Motivational speaker, life coach and author Gabrielle Bernstein was in Los Angeles doing a lecture based on her book, Add More ~ing to Your Life, A hip guide to happiness – and we just had to sit down for a chat.
Gabrielle is the founder of Women’s Entrepreneurial Network as well as HerFuture.com, a mentoring network for women, and through her lectures helps a new generation of women to shift their search for happiness from the outside to the inside. Since HLife is all about the inside, we met with the multi-talented beauty and talked about the book and the personal journey that led her to discover herself as a messenger of the steps to a happier life.
Silvie Celiz: Tell us about the book.
Gabrielle Bernstein: It’s a self-help book for the next generation. A hip guide to happiness, so Add More ~ing To Your LIfe is the title. “Ing” stands for Inner Guidance and the whole book is about helping people release their negative patterns and create positive change. So, I use a lot of amazing metaphysical principles within the book that I have just translated for the next generation, and made them relevant for young women. There are 12 chapters, and forgiveness is a very important topic. Sometimes I use a topic called mirroring, which is recognizing what your part in the situation and how your thinking and your believing is affecting your outside experience. Everything is meditation and choosing a positive perspective, bringing in a physical experience. And throughout the book I do three steps: rethinking, moving and receiving – what I call the ~ing equation. Rethinking, moving and receiving x 30 days = changing. And it’s mental and physical reconditioning with positive affirmations. If you apply those three things for 30 days, you can create permanent change. That comes through in every chapter.
Maryl Celiz: What’s something you’ve always wanted to say that nobody’s asked you?
GB: Something that I was asked recently and I want to repeat the answer to is the thing about spirituality being packaged into this hippy woman with beads – she was asking what is my opinion on being cute and hip and spiritual. And I told her that that’s exactly everything I teach – being spiritual doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be all woo woo and out there, it means that you bring it into the body and you recognize what your purpose is, and what your body’s purpose is. And your body’s purpose is to be a messenger, to help carry the message. So if you want to broaden your audience to young women who are into shoes, into fashion, into nightclubs or whatever they’re into, why leave them out because they don’t look like you? You wanna make sure that you honor the body that you’ve been given and play the role of the messenger that you are. I will never deny the fact that I choose to be cute and spiritual to keep my message as relevant as possible for the listeners. Young women today are very, very hungry for these conversations.
SC: How does diet play into it for you?
GB: In general, I know the difference when I am alkaline. And when I’m leaning in that direction as much as possible, I feel a tremendous difference.
MC: I read somewhere that you’re a self-help junkie, and that you love the Course In Miracles. What got you to that point?
GB: From age zero to 25 I was trying to figure it out, like most people, trying to get something to be happy, what I call the “when I have” – when I have that job, when I have that client, etc. So, when a lot of my when-I-haves became my haves, and still didn’t find myself happy. So at 25 years old I hit a very hard bottom, I became extremely saddened by this outside search, and I immediately chose to turn inward. I got sober, I became a metaphysics junkie, I started picking up my meditation practice like a full time job…I completely changed my life. And, as I went through that, I knew right away that it was my turn now to carry this message – it’s not just about teaching myself and directing my own line, but carrying that message too. I’d already been a motivational speaker since I was young, I started my first two businesses when I was 21, so I’d been speaking publicly for five years already and rather than speaking on vocational topics, I started speaking on health and wellness, manifestation and the steps you need to take for it. My lecture called Knowing Your Worth is about really knowing that you’re worthy of what it is that you desire before you call on your desire, because so many of us get so hooked on what we want and how to manifest these things, but we’re not being clear about what is blocking us from receiving what we want. There is a voice inside each of us saying, “no, you’re not worthy of that,” or “no, you can’t have that,” and, so, why bother manifesting anything until you believe you can have it?
SC: What are the steps?
GB: The first step is really identifying what the limiting belief is, what that thinking is in saying, “you’re not good enough.” You know where it came from, it came from growing up, high school, mom and dad, some boyfriend who told you that you sucked – who cares, right? It came. And it’s like this tiny idea that began to germinate and became a virus and just sort of exploded in your thinking. And it created the reality that you live today, which is in this box that keeps you small and says, “you can’t go further than that.” The second step is to be willing to change that belief, because with the willingness, you’ll end up with a lecture like mine, you’ll read a post on this site, you’ll find that teacher that needed to be there – whatever it is that you need to spawn change will arrive. And the third step is really allowing yourself to experience the feeling of discomfort. So much of what we avoid is the feeling. We don’t allow ourselves to feel what we need to feel with regard to change. So, when we recognize that limiting belief come up, we want to honor the feeling – and then release it. Honor it and release it, rather than think over the feeling, work over the feeling, run over the feeling, eat over the feeling, drink over the feeling, whatever. By feeling the feeling, you actually start to create change. And the more often you feel it, the more you change.
MC: In the question and answer sessions of your lectures, what’s the one thing that keeps coming up?
GB: People always say things like, “I feel stuck.” And that’s exactly where they are, they are stuck, because they’re stuck in a negative perspective. And they’re blocked. Fear is what is blocking them. So, when they say that to me, I say, “of course you are. That’s why you’re here.” And most everyone is stuck in some way, ‘cause fear has taken over in some area of their life and they have to figure out how to get out of it. There’s a lot of work – but the thinking and the believing is what primarily has to change for that.
Who did you write the book for?
GB: You guys. Young women 18-39, young women who are having an existential crisis – because all of us are. For any young woman who wants to get unstuck, who wants to connect back to spirit, who wants to find a better way to live – and learn how to release fear.
