Gabrielle Bernstein wasn’t always a social media darling with an international following. Before she was featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as a next generation thought leader, before the New York Times described her as a “guru” for young women, before her video blog made the top of YouTube’s Next Video Bloggers list, and before Forbes named her one of the 20 “best-branded” women in America, Bernstein was riddled with self-loathing and doubt, addicted to love, drugs, food, work, and fear. But she found a spiritual path that guided her through and beyond her challenges. Now she wholeheartedly preaches what she practices.
Bernstein took the lessons she learned, combined them with her charisma and business acumen, and devotes herself to rewiring lives or, as she would put it, “enjoy[ing] the miraculous journey of living a miraculous life.” “Miracle” is a key word for Bernstein. As readers of Rewire Me well know, there are myriad catalysts for transformation—the tools are available and timing is everything. Bernstein’s guidebook was A Course in Miracles, the metaphysical text written by (or, perhaps, Divinely dictated to) Helen Schucman, a former professor of medical psychology at Columbia University. A Course in Miracles’ most famous advocate is Marianne Williamson, someone Bernstein describes as a “spiritual rock star” and whose name appears frequently in her writings and talks.
Her writing is accessible and colloquial to the point of being chatty—a style that puts a reader at ease, making the esoteric accessible. When her subject matter veers into emotional complexity, she peppers her prose with words like cool, psyched, ballsy, grooving. This doesn’t diminish her message but rather brings it to the readers instead of holding it over them.
If Spirit Junkie is the “why,” her most recent book, May Cause Miracles: A 40-Day Guidebook of Subtle Shifts for Radical Change and Unlimited Happiness, is the “how.” In it Bernstein gives readers the tools to put the principles that worked for her into practice by mapping out a day-by-day plan. Each week is divided into seven manageable portions of wisdom: witness your fear, become willing to change, choose a new perspective, be grateful, forgive, expect miracles, and reflect. Over six weeks, readers learn how to identify their fears, strengthen their relationship with themselves, shift patterns of self-sabotage, and become comfortable in their bodies, apply the teachings to their romantic lives and then self-worth and financial abundance, and ultimately create positive change in the world. The methods Bernstein espouses are pretty familiar: meditations, self-inquiry, affirmations, and journal writing, but the enthusiasm, clarity, and presence she brings to them are what make them special.
She writes, “[Y]ou may not think one minute of stillness will have an effect, but trust that every second you choose a new perspective is a miracle.” There’s not much better advice for rewiring than that! What becomes apparent when reading Bernstein’s books and watching her video blogs is that it worked for her. Really worked. Whether she’s announcing her engagement and showing how practicing the principles she preaches helped her find genuine love, or explaining her spirit-driven publicity techniques, she embodies the notion that if you’re “willing to see things differently… you’ll be led to all the happiness and serenity that you desire.”
