Gala Darling: [00:03:31] Hi. Thank you so much for having me. Of course.

Gala Darling: [00:03:54] Radical self-love is about understanding your worth and your values so that you can make better decisions about the things that you do in your life. And it’s really a process that takes time. And it’s about asking yourself questions about who am I and why am I like this? What are the stories I tell myself? What are the beliefs I’ve inherited from my family or my friends or the culture? And really asking yourself, is this true for me? And what happens when we start to do that is we realize that a lot of the things that we’ve been told or that we think on a daily basis are really not true. And they’re actually very disempowering. And so once we start to ask ourselves like this, it’s really apply to my life. Is this still true? Then we find there’s a lot of freedom in that and we can grow and flourish and start to do things differently because we’re no longer held to these small little beliefs that keep us stuck.

Gala Darling: [00:05:15] And All of our thoughts come from somewhere. And often they’re related to a fear or an early childhood memory or a band that was traumatic or painful. And it keeps us closed off. You know, I was talking to my friend Colin yesterday. We were recording an episode of my interview show, which is the Gala Darling show. And he was like, what do you feel about people who describe themselves as like lone wolves? And like, they do everything by themselves. And they’re very you know, they’re anti-social and they kind of have that as a badge of honor. And I said they’re afraid that comes from a fear of being abandoned or rejected or not accepted or being too weird or misunderstood, like all of these things that we do. These labels we hold on to and these little grooves we put ourselves into. You know, a lot of that comes from a fearful place that stems from a painful experience in the past.

Gala Darling: [00:06:49] Yes, it feels so good. And it’s interesting, too, because even the story of like I’m an introvert is a limiting story, because as long as you’re telling yourself that, as long as you’re telling yourself, oh, I’m shy or I have social anxiety, you’re not going to push yourself to be in a slightly uncomfortable situation where maybe you’re not that comfortable being with people because you don’t practice it a lot. And that’s really limiting you from having these experiences. And I totally know what you mean. Like I am an only child. I’m a writer. I look by myself and I love my alone time. And often, you know, I get home at the end of the day after being at the gym or whatever. And I’m like, God, I’m tired. I just want to be in bed. But I know that if I make the effort to go out or call a friend, I will feel so good. Yeah. So it is about, you know, balancing those sides of us. Yes. If you’re a creative person, then you are probably going to need time alone to create. But that social aspect is so important and really cannot be underestimated for sure.

Gala Darling: [00:08:19] Sure. When I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I had clinical depression. I had an eating disorder. I was a very unhappy person. I think a lot of it stemmed from the fact that I was really creative, but I had been told that there was no way to make money by being creative. And even though I was encouraged to be creative as a child, once I hit my teens, the message was like, well, you need a job that’s going to pay you good money. Maybe you should be a lawyer. Maybe you should be a journalist. And these ideas were like so depressing to me. And when you’re that age, you listen to and believe the adults around you because you assume that they know best, because they have more life experience than you.

Gala Darling: [00:09:01] And so when I looked at what my future could be, I thought, wow, this sucks, my life is going to suck. I don’t want this. And because I had no way of dealing with my emotions, no coping mechanisms, I turned to self-harm. I turned to not eating. And I was really in a bad place. And this continued until I was about twenty two. And then I was introduced to an energy psychology technique called tapping, which is also known as the emotional freedom technique. And I started using this technique to essentially lift the veils that had been obscuring my vision for so long. And, you know, I used it on asthma. I used it on back pain. I used it on my depression. And on a night that I used it on my eating disorder, which, by the way, cured me in one night. I did one session of tapping in front of the mirror on my eating disorder. And the next day, I was like, oh, food’s not that bad. I can eat this, which is so amazing.

Gala Darling: [00:10:07] Once I got to that place and I looked at the world, I felt like I had been wasting my time by being in this dark place. And I realized there was so much beauty in the world. And I’ve really been making up for lost time ever since. And I also believe that when you find something that helps you or you know, of a technique or a tool or a pattern of thought that could help other people, it’s your responsibility to share that with others and not to be preachy. I hate evangelical preachy people, but if someone’s interested, I am thrilled to share with them what has worked for me because I see so many women who are disempowered or you know, they’re so focused on what their body looks like or they’re so focused on getting into a relationship. And it really shrinks your experience of life so much. And all I want to do is make women feel so good and so confident so they can go out there and live the life they could never have even dreamed they could have lived.

Gala Darling: [00:11:23] So tapping is basically like acupuncture without needles. So it’s a technique you can do to yourself. It’s free. You can learn it really quickly. And you’re basically using the fingers on one of your hands to press on various parts of your body that are meridian points. So where the energy runs strongest in your body and you’re just pressing on these points repeatedly while out loud, you’re talking about whatever the problem is that you are hoping to resolve. So that’s basically what happens. And the theory behind it is that where you have pain or trauma or fear, that’s because there’s energy stuck at these certain meridian points in your body. And when you’re physically tapping on them, you’re freeing up the energy so it can flow freely. And it sounds bizarre. I always think it sounds so weird when I explain it to people, but I’m really of the belief that I don’t care what the tick is, as long as it works, that’s it. I don’t care how weird it is. I don’t care what it sounds like if it works. I’m about it.

Gala Darling: [00:12:49] Well, I do a weekly series on my YouTube channel called High Vibe Honey. And in this series, I pull tarot cards for the week ahead for all the people watching. And then we use tapping to break through the blocks that we have about what the cards say. So, for example, if a card comes up like the two of hearts which says you’re gonna meet your soulmate and love is here and all those things, you might listen to them and say, OK, that’s great. But your beliefs, the internal story might be, well, I don’t deserve that or I don’t trust men or marriage as a prison or something like that. And so with the tapping. We just remove the obstacles that we feel are in the way of us getting what we want. And it’s a really good way to introduce people to tapping because it’s sort of low stakes and we all do it together. And there’s a community and it’s fun. And, you know, I teach it in a really fun way. I’m very conversational. I’m not I know spouting lines off a card. It’s very spontaneous and free flowing and it’s fun. So it’s a good place to start.

Gala Darling: [00:14:22] The feelings of unworthiness come from everywhere. They come from watching our parents or guardians settle for less than they were capable of. We hear it from our friends. We see it in movies. We’re really ingrained with seeing this. And if you think about the way our parents ran their lives, you know, they were mostly, you know, thinking about this all the time, like our generation is so obsessed with, like, what’s my purpose? What’s my mission? What am I here for? Like, you know, what is the reason that I’m on the planet? I don’t know that our parents thought about that that much. I think they were more like, I’m going to get a job and put some food on the table. I’m going to raise my children and try not to fuck them up too badly. Like, this is a it’s a luxury problem that we think about all of this stuff. And even the idea of thinking about worthiness is a bit of a luxury problem. But we see it because our parents didn’t really consider it that much. And we’re just kind of trying to do what they were trying to do. But, you know, every time you say your parents were fighting and you saw like, you know, maybe your mother was not able to stand up to her husband or whatever. When you see these things, it tells you a story about how you should be, how you get your way in life, what’s acceptable, what you should put up with and what your life is going to look like in the future.

Gala Darling: [00:15:48] So one of the best ways and I’m going to talk about this through the whole interview. One of the best ways to deal with unworthiness or breaking up those old stories is by tapping. It’s truly the best way to do it. Because when we’re tapping the key phrase and tapping is a deeply and completely love and accept and forgive myself. And just saying that to yourself as you tap on these points is revolutionary, because how often do you tell yourself, I love you unconditionally or I accept you no matter what the situation is right now, or I forgive you for believing this or having experienced this or putting up with that? We say it to ourselves so rarely. Most of the time we’re telling ourselves like, you’re so stupid. Like, Why did you do that? I can’t believe you do this. This isn’t going to work or whatever. And those stories are so disempowering. And when we give ourselves the gift of loving ourselves anyway, we’re fucking free. That’s what it’s called emotional freedom technique, because you really are freeing yourself from these emotions that keep you locked down.

Gala Darling: [00:17:27] Absolutely. Our beliefs lead to our thoughts, which lead to our actions, which lead to our results. So if you can go back and start to change some of those beliefs, everything in the chain changes as well. And often if you have that record in your minds, like you’re saying, that usually sounds like it to your mother or your father. So even a good place to start would be like even though I hear my father’s voice in my head all the time. I accept myself. I love myself. I forgive myself regardless.

Gala Darling: [00:18:12] It’s very, very powerful. I’m completely obsessed with it and I’ve been doing it for 13 years now. And it’s only recently that I’ve really started to bring it to my audience unrelentingly. And just the results so people are getting are so mind-blowing that I’m kind of like, you know, I’ve been talking about radical self-love for so long and affirmations and journaling and murra work and all these things that we’ve heard about a million times. But nothing is as powerful as tapping. Tapping gets you results in the moment and it changes you forever. So it’s really, really, really worth checking out.

Gala Darling: [00:19:01] Yeah. There is a practice that I developed about a year ago called the Magical Morning Practice, which I love, and it’s a really great manifestation practice for those of you who are into manifesting the life of your dreams, which is probably all of us for sure with the magical morning practice. What we’re doing is we are creating a story about our future, but we’re talking about it as if it’s already happened, because often if you are thinking about what you want, it’s always in the distance or you talk about like, oh, you know, I’m going to buy this car or I can’t wait to get this job or whatever it is. And the way we talk about things is we constantly put them out just out of arm’s reach. And the more that you talk about them being out there, the further and further away they seem to be. So the magical morning practice is a way of bringing those desires into the past. So it’s like you already have them. And when you talk about them as if you already have them, you feel relaxed, you feel at ease. It’s like it takes the resistance out of it. So it really, really helps. So the magical morning practice is generally done on your phone. And the reason for that is because pretty much everybody wakes up in the morning and grabs their phone even though they know they shouldn’t. We know we shouldn’t be looking at Instagram first thing in the morning, but most of us do because we’re addicts. So instead of using your phone to be a consumer, you use it to be a creator. So first thing in the morning, you grab your phone and you go to the voice recording app and you start making a recording and you start talking into your phone and you’re gonna talk into your phone in three parts.

Gala Darling: [00:20:47] The first thing you’re going to do is talk about what you are grateful for and you’re going to talk about this for two minutes. And it’s going to be really juicy gratitude. There is no I’m grateful for my job, I guess. No, that’s no good to anybody. I want you to get really specific about the things that you are truly, deeply joyful about, to talk about that for about two minutes and then you talk about your desires for the day. But like I was saying, you talk about them in the past tense. So for this second section, you just keep recording and you would say, for my daily desires, I am so grateful that I had such a great day. I woke up early, I drank a really delicious coffee, I did a really good podcast, went to the gym, and then I had the most amazing photo shoot and it was so fun. And then I went out to dinner with this really cute man or whatever. Right. So you talk about what you want to happen that day as if it has already happened. And then the third part of the magical morning practice is to talk about your desires for the future. But again, to put them in the past. So then you would say my future desires. I’m so grateful that my book was a New York Times best seller and my book tour is going really well. And I bought this amazing house with this turquoise swimming pool. And I’m just love looking at it every morning. It makes me feel so good. So that’s the magical morning practice.

Gala Darling: [00:22:11] And then you press pause on the recording and you send it to a friend. Now, this has to be a legit friends, no frenemy. It’s no people who are going to shit on your dreams. These have to be said to people who truly love you, believe you and want to uplift you. So you see in them you’re recording. And then at their leisure, they listen to it and they send you one back. And this is the most effective manifestation practice I know of your speaking, your desires into fruition as if they’ve already happened and you’re letting it be witnessed by someone who wants the best for you. And I was doing this with a friend of mine for such a long time. And we really got into a groove where I would make my recording every morning when I walk to the coffee shop and she would listen. And when back and when I listened back to her recording and paying attention to it, but I’m not paying a total attention. I might be listening while I do the dishes or brush my teeth or something. And the line between what she was grateful for and what her desires were got really blood. Like I didn’t really know whether she was talking about something that had already happened or something she wanted. So in my mind, I’m seeing it as if it’s all already happened for her. And you’re using somebody else’s manifestation powers to add juice to your own desires. This works so well.

Gala Darling: [00:24:13] Absolutely. It’s so powerful because when I first started doing this practice, I would have to really think like, oh, what do I want today? Because up until then, I had really been running my life by. OK, what’s on my to do list today? And that’s not fun. Like, where’s the fucking pleasure in your life with the juiciness, with the joy like this practice really helps me get focused on what would feel really good today. What would be really nourishing. And, you know, a lot of this is stuff that you’re creating in your own life. You’re planting these intentional seeds in the morning. So if you say that you’re good that you had a really great workout today, you’re gonna go and have a really great workout because you’ve already told yourself this is what’s happening today. You’re starting to create this roadmap for yourself. And our brains believe whatever we tell them. So why not tell your brain something really powerful?

Gala Darling: [00:25:37] Oh, my goodness. I’ve manifested amazing relationships, amazing friendships. I moved from New York to L.A. I released a new book that’s been going so well. I mean, my life has completely changed. I manifested this beautiful house I’m living in like literally my whole life has changed in a short period of time that I’ve been doing this practice. It is very powerful.

Gala Darling: [00:26:35] It does. You know, and it’s one thing to dream it and it’s another to have the courage to say it out loud and have it be witnessed. That takes balls. It is not easy to do that in the beginning. It really isn’t. And a lot of us are afraid to say what we want because we think we’re not going to get it. But as long as you’re in that place of light. Well, I don’t want to say it because I might jinx it. You’re not going to get it. You’re holding it at a distance with one hand. So having the courage to speak it out loud is like you grabbing it and you’re pulling it in close and you’re like, here I am, baby, let’s go.

Gala Darling: [00:27:20] Yes, it is.

Gala Darling: [00:27:40] Right. It’s really important to have these daily energy practices that make you feel good and to really make feeling good. Your priority feeling good is the number one priority in my life. And it’s fully how I run my life these days. If there is something that comes up and I think like that, I’m not going to enjoy that. I just don’t do it. I say no delegates do something else. I would figure out a work around feeling good is my number one priority. And the reason for that is that’s really your job is to feel good. We think our job is how we make our money, but it’s not when you feel good. Everything else works. Everything else flows when you feel good. There’s the sense of momentum that carries you forward. And when you feel really amazing, like think about the last time you had a really crazy endorphin surge after you went to the gym or you danced around your living room to your favorite song or you went and did karaoke or something like that, somebody that used your whole body that felt so good.

Gala Darling: [00:28:42] When you’re in that place, you have so much energy and power and that momentum carries you floored. It helps you do new things. It helps you have ideas and helps you contact people and be brave. And so my belief is that if you can make feeling good, your priority, that will lead to everything else good in your life. So a really big part of manifesting is to make yourself feel good every single day. And if that’s difficult for you, then you’ve got to work on it. That’s it. Like there’s no excuses. We are this incredible generation where we truly do get to design our lives exactly how we want them. There are really no excuses anymore. You get to live your life however you want. So make feeling good a priority and you will just see things happen so quickly in your life. Like you can’t manifest anything when you’re in a bad mood or you’re stressed out or you’re panicked or anxious or fearful. It doesn’t work that way. It only works when your energy is high. So make feeling goo a priority for sure.

Gala Darling: [00:30:33] People want to be around people that uplift them. If you think about like who are your favorite people, they are probably not the people that always have a new complaint.

Gala Darling: [00:30:58] Right. Like they’ve made a decision that feeling good is important to them no matter what the circumstances are. They’re like, I will spin this into gold no matter what. And those are the people that you just want to be around, you know? So that’s very important. And really looking at who you surround yourself with is such another important piece of this puzzle. I went to Disneyland with my friend Natalia Benson the other day for her birthday, and she’s an Aries and she’s very enthusiastic about everything. And we went to Anaheim the night before and stayed at the Disneyland Hotel so that we could be up at 6:45 in the morning so we could be the first people on the rides. She is not fucking around. It was insane. I was like, oh, my God, why are we up so early? But we had the best day. And she was so enthusiastic and positive and excited about things. And I looked at her and I said, this is so great because this is the kind of situation I want to be in with people all the time. You know, I think when we are people who are healers or teachers or we’re. Trusted in helping other people, whether it’s through being a nutritionist or being a therapist or whatever. When you’re a person like that, you often attract people into your life who are a little bit dark because they love that bright lights and it feels so good for them to be around it like moths to a flame, literally. But I’ve spent so many years of my life being in relationships with people who were kind of like your. And then it’s weighs on you so heavily and being around the Natalia all day. Disneyland. I was just like, this is what I want now. I have no time for anything that is not really equal where we’re both lifting each other, where we’re using that momentum to get higher and higher together.That’s all I want.

Gala Darling: [00:33:20] Yes. And the thing is that a lot of us are very accustomed to playing the victim. For some of us, it’s how we get attention or it’s how we get love. And we also can be sort of addicted to our pain. Sometimes that pain feels so familiar and comfortable that we really actually like being in there. But it’s always your choice as to whether you want to stay there or whether you want to try something different. And the truth is that even if that pain feels comfortable in the short term or like you’re used to it and you’re it’s kind of like better the devil, you know. You know where that pain leads you, it doesn’t lead you anywhere. Good. So you have the choice to continue thinking those thoughts that bring you pain or to think something else. And learning to discipline your mind and think differently is a really important skill for us all to learn.

Gala Darling: [00:34:28] That’s a great question, because it happens to absolutely everyone. Nobody is going to feel amazing 24/7. It’s just not possible. Life provides us with contrast and conflict all the time. And part of the reason of that is to make our joy so much sweeter. But really, it’s just about the awareness of the thoughts and realizing like, OK, I’m having that thought again. That’s making me unhappy. What could I think that would be different? That can make me feel different. And my experience is being that it’s not really about thinking yourself into a new thought. It’s about acting your way into a new thought. So often it’s about using your physical body to change your state. So get up and like jump up and down or listen to some music or sing or talk to someone on the phone. Do something with your body. Go for a walk. And that will help you to change your state. And while you go on a walk or while you exercise or whatever you’re doing. Think about the things that you’re grateful for. And it will turn your mood around so, so quickly.

Gala Darling: [00:36:07] Absolutely. The last time I went to a Tony Robbins event on day one. You know, you finish at like 1:00 in the morning or whatever and you’ve been in the room for at least 12 hours. I came home and I danced in my living room for at least half an hour. I was so psyched. And that’s the thing about Tony’s events, is it shows you that you have so much more energy than you ever thought you did.

Gala Darling: [00:36:38] Absolutely. And he’s physically proving it to you because we tell ourselves these things all the time. Like, I’m so tired, like I can’t be bothered. I just don’t have the energy for that or this is too hard. As long as you’re telling yourself that it’s like putting cement shoes on. Like that’s not going to help you get to where you want to get. So, yeah, it’s really about disciplining your mind and telling yourself new stories like asking yourself, is this really true? Or am I just telling myself some bullshit so I can say small and safe and comfortable and not be criticized. And that’s what it’s usually about.

Gala Darling: [00:37:35] Again, it’s about changing your beliefs. And in my radical rituals, abundance class, which is a two-week class. So it’s very quick. It’s very easy. We do a lot of capping and exercises around changing your mindset around money. So like I said earlier, you know, tackling is the most powerful tool I know for changing your beliefs in an instant. And in this class, you know, you get an exercise every day that’s about takes about 10 minutes to do. So it’s really doable. It’s really simple. And the results people get from this class are mind blowing. I get e-mails from people all the time who are like, I made twenty five thousand dollars. I made forty thousand dollars. I made a hundred thousand dollars. I had a woman e-mail me and she is like, I woke up and we have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars more in our bank account today. Wow, that is crazy. And that’s the thing. We have these beliefs like, you know, I don’t know how to make more money. I don’t know how to ask for more money. I don’t know where it’s going to come from. That’s the big one. We don’t know where it’s going to come from. And if people ask me all the time, you know, I want to take this class, but I’m not an entrepreneur. Does it matter? And it’s like, no, the universe is massively abundant.

Gala Darling: [00:38:50] Money comes from all kinds of different places all the time. So in this class, we really open you up to those possibilities and it just works like the money just comes. It is so amazing. And every time I have a friend, I’m talking to him. They’re like, man, like business is slow or whatever. I’m like, dude, just take my class again. And they’re always like, Oh, yeah, cool. Okay, great. And then two weeks later, they emailed me and they’re like, yeah, I made my goal like, I’m good.

Gala Darling: [00:39:45] Well, it’s going to change your body language even when you go into the office to ask for the raise. There’s two different ways of approaching it. There’s a way of approaching it where you think you’re not going to get it. See, you walk in and you’re slumped over and you’re small and you speak in a sort of like almost embarrassed way about what you want. And there is a way that you walk in there fully confident with your shoulders back and your head up and you present your case and you’re compelling and you’re magnetic and you’re exciting. Those are two totally different things. But the thing with money is it goes back so far. A lot of people don’t want to make more money because they don’t want to do better than their family did. They don’t want to make their parents feel bad or their sister feel bad for the choices they have made. They don’t want to do better than their friends because then maybe they won’t have any friends left. They don’t want to be judged. They think if they don’t have a lot of money, then they won’t be criticized. There are so many things that hold us back from making more money. So in this class, we really investigate those and we just get rid of them. And it is so, so powerful.

Gala Darling: [00:41:07] Tapping. Tapping? Yeah. My most recent high by High Vibe Honey video was about, well, the tapping portion of the hype party video was about what’s my life purpose, because this is something that people are like. I don’t know what I’m here for all the time. So there’s just a really easy tapping routine on just realizing what your prosthesis getting clear on it. Letting it come to this office. And it’s a really good place to start. For anyone who’s like, what is this? I’m not sure. This is a really good place to start.

Gala Darling: [00:41:57] I’m on Instagram a lot, so I’m @galadarling. And then I have a website as well. And I’ve been blogging for 13 years about self-love and empowerment and feeling good. And that’s all at galadarling.com.

Gala Darling: [00:42:12] Thank you, Maria.