Helene Hadsell is The Winning Sage – Part 1
In 2008, Vishen Lakhiani and his team from Finer Minds, now Mindvalley, interviewed Helene Hadsell and created a program called The Winning Sage, which included 13 videos, 4 audio recordings, and a PDF version of the 2nd Edition of Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game.
As clips from those interviews are widely shared on Instagram and TikTok, I thought it would be prudent to create a blog series featuring highlights along with the full video (or audio) from each interview to ensure Helene’s teachings are not lost to quick sound bites.
“Helene should have been in The Secret.”
Dr. Joe Vitale
Interview One
In this 2008 interview with Vishen, Helene regales him with some of her favorite contest stories: how she won her first prize, an outboard motor; the famous Formica house; and even how she managed to turn a trip to Venice into the trip to Paris she had wanted for her 40th birthday.
Helene was a master at weaving manifesting techniques and teaching how to cultivate a positive mindset into stories about winning prizes. She knew that everyone wanted to win and would learn to change their thoughts and, in turn, their lives under the guise of sweepstaking.
One of the first things she learned from Norman Vincent Peale was the idea that you can have what you want if you know what it is and see yourself as having it. And that became a theme throughout her life.
When Helene wanted that outboard motor, she didn’t just send in an entry and hope. She pictured her husband sitting in the boat enjoying it. When her daughter wanted a bicycle, they imagined the bicycle. And when Helene decided she wanted to spend her 40th birthday in Paris, she could already see herself sitting on a sidewalk in Paris with her husband, drinking wine.
Helene wasn’t asking, “Will I win?”
She was thinking about what it would be like when she won.
That distinction is key.
Helene also didn’t see other contestants as her competition. In fact, she said the only competition she really had was with herself, particularly when she doubted herself.
That is a pretty powerful idea when you think about it. We can spend so much time worrying about how many other people are entering, how good their entries might be, or whether we have any chance at all. Helene’s approach was to focus on what she wanted rather than what everyone else was doing.
And then there was action.
Helene didn’t sit at home visualizing and waiting for prizes to magically appear. She entered contests. She watched for opportunities. When a friend at her club meeting told her about the Formica house contest, she drove 19 miles in the rain to see the house and enter, even though nobody else wanted to go with her. She was already imagining the furniture she would put inside. The contest wasn’t even over yet.
That story also illustrates another part of Helene’s philosophy that I think is easy to miss: pay attention. Sometimes the opportunity is already there, but we don’t know about it, or we aren’t paying attention when it appears.
And what happens when the prize doesn’t arrive right away? Helene’s answer was basically: don’t give up.
She talked about patience and not being disappointed by a delay. Her Paris story is a perfect example. She wanted Paris, entered contests for trips, and initially won an electric organ instead. Eventually, she received a trip to Venice, which she was able to change to Paris.
Her lesson wasn’t that every result will happen exactly when or how you expect it to. It was to keep believing in the outcome.
I love hearing Helene tell these stories in her own voice. The contests and prizes are fun, but listen closely, and you’ll hear the bigger message underneath them:
- Know what you want.
- See yourself having it.
- Don’t let doubt become your competition.
- Take action when the opportunity appears.
- And don’t assume that a delay means it’s not coming.
That’s really what Helene was teaching long before words like manifestation became part of everyday conversation. That’s what makes these old interviews so much fun to revisit.
Watch the full interview below and listen to Helene tell the stories herself.
Learn more about Helene and all of her adventures in her books:
- Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game
- In Contact With Other Realms
- Confessions of an 83-Year-Old Sage
- A Man Called Friday
