Dear 'GMA' Advice Guru Top 20 Finalists: Kimberly Giles

Nov. 26, 2010 — -- Kimberly Giles from Bouniful, Utah, is a finalist in the Dear GMA Advice Guru Contest. Read her application below!

EssayI would be the ultimate advice guru on GMA because I'm funny, modern, hip, sexy, clever and entertaining. I have experience in radio and video and am a professional writer, speaker (humorist) and life coach. I am also a Mormon mother of seven (No scandals with this girl)! I have been through so much in my life it would make your head spin! I've been a college student, a mother with small children, a rich stay at home mom with a huge house, an unhappy woman on the verge of divorce, a totally broke single mother with four kids in a little apartment, a single mother trying to date, a soccer mom, an administrative assistant, a computer consultant, a professional speaker and humorist and for the last 6 years a life coach. I have done it all in my 42 years. I wrestled a gun away from a shooter, had my car repossessed, adopted a child (my beautiful African American daughter), fought chronic illness (spent years in bed on IV's) married a man with three children and made a blended family work (which is not an easy thing to do!), been a life coach to multi-millionaires, coached financially broke couples on the verge of divorce, survived domestic violence, dealt with a husband with mental illness, wrote a popular blog about trying to get a date at 40 years old, entertained groups on a cruise ship with my humor, cut coupons so I could afford to feed a family of nine, ran my own home-based businesses, and helped open orphanages in Mexico. Bottom line - there is not much that I haven't experienced. This makes me very good at giving advice!

What's the best advice you have ever given? What was the result?

When I told a teenager to stop listening to her parents. Her parents were so controlling that she HAD to make bad choices in order to feel that she had a choice at all. It is in our nature to value the freedom to make our own choices. This child wanted to have choices. She didn't want the bad stuff she was choosing, but she felt they were her only choice because doing what her parents said would not feel like a choice at all. I told her that she needed to completely ignore her parents! She needed to start making smart choices that actually made sense for her life. I told her to think about what she wanted in her life -- and start choosing what she actually wanted. It worked too. Given the freedom she always wanted, she started to make good choices for herself.