Genuine Insights

Why they walked

Sometimes the great big fat moments in life are actually very small moments that touch your soul in a profound way, making you different than you were the day before. This past Saturday I experienced one of those moments as I served as the announcer for this year’s Help the Homeless Walk in D.C.

The entire experience from the start—which for me was 7 a.m. that day—was powerful, invigorating and a massive reality check on what really matters. Homeless men and women came up to me requesting that the names of their shelters be mentioned as they passed the finish line. Priests came up to me and asked for the names of their churches to be mentioned, too. Hundreds of children asked for their school names to be mentioned and most moving were the thousands of social workers and service providers who were walking with their families and clients, smiling and saying thank you as they passed the riser where I stood, doing my best to represent those smiling faces. What a deeply humbling experience.

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Posted Nov 23, 2009 Tagged under: charity and community service, events, volunteerism

A Gathering of Shamans

You won’t believe the story I am about to tell. You may remember that three weeks ago, I wrote about the power of intuition (“Intuition, Your Personal Fortuneteller”) and vowed to live by it. Wow, how much has changed since then. So here goes the speed-dating version of what’s transpired.

Three weeks ago I read an article in O Magazine by life coach guru Martha Beck on inner genius (and as you all know I’ve been obsessed with the contemporized notion of genius for more than two years). And only eight days after reading and blogging about the article, I coincidentally found myself backstage as a volunteer at The Women’s Conference in California, standing next to Martha Beck herself. I could not believe that the stars had aligned (literally and figuratively) for me so fortuitously.

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Posted Nov 16, 2009 Tagged under: genius, inspiration, networking

On Your Next Business Trip, Pack a Tent

This week I received an exciting email from a young professional who I had the pleasure of meeting during one of my Practical Genius talks. Inspired by my message and crusade to inspire professionals to bring their whole selves to work and to honor their personal creative talents, she wrote me to share her exciting decision to take me up on my advice on her next business trip. She was heading to San Diego on business and had decided to actually go on a photo exploration camping trip while visiting California. With little time to give notice to her friends that she was coming, she decided to pack a tent right alongside her business suit and camp out for two nights in the Redwood Forrest at the tail end of her business trip.

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Posted Oct 29, 2009 Tagged under: balance, business, practical genius, self-awareness

Intuition, Your Personal Fortune-teller

There is something very mysterious about our intuition. It simultaneously scares and excites us when we face these moments of inexplicable foresight. As with most mystical contradictions, I find myself curious to learn more about it, especially about how to tap this internal messenger for my own personal
development. I even wonder, “What if I can master my intuition like some kind of superhero power?” But then I fear whether it might master me. What is it
about some unknowns that heightens our curiosities?

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Posted Oct 19, 2009 Tagged under: self-awareness

Fearless

People ask me all the time, “Gina how do you do it?” But the real question they are asking is “Gina, how the hell are you succeeding during such uncertain times?”

My answer is simple. The way I see it, you have one choice in life. You can choose to live in fear or you can choose to live fearlessly. I have chosen the
latter.

The greatest lesson I have learned this year is if you don’t want to live in fear, you have to take risks. The more risks you decide to take in life, the
less fear you live with. Big fat, scary risks really do wash away fear and the outcome over time is a rewarding sense of fearlessness. The trick to this paradigm is if you don’t take outrageously scary risks like jumping out of a plane or committing to a relationship or, in my case, launching a business during a recession, you will never really conquer fear.

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Posted Oct 9, 2009 Tagged under: entrepreneurship, fear, overcoming obstacles