Everyday Mindfulness Show: Power Habits & 'Afformations' With Noah St. John

We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems. Holly comes into Divine alignment with Noah St. John to discuss his new book that addresses the system of changing habits for success: Power Habits®: The New Science for Making Success Automatic®. In it, he studies the power habits of the “naturals of success” and how they are unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed.

Transcript

Welcome to the Everyday Mindfulness Show where we educate and inspire people to live fuller lives through mindful practices.

Let's get started with your host,

New York Times contributor,

Leadership advisor,

Sought after keynote speaker,

The author of the Amazon hot new release,

Everyday Mindfulness from chaos to calm in a crazy world,

She's smart,

Strong,

Sassy,

And a trendsetter in the field of mindful leadership.

Your host,

Holly Duckworth.

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Mindfulness Show where we get to talk to the foremost leaders,

Experts,

And real life people living mindfully today.

And I have saved a special treat for you guys today.

This guest is a guest that I have followed for many years,

I have read his books,

Used his books over the years,

And I love the divine alignment when his team came and said,

Would you have Noah on the show?

It was an easy yes.

Noah St.

John is the author of 15 books,

Including the new book we're going to talk about today,

The Powerhouse Habits,

The New Science of Making Success Automatic.

Noah,

Welcome to the show.

Well,

Thanks,

Holly,

Great to be here and it's really an honor.

Thanks so much for your kind words.

It's an honor.

You know,

Some of our listeners here are going to get just the audio,

Some are going to get the visual,

But I want to make sure that they can see or I'm going to read the sign behind you because I think it's always fun when we do these personal interviews.

You are not alone is what your sign says.

Why did you pick that?

Well,

As entrepreneurs,

Holly,

And you know,

For all of your listeners and viewers,

Sometimes it can be a very lonely space,

You know,

As we were just talking before the interview as before we started,

You know,

What I've always said about entrepreneurs is we're the only people who will work 80 hours so we don't have to work 40 hours.

So you know,

But a lot of times,

You know,

When I started my company,

I started in my college dorm room in 1997 with $800 to my name,

And a book on how to do HTML.

So I literally my company,

Successclinic.

Com is one of the original business and personal growth websites on the internet.

I didn't even know what any of that meant back then.

I just knew I wanted to help people I wanted to make a difference.

I want to have an impact on people and I wanted to get my message out to the world.

So there were so many years that I did feel alone.

And then I did feel like nobody understands what I'm going through.

And I don't have anybody to talk to.

And so I want people to know,

You know,

Whenever I do these interviews,

Or whenever I'm talking to coaching clients,

Or when I'm doing private workshops or keynote speeches,

I want people to realize that,

You know,

You're not alone,

That there are people who have been there,

And there's help available,

But you do have to reach out and get that help so that you can have more of that that time freedom,

That financial freedom,

Or whatever it is that you're looking for.

It's so sad and unfortunate,

I think in today's world,

Because we have more ways to connect than ever before social media technology,

And yet,

We feel more alone than we've ever felt before.

And so I think you and I in this role have this great responsibility of the ability to respond and connect to people and continue to,

As you say,

Invite people to our workshops,

Our tools and our classes,

To recognize that everybody thinks they're alone.

And so let's be together in our aloneness.

Right,

It is it is ironic,

Because of all these tools for connection that people do feel more alone.

And you know,

Numerous studies have shown that the more time you spend on social media,

Consuming social media,

The more lonely you feel.

And if you really look at social media itself,

Not to go too far down this rabbit hole,

But it really the whole purpose of it is designed to keep you addicted.

That's what their job is,

You know,

All of those,

You know,

Multi billion trillion dollar companies,

Their job is to keep you addicted to their platform.

And of course,

One of the ways that they do that is to show you all these images of,

Of cool people who are having way more fun than you are.

It's like,

Man,

You know,

So it's,

It's really easy to get sucked into that.

And so we really do need to have those ways to connect offline,

Not to say not to do social media,

I'm not saying that at all,

I'm just saying be aware.

As you're doing it,

There are really two ways to use social media.

What I teach,

You know,

My coaching clients,

There are two ways to use social media,

One is as a consumer,

And one is as a business owner slash entrepreneur.

So in other words,

You want to make sure that you are controlling the social media platform,

Not letting the social media control you.

We talked about that in my keynotes as well,

That it's that mindful awareness,

Being in the present moment,

Setting some safe boundaries around that.

And that's really the key,

I think,

To success in every area of your life is owning your ability to create it.

And your work came into my world,

I'm going to talk about it,

But the the older book,

And then we're going to talk about the newer book affirmations.

Now we talk a lot on the show about affirmations,

Like,

You know,

Stating positive things.

So tell us what is an affirmation?

And how did you come to write that one?

Absolutely.

So I'm,

I'm holding up the book of affirmations,

Which is the one you're referring to.

So of course,

Everyone listening to this program or watch this program knows what an affirmation is an affirmation is a statement of something you want to be true.

So a classic affirmation what you know,

When I'm doing my keynote speeches,

Or my live events,

Or my workshops,

I love to have everybody stand up in the room and say,

Okay,

We're going to do it,

We're going to do an old style affirmation.

Ready?

Everybody say,

I am rich.

And everybody goes,

I am rich.

Know what happens next?

Everybody starts laughing.

What are you laughing at?

They said,

Well,

I'm not rich.

I go,

Well,

You just said you were and they go,

Yeah,

But I don't believe it.

Aha.

See,

That's the problem.

See,

We're saying these positive statements.

That's because that's what we've been taught to do for decades.

I mean,

Literally over a century,

You know,

In the personal development world is hey,

These statements,

Right?

Now,

I grew up poor in a rich neighborhood.

So that's why I started studying personal growth when I was a little kid,

Literally,

Because I hated that life of poverty and not enoughness,

Which is what I grew up with in my home.

But right down the street,

I saw that there was great wealth and abundance.

So I'm like,

What the heck?

So I went to all the you know,

All the books,

I went to the library and just read all the books,

And all said the same thing,

Use these statements,

Right?

And I tried it,

And I could never get it to work.

It was so frustrating.

So one morning in April 1997,

I was in the shower,

I was thinking about all this,

Right?

You know,

Ever have those shower moments?

Yeah.

I'm also the shower,

Right?

And in my books,

I call it the shower that changed everything.

Because I was thinking about this,

I was like,

Why have I been doing these things?

I'm doing everything they told me to do,

And it's not working.

I don't have the money.

I don't have the life that I want.

I don't even have a girlfriend.

I'm like,

I'm broke,

I'm miserable,

And I'm unhappy.

And I'm saying I'm happy.

It's not working.

And I was like,

What are we talking about here?

We're talking about beliefs.

I said,

But what is a belief?

Well,

A belief is just a thought.

And I said,

What is a thought?

And as I thought about that,

I realized that human thought is the process of asking and searching for answers to questions,

Right?

Not statements.

For example,

If I ask you,

Why is the sky blue?

Why is the sky blue?

Do you know what just happened in your brain?

Your brain starts to search for the answer,

Right?

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,

What would that look like?

Well,

Let's see,

You got the statement,

I am rich,

To which your brain replies,

Yeah,

Right.

Uh-huh.

Right?

So I said,

Well,

What would the question be?

And then my next thought was,

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?

So what we're talking about here,

And what I teach is about the law of sowing and reaping.

As you sow,

So shall you reap.

Now,

Of course,

It's nothing new.

It's been taught for centuries.

But what are most people doing?

Well,

What are we sowing?

We're sowing thought seeds.

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 broke?

Why isn't my business growing?

Why can't I get a date on Friday night?

How come my business is stuck?

Why is there more month left at the end of the money?

Right?

And when you ask lousy questions,

What do you get?

Lousy results.

Lousy answers,

Right.

And that means do a lousy life.

So I said,

What if instead of asking lousy questions that lead to lousy answers and create a lousy life,

What if we just put 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 down 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,

As you mentioned,

Afformations.

And so now with my new book called Power Habits,

The new science for making success automatic,

What I do is I go into,

I teach you about Afformations here in the Power Habit system because it's actually the foundational power habit.

Because what I do in the Power Habits book is I actually teach you what I call the power habits of unconsciously successful people.

Right?

And so Afformations is actually the foundational power habit.

Why?

Because when you look at,

And I've had the opportunity to interview over 200 highly successful millionaires,

Multimillionaires,

Even a few billionaires,

And what I realized is that they are unconsciously doing these habits,

Which one of them includes asking empowering questions.

So that's why the Afformations method is really incredibly simple,

But so,

So powerful.

We've actually had people who've gone through my Power Habit system and come to our events.

And when I coach people,

They've literally doubled or tripled their income in less than a year.

We've had people start their business,

Grow their business.

We've also had people who have overcome addiction.

We've had people who came to my events or got coaching from me.

They were trying to quit smoking for like 17 years,

20 years,

And they were able to quit in less than 60 days.

I mean,

Just incredible stories like that,

All because of using these power habits.

So no,

Because you created this and I know you're so passionate about it,

I'm going to ask you an interesting question I hope nobody's asked you before.

You obviously use these Afformations in your daily life.

So I'm curious,

What question or Affirmation are you using right now to start planting the seeds for your 2020,

21,

22,

23?

What's your Affirmation right now?

Well you know,

Thank you for asking that.

And you know,

One of my Afformations that I use every day is,

Why am I so calm?

Because for me,

I tend to be really high strung.

You know,

I just tend to get really like,

Ah,

You know,

That's sort of my natural tendency.

My wife is very calm,

She's just laid back and you know,

Nothing flusters her.

She's unflappable,

Which is awesome.

So you know,

One of those,

One of the Afformations that I use every day is,

Why am I so calm?

And also,

You know,

Why am I attracting just the right people to me so that we can all reach our goals together?

You know,

Because that's what to me,

What Afformations and Power Habits is all about,

Holly,

Is really helping to raise the consciousness of the earth.

When you,

When you,

You know,

I'd rather brag about my clients than myself.

You know,

I,

You know,

A lot of people in this industry,

The gurus,

I call them,

You know,

They like to show off all their shiny objects and look at all my cool stuff.

And I'm like,

Yeah,

That's great.

Look,

We all want nice things.

We all want nice home,

Nice car and go on fun vacations,

All that stuff.

That's nothing wrong with that.

But my question always is,

Have you helped anyone else get what they want?

You know,

Of course,

We all know Zig Ziglar's famous saying that you can get a,

You can have anything you want as long as you help other people get what they want.

And what I noticed in this industry,

Sadly,

Is it's really dominated by,

You know,

People who are all about me,

Me,

Me,

Me and look at how cool I am.

And I'm like,

Well,

I guess that works for them.

I don't really know how that works because,

You know,

I don't get it because to me,

What's far more important is have you helped someone else?

Have you helped other people to get what they want?

And that's how I think we should measure success.

Well,

That's why I love I love doing the show because I get to demonstrate and show people the real people.

You're not just up there on a platform saying affirmations,

You're living them every day.

And I think it's just really special that your affirmation wasn't,

Why am I so rich?

But you know,

Why am I so calm?

And I think in today's world where we go around,

We rewarding busy,

Thank you for demonstrating the authentic you and the willingness to use your own tool to create this,

This lifestyle.

And in the book,

You have a concept you alluded to it a little bit earlier,

Unconscious Lee successful.

So what does it mean to be unconsciously successful?

Right,

Absolutely.

So when we look at any human endeavor,

Habit,

Or even any task that we want to do as human beings,

We go through four stages of competency.

So the first stage is unconscious incompetence.

That means you don't know you don't know.

The second stage is conscious incompetence.

That means you know,

You don't know.

The third stage is conscious competence,

Which is you know,

You know,

And then the final stage is unconscious competence,

Which is you do without thinking.

So the example I always like to give to my audiences at my keynotes and workshops is driving a car,

Right?

So we all went through those four stages,

Most of the people listening to this program are watching,

You know,

Probably can drive a car at this point.

But we all went through those four stages.

The first stage is unconscious incompetence.

That means you didn't know you didn't know how to drive a car,

Meaning nobody comes out of the womb and goes,

Hey,

Where's my car?

That's not positive,

Right?

We don't even know we don't know,

Right?

Then the second stage is conscious incompetence gets about eight or 10 or 11 years only like,

Man,

I really want to get away from my parents.

And all I got is this bicycle.

Wait a minute,

I think of car,

What's a car?

How do you drive a car?

I want to drive a car,

Right?

So now I know I don't know how to drive a car.

Right.

And so then you get to the third stage,

Which is conscious competence,

You go to driver's ed and you go to licenses.

Yes,

I'm consciously competent to drive a car.

It doesn't say that,

But that's what it really says.

Right.

And then of course,

You have unconscious competence,

Which is you do without thinking.

So now all of us,

You know,

Most people watching this and listening can drive a car with and you're literally not thinking about it.

But literally,

There are dozens of things,

Dozens and dozens of habits,

Things we do every day that we don't think about,

You know,

Driving a car,

Brushing your teeth,

Tying your shoes,

Getting dressed in the morning,

And so forth and so on.

But so the hope,

The point of my power habits system is that what I realized over time,

You know,

Over decades of study is that the highly successful people,

What I call the naturals of success,

I call them the two percenters.

Because if you just look at mathematics,

2% of humanity holds 98% of the wealth.

That's just math.

It's not fair,

But it's what is.

And so those two percenters or naturals are unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed.

And what I mean by that is it doesn't mean that they don't work hard.

It doesn't mean that they're,

You know,

Not not doing something or they're doing something wrong.

It's just that they have become unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed.

And see,

My very first book over 20 years ago was called,

In fact,

Permission to Succeed.

That was the title of my my very first book right here from the chicken soup people called Permission to Succeed,

Because I realized when I had that other epiphany,

I,

You know,

Those two major epiphanies in 1997,

And that that that second epiphany,

The first was Aff Formations,

Which I just shared with you.

And then the second was this whole concept that I'm sharing now,

Which is that,

Oh,

My gosh,

We don't need more how to's of success.

We don't need to read more how to succeed books,

What we need is a training on how to allow ourselves to succeed.

Because I realized that I and millions of people were unconsciously holding ourselves back from the success we're capable of.

And so now with my power habits system,

What's so exciting is that people come to my live events,

We have a live event called freedom lifestyle experience,

Where I teach you how to master the inner game and outer game of success.

And so what happens is people come to my events,

Or when I'm able to work with them in a coaching situation,

They're able to just explode their results,

Because they've already done all the heavy lifting,

They've already taken all the how to succeed course,

But courses,

But no one has ever shown them or taught them how to allow themselves to succeed.

So that's what makes it different and powerful.

And that's why people get such transformational results.

Listeners are laughing because what no you don't know was every year I have kind of a word that is my theme for the year and my 2019 word was allowing.

And it was it was a fascinating year from you know,

Writing new books and manifesting a new a new husband and starting a new future and a new life and a new house and a new whatever and it is it is really powerful.

And again,

To go back to the affirmations,

I'm kind of smiling,

You know,

What an affirmation here could be,

Why am I naturally successful?

Why am I allowing myself to succeed?

So listeners get these books and these tools,

Noah's providing us a great gift and a platform based on the book,

The power habits.

So tell us why you wrote the book,

Why now and how we can get access to this work.

Well,

I've had the privilege of helping tens of thousands,

Hundreds of thousands of people over the last two decades,

Holly,

To really to live a dream life,

You know,

Live that what we call the freedom lifestyle.

And so what what I mean by that is we've helped people,

You know,

Get more time,

Have more energy,

Have better relationships and make a lot more money,

You know,

To the tune of $2.

7 billion collectively for my clients.

That means we've helped people add six figures,

Multiple six figures,

Seven and even eight figures to their business using my power habit system.

So what I realized is I partnered with the Nightingale Conant Company,

And they they actually came to me,

The president of the company called me because I've done two audiobooks with the Nightingale Conant Corporation,

And they called me and they said,

We want to do printed books for the first time.

They've never done this before at Nightingale Conant Corporation.

And so the president called me and said,

We're going to start with three of our authors,

And they have I mean,

They've done every author out there from Tony Robbins,

Deepak Chopra,

Neil Donald Walsh and everybody else.

And you know,

Me,

You know,

I've done two programs with them.

And so they said,

The president said to me,

No,

We're going to start with three of our authors,

Zig Ziglar,

Earl Nightingale,

And you,

Meaning me,

And I'm like,

What?

So I was really honored by that.

And so that's why I've really,

I put a lot of work,

A lot of research into this new book,

The new power habits book.

And so for your listeners and your viewers,

They can go to power habits book.

Com.

It's very easy to remember power habits book.

Com.

And you can actually when you order the book,

You just go to that page,

And then order it on Amazon,

Go back to the page,

Put your order info in there,

I mean,

It'll take you less than like 60 seconds.

And then you just get your put your order info and I will send you a digital gift pack worth over $299.

And in fact,

Because you're watching and listening to this right now,

You actually can get two tickets to my live event you're going to get when you get the book when you get the power habits book at power habits book.

Com.

You're also going to get two tickets to my freedom lifestyle event,

Freedom lifestyle experience,

Which is valued at $997.

So we're really excited to offer that for your viewers for your audience members when they go to power habits book.

Com.

Well no,

That's so generous.

And we're so excited to get to share this with folks because what I love about your system,

The freedom lifestyle is you're not saying live life the way I live life,

But you're inspiring people to live the life that fits for them.

And I know on the show,

We've got a lot of people that come from a lot of different thoughts about what success is to them.

And this freedom lifestyle and the power habits system will set you up for unconscious success,

Whatever that looks like for you.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And we do work with with CEOs with executive teams.

I'm doing a lot of executive coaching now,

Because we know a lot of companies come to me and they say,

You know,

Habits is such a critical area,

Of course,

Because,

You know,

One of the one of the phrases I love to share with our clients is we don't rise to the level of our goals,

We fall to the level of our systems.

And so if you don't have the system in place,

What we call the power habit system,

It's going to be just so easy to fall back on those unproductive habits that are going to keep you stuck that are going to keep you spinning your wheels are struggling.

Certainly most people are feeling that level of frustration or lack of engagement.

And so when we get engaged,

When we have the systems in place,

I mean,

That's why people make more money.

That's why companies grow.

That's why the sales increase.

I mean,

Just so many stories.

I mean,

Just go to the website,

You just you'll just see so many stories.

And I'd rather brag about my clients and myself,

Because to me,

It's not about,

Oh,

I've made this much money.

And here's all the cars in my garage.

It's like,

I'd rather brag about the car that I helped you get that's in your garage,

You know,

Rather than the cars in my garage,

Because that's just how I like to do things.

Well,

And that's the fun of having the show is I get to get you to brag on you.

So I'm curious,

It's we're into 2020,

You're building habits,

What's your habit that you're personally going to focus on to continue to evolve and expand your success and lifestyle in 2020?

What's your what's your personal one?

Well,

Mine,

Mine is to reach people,

More people internationally,

According to Google Analytics,

My work is is used right now.

I mean,

People have purchased my programs in over 120 countries,

According to Google Analytics,

Which is incredible and such an honor.

I'm very humbled by that.

So I want to visit some of those countries,

You know,

I've spoken in Australia,

In Jamaica,

In Costa Rica,

And Mexico,

All over the US and Canada.

And so I just want to go and speak in on more international stages.

Like I haven't been to Australia for a while,

I want to go back to Australia.

But you know,

Speak there,

We got some,

I've got a promoter there working on that with me.

And so I'm excited for that.

But really,

You know,

It's,

It's,

It's a,

It's a human problem,

Right?

And you know,

What some people have said about my work is,

My system fixes the problem that causes all the other problems.

And I'm like,

I think that's really accurate.

Because if you look at habits,

One of the things I like to say to my audiences,

You know,

In my workshops,

My keynote says,

You know,

What is one area of your life where your habits don't affect you?

And they go,

I go exactly,

There's no place your habits don't affect you,

Right?

There's no place your habits affect your relationships,

Your health,

Your business,

You know,

Your team,

Whatever it might be,

There's no place your habits don't affect you.

So what's so nice about the power habit system is wherever you point it,

It works.

Wherever you point it,

You're going to get better results,

Whether it's overcoming addiction,

Whether it's,

You know,

Manifesting the love of your life,

Whether it's improving your marriage or your family life,

We have people who they hadn't spoken to their son or daughter in years,

And then they applied my system and now they have a great relationship again.

I mean,

Just amazing,

Amazing stories like that.

And as I said a moment ago,

That's what I like to brag about.

Well,

I'm so glad that you reached out to me that you said yes to coming on the show.

Thank you for not just just writing a book,

But living your message,

Living your brand.

And let's all remember that,

You know,

The sign back behind you that you're not alone.

And take a moment to get this system to attract more power habits to create your unconscious success in 2020.

We're going to get the links powerhabitsbook.

Com on the show notes here.

And Noah,

Thank you again.

We hope you'll come back for another episode again in the future.

I'll be happy to.

Thank you for joining us for today's show.

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