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It’s true. I’ve just appointed you CEO of You, Inc. So from now on you will need to make your decisions accordingly. I have given so many clients this advice and it is a game changer for them! Why? Because as unglamorous and chilly as it sounds, life is kind of like a company. You have the bosses, the employees, the mission and the message, the bottom line, the strategic planning, the SWOT analysis (assessing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and even employee appreciation days. You have all of those things in your life.

As CEO of your company (aka your life) you have incredible freedom and perks. You get to decide who you trust and enjoy enough to hire (bring into your life). You get to decide who is no longer serving the company and must be let go. You get to make the one year plan, the company mission statement, the workshops, and you are responsible for employee morale.
I used to be a “yes man.” I said yes to everything, whether I wanted to do it or not. And what would invariably happen is that as the obligation drew near, I would get more and more irritated, maybe even start to resent the person I had agreed to help or meet and the energy of the day would plummet. I was just trying to please everyone so my intentions were coming from a place of purity and service. But it’s ok to consider YOUR best interests. Any competent CEO would. Let me tell you a very short story about the day I became the CEO of Gina, Inc.

I had been invited to dinner. I really didn’t want to go as it was a group of people I had grown apart from and I was no longer comfortable in their company. The night of the dinner came. It was dark, rainy, my youngest child was sick, I wasn’t feeling 100%, my husband ended up working late so I was scrambling to find child care and with every passing hour that the dinner approached I was more and more irritable. But then something clicked. I went into CEO mode. I thought to myself “This is absurd. This is MY life. MY time. Time is the only resource that I can never replenish and I should get to decide how I want to spend every delicious hour of it!” I called the person who had organized the dinner and respectfully said, “Unfortunately I am not going to be able to make it. My family needs me tonight.” Period. End of story. No fake excuses. No contrived apology. This particular dinner was not in the best interest of my company or my staff (my home and my family.) I can’t tell you the amazing feeling of freedom you will feel when you no longer have to dream up excuses.

This is YOUR time. Your life. And sure you want to be in service and there will be times you have to honor an obligation. But how many hours of your time have you given to the draining friend who keeps you on the phone for hours lamenting their dramatic love life? (When really the time clock was ticking and your company’s billable time would be better spent on a growth task?) How many hours have you spent at a monthly book club that you no longer enjoy at ALL? How many hours have you spent trying to preserve a friendship that had run its course, emailing back and forth, feeling misunderstood and unheard but hesitant to pull the plug? It’s perfectly ok, and I would argue imperative to your self-worth, to make decisions firmly and proclaim them confidently. And most people will respect you for it. The ones who don’t will never be invited to join your company and they will miss out on the stock options, the perks and the company Christmas party. =)

Each year, those of us in America who celebrate Thanksgiving gather around a festive table, consume more food in one hour than some people do all week and then, share with one another things that we are grateful for. This is all very nice and I like a good pumpkin pie as much as the next person, but what doesn’t sit well with me is the emphasis on gratitude just for one day of the year! What about the other 364 days?

Thanksgiving is not a holiday, it is a choice!  

One of the fastest paths to happiness is recognizing and embracing that which we already have. So why not choose to practice that all year round, every single day. Pay attention to how you pray.

 To often, our prayers begin with “please”, when in reality they should begin with “thank you.”

Below are some tips for capturing that “attitude of gratitude” once and for all:

• Remember this: if everyone in the world, or everyone in your town for that matter, threw their problems into a big pile, you would likely grab your own problems right back! You would see that despite how things may look from the outside, many people are dealing with things that are much more painful than your own circumstances. You are feeling low on money this month? Someone else lives in poverty every day. You are feeling lonely after a breakup? Someone else, somewhere, is trapped in an arranged marriage, while you are free.  Find the miracle underneath your challenge.
• Live in the moment. Drink in the tiny moments that make up the tapestry of a beautiful day. For instance, find gratitude for your view of the sky, for the quiet moment with your tea, for the fact that you have hot water for your bubble bath!
• Check in a few times a day with yourself. Set your phone timer to “ding” every few hours and at that moment, find one thing to be grateful. Even on the WORST days, you can be grateful for the fact that you are alive to hear the “ding!”
• Finally, be grateful for everything that you don’t yet have in your reality. Sounds odd right? But it sets the Law of Attraction in motion. For example, if your goal is to gain financial security, you can choose to proclaim your gratitude for the fact that money is moving into your life. It’s a powerful energy and through that, you raise your frequency and open the doors for the blessings to roll in.

    “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” 
― Epicurus

When we spend all of our time wanting, we are distracted from the bounty of blessings that are already ours. It’s ok to want, but be mindful that your longing supports your gratitude and doesn’t replace it. You are alive and reading the post. Score!  If you make it to the end of this sentence, you are having a better day than someone else. 😉

Looking to make 2014 your BEST year yet?? Set up a Free Coaching Call!! Email Gina at

“I don’t have time.”

“I don’t have the money.”

“I don’t have the family support.”

No. What you don’t have is the desire. You aren’t yet uncomfortable enough. The fire hasn’t started in your soul. You are stuck in fear, in self doubt. You are safe inside your bubble of what’s familiar. Because for those who have been called, there are no excuses. For those who have been called, excuses are abolished and replaced with a golden, twinkling, Vegas style lights of possibility.

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. – Andre Gide

I get it. I was there too. For an entire decade actually. But I don’t want YOU to have to hit rock bottom in order for the light bulb to finally turn on.  When you stay safe, you are smothering the person you are MEANT to be in fear. You may live an ok life. And there is nothing wrong with that if you can live with that longing; if you can ignore that whisper from your soul that reminds you daily of the gifts and abundance you are leaving on the table. I couldn’t ignore it. For me, and I am guessing for a lot of you, leading a life that is not in line with your soul eats away at you.  And every day, the knowledge that life is short is presented to you.  And the message gets louder and louder. And if you still ignore it, it starts to manifest in physical symptoms like fatigue, anxiety, weight loss (or gain), depression. I’m not making this up. It happened to me and studies support the physical manifestation of emotional pain. You might not feel quite so desperate yet. But keep ignoring… and you will.

“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”- Anais Nin.        

There comes a time, and maybe you are already there, in which you cannot imagine going one more day in your current reality. That’s fantastic! That’s the fire starting! That’s the stunning realization that you are more afraid of staying the same than you are of changing.  There is power in that realization. Use it!

I don’t believe in accidents. If you read this, it’s because you were meant to read it. Can you be absolutely sure that destiny will keep knocking day after day? TRUST yourself. And if you can’t, trust me, trust God, trust possibility. You are not promised a tomorrow. None of us are. So make sure your today fills you with unprecedented happiness and immeasurable love!

I want this for each and every one of you. Start your own movement. Right here.. http://30secondstopeace.com/jointhemovement/soul-success-360/

For years I had 2 kids. Then one day, when my oldest was 8 and my youngest was 6, I found out that I was pregnant. If the world ended right now while I was typing this, I would not be more surprised than I was that day. I had a business. I had a social life. I had a clean house and manicured nails. That was all about to change as my incredibly cute but exhausting third child splashed onto the scene!

Suddenly, a daily shower was a feat of Olympic proportion and I went from a woman who was proud of her home to a woman who closed the curtains so that no one could see the toys all over the floor. I went from a woman who considered herself well versed in literature, new movies and CNN to a woman who found herself mindlessly singing The Wiggles theme song out loud in the grocery store.  So this blog post is dedicated to all of the busy moms out there who have ever looked in the mirror and wondered, “Who in the hell is THAT?” I hereby give you permission to drastically lower your expectations of yourself. We don’t want to do this every day, mind you, but it is absolutely ok to, on particularly challenging days, turn in your cape, exchange it for fuzzy slippers and just get through the next 12 hours.  I salute you, and I want you to know that every once in a while it’s ok to:

• Order chicken nuggets for yourself and only eat the outside
• Be 37 and eat cake for breakfast…and lunch
• Put the kids to bed without brushing their teeth, or reading to them or remembering which bed is theirs
• To be just a little picky about approving which pics of you your friends can post on FB
• To think that mismatched sweats are perfectly alluring bedroom attire
• To prefer cheesecake over sex, but sex over cooking
• To admit that you do not understand the political situations abroad, but feel totally connected to The Real Housewives
• To protest Skype, facetime or any other technology that requires you to be suitable for public viewing.
• To fluctuate between wanting to take over the world and help millions of people or sit on the couch with a pint of cookie dough ice cream
• To love your children immeasurably but at 8pm breathe a sigh of relief that can be heard in China
• To pretend that you don’t even see the juice in the carpet, the crumbs under the couch or the girl scout at your door (you can leave money in her mailbox tomorrow)
•  To not be worried about  being stuck in traffic because there is probably enough random food in your car to feed a family of five and enough clothes to get you through four seasons
• To pretend that you have to go to the bathroom just to grab five minutes of uninterrupted time with your iPhone
• To eat the last cookie while hiding in your closest, not share it, and not feel the least bit guilty about it.

The point of this? It isn’t to go so completely off track that you offend the neighbors and end up on the Learning Channel.  The point is to be compassionate with yourself. Let go of perfectionism. If, at the end of the day, the people you care for are alive and mostly happy, you’ve done well. No one wants you to be perfect. Perfect isn’t fun at parties. And when you allow yourself a “human” day you are teaching a valuable lesson about self love.  Just get up and relight the fire the next day. Don’t beat yourself up. Your imperfections make your loved ones feel safe about theirs.  Show yourself the same empathy you would show them. You will forget things like school snacks and birthdays. You will lose your patience with a tired child, with your spouse and with your computer. You will screw up your calendar and forget to return phone calls.

But you will also love unconditionally, forgive wholly, live passionately and serve selflessly.  And I promise you all of that cancels out the cake you had for breakfast. 😉

Some of you know that in my former life I was the editor-in-chief of a digital fashion magazine. That line of work does come with some occupational hazards including sticker blindness and shoe addiction. One term that came up consistently throughout the days of trend watching was “must-have.” Usually a “must-have” refers to the latest “it” bag or refers to the runway trend that you MUST take part in to avoid a worst dressed list. But for me, the term has evolved. For me, a “must-have” is a component of life or relationships that MUST be present and is non-negotiable. I encourage you to steal the term. Let’s break it down.

So often we are settling. We take the less exciting job because it pays a bit more. We stay in the stale relationship because it isn’t abusive and is at least comfortable. We put up with the inconsiderate friend because we have known them since childhood. If you are reading this blog post chances are you are older than 18 and therefore an adult. So I can’t help but ask, why? Why would you, as a fully functioning, intelligent adult, continue to settle for anything less than you deserve?

A few weeks back I held a training series called The Peaceful Path to Your Life’s Purpose. The very first video was all about defining our non-negotiables. So many of us make decisions based on what we need to DO, when what we should be basing our decisions on is how we want to FEEL. You are free. Free to choose who you let into your life. Free to go to the party, or not go. Free to let someone get under your skin, or blow them off and go on your way. You are free to leave that relationship or plug away for another ten years committed to change and growth. You are free to be bogged down by negativity in a constant state of victimhood or you can choose to never let any one person or circumstance steal your hope and vision for the future. You have CHOICES. And the best way to honor those choices is to come up with your list of life “must-haves.” These are your non-negotiables. These are the things, circumstances, feelings, people that you want to have in your life on a daily basis. It’s important to note that the space for all of this blissful must-have living must be cleared. There is no room for your must-haves if your life and spirit are cluttered wall to wall with “should-haves.” There is no room in your “must-have” life for “should-haves.” It’s one of the beautiful blessings of adulthood. You can weed out the toxic people. You can let go of chores and duties that suck the life out of you. You can distance yourself from relationships that drain your energy and constrict your soul. What you do you want instead? You CAN decide. You CAN and you WILL and it will be on YOUR terms, honoring YOUR must-haves.

Some helpful hints to get you started:

How do you want to feel every day? List five feelings.
How do you never want to feel again? List five
What kind of people do you want in your life?
What kind of people do you want out of your life?

It really is that simple. So start your list. Clear your space. Invite the blessings in. Offer them a cozy space in a warm corner of your heart. They’ll stick around. 😉

Quitting has been given a bad name. We are told not to be quitters. We are told not to let our kids be quitters. Quitters never win, they say. I’d like to twist that and give you a bit of a hall pass, if you will, on quitting. I am a master quitter. And I’m darn proud of it. Let me explain.

As a teenager, I made the cheerleading squad. It was NOTHING like I thought it would be. I’ll save you the sob story but basically, I was so miserable wearing that uniform that I didn’t even want to go to school. It was affecting my grades, my friendships, my spirit. My mother, whose only concern was my happiness, allowed me to quit. The other mothers chastised her. I was, however, eternally grateful. A weight lifted, I loved school again, I felt like myself.

I can name at least a half dozen other times when I had tried something,(or someone) found myself miserable, and moved on. That’s not quitting friends, that’s soul preservation. Now before you start writing me unfriendly letters, let me say that I am not encouraging you to quit every time the going gets tough. Even the things that are absolutely right for us won’t be without challenges or seasons of rain. But you know yourself. And if you take the time to sit in silence and just be with it,you are easily able to discern between normal “bumps in the road” and “soul crushing misery.”

Life is about trying new things and exploring and discovering, but the truth is, not everything is going to be what we thought it would be. Not everything we try is going to end up feeding our soul. Fast forward to a few years ago. I was 35 years old and found myself launching a digital fashion magazine. From the time I was a teenager, I had wanted to be the editor in chief of a magazine. And now I had done it. I was managing a staff and working with celebrities. I was being invited to New York Fashion Week. And I was absolutely miserable. My dream had come true but it wasn’t MY dream anymore. My 25 year old single self would have been all over it. But my 35 year old mother of three self wanted nothing to do with it. I had outgrown the dream. So I quit. And my 35 year old life unfolded into something beautiful and nourishing. I had to let go of the weight of the magazine to make space for my true purpose. If I had committed to not being a quitter and stuck with it, I might have made a lot of money. I would have attended fabulous events and met fabulous people. But I would have been a ball of anxiety, and we never would have met!

Quitting isn’t always a failure. Sometimes you have to put something down so that your arms are free to pick up something better. I could name countless friends, but I won’t or they’ll sue me 😉 who stayed in unhealthy relationships far too long because they were afraid of giving up, or because they had already invested years of their life in someone. What difference does it make how much time is already in? If you are unhappy, be it in a relationship or a job or a city, how many more of your years are you going to give to it?

Let go of your ego’s attachment to how things “should” be or your fear of what people might think. Who’s life are you living? You’ve got to know yourself well enough to know when it’s time to, at last, turn the page. As long as you remain stagnant, living in contrast to your intuition, you cannot fully step into your possibilities. Make space for the blessings to pour in!

“You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.”
― Steve Maraboli

It was about 6 years ago on a quiet Sunday. I had been married for a few years and my two young children had somehow miraculously fallen asleep at the same time. I sat down to read the latest issue of one of my magazines and opened up to a quiz that said “How to Tell If You Have Found Your Prince Charming.” I read through the questions. Does he sweep you off your feet? Does he surprise you with little gifts? Is he more like Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling or Hugh Jackman? As I’m reading, the movie “The Notebook” is on the TV. It’s the kissing in the rain scene. I look over to see my husband watching MTV’s Jackass on his laptop. He’s laughing, potato chip crumbs on the desk in front of him and he’s wearing a shirt that says “If you think my attitude stinks, you should smell my underwear.” True story.

It got me thinking about the fact that chick flicks and romance novels may actually be doing us a disservice. Have we set our expectations too high? Are we even living in reality?
The men of the movies leave flowers and notes. They wait years for the woman they love. They make huge overtures to prove their affection. They write poetry and love songs. Hell I’m happy if he empties the dishwasher without being asked to. Because that is REAL life. That is REAL partnership. Are there men out there who actually do go the extra mile? Absolutely. Do I wish that my husband would sometimes surprise me? Of course. But measuring the success of your relationship based on the parameters set by Hollywood is fatal. That is not to say that you shouldn’t expect to be treated beautifully, but that your expectations should be fair. Let me put this in perspective for my female readers. The lead ladies in the movies that most guys watch are always gorgeous. They know how to fight, black-belt style. They wear heels and lingerie to bed and are ALWAYS in the mood for sex. So to be fair, if you expect him to maintain Bradley Cooper type hygiene and behavior, then it’s ok for him to expect you to morph into Angelina Jolie no matter how many kids you have or how much they threw up that day, right? See how quickly this feels less appealing?

Each of you deserves to be in a relationship that makes you feel special and important and cherished. But really take some time to think about what that means. Would you rather he surprise you with flowers every day or take the time to coach your son’s baseball team? (Right now a lot of you are saying, “BOTH!”) I get it. I would like both too. But I would also like his continued understanding that if the baby is up all night every night for three weeks, he should stay at least 10 feet away from me at all times. I would like him to find it perfectly acceptable that I sometimes flop into bed in mismatched sweats wearing a mud mask facial.

Live in reality. Honor your needs but manage your expectations. Not one of us is “Hollywood perfect.” And thank goodness for that! Relationships are meant to be raw, real and remarkable. 😉

Because I care about all of you, I am going to put myself out there and share a not-so-fantastic parenting moment. This morning, after a night of tossing and turning, I woke up to my youngest throwing tantrum after tantrum, walking around like a little chubby bomb waiting to explode at any moment. “You’re being SUCH a baby” I heard myself say. Here it is… wait for it… he’s 15 months old people. So there you have it. I called my baby a baby. I’ll remove myself from the “Mother of the Year” contestant list.

But let me defend myself for a moment. He is adorable. But I see his wheels turning. I see that inner monologue going and I’m convinced that the inner monologue sounds something like that the guy that does the voiceovers for horror movie trailers. Sometimes I think he sits, big brown eyes looking all innocent and thinks to himself, “I’m so glad we are going grocery shopping. This is finally my moment. I will wait patiently until we get to the checkout line and then, when the cart is full and just enough people are around, I will break into hysterics for no good reason and make everyone there think she is completely incapable as a mother.” This is the kid with the 10 octave squeal. This is the kid who has made me THAT person, the one everyone looks at in restaurants. I have 2 other kids whose behavior is near perfect so this one has thrown me for a loop.

Thank GOODNESS for my super strong inner peace force field! And for time spent in silence. It was in such a time that the BEST parenting method came to me, and it’s a method I have used with all of my kids and more and more often, my spouse as well. Here it is:

BEST- Breathe, Empathize, Solve, Toss

When your kids push your buttons, talk back, spill something, break something, act out in public, scream on airplanes or whatever, try handling it the BEST way possible.

Breathe. When you take a sec to breathe, you stop yourself from REACTING. And from OVER-reacting. When we take one breath, it’s just long enough to diffuse the frustration and to keep us from acting like someone we wouldn’t even want to share cab with.

Empathize. SO often we react and over react because we are expecting our children to behave in a way that they are not emotionally capable of. Even our teenagers lack the same level of adult control that most of us have. Is your child tired? Feeling persecuted? Feeling that you don’t trust them? Most of the time our kids are not trying to drive us insane. Take poor behavior as a message. What message are they trying to send that they aren’t ready to verbalize? Think about it. And manage your expectations. If you take your kids to the grocery store when they are sick and exhausted, guess what? It’s kinda your fault.

Solve. Solve the problem. And if they are old enough, get them involved in the solution so that they begin to think about problem solving for themselves. Ask them,”Any ideas on how we can fix this?” If they are tiny and it means cutting your shopping trip short? Do it. The best solutions are the ones that get them thinking or the ones that diffuse the anxiety for you and for them.

Toss. Toss it out. Get rid of it. The second you solve it, stop thinking about it. Give them a hug. Get on with your day. My husband has a tendency to stay mad for three hours over a broken remote. It’s broken. Breathe. Empathize. Did you put the remote where the 15 month old could get to it? Solve. Fix it or buy a new one. And Toss. RIP remote. We had some good times. And now it’s over.

Onward and upward, just a little step closer to sanity. =)