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Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 198, “How to apply success principles to relationship”, and interview with Noah St. John.

Before we get started I wanna take a moment and just appreciate your tuning in… And also, if you will, join me as I kind of name the intention of the Empowered Relationship Podcast – that is we are on the path of cultivating long-lasting intimacy. In doing so, we are improving the quality of our connection, our love, our happiness… And within that journey we’re also growing ourselves. Sometimes this terrain might be challenging, might be surprising even; we might encounter things we didn’t expect to encounter. This is our curriculum for developing.

The conversations that happen on the Empowered Relationship Podcast are intended to support you in this development on this journey of cultivating long-lasting intimacy. If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast, and you can find all the episodes listed there. Again, today’s episode is 198, “How to apply success principles to relationship”, and interview with Noah St. John. Let’s get started in today’s episode.

If you’ve been a long-time listener, or have listened to several episodes on the Empowered Relationship Podcast, you might recognize that today’s episode is a little different than the episodes I normally release.

I like to have relationship experts on the show, providing tips, tools for you to contemplate and implement into your relationship. Again, to improve the quality of your connection. When Noah’s team reached out for him to be a guest on the Empowered Relationship Podcast, the person that I have helping vet these requests gave him the green light; during the interview, I recognized that his real focus is around success and wealth building.

Now, I had a moment where I wondered if this is a good fit for the Empowered Relationship Podcast, and yet I decided to share it with you anyway, because I do believe that some of the ideas and philosophies that he’s sharing do really support the development of relationship. I’m gonna offer a little more example and story after his interview, so stay tuned for that.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Noah St. John, author of 15 books including the NEW book Power Habits®: The New Science for Making Success Automatic. He is known as “The Power Habits Mentor” and is famous for helping people get rid of their head trash and make more money.  Noah, thank you for joining us today.

Noah St. John: It’s a pleasure to be here with you, Jessica.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: I feel grateful, because it sounds like you have really developed a system, looking at power habits. We’re gonna apply that to couplehood, and really happy couples, and what they’re accomplishing in their lives. Before we go to that, I would love for people just to get to know you a little bit, and what got you interested in looking more specifically at power habits… And maybe if you can also define what you mean by power habits.

Noah St. John: Yes, absolutely. Well, my story briefly is that I grow up poor, in a rich neighborhood… I know that’s a total cliche, but it’s totally true. I grew up in this small town called Kennebunkport, Maine, which just happens to be one of the wealthiest communities in New England… But my familiy was dirt poor. And I mean that literally, because we lived at the bottom of a dirt road, in a drafty, unfinished home, that my parents ended up losing to foreclosure.

So from a very young age I was painfully exposed to the gap, the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. Now, the haves was everyone else in the community, the have-nots was my family.

You hear the motivational speakers get up on the stage all the time and they say “Well, we were poor, but we were happy. We didn’t know we were poor.” Well, we freakin’ knew we were poor, because my mother reminded us every day that we were poor and miserable… So no, we were not happy; it sucked.

The point is, I hated that life of poverty and misery and lack and not-enoughness, because right down the street, literally, I saw that there was wealth and abundance, and that it didn’t have to be this way. So I didn’t know what else to do.

Because I hated that life so much and I wanted out of it, I did the only thing that I knew to do, which is that I just went to the library and started reading books. I’m probably the nerdiest nerd in the personal growth industry, because I just love to learn how things work at their molecular level. I like to break them down and then put them back together, so that anybody can understand them. That’s how I’ve always been; I just loved reading, from the time I was very little.

So I went to the library, I basically grew up in the library, reading books by Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Stephen Covey, Wayne Dyer and all the classics of self-help… And then I really tried to apply them. I worked as hard as I could, and I was really trying to apply them, but I could just never seem to get them to work.

I was very frustrated, and very depressed, and at the age of 25 I decided to commit suicide, because I was so depressed and I was so frustrated. You know, when you work really hard at something and you have success, that leads to the feeling of satisfaction. But when you work really hard at something and you don’t have success, that leads to depression and frustration, and that’s where I was… So I decided to commit suicide when I was 25, and at the very last moment my life was spared. I do share that story in the book, but long story short, I didn’t take my own life, and I didn’t know what to do, but I decided to devote the rest of my life to serving God and serving humanity as best I could while I was still here on the Earth. The only problem was I still didn’t know why I was here on the Earth.

Then I went on another long journey… This one more of a spiritual journey, more of an inner journey. The first part was more like an outer journey, trying to be successful and make money and stuff, and I really never did that successfully, so I went on an inner journey of “Well, what am I missing here? What’s missing in my life?” That sense of meaning and purpose and mission.

I did a lot of study on spiritual books, spiritual thinkers like Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Ernest Holmes, Louise Hay, and spiritual thinkers like that… Then it was five long years after that, in 1997, when I had the two epiphanies that really changed my life and led to the work that I’m doing today, all these years later. The first epiphany was where I discovered how to change your brain using empowering questions, that I call my afformations system, which we can definitely talk about more… And then the second epiphany that I had was when I realized that there are millions of people who are unconsciously starving themselves of success, and I was one of them.

That’s when I discovered this whole concept and condition that I called success anorexia; I realized there are millions of people like me who are starving themselves of the success they’re capable of. So it all came to me in this one a-ha moment, a flash of light came to  me and really it explained my whole life for the first time. That’s when I wrote my first book, back in 1998, which was called Permission to Succeed… Because I realized that we don’t really need more how-to’s of success; what millions of us need actually is to learn how to allow ourselves to succeed.

That book became published by the Chicken Soup people. So that was my first book, published by the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher… Then all these years later now we have my new book called Power Habits: The New Science For Making Success Automatic. Really, it’s been an amazing journey, it’s been full of ups and downs, but now over the last 20 years or so we’ve been able to help people make lots of money, double/triple their income, and also find love, and we’ve saved a lot of marriages, we helped people to overcome addiction, and really some pretty amazing results using my power habits system.

So really, that’s how it all started – it started really from a place of frustration, and wanting to get better results in my own life, and now being able to help other people. It’s been really pretty amazing.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, I appreciate that you’re giving us an overview of some of your life events and circumstances, and that really were your draws. You’re talking about this external acquisition of success principles, and trying to apply them, and also feeling really unfulfilled with that journey, and then really launching into this inner journey, that sounds like it was really deep for  you; you were even contemplating ending your life… And given the vantage point that you’re at now, can you help as far as the emotional place — you’re also talking about neuroscience, and… How would you talk about the integration of those things? Because it sounds like you have a way in which you’re helping people apply this to have good results, but there’s also something really unique that you’re describing around this external pursuit and this internal deep dive… Can you help around how those fit together for you?

Noah St. John: Yes, absolutely. So when you look at any human endeavor, whether you want to find love, whether you want to improve your marriage or your relationship, whether you wanna have a better family life, whether you wanna make more money, whether you wanna start a business, grow a business, or just have a better team, or any human endeavor – there are really two components: the inner component and the outer component. At my company SuccessClinic.com we just call it inner game and outer game, just to keep it simple.

Inner game is everything that happens between your ears, that you can’t see directly, but you see the effects of it everywhere. For example, my live events and my private workshops, and when I’m working with clients or when I’m doing keynote speeches, one of the things I’ll ask my audiences or my clients is “What is one area of your life where your habits don’t affect you?” And of course, people think about it for a second, and they go “Um…”, and I go “Exactly. There’s no place where your habits don’t affect you.” Your habits affect your relationships certainly, your  habits affect your health, your habits affect your business, your career, your finances, your social life, your family… There’s literally no area of your life where your habits or your beliefs don’t affect you. Well, that’s what we call your inner game. But notice, you can’t see it directly. You can’t see a belief, you can’t see a thought, you can only see the effects of it, the effects of a belief, the effects of a thought.

Now, also notice – and this is one thing I like to point out to my audiences – it’s not just one-size-fits-all. For example, you may be feeling really good or doing really well in your relationships, but maybe your business is suffering. Or vice-versa – maybe you’re doing great in your business, but your personal relationships are suffering, or struggling, or maybe you’re not finding the right person, or whatever it might be. Also, maybe your relationships are great, but your health is suffering, and so forth.

The point is, it’s not cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all. We could be doing really well in one area, and maybe in another area you’re stuck or struggling. So that’s your inner game. But then we also have your outer game.

Now, outer game is everything you can see directly. That’s all the systems, and strategies, the blocking and tackling that we have to do, whether it’s in your business or in your career, in your job, or in your marriage, in your relationship every day, or in dating, for example.

For  example, if you say “I really wanna have a happy marriage. I really wanna have a happy relationship”, but all you do all day is put down your partner, find fault with them, criticize, use sarcasm, and things like that. That’s not exactly gonna lead to a happy relationship, is it? And I should know, because that’s how I used to be. I used to do that all the time, and that’s why my relationships were not very good, because I was sarcastic, I’d put people down; I was very critical… Because, of course, I was very critical of myself, and it naturally spilled out onto the other person. So it wasn’t until I did all this inner work that I started to see “Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how critical I’m being of other people, but I’m also being hyper-critical of myself.”

When you look at those two elements, the inner game and the outer game, it’s really only when we master inner game and outer game systems and strategies that you have the phenomenon called success, whether it’s success in your relationships, success in your health, success in your marriage, success in your business or your career. You have to master both the inner game and the outer game to have that success.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. Well, would you be willing to talk about power habits as they relate to happy couples?

Noah St. John: Yes, absolutely. So when we look at what I was just talking about, the inner game and outer game – really, it comes down to understanding what we want to have in our relationships. One of the things that I developed the power habits system for is for this whole concept of giving yourself permission to succeed. Now with power habits what I realized is that highly successful people, whether it’s in successful relationships, successful in business, successful in life, they’re doing things unconsciously, that they don’t even realize they’re doing. Let me explain what I mean by that…

Any time we want to master a new habit or something we wanna do in our lives, we go through four stages of competency. 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 means you know you know… And then the final stage is unconscious competence, which means you do without thinking.

The example I like to give is driving a car. We all went through those four stages, those of us who know how to drive a car, which I’m assuming most people listening to this program do… The first stage is unconscious incompetence. That means you didn’t know you didn’t know how to drive a car. Nobody comes out of the womb and says “Hey, where’s my car?” You don’t even know you don’t know, right? And then you get to about the age of 8, or 9, or 10, and then you say “Hm. I wanna get away from my parents, because they’re really annoying, and I only have a bicycle. I wanna get in a car. How do you drive a car? Oh, shoot, I don’t know how to drive a car.” So now I’m consciously incompetent; I know I don’t know how to drive a car.

Then the third stage is conscious competence. You go to a Drivers Ed,  you get a license that says “Yes, I’m consciously competent to drive a car.” I mean, it doesn’t say that, but that’s what it’s really saying…

Then of course, for the most of the people listening to this program  – you’re unconsciously competent at driving a car, which means you don’t think about it. You do without thinking.

So think about all the dozens and dozens of habits that you literally do every day, without conscious thought. Getting up in the morning, bathing, tying your shoes, getting dressed, shaving, putting on your make-up, whatever it might be. Literally, there’s dozens and dozens of things we all do every day without conscious thought.

But what I realized, Jessica, is that it’s just like that with success. There are highly successful people who have become unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed. That literally means they allow themselves to succeed without thinking about it. That also means that they’re not holding themselves back from success. So what I realized – and one of the big a-ha’s that I had, that has helped my clients make a lot of money and have a lot of happiness, is that it’s not about having more how-to’s of success… Because if how-to’s were enough — think about it this way… If how-to’s were enough, we’d all be rich, happy and thin. Because think about it in terms of having a successful business, for example – there’s so much information out there about how to make money, how to be successful, and so forth… So why aren’t more people more successful? The answer is because it’s not just about the how-to’s, it’s about allowing yourself to succeed.

When it comes to happy couples, what we work with people on, what we work with our clients on is realizing that there are things that you may be doing unconsciously, that are pushing away the love, the happiness, the relationship that you really desire.

One of the examples of that is this whole method that I invented called the afformations method. The afformations method is something that I discovered over 20 years ago. What I realized is that in every book that you ever read in self-help – and I know probably most of the people listening to this program listen to a lot of self-help, and read a lot of self-help/personal development books – in every one of those books and trainings they tell you to use this thing called affirmations. An affirmation is a statement of something you want to be true. We’ve all probably heard this. For example, at my live events and my keynote speeches I like to have everybody stand up, the audience, and I say “Okay, we’re all gonna use an affirmation now.” Everybody say “I am rich.” And everybody goes “I am rich.” Do you know what they do next? Everybody starts laughing. And I go “What are you laughing at?” They say “Well, but I’m not rich.” I say “But you just said you were” and they go “Yeah, but I don’t believe it.” See, that’s the problem with these statements – it’s not that there’s anything wrong with the statement; the problem is we don’t believe the statement.

What I realized is that I’d been doing that exact method, what they told us, for decades; for so many years I did everything they said, I wrote them down. “I’m happy, I’m successful, I’m in a happy relationship…”, and I’m like “No, I’m not. I’m broke, I’m miserable, I’m lonely and I’m unhappy.” So it wasn’t working.

One morning I was in the shower and I was thinking about all this; in my books I call it “The shower that changed everything.” Do you ever have those a-ha moments in the shower? Probably most of us have…

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, all the time.

Noah St. John: So I  realized that “Wait a minute… What are we talking about? We’re talking about beliefs.” But what is a belief? Well, a belief is just a thought. And I said “But what is thought?” And I realized that human thought is the process of asking and searching for answers to questions. For example, if I were to ask you “Why is the sky blue?” Now, for everyone listening, do you know what just happened in your brain? Your brain started to search for the answer. So it automatically did it, even if you don’t know the answer; it automatically started to search for the answer, just like a Google search or a computer searching its files. Your brain is like a computer, so it’s searching its files. “The sky is blue because… I don’t know.” But it’s searching.

So I said, “Now, wait a second… If the human mind is automatically searching for answers to questions, why are we going around making statements we don’t believe? Why don’t we just cut out the middleman?” And I said “Well, what would that look  like?” Let’s see… You’ve got the statement or affirmation “I am rich” to which your brain replies “Yeah, right.” So what would the question be? And then I said “Why am I so rich? Why am I so rich?” Now, when you ask that question of your brain, what instantly starts to happen – you start to search for the answer.

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, it’s nothing new, it’s been taught for centuries, but what are we sowing? We’re sowing seeds of thought. And yet, what are most people doing? Sowing lousy thought seeds. So I realized “Wait a minute…” If you ask lousy questions like “Why am I so stupid? Why am I so fat? Why can’t I lose weight? Why isn’t my business growing? Why can’t I find the right person? Why is there more month left at the end of the money?” When you ask lousy questions, what do you get? Lousy answers, right? And that creates a lousy life.

So I said “Wait a second, what if instead of asking lousy questions that lead to lousy answers and create a lousy life, what if we just flip the whole thing on its head, start asking empowering questions, that lead to phenomenal answers and create a  wonderful life?” And as I was standing there in the shower, April 1997, I said “Holy cow, I think I’ve just invented something.” So I had to give it a name, and the name that I gave it was not affirmations, but afformations.

What I realized is that that’s what highly successful people are doing, unknowingly, unconsciously – they’re asking empowering questions, not disempowering questions. 99% of the people out there are asking disempowering questions. “Why am I so stupid? Why am I so fat? Why can’t I lose weight? Why can’t I find the right person? How can so-and-so always does the wrong thing? How come I can’t connect with my partner?” You’re not doing this on purpose, but it doesn’t matter – because of the law of sowing and reaping, you’re going to find the answer to your question.

So now, using my afformations method, what we’ve helped so many people do is to turn those disempowering questions into empowering questions, and that’s how you can change your questions, change your habits and change your life.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: I like that. So often I’m referencing the quality of the question. I’m really speaking to  something very similar, but I like that you’ve really systematized this… And it sounds like you’re really looking at the brain’s response and the emotional impact of asking these afformation questions, that you really get your system on board to be working towards the result you’re looking for.

Noah St. John: Right.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: I like it. And how does this fit — is this part of the power habit process?

Noah St. John: Yes. So in my book Power of Habits: The New Science For Making Success Automatic, I teach you the 11 power habits of unconsciously successful people. I’m sure most of the folks listening have heard or read the book Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. Think and Grow Rich was written by Napoleon Hill, and what he did was he interviewed all these successful people back in the ’30s and ’40s, and he basically said “So what do you do? What did you do to become so successful and make all this money?” Well, you do this, this, this and this.” “Oh, okay, so you’ve done this, this, this and this.” So the point of that is that’s great, but how come so many millions of people have read that book and more people aren’t rich, aren’t successful, aren’t happy? What I’ve realized is that that’s the conscious habits; that’s what they said, right? So what I realized is that in fact what many people have said about my work is my work starts where Napoleon Hill’s left off.

The point is that Napoleon Hill didn’t say anything wrong; it’s not like there’s anything wrong in that book. Those are great habits, great things to do. But it’s all of the stuff that they left out, all the stuff that they didn’t even know they were doing… Because going back to that point of unconscious competence,  a lot of time if you’re not aware that you’re doing something, how could you possibly teach it?

Probably, those people that I call “the naturals” have either always done these power habits, or they do it without thinking, so they actually can’t teach it… And the way that I know that is because 1) I’ve interviewed over 200 millionaires, multi-millionaires, highly successful people, and I will often ask them a question related to my power habits system and they’ll say “Well, you’re right. I do do that. I’ve never thought of that before.” What does that show you? They’re unconsciously doing it; they did without thinking. That’s point number one.

And point number two, which I think is even more important for your listeners, is realizing that the gurus out there, all those traditional success programs that probably many people have studied — I mean, I spent over $250,000; I gave the gurus, all those big-name gurus so much money, over a quarter-million dollars, only to find they can’t teach their way out of a paper bag, because they’re unconscious. They’re doing all this stuff unconsciously, which means they can’t really help the rest of us who maybe are either struggling, are stuck, or have our foot on the break. So that’s why these power habits are so powerful, because they teach what the unconsciously-competent, what the naturals don’t even really realize they’re doing.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. And I’m listening to you and it sounds like part of the key for the naturals, when they’re doing the practices so naturally and unconscious, part of what you’re saying is to be a teacher you need to be conscious about what you’re doing, so that you can actually really be specific in helping and leading people in the process. Is that right?

Noah St. John: Well, I feel that way, yeah. And a lot of people over the last two decades have told me they really appreciate that I am the nerdiest nerd in the industry, because they too have spent lots and lots of money on lots of gurus, and stuff. For example, there was one of our clients named Susan, who came to one of my live events, and she told me that she had spent over $60,000 on all the gurus out there, and she was about to declare bankruptcy; she was about to lose her home, she was about to lose her marriage, her husband said “I can’t take this anymore. You’re spending all of our  money on self-help, but we’re not getting better. We’re getting worse.” So she was really in kind of a desperate situation, and she ended up hiring me as her coach.

In that year we worked together. We worked together about a year or 18 months, and we were able to not only help her repair her marriage, but also not declare bankruptcy and actually create a six-figure income in less than a year, using my power habits systems.

We have so many stories like that, Jessica, because so many people have spent lots of money and time and effort on the gurus… And again, they’re not saying anything wrong, it’s just that they’re leaving all the good stuff out, because they’re unconscious. So that’s the whole point – because I’m such a nerd, because I had to dig, dig, dig until I found the answer… And frankly, I did it because I was so frustrated, because I’d spent all that  time, money and effort, and I wasn’t seeing any results. So it came from a very organic place of my own frustration, my own struggles, and that’s why I think people can relate to that, and that’s why I think we’ve gotten so many amazing, transformational results, as a result of people using power habits.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: And how would you describe perhaps a couple that were stuck and that were able to uncover some of these deeper layers, and what that looked like, as an example?

Noah St. John: Yes, absolutely. I talked earlier about inner game and outer game. One of the things that we start with with couples who come to us – or individuals too, whether they’re working together in a business, for example, or whether they have different jobs, or what have you… One of the things that we start with is looking at their inner game and outer game.

There’s a quote that I love to share with people, which is that we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. Everybody has these goals, everybody wants — say, New Year’s resolutions… “I’m gonna lose weight, and I’m gonna get organized, and I’m gonna get out of debt”, whatever it might be. On January 2nd the gyms are full, and by January 30th they’re empty again. Because everybody has these great, high, lofty goals – which is great; I mean, you wanna have lofty goals, you wanna have big goals – but the problem is no one’s taught them how to install these systems, what we call the power habits system.

One of the things we look at – let’s say a couple would come to us, and we start with their inner game. And their inner game would entail things like my afformations, that I was just talking about. So we would teach them the afformations method and say “Okay, well let’s look at some of the questions you’re asking.” For example with Susan, who I mentioned earlier, our client – she realized, after going through my Power Habits Academy, which is our online program, and coming to my live events and working with me as a coach, she realized she was asking a lot of disempowering questions, like “Why am I so stupid? How come I can’t get ahead? How come nothing works out? Why am I a failure?” and so forth and so on. So many millions of people are unknowingly asking these disempowering questions. And when I use that word “disempowering”, that’s literally what it does – it is taking away your power to act, it is disempowering you.

So then I taught her how to use my afformations, my empowering questions. “Why am I enough? Why am I so calm? Why am I always in the right place, at the right time?” Then what happened was she started to use my afformations, and that literally changed her brain’s chemistry and changed the thought patterns in her brain, changed the pathways in her brain… Because when you’re asking disempowering questions, you’re gonna find the answer. If you keep going around saying “Why am I so stupid?”, well – guess what? You’re gonna find the answer to why you’re stupid. But if you say “Why am I enough?”, you’re gonna find that answer too, and I think you’ll find that the latter is a lot more satisfying than the former.

So that’s one of the places that we start with our clients, whether they’re couples or individuals, is say “Well, let’s take a look at these disempowering questions you’re asking, and you probably don’t even realize you’re doing it.” So that’s one of the things that we look at… And that would enable people to say “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even realize that  I’ve been asking these disempowering questions”, and then we use my afformations method to literally flip them into empowering questions.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Gotcha. Let’s see… You talk about freedom lifestyle – is there anything you wanna say about that? I know there’s so much here that we could focus on… But we’ll just kind of put a little attention on that, and then shift into how people can get in touch with what you’re offering.

Noah St. John: Yes, absolutely. One of the things that I’ve always been fascinated by is this whole concept of freedom, whether it’s time freedom, financial freedom, business freedom, and just having what I now call the freedom lifestyle. I was meditating one morning and I said “Well, what does it actually mean?” and then it really came to me in a flash of insight… I realized that a freedom lifestyle is really four elements. The first element is the element of time. Time is the most valuable resource, because we can’t get any more. In the game of life, Father Time is undefeated.

I was actually just driving on the highway recently – this literally just happened last week. My wife and I had flown home from Las Vegas, and we got on the road at about 2 in the morning. I was driving on a four-lane highway going East, there was nobody around, and then all of a sudden I see a pair of headlights coming directly at me, going West, in the East-bound lane. Right in my lane, right towards me. So I only had less than two seconds to get out of the way; luckily, I was able to get out of the way and avoid an accident… But that would probably have been the end of my life.

It was a very visceral experience of “Oh my gosh, we don’t have forever.” We’re very fortunate to be here. Long story short, time is absolutely the most valuable resource that we have, because it can never be replaced. So that’s the first element.

Then the second element is energy. If we look at energy, there are two uses of energy – positive and negative. Positive energy would be happiness, joy, gratitude and so forth, and then of course, negative energy would be sadness, frustration, depression, anger, jealousy, fear and so forth. Those are how you go through your day; that’s the energy that you have throughout the day, and that’s crucial and very important.

Then you have relationships. That’s the third area – relationships. And notice, you have personal relationships and business relationships, or professional relationships. You may be doing really well in your business, but maybe your personal life is struggling, or vice-versa. So relationships are a key component, because imagine if you had a million dollars in the bank, and no one to enjoy it with. That probably wouldn’t be a happy life or an abundant life.

And then the fourth element of the freedom lifestyle is money. Money is very, very important. People who say it’s not important probably don’t have any. As I  mentioned, I grew up poor, in a rich neighborhood, I know what it’s like to not have money… And it sucks. When I say that, I mean it literally. It sucks the life out of you, it sucks the joy out of you, it sucks all the happiness out of life. So money is a very, very important element of a freedom lifestyle.

So when you look at those four elements of time, energy, relationships and money, when you put those four together, that’s what we teach our clients, is that that’s really the freedom lifestyle that we all want. So what I would recommend is you can rate yourself on a scale from one to ten, “How stuck or how abundant do I feel on time, energy, relationships and money?”, and that’s a good indication of where you might wanna be working on in your life, to have that freedom lifestyle.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that. You’re giving us some very practical tools to work with, and really consider and make an empowering shift in our own inner game, and also it sounds like that really does allow us to interact in the world and with others in this outer game way, that is an expression of the inner game that you’re referring to, from a more empowering place. Is that right?

Noah St. John: Absolutely, yes.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Great. Well, how can people get in touch with what you’re offering? You’ve already mentioned your books, and some of your workshops… So  what would you recommend for people that are interested in learning more?

Noah St. John: Well, we have a really special offer for everyone listening. When you go to PowerHabitsBook.com (it’s very easy to remember), when you get my new book called Power Habits: The New Science For Making Success Automatic – just order that book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and just come back to that page, PowerHabitsBook.com, enter your order information, and then because you’re listening to this program, I will give you a digital gift package worth over $299. And because you’re listening right now, I will also include two tickets to our upcoming live event called Freedom Lifestyle Experience, where I teach you how to master the inner game and outer game. There’s really nowhere else in the world where you can do in two transformational days and learn how to master the inner game and outer game at this high level. That’s a $997 gift package right there. So at PowerHabitsBook.com, just order the book, put our order info in and then we’ll get you those tickets and the gift package.

Then if you wanna learn more about me and the other different programs that we have, you can just go to NoahCoaching.com or NoahStJohn.com. So NoahCoaching.com to learn more about our coaching, and NoahStJohn.com to learn more about all the other things that we do.

Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. Well, I appreciate the great service that you’re offering people, and leading in this transformation. Thank you for being on the show today.

Noah St. John: My pleasure.

As I mentioned, I wanted to offer a little more example and story, translating success principles into the path of developing conscious, intimate relationship. Asking empowering questions – I think this is a really powerful tool. So often when we are in relationship, experiencing disconnect, a challenge, pain, or looking for what’s the problem – and oftentimes that’s to fix it – but when we ask that question “What’s wrong?”, we’re looking for fault. And those questions tend to lead to the story and the narrative of how our partner is to blame, what’s wrong with them… Quite often when a couple reaches out for support, one or both of them have diagnosed each other with a mental illness, or perhaps they hold the belief that their partner is pathological in some way, or deeply flawed and really troubled in the problem… And I get it; so often when we are in heightened levels of pain and disconnect with the significant other, we will resort to yelling, defensiveness, criticism, or even other destructive tendencies or behaviors.

Now, what I wanna note here is these are behaviors, protest, acting out of pain, and it doesn’t make it right. But if we focus on that, that’s not the full picture, that’s not the end of the story. And yet, when we focus on that, again, that’s where our mind goes, that’s where the story gets told, and that’s where our beliefs get created. So when we apply this success principle of looking at possibility, it can really open up the dialog  to understand more.

I can say this is one thing that has served me so well in my relationship with my significant other, my husband, and that I continue to operate within. When we are in a place of disconnect or in a place of challenge, I’m often looking at — granted, not immediately; I have my own humanness and reactivity… And when I can regulate that and get grounded and centered, then I come into this, again, possibility thinking. And often, the question is “How can we create or generate a solution that supports us both? How do we find a way that’s a win/win?” And this question I cannot ask until I have a deeper understanding of what’s important to me and what’s important to my husband.

Granted, there’s some dialog and deeper levels of understanding, but when we can hold that space for what really matters on the deeper levels, that’s where the intimacy can get created, because then we get to know each other more deeply, and then we can look for a possibility and generate these positive outcomes. And this is where we get our mind on board to search for solutions for the win/win for a step forward. And again, oftentimes I don’t have the big architectural plan all built out. It’s more of a next step that I suggest, or that  we start to bounce back and forth… But it’s a beginning of a generative brainstorming process, that gets our mind in service of that.

Recently I assigned homework to a couple that are going through an intense phase of hardship and crisis… And their patterns have been operating for a while, and that she tends to pursue, he tends to distance, and he seeks safety from containment, and kind of finding his own place of comfort, that is turning away from her… And she tends to seek reassurance, and tends to express, and wants to articulate, and he feels overwhelmed with that. So they’re in a process of attempting to repair some injury in their relationship and their marriage, and she’s wanting to be much more active, and he’s wanting to be a little more (again) slow and regulated, and what she might call passive.

I was trying to suggest if they could both be in service of generating ideas where it could support his need for safety and regulation, and support her need for engagement, emotional connection. It’ll be interesting to see if they were able to get their mind on board and think in possibility terms. And I get it, they’re going through a lot right now, and there’s a lot of stress, so no judgment if that’s a difficult process, but again, I’m giving you an example of what this success principle can look like in relationship.

Noah also talked about our beliefs, and talking about the inner game and the outer game, and how closely they’re connected. And as this relates to relationship, again, if I reference that pathology thinking, or something’s wrong with my partner – we’re gonna create a story and a belief that supports that, and then we’re likely gonna treat our partner as if they are flawed, or had a mental illness, or have some deep issues.

Oftentimes this sets a negative downward spiral into motion. Now, there’s no fault to either person, both people are dancing in this way, but they tend to be both viewing each other from this very negative light.

Now, another example is I was hiking with a dear friend, and she’s had some relationship challenges in her life, and she is contemplating if she wants to open up to love again. I was really holding space for her that either option I support, and know that she’ll be happy either way… But knowing her heart, and knowing how she is so relational, and would enjoy companionship, I was saying to her that I could see it for her, and the belief for her… Because what tends to happen for people that, again, run this pattern of doubt and negative thought is perhaps someone in her shoes might say there are no men that are available, or the type of man that I want doesn’t exist, or they’re all taken, and “I can’t have love. It’s not gonna happen for me.” Or “Is it worth it? Can I do it?”

Again, these are a lot of thoughts, and these questions tend to, again, get the mind supporting that narrative, and showing all the reasons why any person that you look at, or might have piqued your interest, you notice a  wedding ring, or you just keep running into all these roadblocks. So again, that could be part of the inner game, and not seeing that it’s possible, and not believing in it, and hence taking action that supports that, and also behaving in ways that reinforce that.

At one point, Noah mentioned his past negative tendency of being critical. I just wanna take a moment and plug the Shifting Criticism Into Connected Communication – this course supports the inner game, as well as the outer game. I encourage you to check that out if you’re interested.

To learn a little bit more and get the free guide of Shifting Criticism Into Connected Communication, you can find that link on today’s show notes, which can be found on my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com.

The last point that I wanna mention has to do with the learning process. Now, he referenced the developmental process of going from unaware, incompetent, to unaware and competent. Now, if you have listened to this show for any length of time, you may have caught the episodes 140 and 141, “How to decrease relationship pain and suffering”, referencing a TED talk by Lode Dewulf. He really goes over this learning process in great depth, and I think it’s a great resource.

But if we apply this to relationship — again, so often we enter into couplehood, unaware that we even need to have any skill. We just think sometimes – and this is often supported by media – that it’s just supposed to be easy. And yes, of course, there are elements that we want to feel ease in, and of course, feel that genuine connection and chemistry, and at the same time we are two individuals that are cultivating a life together, and that tends to require some level of development. So once we embark on that hardship, which is typically six months to 18 months, where we enter into that power struggle phase, and this starts to become a little more recognizable because all the neurochemicals have worn off, and we tend to see a little more clearly, and we’ve also had a little more time with the person to get them in a little more depth… So then we recognize “Oh, I’m aware that I don’t have the skill needed to get through or resolve these conflicts.”

So we seek training, and we seek guidance, we seek support, and then we start to become aware of how to practice this. And this does take time. So often we think it’s supposed to be automatic, or that we have the insight and we’re supposed to be able to implement it right away… And like with anything, there’s a learning curve into implementation. And so then we become a little more unaware and competent.

Several weeks ago my husband received a book in the mail from Eddie Marie Crouch and her late husband, Martin D. Crouch… And it’s titled “Couples Dialogue: 365 Practices to Deepen Your Communication and Strengthen Your Partnership.” And he received this as a gift from Eddie because they had taken this training together several months ago in Grief Companionship. The book is intended to offer a teaching and an exercise each day of the year, for a year, hence the 365 practices. So my husband cracked it open January 1st or 2nd, and we’ve been reading them every day… And it’s funny, most of the time – pretty much all of them so far – we have naturally been doing already. So we can point to an example that happened the day before, or earlier that week, or something that we do every day… So it’s fun to see an example where this isn’t effortful, this isn’t forced, this isn’t something we’re really putting a lot of concerted effort in. It’s a part of our relationship. We’ve implemented it, integrated it, and it’s a part of the way that we related to one another, so it’s a really beautiful thing to see what it looks like on us, and the benefit of that.

So we share that with you just to let you know that these practices can become a part of the way that you relate in your relationship. And again, it might look different on you and in your relationship, but the quality of them, the principles of them will be the same, or similar.

So I just wanna encourage you to stay the course. If this feels difficult or it feels hard – yes, it’s supposed to feel hard, and there is this developmental process, and learning is sometimes painful, and hence, that’s the episodes that I wanted to offer… Again, episode 140 and 141, to really hold the perspective that sometimes we need to develop some tolerance of facing some of this pain in the interest of growth.

I will put the link for those two episodes on today’s show notes for your easy access. Again, today’s episode is 198, “How to apply success principles into your relationship”, and interview with Noah St. John.

Until next time, I hope you take great care.

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