My Essay on the benefits of Gabby Bernstein: Miracle Maker

It DID Cause Miracles

They say when the student is ready the teacher appears. In my case, I didn’t know I was ready, but Gabrielle Bernstein appeared anyway. Remember when you were 7 and you ate too much cookie dough while helping make cookies – at first it tasted good, so you kept eating and all of a sudden something changed. You felt tired, uncomfortable and like you had a big ball of goop in your stomach that might never go away. You couldn’t throw up and it wouldn’t digest. That’s how my life felt in August of 2010. Soul sick. I was taking in more of life than I could digest. I thought I liked my job but didn’t. I thought I was a positive person but was filled with resentments. I thought I had all the answers but had none. It was the PERFECT place to be: Naively desperate for change.

After holding my friend Peter hostage at dinner one night by complaining about everything, he told me to read Louise Hay’s “You Can Heal Your Life”. I did. It was all this metaphysical mumbo jumbo, “look in the mirror and tell yourself you love yourself” bullshit and “forgive everyone that has caused you pain”. Something that would normally cause a NO WAY reaction seemed like an offer to taste the nectar of the Gods. I was into it. Next was Marianne Williamson’s “Work and Career”, where she touted, “Your employer is God and you can neither be hired nor fired by him.” This was “the good news” because at the time I was working with a “boss” who…(well, I’ve forgiven her so there’s no need to get into it.)

By September 2010 I was ready (for what, I didn’t know). There was this girl Clara at work that I used to have bitch fests with that involved a healthy amount of catty office gossip. Occasionally, I would share bits of wisdom that Louise Hay gave to me. She, in turn, would tell me about Gabrielle Bernstein – this late 20’s/early 30’s positive life coachy, power and love of the universe, forgiveness is important, New York City chick who wore good shoes and had a book on the market. Always a talker more than a listener, I would wait for Clara to get done going on about Gabby so I could retell stories of Louise. I had the answers to give. But you never know what sinks in.

Learn more about Gabby Bernstein here: Spirit Junkie Masterclass

One Friday night, a few weeks after hearing about Gabrielle Bernstein, I walked into my apartment and she popped into my mind. I don’t know why. She just did. What was her name? Gabrielle Berenstain Bears? I kind of didn’t know. I sort of did a Google search and Google said, “Did you mean Gabrielle Bernstein?” Um, yea. I went straight to Google Images because I wanted to know what my next potential spiritual guru looked like. The tile of images revealed this shiny blond girl with lots of legs and perfect blond hair with just the right amount of curl on the ends. And angel wings. And a skateboard. It was a lot…it was too much. I am too much. I liked it. I liked the idea of her. It was a brand of visual perfection that I really buy into. Is she on iTunes? Yes. The first lecture that popped up was called “The F Word.” I say “f*ck” all the time. This might be for me. $9.95. Download. Done.

I sat in my apartment on that Friday night half listening to the girl in Louboutins with an OMG enthusiasm for life with spirituality accessorized by the F Word. The F WORD in this lecture was, surprise, FORGIVENESS. However, at the time, Gabby swore in her lectures. I liked it. But that was about it. She’s younger than me; she has no idea what she’s talking about, who does she think she is? This is NOT for me. I doth protested, maybe too much. I listened to “The F Word” twice that night. I didn’t like her. I didn’t like her because she was right. And I had work to do…on me. That’s scary.

I listened to “The F Word” on Saturday. Why? She’s a hack. She went from party girl to good girl to forgiveness girl to happy girl. Liar. Well, a liar that made me laugh. Maybe she wasn’t a liar, though. Maybe I was afraid. Despite my misgivings, I wanted what she had. I had to have it. It was this light. It was a light I couldn’t describe. She would talk about situations in her life that were F’ed up and how she used practical principles to overcome them and move on…and feel happy. Okay, maybe.

By Monday I had downloaded free Gabby Podcasts “2009 is 2000MINE”, “I Believe”, “InJOY” among others. I would listen to them, gather ideas and solutions and take them for a spin in my own life. They worked. I started memorizing quotable “Gabby Quotes” that I took with me. Now I call those “Vintage Gabby”-because I still quote them-sometimes with Twitter hash tags. I was doing the 3 R’s (Recognize, Record, Release), I was looking for the “Tiny Mad Idea” created by the “ego’s fear” that kept me from “love”. I was “witnessing” my behaviors, looking for “who I needed to forgive” and “searching for my part”. I was “cleaning up my side of the street” and life was getting easier. Or maybe I just felt better because I was looking at things from a different angle. What the F WORD did this all mean?

I wasn’t quite sure, but I trusted and kept laughing. Gabby is FUNNY and quotable. Her message seeped in. I felt better, I laughed more and my life felt gooder. There came a point where I couldn’t contain myself anymore. I needed to make contact. I was in love. On October 2nd, 2010 I wrote Gabby a love e-mail, which she actually responded to. Human contact. The next step was attending one of her lectures in person. I went on November 17, 2010 in New York City. I remember it exactly. I remember what I was wearing (I overly dressed up because I really wanted to impress and I did), I remember shiny smiling Gabby coming up to give me a hug to welcome me and I remember the magic I felt in that room as she lectured. It was a vibration. She claims that all her “Sprit Junkie” community of followers can and do collectively raise the energy of the universe. It’s not a claim. It’s truth. I felt that energy in that room. It was a sweat lodge for love and truth. I fell more in love.

During group questions I got up and complained about my boss. Gabby gave me practical suggestions to move through the situation. One of them was praying. I was like, “She’s a bitch and I’ve already prayed for her. I send her white light in morning meditations, like I learned in your podcasts and she still sucks.” Gabby was like, “Keep praying and pray to release her and stop attacking her in your mind”. Two days after that lecture I was laid off from the job by that boss with a hefty severance. Prayer to release that boss got me released, in perfect timing. I was SO excited. No really, I handed my ID to the security guard and spun around in the lobby with shopping bags filled with shit from my office and said outloud, “I don’t work here anymore”. It was an Emmy moment (for change). Gabby was the FIRST person I e-mailed. In Gabby’s world, we celebrate getting fired because “something better is on the truck.” She wrote back, “CONGRATULATIONS. Now it’s time to get to work and be clear about your intentions.”

Ahhhhhhhh, intentions. Backed up by actions. It’s work. It is. It’s a one-day at a time thing. It’s a moment-by-moment awareness. It’s a quest for happiness. It’s a willingness to be willing. It’s a chance to be open. It’s an invitation to manifest. It’s an RSVP for miracles. It’s a way of life. No, it’s life. Life being lived. It is a path; one that Gabby started me on and has led me through. I am not alone in this process.

I kept on the Gabby train. I’m ON the Gabby train. I listened to podcasts, I went to the lectures, I read the books and I started doing Monday night group coaching. I got to work. I’m working. And there’s much more work to be done (which is a GOOD thing). I started looking at who I was blaming for bullshit that I was creating in my own life. I started to see where I sabotage the good things in my life. I saw where fear kept me limited in my potential and how excuses are empty calories. Then I focused on the things I love about me that make me, me. I did some journaling. I did some more complaining about situations in my life and then realized I needed to journal more. Mistakes follow(ed). Many. I keep making them and little by little, in the process, my authentic self surfaces. I am comfortable with being uncomfortable and that is the beauty of all of this. It’s a process. I’m not going to bore you with the details of the last 2 years of my life or check off the “good things” that have happened. Sure, they have (I bought my first car and interviewed Kristen Stewart on camera for TV – 2 dreams come true). The real success comes in the form of the way I feel…which is good, better, best. And sometimes I feel like SHIT too, but I know that is a symptom of something GOOD to come IF I “work” the principles that I’ve picked up from my work with Gabby. After all, every relationship is an assignment and every obstacle is an opportunity.

That’s kind of why I’m writing this blog post. I’m a writer. I AM a writer. I have this blog. But I don’t write. Or at least very often. I hadn’t written a blog post in 7 months. The excuses come up…”I’m busy”, “There’s no point to blogging”, “I have nothing to say” and “I’ll be discovered and become a famous writer without doing the work.” Then I thought, what would Gabby say? She’d probably say, “Get f*cking blogging.”

So that’s what I’m doing. I am committing to 1 tumblr post a day in 2013, starting with this post. Gabrielle Bernstein is launching her 3rd Book, May Cause Miracles on Jan 1, 2013. So as I recommit to blogging and in gratitude for all I’ve learned from her, I wanted to share my story of how I came to find Gabby.

It all began when Clara told me about Gabby. Then I found her. I’ve told a few as many people that will listen to me about her. Growth is shared and celebrated. I want to share Gabby. She didn’t swoop in and fix me when I was in a ditch. To be honest, my life was fine. Something spoke to me in her early messages and the simple suggestions that I took from her enabled radical changes in my life, which involved little more than shifting my perceptions about situations. It was the perceptions about my life that needed to be changed. I listened to her stories and experiences, obstacles she’s moved through and how she did it and I tried a few of those things out, and they worked. That’s the miracle. Sometimes the SLIGHTEST shifts in our life MAY DO CAUSE MIRACLES. Which is why her new book is called, “May Cause Miracles”. It will.

For more info on Gabrielle Bernstein or to follow Gabs on Facebook or Twitter, see below! You can also click on the image above for details on her #MCMiracles Book Launch in NYC on January 3, 2013. Honestly, she’s better than organic Cool Whip on dairy free ice cream. Now let’s see if I can get down to blogging….HAPPY NEW YEAR!