Sabrina and Nat call this theory the “five roots of success.” In a nutshell, it’s about being mindful of five universal areas of life that determine a person’s success, no matter what one’s personal definition of success might be – and investing the time and energy to ensure each of those areas is adequately nourished.

Sabrina recently traveled from her home in Austin to spend a weekend with Nat in Los Angeles – so we seized the opportunity to share a pot of warm kombucha with these two visionaries, discover how their shared success formula works, and hopefully inspire our communities to reach for the stars just like they did.

First off, can we just ask, “What does ‘Success‘ mean to you?”

Sabrina:

There are countless beautiful ways to define success, but my favorite is when you’re able look back at your life, your choices and your actions, with zero regrets, because you didn’t miss the moments that mattered with the people that mattered, nor did you miss out on exploring everything the world has to offer, making valuable mistakes, and realizing your deepest gifts.

Nat:

For me, the real measure of success is when you can fall asleep with a smile every night, because you’re living up to what you know you’re capable of, deep down inside. Everybody has that knowing, everyone’s Higher Self knows they have certain gifts that lend themselves to a certain purpose and path in life – and when you learn to focus and commit and pursue that path with all your heart, success is really inevitable. It’s about that deep sense of fulfillment, everything else like being rich or having the freedom to wake up at noon every day, that’s all just gravy.

So both of you have a SHARED success formula. How did that happen?

Nat:

Sabrina and I have been close friends for years now. She works with entrepreneurs, I work with people from all walks of life. But the core of our work remains the same: it’s about empowering people to harness their minds to shape their greatest life.

Each root starts with a ‘P’, and those 5P’s are: Purpose, Passion, People, Prosperity and Profession – and no matter what your personal definition of success might be… success always boils down to making sure all these five roots are strong.

ED: We had a bunch of other questions lined up for this interview, but we decided to set them aside so we could take a deep dive into these 5P’s. That’s where the real gold is!

Okay, so could you take us through these 5P’s, one by one? Starting with the first one on your list… Purpose?

Nat:

Here’s how your purpose fits into your success. I believe each of us was born with the mission to find or create our unique purpose in life, and pursue it. If you’re lucky, that purpose comes to you – but more often than not, you have to search for it.

People who don’t know or pursue their purpose tend to feel like something’s missing in their lives – no matter how much money they make or what they achieve. Success means not having that emptiness, it means having your cup full in every possible way.

But here’s the tricky thing about purpose: sometimes you think a certain pursuit is your purpose because it gives you satisfaction – and yet it’s not actually the highest and most authentic expression of that purpose. For instance since I was a little girl I always felt my purpose was to help people, and I felt satisfied for a while being an aerobics instructor and helping people get fit. But was teaching aerobics my purpose? Well before long I felt it simply wasn’t enough.

Why? Well yes, fitness is extremely important – but I wanted to help people on a deeper, more mind-based level. And I felt like aerobics simply didn’t give me the platform to do that. I felt like my purpose was elsewhere, so I started exploring. That’s how I got into personal growth, and that’s how I ended up creating the Mind Movies movement, and serving over 2.1 million people worldwide. And I have to say I haven’t felt as purpose-driven and successful in my life, as I do now.

Sabrina:

To be honest, I struggled with my purpose for years. Like Nat, I always wanted to help people, and I’d been drawn to spiritual teachings since a was a teenager. I remember having this strong urge to just be connected to source, to pure love. So I spent thousands of hours just meditating and asking: how can I serve?

So trying to choose one “thing” or one “action” as my sole purpose felt small, limiting and almost wrong . Not to mention scary! What if I choose the wrong thing? Will my whole life be a waste?

But then I realized that living in alignment with Love and sharing it with others – that is my Purpose. Having an online business allows me to “touch” so many people’s lives with this love. I think that when we live in alignment with our core purpose, everything we do matters, and everything has meaning.

We love that perspective on Purpose. What about the next root of success: Passions?

Sabrina:

To me Passion is a verb. It’s an energy of excitement, and playfulness. It’s what you do when you forget what time it is, when you forget to eat, when the whole world disappears inside this “action” or “event” or “relationship” that is your passion.

I experience passion with dancing. I have absolutely no thoughts when I dance or teach dancing. It’s a full body prayer, and I dance for at least an hour a day, 6 days a week. I also feel it when I teach and feel the shifts and success of my students. Another one of my biggest passions is charity – so I started a charity gala to help abused kids using dance as the premise, and managed to raise 10 million dollars in the past 10 years.

So as you can see: your passions can absolutely lead you towards your most successful life. What’s important is you go all-in and give them the time and energy they deserve.

Nat:

Unlike a Purpose, Passions don’t necessarily hold a deep meaning, but they do fill you with joy, which fuels every step of your journey towards your most successful life.

You don’t need to build your life around your passion, nor do you have to quit your job for your passion, although you can of course do that too if you like. But what’s important is you hold space for it.

Similar to purpose, people who don’t explore their passions often feel a sense of emptiness and unfulfilled potential. We were put on this planet to PLAY! So the question is, are you playing enough? Are you passionate enough?

It makes a lot of sense that your Passions can become fuel for your success. On to the next root of success then, we believe it’s People?

Nat:

That’s right! You know, there’s a longstanding theory in the personal growth community, which is that you are the sum of the five people you surround yourself with. This is absolutely true, and yet unsuccessful people are not mindful of this. They focus on sticking to people who make them feel good, without considering whether that good feeling is a positive one.

Do your friends and peers uplift you? Do they help you be a better person? This is independent of feeling good – in fact in the beginning, sometimes surrounding yourself with the right people can be stressful, while you’re still trying to align with their vibrations.

Are you being of service to these people? And are you making the most of your connections with them? These are the kinds of questions I always encourage my students to ask themselves.

Sabrina:

I completely agree with Nat that you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, and with today’s technology this applies to ALL the ways we engage with people: whether it’s face-to-face, and even through virtual communities like Facebook, and so on.

But what really blows my mind about the power of our networks is when I read a brain study on mirror neurons. You see, studies on the amygdala, which is the brain’s emotional center, show that we induce feelings of fear and anxiety in others if we are fearful or anxious ourselves. The emotional state is mirrored, and it’s probably connect to our ability to feel compassion and empathy as well.

When you look at the brain scans of someone seeing or interacting with a stressed out person – their amygdala also activates. That’s why anxious people make other people anxious, and fearful people make other people afraid.

Fortunately similar principles apply to happiness and expected reward. So when someone sees you radiating positivity, this same response is mirrored in the brain of the observer – drawing them to act positively towards you as well.

This makes it so clear that who you spend time with is who you become! You can completely change your life by consciously choosing to surround yourselves with people who have the same values, goals, and inspirations as high as yours.

So I strongly believe you need to be protective of your energy and of WHO you allow into your close circle. I personally have a system and process that helps me get clear on who, how and why I allow people to be close – as well as how to stay connected to family members whose limiting beliefs I’d rather not absorb.

ED: At this point Nat pauses the interview to take a call from one of her students. The conversation is brief but warm; and seems to leave her even more enthusiastic to continue.

Now we’re at the fourth of the five roots of success: and that’s Prosperity. What’s your take on that?

Sabrina:

One thing I hear a lot from people trying to manifest prosperity in their lives is: “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do but it’s not working.” You could be doing all the steps, and following the Law of Attraction, and yet because your energy isn’t aligned with those steps; because your mindset isn’t aligned with Prosperity; you don’t see the results you want.

And it doesn’t matter where you start from, because like Nat said, people win the lottery and get rich, only to be poor again one year later. Why? Their energy. Another person creates business after business, selling each one only to immediately start another one – gathering more and more wealth. Why? Again, it’s their energy.

Some of the things we often hear our parents say as we grow up is, “we need more money“, “do we have enough to buy that?” and “money doesn’t grow on trees“. What do statements like these have in common? It’s a consciousness of there not being enough. There’s a tightness to it. And that tightness actually blocks the flow of Prosperity.

There is also a misperception of money that it’s somehow not aligned with being spiritual. It’s “dirty”. It’s “the root of all evil.” So even if you are consciously asking for more prosperity, there may be a part of you that’s pulling away of the same time – and that’s the part we need to address.

Nat:

Despite what anyone says, prosperity – or wealth, abundance, money, or whatever you like to call it – is not a function of how smart you are, or how rich your family is, or how lucky you got. It’s simply a function of your mind. That’s why studies show that lottery winners usually end up broke within months of winning, while billionaires can go bankrupt and then bounce back over and over again.

Unsuccessful people tend to associate money with lack, fear, risk and greed. Successful people are the opposite. Most of us already know this, but are we tackling the subconscious reasons behind it? I always ask my students to think about what kind of prosperity mindset they have. What are your habits, beliefs and emotions when it comes to money? Do they magnetize wealth into your life, or push it away?

I can’t stress enough just how important a person’s wealth mindset is to their success. There’s a story I always share with the Mind Movies community, and it’s about back when I was a little girl living in a small town in Australia. I remember getting bullied by a group of rich kids in the school playground every day, they’d tell me to go roll off a hill, because my maiden name was, well, Rohloff. So I got really upset at these kids, and what happened was as I grew up, my dislike for these kids actually scrambled my wealth mindset, because I grew up thinking all rich people were bad. It took me years to shake off this belief, but the first step to doing so was simply to acknowledge it was there.

That brings us to your fifth and final root of success: Profession, right?

Sabrina:

I believe our professions need to be a natural outgrowth of who you are and what you care about. If your career or business is in conflict with your authentic values and beliefs, you won’t achieve them – in fact you’ll sabotage your own efforts, because deep down, the attainment of them feels wrong. Or you’ll work super hard, and force yourself to meet your goal, only to realize that achieving it has left you feeling empty and sad.

When you think about your profession, you should feel alive! That’s why I love having my own business. The freedom it gives me makes me feel alive, and I love sharing with others how to do it too.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Life is a journey, not a destination.” And this is the way I try to live my life and my profession. Each day of “work” is part of your life’s journey, and you should love every step of it. I used to tell my dance students when we were preparing for a performance – remember to enjoy every class, love the sweat, love the music, love the practice sessions. Don’t postpone your happiness until the actual day of the performance.

If professional success is defined only by hitting an outer goal, it will be unfulfilling and unsustainable. True success is a having a profession that invites you to strive to reach your highest potential both personally and professionally – and this is very possible. Through a process of self-introspection and self-inquiry, you can see very clearly the professional path that is best for your ultimate success and happiness.

Nat:

It’s normal for successful people to have a healthy relationship with their careers. A passion or purpose-driven career makes you jump out of bed every morning. You don’t struggle to juggle your career with other aspects of your life, because everything is in flow and alignment.

And for many successful people, their purpose and their passions are woven right into their work. That’s how people like Sir Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk have the energy, stamina and clarity to launch so many successful businesses and movements: it’s because they’re genuinely passionate and in love with what they do.

But what about unsuccessful people? Well you might notice that unsuccessful people almost always hate their jobs. They can’t wait to clock out. They live for the weekend. They hate Mondays. Which means they end up spending a large percentage of their lives dreading what’s to come, rather than anticipating and striving for greater success.

That’s why it’s so important to ask yourself how you really feel about your career. Would you do it if you stopped getting paid for it? Is it truly how you want to spend most of your waking hours? It’s important to be honest with yourself about this!

What’s interesting too is that throughout our lives, what brings us meaning may change, which changes how we define Success. Wayne Dyer wrote about this is his book The Shift – how as we mature, our key drivers move from Ambition to Meaning and Purpose.

So we’re saying a person needs to focus on these five areas of life in order to be holistically successful?

Nat:

Absolutely. Now I know that might sound daunting, but firstly it’s important to remember that most people already naturally have one or two of these bases pretty well covered. Some people have great relationships. Some people love their careers. Some are deeply passionate about life and their hobbies.

The reality though, is that our beliefs, habits, emotions and thought patterns often leave us struggling to nourish all our roots of success, which in turn pulls us away from the life we want to create. The danger here is that leaving even just one of your roots of success in an undernourished state is enough to damage and bring down other areas of your life too. Just ask someone who’s dealing with relationship problems how they’re able to perform at work, or whether someone with financial problems can fully invest in a relationship.

The solution boils down to first understanding your own mind’s programming. What are your blocks? What are the subconscious thought patterns that drive your behavior? What are the habits that shape your productivity, drive, focus and activities? What are the beliefs that color your perception of success?

Once you know how you tick, it becomes easier to start shifting your daily thoughts and actions onto the path of your personal success. And once you start start doing this inner work, you’ll find yourself smoothly and almost automatically excelling in all five ‘roots of success.’ Yes, automatically. That’s the real beauty of it: when your mind is programmed for success, every area of your life starts aligning with the vibration of that success, with far less resistance than before.

Sabrina:

Speaking of resistance, it took Nat and I years to get a handle on our five roots of success. We struggled, we stumbled, and at times we’d find ourselves sacrificing one area of life for another. Like when you focus on your career, your relationships suffer. Or when you focus on your finances, your wealth suffers. And of course, at times we’d be our own worst enemy, and find ourselves sabotaging our own progress just because we felt like procrastinating or let our self-doubt get the better of us.

But that’s only because we hadn’t been performing the right ‘landscaping’ work on our own minds. And when we did, whoa did things change for us. Like Nat said, by working with our own subconscious minds, and exploring which parts of our programming were helping or hurting us, we were finally able to get focused. We got clear on what we really wanted, we got more productive, creative and empathic, and we were able to get through challenging days without relapsing into our own bad habits. Your inner reality really is the number one factor that determines your outer success.

What would you say is the easiest way for a person to perform this ‘inner work’ on their minds?

Sabrina:

Some of the best tools for the job are practices like meditation. Visualization. Introspective mind exercises. And even technologies like subliminal and guided meditation audios, which re-tune your mind for success just by listening to them.

Personally I’m partial to affirmations, which I recite every morning without fail to get me in the zone, and guided meditations before bed, which help me unwind and frame the events of the day in a positive way that gets me excited and hopeful for the next day.

Nat:

What Sabrina just described is exactly what both of us have committed our lives to helping people with. You know, ‘hard’ skills like public speaking or selling are of course extremely powerful tools for anyone in search of greater success in life, but even to this day, Sabrina and I are always blown away when we see the kind of breakthroughs people can experience by just looking inwards, stepping away from who they think they are, and gaining an authentic perspective on why they do what they do.

So if I had to summarize everything we’ve been talking about, what it takes to be holistically and sustainably successful is really quite simple: you’ve got to be aware of the five roots of success in your life, and you’ve got to nourish them by doing the correct inner work. You’ll be amazed at how quickly any form of resistance, struggle, or personal block vanishes when you do this.

I believe it was Marianne Williamson who said: “As long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance: an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love – then external lack is bound to be temporary.”

Sabrina and Nat’s latest project is a holistic and easy-to-use guide for nourishing the five roots of success in your life.

It’s called The Unshakeable Success System, and in it you’ll find their best tools and technologies for creating your most successful life from the inside out.

>> Experience The Unshakeable Success System (and claim an exclusive launch discount PLUS other Bonuses when you try it now)