Positive Path NOW - Kathleen Gallagher | DFS 398

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and I've just been having the funnest

conversation ever with Kathleen Gallagher. And Kathleen is a

former HR leader turned yoga teacher, Mind Body coach and

community dance party organizer, and I love that so much, because

you just don't know what path life is going to take you on,

and today, like her talk, title is positive path now offering

simple tools to help you feel more alive. This is all so

exciting for me. Kathleen, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jennifer. I am a big fan of

yours, and it has been so much fun just chatting with you

before we started recording. So thank you so much for having me

on, and I'm just ready to sort of jump in. Yeah. Oh

yeah. Okay, so I, just before I hit record,

mentioned that sometimes it can be a little bit difficult, as a

speaker and trainer, to break into the HR world of you know,

Please invite me in to speak at your thing or train your people

when you haven't really been in that. And you went well, and so

I stopped you there. So share your path, share your story,

because, like, I think you have so much wisdom to share with the

audience. Thank

you. Thanks so much. Yeah, I just retired

last year from almost a 30 year career in human resources and

along the way, sort of behind that was always, sort of my yoga

practice and some of these mindful practices that we'll

talk about along the way here. But you know, HR can be life

giving. HR can be life taking. We used to always say the highs

and lows of HR, right, where you're hiring people, you're

bringing them on, you're developing people, helping

interns to grow, right? What could be more rewarding, except

for when you have to do the firing part, right? And in, you

know, a span of 30 years, you have sort of the the ups and

downs of the economy and the business that compresses and

expands. So yeah, I've, I've done all aspects of HR in my

career, but my favorite part of HR was the developing of people,

helping people to grow, especially young people,

mentoring people that were coming up behind me, you know,

my team probably, you know, didn't realize it at the time,

but I was always sort of trying to give my job away. It's like

I'm leaving eventually, you're going to need to do these things

right. And it was, it was great, because they had to rise up

right eventually. And I had, I had a very, sort of long exit. I

had given my notice almost a year before I left, I had a

strong desire to move into something else, right? This,

this little business of mine called positive path now, which

is all around, evaluating your core values, right? Looking at

our daily habits. What does make you feel most alive, right? And

I found there were many days in corporate, and I'm sure your

listeners might relate to this, where I didn't feel my best in

corporate. I was pretty stressed out, right? I was sort of, you

know, like trying to, trying to deliver the calm cool above the

water, but what was happening below was was quite stressful

for me and difficult at times, and I needed, I desperately

needed, to have some of these wellness tools that were in my

back pocket that I didn't always go and grab right. Sometimes it

was grabbing the glass of wine rather than going to the yoga

class right, which most of us will

do

right,

easiest fit. So, yeah,

yeah. Need the quick fix. But it was pretty

cool to be straddling both worlds for quite a while. So

there was a period of time in HR where I was teaching meditation

in a big conference room. This is pre covid, of course, when we

were all together, and we'd sit around this big board table

where, otherwise there were very serious meetings taking place,

but at lunchtime, once or twice a week, we'd get together and

we'd just do, you know, maybe 15 minutes of closing our eyes,

resetting and doing some meditation in a space that

wasn't always conducive to that kind of energy, if you know what

I mean, right? So, so that was one little piece that we got to

do. And the other thing I got to do for a few years in corporate

was to teach yoga on property. Right? We would go down to the

kitchen after work, whether it was 530 or six o'clock whenever

the meetings ended, and whoever wanted to come to yoga could do

some yoga with us on property. And the company that I was

working for at the time purchased all the yoga mats and

the blocks and the straps, and it was a really low cost

investment for the employees, you know, to sort of figure out

some new ways to de stress together, right? And so that was

sort of, you know, part of what was happening for me as. I was

thinking, Hmm, what if I was to exit HR and move fully into the

wellness space? Right? Obviously, corporate pays. I

made a great living. It was a wonderful career. No regrets,

but it was time. It was time for me to pass that baton. You know,

the younger folks that were coming up behind me, they

deserved a shot. I had my turn, really. And so since then, since

I since I left corporate, I, you know, begun my my practice. I'd

been teaching and practicing yoga for the past 22 years, but

I got more serious about coaching, kind of that one on

one, which I had a lot of experience with, but I had gone

back and got my my coach, my coaching certification. I got my

alcohol free coaching certification, which was a big

deal. Yeah, we got, we're gonna have to talk about that, and

other certifications, including one from the belong Institute. I

don't know if you know anything about Daybreaker events that

they are, these are events. They're alcohol free dance

parties that happen in the morning. I'm talking like seven,

eight o'clock in the morning in New York City. I've been to one.

I've been to a couple in Miami, where we get together. There's a

DJ, there's a lot of fun energy around there's never any alcohol

at these events. So it's called Daybreakers. But the woman who

was behind this entire multi million dollar organization, her

name is Rada, and she introduced a certification called community

builder, or architect builder, and it was through the belong

Institute. So I couldn't wait to get certified with Rada. I just

love what she was doing. I'm like, I want to lead these

Daybreaker events, right? So it's kind of like yoga, which

leads into a dance party. And you know, Radha being the, you

know, just the guru that she is. She figured out a way to design

a certification program. So has these cohorts couple times a

year, and it is all designed around, how do we build

community? How do we get people back together again? Because

this is like now post covid, right? And we need that right,

myself included, we sort of like forgot how to be with people in

person, and we got real comfortable at home behind the

screen. So, you know, those are some of kind of the highlights

of things that I'm getting into now.

Well, I love that. And I have a dear friend,

Hillary, who one day said, Jennifer, you just like to

collect certificates and certifications you need to stop

that. Just implement stop that. And and then I felt very judged.

It was like, Oh, wait, do I have too many? Because I have a lot.

I have a lot. But during years, I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not the

only one. And I was somebody, and you know, one of those

spiritual type people, and she is. You're a lifelong learner,

and you're never going to quit collecting certificates like

Virgo.

Are you a Virgo, by any chance?

Are

you Sagittarian? But I'm a projector

in human design, if that matters, Sagittarius, yes,

you're my you're my literary compliment, actually, yes. What

are you? Are you Leo? I'm a Virgo. I'm a Virgo. And, yeah, I

became kind of addicted to those certifications, too. When I got

my first yoga certification was way back, right, 22 years ago,

then the second yoga certification, then I'm like,

oh, positive psychology. I want to study that. Let me get

certified in that. And at some point, somebody said to

Kathleen, you have the credentials. You gotta just get

out there and do it right?

Do the thing in 12 minute increments.

Yes, yes. Exactly right. Exactly right.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh. I love that. And I love this idea

of a dance party, and I've never heard of being I wrote it down.

I can't find it in my notes, but a certification in alcohol free,

yeah, yeah, it is

certified not to drink.

You get certified as an alcohol free

coach to help other people who are struggling with their gray

area drinking. So this is nothing to do with alcoholism or

people who have a really serious problem, who might need to go to

rehab. Not that it's kind of we're taking care of ourselves,

right? We're coming home, we're going to the gym, we're doing

the yoga class, we're getting our hair done. We're picking out

the right outfits. We're we're juicing, we're having a good

diet, but then we we also use alcohol. It's kind of like the

one thing for me anyway, that was kind of incongruent with the

other life that I was living in all other aspects, right? And I

realized for me, I was not feeling well, even with the sun.

Smallest amount of alcohol, I would have a hangover before I

even went to bed after a glass and a half of wine, right?

Taking two Tylenol before I go to bed. And then that cycle,

sort of waking up, feeling stressed out with the corporate

job, of course, and not feeling my best. And I just really had

to look at that. And so I started plugging into some

podcasts, and discovered there's a whole world of people out

there talking about gray area drinking, whether it's your

desire to reduce alcohol or not drink at all. And you know, I

had some champagne on New Year's Eve, and I enjoyed it. It was

fantastic, right? I knew I wasn't going to feel my best the

next day, but I planned for it, as opposed to, what are the

habits that I really want to reinforce that aren't going to

take me away from feeling my best, right? That habitual,

that mind one, mindlessness, and get a glass of

wine or a beer or whatever, just mindless.

It's so hard. You know, everybody wants

to get together with you and have a drink. And it's not

usually a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, right? It's usually

everybody wants to go out for a drink and go what else could we

do together? Right? So this is where the dance parties come in.

This where the yoga comes in. What can we do together, where

we feel like we're we're building some community, and

we're not having any alcohol, right? Not that, not to say we

can never have any. My husband is a major wine aficionado.

Loves to go to the wine country, right? Collects wine certain

things you know, you want to be able to enjoy, but what is it

that really gives life and what takes life away? And for me, I

felt like alcohol was starting to really take away my life

force. You know, as I'm getting older, I'm trying to think of

everything I could possibly do to feel my best. And that was

kind of the elephant in the room for me, right? So I did get that

certification a couple of years ago, and that's reputation, very

specific piece of coaching where, let's say we were working

together, you know, we come together and start to talk

about, you know, what are your core values? What do you really

value? Let's talk about your limiting beliefs, right? We have

all grown up, every book, every TV show, every movie that you

see, what are they doing? They're cheering, they're

toasting. If they're upset, they're going to the bar.

They're having it. We've all been programmed to use alcohol

to commiserate or to celebrate.

That and a piece of cake.

Amen. To the cake, alright? Like,

oh, I eat too much sugar, right? And it's

like, you do something good, you celebrate, you get a ice cream.

I remember in high school, my friend did something good. I

can't remember what it was. And our local state in North Texas,

ice cream place is called Brahms, and it's a family owned

company, and their ice cream is amazing. And I remember, I went

and got her a hot fudge sundae, and, you know, and then later

she was like, Man, I have a real problem with eating. I eat too

much, and I fight with my weight. And I'm like, Oh, wow.

And I did what we all do. I brought you ice cream, right?

Yeah, thank you. With the alcohol, my grandfather, on my

mom's side, was a pretty severe alcoholic for many years, and it

impacted my mom greatly. So for the first years of their

marriage, if my dad had a beer, my mom just would lose it. She

thought he was going to be an alcoholic. So it was a long time

before she learned you can have a drink and not be an alcoholic.

And so, you know, is it genetic? Is it habit? Is it lifestyle?

Who know, I mean, like, there's all kinds of opinions on that,

but I had a rule, until I left my government job, I never had a

drink before five in the afternoon, under any

circumstances. And it could be Saturday, it could be a party,

it could be on vacation, because I didn't want to set myself up

for that. Ooh, she has a drinking problem. Now I've

retired. Now it doesn't matter quite so much. I have my own

business, so I can moderate it however I want. But if I want to

drink at noon, I'll have a beer at noon, whatever. But that can

be a huge part of people's lives. And my husband and I

bought a lake place many years ago, small, little place. And I

looked around and all the marriages that were struggling,

it was alcohol related. And there it wasn't alcoholism per

se,

right?

It was they're drinking. And then you say

things and do things that you shouldn't, couldn't, wouldn't,

things escalate. Basically,

absolutely, I

because you can have a lot of fun with a Diet

Coke and a glass of water,

you know, I kind of realized that, I mean, I

would have, you know, relationships with people at

work, where we would land. And we would have fun. We're at

work. Of course, we're not drinking, right, right? And now,

you know, you start to become friendly with these people. Now

we're going to get together on the weekend, let's say, with our

spouses, and then you're going to bring alcohol into the mix.

And I realized years ago, it's like, I have a lot of fun with

this person at work, stone cold sober. I don't need to bring any

alcohol into it to enjoy these people, right? You know, the

biggest thing for me, probably was the interruption of sleep.

My sleep was horrible, right? And I've listened to your

program about how important sleep is, right? I mean, I value

sleep more than just about anyone you know. And so here I

would go to sleep, I was able to fall asleep. But what happens?

You know, chemically with alcohol, once the alcohol wears

off, it sort of wakes you up, right? There's a reaction

happening in your body, and your heart's pounding a little bit,

and the worry and the stress, the anxiety, starts to come, and

you're laying there, and you can't fall back to sleep until,

what, maybe four or five o'clock in the morning. And you fall

back to sleep, and you wake up and you're so fatigued, right?

So that that sleep interruptus is what I would call it. And

like, I cannot afford that. I need to be at my best for this

big job that I had. And so it kind of started there. It was,

like coinciding with, you know, stages of life as things were

changing, like, Okay, let's see if I, you know, remove the

toxin. Boy, did my sleep improve? I am like, an eight or

nine hours a night, every night, without, without a problem,

right? And you just wake up and you feel rested, and you so then

you start to feel like, well, I've got more energy. I actually

have more time. There's more space, there's more capacity for

me. And that was a big one. That was a big revelation, when I

realized I actually could handle more stress on the job or in the

marriage, because I was, yeah, let's get real. And you know,

even though my husband was still drinking and he, you know, he

has a beer at night, or he'll have a glass at the most, two

glasses at one. Not a big drinker at all, and neither was

I. But where I am in life with my size, where I am my age, I'm

sure, has a factor to it. I just couldn't handle sort of any any

quantity was really becoming no good for me. And, you know,

removing that also allowed a little more room for me to have

a little more desserts. Which I I value more? I rather have the

cake. I rather have the ice cream. If I'm going to, you

know, calorie for calorie, I'm going to go with the vanilla

MILK SHAKE over the beer, right? So anyway, it's been, it's been

a journey for me, and it's something that I feel like, if

there are other people out there who are struggling with this,

it's not just you, right? It is, it is something that we don't

really get to talk about too much, because there's, there's a

shame in it, almost, where you go, Oh, I must be an alcoholic

if I'm questioning my drinking. No, you're questioning your

health. And what do you really want to give your body, your

mind, your friends and family, even like more of you, just by

reevaluating taking a toxic poison out of your out of your

routine, yeah,

well, and I've got, I can't tell you how many

bottles of liquor that I have, because I had a drink and it was

really good, and I came home to make it, and I made it, like,

once, and so, like, I have all this alcohol. Why? Why can't you

get all this fun stuff in little bitty bottles? I have a bottle

of some kind of chocolate. It's similar to a Bailey's type

product, but it's chocolate a friend brought over six years

ago, and it's still in my refrigerator. Like, yeah, if

beer goes bad, there's probably some bad beer in my

refrigerator. Now, when I'm at the lake house, where there's a

party all the time, that's different, but I think it's,

it's what habit do you want to have? I just got off an eight

day cruise, and I will say I consume some alcohol, possibly

copious amounts, on various evenings.

It

happened, it happened. But I got home last

Tuesday night at midnight, and that's been over a week ago, and

I haven't had any alcohol like No, it just didn't fit right.

And I think there's a thunder basketball game tomorrow night

or tonight, and I'm probably gonna have beer, but I it needs

to be conscious. I think that's like, the whole deal, like,

consciously. How is this impacting me, and is it

impacting me in a positive way or negative way? So I love that.

How do you work with people? What like, I love that you have

this whole, like, plethora. I love the word plethora and

cornucopia. And if I can use them both in a day, it's like a

hit I haven't used it. So you have a plethora of things, like

cornucopia of certifications, which I love. Like, you know now

you're my soul sister. And. Like, how do you work with

people? Do you do group? Do you do one on one? Do you have

something coming up, you know, over the summer, like, what's

happening?

Yeah, thank you. Yeah. So, so right now, I

am working one on one with individuals. And the reason I

say that is I believe so strongly in creating an

individual plan. Every single person is coming from a

different place. I have people who have never done any yoga

whatsoever. They don't want to do that. It's not even going to

be part of our program. Okay? I would love to to have everyone

who's going through my programs to have some level of movement

in their day, whether, okay, we're going to commit to a walk,

we're going to commit to maybe a bike ride or some yoga, maybe

some chair yoga, right? So you have a very individual approach.

Other people will say, I am not someone who could sit still and

do meditation. Well, let's like, kind of, let's dig into that.

You know, do you really understand what meditation is?

Have you tried it before this way? Have you done any work with

affirmations? Or have you done any work with visualization? I'd

love to take people through like a guided visualization

meditation exercise, and we can record that together, and then

it's something you can have, maybe to help yourself fall

asleep, or help yourself in terms of your goal setting,

right. The other thing that I love to do, depending on if

people are open to it, is, I'm sure you know about the

emotional freedom technique, we can do some tapping right where

people are doing some tapping with some very positive

affirmations while they're tapping right, a way to switch

the brain off from where it was in a stressful place. Let's

bring ourselves back to the body we're all living from the neck

up for the most part, right? And there's a lot of stuff going on

up there. We got to get people back into their bodies. Let's

really see what it feels like to put your feet down on the earth

and just to ground in a little bit. So, so the movement piece

is really, really key to me, doing journaling, doing

reflection exercises. I have hundreds, if not 1000s of

questions that we can take you through to just help you to sort

of evaluate some of those limiting beliefs that we talked

a little bit before. You know, what was your story growing up?

Was it just super common that people got older and didn't move

as much or people as they age? Maybe they did put on the extra

pounds. Maybe they weren't their healthiest self in retirement,

right? That's just a story, right? How do we sort of break

that down and maybe change that? I love the expression to reframe

right, to help people to reframe their story, right through

reflection, through journaling. My husband and I have a daily

prayer practice, right? And part of that prayer practice is a

spiritual reading. And then, you know, we have individual prayers

that we have written up for our marriage, for our friends, for

our family, that sort of thing. And then we end it with a

gratitude practice. I mean, it's a basic one, but how often are

people really paying attention to all the things that we have

in life? Look at us here in our comfy homes with the heat on

plenty of food in the refrigerator, right? Wow, we are

blessed beyond measure, and there's a lot of people in this

world who are suffering, and I think we have to remember all

the things that we do have. And so I think that gratitude

practice is something that can't be overstated, to help people

remember, especially when they're just in their head and

they're spinning and they're super stressed. What are some

things we could do to get you out of that state in 12 minutes

or less, by the way? Okay, absolutely, I could commit to

that where you just have these little shifts. It has to be that

I don't believe in wholesale change, you know, I don't

believe in the radical diets. I don't believe in, you know, oh,

I'm going to go, you know, I'm never going to have another

drink again. You don't need to do that, right? What are the

small shifts that we could do that are really going to make a

difference?

I love that. And when you talk about the

limiting beliefs and the stories I'm going to put out to the

audience, I know someone. And whenever the conversations get a

little bit deep, not just like superficial, a little bit deep,

yeah, wow, part

of

me the same story about the childhood comes

up again and again, and if you have that same story coming up

again and again, you're holding on to it, and it's creating the

rest of your life. And so there are. So many ways that EFT

works. I do Emotion Code, Body Code, it works. Meditation

works, prayer works. I've never found anybody who has ever heard

of this. But I was meeting with my preacher one time, and I had

I got married for 12 months and 11 days, and let me tell you, it

was the worst 12 months and 11 days of my life. Don't be

judgmental. It was, like, wrong decision from the get go, and I

went to see the the preacher, and I was like, my friends are

really being judgmental, because I'll go on, like, two days with

a guy, one lunch, one dinner. I'm out. Like, if you don't

throw me to death, I'm I'm moving on. And I said they think

I'm a little too harsh. I should give people, like, more of a

chance. And I'm like, now I don't think so. I don't I was

right. I'm just saying I was right. And he goes, Well, you

need to let go of all those emotions around because i We

dated for like, five years before we got married, so I had

plenty of clues not to do this. And he said, This is the

Catholic healing of memories, and you get in a quiet space,

and you think about to the first time that that person hurt you,

and you kind of remember it, and let that emotion bubble up a

little bit. And then you pray that Jesus will take that away.

And then you remember the event without the emotion, so when you

retell the story, you're not being re triggered. And I went,

Oh, my God, that sounds great. How many times do I have to do

it? Because once, if you do it right, mean it. And I was like,

oh, okay, so I can tell stories about my ex husband and our 12

month and 11 day marriage all day long. Like, let's go deep.

Do you want to hear the nitty gritty, the things that were set

like I and I have a great memory, which is a blessing and

a curse,

absolutely, but

I'm not triggered by it,

yeah, but

when you tell those stories and you start

really feeling that emotion again,

yeah,

you're hanging on to it,

yeah, that is amazing. And I grew up

Catholic, and I actually never heard of that.

I've never found

anybody

who heard it, but he told me it was called the

I need to google it now, or chat GBT, the Catholic healing of

memories is, is what he told that, like all these things

work, and that's the one thing I think is so amazing about the

space you and I are in.

Yeah,

it all works.

Yeah, it all works. If you work it right,

helping people to discover and this is where it's very

individual. What is true relaxation look like for you.

It's different for you then it's different for me, it's different

for my husband, it's different for my neighbor. What is true

relaxation for you? And that's where I think we need to have

that cornucopia, as you said, of tools, right? We need to have a

bunch of things in the toolkit. Oh, how about this. Have you

tried this one? Oh, how about this? Have you tried this,

right? And this, and then, and then, the beautiful thing is,

when you hit on something right, and somebody goes, You know

what? Since I've been doing that gratitude practice, my

conversation with my husband has been a lot better, right? Right?

Yeah, little things like that, which hopefully lead to some

bigger shifts and changes. But we got to start with so many

people as you know, who haven't done the work, who are beginners

in the space. And I think you hit on that a lot with your

audience, too, where you just, you know, you're putting things

out there to say, let's see what works, right? Yeah,

let's see what works. Oh my gosh. Kathleen,

this has been the greatest conversation, and our pre

conversation was amazing. Thank you for being here, and thank

you for sharing all your wisdom with my audience. Do you have

any final last words?

You are amazing. This was so delightful,

I have to tell you, was a little nervous coming on and a little

intimidated, but you made me relax. And thank you so very

much that I will say this, whether you're following

Jennifer or you're learning about me or anyone else who's on

on these types of programs, I like to say, discover the

missing pieces to your piece. Okay? And if we can help you to

do that somehow, some way, you know, you can check out my

website. I am having an event coming up in Tampa. We're going

to be doing a glow in the dark yoga event in Tampa. I don't

have the date yet, but as soon as I do, I'll be sure to let

Jennifer know about it. Maybe she'll help me, you know, give

it a little bit of air

time. Wow, absolutely. And we'll drop that

in the show notes when we when we get a link for that.

Kathleen, this has been delightful. I'm so glad we got

to spend some time together. I'm Jennifer Takagi, and I look

forward to connecting with you soon. Thank you. Thank you so

much.

You.