THERE ARE LOTS of books, tapes and seminars about how to succeed. But Noah St. John, author of Permission to Succeed and the lead-off speaker for the Family Business Center’s seventh year, that doesn’t matter.

We already know how to succeed, St. John believes. But too many of us don’t know why. We’ve been inundated with self-improvement literature on the how tos of success. But 90% of what we do is based on our “why-to,” not our how-tos. There are millions of people who don’t understand that they are allowed to succeed.”

 A seminar about eating disorders in October, 1997, St. John had his epiphany: the speaker said that anorexia was not about losing weight or looking like a supermodel, but that it afflicted people who look very successful, who could be described as overachievers even ̶ ̶ but inside, they suffer from a dangerously poor self-image. They develop a “negative mind” that becomes their dominant internal message ̶ ̶ and they stop eating.

“That sounded exactly like me!” He’d graduated first in his class, had a 4.0 average, won many awards, and gone on to a promising career in the entertainment industry. “However, I suffered from a lack of self. I believed my family would be happier if I weren’t around” and had moved from Maine to California.

Looking at his life through the lens of the eating disorder speaker, he realized why he hadn’t developed an eating disorder, but instead had subconsciously blocked his own sense of self-worth.