by Gay Hendricks
Book Review by Cate Montana

When you review books for a living, they come in the mail like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

Faced with so many books to choose from, the selection process for each review is tough. At first my acid test was the first chapter. Then, as the flood gates opened, it narrowed to reading the first page, and then that narrowed to a couple paragraphs before moving on to the next one in the stack.

When Five Wishes by Gay Hendricks arrived, I started at the foreword by Neale Donald Walsch and the book swept me to page 63 before other work demands forced me to put it down with great reluctance. I finished it the next day, followed the action steps he lays out, and suddenly my life was very clear. I knew what was absolutely of primary importance to me and what wasn’t, and had a pretty fair idea how to actualize the things that were important. The rest would take care of itself, falling away as needed.

Now if that isn’t valuable, I don’t know what is.

Five Wishes separates the wheat from the chaff of your life. And it does so, not by lecturing and spelling out just one more process for personal transformation, but rather by engaging you in a true story of a conversation that changed Hendricks’ own life. A conversation that started at a cocktail party Hendricks didn’t even want to be at. A conversation that introduced Hendricks to a question that started out with the line: “First, imagine you’re on your deathbed, tonight or fifty years from now...”

Yes, the question is a grabber, and I’m not going to spoil your fun by telling you what it is. Find out what it is for yourself. Soon.

It’s a fun book too, with an easy-going style and informality that makes you feel as if you’re in Hendricks’ living room, talking with him, being let in on the secret of a lifetime. And the book does more than just relate a story. In Five Wishes Hendricks shows you not only how to learn what your real wishes for your life are, but how to turn those wishes into attainable goals. He also provides stories from other people who have used and benefited from this question and process as well. A corresponding website www.5wishesbook.com offers a downloadable worksheet to assist readers in implementing the process in their life.

Five Wishes is small in size and only 145 pages long and so readable just about everyone can handle it – even those people in your life who say they hate to read. For a fabulous Christmas present, Birthday present, or just plain present to give someone you care about (starting with yourself!) Five Wishes can’t be beat.