Would you take five minutes a day for yourself if you thought it could help you discover something as profound as your purpose in life? Because, according to Kirsty Gallagher – spiritual and astrology expert, Sunday Times best-selling author and host of the UK’s number 1 spirituality podcast – it can.
“I really believe that if you did sit with yourself for five to ten minutes a day, every day, your life would be almost unrecognizable after a year.
“Because the outside world is just a mirror of your inner world,” says Kirsty, whose new book Your Cosmic Purpose is out now. “You need to find out who you are.”
And how do we find out who we are? This is where the five-minute hack comes in.
“You start to check in with yourself every morning. I argue this with people a lot, especially mums, but if you cannot find five minutes a day for yourself, there’s a really big problem in your life!
“Those five minutes are truly all you need. Just sit there for five minutes and put your hands over your heart and check in with yourself. How are you feeling today?
“What normally happens is that an emotion we suppress comes up and we feel sad, or we feel that anger.
“We feel those words we didn't say, and then we go ‘No! I don't want to feel that!’ So we make ourselves too busy.
“But stick with yourself every day. Ask: ‘If I were going to do something to take care of me today, what would it be?’ I joke about it a lot, but a lot of mums can't even tell you what they want for dinner. They're so used to making what the kids want. So start to check in with asking ‘What brings me joy?’
“If you think, ‘Actually it's dancing’, okay, beautiful. Use your five minutes a day to put a music track on and dance like no one's watching, or to sing at the top of your voice in the car.
“That five minutes is going to make you feel more purposeful. And then the more you start to feel purposeful, and the more you start to feel more alive, and the more you start to feel more you.”
Kirsty, who has helped millions of people across the world to reconnect with ancient wisdom and astrology and has hosted hundreds of sell-out workshops and events, says that this will help you tap into your intuition.
“You're going to be able to feel those little nudges and those little things that are calling you forward more.”
“If you can't sit with yourself for five minutes when you feel sad, how are you going to follow that intuitive nudge that says quit your job of ten years and go and become a yoga teacher?
“It's nearly impossible. But this is small and it's steady, and it's realistic. We want to Amazon Prime our life, but you're not going to find a purpose overnight. And you’re never going to find what you're looking for outside of you.”
Your purpose, says Kirsty, does not need to be your job. “It's anything that makes you feel purposeful and meaningful, which doesn't necessarily need to come with a pay cheque,” she says.
Kirsty’s brilliant new book, described as a “transformational journey” to help readers discover who they are and offering practical ways to live your cosmic purpose, is her sixth.
“What I really pride myself on is taking what's really mystical and making it really relatable,” says the author, whose previous titles The Goddess Path and Lunar Living are Sunday Times bestsellers.
“The really big spoiler alert I give in the new book is that your cosmic purpose is to be you. It's to be more you.
“I truly believe that what the world needs right now is more people being authentically, truthfully themselves, in full integrity in who they came here to be. So it's really a journey back home to discovering who you are, before the world told you who to be.”
Your Cosmic Purpose is out now, published by Happy Place Books