Tired of the same old advice on conquering your “inner critic” and still finding yourself stuck? In this episode, we’re breaking down why positive thinking isn’t always enough, and introducing transformative strategies like Afformations® and beneficial habits to tackle head trash. Say goodbye to self-doubt and hello to the success you’re truly capable of. Get ready, it’s time to turn up your potential!
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Show Notes | Transcript“Instead of asking lousy questions that lead to lousy answers, start asking empowering questions that lead to phenomenal answers and create a wonderful life.” – Dr. Noah St. John
Today, we have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Noah St. John, a trailblazer in personal growth and self-help strategies. His journey from poverty and depression to becoming the Father of Afformations® is truly inspiring. He’s well-regarded for his unique perspective on self-limiting beliefs and mental blocks. Noah’s Afformations strategy has made a significant difference in the lives of many, including Hollywood celebrities and CEOs, steering them towards financial growth and personal well-being.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Unearth the might of Afformations, and how they differ from Affirmations, reshaping your perception of self.
- Break free from the chains of self-limiting beliefs, paving the path for immense possibilities.
- Discover the detrimental impact of head trash on personal growth and how to effectively cleanse it.
- Master the technique of leveraging habits for propelling achievement.
Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy:
Mindset Mastery for Female Entrepreneurs: Conquer Fear and Self-Doubt
Tapping for Money Mindset Blocks with Erin Newman
Mindset and Blind Spots with Jarrod Haning
Resources:
Connect with Noah here
Get Noah’s free book, Get Rid of Your Head Trash about Money here
Join the Soulful Women’s Network here
Send me a message here
☕ Support the podcast here
❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here
Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter
TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste. Oh, and welcome to Live Love engage. Welcome if you are one of our wonderful subscribers and whether on podcast platform or on YouTube, and if you’re new to the show, I’m just so glad that all of you are here today because I’ve got a great guest. But before I do that, let me just share with you a little bit more about me, especially if you are new. I am Gloria Grace, the light messenger and spiritual alignment coach and women entrepreneurs hire me to clear the inner blocks, keeping you stuck so you can put yourself first and live the life you want now. And today we’ve got an interesting guest who’s going to be really sharing, I know, some amazing information and I’m just delighted to welcome Noah St. John. He is the author of Get Rid of Your Head Trash about Money, which I love that concept. He’s also known as the Father of Afformations, not affirmations, but Afformations and the mental health coach to the stars. So he’s worked with Hollywood celebrities, eight figure company CEOs, and professional athletes. And he’s ultimately famous for helping entrepreneurs make more in just twelve weeks than they made in the last twelve months while winning their lives back, which is so important because it’s not enough to be successful in one area of your life. It really is nice to be having everything going in harmony, I like to say. So I am going to be bringing on Dr. Noah St. John to the show. So welcome to the program. I’m so glad to have you here.
Dr. Noah St. John
Thanks, Gloria. Great to be here.
Gloria Grace Rand
I love asking our guests a little bit about their background and the one thing that when we connected at a publicity summit a while ago and when you mentioned that you were the father of Afformations, which is different from affirmations, which people may have heard about before, I was intrigued and wondering, what is the difference? So how did you become known as that and what do you mean by that?
Dr. Noah St. John
Well, I’ll answer that in two parts, if I may. So I’ll give you the quick story of how I became the father of Afformations. So I grew up poor in a rich neighborhood, and I know that’s a total cliche, but it’s totally true. I grew up in a little town called Kennebunkport, Maine, which is one of the wealthiest communities in New England. But my family was dirt poor, and I mean that literally because we lived at the bottom of a dirt road in a drafty unfinished home that my parents ended up losing to foreclosure when I was just 15 years old. So from a very young age, I was painfully exposed to the gap, the chasm between the haves and the have nots. The haves was everyone else in the community, and the have nots was my family. Now you hear these motivational speakers, they get on stage and we’ve all heard them and they say, well, we were poor, but we were happy. We didn’t know we were poor. Well, in my family, we freaking knew we were poor because my mother, bless her heart, reminded us every day that we were poor and miserable. So, Noah wasn’t happy. It sucked. And so I hated that life of poverty. I hated being poor because I saw that right down the street there’s great wealth and abundance. So literally, from the time I was a young kid, I said, how the heck do I get from here to there? And of course, there was no one who could answer that question. This was long before the Internet or anything like that. So I did the only thing I could think of to do, which is I went to the library and started reading every book. I read every book that I could on personal growth and self-help, all the classics, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey. I read every book that I could, and I really tried to apply them. I tried to work hard to be more successful. The problem was I couldn’t get it to work. And so at the age of 25, I decided to commit suicide because I was so frustrated and depressed and lonely and broke. And at the very last minute, my life was spared, but I didn’t know why. And so I went on another long journey to find what is my purpose here on the Earth? Why am I still here? And it wasn’t until five years after that experience that I actually had the discovery that led to me becoming the father of Afformations. So you can see, it was a long and winding road that actually caused me to end up where I am today. And all these years later, we’ve helped our clients in over 120 countries to, you know, add over $2 billion in found revenues as a result of using my method. So I wanted to give you that first, and then we could talk about my afformations method.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay, well, let’s just dive into that now. Let’s talk about that first, and then I definitely want to ask you a little bit more about head trash.
Dr. Noah St. John
absolutely. Okay, so everybody listening to this program knows what an affirmation is, right? An affirmation is what the gurus have been teaching for decades, right? And as an executive coach, a business coach, I’m also a keynote speaker, so I get to speak at conferences and events all around the country and around the world. And one of the things I like to do at my keynote speech is I like to ask everybody in the audience, I say, okay, everybody, we’re going to play a game. And everybody say an affirmation, just like those guys taught us. And everybody say, I am rich. And everybody goes, I am rich. You know what happens next? Everyone starts laughing. And I go, what are you laughing at? And I go, well, I’m not rich. And I say, but you just said you were. And they go, yeah, but I don’t believe it. See, isn’t that the problem with that old method, right, with the old way of doing it, right? We say these positive statements. We want to believe it, but we just don’t believe it most of the time. In fact, did you know that a study was actually done on this very topic? And it actually showed scientifically that the old way, the old affirmations way only works for 25% of the people. It only works 25% of the time. So imagine if you had a smartphone that only worked one out of four times. Yeah, you’d probably trade it in for a better phone, wouldn’t you? Right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Yeah.
Dr. Noah St. John
So that’s what I did. I invented a better phone, right? A better way of using your brain. And so this was actually April 20, 1997, and I was in the shower, and in fact, in my books and my programs, I call it The Shower that Changed Everything, because I literally had that a-ha moment in the shower, which probably everybody’s listening has had that right? You have those a-ha moments. Well, this was the shower that changed everything for me and now for over a million people around the world who use my Afformations method. So I was thinking about this very topic. How come I’ve been using these affirmations? I read all those books, they all say the same thing. How come I’ve been doing exactly what they said and it’s not working? Right? Because I had all these statements just like they tell you: I’m happy, I’m rich, I’m successful. And the reality was, no, I’m not. I’m broke, unhappy and miserable, right? So what the heck is going on here? So I started to think about, well, what are we really talking about? We’re talking about beliefs. But what’s a belief? Well, a belief is just a thought. And then I said, well, what is human thought? And I realized that human thought is the process of asking and searching for answers to questions. Not statements, but questions. In fact, I can prove this to you. I can prove to everyone watching the program. All right now, if I ask you a question, I want you to see what happens. Why is the sky blue? Why is the sky blue? Now, what just happened in your brain? Your brain started to search for the answer, right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Right. Yes.
Dr. Noah St. John
And notice it did it without even thinking. It happened automatically, without your own volition. You automatically, your brain automatically started to search for the answer. So I said, Wait a second. If the human mind is automatically searching for answers to questions, why are we going around making statements we don’t believe? Why don’t we just cut out the middleman? And I said, well, what would that look like? Well, let’s see. You got the statement or affirmation, for example, I am rich, which your brain goes, yeah, right. Yeah, right. We don’t believe it. And so I said, if that’s the statement, then what would the question be? And then I said, why am I so rich? Why am I so rich? Now, when you ask that question, what immediately starts to happen in your brain?
Gloria Grace Rand
It looks for answers.
Dr. Noah St. John
That’s right. You start to search for the answer. In fact, psychologists call this the embedded presupposition factor of the brain. That’s just a fancy way of saying, when you ask a question, your brain searches for the answer, right? And so what we’re talking about, what I talk about in my books and my coaching and my speaking, my teaching programs, is the law of sowing and reaping. As you sow, so shall you reap. Now, this is an ancient law. It’s been taught for centuries. However, what are we sowing? We’re sowing seeds of thought. And yet, what are most people doing? Sowing lousy thought seeds. Why am I so stupid? Why am I so fat? Why can’t I lose weight? Why isn’t my business growing? Why can’t I get more patients or customers or clients? Why is there more month left at the end of the money?
Gloria Grace Rand
Right.
Dr. Noah St. John
Right? And when you ask lousy questions, what do you get?
Gloria Grace Rand
Lousy answers.
Dr. Noah St. John
Lousy answers. Right? And that creates a lousy life. So I said, Wait a second. What if instead of asking lousy questions that lead to lousy answers, create a lousy life? What if we just flip the whole thing on its head, start asking empowering questions that lead to phenomenal answers and create a wonderful life? And as I was standing there in the shower, April 1997, I said, Holy cow, I think I just invented something. And so I had to give it a name. And the name that I gave it was Afformations. I’ll show you what it looks like for those of you watching the program here. So it’s Afformations. This is one of my 18 books. This is my book from Hay House called The Book of Afformations. So it’s A-f-formations, and you go to Afformations.com and learn more about this. But anyway, that’s how Afformations was born, and that’s how I became the father of Afformations. By the way, people ask me, one of the questions I get all the time is, well, Noah, where’d the word afformations come from? How did you invent that word? The word affirmation, right? The one that we’re all used to, the one that the gurus have been teaching for decades, that word comes from the Latin word fermare, which means to make firm. Now, the word afformations that I invented and by the way, it’s perfectly legitimate to invent a new word when you have a new way of looking at the universe or new technology. Isn’t it true we need a new word to describe it? For example, computer, software, internet, Google, Facebook – these are all new words in terms of human history. They’ve only been around a very short amount of time. Of course, now we use it every day. But it’s a new technology. We need a new word. Well, what I’m teaching, what I’ve been teaching for the last quarter century is a new technology of the mind. So our formations comes from the Latin word formare, which means to form or give shape to. So what I often ask my coaching clients or my audience members at my keynote speeches is, what if you’re making something firm but it’s in the wrong form? That means you form the life you didn’t even want?
Gloria Grace Rand
Right.
Dr. Noah St. John
And so therefore, now, using my afformations method, for the first time in human history, we humans can take conscious control of the questions we’re asking, change the questions, change our habits, change our results, and that’s how we change our lives.
Gloria Grace Rand
Wow. Mind blown.
Dr. Noah St. John
Yeah, it’s powerful. It’s so simple. And the number one thing that people say to me is, I can’t believe no one thought of that before. And I’m like I know. That’s what I said when I invented discovered this 25 years ago. I said, oh, my God, that’s the coolest thing I ever heard. Yeah, I mean, I heard it in my brain and I’m like, that is amazing. And so I had to write a book about it. Now I’ve written 18 books about it, so it’s pretty awesome.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s awesome. Okay, so let me ask you one example, just if you can share. So what would be an example of an afformation? Let’s say if someone does want to be able to, let’s say, get more clients in their business, right? So what would be a better actually, I’m going to back up. Are these always questions or is it or can you come up with a statement? So which… ?
Dr. Noah St. John
This is great, this comes up all the time and I’m happy. I love answering these questions. Okay. My afformations method is by far the most popular thing that I teach that I do over the last 25 years. I mean, it’s the number one thing that people ask me about that people find me on YouTube or on podcasts, they say, oh, my gosh, Noah, your afformations method changed my life. Now, that’s just one thing of what we do. We do a lot of other things, but it’s the hook that people just love because it works and it’s so simple and fast. People like what works and they like what’s fast and simple. It’s like, wow, it checks every box. Okay, so the point is that my afformations method is a specific form of a question, all right? Notice the word form is right in the word formare. Right? When you form a question in your brain, by virtue of the embedded presupposition factor, your brain has to start to search for the answer. So to go to your question, all right, so an example being an entrepreneur who wants to get more clients right? Now, we’ve helped doctors chiropractors, dentists, network marketers, affiliate marketers, coaches, consultants, course creators, I mean, dozens and dozens of industries over the last 20 plus years to add six, seven, and even eight figures to their businesses. All right? So this is one simple example, all right? So let’s take the old affirmations method, right? So that old way the old way that the gurus would teach you would be to say, like, I’m getting more clients. And your brain goes, no, you’re not. It’s like, who are you trying to kid, buddy? Right? And so what they’re teaching is basically, what they’re saying, if you really break it down, is bounce your brain into submission, right? Say these things that you don’t believe, and all you have to do is repeat it 1000 billion, million, billion gajillion times and then you’ll believe it someday. Now, for about 25% of the population, that works just fine. What about the rest of us, right? So that’s where my Affirmations method comes in. It’s like, how about the rest of us? Yeah, the point is, every human being right now is forming questions in our brains. All 8 billion of us on this planet are already doing this. But here’s the problem. There’s actually two problems. Number one is most people don’t know they’re doing this, right? Most people haven’t learned about Afformations yet, okay? Even though I’ve been teaching this for over 20 plus years, most human beings have still not heard of this method. And so they’re still trying to do the old way. But here’s the second problem, is that most people are unknowingly, unconsciously, unwittingly, asking lousy questions, right? Like the examples I gave before. So an example in this sense, or in this case might be, why is it so hard for me to get new clients? See? So the entrepreneur is unknowingly asking a disempowering question. Why is it so hard for me to get clients right? Now, it’s obvious that no one would do this on purpose, right? No one would consciously but that’s the very point. When I discovered Afformations over 25 years ago, I literally well, one of the things that I did was I sat there and I wrote down all the disempowering questions I’d been asking myself without knowing it. Why am I so stupid? Why can’t I do anything right? Why does nothing ever work out for me? And blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, oh my God, that’s my life. I didn’t know I was doing this. See, this is why, as you mentioned, the mind blown and you see the light bulbs going on over you like, oh my God, I didn’t know I was doing this. No kidding. Nobody told you, right? That’s why I had the discovery in the shower 25 years ago, right? But my point is that now that you see that and you go, oh my God, I didn’t know I was holding myself back. Yeah, okay, which goes to my point of head trash, which is another thing that I’ve written a bunch of books about. But anyway, so if we were to flip that around and very simply ask an empowering rather than a disempowering question, why is it so easy for me to get new clients? Let me give you an example. I have different programs. We have online courses, programs. We have group coaching, one on one coaching, one of my group coaching programs called The Twelve Week Breakthrough. And that’s where we as you mentioned earlier, I’m known for helping my clients make more in just twelve weeks than they made in the previous twelve months while winning their lives back. So one woman, she’s a 68 year old entrepreneur in Arizona, right? And so. Her name’s Tamisa. Great. Awesome. She’s got great personality, really warm and bubbly and just awesome. But she had spent lots of time, money and effort on all those gurus out there, and her business had plateaued. She was doing okay, but she just kept hitting, I call it the income ceiling, right? She just kept hitting that ceiling no matter what she tried. And so she joined my Twelve Week Breakthrough program, and I taught her my Afformations method and the other things that we do, too. As I mentioned, Afformations isn’t all we do, but the starting point for everything that we do, because your beliefs form everything. Okay? Anyway, so she was like, oh my gosh, Noah, I didn’t know that I’ve been asking myself all these disempowering questions and it was keeping me held back. Bottom line, in the first two weeks of us working together, she tripled her investment in the program. Meaning she started to see this hockey stick growth, as we like to call it. She’s going along like this and then, whoop, hockey stick. The point is, in just two weeks, she tripled her investment. We hadn’t even started talking about money yet. Okay? So that’s one simple example of how powerful this really is.
Gloria Grace Rand
Cool. Now, I think this is probably related because you’re talking about these disempowering questions. So is that really then, what you’re talking about when you talk about head trash? Because you said that I guess that’s the number one reason so many people feel stuck. So can you define that for me? And how does it really keep people stuck?
Dr. Noah St. John
Absolutely. All right, so for everyone watching the program and listening, I want you to think about your goals for the next twelve months, right? Everybody talks about goals, right. Set your goals and think positive, and you can do it. And bram, bram ram, right. We see this all over the place, right? They have it sort of almost, right. All right. Well, not really, but anyway, there’s a little piece in there that’s right. So it is important to think about what you want. Let’s just say. And people say, well, Noah, I want to grow my business, I want to start a business, I want to start a side hustle. I want to write a book or write books like you do. I want to have online courses like you’ve got whatever your goals are. And by the way, it’s not just about money or business. It can be in your personal life. I want to find love. I want to have a happier marriage. I want to lose weight, I want to be healthier, whatever it is. So, again, we’re not just talking about money, right, but whatever it is. All right? So think about that goal for the next twelve months. Now, what happens is for most people, for most people, the very next thought is, I probably can’t do it. So you think of the thing. And this is what the gurus never tell you. The gurus never tell you this because they just like, okay, no kidding. So here’s that thing that I want. And then the next time is, I probably can’t do it. Now, that right there is in fact the thing that’s keeping you stuck. The way that I teach head trash and the way that I help people get rid of their head trash. Take out their head trash. Right. One of the first steps we look at is, what are you saying to yourself? So I want that thing, but I probably can’t do it. Okay, so your head trash is the voice in your head that says I can’t do it because dot dot dot. Nobody just says I can’t do it. They say, I can’t do it because. Now, whatever happens after the word because is what you believe and what you will defend to the death. Okay? As an example, well, Noah, I want to grow my business, but I don’t have the time. Well, Noah, I want to get coaching, but I can’t afford it. I want to lose weight, but I’m too old. And whatever you just said is what you believe and what you will defend to the death. See, we humans have an infinite capacity to make ourselves right, which is fascinating, isn’t it? Because it’s like, yeah, I told you I couldn’t do it. I didn’t do it. See, I told you. I’m like, well, great, you get to be right. Yeah. Wait a minute.
Gloria Grace Rand
Self-fulfilling prophecy, yeah.
Dr. Noah St. John
Exactly. This is one area where you don’t want to be right. It’s like, wait a minute, why am I making? And I often ask my clients, my audience members, I say, would you rather be right or would you rather be rich?
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s amazing. So many things are going through my head at the moment.
Dr. Noah St. John
It opens up a lot, doesn’t it?
Gloria Grace Rand
I know it does. Well, you know what, I’m going to ask you something, because I’ve done this sometimes with people. I love what you’re saying. I think it’s awesome. How could someone that wants to execute this, what you’re saying, get it wrong?
Dr. Noah St. John
How could they get it wrong?
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Dr. Noah St. John
By keep doing what you’re doing.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay.
Dr. Noah St. John
Ben Franklin said famously that there are only two guarantees in life, death and taxes. Now, with all due respect to old Ben, I would argue there is actually a third guarantee in life, and that is if you keep doing what you’re doing, I guarantee you’ll keep getting the same result, right? We’ve all heard the definition of insanity doing the same thing, expecting a different result. So that’s one of the reasons why, for example, our twelve-week breakthrough is so effective. Because we’re working on inner game and outer game. All right? Now, what I mean by that is inner game is everything that happens between your ears that you can’t see directly, but it’s affecting everything that you do. For example, your head trash, right? Like Tamisa, who I just told you about, she didn’t know that she was doing this. You meet her, she’s very positive. She’s got a great bubbly personality. But inside she wasn’t aware of this consciously, of all this head trash, all these negative, self-limiting beliefs. She didn’t know. And she was like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even know I was doing this. I’m like, no kidding. That’s why I called it in the subconscious, right? And then, as I mentioned, she tripled her investment. And we haven’t gotten to the money part yet. The money part is the outer game. That’s where we look at, for you online entrepreneurs, people who either have or want to start or grow their online business, right? And we have to look at those things. You have to look at your offers, your funnels and your traffic. Because it’s amazing. Because I’ve helped people add six, seven and eight figures for over 20 years now to their business while working less. And for a long time I taught that all you need to do is fix your inner game. And the reason I taught that is because that’s what I saw over and over and over again. People going from 4 million to 20 million, people going from 5000 a month to 75,000 a month. I mean, just this hockey stick growth, just incredible. And 100% of that was inner game. Yeah, but I realized over time, if I said that some people took it the wrong way, they misunderstood, they misconstrued it, and they say, well, I don’t even have to work on my online business. I’m like, well, no, you really have to do that too.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s true.
Dr. Noah St. John
But it’s kind of very much like the iceberg, right? Like 5% is what you see meaning outer game, right? Meaning while the 95% of the iceberg, your inner game, I mean, that’s what causes the hockey stick.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I’ve seen that just even with my own experience as a business owner, but also with my clients, is that it really is. You can have all the best tools and the best strategies and everything, and the best-looking website. It’s got great messaging. But still, if you are doing those sabotaging beliefs and questions that you’re still not going to be successful…
Dr. Noah St. John
That’s right.
Gloria Grace Rand
as you want to be.
Dr. Noah St. John
And it’s always in the subconscious. You’re not consciously… nobody wakes up in the morning and says, wow, this looks like a great day. You know what? I think I’m going to hold myself back from success today.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right. Yeah.
Dr. Noah St. John
Nobody would ever say that. That’s a conscious thought, right? So we are holding ourselves back because of these subconscious, self-limiting beliefs. And I mean, when you go to our website, you just see just hundreds of examples of this, and people literally say, Noah was the first coach I ever worked with that actually instead of just doing all this outer game stuff, we worked on the inner game. And that’s what caused my hockey to grow.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely, yeah. Now we’re talking about being able to change our way of thinking. And I know part of this. I think sometimes maybe we are… there may be times when we are consciously aware of when we do have these negative thoughts. And so I know one of the things you talk about is when you want to be able to change a habit. A lot of times people talk about, well, you just need to have a lot of willpower to do it. But you say that’s actually the worst thing to do. So why do you say that?
Dr. Noah St. John
Yeah, that is another thing that gurus love to say. Well, just grit your teeth and nose to the grindstone. Hustle and grind. It’s like, oh, my God, where did these people grow up? It’s just nuts. Anyway, so again, there’s a kernel of truth in there, a grain of truth. But let me give you an example, all right? So imagine you’re in your kitchen. Everybody listening to the program, all right? So imagine you’re in your kitchen right now, right? And somebody comes into the kitchen, and they have a freshly baked plate of chocolate chip cookies. And you see the chocolate chip cookies, and you can see the steam rising up, and you can smell the cookies, and you’re like your mouth starts watering. You’re like, oh, my gosh, that really works. It smells great, right? And then they say to you, okay, now listen, I have to leave, so I’m going to put these cookies here. Now, don’t eat a cookie. Whatever you do, do not eat a chocolate chip cookie. All right? I have to go now. Don’t eat a cookie. And they leave the room. Now what are you going to do? You’re going to go, you’re going to eat cookies. Right? I mean, come on. That’s what willpower is like, right? It’s like basically saying, don’t do that thing you want to do, right? And we humans don’t like that, right? We don’t like to deprive ourselves of anything. By the way, this is one of the main reasons why diets don’t work, because a typical, traditional, old-school diet is basically you saying to you, don’t do that. Don’t be that. And you’re like, I want that. Right? You’re eating at 03:00 a.m., right? It’s crazy. I mean, it’s a cliche because it’s true. And so that’s why what we do with our clients and one of the reasons we’re able to get that hockey stick growth is we work on what a habit really is. And just very briefly, a habit is five stages. So it’s the cue, the routine, the reward, the craving, and the belief, all right? So basically, the queue is the trigger that happens in your environment. The routine is what you do as a result of the trigger. Then you have a reward that happens in the brain, and you have a craving that actually causes you to keep doing that habit. And then the final stage of a habit is actually a belief, and you actually develop a belief about that particular habit. Now, let me give you a classic example, which is procrastination. Now, procrastination is the number one habit by a million miles that my clients tell me they’d like to break or change, right? If I say, hey, what is the habit that you think is holding yourself back right now? Eight out of ten people say procrastination or also lack of focus. Those two go really hand in hand. So what is procrastination? Procrastination is you knowing you need to do something, and instead you go do something else. Right? I really need to work on my website. I think I’ll go watch Netflix.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Dr. Noah St. John
What? And so the point is, the gurus would say, well, come on, just work on that website, or do that, maybe you can, grit your teeth. Again, it’s not that it doesn’t work. It just barely works. Kind of like affirmations. It’s not that they don’t work. It’s just that they barely work, right? So why not use a better tool, right? That’s what I’ve invented, better tools. Right. Well, to change your life, change your habits, change your results, change your life. And so anyway, so what we do is we first of all, we identify the cue. What’s the cue that happens to trigger in your life? Oh, I think about doing that project. The very next thing is the routine. Well, I get scared and I’m like, oh, what if it doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if it works? What if I succeed? Right? Fear of failure, fear of success at the same time. That’s crazy. Have you met humans? Hello. We’re nuts. Anyway, I’m kidding. But I mean, not really. Anyway, so we got the cue, the routine, the reward, right? What’s the reward? That doesn’t make any sense. No, I’m not talking about a reward like money. I’m talking about a reward in your brain. The human brain is designed to keep you not dead. That’s the basic design of the brain. Make sure you’re not dead, right? So what’s a great way to make sure you’re not dead? Don’t go after something that scares you, right? If it’s something that scares you. It might be a lion or a tiger, saber tooth tiger, or what do you call it? Mastodon in there, in the bushes are going to eat you or stomp on you, and you’re dead. Okay? Of course, there’s no saber tooth tigers around here, but we’re talking about the ancient human brain here. There’s around for how many hundreds of thousands of years? Right? And so that’s the point is we have this fear. So we say, oh, fear, go away. Go watch Netflix. Okay? It actually really does make sense when you dig down right, deep enough, so then you have the cue, routine and the reward. Then you have a craving. A craving for what? A craving for safety. We humans crave safety. And your brain’s literally going, hey, you’re not dead. You’re welcome. I did my job today. Yeah, that’s why procrastination actually feels good, because, like, I’m not dead. Oh, this is great. And what’s funny is this brain I’m pointing to the back of my head here, the ancient brain, not the frontal cortex, is the thing that says, hey, dude, you got to do this. Come on, man, get to work. Nah, I think I’ll just be not dead. Okay, so instead of fighting it, which is what willpower is, it’s you fighting you. Which, again, can work a little, but not really. We just say, Listen, here’s all you need to do. You have the same trigger, the same cue. Oh, man, I got to do that thing. All you do is change your routine. What if we just worked on it for five minutes? Just five minutes, and then okay, how about ten minutes? All right, I can do ten minutes. Anybody can do ten minutes. All right, I’ll do it. All right. And then what happens is you finally do the thing like, wait a minute. Oh, my gosh. 90 minutes just went by. I didn’t even know.
Gloria Grace Rand
I’ve done that right before.
Dr. Noah St. John
Yeah, I’m sure we’ve all done that. And that’s the thing. I’ve always said that the hardest part of any exercise program is getting up off the couch. Yeah, it’s not the thing. It’s you getting up off of the couch and doing it. And same thing. Oh, I got to write that report, or I got to do my website. Whatever. It’s just starting the stupid thing. All right, so just do it for five minutes. And there’s no lions. There’s no tigers, there’s no bears. You’re not going to die. And people go, oh, my gosh. I honestly felt like I was going to die. I’m like, I know, because your brain’s telling you. Your brain is sometimes a liar.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, it’s true.
Dr. Noah St. John
Okay? And then, by the way, and of course, the beauty of this is and this is one of the ways it all ties together, then we use afformations to change your belief.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right.
Dr. Noah St. John
Why can’t I ever get anything done on time? That’s a negative affirmation. You affirmed it, it became firm. There’s your life. Why am I so good at getting done what I need to get done each day? Wow. I afformed it. That could be my new life.
Gloria Grace Rand
I love that. Yeah. This is wonderful. You’ve given me so many good things. So I want to ask one other question I love to ask our guests because especially because you’re really involved with the mind and helping people out with that. What are you curious about right now?
Dr. Noah St. John
Oh, that’s a great question. Let’s see, what am I curious about? I guess where I’m going to go next. That might sound self-serving, but I am. It’s been an amazing journey up until now, 25 years. I know I’m very blessed that I get to work from my home, my home office. You see it behind me here. I started 25 years ago in 1997 in a 300 square foot basement apartment with $800 to my name and a book on HTML. Now I live in a 6000 square foot mansion on a hill. I get to work from home. My beautiful wife and I, business partners and I mean, we’ve built an incredible life together. So I guess what I’m curious about is what we’re going to do next because it’s been an amazing journey.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s wonderful. And you are certainly practicing what you preach, which is important because that’s also sometimes what happens with a lot of these so-called gurus is that they talk a good game, but they don’t necessarily follow through on what they’re actually talking about. So I’m glad to see that you do. One thing I’m going to ask you one other thing after this, but I know that you’ve got a way for people to be able to get a copy of your book.
Dr. Noah St. John
Yeah, absolutely. So this is one of my books. It’s called Get rid of your head trash about money. How to avoid the three big money mistakes even smart people make. And you see there on the screen, you can get the book for free. It’s sendmeabooknoah.com easy to remember. Send me a bookNoah dot com and I will send you a book. So the book is free. We just ask you to cover the shipping so the book is free@sendmeabooknoah.com.
Gloria Grace Rand
Excellent. I love that domain. Very good. Yeah, I know what I was going to ask you, one last thing is, is there anything else that I should have asked you about that I didn’t that you would like to…
Dr. Noah St. John
oh, man, we could go on and on.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right. One last thing. One last thing.
Dr. Noah St. John
Jeez. No, actually, I just actually released something that I think your listeners would really love and it’s called The Seven Figure Scorecard. And so you can actually get because my new, new book is called The Seven Figure Life. And so I created a scorecard to see how you are doing on your journey to making that seven or even eight figures, if you like. So that’s at sevenfigurequiz.com, it’s a free quiz and you can get your seven figure scorecard. So basically, you just answer some questions, and it’s basically like taking one of those online quizzes, which friend are you? Or which Sex in the City character are you? Whatever. But in this case, it’ll actually help you on your journey to that seven or eight figures. So that’s, again, it’s free@7figurequiz.com.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay. And is that the number seven, or is it spelled out either way?
Dr. Noah St. John
Actually, it’ll work both ways, but mostly the number seven.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay, well, I will be sure and have that in the show notes. So if you are listening somewhere and you don’t have a pen handy, just go to Livelovengagepodcast.com, find this episode, and then you’ll be able to get that information. So, yeah, this has been wonderful and the time has flown by, and yet we covered a lot of stuff, so I can see why you’re a keynote speaker. You know how to be able to get your point across in a succinct manner. So I appreciate that.
Dr. Noah St. John
Thank you.
Gloria Grace Rand
Actually, well, you have it on the screen there, but where is your website if people want to find out more about maybe coaching? If you want to let people know about that who aren’t watching, yes.
Dr. Noah St. John
So our main website is just my name, Noah St. John.com. Noahstjohn, just like it sounds, Noah St. John.com. And there’s lots of free resources, my books, my online courses, our one-on-one coaching, group coaching. But, yeah, all of that is at our main hub, which is Noah St. John.com.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right, excellent. All right, well, and again, I’ll have that in the show notes as well, for everyone. So thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Noah St. John
My pleasure.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I also want to thank all of you for watching and listening. And if you are, like I said, if you’re new, make sure that you subscribe. You can subscribe on YouTube at GloriaGraceRand or on your favorite podcast platform. And until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.
