Dr. Noah St John discusses how limiting beliefs, or "head trash," sabotage your goals even when your habits seem fine. He argues most personal-growth advice treats symptoms instead of root causes, and shares how clients see rapid transformations by addressing these deeper blocks.
For everybody listening, I want you to think about your goals for a second, right? So what are your goals for the next 12 months of your life, right? So, well, of course people say, you know, I want to make more money. I want to start a business. I want to grow my business. I want to get more clients or patients or, you know, whatever it is that you do. I want to write a book. You know, maybe a lot of people say to me, no, I want to write books like you do. I mean, I've published, you know, 19 books at this point. My 20th is coming out soon. But anyway, so You know, think about those goals, right? And then what happens for so many people is that the very next thought that they have is, well, you know, I want that thing, but I probably can't do it. You know? And then what happens is they say, I can't do it because, right? And see, whatever happens after the word because is what you believe and what you will defend to the death. See, there's an old saying that if you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. And see, the way that I say it is that we humans have an infinite capacity to make ourselves right. And so the point is that if you believe that I can't do it because, you know, and then people say, well, I can't do it because I, oh, I don't have the money. I don't have the time. I can't afford it. I don't have the right connections. I don't know the right people. I didn't go to the right college, or, you know, I'm too old. I made too many mistakes, or, you know, I'm divorced, or, you know, I have kids, or I'm a Martian, you know, whatever it might be. People can find any excuse, right? And then you always make yourself right. See? And so you think about those goals and then it's like, yeah, but why bother? You know what? I think I'll just go watch Netflix. And that's, you know, that's just one example of how these poor habits, which I call unproductive habits. See, there's really only 2 types of habits if you think about it. What I call productive. Yeah. And unproductive, right? So a lot of people out there have a lot of labels. You know, they say good habits and bad habits. I don't agree with that because what happens is that you just get into these labels. It's a good habit or it's a bad habit, but that doesn't really mean anything if you think about it. What you really want to start thinking about is this habit, is this thing that I'm currently doing bringing me towards my goals or not, right? In other words, is it bringing me towards my goals? Or is it actually bringing me further away from my goals? Or is it maybe just doing nothing and I'm just staying right where I am, right? So if it's bringing you further away from your goals or keeping you right where you are, I would classify that as an unproductive goal, right? So a classic example would be if my goal is to be healthy and yet I have a habit of overeating and smoking, is that gonna give you the thing that you want? Probably not, right? I mean, I mean, or even eating junk food, right? Eating junk food. We all know what that means. We all know what it means to eat right and not eat right. We all know that. Nobody needs any more training on that, right? And so the point is, well then why would we do that? Well, because the human, what people don't realize is what a habit actually is. And this is why it relates to head trash, because the head trash says, Well, I'll never lose weight. I've always been overweight. I've always been fat and I can't do it. Same thing with money. You know what? I came from a poor family. You know, I was raised poor and I'll probably never have any money. So, you know, that's it. That's the end for me. And I'll just, you know, make do with what I got. And, you know, I understand that because I grew up poor in a rich neighborhood. And so I had a very unique, interesting, you know, childhood because most people either grow up rich in a rich neighborhood or poor in a poor neighborhood. Well, I grew up poor in a rich neighborhood. So I got to see the vast chasm between the haves and the have-nots. The haves was everyone else in the community. The have-nots was my family. Right. And we'd probably all heard, you know, motivational speakers or whatever they are, gurus get on stage and they say, well, you know, we were poor, but we were happy. We didn't know we were poor. Well, 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 no, it wasn't happy. It sucked. And so I hated that life of poverty. That's what I grew up in. But I saw right down the street, there's great wealth and abundance. So for my whole life, I'm like, how the heck do I get from here to there? And that's what all of my work has been about. So, you know, it's not like I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I don't think I even had a spoon. It was plastic. But anyway, you know, that's what I'm trying to say is that if you want to have something better in your life, which, right, we all do. But what happens is because of this head trash that I'm talking about, and I mean, let's face it, I've basically written 20 books on this one subject. How to Take Out Your Head Trash, you know? And I mean, in fact, you can, I'll just show you one. I won't show you all my books, but here's another one that you can get for free. It's called Get Rid of Your Head Trash about, you know, everybody can get this book for free at sendmeabooknoah.com. Very easy to remember, sendmeabooknoah.com, and I'll send you a book. The book is free. We just ask you to cover the shipping. But the point is that the head trash is in fact the thing that's keeping so many people stuck. But what's happening out there is that People are just focused on the symptoms rather than the actual root cause, right? So it's like kind of going to the dentist, right? Imagine if you have a toothache, right? And you're like, oh man, my tooth really hurts. So what do you do? You go to the dentist, right? And you're like, can you check this out, man? This really hurts. And he's like, yep, you got a cavity. He's like, and you're like, okay. And he says, all right, well, here's some painkillers. You know, just take some pain pills and that'll be, make you feel better. And you're like, well, wait a minute. That, no, that's, wait a minute. That, All you're doing is masking the symptom, right? The symptom is called pain, right? And, but we, all of us have pain in different areas, but pain is always a symptom. Pain is always up here, right? So if you're like, well, the pain is, you know, I'm lonely. The pain is I'm overweight. The pain is I'm not making the money I want to be making, right? So we have pain in these areas of life, whether it's health or wealth or relationships or whatever it might be, right? That's, but that's only a symptom. Pain is a symptom. The point is we have to look at the root cause, at what's actually causing the pain, right? Even though it might not be fun to get a root canal, you know, at the moment, it's probably better than just taking a pill because otherwise, you know, you might lose not just one tooth, but a whole bunch of teeth. That's a good example. This is why the personal growth industry is primarily focused on symptoms, right? They're focused on symptoms, meaning like, hey, if you're not reaching your goals, Then you need to get motivated. Come on, set your goals and think positive and you can do it. And that's going back to the hustle, you know, you know, work and hustle and grind. And you're like, that's all symptoms. It's all up here. The reason that my clients make so much money so quickly or lose weight so quickly or find love so quickly is because we get to that root cause. So you talk about hockey stick. I mean, if you go to our website, you'll see lots and lots of examples of hockey stick. I mean, people going from $60,000 in debt to a 6-figure income in less than a year, from $5,000 a month to $75,000 a month, from $4 million a year to $20 million a year. I mean, just so many stories like this. Do you think I could have done that if I just said, come on, work harder, set your goals, think positive, you can do it. It's like, oh my God, really? You know, none of that is wrong, but it also doesn't really help. So that's why we get to the cause and that's what hockey sticks.
