Decades before books and movies like "The Secret" popularized the Law of Attraction, a single mother named Helene Hadsell tapped into its power to claim over 5000 contest prizes. Enduring financial struggles in early 1950s New York, Hadsell discovered Napoleon Hill‘s gamechanging book "Think and Grow Rich" and became enchanted by its core message: thoughts can be harnessed to manifest results. She began testing various visualization techniques until she repeatedly demonstrated an uncanny ability to manifest specific goals. Newspapers eventually noticed her unusual knack for contest wins and dubbed her "The Contest Queen."
But how did she acquire such mastery over luck and chance? Hadsell developed a reliable 4-step manifestation system called the "SPEC" method which enabled her shocking succession of contest wins. While contests provided a convenient way to validate her skills, the SPEC process can work for goals beyond just prize packages. This article will retrace Hadsell‘s journey from single mom to Contest Queen before analyzing step-by-step how the SPEC method taps into the extraordinary manifestation potential hidden within your own mind.
The Origins of The Contest Queen
Long before Oprah, Deepak Chopra or Tony Robbins popularized the concept, Helene Hadsell helped pioneer the philosophy of conscious creation, seeking to empirically validate that focused mental and emotional energy can reliably yield tangible results. Enduring painful losses early in life, Hadsell admitted that developing an understanding of life‘s mental/spiritual dimensions became an emotional anchor for both her and her beloved daughter.
“I was divorced and had to make a new life for myself. And I didn‘t have anything when I started, not even a job.” – Helene Hadsell
Surviving through house cleaning and odd jobs in 1952, Helene struggled as a single mother to provide for her growing daughter Susan. One evening she noticed the cornerstone book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill and felt drawn to open it despite lacking money to purchase. Hill‘s book had already silently transformed the lives of famous businessmen, athletes, and politicians since its 1937 debut. Yet as she turned those crisp first pages, Helene gasped as Hill‘s core revelation lept from the page:
Thoughts can be harnessed, intensified, and focused upon desired goals, manifesting unexpected resources and opportunities that transform results in one‘s life!
Immediately she sensed this mental/spiritual connecton between thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and life outcomes might alleviate their scarcity and launch them toward abundance.
Helene promised herself that very night to become a living example of Hill‘s principles. To validate this she began testing techniques to manifest basic goals like cups of tea or coffee and small food items. Sure enough with disciplined focus on positively expecting to obtain simple selections, Helene found increased success receiving precisely what she wanted from life. Daniel Kahneman‘s research on the focusing illusion supports why Hadsell‘s early tests concentrating on rather minor goals enhanced her motivation to manifest them. Her small successes built lasting confidence that she could eventually apply manifestation mastery to achieve bigger goals.
Testing The Power of Positive Thinking
In spring of 1953 Helene decided to conduct a serious test of The Secret-style principles a full 50 years before publication of Rhonda Byrne‘s bestselling book popularizing Law of Attraction ideas for modern seekers. This experimental trial itself attracted unexpectedly lavish public rewards catapulting Helene to fame which itself brought further fortune.
Helene resolved to prove reality could match mental focus by winning an expensive new Coca-Cola outboard motor contest. She admitted visualizing the exact 7.5 horsepower outboard in detail initially seemed difficult. So instead she relaxed and simply enjoyed vivid scenes of her daughter Susan gleefully bouncing on sunny boat rides, smiles and hair radiating summer fun. The mental movie captivated her thoughts for days until a surprise call notified she had indeed won Coca-Cola‘s featured outboard motor, precisely as envisioned!
Skeptics may criticize that one motor win alone doesn’t confirm mental powers over matter. But further contest wins stacked rapidly after Helene’s public motor success. These mounting victories combined with Hadsell’s warm personality as an outspoken single mom earned her growing media nicknames like “The Contest Queen” and for those who sensed her deeper teachings, even “The Metaphysical Princess.” With fame her manifested outcomes advanced too – from common consumer goods to expensive Swiss watches to large cash sums up to complete houses!
Statistician Persi Diaconis explained the astonishing odds against such repeat luck declaring “It’s astronomically unlikely just how successful this woman was.” Yet Helene achieved over 5000 contest wins thanks to disciplined mental training in manifesting. Let’s break down her step-by-step recipe for success called SPEC to unlock such reality-bending power within anyone.
SPEC Manifestation Method Steps
Helene openly shared that her winning secret involved no gimmicks, luck or even trying too strenuously. She simply aligned her thoughts, energy and expectations toward mentally “ordering” then accepting she already had her goal. Despite fame for wildly improbable contest wins, Hadsell emphasized that anyone willing to follow her SPEC (Selected, Projected, Expected, Collected) system could replicate her results in their own life.
Step 1: SELECT precisely what you want to manifest in exact detail.
Define every aspect of your goal just like ordering a delicious meal. Leave no nuance unselected. The precision provides momentum attracting your outcome faster through specificity. Know exactly what you want with no vagueness.
Step 2: PROJECT vivid scenes implying your selection exists now
Relax, close your eyes and play out imaginary scenes where you already have what you selected. Make projections so realistic they include sounds, textures, smells and flavors you expect along with your goal. Revisit favorite projections often.
Step 3: EXPECT having your selection with unwavering faith
Cultivate positive expectation same as expecting dinner arriving after ordering it. Avoid desperate craving or anxious attachment around getting it. Expect from a state of trusting your order is already cooked and on its way to you.
Step 4: COLLECT when your selection finally manifests
Stay playful and grateful once – then keep your mind open for next inspiration! Mastering manifestation helps you attract more of what you’re focused on.
While contests made great practice, Hadsell wanted followers to dream bigger than motorboats and cuckoo clocks. She urged folks to pick soul-nourishing goals that filled spirits with joy. Vaclav Havel called this “Wanting the right things for the right reasons.” One may use SPEC seeking shiny cars or gadgets, but Helene believed life’s deepest meaning comes from pursuing self-transcendent goals. SPEC works for small selfish cravings, she argued, yet lasts longer sustaining big visions centered in compassion. So if you try it, use wisdom selecting goals aligned to higher purpose.
Scientific Explanation
Skeptical minds may firmly doubt any mystical “mental trick” can alter external reality‘s outcomes. Yet Hadsell’s SPEC method and the broader Law of Attraction principles actually have strong neurological and psychological explanations. To demystify the magic, let’s break down what we know.
The Reticular Activating System
First, scientists discovered a Reticular Activating System (RAS) inside our brains that filters reality’s endless sensory data to determine what makes it to conscious awareness. Much like search filters shaping what results appear in Google, your RAS filters decide what stimulus from gazillions of options grabs your attention minute to minute. It operates based on what cognitive neuroscientist Moshe Bar calls “top down priors” – expectations priming our brains to notice certain things over others.
Experiments confirm that deliberately targeting mental focus toward a specific item reliably increases subjects spotting more instances of that item around them afterward. In visualization tests across hundreds of British soldiers, psychologist Richard Wiseman found 92 percent saw desired objects more often when intentionally focused only 1 hour per day compared to control groups given no visualization task. Results imply consciousness guides perceptive reality.
Your subjective experience of "reality" relies on RAS filters screening gazillions of simultaneous stimuli funneled down to selective output your conscious mind notices based largely on past habits and current expectations.
But it goes a step further – by deliberately visualizing and expecting desired scenarios, your RAS increasingly directs resources to notice related opportunities. Like programs updating software to run more efficiently, focused mental repetition optimizes RAS task handling for your goals. Stanford experiments in 2011 first confirmed using fMRI scans that visualization expands function in brain regions tied to perception, movement control and memory.
Beyond inward effects on our brain’s operational efficiency, persistent mental focus also influences external behaviors subtly steering us in consistent directions without realizing.
Consistency Compulsion
Duke professor Dan Ariely famously discovered even tiny acts hinting we are a “certain kind of person” compel us to unconsciously align later actions with that implied identity to avoid inner hypocrisy. Across thousands of experiments, people percent volunteering, recycling, voting consistently etc despite being free to change, once they’d signaled even the smallest intent toward that habit.
This behavior gap between our positive perceptions about ourselves versus how we actually act is described in psychologist Carl Rogers‘ famous formula:
Self-image = Self-esteem + Self-worth
The greater the gap between self-image and reality, the more anxiety and disorientation we feel. The brain responds by constantly steering us to close that distressing gap.
In Manifestation terms, repeatedly visualizing and expecting you already have your desire signals “self-image” of already being a person who obtained that goal. The inner contradiction between that imagined identity and reality creates tension. Your subconscious then steadily nudges external choices toward resolution – seizing more opportunities and decisions congruent with mentally being that “type” of person…ultimately causing manifestation!
Hadsell gave talks well into her 80‘s sharing research-backed insights on topics from neuroplasticity to quantum physics confirming to her decades earlier teachings. While SPEC‘s simplicity invites overly mystical assumptions, current psychology clearly supports science firmly underlying her system‘s effectiveness.
Tips From The Contest Queen Herself
Analogies help explain complex concepts. Hadsell often compared manifestation to ordering meals you crave from your favorite restaurant. Visualizing and expecting to soon enjoy what you ordered keeps energy high. But stressing or complaining to the kitchen staff could sour your mood. Likewise with goals: project positive expectation preferably from relax states where creative inspiration flows freely.
Helene insisted nothing worked better to attract desires than playfully pretending “you already have your menu order now and everything else is just details for the universe to handle.” She rejected notion that earning money itself held deeper life purpose, seeing financial worry as pointless as anxiousness over your upcoming dinner’s journey from farm to table before eating. “Stressing can spoil your appetite” Helene winked.
Certainly hardship challenges faith when reality still looks starkly contrary to desires for long periods even visualizing optimistically. Yet Hadsell found playfully adapting perspective helped overcome external circumstance struggles internally:
“When I looked at circumstances, I made treasure hunts or games to energize my imagination. Games nourish childlike curiosity we all still have inside and tap creative flow states.”
Researchers Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura describe such childlike immersion in creative flow states as the “Hidden Driver of Quality of Life”. For Hadsell, playful games invented around goals brought patience persisting through years-long dry spells externally before her improbable contest wins manifested.
“Surrender wondering ‘why’ or ‘how’ imagined scenarios would show up and simply trust they will.” she urged followers, comparing manifestation to baking sweet treats. “No one stares at the oven while cakes bake. Go play and trust the process!”
Helene‘s Principles Summarized
Despite fame as “The Contest Queen” Helene Hadsell wanted legacy preserving her wisdom helping ordinary people consciously create extraordinary inner and outer lives through principles like:
“Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they become character; watch your character, for it becomes your destiny”
Whether seeking brief thrills through contests or lifelong fulfillment from deeper dreams, theSPECl steps remain effective gap-closing guides.
“We must learn to expect what we want to achieve as if it is already our reality." Hadsell urged, believing imagination a preview of life‘s coming attractions.
"It‘s expecting the best… Expect the best to come to me.”
What could your life look like expecting the best? Why not find out for yourself?