What exactly is holding us back from having more, doing more, and being more? Whether it’s about money or productivity or something else entirely, the answer lies between our ears.

And a lot of it is trash.

Yes, and it’s okay to recognize that because we’re all human and we all have it.

But how can we ensure that we hold our head trash in check so we can be what we want to be and more?

That’s what we’re talking in this episode with Noah St. John, a person who has probably written more books about this subject than anyone else in the world.

In this conversation, we talk about how his “afformations” can help you get rid of your head trash in five minutes or less a day.

We also talk about productivity, delegation and more things that you are bound to find interesting. Tune in and don’t be the one to miss it!

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Take Out Your HeadTrash With Noah St. John

I’m excited to talk about some head trash. I’m excited for a couple of different reasons. A) We all have it. B) I was part of a book called HeadTrash that I contributed to. C) It is the most important thing that’s holding us back from more wealth, productivity, creativity, and fulfillment in our lives. Who wants some more of that? Raise your hand.

I’m blessed to have Dr. Noah St. John with us. He’s a PhD and is recognized as The Father of AFFORMATIONS®, which I’m sure is going to help us with the head trash problem that we have. Also, a mental health coach to the stars. He’s been working with Hollywood celebrities, 7 and 8-figure company CEOs, professional athletes, top executives, elite entrepreneurs, and now all of you. He is famous for helping his coaching clients make more in 12 weeks than they did in the previous 12 months while winning back 1 to 3 hours per day and 4 to 8 weeks a year. Sign me up for that. His clients are 0.1% rockstars, who love to take action to get amazing results. Welcome, Noah. It’s great to have you here.

Thanks, Penny. It’s great to be here.

That’s my intrigue the things that we could be talking about here. Let’s start with this idea of the head trash. Why do we have such a problem with head trash and why is it holding us back?

I’ve written 24 books pretty much on this one subject, which is how to take out your head trash. This is one of my books called Get Rid of Your Head Trash About Money, which your audience can get for free. We can let them know where they can do that. This is the essence of the work that I’ve been doing for years now and helping my clients add over $3 billion as a result of following my methods. One of the big things that I coach people on even speak on around the country and the world is how to take out your head trash. We have to ask the question, what’s head trash?

The way that I’ve been teaching it for years now is if you think about your goals. For everyone tuning in to the program, think about what it is that you want. Of course, everybody says, “Noah, I want more money. I want to grow my business and get a promotion for my job. I want to advance my career, lose weight, and be happy. I want to have a happy relationship.” Remember, it’s not just about money. It’s about your whole life. Everybody has these goals that we want. Here’s the problem that happens to millions of people. The very next thought that they have is, “Yeah, but I probably can’t do it.”

If you think about those things that you want, “I want more money. I want to advance my career. I want more health,” or whatever, the very next thought for most people is, “I can’t do it because…” That’s the very problem right there. Whatever you say after the word “because” is the reason that you’re giving for you not being able to reach that goal. What’s ironic about that is people will defend that to the death. People say, “Noah, I want to make more money, but I don’t have the time. I want to grow my business, but I don’t know where to start. I want to write a book, but I don’t know how to do it. I want to advance my career, but I don’t have the right connections.” You see what happens?

They have all these reasons why they can’t do it and everything that happens after the word but or because is exactly what you’re going to believe. It’s funny because many people would rather be right than rich. I try to show them. For example, if you take the issue of time. That’s one of the biggest objections people have. “No, I don’t have the time. I’m too busy.” I say, “That’s interesting. Did you know that you, me, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates all have one thing in common?” They say, “What’s that?”

So many people would rather be right than rich. Share on X

We all have 24 hours in a day so it has nothing to do with you not having time. The actual real problem is that you don’t have the right systems in place that support your goals so that you can have the systems working hard for you so you don’t have to work hard. That goes back to the point that you made earlier in your introduction and one of the reasons that I’m able to help my clients make more than just 12 weeks than they did in the past 12 months while winning their lives back.

It’s the opposite of the hustle-and-grind culture. We hear much about hustle and grind. If you’re not working 14 to 18 hours a day, you’re a loser. I’m like, “Is that true? No, that’s BS.” What that means is you don’t have the right systems in place. My job and what I help people with is putting those systems in place so the systems work hard and you don’t have to.

I’m going to make an interpretation here. You tell me if I’m right. Those systems aren’t just physical systems. They’re also thinking systems. If we have to get rid of the head trash, we have to start with the thinking systems. Is that right?

Absolutely right.

A lot of times, there might be people thinking, “I’ve got all the processes. I’ve got this automated.” People must understand that there are other systems other than the number of apps that you have running on your computer.

That’s exactly right. That’s what I’ve been teaching for many years now. It is what I call Inner Game and Outer Game. Those are the systems that I help people install. The inner game systems have to do with your beliefs and your habits. The outer game systems are all the things that you just talked about, which is if you have a business, that’d be the offers, the funnels, and the traffic. What’s interesting is that so many people have spent a lot of time, money, and effort on the outer game, but they’ve ignored their inner game. I’ll give you a quick example.

So many people have spent a lot of time, money and effort on the outer game, but they've basically ignored their inner game. Share on X

I was speaking at a conference in Los Angeles to 1,000 business owners and 7 to 8-figure earners. A man came up to me afterward and he said, “Noah, I want you to coach me. You’re the coach I’ve been looking for.” I didn’t know this man from Adam. Ironically, his name was Adam. I said, “What’s going on?” He says, “You’re the coach that I’ve been looking for. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on all these gurus out there and we still are stuck. We’re at seven figures.” He was at seven figures but he couldn’t break through that income ceiling.

I coached him for 18 months and he went from 7 figures to over $20 million in sales in less than 18 months. It was because of exactly what I’m talking about. It’s these inner game systems. No one had ever helped him with that before. He was doing great on his outer game but no one had helped him with his inner game. That’s what enabled him to get that hockey stick growth.

I’ve experienced that as well as a business coach for many years. When I was doing that, I gave people lots of resources and they’ve got all those systems, the funnels, and all of those things. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t making progress or growing. It became clear to me that we can’t succeed with only resources. We have to have the resourcefulness. I talk a lot about that as well in my talks. I know you’re talking a lot about entrepreneurs growing their businesses but leaders need to focus on giving their teams, at any level, more resourcefulness. They need to help them work on their thinking before they can make the most of any resources that they might have available to them.

That’s what I call inner game and outer game. Most companies are focused a lot on their outer game. That’s perfectly fine and you have to do it. If you’re ignoring your inner game, it’s like building a house and you forgot to put the electricity in. It’s going to be a little uncomfortable in there.

People are shaking their heads and they get it but what are some of the first things that you do to help people tackle and find? Sometimes, we know we’re on our way, but we don’t know what it is and how to get past it. Where do we start?

That goes back to the point you made earlier that I am known as The Father of AFFORMATIONS®. This is The Book of AFFORMATIONS®. You can go to www.AFFORMATIONS.com and learn more about it. It’s what I discovered many years ago. Actually, I was in the shower. It was the shower that changed everything as I call it in my books and my courses. We’ve all heard of affirmations a million times. You say these statements, “I’m happy, rich, and successful.” Your brain goes, “No, you’re not.” A scientific study was done on this very topic, believe it or not. They showed that 75% of people who use the old affirmations method end up more frustrated than before.

Imagine if you had a smartphone that didn’t work 3 out of the 4 times you went to use it. You’d probably get a new phone, wouldn’t you? That’s what I invented many years ago, a new phone for the brain. An affirmation is a statement of something you want to be true that 3 out of 4 times, we don’t believe it. What I invented was the AFFORMATIONS® Method. An afformation is an empowering question. The brain has an embedded presupposition factor, which people weren’t talking about back then, but basically, that simply means that when you ask a question, your brain searches for the answer.

Instead of saying something like, “I’m happy. I’m confident,” your brain goes, “No, you’re not.” You say something like, “Why am I so happy? Why am I so confident? Why am I always in the right place at the right time?” With the embedded presupposition factor of the brain, your brain automatically starts to search for the answer. What’s interesting about that is this is following an ancient law, which is called the Law of Sowing and Reaping. As you sow so shall you reap. It’s an ancient law. It’s been taught for centuries. What are we sowing? We’re sowing seeds of thought. Do you know what most people are doing? Sowing lousy thought seeds. “Why am I so stupid? Why am I so fat? Why can’t I lose weight? Why do I never get a break? Why are there more months left at the end of the money?”

When you ask lousy questions, what do you get? You get lousy answers. That leads to a lousy life. What I invented many years ago, instead of asking lousy questions that lead the lousy answers to create a lousy life, you use my AFFORMATIONS® Method to ask better questions. Use better questions, have better habits and better results. That’s how you can change your life in less than five minutes a day using my AFFORMATIONS® Method.

That’s fantastic. Is this something that you recommend people do in the morning when they get up as part of their morning routine? Is it to come up with 1 or 2 of these that best help them meet the goals that they’re looking to achieve?

Absolutely. In my Book of AFFORMATIONS®, I give you over 400 unique AFFORMATIONS® in all different areas of life from health, wealth, relationships, spirituality, overcoming fear, lowering your stress, and so forth. We also have something called iAfform Audios, which you find out about on my website. These are audio that you listen to throughout the day. You can listen throughout the day. It’s like having a hypnosis recording but instead of affirmations, the old way tends to not work so well, we use AFFORMATIONS. You can literally reprogram your subconscious thought patterns while you’re not even paying attention. I’ll give you a quick example.

 

I got an email from a client in Germany and he said that he and his wife were just about to get a divorce. This is true. He said that divorce papers were on the desk ready to be signed. You can’t get any closer to being divorced than that. He somehow heard about my AFFORMATIONS® Method. He got my iAfform Audios. He and his wife started listening to them. They tore up divorce papers. Now they’re madly in love again. I’m like, “That’s a wonderful story.” It’s not about money. It’s about your whole life.

That’s very intriguing. That’s a concrete tool that we can use. There’s a lot of great understanding about the science. People understand that those questions that don’t work for us, “Why am I so stupid? Why always happen to me?” are clearly not good for us.

I call them disempowering questions because that’s what you’re doing, not meaning to. Of course, nobody does this on purpose. It doesn’t matter because of the Law of Sowing and Reaping, you’re reaping what you sow. You’re forming a life you don’t even want. One of the reasons why it’s called the AFFORMATIONS® Method, it’s a word that I invented. AFFORMATIONS® comes from the Latin word formare, which means to form or give shape to. What’s interesting is the word affirmation, the old one, comes from the Latin word firmare, which means to make firm.

One of the things that I teach my audience members and my keynote speeches even my one-on-one or group coaching clients is what if you’re making something firm, but it’s in the wrong form? That means you formed a life you didn’t even want. Now with my AFFORMATIONS® Method, you can change the form then you change what’s firm. That’s another way that you change your life very quickly.

Any other tips like that that you would suggest as we’re talking about this and then we can shift gears a little bit?

Going back to my point of head trash, one of the things that I’ve been teaching for many years now is that when you look at your goals. I talked about that earlier. I would invite everybody to get very clear on their goals. What is it? Not just money, but health, relationships, and every part of your life. I would then invite you to write down your head trash. What’s the thing that you’re saying you can’t do it because? “I want to grow my business but I can’t do it because.” Write that down and realize that the very thing that you’re telling yourself is the reason that you’re holding yourself back.

Frankly, you can go to our website. We have lots of resources. You can even book a breakthrough consultation with me or one of my coaches so that we can help you take out that head trash very quickly. Realize that if you don’t take out your head trash, it’s going to cost you. I’ll give you a quick example of that.

I was talking with one of my clients. His name is Charles and I asked him this question, “Charles, how much do you think your head trash is going to cost you this year? In other words, if we don’t fix this problem, how much do you think it’s going to cost you?” He said $1 million without even batting an eye. I said, “Give me 10% of that $1 million and I will find you that $1 million in the next twelve months. In other words, if you give me $1, I’ll give you $10 back. Is that a good deal?” He goes, “Yeah.”

He paid me $100,000. That’s 10% of $1 million. I coached him one-on-one for 12 months, and in that 12 months, I didn’t find him $1 million. Instead, I found him $1.8 million in ten months. He sent me an email and he said, “Guess where I am, Noah. I’m on a seven-week vacation. My wife and I bought a new RV with all the money we’ve got. We’re driving around the Southeast. Noah, not only do I have more money than ever before because of taking out my head trash, but I also have more time than ever.”

Thank you for those examples and resources. Those are great. I ask every guest this and I’m curious where yours comes from and where it goes. What’s your definition of productivity and why?

Productivity is getting the things done that I want to get done with the least amount of time and effort on my part. A big part of that for a lot of us, especially as entrepreneurs, would be delegation. As an entrepreneur, usually, you’re the best at everything. You can do everything but that’s also the quicksand. You’re so great at everything. You say, “I might as well do it because I can’t find anybody as good as me.” One of the things that I help my clients with, whether it’s one-on-one or group coaching, is the whole idea of delegation. It’s a very hard thing for some people to let go of those strings and to let others do it and to train others.

 

It takes more time at the beginning. You could just do it. That’s great but you’re going to reach a point where if you’re doing everything, you’re hitting an income ceiling that you can’t possibly break through. That’s what productivity is. It’s not working all the time. It’s the opposite of that. It’s saying, “Let’s get these results.” All that matters is results. Frankly, it would be great if I didn’t do them. Let’s get somebody who’s either as good or even better than me in some cases and everybody’s happy. I shut off my computer at 5:00 and I’m a happy guy.

Micromanaging is also part of the problem even though you delegate it.

The worst thing you could do is delegate and then micromanage. Don’t do that.

The worst thing you could do is delegate and then micromanage. Share on X

There’s a lot of people who are there. They’re like, “I delegate.” Set head trash around, “I’ve got every sense of the way. I’ve got to stick my hands in. I’ve got to take charge or take control of this.” All that does is disempower the team and those people who could do great work and save you time are causing you more work.

It’s tough. The point is you can do it better and faster but you got to let them go through that learning curve and then you got to look at the big picture and look down the road and say, “If I let go of the wheel a little bit, we all get there faster.”

If you could just let go of the wheel a little bit, you’ll get there faster. Share on X

By the way, everybody, I’m saying that because I’m a recovering micromanager so don’t do what I did. Noah, what I didn’t ask you, and then we’ll wrap this up is, did you come from a place where you had a big crash and that’s where you came to recognize this? You said in the shower, but in a short two minutes, what’s the origin story that brought you to where you are?

I grew up poor in a rich neighborhood. I know that’s a cliche but it’s true. I grew up in a little town called Kennebunkport, Maine, which is one of the wealthiest communities in New England. My family was dirt poor. I mean that literally because we lived at the bottom of a dirt road in a drafty, unfinished house that my parents ended up losing to foreclosure when I was fifteen years old. From a very young age, I was painfully exposed to the gap or the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. The haves were everyone else in the community. The have-nots were my family.

There are people out there who say, “We were poor but we were happy. We didn’t know we were poor.” My family freaking knew we were poor because my mother, bless her heart, remind us every day that we were poor and miserable. No, I wasn’t happy. It sucked. I hated being poor because I saw that right down the street there was great wealth and abundance. I went to the library. I read every book in the self-help section and I tried to make it work but I couldn’t seem to make it work. I decided to take my own life at the age of 25 because I was so depressed and frustrated that I’d been working so hard but I had nothing to show for it.

At the last moment, my life was spared at that time. I went on another long journey to find my purpose. That’s why in 1997, I discovered AFFORMATIONS® and all the things that I’ve been teaching for years now and have written 24 books on. Even the first ten years of my business, I started in 1997 with $800 in a book on HTML. Three hundred square foot basement apartment with no money, no marketing, no sales, no nothing. I didn’t know anything about running a business.

Unfortunately, I ended up spending a lot of money on those gurus out there who I came to find out can’t teach away the paper bag. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and they gave me a lot of really bad advice. I ended up $40,000 in debt in 2007 and I had to move back into my parents’ basement. It was ten long years of nothing. It was in 2007 when I hired my first real business coach. That was the person that helped me. He was the first person who back then showed me how to make money online.

Now that’s what I get to do. Not just teach people how to make money online, but as I mentioned earlier, the inner game and the outer game. What’s interesting is the $3 billion that I’ve helped my clients make, 90% of that money came from me showing them how to master their inner game. The outer game is very important, you have to do it, but the inner game is 90% of the outer game.

It’s been a very long journey for me. It took me a lot longer than I would’ve liked because of getting all that lousy bad advice from all those gurus out there who suck at teaching. What’s interesting now is because I’m on the other side of it now, what I say to my clients is, my pain is your game. It’s nice to be able to see people get that hockey stick growth and be able to master their inner and outer game and get great results in their lives.

 

Thank you for sharing your story there. Before we jump off, you mentioned quite a few websites and different things. Maybe you can repeat where they can get ahold of you and then we’ll close it out.

Afformations.com is a great place to start. You can also book a breakthrough consultation with me or one of my coaches at BreakthroughWithNoah.com. I’m known as The Breakthrough Coach. Also, if you want to get a copy of my book, Get Rid of Your Head Trash About Money, the book is free. We ask you to cover the shipping. This is also easy to remember. It’s SendMeABookNoah.com, and I will send you a book.

Thank you so much for being here. You dropped a lot of wonderful nuggets in there for people to wrap their heads around.

My pleasure.

Thank you all for being here because you know that there’s some head trash because we’re human and we all have it and it creeps in if we’re not careful. Go ahead and do some of those exercises. Find yourself some AFFORMATIONS® that you can say to yourself in the morning that is going to help you to reach your goals. Go ahead and ask yourself when you look at that goal, “I can’t do this because,” and see what comes up and get some clear awareness on it. Go check out the information that’s on Noah’s sites and book a session with him or someone from his team. It sounds like you’ll be glad you did. We’ll see you in the next episode.

 

Important Links

• Dr. Noah St. John
• HeadTrash
• Get Rid of Your Head Trash About Money
• The Book of AFFORMATIONS®
• AFFORMATIONS.com
• BreakthroughWithNoah.com
• https://Amzn.to/3KWSiE2

 

About Noah St. John

NOAH ST. JOHN, PhD is recognized as “The Father of AFFORMATIONS®” and “The Mental Health Coach to the Stars.” Working with Hollywood celebrities, seven- and eight-figure company CEOs, professional athletes, top executives, and elite entrepreneurs, Noah is famous for helping his coaching clients make more in twelve weeks than they did in the previous twelve months while winning back 1–3 hours per day and 4–8 weeks a year.

 

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