Gay and Katie Hendricks

Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., and Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D., are the authors of the bestseller "Conscious Loving" and more than 20 other books on forging more loving, fulfilling relationships. Their many appearances on TV and radio shows including "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and CBS' "48 hours" have highlighted both the techniques they teach and how well those ideas work in their own marriage. (They say they haven't had a fight in 28 years, and we believe it.) The Hendricks live in Ojai, Calif., offer personal growth workshops through Gaia Illumination University and fund research, films and scholarships through their nonprofit Foundation For Conscious Living.

Part of creating prosperity in your life is learning how to ask the right questions. Our early life experiences often lead us to focus on limited questions like these:

• How can I survive?
• How can I get even?
• How can I get by?
• How can I hide so nobody sees me?
• How can I get people to love me?

There’s a lot of information about conscious manifestation, but hardly anybody ever talks about how unconscious manifestation works. Here’s the way it looks to me. Without realizing it, we draw experiences and people to us unconsciously and interact with them in programmed ways.

For three decades, it’s been part of my life purpose to teach the principles and practices of manifestation. I use all the principles and practices I teach daily in my own life. I can’t think of anything more important than learning how to create prosperity for yourself, your family and community. I sometimes wish someone had taught them to me earlier in my life, which is why I want to make sure everyone who wants to know about manifestation has the opportunity.

One of the keys to healthy relationships is spoken appreciation. Other kinds of appreciation (such as touch or giving a hand with a chore) are great, too, but spoken appreciation is highly valued and easy to do. We recommend a technique we call verbal valentines, which work wonders in any kind of relationship.

“I feel out of sync with my family of origin around the holidays, when I spend more time with them than usual,” wrote one reader recently. “They aren’t interested in honest communication, working on relationships, or other things that are important to me … How can I deal with this in a positive way?

“Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows — marriage does.” Groucho Marx

Most of us grew up learning to avoid speaking about politics and religion in public. Many of us also remember the dinner table squabbles with parents who just “didn’t get it” about music, the current administration or really anything else that was truly cool.

Kathlyn and I are just back from a meeting in the mountains of Colorado with the Transformational Leadership Council. TLC was founded by a group of us, meeting in Jack Canfield’s living room about 5 years ago. Now, it’s grown to 100+ people, necessitating a move to larger quarters (Jack’s living room is big, but it’s not that big!) We meet now about twice a year, to hear what everybody’s doing and to help move the field of personal and relationship transformation forward. One of our new members, Marianne Williamson, gave a rousing talk based on her new book, The Age Of Miracles. Her talk touched on something dear to my heart, the incredible explosion of creativity that can come forth at mid-life.  I gave the opening invocation, which I will quote from to give you a taste of the expanded yet playful spirit of the event:

Katie and I just returned from the annual LOHAS conference in Boulder. If you’re not familiar with LOHAS, it stands for Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability, and is the umbrella for all the companies that make products and offer services for making life better. It was my first time at the LOHAS conference, but I hope it’s not my last. We had a wonderful time interacting with people from all the companies we buy things from on a regular basis, everything from herb tea to environmental organizations to non-allergenic lotions and potions.

Recently we’ve been getting a lot of email asking about how to deal with stress and tension. It may be because of an uncertain economy or other factors, but whatever the cause, here is some key information about stress.

First, stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Science tells us that some stress is necessary, but that too-high levels impede learning, slow productivity and make you sick. What stress level is optimal for you?

As we write this, in the spring of ’08, it seems like we’ve been in the world’s longest-running political campaign—and there’s still half-a-year to go! Seeing all those political ads have inspired us to propose a new set of rules for politicians and their ads. For many years we’ve had the privilege and joy of helping people change their lives and their relationships by learning how to use four communication tools skillfully. We originally discovered the power of those tools thirty years ago, by experimenting in our own relationship with ways to keep the flow of intimacy going strong between us. The tools work, and we’ve been rewarded with more love, harmony and creativity than we ever imagined possible.