Shad Helmstetter

Leading behavioral researchers have told us that as much as seventy-seven percent of
everything we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us. At the same time,
medical researchers have said that as much as seventy-five percent of all illnesses are
self-induced. It’s no wonder.
-Shad Helmstetter

Whatever you put into your mind – in one way or another – is what you will get back out – in
one way or another.
-Shad Helmstetter

In logical progression, what we believe determines our attitudes, affects our feelings, directs
our behaviour, and determines our success or failure:
1. Programming creates beliefs.
2. Beliefs create attitudes.
3. Attitudes create feelings.
4. Feelings determine actions.
5. Actions create results.
-Shad Helmstetter

How about being your own motivator? How about taking charge and putting yourself back in
control? You can, just by learning that all true motivation – the only kind that lasts, the only
kind you can count on – is internal motivation.
-Shad Helmstetter

Repetition is a convincing argument.
-Shad Helmstetter

Your subconscious mind is an incredibly powerful, goal-achieving mechanism. Programmed
strongly enough, it will do anything necessary to help you achieve your goals. Unless you tell
it what to do, it doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong.
-Shad Helmstetter

There may be a thousand little choices in a day. All of them count.
-Shad Helmstetter

We are most comfortable with the thoughts we have lived with the most. It makes no
difference if those thoughts aren’t the best for us – it’s what we know, it’s what we are most
secure in keeping at our side.
-Shad Helmstetter

You will become what you think about most; your success or failure in anything, large or
small, will depend on your programming – what you accept from others, and what you say
when you talk to yourself.
-Shad Helmstetter

Of the many ways you can use Self-Talk in its various forms, you will find that all Self-Talk
suggestions or phrases fit into one of four categories: Habit-Changing, Attitude-Building,
Motivational, or Situational Self-Talk.
-Shad Helmstetter

Wanting to be a positive thinker isn’t enough. Making the decision to have a positive attitude
isn’t enough. The human brain says: “Give me more. Give me the words. Give me the
directions, the commands, the picture, the schedule, and the results you want. Then I will do
it for you. Give me the words.
-Shad Helmstetter

We are too busy staying alive to figure out how to live.
-Shad Helmstetter

Don’t pass along your negative Self-Talk to someone else. After all, that’s how you got it in
the first place!
-Shad Helmstetter

You can be a graduate student of management and never attain the esential skills of
managing others if you do not first master the management of yourself… The second
essential ingredient of being a good manager is knowing how to develop the qualities and
skills of others.
-Shad Helmstetter

Some people choose to live by complaining. Other people choose to live.
-Shad Helmstetter

I do not agree with those who tell us that all problems are “opportunities.” Some problems
represent potential opportunities, but not all of them. If a man with a gun in his hand were to
walk in at this moment and point the gun at your head, that is not an opportunity – that is a
problem!
-Shad Helmstetter

Learning to manage, control, and direct the resources of your mind is the greatest challenge
you will ever face.
-Shad Helmstetter

You can erase the old negative, counterproductive, work-against-you programming and
replace it with a healthy, new, positive, productive kind of programming. And it’s easy. Erase
and replace. All you have to do is learn how to talk to yourself.
-Shad Helmstetter

How we react to those things in life which we can do nothing about will always be the truest
test of our own self-control, our own individual sense of self, and our ability to manage our
minds and ourselves in a way that keeps us coming out on top and at peace with where we
are. That is a part of maturity.
-Shad Helmstetter

Choosing to live your life by your own choice is the greatest freedom you will ever have.
-Shad Helmstetter

Personal responsibility is at the root of everything we think, do, conceive, fail at, or achieve
in our lives. Personal responsibility is the bedrock of all individual action. Responsibility does
not mean “duty” or “burden.”
-Shad Helmstetter

Your success will always depend on what you think, what you tell yourself most. Expect the
best and then tell yourself the best. If you do, there is a good chance that that is what you
will get.
-Shad Helmstetter

Self-Talk is the key to making all positive thinking work. Without it, for most of us, positive
thinking becomes “wishful thinking.” And wishful thinking is nothing more than saying to
yourself, “I wish I could… but I can’t.” And “I can’t” is Level I Self-Talk – the kind that works
against us.
-Shad Helmstetter

Self-Management is the difference between living a life of fulfillment and purpose, and living
out our years frustrated and incomplete, contained by the shortsighted limitations of our own
disbelief. Self-Management is the final conquest.
-Shad Helmstetter

Self-Talk is a way to override our past negative programming by erasing or replacing it with
conscious, positive new directions.
-Shad Helmstetter

If you tell yourself that you do not like your job – you probably won’t. If you tell yourself that
you are unhappy with your manager or employer, you probably will be… Give yourself an
advantage. Talk to yourself about your work and the people you work with in a way which
makes your work work for you – and it will. You can decide to be happy with yourself and
your job or you can decide to go home every night complaining about the things you don’t
like.
-Shad Helmstetter

You may think that in life, a lot of things happen to you along the way. The truth is, in life,
you happen to a lot of things along the way.
-Shad Helmstetter

Using Self-Talk to deal with lonelines or depression is one of its best uses and one of the
easiest to put into practice. Because Self-Talk deals with you and what you think, it deals
directly with the root of the problem.
-Shad Helmstetter

We can change friends, spouses, jobs, or locations, and we still take the same inner selves
along with us – the same internal identities which made us unhappy, helped us, or got us into
trouble in the first place. If we take the old images of ourselves with us wherever we go and
into what ever we do, how could we expect to do better the next time we try?
-Shad Helmstetter

You are everything that is,
Your thoughts, your life, your dreams come true.
You are everything you choose to be.
You are as unlimited as the endless universe.
-Shad Helmstetter

It is your programming that has created your choices in the past. It is the choices you make
today that are creating the programs of your future.
-Shad Helmstetter