As a former professional ballet dancer, Noah St. John of Hadley knew many colleagues who suffered from anorexia. So last January, when the Hampshire College student noticed that Peggy Claudẻ- Pierre, the Canadian author of “The Secret Language of Eating Disorders”, was speaking at Mount Holyoke College, he expected an informative evening. He didn’t expect a burning bush. But that’s what he got.

“That night my entire life made sense for the first time,” he said last week. “ And I knew what I was on earth to do.”

As St. John heard Claude-Pierre explain the personal profile of those who suffer from eating disorders, he thought, ”That’s me! She’s talking about me.” But St. John’s relationship with food was normal. So what am I starving for? he wondered.

The answer was ̶̶ success. But why would he do that? And how? More importantly, how could he stop starving himself of success?

He said that answers followed all his questions, along with the conviction that it was his mission to share the information that seemed to be pouring through him.

 As he was converging on his 30th birthday, St. John sat down at the computer and “It was like I was taking dictation,” he said. He wrote the first edition of his “Permission to Succeed: Stop Starving Yourself of the Success You Deserve” in two weeks, writing 18 hours a day, five days a week. He took four days off, then edited it, put a notice of the large-format, 107-page paperback up on a Web site last January and sold 200 copies in a month.

Now his Success Clinic in Hadley offers a range of materials for enhancing personal success. Last summer he held a seminar on “success anorexia” at Amherst College and recently spoke to a capacity crowd at Beyond Words Bookshop in Northampton. Like his writing style, St. John’s speaking style is buoyant, energetic and conversational.

“Success anorexia is a very serious condition,” he told the audience, “but is also completely reversible.”

 He listed some of the symptoms of success anorexia ̶ performing below potential, poor self-esteem, an anemic bank balance ̶ ̶ and then moved on to causes.

He said the primary cause has to do with self-image. Stating that individuals can know themselves only as reflected in the eyes of others, he used the analogy of a mirror. The bathroom mirror gives a pretty accurate reflection, he said, while a “funhouse” mirror distorts. “But what if you were raised in a funhouse?” he asked.

 Many people developed negative reflections of themselves, he said, which stop them from going after success, because they believe that they’re not worth it or are incapable of it. “I want people to get it” that the negative reflection is not you,” he said.

 “Permission to Succeed” and an accompanying audio tape include exercises and practical strategies for both releasing negative self-reflections and moving beyond fear and self-sabotage to achieve success, whatever that may mean for an individual. One set of exercises is designed specifically to clarify what the individual means by success.

 Many of the strategies are familiar tools of self-development with a twist. For example, instead of affirmations, St. John recommends what he calls “Afformations.” Instead of stating a goal as already achieved, St. John suggests formulating a positive question ̶ ̶ “How did I get to be so attractive?” ̶ ̶ taking advantage of the proclivity of the mind to formulate answers.

 At Beyond Words he left the audience with three techniques for beginning to reverse success anorexia immediately. First, he said, “identify people who can unconditionally support you ̶ ̶ your loving mirrors.”

The next task is to identify one’s true needs. Last, he instructed listeners to establish goal-free zones in their lives, times during the day or the week when they are not focused on achievement. It could be a nap or a walk ̶ ̶ some time of the day, he writes in “Permission to Succeed,” when you “experience and understand that your worth, value and meaning do not come from your achievements, you win, or form what you do for others.”

 He closed with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.”

The key to public speaking

As president of the local chapter of Toastmasters International, one of the special areas in which Noah St. John helps people find success is public speaking.

Starting Jan. 26, he will teach a class on the Secret of Confident. Public Speaking through Amherst Leisure Services. In the four-week class, which meets Tuesday, 7 to 8 p.m. at the Bangs Center, St. John will help participants overcome the three major obstacles to confident public speaking. And since he says the biggest obstacle is lack of experience, the class will provide a supportive environment to practice, practice, practice.

 Tuition for Secrets of Confident Public Speaking in $69 if participants sign up before Jan. 19 $74 thereafter. To register, call Leisure Services at 256-4065.