Shad Helmstetter
This
is a three for one book report. Shad Helmstetter is one of my favorite authors. He has written a dozen books and just has a
new one out in hardback. The trilogy I
am reviewing today is What to Say When You
Talk to Yourself, The Self-Talk Solution and Choices,
Manage Your Choices and You Will Manage Your Life.
What
to Say When You Talk to Yourself
page 19 As much as I have been a student of success, I have also
been a skeptic. . . . The problem is not with the books. The problem is not with the seminarsor with the motivational talks. There are a lot of self-help ideas and
techniques that are good. They should work -- and they could.
But they don't work, or they don't keep working, because of something that all
of us overlooked: That's not how the
brain works.
page 20 The 148,000 "no's!" If we grew up in fairly average, reasonably
positive homes, we were told "No!" or what we could not do, more than 148,000 times! . . .
I have had people tell me that they could not remember being told what
they could accomplish in life more
than three or four times! Whatever the number, for most of us the "yes's" we
received simply didn't balance out the "no's."
page 21 Leading behavioral researchers have told us that as much
as seventy-five percent of
everything we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us. . . .
Year after year, word by word, our life scripts were etched. Layer by layer, nearly
indelibly. our self images were created. In time we ourselves joined in. We began to believe that what we were being
told by others -- and what we were telling ourselves -- was true. . . . Repletion is a convincing argument.
page 22 & 23 "As a man thinketh,
so is he." I recall shaking my head
thinking that could not be. How could we
possibly be what you think? After all, isn't our
physical self one thing and our private thought another? . . .
I would come to know just how correct -- how scientifically correct -- that Biblical passage had been. . . . We become the living result of our own
thoughts. . . . How successful you will be at anything is inexorably tied to the
words and the beliefs about yourself that you have stored in your subconscious
mind.
page 25 It is no longer a success theory; it is a simple, but
powerful, fact. Neither luck nor desire has the slightest thing to do with it. It makes no difference whether we believe it or not. The
brain simply believes what you tell it most. And what you tell it about you, it will
create. It has no choice. (Pretty scary stuff if we are telling
ourselves we will never get out of debt, never keep a decent paying job, always
be poor, etc. Pretty powerful if we are
telling ourselves we are organized and can plan well for our future, that we
will have abundance in our lives, etc.)
page
47 If we can change our attitudes and our old behavior just by changing our
programming, then none of us have to continue struggling through life with our
old, negative programming dragging us down or holding us back. If we can just learn to give specific,
productive new directions to our minds, then we have a chance to make things
work -- and keep working. When I recognized
that we could make a change in our lives by making a change in our programming,
I saw for the first time, a crack in the wall of the 148,000 negatives, doubts,
and destructive beliefs that each of us had built up in front of us. I began to believe that what was holding us
back, defeating us, could itself be defeated.
I began to realize that an exciting new future was about to become
available to anyone who was standing behind the wall, waiting to get through.
pages 72 to 82 The Five Levels of Self-Talk
Level
I Self-Talk -- The Level of Negative Acceptance ( "I
can't . . .") This level is easy to
spot. It is most always characterized by
the words, "I can't . . ." or "if only I could . . ." or
"I wish I could, but I can't," and so on. All Level I self-talk works against us. And unfortunately, it is the most frequently
used self-talk of all! Rid yourself of
the negative "I can'ts" of Level I
self-talk and you will rid yourself of your greatest foe.
Level
II Self-Talk -- The Level of Recognition, and Need to Change (
"I need to . . . I should .
. .")This level is beguiling. On
the surface it looks as though it should work for us. But instead, it
works against us! In this level we are
stating to ourselves and to others our recognition of our need to change. Level II self talk is characterized by words
such as "I need to . . .," or "I ought to . . ." or "I should . . . "Why does that work
against us? Because it recognizes a problem, but creates no
solution. Level II self-talk
creates guilt, disappointment, and an acceptance of our own self-imagined
inadequacies.
Level
III Self-Talk -- The Level of Decision to Change ("I never . . . I no
longer . . .")
Level III Self-Talk is the first level of Self-Talk that works
*for* you instead of against you. In
this level you recognize the need to change, but also you make the decision to
do something about it -- and you state the decision in the "present
tense" -- as though the change has already taken place. . . . It doesn't make any difference that
you're still a smoker (compulsive debtor) when you start telling your subconscious
you no longer smoke (debt). Remember,
the subconscious mind will believe anything you tell it if you tell it long
enough and strong enough. It will simply
go to work and carry out its new directives. . . . When the
new programming takes over it won't be the result of magic, hypnosis,
meditation, or luck. That's just
the way the mind works.
Level
IV Self-Talk -- The Level of the Better You ("I am . . .") (Echoes of
the book report on Robert Collier)
This
is the most effective kind of Self-Talk we can ever use. In our Self-Talk vocabularies, Level IV is
the kind of Self-Talk that has been used the least and is needed most. It is the level that you are painting a
complete new picture of yourself, the way you really wanted to be, handing it
to your subconscious, and saying, "This is the me
I want you to create! Forget all that
bad programming I gave you in the past.
This is your new program. Now
let's get to work at it! . . . Level IV
Self-Talk is the *positive Self-Talk* that is the opposite of Level I. It replaces helpless "cannots" with vibrant "Yes, I cans!"
Level
V Self_Talk -- The Level of Universal Affirmation
("It is . . .")
(I
really didn't understand this level of self-talk. I don't think that Shad understood it either,
because the half page about it in chapter nine is the only mention of it in the
three books)
( The rest of "What to Say When You Talk to
Yourself" gives examples of Level
IV Self-Talk and gives suggestions on how to put them to best use. I read them dozens of times, never copying
them down. I then started writing down
in my 20 cent note book my own Level IV self talk affirmations. As I compare them to the ones Shad wrote, many
of them are similar and cover the same qualities I want in my life, but they
are in my own words. Somehow the are
more powerful that
way. "The Self-Talk Solution"
carries the first book to greater detail and includes more than 2,000 personal
Self-Talk phrases in dozens of different areas of interest.)
The
Self-Talk Solution
page 67
When
you use a new kind of Self-Talk, you begin to give yourself some completely new
descriptions of who you are. You are
handing your subconscious mind a new picture of at least a part of you, and
saying, "This is me -- not that
other person I thought was me all
this time."
Let's
say that you have begun using Self-Talk to get more things done on time, to
stop procrastinating. So you start by
using Self-Talk that tells you in the present tense (using the future tense
such as "I will" tells the subconscious not to worry about because it
doesn't apply to today.), as though you had already accomplished your goal,
that you are in complete control of your time.
Your new Self-Talk tells you such things as, "I do everything I
need to do when I need to do it" -- a good example of effective Self-Talk.
Of
course, when we first begin giving our selves the new programming, we have not
yet become the way we are telling ourselves we *choose to become.* But we know we are capable of becoming that
way -- and we are in the process of making the change.
When we do this we are defining -- for the subconscious mind
-- who we really are, first inside
and then, with practice, on the outside as well. But
our old programming does not want to agree.
It says, " No you don't! you can't make that change. You won't stop procrastinating.
Why even try!" It has worked hard
to keep us believing in our old limitations -- the ones that caused the
problem, and in this example keeps us procrastinating in the first place.
Since
when you use the new Self-Talk, you are following a very basic and natural
process of the human brain, the
potential for making a change is clearly on your side; if you keep using
the new programming to override the old programming, you will win out.
page 94 Instead of reliving your past pre-live your future.
Choices,
Manage Your Choices and You Will Manage Your Life
(This
is perhaps my favorite of the three. It
would be worth getting for just The Story of Naci
and T'naci or The Four Steps of Choice. If you were to get just one of the three
books which would I suggest that you get?
"What to Say When You Talk to Yourself." Now that I have studied all three and was
given the an opportunity to keep just one, which would
it be? Most definitely,
"Choices." My hand
written notes fill the white spaces between chapters. I spent nearly as much
for yellow highlighters as I did for the book.
"Okay," you ask, "Do I skip 'The Self-Talk
Solution'?" If you do, you will miss The Treasure.)
page 4
In
the years that followed, Naci learned to read the
cards his mother had left him, but T'naci put them
aside, and went his way without seeking their counsel. And while Naci
prospered, increased his knowledge, and always seemed to do well, his brother T'naci floundered.
From time to time they would meet and talk, but there was a growing
difference between them.
"Why
is it you do so well when I struggle and fail?" T'naci
would ask.
"Perhaps
it is because you have not listened to our mother," Naci
would reply. "Perhaps it is because you do not use the cards. I had learned to read eachof
them, each morning of every day, and when I do, things seem to go better for
me. Why don't you read our mother's cards for yourself? If you do, perhaps
things will go better for you."
But
T'naci did not.
page 6 "The twelfth
card is perhaps the most important of these simple cards. It says, CHOOSE TO CHOOSE IN EVERY DETAIL OF
YOUR LIFE. The other side of this card
says, *I choose to choose,* and that is followed by the words, *I do not choose
to choose.*
page 166
The
Four Steps of Choice
1.
Say to yourself (or out loud if you want to), "IS THIS A CHOICE?"
2.
If the answer is yes, then immediately say to yourself, "THIS CHOICE IS
MINE."
3.
Next, as soon as you have given the choice as much or as little thought as it
requires consciously say or think to yourself the words, "MY CHOICE IS . . ." and
then complete the sentence.
4.
Always be aware at a conscious level of why you have made the choice. Say to yourself, "THE REASON I MADE
THIS CHOICE IS . . . " This is to keep you fully on top of which of your
mental programs you are responding to, and who or what is in control of your
decisions.
Richard