As a Wall Street investment banking executive for many years, I discovered the power of invested capital to create companies, build new industries like biotechnology and the Internet, and create billions in stock market value. But as a business and life coach and spiritual teacher, I realized that our greatest resource is the inner wealth that lies within us — our spiritual or inner qualities such as insight, intuition, vision, and so on. Learning how to awaken and invest this tremendous inner wealth will enable you to reach your goals, increase your income, and find deep personal fulfillment.

Gay Hendricks is an internationally famous author, seminar leader, web entrepreneur, and filmmaker.
He is the author of more than 20 books, including the national bestseller Conscious Loving and the founder of the Spiritual Cinema Circle. He resides with his wife, author and seminar leader Kathlyn Hendricks, in Ojai, California.

Five Wishes describes a conversation that changed your life. Who was it with and what happened?

It was a brief conversation at a party I didn’t even want to be at. I went to the party with Kathlyn, who would later become my wife (now 27 years into a great marriage that probably would not have occurred had I not gone to the party.) I met a man named Ed Steinbrecher, who seemed about as uncomfortable at the party as I was. We decided not to engage in any small talk, so he asked me a question that definitely qualified as Big Talk.

I remember wondering many times, as I grew up, what life was about. Why do we exist, is there a meaning to life, why do some people suffer so much? Especially as a teenager I remember spending many hours talking with close friends about these subjects. We had the questions and the curiosity but we had no one to turn to for answers, so we grew up, entered the adult world and began to loose our yearning for understanding.

This must happen to so many people, but without a wish to find some meaning and understanding we will not discover anything or grow in any way. So this should be our starting point we need to recapture some of our wonder and curiosity about life. We need a strong wish to find a way to overcome our problems and find meaning in life otherwise nothing will change..

A Half-Awake Species
Symbolic language led to another significant step in human intelligence. We used language not only to communicate with each other, but also within our own minds, i.e. verbal thinking. With this power we could reflect upon our experiences and plan our future. In addition, we could reflect upon the fact that we were aware. We became conscious of consciousness itself. We began to wake up to our own inner worlds.

At present however, we are only half-awake to who and what we really are. Becoming aware of our own selves brought with it a sense of an individual “I” observing the world and initiating our actions. But just what is this self? It seems so obvious that it is there, but, as many have discovered, it is hard to define it or pin it down.