Noah St. John — How To Remove Your Head Trash About Money

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What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and flow Chart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear.

Yo, yo. Welcome back to another hot episode. I'm with my homeboy right now.

Yes, you are.

I'm Joe Fear.

I'm Matt Wolf and this is the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast, brought to you by evergreenprofits.com. oh, wow.

He just said it all, huh? Cool. Well, today we're talking with basically, this guy has been everywhere in the media. He's written just so many books, really cool stuff. Today we're going to be talking with Noah St. John. He's actually the author of get rid of your head trash about money, and he's known as the power Habits mentor. So I actually worked with him. Oh, man. Years and years back on a project right. About this space here. You know, it's personal development, really. It's, you know, make your life better, make your business better grow, all that fun stuff. So, yeah, we talk a lot about, you know, the head trash concept. Obviously, we'll touch on that in the podcast.

Yeah, if you don't know what head trash is, don't worry. He'll explain it. If you know what head trash is and you want to get it out of your head, we're going to get into that. We're going to.

We.

We actually asked Noah to walk us through some exercises for getting rid of the head trash. And then also Noah's really well known for what he calls afformations. Not affirmations. Afformations. And it's a slight twist on the affirmation concept, and we'll get into what that means and how to do them in the episode. It's actually really, really powerful stuff. So, yeah, pretty exciting.

Let's get into it. Hey, Noah, thanks for being with us today.

Oh, my pleasure. Looking forward to it, guys.

Awesome. Well, yeah, so it was kind of funny. We were just chatting. You know, we did a project. I don't know how many years that was now. It was probably a good six, seven years ago or something like that. But. So I'm sure you've come a long way since we last chatted, because I think that was the last time we did chat. So I guess give us a little quick backstory on who you are, where you've been and where you're at now and what you're doing.

Sure, absolutely. Well, I founded my company successclinic.com in my college dorm room in 1997 with $800 to my name and a book on how to do HTML. Now, most people listening could go, what's HTML? And my point is exactly. You don't even need to know what HTML is nowadays, because it's. Everything is just point and click. And so look, there was no Facebook, no YouTube, no Twitter. Social media meant sitting around the TV, watch, watching TV with your friends. That's what social media was at that time. And you know, there's no blogging. You couldn't, you know, the webs on a website, basically you could put maybe an Image that was 20 pixels by 20 pixels if you were lucky, because you remember that that was in the days of dial up.

Bringing back nightmares.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it was a long time ago. And so I've been doing this for more than 20 years now. And you know what I started my company with just, honestly, just a dream, just a desire to help people, to make a difference. Because, just going back a little bit, I grew up poor in a rich neighborhood. I know that's a total cliche, but true. I grew up in a little town called Kennebunkport, Maine, which just happens to be one of the wealthiest communities in New England. But my family was dirt poor. I mean that literally. We lived at the bottom of a dirt road in a drafty, unfinished house that my parents ended up losing to foreclosure. So from a very young age, I was painfully aware of the dichotomy, the gap, the chasm between the haves and the have nots. The haves was everyone else in the community. The have nots was my family. And so. But I really hated it. I hated that poverty, that lack, that not enoughness that I grew up with. Now, my parents worked really, really hard. I mean, they struggled, they sacrificed just to keep food on the table, but they could just never get ahead. And so from a very young age, I was painfully aware of the difference between people who worked really hard and didn't get ahead and the people who didn't seem to work so hard and yet had great abundance of wealth. I'm going, this doesn't make any sense. And so that really, really bothered me. And so I went, I did all. The only thing I knew what to do, which is I just went to the library and started reading books on success, personal growth, spiritual growth, you know, how to get ahead in life. And, you know, I read all these books and I was really, really trying to put them into practice. I was trying to do what they said. But then fast forward years later, at age 25, I decided to commit suicide because I'd been working really hard and not getting any results. You know, I watched an interview with Tom Brady, the great quarterback, and he said, you know, when you have struggle and sacrifice and not you don't get the result that causes depression. When you have struggle and sacrifice and you have success, then that causes satisfaction. And I thought that was very, a very smart remark. And the point is, I only had depression because I never had success. And so I said, why am I here on why am I here? And so I decided to commit suicide. I tell that story in one of my books. But my point is that at the very last moment, my life was spared. And I, you know, I made a decision, a commitment at that moment to. Because my life was spared at the very last moment. I feel it was a miracle. And I decided to devote the rest of my life to serving God and serving humanity as best I could while I'm here on the earth. But I still didn't know why I was on the earth. I still didn't know why I was here. So it wasn't until five years later that I had the realizations, epiphanies that led to my starting success clinic in my college Dorm Room in 1997. So it was a very, very long journey, very painful. And you know, however, over the last 20 years now, we've helped people in over 140 countries with tens of thousands of students all around the world. We've got just hundreds and hundreds of success stories. If you go to our website, Noah St. John.com and you click on the praise page, there's, you know, a page, we call it our wall of fame. And we've helped people add multiple six, seven and even eight figures to their business over the last few years. And we've even helped people lose weight, you know, find love, save their marriage, help kids get better grades and have better self esteem. So it's really been an amazing journey.

Yeah, that's, that's, I mean, that's, that's a background that I did not know. So that's amazing. And I guess what was like a big turning point because I mean, obviously you had that shift, you had a massive shift when you were younger. You know, how did that, how do you get on this path of success and finally kind of flip it?

Well, it was really what happened was as I mentioned, you know, when I was studying all those traditional success books, I call it traditional success literature. And in all those books, what they talk about is how to succeed. Well, that makes perfect sense, right? If you Want to learn. If you want a result, it's nice to know how to do it. How to succeed. I mean, that just makes logical sense. The problem is we humans aren't logical, right? And so that was the basis of one of my major epiphanies that I had in 1997, which actually led to my writing my very first book, which is called Permission to Succeed. And what I realized is that we humans don't actually, many of us anyway, many of us don't need more how to's of success. What we actually need is to learn how to give ourselves permission to succeed. That was the phrase that just like hit me like a bolt of lightning when I realized it, that I had never given myself permission to actually be successful. That's why I was reading all those books and they weren't making any sense to me. They didn't hit the actual problem that I. And then I realized millions of other people have, or, you know, I had at that time, which was, I don't even know if I'm allowed to succeed. I know that sounds crazy. I know that sounds silly even to some people. They go, what do you mean, permission to succeed? Well, why would you need that? Well, the fact is that what I've realized is there are two groups of people, what I call the naturals of success and everyone else. Now, the naturals of success are the ones that we're all familiar with. We all know who they are because they allow themselves to succeed at a very high level. And what I mean by that is, you know, we all know people in every industry, whether it's the, you know, network marketing industry or real estate or chiropractic or the service industry, or, you know, the thought leadership industry, which I'm in. The point is that in every industry, there's like the very, very top level and then there's everybody else. And what I realized is that the people at that very top level, I call them the 3 percenters, that what they're doing is they have these things that I now teach that allow them to be unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed. And so I'm sure we've all heard the fact that you know, when you're on, when you're learning a skill or a new habit, we go through the four stages of competency. You start with unconscious incompetence. That means you don't know, that you don't know. Then you go to conscious incompetence. That means, you know, you don't know. Then you go to conscious competence, which means you know, and you're working at it, and then you go to unconscious competence, which means you do without thinking. And so what I realized is These naturals, these 3 percenters, are unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed. So they went right to the how tos. They said, well, here's how to succeed. Meanwhile, the rest of us are sitting there going, yeah, that's great, but.

I got to go back a step, you know, and no one was talking about this. I was the first person to actually identify this, in which I actually discovered the name of this condition that I called success. Anorexia. People are actually. There's millions of people, tens of millions, who are unknowingly starving themselves of success. So that was the basis of my entire body of work that Now I've written 14 books, and they're published in 17 languages. And as I mentioned, you know, we've helped people make. Well, actually, now we not only help people build multiple six and seven and add even eight figures to their business, but we've helped our clients add over half a billion dollars just over the last few years.

Now, that's. It's interesting that you said about the whole how to thing, because we definitely picked that up with just our own community, with our teaching. You know, we have a lot of marketing education out there. And it's definitely. You know, there's some people just have this brick wall where they're like, okay, they're not ready for the tools, but they're ready maybe for principles first and maybe even, you know, the mindset stuff and the stuff that you talk about as well. But, yeah, you see a lot more of the how to's than what you're talking about here, which is kind of unfortunate. But, you know, it's. Maybe it's. It's sexier to people. The how tos just kind of get right to it.

Absolutely, yes. What. I mean, this is what I talk about. The difference between personality driven success and system driven success. Now, you can't turn on Facebook nowadays without some guy saying, hey, man, look at my sports car, and look at this and look at my that and look at how cool I am. Aren't I awesome? And it's like, yeah, you're awesome, man. Now, the question is, have you helped anybody else, or is it just all about you? And, I mean, that's what's so funny, because, as you said, it is sexy. And we. Because we humans, we look at those aspirational type of images, and the brain just goes into overdrive of, ooh, I want that so those self promoters, those great self marketers are hitting the right buttons in the human being. The human being wants those nice things. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is that usually 99 times out of 100, that guy did it by virtue of his personality, you know, and so you say, you look and you go, okay, have you helped anyone else? And the answer usually is.

You know, that's usually the answer you get. And so my point is that that's why I. What I've noticed, guys, is that there's two kinds of people in this industry. There's the look at me guys and the look at us, guys. Look at me guys is what I'm talking about. Hey, look at my this, look at my that again. There's nothing wrong with the thing. Nothing. We all want those nice things. Nothing wrong with it. But I'd rather brag about my students. I'd rather talk about their success, because that's how, you know, there's a system. If there's no system, then all you have is a guy talking about how cool he is. And the kind of weird thing is that works. You know, it really works. That's why those guys are making a lot of money and getting all the attention, because they're good at getting attention. But my problem, I guess, with that is are you doing anything for the rest of the people that you're supposedly saying that you're helping? Right, right. Usually I'm not seeing it.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And yeah, there's one too many of them right now. And social media, YouTube, all that stuff. But we won't go there. We won't name names. What are some of the most common reasons of this whole? Permission to succeed. See, kind of these roadblocks. What are the most common ones that you see with your students?

Well, you know, it's funny that you asked that, because that's why I wrote my new book, which is called Get Rid of youf Head Trash About Money. And, you know, we can mention that your, your listeners here. Yeah. Can actually get that book for free. They just go to sendmeabooknoah.com very easy to remember. Send me a book, noah.com and I will do that. I'll send you a book. And it's free. We just asked you to cover the shipping. But anyway, send me a booknoah.com and it's. So the reason I wrote this book is because I saw people making the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. And I said, you know, this is simple. You don't have to keep beating your head against the wall. And so the subtitle of the book is how to Avoid the Three Big Money Mistakes Even Smart People Make. And I know that everybody listening to this program is very smart. However, you may be making one or more of these mistakes without even knowing it. Now, the first mistake that I see people making is not getting rid of your head trash about money. So of course that brings up the question, well, what do you mean? What is head trash? What does that mean? Okay, so do you mind if I talk about that?

Go for it.

It's one of my questions.

Oh, good. Okay, good. All right. So this is like I said, this is basically what I've written 14 books about. You know, this whole concept of head trash. What does it mean? Okay, so head trash basically is that guy in your head that says, I can't do it because.

And then you just fill in the blank. Well, I can't do it because I'm too old. I can't do it because I'm too young. I can't do it because I've made too many mistakes. I can't do it because I don't have the money. I can't do it because I don't have the time. I can't do it because I don't have the connections or because I'm a woman or because I didn't go to college or I didn't go to the right college or I don't live in the right city, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I Right, you get the point. So here's the whole funny, not funny thing about this whole concept of head trash is that you always make yourself right. See, we humans have an amazing ability and proclivity, in fact, a deep need to be right. In fact, I would argue that most people would rather be right than happy. In fact, they'd rather be right than rich. Because think about it. You're literally saying to yourself, now, these thoughts may be conscious, they may be subconscious, maybe a little above, all, right? But. So the point is, let's say you say one of your head trashes is, well, I can't do it because I don't have the time, right? And so guess what's going to happen? You're going to make yourself right. And so you're going to be running around all the time. You're always busy, but you're not getting anything done. I call it being on a treadmill. You're on a treadmill working really, really hard and getting nowhere, right? So you're treadmilling and so. But you're. You're right, but you're not happy and you're not reaching your goals. Okay? So that is just one example of how head trash can totally hold you back. And by the way, you know, the reason that the book is called Get Rid of youf Head Trash about money is because 77% of people who come to me say that money is their number one frustration. You know, I mean, that's a big frustration for a lot of people. Along with health, relationships, and stress. Those are the four big stressors that I see. Money, relationships, health, and stress. Of course, stress is caused by the other three, generally relationships. But my point is that that's why I decided to write the book specifically about money. Because that's where I see. I mean, that's where the majority of people say that they have the biggest frustration, the biggest hangups. And see, money is a very emotional issue, and it's also one that people are embarrassed to talk about. So that makes it a double whammy. It's like, I've got this head trash, but I don't even know who to talk to about it. I don't know how to talk about it. That was one of the reasons for writing the book.

And I just kind of came. I know there's a stat out there for this, but maybe, you know, the number. And speaking specifically about money, if that's kind of like the first. First thing some people focus on, especially if reading your book, maybe they haven't read your other 13. But do you know if there's a dollar amount per year, some kind of salary or just income range that people just finally stop worrying about money, and then they can just kind of maybe focus on the bigger things or, you know, the other stuff like relationships, health, and whatnot.

Well, as far as the number you're talking about, there was a study done by Princeton University that showed that after $75,000 a year in income, a person's happiness doesn't go up very much. So my point being is that everybody says, well, if I had more money, then I would be happier. What we've. Or not me. But what that study found is that basically a person's happiness increases up to the level of about $75,000 a year. And then after that, it's pretty much doesn't move very much. Which I thought was fascinating because I'm like, are you kidding me? That's like a month.

Yeah.

Oh, how is it 75,000 a year? I mean, that should be like a month. I mean, I was a little shocked by that number. But again, this was a Princeton University study. My point being is that going back to what I said a moment ago, most of us, especially in the United States, of course, which we've been pounded by the greatest marketers on earth for the last 50 years, and that is, you get more stuff and you will be happier. However, there's a. There's a sort of an underground movement now going on of purging your stuff, like getting rid of simplifying, you know, the. You know, the cleaning up, the clearing out, which I've been teaching for 20 years, which is, you know, the fact that it isn't more stuff that makes you happy. And what, of course, we, you know, the study also mentioned is that after you've got the stuff to, like, live and. And survive and, you know, not be worried about paying the bills and so forth, what makes a person happier is experiences, you know, And I was asked recently, what do you like to collect? You know, like, you collect things. And I go, yeah, I like to collect experiences. And that, you know, because when you think about, you know, holidays or times with your family, what do you think about? That's what you think. You think about experiences. You know, you think about the trip to the Grand Canyon, you think about the trip to Hawaii, or even just being at home and having a barbecue or whatever it might be. And so that's, you know, as I get older, I go, that's what I'm collecting. I'm collecting experiences. I want to collect experiences with my. My wife, my family, my kids, my loved ones, family and friends. And then that's what I think creates a rich life, definitely.

And we just. It was funny because just last weekend we did a workshop with buddy of ours, A.J. roberts. He was on the podcast earlier, and he's very much mental game. And we walked through so many exercises, and it was the whole thing of, like, yeah, you might think you want stuff, but then if you kind of plan out your perfect day, you know, kind of meditate for a few minutes, figure out, okay, how do you want your perfect ideal everyday life to look like? Not the day on the beach and stuff like that, but just waking up like, okay, where do things fit in on that list? And I don't think anyone in the room said, oh, I want to go rev up my big Lambo every morning and, you know, run around the block and look cool. So, yeah, it kind of confirmed exactly what you're saying right there. Good stuff. And so it's kind of like this battle between logic and emotional. I feel like in the human brain, you know, where it's, you know, like you were saying, people want to be kind of logical with the how to's and it's like, okay, I'm gonna make my goals and you know, get there. But then you're fighting with that emotional state, you know. Yeah. With the excuses, family stories. Maybe it's your network relationship with time and money that kind of feel. So.

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. I mean, look, the emotion is going to win every time.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

So you can say there's a battle. It's kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters against the Washington. We know whoever the team they played, I mean, emotion is going to win every single time. You know, the logic will never win with that battle. And because we. Because very simple, the emotional, what some people call the lizard brain, you know, the ancient brain is, is just a hundred thousand times older than the, the, the, the part of the brain, the human brain that is logical, that's only developed very, very recently, evolutionarily speaking. And so that's why the emotions, that's why those images work. That's why they picture up the Lambo and the private jet and stuff like that. It works because those marketers know that that's going to hit your brain in that specific area and go, ooh, ooh, I want that. And the logic is out the window. All the stuff I'm saying right now goes totally against all those emotions. And that's why those self marketers are getting, they're taking a lot of air out of the room. I'm just here talking about it so that hopefully next time when people see those, they ask questions. Like, I'm saying, like, have you helped anyone else or is it all about you? Do you have any case studies?

Yeah.

Go to NoahSaintJohn.com, click on the praise page, the results page, and you go, hmm, we got 20 years of results. So yeah, there's a system versus a guy's personality.

Right.

And what's the. I'm kind of curious to just learn about what the biggest turnaround story is from all the years of, you know, you working with people. What is like your favorite. Go to story you like to tell?

Yeah, there's so many, but one of them that's my favorite is a woman named Susan. And, and she actually heard me on a program very similar to this. She heard my story, and at that time when she heard me, she was really almost at the end of her rope. She was $60,000 in credit card debt. She was about to lose her home. She was about to declare bankruptcy. She was about to lose her marriage. Her husband said, I can't take this anymore. Now, she was $60,000 in debt. But this is the fascinating part about this story. She didn't get in debt by buying, you know, designer shoes and bags and clothes and stuff like that. She got into that debt by. Because she was spending money on self help programs, personal growth programs. She had spent all this money on the biggest names in the industry and nothing was working. So very similar to my story that I shared earlier, except I just went to the library. But she's been spending tens of thousands of dollars on all these gurus, and she was literally about to lose everything. And she heard me on this on a program and literally was at the end of her rope. She was ducking calls from creditors. She told me later. And she said, oh, my gosh, this just makes sense what I was saying. And she decided to get in touch with me. She signed up for my online programs. We have many different online programs. And she got coaching with me. And she said at first it was kind of like, this is really different. This is very not what those other guys are saying. And she said, that's good, but it was different. And so anyway, I was working with her and she was doing the work. She was doing the steps, following instructions. And long story short, in less than a year, she was offered her dream job, exactly what she had been looking for. She is now a television producer for a national TV show. She's been nominated for an Emmy twice.

Wow.

And she's also just published her first book, which she asked me to write the foreword for because of how I changed her life. And so one of the things I love about that story is that it really embodies essentially the whole point of my work, which is if you, meaning the folks listening here, if you've been spending a lot of time, money, and effort on traditional success literature or success programs, I'm not saying they don't work. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that for millions of us, they're not the right tool to do the job. Okay? So the example I always say is, imagine if I asked you to drive a nail into a wall. Do you think you could do it? Well, of course you could. If you had what? If you had the right tool. Right. And what happens is that there's a lot of people who are trying to drive a nail into a wall, but all they've been given are chainsaws.

So if you're trying to drive a nail into a wall with a chainsaw, you're going to be, what, Frustrated? You're going to be beating yourself up. You're going to be saying, oh, my God, I'm so stupid. Why can't I do this? Well, this guy did it. And then you have these coaches that say, hey, set your goals, get motivated. Think positive. Come on, visualize it. And they give you a chainsaw, and it's like, guys, it has nothing to do with thinking positive. I'm not saying it's bad or wrong. I'm saying you got the wrong tool. So what. What I do is I give people a hammer to drive that nail into a wall. And so that's why when they get results, as I mentioned earlier, you know, when you. When you work hard and sacrifice and you don't get results, it causes depression. When you work hard and sacrifice and you get results, that causes satisfaction. And so that's why we have a lot of satisfied customers over the last two decades.

Now. Do you have any sort of, like, specific exercises or things that you walk people through that maybe we could sort of discuss on the call that some of our listeners could walk away with? Are there any sort of, like, hammers that we could give them right now?

Of course, absolutely. All right, so let's go back to what I was talking about a moment ago about your head. Trash. Okay? So the point about your head. All right, so think about this. I love to give this exercise, too. So think about your house, right? Your home, where you live. So whether you live in a house or a condo apartment, whatever, so just picture that, you know, your home, okay? Now imagine that one day you said, you know what? I don't think I'm going to take out the trash this week, right? And you said, yeah, I don't feel like taking out the trash. Okay? So you let the trash pile up for a week, and you're like, okay, and next week goes by, you go, huh? You know what? I don't think I'll take the trash this week either. And then you let another week go by, and then you let a month go by in two months, in three months, in six months. How's your home smelling right now? How's your home looking? Not so good, huh? I mean, it's pretty gross in there, isn't it? Okay, so here's the thing, folks. There are millions of people out there who haven't taken out the trash in their head for 5, 10, 20 years, okay? So just imagine the Trash that has built up in your head. We all know people who are walking around with resentments, with, you know, with frustrations, with anger, with depression that they've been holding on to. Things that happened years and decades ago that they're still holding on to. They're still beating themselves up, they're still feeling all that resentment or regret or anger or whatever it might be. What I want you to understand is that trash is exactly like having it in your home, except it's in your head. So you can't see it directly, but you see the effects of it everywhere. So one of the things, the exercises that I suggest, and this is one of the places I start with my coaching clients, is I say, listen, what I want you to do is write down the top five head trashes that you have about money. So, meaning what are some negative beliefs that you may have about money? And you know what? I've identified over 85 different head trashes that people can have about money. There may be even more, but I mean, that's just from my clients over the last 20 years. All right. That, you know, they write down these things and they go, wow, I didn't even know I was thinking that, you know, because. Why? Well, because the fact is, it's exactly like sweeping it under the carpet. That's where that phrase comes from. You sweep it under the cart. When you sweep something under the carpet, does that mean it's gone? No, there's a big lump on the carpet, you trip over it. It's not gone. You just don't want to look at it. But my suggestion here, my encouragement to you is, well, that could be the very thing that's holding you back right now. That could be the very thing that is keeping you from reaching your pot of gold, your desired results. And so write down 3 to 5 or even 10 head trashes about money. I'll just give you some quick examples. Rich people are selfish. That's a belief that many people have. Now, that's a very popular belief. Turn on the news, look at movies. Who's the only bad guy that you can have? Basically, a white male businessman. That's the only bad guy you can have in a movie right now. You know, a white male businessman who's rich and is, you know, a son of a gun. All right, so, but the point is, what that does is it reinforces that belief that rich people are selfish and mean. Now, look here, I'm just going to take this one particular, you know, head trash. Of course, there's rich people that are selfish. There's poor people that are selfish too. There's rich people that are really, really nice, and there's poor people that are really, really nice. The fact is, money doesn't change anything. It reveals everything.

That's like a writer downer right there. Money doesn't change anything. It reveals everything, what you are. So take a person who doesn't have money, right? And just picture that. Now, if you're a nice person that doesn't have money and then you give them money, what's going to happen? You're just going to be nicer, but you're able to help more people. But you take a not nice person and they don't have money, and then you give them money, what happens now? They can be more mean to more people. See what I mean? So it's a magnifying glass. It doesn't change anything. It reveals who you already are. And so my point is, that's just one example. Because if you're going around believing, thinking, well, rich people are selfish, rich people are bad, rich people are mean, then how are you going to be one? Are you going to sign up for that thing that says, hey, I think I'll be a mean, selfish person? Yeah, that sounds great. Where do I sign? No, you're going to, you're going to keep yourself. I was just talking with somebody the other day and they said one of their head trashes is, I'm a bad money manager. Well, what do you think is going to happen when you get money?

It's self support.

You're going to make sure it goes away. Make yourself right. Like I was saying earlier, you would rather us, I mean, all of us humans, we'd rather be right than rich. And so to make myself right, I'm going to, oh, money comes in. I'm a bad money manager. Oh, make sure it goes away. Do you see what I'm saying? So this can be affecting you in so many ways, but you're not even aware of it. This is why this exercise, it sounds so simple. And yes, it's simple, but it can be incredibly powerful if you do it.

Yeah. Now what are some. Do you have some examples of some other commonly seen forms of head trash?

Well, you know, I've already mentioned many of them. And so, like, for example, another one like that I grew up with was, I can't afford it. I can't afford it. Now why did I have that? Well, I told you earlier, I grew up poor in a rich neighborhood. So I only heard 10 trillion times. Growing up, we can't afford it. You know, gee, I wonder where I got it from. So maybe, you know, maybe it came from your family of origin. Maybe you made it up as you went through life. Who knows? It doesn't matter. See, this isn't about pointing fingers. Oh, they did it to me. Who cares? You know, it doesn't matter. What we're doing, in fact, is the exact opposite of blaming. We're taking responsibility. When you. When you go through my programs, that is the entire point. We're about taking responsibility. Not blaming, not pointing fingers, not saying, oh, poor me, I'm a victim. No, it's the exact opposite. You're saying, hey, listen, I'm tired of having these results. You know, Ben Franklin said there are only two guarantees in life, death and taxes. Well, with all due respect to old Ben, I would argue there's a third guarantee. And that is, if you keep doing the same thing, I guarantee you'll keep getting the same results. Right? I mean, there's not many guarantees in life, but I'm pretty sure that's one of them. Right? So the point is, if that's what you're. If you're not happy with what you're getting, well, we gotta look at why you're getting it, don't we? I mean, that just makes sense. So, like, what? So for me, like I said, you know, one was, I can't afford it. I only heard it 10 trillion times. Okay? So I'm going, well, okay, now how is that affecting me? Well, it affects everything, you know, because I want this thing. And I go, oh, I can't afford. I'll give you just, like, a funny example. I had been, you know, saying, I can't afford it for my entire life, because I heard it a billion times growing up. And so, you know, I was making money, I was doing my business, and I had money, and all my life I wanted to swim with dolphins. That was one of my experiences. You know, I talked about experiences. That's one of the experiences that I always want to do. I want to swim with dolphins. With a name like Noah, you want to play with animals.

So I said, so I go. But in my head, I would always have that dream, oh, man, I really want to swim with dolphins. But then the next thought was, I can't afford it. That's only for rich people. I literally woke up one morning, I go, wait a minute, I'm rich. I mean, I'm wealthy compared to what I was certainly. I mean, I am now basically the definition of wealthy. Something doing better than that Princeton survey, you know, that I talked about. So I'm going, dude, what is that? And I go, oh, it's head trash. No kidding. And I'm going, well, screw that. I want to go swim with dolphins. And I'm like, But was so funny. I didn't even look it up, because in my head, it just immediately. I can't afford it.

Expensive.

And then I said, hey, what? And I looked it up. I'm going to. Are you kidding me? That's not that expensive. You know, because of course now I've got money. You see what I'm saying? And so I looked, and now my wife and I, we've swam with dolphins four different times in different countries. You know, we love it. It's so fun. And I mean, that's just one example of how that head trash can affect you without you even knowing it. Love it.

So saying that. Yeah, it sounds like. So once you identify what those head trash things are, if we're carrying on with that exercise, that's the awareness factor. And I would assume that's probably the. One of the biggest things is you're pulling it out of your head. You're making. You're shining a massive light on it. You're like, holy shit. That's what's been holding me back.

You know, that's funny you just said that, because one of my clients, years ago, he used that exact terminology. He said, noah, you know, when I was going through your program, it's like you were turning a light on in a room that's been dark my whole life. And I realized that's exactly what it is. That is exactly what it. Because, see, the unconscious mind or the subconscious mind, it's like that iceberg. We've all seen that picture now. You know, the conscious mind is like the top of the iceberg. It's above the surface. Only about 5%, the vast 95%, is below the surface. But that's the whole point. You can't see it. But you think that is not affecting you just because you can't see it. Of course it's affecting everything you do. So, yeah, that's exactly what it is, is turning a light on. And you go, wow, I didn't even know that was in there. It's pretty powerful.

Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the next step, and I'm just kind of getting this from what you were saying kind of inadvertently here is with the second step after awareness, would that be how is this affecting me? You know?

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I suggest I literally say, you know, list all the ways that that belief is holding you back from having the money or, you know, the income that you really want. You know, in what ways is it affecting you? Now, I get that swimming with dolphins is not like a life or death situation and stuff like that, but, you know, in other cases, you know, of my clients, like, you know, I was just talking about, I'm a bad money manager. That belief, I mean, imagine how that could be affecting you. It could be affecting you tremendously.

Sure.

You know, maybe you get a big amount of money in and you make sure it goes out again.

Right, right.

So wouldn't it be great to have a different belief that says, well, wait a minute, I, I'm a good money manager, you know, to change, start to change your beliefs. So, yeah, this is one of the first places to start. By the way, I do also talk about in the book the importance of mentorship. That's another really important thing that I just really want to mention because as I talked about earlier, you know, we have. It's so easy to see this personality driven success out there. You can't turn on Facebook without seeing it. The problem is, as I mentioned, that, you know, they usually are just all about themselves. That's the only success story they have is themselves. Well, that doesn't help any of the rest of us. And believe me, I've given those guys a lot of money and lost a lot of money because I bought it too. You know, for a long time I was, you know, like, I bought it just like everybody else. And so my point is that when you have a system driven success, a real mentor is really what we teach at Success Clinic is three things. A true mentor is, number one, someone who's where you want to be. Now, that's the easy part. That's what, that's, you know, personality driven success is. Oh, they got the car, the house, the whatever. Okay, that's the easy part. The second stage is they have a system that can help you get there, meaning someone who's not them. Right. That's the part that everybody forgets. But then the third step, the third stage, or the third part of a real true mentor is someone who actually helps you get there. Someone who actually does it. See, so you can know how to do something and still not do it. So that's the point. That's again, one of the reasons we have so many success stories is because I would rather brag about my students than myself. I'm just a weird guy. I like talking about my Students. I'm not comfortable, as comfortable talking about myself. I'd rather talk about Susan and Sheila and Tim and George and all of them, Mike, and just go to the page and you'll see all the stories. My point being is that having a true mentor, you've got to be very, very careful who you pick as your mentor. I think because other than it's so easy to just fall into the trap of, oh, well, they're where I want to be. That's great. Can they help you get there? Do they have a system? And number two, will they actually help you? Those are the two. Those to me, are the two most important.

Those are huge. Yeah, for sure. And I was just thinking about this as we were talking about head trash, and we're talking about, you know, starting out the 75,000 mark, I would imagine now you're dealing with a lot of successful people. I mean, I know you're doing your job right. You know, you have. You have a lot of success. So what are you seeing after people get past that initial hurdle? Now, you know, they're quote unquote, wealthy, but I mean, everybody's still dealing with head trash. How, you know, is it the same stuff, just in a different form, or is it completely different? Like, what are you seeing?

That's a great question. And what I call it is a spiral staircase of success. Okay, so imagine walking up a spiral staircase. You're, as you said, you're kind of dealing with the same, but it's not quite the same. For example, like I said, I can't afford it. That was my belief for most of my life. Well, I don't really say that anymore. Now it's okay. How am I going to get the best return on my investment? You see how. That's a more empowering question. How am I going to get the best return on my investment? Is this particular investment the best way or the fastest way or the easiest way to get my roi? You see? So that's a more empowering question. That's what I want people to start asking is questions like that because, you know, hey, everything has a cost, right? Or, you know, some price attached to it if there's an investment. So the question isn't, well, how much is it? The question in your mind should be, how fast and how easy can I get my return on this investment, whatever it is that you're looking at. And so my point is that one of the things that I look at is an acronym that I call loss LO S S. This is one of the biggest Things that I see holding people back is loss. And that stands for lack of support system. When you have a lack of support system, it's going to be extremely hard to get to your pot of gold. If not, I don't want to say impossible, but just really, really hard. Okay, so the point is that there's no such thing as a self made man or woman. You know, there's. There has to be a support system. Whether it's your spouse or whether it's your family members or whether it's a coach or teacher or mentor. There has to be some kind of support in order for you to reach your goals. Especially if they're big goals, especially if you want to grow your business, scale your business, have a big impact and a big income, which I know the people listening to this program do. The point is that you've got to have that support system and I mentioned a moment ago, you've got to pick your mentors very carefully because that's the person that basically you're going to be modeling. And we humans need good role models. We need strong role models. Not just about personality, but about systems. And so if you're thinking that, man, this is really hard to grow my business or scale my business or whatever it might be, I would encourage you to look at your support system. Do you have the proper mentor or mentors or coaches in place and do you have that support system? If not, I guess one of my messages is to your listeners that there is help available, there's help available out there and you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to do it all by yourself.

Very cool. Now I do have one sort of last question on this topic and then we could kind of sort of start to wrap it up. But so we've sort of identified the top head trash stuff that is going on in our head. We've kind of identified how it's actually affecting our lives. We know that we should probably go out there and look for a good mentor that meets all the criteria we just discussed. What sort of things can we start doing on a daily basis to start shifting this head trash? What's the recommendation? Once it's identified and we know how it's affecting us, what can we do to sort of shift those beliefs?

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I teach is my concept of afformations. I'm kind of famous for inventing this method called the afformations method. We all know what an affirmation is. An affirmation is a positive statement Like, I am happy. I am rich. You know, so basically what the traditional success teachers said is just take those. If you have a negative belief, just turn around, make it a positive statement. Instead of, you know, I'm not good enough, you say, I am good enough. So, you know, the classic example is I am rich. And you say, I am rich. And your brain says, no, you're not. Right? And so what we're. What basically they're saying, what they're. What they taught is bash your brain into submission. That's basically what they taught. Bash your brain into submission. And I'm sure it'll work out. Okay. Well, many years ago, in fact, in 1997, I had a shower epiphany. I call it the shower that changed everything.

You know, this epiphany in the shower. I talk about it in, you know, several of my books. Book of Afformations, the Secret Code of Success, and on and on. Anyway, so I realized, wait a minute. The human mind actually operates using questions, right? Not statements. If I were to ask you, why is the sky blue? Your brain automatically starts to search for the answer, why is the sky blue? Now, you couldn't even help doing it. So I said, wait a minute. Why are we going around making statements we don't believe? When the human mind automatically searches for answers to questions, why don't we just cut out the middleman? And I said, well, I don't know. What would that look like? Well, let's see. You got the statement. So what I like to do in my live events, like I have a live event called Freedom Lifestyle Experience, have everybody stand up and I say, okay, we're going to say this affirmation. Ready? I am rich. And he goes, I am rich. And then they start laughing. What are you laughing at? They go, well, I'm not rich. I said, but you just said you were. Yeah, but I don't believe it. You see, so that's the whole point. We could say these things all we want, but if you don't believe it, it doesn't make any difference. There's nothing wrong with the statement. The problem is we don't believe the statement. So I said, wait a second. All right, so that's the statement. And the brain literally goes, yeah, right. So I said, well, if that's true, then what would the question be? Why am I so rich? Why am I so rich? Now, when you ask that question, what immediately starts to happen in your brain? You start to search for the answer, right? And so I said, well, wait a second. What we're really talking about here is the law of sowing and reaping. As you sow, so shall you reap. But what are we sowing? We're sowing seeds of thought. But 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 can't I make more money? Why isn't my business growing? Why is there more month left at the end of the money? When you ask lousy questions, what do you get? Lousy answers. And that creates a lousy life. So I said, wait a second. What if instead of asking lousy questions that lead to lousy answers and create a lousy life, what if we flip the whole thing on its head and 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. Not affirmations, but afformations. And now this is one of the things that people absolutely love. This is one of the things that helped Susan. For example, that story I shared earlier helped her turn her life around from $60,000 in debt to a six figure income in less than a year. You know, helped sheila go from 5,000 to $75,000 a month, helped him go from zero to a seven figure income, and on and on and on and on. So this afformations is an incredibly simple but stunningly powerful method to instantly and immediately change your subconscious thought patterns from negative to positive.

And I can imagine just using that in like a meditation space, just like, okay, what is one question? Whatever it might be money related, work related, whatever, and then just focus on that for, you know, 10, 15, 20 minutes.

You got it? Yes. And when you go to our website, when you go to Noah St. John.com we've got lots of different tools, books, we've got ioform audios. You can listen to them, as you just mentioned, you can have them in your meditation or you can even just listen to them throughout the day while you're exercising, even listening in your sleep. So really, really powerful tool.

Love it.

Noah.

Well, before we totally wrap up, what is one? And I know we know you have your own books for sure and people will definitely check them out. What's another good, you know, maybe a book or resource that you go to from maybe one of your mentors that you'd like to recommend.

Well, the reason that I got in this industry was Dr. Stephen Covey, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That book really affected me very deeply back in the 90s. It's still a great book. You know, it's a classic. And, you know, I've very much wanted to follow in Dr. Covey's footsteps. And getting Dr. Covey's endorsement before he sadly passed away was one of the highlights of my career. So that was definitely one of the books that really shaped my life.

That's awesome. And that's a great one.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, everybody listening? If you go to send me a book, Noah.com he'll give you a free copy of his book. And then your main website is noah saint john.com so everybody check that out. We're going to try to list all of the books and resources mentioned on today's episode inside the show notes so you'll get access to all of those there. And thanks so much, Noah. We really appreciate you spending the time with us today.

My pleasure. Awesome.

Noah, we'll talk soon. All right. Thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook. Everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle and Flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing, is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training and a whole bunch of other cool, free training that we give out@evergreen profits.com so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.