it-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:16 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:17 ... who think you're being silly-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:18 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:18 ... who think you're being shortsighted, but that's okay.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:24 That's their reality, and they're also allowed to have that reality.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:27 They absolutely are.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:28 Do you know what I mean?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:29 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:29 I think, I think it, I think that's the key point for me. It's like they don't have to agree with you.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:33 They don't.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:35 And you can still love them-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:36 You can

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:37 ... even if they don't agree with you.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:03:38 And the key thing is a, is s- uh, so much what we've spoken about already, the key thing is not to look at them and wanting to change them, and wanting to make them approve so that you can do it. The key thing is looking into you, so you don't need that approval. I don't need any of you to understand this leap I'm about to make. I just know I need to make it. I don't need your approval, validation, permission for me to be able to do this. I fully honor your feelings, where you are. That last chapter of my book you just read, I'm not responsible for any... You can't make anybody feel something unless they allow you to. So what I need to do is, rather than want all of you to change and approve of me, or, my God, my parents don't approve, I need to maybe look at the parts of me that want that approval, and seek it, and be with those parts. But then my journey is to get to a truth so deep within me that every single other person in the world could say, "That makes no sense to me," and I go, "I know, but it does to me, and that's all that matters." And that takes time.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:39 That's... Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:04:39 And it takes, it takes a lot of time. It takes having to have done this an awful lot. It takes getting to know yourself on a really deep level. But this is the truth we spoke about right at the beginning, that when you get to a place of truth and trust in you, I know now I can step into the unknown, anything, because I know I've got me. And I know no matter what comes, I can face it. I can do it. So I can step into the complete unknown in life over and over again because I've learned time after time-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:05 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:05:05 ... I'm gonna be there for me, and I'm going nowhere. And as long as I've got me, I'm gonna be okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:10 Yeah. It's living from the inside out, not the outside in.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:05:13 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:14 And the only way you get there, in, in my view, and I think your view, is by spending time with yourself regularly, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:05:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:23 If you're constantly listening to the voices outside of you, and, you know, you came to my London Lyceum event, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:05:29 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:29 In, in March, and o- one of the things I say towards the end of that tour was, I, I spoke about solitude.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:05:34 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:34 Right? And why I believe that for most of us these days, it is the most important practice for your health-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:05:39 Absolutely

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:40 ... and your happiness.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:05:40 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:41 Because un- unless you shut down the noise from the outside and start listening to what's going on in the inside, your life is never gonna change.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:05:49 Never.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:50 Because you're, you're just gonna be stuck in this cycle of, oh, who said that? Oh, this new expert said that. That expert said that. And it's confus- oh, I need to do cold plunge. Oh, no, no, I've just learned about sa- I need to do sauna now. Oh, I need to do journaling. Oh, no, no, I need to do meditation.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:06:04 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:04 I need to do them all.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:06:05 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:05 I'm like, wh- wh- wh-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:06:07 Ugh

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:07 ... but then I've also gotta-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:06:08 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:08 ... see my wife and look after my children, and, you know, it-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:06:11 It's too much

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:13 ... it's too much.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:06:13 Too much.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:13 Yeah, so it's, it's really powerful, that. So, okay, so that's interesting. It took two and a half years.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:06:19 It took two and a half years, and, but I n- I now know, and I know this with every bone in my body, had I gone to India one month, one week, one day sooner, I would not be sat here with you now, because there were still ways in that period of time that I needed to grow and evolve, and things I needed to learn. And when we speak about purpose, a big part of our purpose is that everything that we go through, or I call it grow through, is helping us to become the version of us that can hold our purpose when we get there. So everything I had to go through in those two and a half years taught me so much about myself, and it taught me to continue to trust, and that, that dream just wouldn't go away. It would've been so easy to go, "It's not working. It's not working. It's not happening. Gonna give up on it," and then to just stay in that life and stay unhappy. But that dream, it would not go away. It would not go away. Now, I also like to differentiate here between just trying to knock on closed doors and trying to continue to go after something that isn't for you, versus continuing to believe in a dream even when it feels like it's not manifesting. And the difference people need to understand here is-It comes down to the feeling. You're gonna know from a soul level when a dream is for you that won't go away because it's gonna feel something that's a longing, a yearning. It just won't go anywhere. Whereas when we're trying to continue to knock on a door that isn't for us, that feels frustrating, it feels out of alignment, it feels a bit icky. There's kind of an ickiness to when we're trying to force something that isn't meant for us on a kind of soul journey level, versus the lesson our soul wants us to go through to grow into who we need to be. And what's really beautiful about that story is it doesn't stop there. So I got to India, I did it, achieved the dream, did it, got there, quit the job. It was awful. I mean, traveling India as a woman on your own is an initiation, and for that first week, maybe two weeks, if someone would've given me a plane ticket, I would've taken it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:26 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:08:26 It was so difficult, and I would... I found myself again crying my eyes out and pleading to the universe again. And I'd wanted to go to India, I'd had this belief that I'd go and I'd ring back home, and I'd go, "I'm now enlightened. I'm in India. Everything's all worked out." And instead I was like, "I'm here. I've got what I wanted, and it's an absolute mess and it's awful." But again, this is where we need to trust the timing and trust that life's always taking care of us, because I would make promises to myself in that first initial few weeks in India, and I'd put my own cheek against my own shoulder, my cheek on my own skin, and I'd say to myself, "It's okay, Kirsty, I've got you. I'm gonna be here for you. I'm gonna look after you. You might be scared, but I'm going nowhere." And I'd make little promises to myself of, "Okay, today, go to the bottom of the road and then you can come back home. And tomorrow, go and explore that area and then you can come home." I learned to trust myself and believe in myself and be there for myself and care for myself and love myself fiercely-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:25 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 1:09:25 ... in that time like never, ever, ever before, and never since. That time for me was so profound, and again, it was when it was all falling apart and going wrong, it was actually perfect.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:38 Yeah. One of the most important pillars for our health is, of course, nutrition. But I think because of our busy, stressed out lives, so many people are struggling despite their best intentions. So many patients over the years have told me that they know what they should be doing, but they're struggling to actually do it, and that's why I'm a fan of AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that contains over 70 vitamins, minerals, and other ingredients that are designed to make nutrition really easy. It's been in my own life for over six years now. It's simple, it's tasty, it's convenient, and it forms a part of my morning routine. People will routinely tell me that taking AG1 regularly has improved their focus, their cognition, their energy. Some people even tell me that they drink less coffee when they're taking AG1. And there's research out there showing us that taking AG1 regularly can improve specific markers of your gut health, which is really good for your immune health. So if you're looking to upgrade your own nutrition in a simple, tasty, and convenient way, try AG1. To get a free bottle of vitamin D and five free travel packs, go to drinkag1.com/livemore. Now, I'm a huge fan of Vivobarefoot shoes. I've been wearing them for about 12 years now. And one of the main reasons I love them is because when I'm wearing Vivos, I feel fully connected to the ground beneath my feet. What do we want? We want feet that move naturally, and because Vivos are wide, thin, and flexible, your foot can move in the way that it's meant to. A lot of modern shoes are stiff, they're narrow. They start to manipulate the way your foot functions, whereas in Vivos, your feet can do what they're meant to do, and that means they help your feet become stronger. There was this trial that showed within four months of wearing Vivos, your feet are around 60% stronger. Your feet

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:40 are your foundation, and when you've got problems in your feet, it goes all the way up the chain. It can go to your ankle, to your knee, to your hip, to your back, and even to your shoulder and neck. And as a doctor, I have seen back pain, hip pain, and knee pain actually start to get better when people start to wear barefoot shoes. To get 20% off your first order, go to vivobarefoot.com/livemore. You know this whole idea of trusting the timing-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:12:11 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:11 ... right? That everything's happening at the right time for you. Now, some people may be listening with their rational, logical minds-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:12:18 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:19 ... going, um, "Well, that's just ridiculous," right? How do you know things are happening at the right time? How do you know that actually had you not gone to India a year before that to learn yoga at source, you wouldn't still have ended up where you are today, or it wouldn't have happened sooner?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:12:35 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:36 Right? To that person, what do you say?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:12:39 Who knows? Like, who, who actually really knows? 90% of the work that I do, when we look at the spiritual realms, nobody knows the definitive meaning of life until we go back home to wherever you believe home to be. None of us can say... I can say this is a glass. No one can say categorically true there are such things as past life and this and this and this, and all the, the spiritual realms. There's no such thing as your soul, the universe, uh, whatever it may be. None of us can categorically say that. But what we need to do is find enough of the truth for ourselves so that we know that to be true. So if your belief is it would've happened if I'd have gone a year sooner, that's your belief-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:19 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:13:19 ... that's your truth, and that's okay.That's perf- and, and maybe it would've still all worked out. Who knows?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:25 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:13:25 But the way it actually went was, if I look at my journey of those two years, and I look at who I was a year in, and I look at who I was two years in, I know that the year-in version of me, she might have got that plane ticket home from India, because she wouldn't have trusted and believed in herself enough. She'd not built enough resilience.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:42 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:13:42 So she could have come home, and then I definitely wouldn't be sat here with you. I'd have gone and got another corporate job.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:47 Yeah. There's a, there's, for me, as I hear that, 'cause I was just playing devil's advocate-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:13:53 Of course

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:53 ... I also believe in timing, that things happen at the right time. And, you know, the reason I even brought up this whole story with your corporate job is, it's the words with which you described it in that chapter, right? You chose to believe-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:08 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:08 ... that everything was happening to help you get to where you needed to go, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:11 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:12 It was a choice.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:13 Yeah, we always have choice.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:14 It was a choice, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:15 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:15 So I always think about things and I go, "Well, is it useful?" Is your belief useful-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:20 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:20 ... or not, right? Trusting the timing, I would argue, is a useful belief.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:27 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:27 Right? It's a belief.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:28 As you say, how can you prove it?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:30 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:30 Let's examine the alternative. The alternative is frustration. "Oh, my God, I wish this had happened sooner. I can't believe this is happening to me. That person's getting in my way of me living my life." It's blaming on the outside. It goes back to your, uh, taking radical responsibility chapter, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:47 You have to own your life, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:50 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:50 So in some ways, it doesn't actually matter.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:14:53 Nope.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:54 The belief that everything is happening as it should I think is a powerful belief.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:00 And it's a, it's a more helpful belief than not believing that.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:04 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:04 And this is where the, you know, the logical mind versus that kind of intuitive mind... You know, we are certainly, here in the UK and many other Western countries, we're very much trained to shut down the body from a young age-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:16 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:16 ... without even realizing it. It's about, well, what does the research say? What does the science say? What does the logical mind say, right? But I think even, I think when we were on stage together at Carb Fest last year, I think one of the things I said at some point was that, yeah, but you can't get data and science for absolutely everything, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:36 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:36 So I... So for example, do I love my wife? Yeah, I do. How do I prove it?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:40 Like, where's the actual proof?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:41 Where's the trial that shows me that-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:42 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:43 ... I... It's like, well, I just know.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:45 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:45 "What do you mean you just know?" "No, no, I just know."

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:47 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:48 "What do you mean? Prove it." That, that's, that's how we apply-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:51 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:51 ... the logical mind to so many things, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:53 So I think we just need to soften sometimes. I'm not saying ignore your logical mind. It, it's like-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:15:59 No

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:59 ... but just let's also, let's have a sense of awe, that there are some things that we-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:16:03 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:03 ... can't explain.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:16:05 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:05 Right? That there are things out there. You've mentioned the word spirituality quite a few times in this conversation so far. When you use that term, Kirsty-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:16:16 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:17 ... what do you mean by it?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:16:19 Spirituality, for me, is having a connection to something greater, and I mean by that a greater part of me, so I would call that my higher self, my soul, and also the understanding that we are part of something greater, so whether you call that God or universe or source or whatever name you start to, to give that. And that spirituality, to me, is living a life of meaning and purpose and devotion. So spirituality's not something that I do and then I go and live my life. Spirituality is my way of life. So spirituality means that I approach everything in my life from a place of deep devotion and meaning and purpose. So even when I'm going through really difficult times, when life makes absolutely no sense, I'm gonna come to that from a perspective of, what can I learn from this? How can I grow through this? What is this teaching me? What is this showing me? Versus being more of a victim to, to life and everything happening to me. I see everything happening for me rather than to me-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:22 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:22 ... to help me to grow and evolve.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:25 And that's a choice.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:26 That's a choice.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:26 It's a choice to believe that.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:28 It's a helpful choice. It's a useful choice.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:31 And it's kind of interesting, hearing you, you say that makes me reflect back to a conversation I had maybe two or three years ago now with, uh, Bronnie Ware.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:40 Oh, I love her.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:41 Yeah, Bronnie's great.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:42 That was a great conversation.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:43 Oh, she's such a wonderful lady.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:45 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:46 And, uh, I mean, I talk about that chat quite a lot. It had such a... It, it had, and her work has had quite a profound impact on me.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:53 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:53 She wrote the book The Five Regrets of the Dying-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:17:55 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:55 ... the common things people say on their death beds. And I think your book very much speaks to that, because ultimately, through that book and her work, she's trying to help people live a more authentic life-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:18:06 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:06 ... which is essentially what you're trying to do with your latest book, Your Cosmic Purpose, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:18:11 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:11 It's helping people find purpose through authenticity.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:18:14 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:14 But in that conversation, I remember asking her, I said, "Bronnie, did everyone at the end of their life have regrets?"

Kirsty Gallagher 1:18:20 Oh.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:21 She said no.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:18:22 [gasps]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:22 I said, "Oh, what were the commonalities in people who didn't have regrets at the end of their life?" And I'm trying to remember now, but it was, I think it was these three things. It was people who had strong relationships with their friends and family.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:18:36 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:37 It was people who had a sense of humor, and it was people who believed in something greater than themselves.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:18:46 Yeah. Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:48 Right? Now, all of those points are important, but let's just highlight that final one. And I feel this is, when I observe the world today, Kirsty, and as, you know, religion has played less of a role in people's lives, a lot of people are feeling a bit lost now.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:05 Totally.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:05 They don't have a belief in something larger than, than themselves.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:10 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:10 And that's a problem.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:11 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:11 You know, the amount of mental health problems I've seen over the years as a clinician is, you know, everything was too logical. It's all about me as an individual in this world. What am I gonna get out of it?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:21 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:21 Why am I not getting what I want? It's, it's-It's too much if it's all just on you.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:27 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:27 You know, that- that's where the despondency comes a lot of the time. You come home from work, you go, "Is this all there is?"

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:32 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:32 Like, what-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:32 If this is it

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:32 ... I just keep doing this.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:34 I wait for the weekends-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:35 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:35 ... and then I, what, go for a walk on Saturday, and I do this on the Sunday, then I'm back to work on Monday.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:39 You know, I was reflecting yesterday and this morning, why is it, or what are, what is one of the reasons why Kirsty has become so popular over the last few years? Because you have, right? You have this core devoted following.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:19:54 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:56 And I was reading a lot of the comments on your Instagram page yesterday, and the things that your community say about you and how your, is it your Lunar Living-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:20:07 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:07 ... classes have, have literally changed their relationship with themselves. It's kind of interesting to me. I'm thinking, what is it? And I, and I imagine, I'd love your take on this, but I imagine it's that people are looking for something to believe in.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:20:21 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:22 They're looking for something that's greater than just their individual existence.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:20:26 Absolutely. And I really feel that we found that in the pandemic. You touched on that before. And I think pre-pandemic, we'd just been... I call it TikTok. We just TikTok, TikTok, TikTok through life. Get up, go to work, da, da, da, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. All of a sudden, everything about life that we believed to be true all of a sudden crumbled. Nothing made sense anymore, and then we started to look for something to believe in. And I do feel that's, that's why I pray that I give people, that is part of my purpose, but I'm not gonna tell you what to believe in. I'm gonna help you to find that for yourself. Because-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:59 Find your truth

Kirsty Gallagher 1:21:00 ... find your truth. 'Cause I think we also need to be very, very aware of that, and I, I feel that that is part of the problem that came with religion. So if we look even to, to nature, I know you and I adore nature and spend a lot of time there. Our ancestors would've found the divine in nature. They would've gone to nature to worship the divine. They would've found the divine in the trees and the streams, and that's where they would've gone to. Religion came in and was- became a gatekeeper. You can only talk to God through me, and that's where a barrier gets put in, and that's where people then look to other people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:32 Mm-hmm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:21:32 "Well, you, you tell me how to meditate. You, you tell me what the answers are. You tell me." That's not our journey. Our journey is to know it for ourselves-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:41 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:21:41 ... from somewhere so deep within us, and that's what I wanna help people with. And I, I say at the start of every workshop and every class that I do, "I'm probably gonna really frustrate you, 'cause you're coming to me now and saying, 'Kirsty, tell, tell me what to do with my life.' I'm not gonna tell you what to do."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:56 Mm-hmm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:21:56 "I'm gonna help you to know what to do. Because, again, if you're looking to me, you give all of your power away to me, and you always then need me to be here."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:05 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:22:05 "I wanna give you your power back." And I think we've lost a lot of power over ourselves in this world, because we live in a world that capitalizes on us looking outside of ourselves for something. We live in a consumer world that capitalizes on you never feeling like you're enough, on always believing that you need to have a certain thing to be happy-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:24 Mm-hmm

Kirsty Gallagher 1:22:24 ... that you need to look a certain way to be happy, that you need to behave in a certain way to be happy. We live in a world that will constantly take our attention outside of us. And so we live in a world that literally profits from us never feeling like we're enough and having a deep connection to ourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:39 Mm-hmm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:22:39 When you have that, when you know who you are, and I think I write about this in the book, there's a big thing about being spiritual means that, you know, you need to live a life of poverty, whatever it might be. That's not true. Have, have the house, the cars, the handbags, the shoes, the fur, have whatever you want, providing that's not the purpose of your happiness. And if all of that stuff got taken away, you could still be happy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:02 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:02 And that's what I wanna give people, that sense that everything you want will start to come to you, but you need it less-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:08 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:08 ... because you just have a happiness in here that just is. It just is. You're here in this present moment with yourself. L- If loving yourself is a stretch too far, liking yourself, being with yourself, showing up for yourself, doing the best you can every day, and that's enough.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:26 Yeah. It's not the thing, it's your relationship to the thing.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:33 The best things in life can't be learnt, they can only be experienced.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:37 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:39 These are, for me at least, and I think for you, the fundamental truths of human existence-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:45 ... that people tend to ignore.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:49 And that's why the same lessons keep getting handed to you time and time again-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:53 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:53 ... right? Until you realize this stuff-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:54 ... until you actually realize, "No, actually, I can be my own best expert."

Kirsty Gallagher 1:23:59 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:00 Kirsty, to me, you have this quite remarkable grounded presence that I know many people really admire about you and look up to and probably want a little bit for themselves. I also know from reading your latest book that things weren't always that way.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:24:17 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:19 Are you okay sharing a little bit about your best friend, Sharon?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:24:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:24 And how impactful your experience with Sharon has been in terms of where you are today?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:24:30 Absolutely. So Sharon was, um, oh, Sharon was a l- a, a light. She lit up a room. She was one of the most beautiful people you could ever hope to meet. And I met Sharon... So I haven't always been this way, and I, I, I, I think that the reason a lot of people see this in me is because I've, I've been where other people are. I used to be incredibly angry as a child, very frustrated. I played the blame game a lot in my life. I, I think I write in the book, I, I sometimes look back to those days when I could blame my boss or my parents or this person or that person for the way that my life was. It's been a journey for me to get to where I am, and I feel that that's where we can teach the most, when we are that, we, we've had, got that lived experience, and we understand where it or how it feels to be where somebody else is. So I met Sharon in the days of, um, you know, partying. Spirituality took a little bit of a sideline. And-I, I think for me, a, a big part of my journey, to be honest, has been there's been a lot of death that's taken me towards this, and if I can go a stage before Sharon, I'd speak also about the book. My book is dedicated to Sharon and my great-great Auntie Mabel. And my great-great Auntie Mabel was the person who I, I guess, started me on this journey. She read tea leaves and tarot. She was psychic. And as a little girl, I adored her. She introduced me to this whole world beyond the physical world. And they lived in Yorkshire. My family were in Lancashire, so we didn't see a lot of her, and she finally moved to be near us. And I'd go round after school every day and sit at her feet, and she'd only been there... Y- y- your concept of time is, is different when you're a little older. I... It feels like maybe months. And then she got taken into hospital, and I remember my mum speaking to us all that morning and saying, "Don't come to the hospital." And I was like, I was also a very, very rebellious child, and I was like, "Absolutely not." And at the end of that day, I went to the hospital, and as soon as I got there to the hospital and I took a hold of her hand, and my mum was on the other side, and my Uncle George at her head, she, she passed away with... as soon as I got there and held her hand. And I really truly feel like she'd waited for me, and my mum told me later that the reason she said, "Don't come to the hospital" was that morning they'd said, "She's got hours. She's gonna go any minute." And she waited for me all day to get there. And being with her in that moment and seeing the soul leave the human body was such a... And I don't have words for it, and if anyone's ever experienced being with someone in the moment of a passing, it's something you can't find words for, but it touches your soul in a way that again helps you to understand the meaning of life in a way that can't-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:09 H- how old were you?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:27:12 15.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:13 So you're 15.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:27:14 Maybe. And I, I to this day feel so grateful she waited for me to be there with her, that she, she wanted me there with her in that moment of her passing. And it was such a... It was a, it was a beautiful honor to be there for her in that moment. And then from there, I... You know, she'd introduced me to spirituality. I, I'd, I'd met Sharon, and Sharon was just... She was a single mom, and she didn't live a lavish lifestyle. She'd had a difficult journey. But we spoke before about choices. Sharon made a choice every day to light up the world. She made a choice to live life to the full, to experience every moment. I'd, I'd take her to the supermarket every Sunday on a single-mum budget, going 'round ASDA. We had more fun in that hour than most people have in their lifetime. She just lived life to the full, and she loved life. And then we'd been on a night out, and she always used to get quite bad hangovers, and she'd got a headache. I'd left. I got a phone call maybe a day or so later from another friend, and we had a big weekend away planned, and I presumed the other friend was calling me to say, "Can you add me to the weekend?" And she told me Sharon was in a coma. And I just remember thinking, "It's, it, it's, it's impossible. I, I don't..." You know when your mind just doesn't... I, I don't, I don't understand what you're trying... I don't understand what you're telling me. I, I don't understand. And I remember going to the hospital and seeing her on life support and, again, if anyone's ever seen anyone on life support, the drugs they give them means that the body kind of bloats and things, and she just didn't... It... She wasn't the Sharon I knew. And Sharon was full of life. Sharon was incredible. Sharon was... And I really honestly believed that she was gonna get better, even from going to see her. Uh, my, my... I guess those moments where your mind tries to protect you, my mind was like, "No. This isn't happening." And then I remember, it was a Friday, I was in work in the corporate job we spoke about, and I got a phone call of her... from her family saying that we're turning off the life support. And I, I, I, I... Again, you can put yourself in moments in time. I remember, like, the whole world slowed down and everything crashed around me, and the almost like, "No. N-" And I remember just kind of running out of the building, and a few friends came out and followed me. And then she had an open casket at her funeral, and they'd made her look so beautiful at her funeral. She looked like Sharon, the Sharon I knew. And I wrote her a letter, and I put some crystals in there with her, and I stood and looked at her face, and in that moment, all of those silly things that we worry about when we think about, "Oh, but I'm a bit scared to quit the job I really don't like," or... They seemed so irrelevant because I realized that could be me in that coffin. She was young. We were early 20s, you know? That could be me in that coffin. That could happen to me. I could leave the earth tomorrow, and would I, as we spoke about Bronnie Ware before, would I then look back and go, "I was, I was happy with what I'd done," or would I, "Wish I'd been braver-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:20 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 1:30:20 ... lived a life that was more true to me, done the brave things"? And so I went home after her funeral, and I broke up with my partner at the time because, again, deep down, that little voice of inconvenient truth had been saying to me for a while, "This isn't right. This isn't right." And I convinced myself, "Oh, but he's..." He, and he is just an incredible guy. He really, really is. Thought, "Oh, but he's, he's, he's not so bad," and, "Will you ever meet anybody else?" And all those things we worry about when we're questioning whether to leave something. And I made a promise to Sharon at her coffin side that I was gonna do all of the things in my life that I wanted to do, and I was gonna do it for her 'cause she could no longer do it, and that my life would be a dedication to her death. And so her death was one of the biggest catalysts for life for me, which we often find-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:08 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 1:31:08 ... because it took away all the fear. It took away all the, "I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it next week, I'll start next month." None of that seemed relevant when looking at her in a coffin.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:19 I mean, first of all, thank you for sharing that.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:31:22 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:22 Um, i- it's kind of interesting as, as I listen to that and-Think about where you are today, right? So we've only known each other, I would say three or four years.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:31:39 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:39 Right? We, we met at Carfest-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:31:40 We did

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:41 ... which is, uh, people who don't know, it's a end of summer festival-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:31:44 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:44 ... that Chris Evans puts on for charity, and we were on stage together talking.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:31:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:49 And then obviously every summer we hang out there, you meet my family, we hang out, we become really good friends, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:31:56 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:56 And, and death has such a powerful way of teaching us about what's truly important in life.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:32:04 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:05 So for me personally, I don't honestly know if I'd be doing what I do today if my dad was alive.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:32:14 Your dad, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:15 I don't know. Because Dad's death in 2013 was the catalyst for me-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:32:22 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:22 ... for the first time in my life to stop looking outside and start looking inside.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:32:28 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:28 It was only through my dad's death that I started to ask myself questions like, "Whose life are you leading?"

Kirsty Gallagher 1:32:34 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:35 Right? Is it your life or somebody else's life, right? So, and then there was a series of steps of trusting myself-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:32:43 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:43 ... spending time with myself, listening to that internal voice and following it, even when sometimes the sensible decision wasn't to do what I did. And yes-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:32:54 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:54 ... now it can all look that things are great and, you know, everything was planned out perfectly, but no, it wasn't.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:32:59 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:59 It was like you, you take those mini steps. You go, "No, I think, I think there's another way to communicate with people. I think there's another way to heal people-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:33:07 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:07 ... and help them get better," right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:33:09 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:10 So death has a powerful way of teaching us what's important in life. That was true for me in my 30s when my dad died, and it seems to be certainly very true for you-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:33:23 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:23 ... as a teenager and then in your early 20s.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:33:26 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:27 So I guess one of the questions I have is, uh, this, it's this kind of eternal question for me, is can people learn these lessons, these truths, that we know them to be true, right, when we hear them, right? We may push them away, but we, you know, enough people from enough different walks of life end up stumbling upon the same truths-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:33:49 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:49 ... from different countries and different cultures, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:33:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:52 Can you learn them without experiencing extreme adversity yourself?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:34:01 Yes, and so I, I, I, I always give ands around things. We live in a very or world, don't we? It's this or that, this or that, da, da, da. And I feel that... So if I was gonna answer this from my deep truth and a spiritual perspective, I would say that yes we can, but there has to be a certain level of almost deep enlightenment or purpose that you come here with, that drives you to seek answers outside of the norms of society. I still do feel that for most people, it's those, what I might call the dark night of the soul moment, whether that is a death, a shock breakup, losing your job, that takes us to those places where we learn the truth. Because if we're being fully honest with ourselves, and it happens to most people who maybe get made redundant or a breakup happens, that after they've gone through the grieving and everything else that has to take place, they will look back and go, "Mm, I kinda knew. I ki- I kinda knew."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:02 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:35:02 So we have to have got, for me, to quite an evolved level that when we get that first niggle, we trust it and act on it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:08 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:35:09 For most of us, it's a niggle, a niggle, a niggle, a niggle, and then our soul self, or whatever word you choose, goes, "They're not listening. I'm gonna need to bring something in here that's gonna help them to listen, because they're really straying off the pathway that they need to be on." So for me, for most of us, it does necessitate that moment where everything that we have thought to be true begins to crumble around us-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:34 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:35:34 ... that makes us then look at what's real about life and what's true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:39 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:35:39 So I feel like there has to be that little bit of a, a resistance in order for us then. But over time, as you just so beautifully said, you learn to trust the niggle at stage one. And I think a, a point-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:49 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:35:49 ... I'd just really love to make is that I've been doing this work for 20 years. Same for you. They compare my 20-year journey with their one-month journey, and they're like, "I wanna be where you are." And people used to say it to me all the time with yoga. They'd come to me, and I was teaching sold-out retreats all over the world, and they'd say, "I wanna do what you do. How do I do it?" And I'd be like, "Go and learn your craft for 10 years. That's how-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:10 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:36:10 ... you're gonna do it." So people look at me sitting here with you now, and I know there's gonna be so many people out there who are so happy for me that I'm sitting here on your, on your podcast, they don't see those... And I'm talking hours I would spend on the line, on the Bakerloo Line, going up and down, up and down London to teach yoga classes. They don't see the times that I'd teach a yoga class and wouldn't even be able to make the room rent, 'cause not enough people came to that class. They don't see the moments I've been on, on my hands and knees on the bathroom floor, begging the universe to give me a sign. So they compare my 20-year journey. So again, we've just gotta be really gentle with how we look at things and how we compare ourselves to other people, and that we get to be the ones who've gone a bit further down the path and get to say, "Hey, this is what's down the path. There's a little pothole there. Watch out for it. This is over here. But this is where you can get to if you continue to follow this journey." So it's easy for us now to follow the niggle, niggle one, because we've got all that lived experience-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:06 Yeah

Kirsty Gallagher 1:37:06 ... of trusting the timing. You said before how it, how prove it. I, I only have my own lived experience, that every single time it's happened at just the right time, and I've gone, "That's why that didn't happen sooner."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:18 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:37:18 "That's why that didn't happen then." Everything that we need to go through needs to be a lived experience, otherwise it's somebody else's truth.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:26 Yeah. We wanna Amazon Prime our lives, right? And that, that is the seductive nature of the media landscape-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:37:33 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:33 ... in which many of us-... consume our content these days, that we think everything's overnight

Kirsty Gallagher 1:37:39 When we compare a curated highlight reel of someone else's life to our real life, that's like one minute of someone pretending to do something that they're likely not even doing in real life anyway.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:49 Yeah, but even, like, let's, let's say through a medical lens, right? Through people follow, um, let's say medical doctors online for health information, right? But every person you listen to is at a different stage on their journey-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:06 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:06 ... right? So, you know, someone who's just finished medical school and has seen five patients-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:15 Yep

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:16 ... I'm not saying they don't have anything worthwhile to share.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:18 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:18 Absolutely not. But I'm saying it's different from someone, I don't know, like myself, who's seen tens of thousands-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:27 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:27 ... maybe, I don't know, maybe over 100,000 patients-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:30 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:31 ... and got that lived experience-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:33 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:34 ... and feedback continuously, right? You can't just learn it in a book.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:38 Nope.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:38 You learn it through experience, and that's just the way it is.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:42 Like, it's not better or worse, it's just different. And I, I love what you say about, you know, for some of us, we need that extreme adversity to jolt us-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:52 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:53 ... out of our stagnation so that we can actually listen to what we already knew.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:38:57 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:58 But yet, in theory, if we learn to sit with ourselves more, we don't need to wait for that adversity.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:04 Nope.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:04 We can hear the voices there. We can hear the whispers before they become screams.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:07 That's it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:08 Right.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:08 And act on it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:10 Um, I wanna talk about language-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:13 Hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:14 ... okay? And words. One thing that became very clear to me as we appeared on stage together year after year at Carfest-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:27 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:27 ... was that this is kind of interesting for me, me and Kirsty are talking about a lot of similar themes-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:34 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:36 ... but we're using different words-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:39 ... to describe them.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:40 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:41 Okay? And I find this really interesting, 'cause I sort of, I believe that some people will get put off by certain themes by the way I'm describing them or the words I use.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:51 And perhaps other people might get put off by certain things that-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:55 I say

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:55 ... certain words that you're using.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:39:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:57 Right? And I guess I wanna just explore that on multiple levels, right? On level one is words are inherently limiting-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:06 ... I believe, right? [laughs] 'Cause you're talking a lot about feeling things.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:10 Things that you can't always explain with your logical mind.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:12 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:13 You, you can't put a language to it, but you just-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:14 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:14 ... that gut feeling, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:17 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:17 But, you know, you're talking in this book and on this podcast about trusting yourself, taking radical responsibility, listening to your body, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:26 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:27 These are similar themes to what I wrote about in my last book, Make Change at Last, but we use different language.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:34 You know, I will use the word spiritual, you're using the word soul or, um, you know... For example, let's talk about the name of the book, Your Cosmic Purpose.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:42 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:43 Right? So there'll be some people who walk into a bookshop and go, "Cosmic, eh, that's not for me," right? Whereas other people go, "Your Cosmic Purpose?"

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:52 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:52 "Oh, man, I want that book."

Kirsty Gallagher 1:40:54 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:54 Right? But ultimately, the truths in here are just the profound truths that we all need to learn.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:41:02 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:02 So how do you think about language? And I guess let's talk about that word cosmic. Why is the word cosmic in the title of your new book?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:41:12 Because I wanted to remain very, very true to me, and a lot of the work I do and the world that I work in is the cosmic world. It's the cosmic consciousness, it's the universe, it's the divine.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:24 What, what does cosmic mean?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:41:25 So I think as well, a lot of the reason we use the word cosmic purpose is because I also do something online once a week called A Cosmic Weather Report, where I talk to people about what's going on in the planets and the skies that help us to navigate life here on Earth in a slightly easier way, and they are so well watched, and people like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:45 Oh, people love them.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:41:46 [laughs] They do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:47 People utterly love them.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:41:48 I mean, the amount of stories I get like yours that say, "You said this in this Cosmic Weather Report, so therefore I went and did that," and their entire lives have changed. So I wanted to give a nod to, to the cosmic, to the divine, to the universe. So the cosmic for me is that part of us that... We're made of stardust. And I know that sounds like a little bit of a woo fact, but that's scientific fact, that we're made of stardust.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:10 And what does that mean?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:42:11 That within us are bits and pieces, atoms within us that were created at the Big Bang. So to me, that says we are part of everything. We are part of the infinite, expansive, cosmic universe that's out there, and I wanted us, through this book, to realize that we are part of something way greater, that we are the universe in a human body, that we are a soul having a human experience, and that we are here to live and experience and explore in the ways that we come here to do. So I wanted to give a nod to that, and it's so, it's so beautiful you bring this up because this, this returns back to purpose, that we're both living our purpose by the language that we use. So if there were a script for this podcast, which there isn't, 'cause we've just flowed beautifully, but if there were a script, and we got 10 people to come in here and speak the exact script, they still wouldn't say it in the way that we say it. They still wouldn't land it in the way that we land it. And so when we're living our purpose and we're speaking our truth, my words are gonna land with someone that's gonna complete- they're gonna hear it. They're gonna really, really hear it. And other people aren't going to. They're gonna go, "Cosmic, yeah, no. Nothing to do with me."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:21 And that's okay.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:43:21 And that's okay. And so it's about choosing who we speak to. And so I didn't want to alter the title of this book to be something that might be considered more corporate, because they're maybe not the kind of people I speak to right now just yet. Maybe never, who knows? So there's a, there's an area for all of our voices, and this is where we come back to our purpose. And when I'm being authentically true to me and my beliefs and my truth, I can speak in a way that will affect the people I'm meant to speak to.And those I'm not, they'll come and listen to somebody completely different

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:52 Yeah. No, I love that. I mean, I think speaking to the idea that we sometimes push back against things that we know are, are kind of relevant to us on some level, like I said before, about how sometimes that person speaking their mind in a compassionate way online rubs us up the wrong way-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:44:15 Hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:15 ... because we know, wow, I wish I could be that authentic. I wish I could speak my truth like that person can. I wish I could be like that person who, who actually doesn't care whether people validate him or not. He's just wants to share what he wants to share with the world, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:44:31 Absolutely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:31 It's also, I guess, you could say the same thing here in terms of, you know, it's kind of, you know... We, we all... If you, if you even think about the fact that we're here, it is a damn miracle, isn't it?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:44:46 Oh.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:46 You know, how can your rational mind actually-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:44:49 Hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:49 ... properly explain how all these cells have morphed into who we are today, right? Sure, you can talk about your biology lessons and a sperm meets an egg and they fertil- Okay.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:44:59 But there's a 1 in 400 trillion chance of that happening.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:01 Yeah, but even, even-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:02 It's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:02 ... that, the whole thing-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:03 ... wild

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:03 ... is remarkable. It's like-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:05 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:05 ... it's like that sense of awe when you watch a plant.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:07 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:08 And you... You know, I, I wanted to... Uh, we won't probably get time in this conversation. I wanted to talk about your, I think it was your fourth book, Sacred Seasons-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:15 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:15 ... which I really like. Okay. And in that, you talk about, um, how in the COVID lockdowns, we all started to look forward to that one walk we could have a day.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:27 And because we were all doing the same walk, we started to see how nature changed.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:31 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:32 Right? Which is definitely my family's experience.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:35 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:36 And you know that sense of awe-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:39 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:39 ... when you could escape your life to... You know, you couldn't escape then, so you had to start paying attention to the small things, right?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:46 There is a natural awe and wonder in the world.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:45:49 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:50 I think that's there in everyone, even the most skeptical person speaking to this conversation right now, at some point when they were a child, they did have that sense of awe at the world.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:46:00 Hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:00 There is something greater. And going back to this choice, you know, how do you wanna live your life? Do you want everything to be a rational, logical, scientific explanation, or do you wanna have a sense of awe and wonder about isn't it amazing to be alive? Isn't it amazing that that, like, green bush can now have the most gorgeous yellows and oranges and purples because it's spring? Do you know what I mean?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:46:26 Yeah, but we have those moments as adults, but we just choose to ignore them. So I would, I would challenge-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:31 Is it a choice to ignore them, or have we been conditioned by society to think-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:46:35 I, I think both

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:35 ... that's a bit childlike, that's not what a mature adult does?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:46:38 I think we, we... I think we're too busy. I think we're in a busy epidemic. We've glorified being busy. And I would challenge anyone listening to this now to come to me and say they've never watched a sunrise or a sunset and just felt that moment stir within them of like, ah, that moment the sun dips beneath the horizon. Or gone outside and seen a full moon in the sky, and at that moment we go like, "Oh." Those moments of awe, but then we busy them away, and we get caught up in what we consider real life to be, which is the monotony. And we talk about this a lot. We've got so many routines, but hardly any rituals. So we get caught up in then the routines. Well, I've got to get the this done, and I've got to get that done, and I've got to tick that off the to-do list, and I've got to get that done. I've got to be here, and I've got to go there, and I'm busy, busy, and I've got to multitask. And even social media platforms, there's 15 you're meant to be on, and we're meant to keep up with everything. And so in that, we miss those actual moments of present life. Like the present moment, we miss it. Nature's only ever in the present moment. If you turn away from that sunset in the moment it's going down, you've missed it. It's gone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:40 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:47:40 You have to be so present to catch that exact second the sun dips beneath the surface. Sunrise, you have to be present. You go away and start scrolling Instagram, sun's up. You've missed it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:50 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:47:50 You know? So nature brings us into the present moment. And so I feel it's a, it's a choice, but it's also a conditioning that we're made to be so busy that we don't have time to be in the present moment anymore. But that's the only moment that life ever really exists. And the more we can carve out moments to be in nature... And I truly believe that the reason that we feel so good when we're in nature, and some people might call this a bit too woo, but I honestly believe that the same life force energy that grows that bush you spoke about or brings the leaves on the trees or gets the trees to lose... Same life force energy that grows my skin and my hair and my nails, it's the same life force energy that moves through us. And I feel like when we spend time in nature or we look up at a sky full of stars, that we remember that there's something more to life than the monotony of ticking off a constant to-do list, and we get to that essence of who we truly are.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:45 Yeah. Man, I love that, Kirsty. I think the book's really, really great. I think it's gonna help so many people just tune into themselves-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:48:54 Mm. I really hope so

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:55 ... and start the journey of finding more purpose in their lives.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:01 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:02 To sort of wrap this conversation up, there's so many insights that you've shared, lots of practical tips throughout the conversation on how people can start on that journey.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:15 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:15 But at the end there you were talking about this busyness-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:18 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:18 ... right? This busyness that seems to have infiltrated the lives of many, if not most modern humans.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:26 Right? In a way that we never were before.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:27 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:28 Right? Even, you know, you were talking about your grandparents before, even that generation-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:31 No

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:31 ... there, there wasn't this level of busyness-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:34 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:34 ... and overwhelm, right? So to wind this down-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:39 Mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:41 ... for that person who does feel overwhelmed and too busy, is not in a job that they love, is not living a purposeful life-Have you got any final words of wisdom for them?

Kirsty Gallagher 1:49:56 Mm. Start now and start small. So anyone that tells me, if you, if you tell me you don't have five to ten minutes a day for yourself, I'm gonna tell you there's a really big problem in your life if you cannot find five to ten minutes a day for yourself. Ritual, finding purpose, it doesn't need to be hours at a time. You don't need incense burning. The moon doesn't have to be at a certain position in the sky. You don't have to have the right music playing. You just have to carve out that time for yourself to spend with yourself. So if you're a parent, and you do the school run, when you get back from that school run, do not get out of your car. Stay on the drive. Set a timer on your phone for five minutes. And I say to people all the time, "Do what's realistic for you." If you say, "Okay, I've listened to this conversation. From tomorrow, I'm gonna do an hour's yoga, then I'm gonna meditate, then I'm gonna journal," you're gonna fail on day three. Then you're gonna tell yourself, "This stuff is rubbish, it doesn't work," or, "I'm rubbish, I can't do anything." We set these unrealistic expectations on ourself that set us up for failure. Say to yourself, "I've got six minutes a day." You could still make a profound difference in six minutes a day if you showed up for that six minutes every day, because that's part of the big thing about ritual. It's not necessarily what you do, it's that you show up. It's that you say to yourself, "In this moment, there are 100 things I could be doing," or should. People use the word should a lot. Change that to could. If you change should to could, you've immediately won. You should do that, or you could. It gives you an option. You could be going in the house, putting the washing machine on, running around, making that phone call, doing this. But in that moment, you're saying, "I'm gonna make myself important. I'm gonna make going within and finding meanis- meaning and purpose important. I'm gonna gift myself this five to six minutes out of a day." And I almost guarantee you, and I'd love people to give feedback on this, if you did that every day consistently for a month, two months, three months... And this is why I wish we'd got into things like the moon and the seasons, but they give us natural marker points to check in. If you gave yourself six minutes a day every day, your life would change in a month, three months, six months, in ways you cannot yet even imagine, and you won't know until you actually do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:17 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:52:17 So decide what it is for you that works. Are you gonna just put your hands over your heart and check in and say, "How am I feeling today?" And then just listen for the answer, and don't judge it. One thing we, we, we do with emotions, and this is why we don't trust ourself, is that an emotion comes up and we feel sad.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:33 Mm.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:52:34 And then we'll go, "Why do you feel sad? Uh, you've got nothing to feel sad about. You didn't feel sad yesterday." And then we do the what about. "Well, what about other people? They've got it worse than me." If you came to me and said, "Kirsty, I feel sad," and I went, "Well, why do you feel sad? You weren't sad before when I spoke to you. You've got no reason to," you'd stop coming and telling me you feel sad. So the whole time we invalidate ourselves, we tell ourselves we can't be trusted and what we're feeling can't be trusted, and then we lose connection with ourselves-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:57 Mm

Kirsty Gallagher 1:52:57 ... and that's when then we make ourselves busy, busy, busy, busy in the world. Hands over heart, check-in. How do I feel right now? I feel sad. Okay. I'm just gonna sit with this, just for a few minutes and I'm gonna breathe. It might be that you decide to keep a pen and a piece of paper in the side of your car, and you just write down, "I love, um, freestyle journaling," so when you don't necessarily have something, you just write down. And I say to people all the time, "Just write 'I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write, I don't know...'" And so you start to do know what to write. Something, something will come out eventually.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:25 Yeah.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:53:25 It may be that you're gonna take off your shoes and go into your back garden and put your bare feet on the earth and take five deep breaths and just feel the sun on your face and that... Find what works for you, find a timeframe that works for you, and then make the commitment to yourself, not to anyone else. This is how you will learn to trust yourself, when you keep a promise to yourself. If you break that promise for other people, you don't trust yourself anymore. And you will find when you start this, you're gonna be too busy, too cold, too tired, too hungry. Your mind will give you a million excuses because your mind doesn't want you to come into that place of deep knowing. Your mind wants to keep you busy and constantly searching outside of yourself. If you can carve out that time and give that to yourself and show up, if nothing else, you'll learn you can trust yourself. And that means that when you get the niggle to quit your job, you're gonna trust yourself enough to do it. When you get the niggle to go and do something brave, you're gonna trust yourself to do it. When you have to have a hard conversation with someone, you're gonna trust yourself enough to do it. So start now, start small, and be realistic, and then show up and do it every day, and let us know how it changes your life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:36 Oh, man. Kirsty, what a way to end. I've thoroughly loved-

Kirsty Gallagher 1:54:40 Oh, me too. Thank you so much

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:42 ... having this conversation with you. I've loved getting to know you over the last few years.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:54:45 Me too.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:46 Uh, the new book, Your Cosmic Purpose, is wonderful.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:54:48 Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:48 And, uh, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Kirsty Gallagher 1:54:50 Thank you for having me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:52 If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one.

Speaker 1:54:56 I want people to wake up and realize the creative nature of love, health, harmony, because that is available, and yet we struggle, and there's no reason for this. It's changing your thought. That's all you have to do.