"Five Wishes"

The Book

Five Wishes – How Answering One Simple Question Can Make Your Dreams Come True

Gay Hendricks

What It’s About

Encountering a man at a party that neither man wants to attend, the author is taught a way to manifest his dreams by putting them in the present tense and then watching them come true.   The man, Ed Steinbrecher, an astrologist and spiritual teacher, tells Hendricks to make his “deathbed wishes,” that is wishes he would make if he were on his deathbed, perhaps regretting things he did or didn’t do or things he said or should have said.  Steinbrecher tells Hendricks to express a regret.  Hendricks’ first regret is this: 

My life was not a success because I never enjoyed a long and happy marriage with a woman I adored and who adored me.  I wish I’d enjoyed a lifelong blossoming of passion and creativity with a woman.”

Steinbrecher then tells Hendricks to turn that regret and wish into a goal.

My life is a total a success because I’m enjoying a long and happy marriage with a woman I adore and who adores me. I’m enjoying a lifelong blossoming of passion and creativity with her.”

Turning regrets and wishes into goals becomes a more proactive way of dealing with past regrets and perhaps circumventing future regrets.  The book goes on to describe Hendricks’ other four wishes and how working on them dramatically improves his thoughts, behavior, and life.

Why I Picked This Book

This book is a fun, easy, and quick read, but it has some substance to it as well.  Though the author focuses mostly on his own experiences, many of them are universal, such as damaged relationships, professional troubles, and finances.  By focusing on these areas as goals and seeing their completion in the present, he helps us see that we can take greater control of our own lives, heal wounds from the past and work towards a happier and more productive future.

            The most interesting part was the idea that we unconsciously keep ourselves from being happy because we think we don’t deserve to be happy (pgs. 74-75).  That idea alone could be the basis for another book.

How This Can Help You

Whether we set our goals in the completed present or the future, it is important that we have goals, state them, write them down, and begin working on them.  We don’t have to wait until our deathbed to start reflecting upon our lives and our choices.   We can begin now.  Five Wishes provides a way to do this.

Quotes from the Book

“Wherever your path takes you, may all your deathbed wishes come true, and may you celebrate each and every one of them many long years before your final breath.”

“Welcome the back talk, because it's completely natural and normal. It's actually a sign that the new idea you've planted in your mind is taking root.”

“The history of humanity, as well as our personal histories, teaches us a lot about adversity and how to deal with it, but very little about how to feel good and maintain that feeling.