CONNECTING THE DOTS (THE REST OF THE STORY)
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
— STEVE JOBS
There have been a lot of dots.
I was born during the worst snowstorm the state of New Jersey had seen in decades. (Yes, Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, and I all share a Garden State heritage. I’m thinking tribute concert!) Somehow, my parents made it to the hospital in time for my two-weeks-early arrival. My parents have often said that because my older brother, their first child, had been so easy, they assumed that having another would be a piece of cake. Oh boy, were they in for a wake-up call!
Where my brother had been healthy as a horse, I was as sick as a dog. There was one complication after another—I was underweight (needed an incubator), had colic (needed constant care and medication), and malformed legs (needed to wear leg braces like Forrest Gump).
So my parents and I got off to a rocky start. It didn’t help that I arrived just as my father decided to leave his cushy advertising job in Manhattan (that paid well) to help launch a summer playhouse in the backwoods of Kennebunkport, Maine (that paid squat).
When I was about 18 months old, my aunt, a schoolteacher, noticed that I was sitting on the living-room floor in my grandparents’ apartment reading a book. Not just any book, mind you, but The World Almanac. In case you’re too young to remember, it is an encyclopedia-style book with lots and lots of words, facts and figures, and charts and graphs—real fun stuff for an infant.
My aunt said to my mother, “Do you know that he’s reading?”
My mom, a former schoolteacher herself, couldn’t believe it—because she didn’t have any experience of a child reading at such a young age.
As my school years progressed, I found myself always being “that kid.” You know, the one who raises his hand in class because he always knows the answer? (If you’re a Harry Potter fan, I’m Hermoine.) Yes, I was that kid the other students would roll their eyes at, because I did my homework and gave the teachers the answers they wanted. “Teacher’s pet” was dropped on me more than a few times, along with a few other choice names.
By the time I was about to enter eighth grade, my teachers told my parents, “We don’t have anything more to teach him. We think Noah should skip eighth grade and go right into high school.” My parents and I decided that I would leave behind the friends I had grown up with since kindergarten and enter high school as a freshman with a brand-new class.
By this time, I had a face full of acne, wore Coke-bottle glasses, and didn’t have shoulder-length hair—I had shoulder-width hair. (I was a geek, remember?) And it was during this time that I started taking ballet lessons.
Wait, what?! Where did that come from?
Oh, right, I forgot to mention that part. Remember when I told you that I had malformed legs and needed leg braces to walk? Because of my condition, one of my doctors recommended to my parents that I start taking dance lessons to strengthen my legs and improve my posture. Around that same time, I saw a movie with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire where they tap danced magnificently and gracefully. I said to myself, “Wow, I’d love to do that!”
My mom enrolled me in tap-dance classes at a local dance studio. My first dance teacher, a talented man named Jon Miele, took me under his wing and gave me exercises that strengthened my legs, improved my posture, and were also a lot of fun. Plus, I loved all that noise you could make with your tap shoes!
After I’d been taking tap-dance classes for several years, Jon suggested that I start taking ballet lessons. He told me that since ballet is the foundation of dance, it would help me get even stronger. To which I replied, “There’s no way you’re getting me in tights!”
But Jon kept insisting, and I finally relented. Up until then, I had only ever taken tap classes, which consisted of Jon, me, and two or three other boys. I had never even been in a dance class with (ugh) girls!
That’s why, when I walked into my first ballet class at age 15, I was stunned to see 20 pretty girls standing at the ballet barre with their hair pulled back, dressed in leotards and tights. They smiled at me. I smiled back.
Let’s see . . . me and 20 girls. Hmmmm.
I thought, Now this is good!
That’s how I came to take ballet lessons throughout high school. After graduating high school and attending college for one year, I decided to leave college to become a professional ballet dancer. This was more of a financial decision than an artistic one. My reasoning was that, as a male dancer, I could get a job at almost any ballet company in the country—because there simply weren’t that many of us to choose from. I also realized that I could always go back to college and finish my degree, but a dancer’s career has a very short shelf life due to the constant wear and tear on the body. I ended up working for several ballet companies along the East Coast, and was broke and miserable the whole time.
How broke was I? One company, for example, gave me a stipend of $150 a week. This was in the mid-’80s, so it was exactly as little money as it sounds. At the time, I was on the “Pop-Tarts and ginger ale” diet, since that’s all I could afford.
How miserable was I? As a professional ballet dancer, the hours are brutal—we worked seven days a week during the season, with classes in the morning, rehearsals during the afternoon, and performances at nights and on weekends—the routine was exhausting, and the punishment you put your body through was essentially willful torture. One of my dance teachers cheerfully described ballet as “a socially acceptable form of the rack.” (Yes, she meant the medieval torture device. Pleasant thought, no?)
Why did we—my fellow performers and I—put up with all this? While I can’t answer for anyone else, for me it was for one reason only: the chance to perform in front of an audience. When you are flying through the air as if defying gravity, or doing spins that look effortless, there is no feeling like it in the world. It’s a feeling that few people on Earth ever get to experience.
But in spite of all my years of sweat, sacrifice, and hard work, I never became a great dancer. I also was very naïve and didn’t understand how to play the political games that happen behind the scenes at every ballet company. That’s why I often ended up watching in the wings while other guys got all the glory.
A life of dancing is a life of nearly constant physical—not to mention emotional—pain. My comrades and I just accepted it as a fact of life. Sometimes the pain was bad, and other times it was really bad.
Over time, I noticed that the bad pain was becoming really bad; and the pain that had been really bad was becoming excruciating. One night on stage during a performance of Carmina Burana—a particularly gorgeous and brutal piece—I was performing a lift when I heard and felt something go pop in my hip. That was the end of my dance career.
I was 21 years old. I had no money, no connections, no business experience, and no idea what to do with the rest of my life.
Since I had to find a way to make ends meet, I worked dozens of different survival jobs, and was even more miserable than before. I finally realized that, if I couldn’t dance professionally, at least I could act. I decided to move to Hollywood to become a movie star.
I packed everything I owned in my 1977 Buick Riviera and drove from Maine to California with less than $600 in my pocket and stardust dreams in my eyes.
Luckily, a friend from high school who had moved to Los Angeles let me sleep on his couch until I could find my own place. Having no earthly idea how to get a job as an actor, I went to the library and read books on that very subject. They said to polish up your résumé and get a headshot taken. I didn’t even know what that meant!
I pounded the pavement going from one audition to another. But Hollywood was underwhelmed by my performance. Every day was a constant stream of rejection: “Thanks, but we’ve decided to go in another direction.” By now I was living in a tiny apartment, barely making enough to survive, and hoping for my big break.
One day in 1991, I was sure it had finally arrived. I auditioned for a traveling musical children’s show, and the producer sitting in the audience said he loved how I “took over” the audition. Boom! I went home and waited for the phone call that I was sure would change my fortunes.
A few days later, the phone rang. This was it!
“Hello?” I said.
It was the show’s producer. “Thanks, but we’ve decided to go in another direction.”
I hung up the phone and decided I was going to kill myself.
I’m not using a turn of phrase when I say that. When I heard those words of rejection from a total stranger, I decided that I’d had enough of this life. I had been broke since forever; had never known more than a few moments of happiness; and spent most of my life being angry, lonely, and scared. I decided to commit suicide.
Problem: I didn’t own a gun. I thought of how I could kill myself without a gun. I remembered hearing how the exhaust from your car engine would kill you if you kept your car running in a closed garage. I decided to do it that way.
Problem: I didn’t have a garage, either. In my apartment building, there were only open auto bays, and there was no way to asphyxiate myself in the open air.
I decided to get in my car and drive around the neighborhood until I found an unlocked garage that I could pull my car in, shut the door behind me, and kill myself.
Wouldn’t you know it, about 15 minutes later I found myself parked on a strange street in front of a garage with its door wide open. I could drive right in, shut the door behind me, close my eyes . . . and that would be that.
Through all of this, ever since the phone call, I was perfectly calm. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t hysterical. I wasn’t even upset. I remember the moment I decided to kill myself as a crystalline moment of clarity. It was as if a switch had flipped in my mind: I accepted that I was going to do it, and that was that—as simple a decision as going to the grocery store.
But now, staring at the reality of what I was about to do, I paused. Think about what you’re doing, someone or something seemed to say to me. Are you sure you want to do this?
And then I saw it: the thing that saved my life.
Parked in the corner of the garage was a child’s bicycle. It had a white seat and those white things you hold on to at the ends of the handlebars. It looked just like a bike I’d had when I was a kid.
I thought, Wait a minute. This isn’t an abandoned home. A family must live here. What are they going to do when they come home and find my dead body in their garage?
In my mind’s eye, I saw a woman coming home and screaming in shock and terror. I saw a man trying to console the woman, but her being inconsolable, crying hysterically. I saw the bicycle’s owner, a child, standing there not understanding what was happening but knowing something was terribly wrong. I saw my horribly selfish act traumatizing this family for the rest of their lives.
And then I saw it: the thing that saved my life.
And I realized that I couldn’t do this to them. Even though I didn’t know who they were (and will never know), I recognized that what I was about to do wasn’t fair to them.
I turned the car around and drove home. That was the last time I ever considered killing myself.
When I got home, I got in the shower—for some reason I wanted to cleanse myself. As I stood there in the shower, I said to no one in particular, “Okay, God, I don’t know why you spared me, but you did. I promise to give the rest of my life to you.”
I really hadn’t talked to God very much before then. But at that moment, it seemed like the right thing to do.
A few months later, a friend told me about a church he was attending and how the minister there was a really good speaker. I had been raised in a church that basically told me that I was a sinner and nothing I did would ever be good enough. (Working as a professional ballet dancer certainly helped to reinforce that belief, since nothing I did was ever good enough!) That’s why I was approximately as excited about going back to church as a turkey is about Thanksgiving Day. But for some reason, I decided to give it a try.
I walked into that church, the North Hollywood Church of Religious Science, and heard the minister talk about the nature of God and man. He said, “There is no spot where God is not.”
He said, “God and you are one.”
He said, “God is right where you are.”
I had never heard such things before. I had been raised to believe that God not only didn’t like me, but He didn’t approve of me and would never be happy with me or what I did. I had never heard of the idea that God could actually be right here . . . and actually like me!
I started taking classes at the church and learning about the teachings of Dr. Ernest Holmes, the founder of the Church of Religious Science (Science of Mind). I started studying other metaphysical teachers like Catherine Ponder and Deepak Chopra. Then I remembered seeing an author named Louise Hay on the talk show Donahue a few years earlier speaking about how your thoughts create your life. At the time, I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. But as I read her books and absorbed her message, I was beginning to understand what she meant.
For the first time in my life, I learned how to pray and began meditating and journaling, learning how to quiet my mind and listen to God. I know that probably sounds awfully woo-woo to some people, but please understand that up until that point in my life, I had been so cut off from my own feelings and opinions that I would just go along with whatever anyone else told me to do. It was the first time I had ever asked myself what I really wanted.
One day, I was praying when I decided to ask God what He wanted me to do with the rest of my life. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but what happened next was the last thing I expected. After I asked the question, I heard a voice say, Move back to Maine. The voice came from inside in my head, but the words were as clear as any that had ever been spoken to me.
After I heard the words, Move back to Maine, my very next thought was, Are you kidding me?
I hadn’t lived in New England for nearly a decade, and the thought of moving back seemed crazy. I decided that it was a silly idea and tried to ignore the voice.
But every time I sat down to pray or meditate, the voice would come back: Move back to Maine. If my life had been a movie, it would have been Conversations with God meets Field of Dreams.
The more I tried to ignore the voice, the more I realized that it wasn’t going away. As I began to journal about it, it gradually dawned on me that I really didn’t want to live in Los Angeles any longer and that my time there had served its purpose. I decided to do something that made absolutely no sense to me.
I sold my car, my furniture, and most of my belongings and moved back to Maine. After working with a business mentor who helped me better understand how I could use my talents and skills, I decided to go back to college to finish my degree. In college for the second time, I decided to major in religious studies and thought I’d end up as a college professor, or even a minister.
And that’s how I came to be in that college dorm room on April 24, 1997; experienced The Shower That Changed Everything; and discovered Afformations.
Right after my discovery, I immediately had two thoughts. My first thought was, Wow, that is so cool! My second was, I can’t believe no one’s thought of this before!
I then sat down at my Apple computer and wrote the first Afformations: Why am I enough? Why am I so rich? and Why can I do whatever I choose to do?
These were thoughts I’d never thought before, and the very next thing that popped into my head was: What am I supposed to do now? Keep in mind, this was in 1997—years before the advent of blogs and social media; even Google was barely a month old at the time!
I really didn’t know what to do with my discovery. Then, on October 20 of that same year, I had the second epiphany that changed my life when I discovered success anorexia—a condition that causes people to starve themselves of success and leads to behaviors like self-sabotage and what I describe as driving down the road of life with one foot on the brake.
That discovery led to the publication of my first book, Permission to Succeed®. Shortly thereafter, people began asking me to coach them and help them get their foot off the brake in their lives, careers, and relationships. I coached many clients through my system, and they started getting amazing results, a few of which you’ve read about in this book.
I published several other books and crisscrossed the country again, this time doing keynote speeches and leading workshops for Fortune 500 companies and national associations. I had finally discovered what I was here on Earth to do.
But something was still missing. I still didn’t have the right systems in my life or my business. I was still trusting the wrong people and not listening to my inner knowing. I found myself in an abusive relationship that ended up costing me tens of thousands of dollars. Eventually, I ended that relationship and closed that chapter of my life, but by that time I was over $40,000 in debt and was forced to move back into my parents’ home and work from their basement.
I felt embarrassed, ashamed, and as if I’d let everybody down. But I finally realized that if I had created this life that I didn’t want, I could also create one that I did want. (Gee, isn’t it amazing what happens when we apply our own teachings?)
I set about to create a new reality for myself. I started focusing on providing tremendous value to my clients. I learned how to package and promote my products and services to actually turn a profit. (I know!) And most important, every night before I went to bed, I wrote down everything I was grateful for in my life.
At first, my lists started like this: “I’m grateful that I have hands that can feel. I’m grateful that I have eyes that can see. I’m grateful that I have ears that can hear. I’m grateful that my heart is pumping blood throughout my body.”
Was this corny? Maybe. But there wasn’t anything else to be grateful for—I had no money, had a mountain of debt, and was working out of my parents’ basement. What that experience taught me, however, is that we can choose to be grateful, no matter what our outer circumstances are.
Slowly but surely, momentum started to build. Word spread about my work again. More clients started to tell their friends, and those friends became clients themselves.
When money came in, I saved it. Less than six months after moving into my parents’ home, I had saved enough to move out and get my own place. Within a year, I had paid off all of my debts and became 100 percent debt free.
Within 24 months, I signed a six-figure book deal with one of the world’s largest publishers and became a best-selling author for the first time. I literally went from basement to bestseller in 24 months using this method!
One month after my 40th birthday, I moved to a little town in northeast Ohio. Before I moved there, I’m not sure that I could have pointed to Ohio on a map of the United States. But a friend persuaded me to relocate there, because he lived there and said it would be, and I’m quoting here, “fun.” Okaaaaay. . . .
A short time later, my friend introduced me to one of his friends, who in turn introduced me to this gorgeous little blonde named Babette. A short time later, I got up the courage to ask her to go ballroom dancing with me, because I figured if I could take her dancing, maybe I’d sweep her off her feet. It turns out that I was the one who got swept off his feet!
Babette and I were married at a perfect ceremony on April 30, 2011—14 years almost to the day after my discovery of Afformations. At our wedding, in front of our family and friends, I gave her this toast: “Because you loved me for who I am, you made me want to be a better man.” And I was crying when I said it!
The years since I turned 40 have been the happiest of my life, because in Babette, I finally found my Loving Mirror—the person who sees and believes in me and makes me believe I can do more than I think I can do. Even though I had been writing and teaching people for over ten years about the necessity of having Loving Mirrors, I had never had one myself until she came into my life.
Today our days are filled with friends, family, laughter, and love. I have an amazing team that supports me and our wonderful clients in over 50 countries. I get to lead life-changing seminars and exclusive mastermind groups for people who come from all over the world to attend our programs. My books have now been published in ten languages, and I’m always grateful when I receive a postcard, letter, or social-media post from someone thanking me for something I wrote—whether it’s from a person writing in English from North America or in a language I can’t even speak from a country halfway around the world!
Are there challenges? Of course; life happens. But they’re nothing in comparison to the pain and emptiness of my earlier life. All I have to do is look back and say, “Thank God Almighty that I’m not the person I was.”
Every night, I still thank God for the gifts of my life. But instead of thanking Him only for my hands, eyes, ears, and heart, I also thank Him for my gorgeous wife, our beautiful home, my amazing support team, our wonderful friends, our mastermind students, and for our thousands and thousands of fantastic clients around the world. I love you all so very much!
I hope my story inspires you to know that, no matter what challenges you’re facing in your life right now, there is a way out—if you allow yourself to let go of the past, step into your best future, and take new actions based on the truth of Who You Really Are.
I would love to help you do that.