The Ten-Second Miracle: Creating Relationship Breakthroughs [Hardcover]

Gay Hendricks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

Discover the Ten-Second Actions That CanTransform Your Relationships Forever

How often have we in one single instant taken a step backwards in a relationship simply by saying the wrong thing? We cringe because all of us remember the precise moments when we unintentionally made a bad first impression, distanced ourselves from someone we care about, or even betrayed someone we love with painful words.

Fortunately, bestselling author Gay Hendricks shows us that we have the power to turn these negative moments into Ten-Second "Miracles" that will transform and enrich our relationships. "The Ten Second Miracle" prepares us so that we will never be caught off guard again, consequently allowing us to take positive control over our relationship destinies.

By learning simple, yet life-changing actions, you will know how to handle the most important moments of your relationship life:

How to begin relationships in the first ten seconds of meeting someone. How to restore harmony any time you feel unspoken tension in the air. How to make a decision when you don't know whether to leave or stay in a relationship. How to get a solid commitment. How to know what to say in situations where you need to speak a difficult truth.

Hendricks will help you recognize the exact moments when Ten-Second Miracles can be created and he will help you discover how to say the words and take the actions that restore harmony to your family, your marriage, and your work.

"Gay Hendricks has been enormously effective in my understanding of human emotion and intimacy."
-John Bradshaw, author of "Homecoming" and "Healing the Shame That Binds You"

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning with the question, "Does any great change in our lives ever take longer than ten seconds?" Hendricks (Conscious Loving) spends much of the rest of this relationship manual attempting to prove his negative answer. He describes five-step "Miracle Moves" to create a "mind-body shift" that he guarantees will dissolve conflict. Fully feeling and speaking the emotions people often suppress is the basis of his method, and the simple exercise Hendricks advocates seems a useful tool for momentarily breaking out of old patterns of behavior. Applied to the "seven biggest relationship mistakes" people make, the "Key Moves" are shown to be effective in personal examples from his "thousands" of workshop participants. Unfortunately, Hendricks has so much enthusiasm for his technique that his claims for instant major life and relationship changes stretch the boundaries of credibility. "The Ten-Second Miracles are... effortless," he says, and "[i]t doesn't matter if you have been unhappy for decades, you are still only seconds away from the miracle"Awhich, he seems to assert, can cure migraines or addictions and resolve conflicts instantaneously. In his workshops and personal therapy sessions, Hendricks may achieve the amazing results he claims, but whether readers of his book will achieve the same success is doubtful. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Gay Hendricks is a master of intimate relationships." -- John Gray, author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 266 pages
• Publisher: Harper San Francisco (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006251489X
• ISBN-13: 978-0062514899
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,154,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gay Hendricks has served for more than thirty years as one of the major contributors to the fields of relationship transformation and body-mind therapies. Throughout his career, Dr. Hendricks has coached more than eight hundred executives, including the top management at firms such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and KLM. Along with his wife, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks, he has coauthored many books including Conscious Loving, The Corporate Mystic, and his latest, the New York Times bestseller Five Wishes, which has been translated into seventeen languages. Dr. Hendricks received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Stanford University. After a twenty-one-year career as a professor at the University of Colorado, he founded the Hendricks Institute, which offers seminars in North America, Asia, and Europe. He is also the founder of a new virtual learning center for transformation, www.gaiailluminationuniversity.com,
and The Spiritual Cinema Circle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a fabulous 'how to' guide to feeling stuff, March 23, 2000

By 

T. Tree Walker "startree" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ten-Second Miracle: Creating Relationship Breakthroughs (Hardcover)

This is a fantastic little book i picked up on special. Instead of telling you how you might feel, or how other people feel, it actually teaches you how to feel your own feelings. Starting by giving us a rough guide to where in our bodies different emotions might be felt, it goes on to step by step instructions on the 'how' of feeling - the actual process of feeling things.

At the beginning of this year i started using it with clients, and have had really good results - people saying they've never known they could actually feel things and survive, or that they didnt have to go to such efforts to avoid feelings. Even the big scary feelings from way back when, can be felt with some practice and persistence. Maybe more than 10 seconds, but not usually longer than 5 minutes. If the person feels safe enough to give it a try, that is.

Its also great for helping people who have been dissociated from their feelings and bodies reconnect with their embodied emotions. The body focus is a nice way to get even people with childhood sexual trauma in touch with their body and start listening to it, and maybe even caring for it. Have had some great feedback the practices so far.

The other great thing is the bits about expressing the feelings - not your good old 'assertiveness' formulas either. Simpler, far more effective, and essentially about holding onto yourself rather than trying to change the other person.

I have to say this is a must have book. Sure, its laden down with the pop-psych-speak, but the content is so useful you'll quickly forgive the author.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is incredible, July 31, 2003

By 

Matthew A Mertens (Maryland Heights, Mo United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ten-Second Miracle: Creating Relationship Breakthroughs (Hardcover)

This book combines the empirical observationalism of John Gottman(7 Principles for making marriage work), with the modern contributions of NLP, and though the writer probably doesn't know this, with the ancient wisdom of Buddhism! I've been having a difficult time understanding why the Buddhists teach some of the things they do. After reading this book, you'll understand why it is so important to take the 10 seconds to process your emotions, less you need time-line therapy or its equivalent to get the gunnysacked emotional situations resolved. The author so effectively discusses the problems of the victimizer-victim and rescuer-victim scripts. And in a way that Gottman did not address, he discusses why defensiveness is so destructive to a relationship, for defensive people can be running from the truth, and people who can't handle the truth can't be trusted. The very best idea I got from this book is that: The people you lie to are not the people you get intimate with. This book explains so well why we must be brutally honest to ourselves and others. And this book teaches us how to handle issues honestly and fairly. In short, this is the best relationship book I have ever read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars saved my marriage, February 13, 2003

By 

Teri Jo Smith (Nahant, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ten-Second Miracle: Creating Relationship Breakthroughs (Hardcover)

What can i say? This book came to me as a gift and I was
skeptical. I started reading it and became amazed. The
truth is that it came right at a pivotal moment when I felt
I needed to leave a relationship that wasn't working.
This book was more valuable than friends and family
that have given concerned advice throughout my life.
It was better than a therapist! It's a chance to
step out of the protagonist/victim/peacemaker triangle
that makes many relationships mostly entanglements.
This book honestly saved my marriage.