Helene Hadsell is The Winning Sage – Part 6
In 2009, 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.
Since 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 don’t get lost in quick sound bites.
Interview Six
Becoming the Master of Your Own Mind
What has always fascinated me about Helene Hadsell was how naturally she talked about winning. But underneath all those prizes was something much bigger: learning to take charge of your own thoughts.
Helene goes back to the basics of her SPEC system—Select It, Project It, Expect It, Collect It—in this interview because she had just published it and wanted to share her updated manifesting technique.
1) Know what you want. That sounds simple, but Helene believed many people never get what they want because they have never really decided what they want. We spend years being influenced by our parents, our culture, our friends, and everyone around us. At some point, she says, you have to decide what is actually important to you.
2) Then comes projection, which is really visualization. And Helene made this sound much easier than people sometimes make it. If you can picture an orange in your mind, you can visualize. Want a car? Don’t just think about having a car. Picture yourself sitting in it. Notice the color. Smell that new-car smell. Feel yourself behind the wheel.
3) The next step is expectation. This is where Helene drew a very clear line between expecting and trying. She didn’t like the word “try” because, to her, trying leaves the door open for failure. Her attitude was simple: don’t try to do it. Do it. And if it doesn’t happen immediately? Don’t assume you’ve failed. Helene often said there was no failure, only a delay in results.
4) She also believed in starting small. Her own first projection was an outboard motor, followed by bicycles, roller skates, and other smaller things. As the wins came, so did her confidence, and eventually she projected vacations and much bigger goals.
5) Another part of her process was emotion. Helene believed desire creates energy, and that emotion adds intensity to what you’re projecting. That’s why she encouraged people to use all their senses when visualizing. The more real the experience feels, the more energy you are putting into it.
6) And perhaps the biggest lesson in this interview is that nobody can change your thinking for you. Helene talked about reading positive material over and over again until something finally “clicks.” You can’t simply tell someone to stop being negative and expect them to change. They have to make that shift themselves.
That’s really what Helene meant by becoming the master of your own mind. Not controlling anyone else. Learning to notice your thoughts, choose what you focus on, and deliberately direct your attention where you want it. It’s a simple idea, but as Helene often demonstrated, simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy.
Watch the full interview below and hear Helene explain her process in her own words.
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
