Dr. Joe Vitale’s Blog

Back in the 1980s I read a life changing book called Contesting: The Name It and Claim It Game.

It was by Helen Hadsell, billed as “the woman who wins every contest she enters.”

The book showed the practical side of metaphysics. My attract a new car program is in the same genre: the idea is to show how tools like positive belief, visualization, feeling and action lead to concrete results — like winning a contest or manifesting a new car.

Contesting was a breakthrough book for me and many others – in fact, millions of others. The book sold three million copies. A few copies are still floating around, but you’ll pay anywhere from fifty to two hundred dollars for one (unless you’re smart and read this post to the end).

What most people don’t know is the author is still with us.

I talked to her on the phone the other night.

Helen Hadsell is 83 years old and a hoot. She’s vibrant, humorous, active, a hypnotic storyteller, and still as plugged into metaphysics as anyone around. She should have been in the movie The Secret.

Movie producers are in fact considering making a film of her life. I’d love to see that happen.

Helen and I spoke for about an hour. She’s still writing. She sent me her recent autobiography, Confessions of an 83-Year-Old Sage, which I’d love to see published, and one of her lesser known books, In Contact With Other Realms: An Adventurer’s Experiences in Awareness.

She personally knew many of the great teachers of the New Thought Movement, from prolific prosperity author Joseph The Power of Your Subsconscious Mind Murphy to Silva Mind Control creator Jose Silva to the mystical founder of Eckanker, Paul Twitchell.

Helen is delightfully fearless. She calls it the way she sees it, even if what she sees is invisible. She told me I was a monk in a past life who spent too much time “monking” around.

I guess that meant I got tired of being celibate.

She says we knew each other then.

Hmmmmmm…

I didn’t know how to respond to that esoteric observation, so I asked her about her most famous book, Contesting. The story of its birth is a great marketing lesson.

A young man who was so broke he lived in his car, heard of her winning contests with spiritual principles and said he wanted to publish her book explaining how she did it.

He didn’t have any money.

He didn’t have any experience.

He didn’t know where to begin.

But he had a goal: “I want to make one million dollars and move to India.”

Helen had a goal, as well: “I want to make one million dollars and open a center of my own to teach these principles.”

They made a deal: the man would pay a royalty of fifty percent (virtually unheard of today) for every book sold.

The young man drove off to begin his mission. Helen trusted him (though her late husband did not). She let go and allowed things to unfold.

“If it’s meant to be, it will be,” she says.

Six months later the young man returned, this time with a check for Helen.

A large check.

Here’s what he had done:

#1. He rented a mailing list of people who had entered contests.

#2. He sent every person on that list a postcard about Contesting, by the woman who won every contest she ever entered.

Clearly that’s an offer to market match.

You can imagine the response.

The man sold millions of copies of Helen’s book.

He made his million dollars, moved to India, and gave all rights to the book back to Helen. He had achieved his goal.

Helen got her money and opened her center.

This was a win-win-win.

The publisher won, the author won, and all those readers won.

That’s my all-time favorite way to do business.

There are so many marketing and metaphysical lessons in this little story that I urge you to read this post again and consider what happened.

And then apply the insights to your own life.

While you chew on that, here is Helen’s ending advice about life from her unpublished autobiography:

Make Every Day Special

Share a joke, hum a song.

Pass some special joy along.

And if someone should come your way

who doesn’t share your joy today…

THE HELL WITH ‘EM!

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS – Helen is a private person. She doesn’t have a website. She rarely gives out her phone number. She does “Blueprints” on your life path, combining astrology and numerology and whatever her own intuition suggests, for $35. She has a few copies of her Contesting book remaining, which she sells for $10 each (postpaid).  She’ll even autograph them. If you want one, write her at taptap88 at cowtown dot net. Tell her that her old lusty friend Joe the Monk sent you. 🙂

This one is from the recent book signing…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdsSlEbqBWA 

My friend and chiropractor…

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hmwMuaDCih4

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xBEkxOg7uB8

And you can find an astonishing amount of free resources for making videos and more here:

www.FreeMediaGuide.com 
 

The third subliminal manifestation DVD was released this morning. This one is on how to Transcend Fear.

Since fear is the number one thing that stops any of us from getting things done, this DVD should be of high interest to everyone, from tears for fears to fear factory to fear of the dark to fear of flying to fear and loathing to fear of heights to fear of public speaking to fear of a blank planet to — well, you get the idea.

Like the first two — the first on love and forgiveness and the second on increasing sales — this third DVD by Mark Ryan and myself uses hypnotic stories, music, images, subliminals and more to help remove inner blocks, all while you simply relax and watch the show.

It’s all explained over at www.ZeroFearNow.com

Why not take a look?

There’s nothing to fear, you know. 🙂

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS – All three DVDs are explained at www.SubliminalManifestation.com 

 The book signing in Wimberley last Saturday was a terrific event, though a couple of “freaky” things happened.

I signed books for five hours (!). Everyone was super nice and came from as far away as Houston and Dallas, and even Corpus Christi (a five hour drive).

There were some wonderful highlights, such as —

* The 8-year old boy who is selling something online that everyone has and hates. I’ll interview him one day for my Hypnotic Gold membership program. He said, “Dr. Vitale, I want to be a millionaire like you.” (He’s eight years old and has already made $500 online selling — are you ready? — farts.)*

* The woman who beamed as she looked at me and said, “You are single handedly elevating the consciousness of the planet!” (I am?)

* The man (a reader of this blog) who knows I love Amazon gift certificates but gave me a rarer gift: a genuine Cuban cigar. (Illegal for we Americans to buy so always welcome as a gift).

* The woman who said, “Your energy is softer than I expected.” (Did she expect some sort of pro-wrestler “Mr. Fire!” smackdown loud mouth author?)

* The young man who looked at my signature in his copy of Zero Limits and said, “Your handwriting reminds me of Al G. Manning’s handwriting.”

Now that was freaky.

Al Manning was an author and spiritual teacher of mine when I was a teenager, forty years ago. I was a card-carrying member of his E.S.P. Lab for many years. I haven’t heard his name mentioned by anyone but me in a long time. (Al passed on in 2006.)

It was a terrific day. Pat O’Bryan filmed the entire event. I imagine snippets will end up on YouTube.*

Master photographer Rodney Bursiel took many pictures. And this time he was alert enough to ask someone to take a pic of him and me. (That’s him above.)

I still don’t think book signings are a great way to sell many books, but they are a great way to meet new friends and have a good time.

I ended the evening by playing my Taylor 655ce 12-string guitar for our friends Rick and Mary Barrett — the first time I’ve ever played any guitar in public (for more than myself and a cat, anyway). They applauded and even asked for more, which was a real confidence boost.

All in all, a good day.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS – The best place to order genuine Cuban cigars (so I hear) is www.cgarsltd.co.uk/ They’d make a great gift for somebody. 🙂

* If you want to see a short video of ‘fart boy’ being interviewed, go see www.patobryan.com/blog.htm Enjoy.

 Lynn Reardon, founder of LOPE, a loving service that rescues Texas ex-racehorses and finds them new jobs after their racing days are over, came to my book signing yesterday.

She told me how she used my attract a new car material to get a truck and I asked her to write the story for me. She sent me the following email, used here with her permission:

Dear Joe,

It was great to meet you yesterday at the book signing. I just finished reading Zero Limits last night too!

You asked about our new truck — but first off, let me warn you — all of my stories are long 🙂

I am one of those people who always drive beat-up vehicles. Until recently, LOPE’s truck was a mammoth 1992 dually truck — the clutch was dying, the A/C had been gone for years and the front driver’s door wouldn’t open. Still, I stubbornly held on to it, the notion that LOPE couldn’t afford a new truck firmly fixed in my mind.

The truck continued to decay, until finally I had to use my husband’s even MORE dilapidated, tiny Toyota truck to do ranch errands. That truck is shown in the DVD you saw — it was down to about 1.5 cylinders, went through gallons of oil and shook incessantly.

Did I mention I am stubborn?

Anyway, I saw your “attract a new car” website and also listened to you describe it with Bill Harris (on the Masters of the Secret interviews). Inspired, I decided to contact everyone I knew and tell them LOPE was ready for a new truck. I specified our ideal truck (F250, 4WD, excellent condition, icy A/C, “ranch tough” exterior, gooseneck hitch for towing, stick shift if possible) and casually mentioned (“oh by the way”) that LOPE was looking for creative solutions to financing the vehicle.

Our budget was small but our ambitions were mighty.

The response blew me away. Several people offered to research auctions for us; another sent a letter to local truck dealers requesting a discount for LOPE; someone else scouted Carmax daily. 

None of these quite panned out, but I sure appreciated the help and support.

But then one of our sponsors, Equine Express, recommended a dealer up near Fort Worth. Equine Express buys lots of trucks (they are a cross-country horse shipping business) from this dealer.  I called the dealer, and they were great to work with. They had a good truck for us, offered us a nice discount and figured out some wonderful creative financing — with a monthly payment LOPE could afford.

What type of truck was it? A Ford F250 with 4WD, low miles, icy A/C, a gooseneck hitch, tough truck bed rails (for tying down hay bales, etc) — and automatic transmission (well, I did say standard was optional). It even had rubber floors and vinyl seats — the ultimate in ranch chic!

So I boldly agreed to buy the truck over the phone — just needed to drive there to sign the papers & pick it up.

Attached is a photo of the truck — it’s the perfect ranch vehicle — I feel very rugged in it 🙂

That’s the first long story — pretty neat! I didn’t even have to sign up for your attract-a-new-car course (though I was planning to — seemed like a terrific deal) —  just reading the site inspired me to action.

There is a second long story — about how we picked up the truck in a tornado-laden storm — but I will spare your eyes and send that in another email.

Also attached is a photo of Woodford Lad, a racehorse we adopted out to a new home. As you can see, his new owner is very happy with him 🙂

Thank you again — your work has helped LOPE and racehorses like Woodford Lad very much.

Lynn
www.lopetx.org