Most of us didn’t design our lives. We accumulated them.
One sensible decision at a time. Until one day you look up and think: wait. How did I get here? Is this actually what I would choose today?
I had that thought. In the middle of a career I’d worked extremely hard to build. A life that checked every box. And I kept looking at the people ahead of me thinking: oh shit. I don’t actually want their lives.
Slightly inconvenient when you’ve spent 15 years working toward it.
Nothing was obviously wrong. But something didn’t feel right. And there’s nowhere to take that feeling. The world is set up to keep you moving. Keep performing and optimizing. There’s always another version of success to chase.
So I did what most people do. I tried to figure it out in between everything else. Notes in my phone. Half-finished journal entries. Conversations that got close to something real before getting pulled back into logistics, work, life.
I felt stuck. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t have the answer. It’s that I didn’t have the space to hear myself think.
So I made one.
A day in Serenbe designed to help you hear yourself think.
June 26th. Among the horses and trees 40 min south of Atlanta. Seven spots left at the time I send this.
If you want to just go straight to the details of the day, here it is. But I’d love it if you stayed for a minute because this thing didn’t arrive overnight. Here’s where it actually came from.
Where this started
Eight or so years ago I was in the middle of a career I’d worked extremely hard to build, a life that checked every single box, and I kept having this one thought I couldn’t shake.
Wait… is this it?
Not a crisis. Just a inconvenient, persistent little wait.
I didn’t have a place to take it. So I kept filing it away and showing up to the next thing.
Around that time I did my second advanced yoga teacher training at Tough Love Yoga in Atlanta with Neda Honovar. I went in thinking I was there to learn more about poses.
I was not just there to learn more about poses.
I don’t know exactly how to describe what happened in that training except to say it cracked something open. It was the first time I’d been in a room explicitly designed to help me go deeper inside. Not to fix anything, not to optimize anything, just to be honest about what was actually there.
In that training I said something out loud I’d never said before. That I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to be a mother, or whether that was just a soundtrack someone had put on for me so long ago I’d forgotten it wasn’t mine.
Clearly today I have kids. I love my kids. But saying that out loud, in a room eight years ago, and having nobody gasp or revolt or try to fix it, that freed something. I shared half-baked ideas that didn’t have neat conclusions with myself and others. And the thing that happened, the thing I wasn’t used to. I started getting curious about my life and my priorities, examining what it was time to let go of and move toward.
I kept thinking: most people never get that. Not even once.
Why I’m making this.
I think about the speed a lot. The noise. The way a whole year can go by and you realize you haven’t once sat down and actually thought about where you are and where you want to go.
At work, we do this constantly. We build V2MOMs and OKRs. We create annual plans and quarterly goals. We sit in offsites and map out where the business is headed three years from now.
But what about us? Like outside of work. This amount of thought on just our own lives. Somewhere along the way we became incredibly thoughtful about designing our careers and strangely passive about designing our actual lives.
This isn’t for people who have it figured out. It’s for people who are tired of pretending they do.’
The day isn’t about blowing up your life. It’s about pausing long enough to actually see it. A small jolt. Enough to remember what you actually want.
How I put it together.
Each Life at Play Day is designed by me. Four of these a year, each one bringing some of the best teachers and guides I know into one day, one space, one small group.
Step one: what you walk away with.
People leave lighter. Not because anything got solved, but because they finally had the space to put things down. To question what they’d been carrying. To get curious instead of just busy.
Most people describe it as: I don’t know exactly what happened, but something shifted and I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
They revisit the notes often… And if you are like me you will revisit them for years.
Step two: the place.
I immediately knew it had to be Soul Barn in Serenbe. Not because I thought about it carefully and weighed options. Because I’ve been transformed there, repeatedly, in ways I didn’t see coming. The concerts at night, the equine experience, the sound baths, the shaman they’ve brought in. There’s something about the horses and that space. The wood stables, the light, the calm.
People arrive one way and leave another. I’ve watched it happen too many times to think it’s coincidence.
Step three: the featured guest.
My vision is to bring a different guest or two into each of these days. For the first one I knew I wanted someone to share something I’ve been digging into deeply this past year: finding my intuition and learning to trust my own voice again. said yes, and I was grateful. She’s a psychic medium and intuition coach based right here in Serenbe, and she has a rare ability to help people hear themselves more clearly. That’s the whole job. Not to tell you what to do. Just to get you quiet enough to hear what you already know.
And if the phrase “psychic medium” makes you picture all of us in white robes chanting in the woods. Less of that, more of the thing where you actually hear yourself think for the first time in six months. The woo is there. Obviously. I am still me.
What I’m asking from you.
One ask, really.
Come. If your whole body just went oh no… I think this is for me, here’s the page to sign up →
Can’t make June 26th? Get on the list. This is No. 01. I’m planning more of these, different teachers, different themes, same idea. Small groups. Thoughtful people. People on the list hear first, before anything goes public.
And if you know someone who needs this, the friend who keeps saying they need a minute, the one at a crossroads, the one who says they’re “just tired” but you suspect it’s something bigger than tired. Send it to them.
The best things in my life have almost always come through someone saying: this made me think of you. This might be one of those.
I keep coming back to this: I’ve seen what happens when people actually pause.
Something shifts.
It’s like, once you step off the hamster wheel, you can’t unsee it. You start questioning things you thought were just part of who you were. You get curious about the soundtrack in your head and whether you chose it or just inherited it. You stop rushing past the questions.
You go home and you’re different. Not fixed. Not finished. Just, a little more awake. Tinkering. Curious. Asking better questions and not immediately running from them.
Come if you need it. Send it to someone who does.
xx, Gina
Join the waitlist for future Life at Play Days →
P.S. Not ready for a full day? The free Playdate walking club happens the first Friday of every month in Serenbe. Same woods. Same Gina. Zero commitment required.
