The 2-Minute Morning Ritual That is the Secret to Manifesting Your Dream Life with Gina Kershaw

Kathi: Today I'm interviewing Gina Kershaw. She's a manifestation coach and the host of the top-rated podcast for women called Your Today Story. So, welcome to the show, Gina. Thank you for coming on, and I appreciate you being here and giving us your time.

Gina: Thank you so much, Kathi. I'm just really excited to be here and appreciate the opportunity to talk with you.

Kathi: Yeah, we're gonna have a good little chitchat here, I am sure. So tell me about your backstory of how you became a manifestation coach.

Gina: Well, my backstory is I just wanted to start this business to connect with women. I call it Your Today Story because so many women right now are starting to challenge these cultural norms that they grew up with, and they're starting to actually believe they can change the direction of their life and they can change their story.

Kathi: And so, yay.

Gina: I know. But I wanted to be part of that process of all of these women starting to just open their eyes to their new potential, because many of them are changing careers and many of them are becoming work-from-home entrepreneurs. And they're doing that so they can have more freedom to do what the important things in life are to them, to be with family or to travel or just to learn and grow. And I felt this connection to women like that because that's who I am. I was a trial attorney for 15 years.

Kathi: Wow.

Gina: I know. I did all the things. I did everything I was supposed to do. The way that I was brought up and taught, this is how it should be done. That's what I did.

Kathi: Like a good girl.

Gina: Like a good girl. And I got the education, I got the husband, I got the successful career, and I thought I had it all figured out. But my soul just did not feel fulfilled. So I ended up walking away from this well-established career, a steady paycheck, which has its benefits. And I set aside all of this time and effort and student loans and all of these things I had done to get to the high level of career where I was at. And the kicker was that I knew it wasn't right for me anymore, but I wasn't even sure what my identity was. I was having an identity crisis. I didn't know what life would look like if I stopped introducing myself as a lawyer.

I didn't know what life would look like if I stopped introducing myself as a lawyer.

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Gina: I did it, though. I felt like I was not living my purpose, that I was meant for something bigger and better. And it was hard. It was really hard. But I took this leap of faith, and I have spent the past five or six years just learning everything I can get my hands on about self-development, law of attraction, enlightenment, manifestation, ancient wisdom, quantum physics. I've been in masterminds. I've done courses. And I'm just at this point in my life where I feel like I'm in a unique position, because of my life experience, to share this information and to guide other women along the process. I know manifestation works. I have everything right now that I've manifested three years ago, and I feel like I've figured out the most effective and the fastest way to do it. So I'm just so grateful to be able to share it with other women who just might feel stuck in a career or whatever they're doing and just feel like, well, I put all this time and effort into this thing, this is just what I'm going to have to live with. And you don't have to live with it if it's not fulfilling your soul purpose. So, yeah, that's my backstory. That was probably more info than you wanted there.

Kathi: No, I think it's fantastic. And actually, my podcast is all about that: people who feel stuck and unable to move forward. They feel like they're not on purpose. That was me for the first 40 years of my life. I felt like I was making money, like you, doing the thing that we're supposed to do, but it wasn't really resounding. It wasn't in the soul. It wasn't the soul purpose path. And it's funny, we know when we're not on it, but we don't know how to get to what it is or even what it looks like. I had no idea what it would look like either. But you were courageous. You were courageous. That's a new word, actually: you're creatively courageous.

Gina: Creative and courageous at the same time.

Kathi: Yeah, that's going to be my new word. You're courageous to stop and quit and pause and then figure it out. And it's a big step, but that's what a lot of women are doing right now. You're spot on. We're all redefining, and we're all coming into our power to be able to claim whatever it is that is ours to claim, whatever our purpose is.

Gina: It's definitely a time for women. It's like a revolutionary time. So many things have changed. We've realized the status quo doesn't have to stay the status quo. There's a lot more opportunity. So I love being there and being part of the process and helping women figure out how to do it.

Kathi: I love being a woman in business right now. I think that the cards are all stacked in our favor. We're going into more of the feminine energy anyhow throughout the world. But I think right now, especially in the United States, being a woman entrepreneur is huge. And we can do whatever we want to do, and we're not judged for it nearly as much as men who are going to strike out and do their own thing. And yay for us.

Gina: Yeah, you're so on point with that, because you say that we're not going to be judged, but it's hard for women because we judge ourselves so harshly. And so that's a huge challenge for women if they figure out that they're not living their purpose and they know they want to do something else, but they have that little mean voice in the back of their head saying they can't do it or they're not good enough.

Kathi: So that's it, it's our voice. It's our voice. I really think the world is backing and supporting us to do whatever we want to do right now, but it's that little niggly voice of our own. So put that puppy aside.

Gina: Harder than it sounds. Harder than it sounds.

Kathi: So talk to me, Gina. Whenever you landed your first client, you decided, okay, I'm going to help people manifest their dreams, and you manifested your first client. What happened? What did that look like? Tell us a story about that.

Gina: Well, I think I just had so many eye-opening moments in my life and so many realizations that it's possible. Teaching women how to do this more easily has been just so fulfilling. I think what I recognized in my first client was that she was very curious about manifestation. But, it's going to sound funny, she thought that manifestation and meditation had to go hand in hand. And meditation just sounded too hard, too overwhelming. She didn't enjoy it at all. She didn't understand how doing something that she didn't enjoy… and by the way, she didn't have time for it because she's a busy mom. Finding a moment to meditate is almost impossible. So she came into my life at a time where she knew she wanted some help. I was ready to put myself out there and share what I learned. But she wasn't sure if manifestation could ever even work for somebody like her if she didn't want to meditate.

Kathi: Okay. Okay. I think probably a lot of people think that. So let's go further into that. So what did you do with that?

Gina: So what I realized with meditation is the key about meditation is that you are getting your brain waves to just slow down and to relax. And so one of the things that I learned, which is the basis behind my business of Your Today Story and my course, the Your Today Story Formula, is this two-minute morning mindset ritual. But what's really cool about this is that anybody can do it, even the busiest people, because you do it before you even open your eyes in the morning. So you could still be pretending to sleep, and you can do this mindset trick. But what they found through research is that the first moments that you wake up in the morning, your brain is still in that alpha state, like meditation. And so your subconscious mind at that moment, those first precious moments when you wake up, your subconscious mind is the most receptive to suggestion. But what do most people do with those precious moments? They think things like, my day is going to be terrible. I'm so tired. I don't want to do that thing today. When is it too early to have my first glass of wine? I mean, it's crazy what people think in the morning, like the laundry is never going to get done. And it's in those moments that you set the tone for your entire day.

It's in those moments that you set the tone for your entire day.

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Gina: So if you can capture that moment, which is what I teach my clients and what I figured out because of the roadblocks against meditation, if you can capture those first few moments and intentionally have thoughts that will guide your subconscious to help you have a better day… I mean, they can also help you reach future amazing dreams and goals. But if you can decide how you're going to show up and who you're going to be, the best version of yourself, in those first few moments, you end up being more productive. You end up having more clarity about your day. You end up making better decisions. It's a total game changer. So it's like two minutes. And what I've found through working with women is that you start to see results right away, which is harder with people trying to manifest because they're starting their day by programming their subconscious mind that they're tired and that life is awful, and then they go into, but now I want to manifest my dream life.

Kathi: It's harder.

Gina: Yeah. It's just not going to work as easily. But if you can capture those first few moments and intentionally figure out how you're going to show up to be this future version of yourself, it happens really fast. The transformations happen really fast, and it's been this incredible tool that I just happened upon and discovered.

Kathi: So that's awesome. So you talked your first client into knowing that she didn't have to meditate. She just had to pretend like she's asleep for two minutes and dream her dreams, right?

Gina: Yeah.

Kathi: I love that. It reminds me of Wayne Dyer. Every morning when he would wake up, he would put his feet on the ground, and as his feet hit the ground, he would say, "Thank you. Thank you." He practiced gratitude every single morning as the first thought as he put his feet on the ground. And I know you're talking about doing it before you even wake up. I think that's great. I think also a lot of what I've learned is you wake up with what you go to sleep with. So I would follow that up by saying, let's go to sleep with those groovy thoughts. Let's wake up with those groovy thoughts, too.

Gina: If at all possible. And you are actually awake, you're not still sleeping. So you're awake, and you can open your eyes and say this out loud. But if you have somebody lying next to you, or a child who's going to use their ESP to figure out that your eyes are now open in the other room, you can keep your eyes closed and do it. And I'm glad that you mentioned Wayne Dyer, because this whole concept is not new. It's not new at all. These legendary people have been using these tools. I just think I found a way to put it together and make it easier for moms to know that they do have a moment, that they can make manifestation happen for them by just using these simple tools. And I call it Your Today Story because that's what you're saying to the universe, like, today my story is I'm awesome. I'm happy. I'm going to go out and get stuff done. And your today story sets up how your day plays out in your life.

Kathi: Yeah. Absolutely. So, if you were to do your life over again, what would you change? Would you still start out… You wouldn't change anything?

Gina: No. No. I don't know if I would even be enlightened about how deeply I was programmed as a child if I hadn't actually at one point been able to poke my head outside that box and then never be able to put it back in. If I hadn't had those life experiences, I may not have felt the connection with women. I was a criminal defense attorney, but a lot of my practice was helping women, and just seeing so many women who had just lost their way in their life and just could not see their potential. I really had a huge desire to help women, and my last years of practicing law, I focused mostly on women. So I think this desire to help women and just to see this need really started when I was still a trial attorney.

Kathi: So you were already on the path. And I agree that everything that we've done throughout our life, even if it's been terrible or a failure or a tragedy, has led us into understanding who we are more, which allows us to offer our gifts.

Gina: Yeah.

Kathi: Because once we know who we really are, we know what our gifts are, and then we know what we can present to the world as far as our gift. We all have a gift of some sort of service to others for something.

Gina: Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree.

Kathi: So do you have any advice for entrepreneurs who are in the business now and they're chugging right along and they want to create a little bit more freedom or get a little more time back in their life? Do you have a favorite hack or anything that you use to stop the overwhelm and to move forward?

Gina: I think the best hack that I could recommend is, well, the best thing for me really was finding mentors and becoming part of masterminds, working with coaches. I think the first reason is because you become part of a community, and becoming an entrepreneur is not an easy path, right? Because all of these limitations come up that maybe have been lying pleasantly in the back of your brain, unbothered for many years. They come up and they come roaring out. So it's nice to be part of a community where you can see that everything you're going through is normal. And then when you're working with top mentors and coaches, you really just accelerate the learning process, and you raise the standard of where you're going to be. So you actually move and grow faster.

Kathi: Absolutely. And you feel like you're not alone, because as entrepreneurs it can be really lonely if you don't have that mastermind group or that mentorship or listening. That's why I started the podcast, actually: to show people you're not alone. We're all doing this together. We're actually doing the same thing in multitudes of different ways and creating our own perfection of what we have to give. And we all face obstacles and all that good stuff, and we're not alone. That's the main thing. So I agree, having mentors and having masterminds will accelerate the process, because you won't feel like you have to do it all by yourself, for one. For two, you'll know that there are others that can do things better that you shouldn't be doing anyhow. So that helps you see your way on that as well. So tell me, do you have any favorite organizing hacks that you use? Any tools or anything that you use to keep yourself organized?

Gina: Well, I was thinking about your podcast about being organized and energized and what being organized means to me. And when I was thinking about that and how that works with what I'm doing now and helping women, I actually had this picture of my sock drawer come to mind. And as I was thinking about it, I'm like, you know what, that's not a bad analogy. I like to think that organizing your mind is kind of the same as cleaning out your sock drawer, right? You open up your drawer, you realize you have all this old stuff in there, you realize some of it doesn't even match anymore. And when you get down to your favorites, you have this basically empty drawer for yourself.

I like to think that organizing your mind is kind of the same as cleaning out your sock drawer.

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Gina: And so I like to think that organizing your mind is the way to make space. It's the way to let go of things so that you can start writing this new story for yourself. And your socks are like these old beliefs in your subconscious mind. When you go looking for them, you realize there's a lot of stuff in there that you haven't seen for a long time.

Kathi: Yeah.

Gina: It may not match up with what you want to be anymore. So I would say the biggest organizing obstacle that I see my clients face is making space for more new ideas, for opportunities to come into their lives. Because if they don't make the space, if they're not willing to open their minds and let go of all these old beliefs and mismatches that aren't serving them anymore, then it's a lot more difficult to find purpose and to make changes and to use manifestation in the way that they want it to work. It's just harder.

Kathi: Yeah. Creativity requires space, and if you're going to grow, you're going to have to be creative. You're a girl after my own heart. I have a website called Add Space to Your Life.

Gina: Yes. I love that.

Kathi: It's very important. You have to have space or you can't grow. You can't create. You can't do anything without space. But I love the sock analogy. I absolutely love that. It's true. And if we have our sock drawer under control, oftentimes we feel like we're more in control of our life anyhow.

Gina: Yeah. Life's good.

Kathi: We find all those loosies that didn't have a mate to begin with for the longest time. Like, what are they doing in there? That's like the unfinished system that was never built. There are so many different things that you can draw that around, too. That's fantastic. So what's the best piece of advice, either in life or in career, that anybody's ever given you? What advice do you think of all the time, that's right there in your head?

Gina: I think the best advice is that it's okay to fail. That was part of my programming growing up, that it was not okay to fail, and you can't move forward unless you try new things. One of the mentors that I work with, one of my coaches, is James Wedmore. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he does the Mind Your Business podcast. He's personally coached me, and he says this thing: what got you here is not going to get you there. And so you do have to get uncomfortable, and it feels uncomfortable, just like you would expect it to. And you have to be willing to fail and see each failure as a learning experience that you needed, that was necessary to get you to the next level. I think that's the best advice, really: just getting comfortable with failure, because there are stepping stones that you have to step on to get to where you're going, and they're all about failure.

Kathi: Yeah. And a lot of them are slippery, and you slip right off. But then oftentimes there's that little lesson in that. It's like, oh, okay, maybe I shouldn't have been going so fast. Maybe I should have watched where I was going. Maybe I should have known that it was slippery. So we learn all this through our crashes and burns. And we have to have the crashes and burns. Actually, if we didn't, wouldn't it be boring? If we're instantly given everything on a platter, then we'd be like, okay, what's next? Right?

Gina: Well, what I found, too, is all of those learning experiences: when I look back, I realized that I wouldn't have been able to do the next thing if I hadn't gone through that. So during the experience or the failure, I didn't always know what was happening. But it's like trusting that this step is necessary.

Kathi: Yeah, trust is a huge thing, and especially when you're talking about manifesting, because things don't come instantly. Again, you don't want it to come instantly, gang. Sometimes a one-off instant gratification thing is great, but to realize that you have to have the trust that it will manifest, and knowing that it's going to manifest in its own perfect sweet time, is the key to settling into it, I think.

Gina: Yeah, absolutely.

Kathi: Yeah, we're simpatico, girl.

Gina: I think so. Absolutely.

Kathi: Okay. So I know you have a valuable free resource. You have something that you're going to offer the listeners that they can download or listen to or do something with. So talk to me about that.

Gina: Yep. So I created a manifestation guide for this year, and it shows you basically how to use manifestation as a daily tool in your life without meditation, if you don't want to meditate. It's really a great guide. I'm super proud of it. It's 14 pages. It's a workbook, but it takes you through your vision of what you truly want in life and who you want to become. And then it walks you through the steps that will help you manifest better and faster. And your listeners can have it for free.

Kathi: Oh, thank you. So we'll put the link below. So you just click, click and download it into your computer and into your life and make use of it. I highly recommend that, because Gina knows what she's talking about. So, speaking of talking about, is there anything that I should have asked you or that we didn't cover that you'd like to talk about a little bit more?

Gina: I think something that your audience might ask would be, what is the first step? And I think the first step, if I could answer that for anyone who is wondering, is to figure out what you actually want in life. It's surprising how many people don't even know what they want. So the best way usually to figure this out is to put yourself in a position where money is no object. Whatever that might be for you, whether it's you have a billion dollars in the bank, whatever it is, money does not come into play. So if money had no influence over your decisions, what would your life look like? Who would you spend time with? What would you be experiencing? And if you can write those things down, then you start actually knowing where your heart is. Money gets in the way with a lot of that because we start to think, well, I'll never have that. I'll never have enough money to do that. Take that out of the mix. So the first step is really to figure out what you want in life and just to allow yourself to dream a little. That just starts opening the door to this beautiful manifestation process.

The first step is really to figure out what you want in life and just to allow yourself to dream a little.

Kathi: Yeah. Because you can't manifest what you can't see. And I agree. It takes a long time to know what you really want. What do you like to do? What would you do if you could just have a week off right now? What would you do?

Gina: I love that, right?

Kathi: Yeah. So what would we be doing? And then that's the key to what you really might want to be doing for the rest of your life. And then you can model your business around it, because as women, back to that, we can create anything we want to create once we know what it is. It's kind of hard. I grew up, my mother would say, you can do anything you want to do. You can do anything you want to do. And I bought into that and I claimed that. But then the challenge was, I can do anything, so I will do everything, right? That's what happened to me. It's like, oh, I can do everything. So I've had 13 careers because I can do anything I want, right? But what is it really that makes Kathi happy, satisfied, fulfilled and all that good stuff? So open your mind up to the possibilities. And I love that, Gina. Paint the picture and write down every single thing that would have appeal to you in your life.

Gina: Yeah.

Kathi: And especially, who do you want to hang out with?

Gina: Yeah. Who do you want to be with? And I figured out that one of the most important things to me was freedom when I did this step. It's one of the reasons why I left being an attorney: I didn't even have freedom to go to my kids' school assemblies. I couldn't leave to do that. I had to ask permission to go on vacation. I didn't want to do that anymore. It was so important to me to just be able to be in charge of my own time and to be able to focus on the things that mattered the most to me without somebody else telling me whether I could or couldn't do that. So for me, one of the first steps was realizing I've got to have freedom. And so when you do this process and figure out, okay, what would make me happiest, you'll be surprised at what comes up.

Kathi: Yeah. And you could think freedom, and then, well, freedom looks different to everybody. Freedom to you means you can go to your kids' plays and your kids' events anytime you want without having to ask for permission. That's a huge amount of freedom. It's going to be a completely different painted picture for somebody else, what freedom means to them. So think about that in detail and write it down. Put the words out there. So you think it, you write it down, and then it shows up and it manifests. So we've been talking with Gina about manifestation and manifesting your dreams. And I hope that you ladies out there and you listeners are feeling a little bit closer to being able to do that, because that's what this podcast is dedicated to do for you. Your today thing, right?

Gina: Yes. Yes.

Kathi: Well, thank you for your time. I so much appreciate it. This has been a great podcast, and I know that everybody's going to get a lot out of it. Download the free resource from Gina, and I will see you next time around.

Gina: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Kathi: You're welcome. It's a pleasure.