They say that money doesn’t bring you happiness, and that was certainly true for me at the time, because I was missing something that money cannot buy. It was six years ago. I had a good job that gave me a six figure income, but I wasn’t content.

Something was missing in my life. At first, I didn’t know exactly what it was or how to fix it. I just new there was a Grand Canyon sized crater. I wasn’t living my life’s purpose. I knew there was more to life. I read books and searched for something that would make a difference, but one day I found my solution. That’s the day I accepted the offer for a free strategy session.

Expectations and the Definition of Insanity

Maybe you’ve heard it said that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting to get different results. Well, I knew that if I wanted things to change, I had to change me. But how?

The Strategy Session

I felt a little nervous when I got on the phone with the coach for my free strategy session. After all, this wasn’t someone I had known for years or months, or even hours, but I had to do something different. I couldn’t live out the definition of insanity anymore.

One of the first questions the coach asked me was what was I passionate about and what made my heart sing. That sounded a little hokey. Plenty of people have a passion for something, but that’s not what they make a living at it. Still, I thought of a couple of people I know who always seem to be on top of the world, loving life. I wanted that kind of lifestyle. I thought back over my life as it was now and decided that maybe finding a way to live and work from passion could be just what I needed.

But Still, I wavered. I had never had a life coach and didn’t know what it would be like.

The next question the coach asked me turned out to be the million dollar question.

He asked me, “Scott, in another year or two years from now, what is going to change if you don’t get coaching right now?”

I felt like he’d punched me in the gut. He said, “You are going to be the same old Scott Armstrong doing the same old things. Nothing will change.”

I thought of the definition of insanity and knew he was right. I would be the same old Scott living the same old life and not loving it. That’s all it took and I said yes to his coaching. I didn’t want to be the same old person! I immediately made the decision to move forward with his coaching.

Getting coaching turned out to be one of the very best decisions of my entire life. I am now living my dream everyday because of it. One of my mentors taught me that greatness begins by saying yes to an opportunity. And to this day I am so happy that I said yes.

Fast Forward Six Years to Author, Coach and Motivational Speaker Scott Sharp Armstrong

I am now considered one of the top life/success coaches in the country and have a great business worldwide. I have authored two books and am working on my third. I followed my passion and it really has paid off. You might have heard the saying: do what you love and the money will follow. It’s true.

But what’s important in coaching is not my lifestyle, but the successes of my clients, who are people just like YOU!

I Feel So Grateful for These Coaching Testimonials

Here is what some of my clients are saying:

http://www.bouldercoachingacademy.com/testimonials/

Scott Armstrong exposed/taught me more in 4 lessons than I have been able to come across my whole life. Between the new daily habits, increased awareness/ focus, consistency, affirmations & meditation, I feel I’m on a direct course to obtain all my goals & dreams. There will be no stopping me now that I have been shown the path to greatness.
- Paul Burgess
Florida Real Estate Investor

Scott Armstrong’s coaching has lifted my life to a higher level in no time. Before I knew him I was frustrated, unfocused and underachieving. His expertise and enthusiasm have led me to achieve things I would never have imagined possible – he is absolutely top-notch!
Dr Elizabeth Drayson
University of Cambridge Professor
Cambridge – UK

Why Get Coaching:

*Achieve a healthy work – home life balance.
*Connect more fully with your life’s purpose
* Continually evaluate where you are, and where you’re going.
* Develop a clear vision for all areas of your life.
* Become accountable to a game plan designed to actualize your personal vision for your life.
* Progress more rapidly toward your goals.

Am I the Right Coach for you?

I am going to be completely honest and transparent with you. I don’t know the answer to that question. Neither do you until we get acquainted. Coaching is a relationship, and it has to be the right fit for both you and me. That’s why I am extending this no obligation gift to you.

Please Accept a Complimentary 20-Minute Phone Strategy Session with Me
Is it worth your time to see if a 20 minute free no obligation strategy session might just change your life? It worked for me and it could very well work for you as well!

I look forward to talking to you.

Scott S. Armstrong – Author, Coach, Motivational speaker

Call today: 1-800-373-9685

The Law of Attraction is a natural law of the universe and it is actually a very simple concept. At its most basic, it is “like attracts like.” Whatever you are thinking about, that is what you attract in your life. Many say it is one of the most powerful laws in the universe. Bob Doyle in The Secret defines it this way: the law of attraction is impersonal. It does not see “good” or “bad,” it is a law of the universe that simply receives your thoughts and then reflects those thoughts back to you as your life experience. The law of attraction simply gives you whatever it is you are thinking about.

Also in The Secret, John Assaraf talks about a problem that many people have. Most people, he says, think about what they don’t want, and then they wonder why that thing they don’t want shows up over and over again.

The answer to this is startlingly simple. Assaraf says: “The only reason why people do not have what they want is because they are thinking more about what they don’t want than what they do want.”

Assaraf’s advice is simple. “Listen to your thoughts, and listen to the words you are saying.” Because the Law of Attraction is absolute, there are no mistakes. In other words, this law works every time, no matter what. Whatever you are thinking about is what you are going to attract.

So, the question is: why attract what you don’t want when it is just as easy to think about what you do want! The choice is yours.

To put it another way. Affirmations are simply you being in control of your thoughts, declaring to the universe what you want to be true. And when you want it to be true, it will be true because that is your intention.

The Power of Intention
Intention is the power behind affirmations. When you assert something to be true, it is true because your intention makes it true.

Webster’s dictionary defines intention as the “conception of a thing formed first by the direct application of the mind to the individual object, idea or image.” This is what we were just talking about. You have to have the conception of a thing in your mind, you must have the intention to make something happen before it actually happens.

A good example of this is when I decided I wanted to be an author. I put the intention out the universe and things happened very quickly. The people circumstances and events lined up beautifully.

When you have an affirmation and back it with intention, you become an unstoppable force. Give it a try and see what happens. You will be pleasantly surprised!

Research has shown that we have between 45,000 and 51,000 thoughts a day. That’s about 150 to 300 thoughts a minute. Research has also shown that for most people 80% of those thoughts are negative.

Now, we have been taught to think that most of these 51,000 thoughts are “sub-conscious” thoughts meaning that they are below our conscious awareness level. Affirmations actually make your sub-conscious thoughts conscious. Affirmations make you consciously aware of your thoughts. When you start making conscious positive thoughts, you actually become more aware of the negative thoughts that are always threatening to take over.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, really. It actually proves true what your mother always warned: be careful of what you think because what you think is what you get. She was basically telling you that you create what you think about.

When you’re not aware of your thoughts, they tend to be negative. And not being aware of your thoughts tends to cause a nasty spiral downward. Remember that 80% figure of negative thoughts? It gets worse. Whatever you are thinking about, 90% gets carried over to the next day’s 51,000 thoughts. So, if you’re thinking negative thoughts, you will cause yourself to think more negative thoughts. This is not going to get you out of your rut.

Affirmations can change all of that! Affirmations make you conscious of your thoughts. To affirm means to say something positively. It means to declare firmly and assert something to be true. Affirmations are statements where you assert that what you want to be true is true.

Here are some affirmations you can use:

I am a success in all that I do

I feel happy, I feel healthy, I feel terrific

Everything feels just so right

I am a money Magnet

My mind is clear focused and energized

A belief is any guiding principle, dictum, faith or passion that can provide direction and meaning in life. When we trust something is true, that belief delivers a strong command to the brain to visualize what we are convinced will occur while simultaneously changing our subconscious thought patterns.

Having a strong belief can be your most powerful tool in bringing great things into your life. A series of strong beliefs can empower you so you can achieve almost any goal that you set for yourself. Once you set your goal and you truly believe you can accomplish it, your nervous system and brain come into play and make it work. Throughout history, people who have had strong beliefs have accomplished things many people thought were previously impossible.

To change your behaviors, it is important to examine your current belief system and be open to changing what doesn’t work. The first step in changing your belief system is to find people who have done what you want to accomplish. Study their belief systems and incorporate them into your own belief structure. As these wise folks know, success leaves clues.

It is important in your life to do things that will challenge your established belief patterns and get you out of your comfort zone. The event in my life that took my belief system to an entirely new level was the fire walk experience with Tony Robbins. As you may already know, Tony Robbins is a well known motivational speaker and the father of the Life Coaching movement. On the first day of his seminar, participants walk across a bed of hot coals. I will never forget signing the waiver form right before the event which stated that Robbins Research International was not responsible for any bodily harm — noting that the coals can reach temperatures up to 1,200 degrees! Trying to stay positive, I thought to myself at the time, “If I don’t get through the fire walk successfully, I could always become a professional stump dancer!”

In the end I made it through unharmed, and that successful walk across a twenty foot bed of hot coals took my belief system as well as my mental game to an entirely new level. The fire walk also demonstrated to me that I can trust myself and have the ability to use my mind over physical obstacles. It removed any doubt about my ability to do anything I thought was difficult or impossible. That is why I now believe that if I could get myself to walk over red hot coals, the world is open and waiting for me to achieve things I previously thought I could not.

Beliefs come from different events in your life. We all have experiences that we won’t forget. We each have events in our own lives that create or alter the perceptions we have of our own world. A good way to reconstruct or bolster a belief structure is through seeking additional knowledge. By reading books on how others have achieved incredible accomplishments, you will help shift your belief system relating to what is possible. This will eventually help you succeed. Also, talking to anyone you can find who has accomplished what you wish to accomplish adds to your knowledge base. Learn as much as you can from others’ experiences. Most people enjoy talking about their successes and sharing the knowledge they have gained.

Remember to Believe and you will succeed!

One of the reasons why I am considered one of America’s top success coaches is the affirmations I have shared with my clients worldwide. This is the foundation of my coaching program. Within a couple of weeks of my clients practicing affirmations daily, I have seen an incredible difference in their mindset. I am helping them program their minds for success every single day. The success stories with my clients are just overwhelming.

When you consider you have over 50,000 thoughts a day and the majority are negative, and then the following day 90% of the thoughts you have are the same as the previous day, there are a lot of negative thoughts swirling around in a person’s head. With affirmations, I have my clients break this negative loop and have them affirming all the things they want in their lives. Affirmations are almost magical, and oh, how fun it is when you start seeing them work!

One of the most memorable moments when the affirmations really came through for me was when I was going for one of the biggest dreams of my life. I always wanted to run the Boston Marathon. Only the best runners get to do it, and qualifying for it is actually the most difficult part. In my case, because of my age, I had to run a marathon in under 3 hours and 10 minutes. That’s running each mile in about 7 minutes!.

I chose the Chicago marathon as my qualifying race, and going into it, I was in the best shape of my life. I also had the best coaching possible. But the most intriguing part about a marathon is that you never know what will happen race day. Since you are running 26.2 miles, many different variables can come into play.
The race started out great for my running partner and me. In the early miles, we were right on target for a 3:00 finish. At mile sixteen, things changed for the worse. I was feeling a little fatigued. My training partner started to pull away from me, and I had a hard time catching up with him. He had never beaten me in a race so this was not a good sign. This was the turning point of the race.

Of course, all of those negative thoughts that are always lurking about started to jump into my mind. When things started getting tough, I started thinking—almost automatically—“I can’t do this,” and “Why did I do all of this training for the race?” I will never forget thinking to myself: “Here I am at mile sixteen, with ten miles to go, and I’m already running on an empty tank.”

Knowing what I know about affirmations, however, I recognized this as a crucial time for positive self talk, for affirmations. I immediately cancelled my negative thoughts and went into my positive self-talk mode. Even though I was not physically 100%, it was important to be 100% mentally. I started to think about how much training and time I put into this for the last 10 months. I thought about all those mornings I woke up at 5:00 a.m. and did half-mile repeats. The deciding factor that made all the difference was my inner dialogue. I started to tell myself: “I can do it.” “I feel strong.” “I am the best.” I gave my mind every positive message imaginable.

Sure enough, things started to turn around for me. I continued with this positive self-talk the final ten miles of the race. I finished with a time of 3:07 and qualified for the Boston Marathon! My dream came true! If it weren’t for the affirmations before the race, and the positive self-talk during the race, I don’t think I would have accomplished my goal.

Start using affirmations today! They will change your life!

Dire messages about the economy are everywhere. Television newscasters, talk radio hosts and sites all over the internet spread a message of fear about the future. Headlines proclaim the worst Christmas in decades (or perhaps ever) for retailers. With the world seeming to fall apart, is it possible for a person to rise above it?



Scott Sharp Armstrong says a resounding “yes.” His story is a perfect example of the power of the mind in action. He wrote his first book Boston Marathon or Bust about the journey to his dream. His new book The Best Affirmations Handbook, co-authored by Dr. Patricia Ross, delves into the mental training strategies necessary to overcome potentially defeating situations.



At the cusp of achieving his big dream, Armstrong nearly lost it. “Qualifying for and running in the Boston Marathon was the biggest dream of my life.” He trained 12 years to qualify for and run this prestigious race. “Success isn’t easy. It takes a lot of hard work, persistence and training”



Armstrong had trained his body for peak efficiency in order to qualify to run the Boston marathon. “I was never more ready for anything in my life. I knew this was the time.” Yet despite his physical conditioning and winner’s mindset, he had to fight to keep his dream alive.



Armstrong had to average 7-minute miles throughout the marathon to make it through the race. “I was right on pace at mile 16 when all of a sudden the wheels started falling off the bus. I knew I was in trouble.”



The grueling race was taking its toll. “I wasn’t feeling good. Then stinking thinking started to come in and I was telling myself things like, ‘what are you doing out here? Why are you doing this? What were you thinking? Listening to myself made me feel worse.”



Scott Armstrong’s well-conditioned mind saved his dream. He knew he had to get into a better mindset if he was going to finish the race. “I flipped the switch and started talking to myself instead of listening to myself.” 
He said he talked to himself throughout the remaining ten miles of the race repeating statements like these: “You can do it. You’re the best. You’re a winner. You’re getting stronger and stronger.”



When the finish line came into view, he knew he was about to achieve the biggest dream of his life. How did his mind save his dream? “If it was not for using the affirmations, I would never have achieved my goal.”



Armstrong dedicated an entire chapter of his first book Boston Marathon or Bust to using affirmations, and one on the importance of having a coach or mentor. He now runs the Boulder Coaching Academy and is a highly sought after life coach with clients from all over the world. “Affirmations and mindset are a huge part of my coaching, because without the right mindset, nothing else works right.”



“Affirmations will not change the stock market closing number or a bank balance,” Armstrong said, “but when you train your mind to move you toward success, you can achieve your goals and dreams even when everything seems to be falling apart around you.”



His newest book, the Best Affirmations Workbook is currently available in audio and electronic book format from BestAffirmations.com. Dr. Patricia Ross, a mindset and writing coach, is his co-author. The print version, called The best Affirmations Handbook comes out in January and will soon be available from their website or your favorite bookseller.



“Without affirmations,” Armstrong said, “I would never have achieved the biggest dream of my life.”

11) Be Abnormal
I’d been in the football War Room with Hawkins, attending a meeting with his assistants. It was time for the next meeting. Hawkins’ day is highly structured. It moves, much like a football practice, in regimented increments. As we left for the auditorium downstairs, Hawkins handed me a blue plastic bottle of water. “Try this,” he said. “It’ll change your life.”

He was joking. He’d handed me something called AquaVybe, “a premium bio-energetic drinking water infused with 72 essential trace minerals derived from Power Organics Krystal Salt from the Himalayan mountains.” Companies give Hawkins free stuff all the time, hoping for his endorsement, or at least to be able to claim their products are used by the University of Colorado football team. “Three water companies have approached me and said, ‘If you don’t drink this, you’re done,’” Hawkins told me. I don’t expect to see AquaVybe on the Folsom Field sidelines anytime soon.

Which is what makes Scott Sharp Armstrong’s involvement with the team all the more remarkable. Armstrong is a self-invented “life coach.” “Let Scott Armstrong Show YOU How to Live the Life You Were Born For,” is the opening line on the Web page of the Boulder Coaching Academy. Before the 2007 season, Armstrong cold-called Hawkins at the Dal Ward Center, pitching his services as a way for the Buffaloes to “break through self-limiting boundaries,” to “learn how to ‘Dream Big,’” and to “design [lives] that tickle [their] soul[s].”

Hawkins talks a lot about being different. It’s a staple of his stump speech, which I heard first at Valor High, then heard again several times in the weeks that followed. Be different. Don’t just be a carbon-based life form existing until you die. Don’t have an average job or an average marriage. “Being an average person is really easy to do,” he says. “Mammals want to get into a comfort zone. They want to know exactly where to get dinner or a haircut. Reinvention requires courage and the guts to think a little different.”

Hawkins’ relationship with Armstrong ˜who’s known around Dal Ward as Coach Armstrong˜shows Hawkins’ willingness to take risks, to be, as he says, abnormal. During spring training last season, Hawkins let Armstrong meet with the players and coaches once a week. This spring, Armstrong met with the team twice a week.

I sat in on one of the sessions. In the Dal Ward auditorium, the entire team and all the coaches flipped through Best Affirmations Workbook: A 30-Day Guide to Actively Creating the Life You Want. It was time for Day Four: The Power of Smiling. Frowning takes more energy than smiling, Armstrong declared, standing in front of the team. Smiling more will attract far more success to our lives, he added.

He talked about a trip he took with his wife to Mexico. After the porter had brought their bags to their room, Armstrong had given the man his business card, which looks like a fake million-dollar bill. He then handed us our own fake bills, telling us to hand them to our girlfriends or wives. “They’ll get a big kick out of ‘em,” he said.

It was a tough room. While some of the players and coaches followed Armstrong closely, others snickered. When we acted out the day’s exercise: closing our eyes and smiling for 60 seconds, the malevolent vibe˜emanating from roughly a quarter of the players˜made me wince. After that exercise we again closed our eyes to listen to the theme song from Chariots of Fire.

“I think Scott kinda knows it seems really cheesy,” Cody Hawkins told me. “Even for me. You’re sitting around with a bunch of 18-year-old guys listening to a song that all these parody movies make fun of, with fat girls running on the beach or whatever. I’ll be sitting next to my best friend, and we’ll have just seen this funny movie, and now we’re listening to Chariots of Fire, trying to relax while our legs are touching.”

The hostility in the room is probably unavoidable, Cody says. A lot of the guys on the team come from tough backgrounds, and have a hard time dropping their defenses. After the session, in the locker room where the coaches dress for practice, Hawkins admitted not everybody’s going to glean something from a life coach. “I just throw it all out there, hoping some of it sticks.” Josh Smith, a wide receiver on the team, subsequently added his endorsement: “I don’t know how most guys take it, but I know that it’s just positive. To have a good team you got to have everybody positive.”

Walter Sharp’s famous one-pound yellow sampler box was the first to include a variety of chocolates and a custom map inside the lid, making it possible to choose your sweet success with every bite. Four generations later, staying true to the Whitman Sampler innovator’s ideals, Scott encourages and empowers his clients to effectively map out the sweet success of their own daily lives.

Armstrong, a highly regarded life coach, has helped hundreds of clients around the world savor the sweet success that comes from choosing their personal life goals and taking the right steps to achieve them — effectively determining their own life’s future, rather than leaving success to chance.

“Life success is just too important to treat as if you were merely selecting a bon bon from a candy dish,” says Armstrong. “I firmly believe that to achieve major success in life, you need a coach. It’s no secret that Opra Winfrey, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Dell and Deepak Chopra have all been coached in their pursuit of stellar achievement. A coach focuses on helping someone chart their future and provides an objective partner to constantly evaluate whether your actions are effective. A coach helps you retool efforts, change habits and learn new skills if you’re not performing as expected. Most importantly, a coach holds you accountable and ensures that you achieve your objectives.”

Karen Knowler enrolled in the Boulder Coaching Academy in November 2005 to gain the knowledge and experience required to turn her dreams of greatness into a plan of action. Under the guidance of Scott Armstrong, Karen developed a roadmap and the skills needed to become one of the top raw food experts in the world. Karen has lectured internationally and has been seen by millions of viewers on national TV, and appears frequently in other media.

“Scott is an amazing human being who truly walks his talk,” said Karen Knowler. His professionalism, positive attitude, passion for life, desire to serve, and amazing knowledge base, have accelerated me past my initial goals, to a position leaps ahead of where I imagined when we first started.”

Scott Armstrong has coached clients worldwide — from Australia, Canada, Curacao, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Iceland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, United States, Trinidad, and New Zealand — sharing his secrets of success while training clients to achieve their own outstanding outcomes. To hear testimonials from past graduates who share how the Boulder Coaching Academy has helped them choose success in their lives and careers, or to download Scott Armstrong’s eBook, titled “Boston Marathon Or Bust: How to Achieve Your Dreams,” go to the Boulder Coaching Academy website: http://bouldercoachingacademy.com/

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1. Set Your Goals in Writing
Create goals for both for the long-term and the short-term, and put them in writing. Studies have shown that when you write down a goal the chances of achieving it are a thousand times greater. Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and must have a time limit.

2. Visualize Your Success

Make a daily habit of visualizing yourself accomplishing your written goals. When training for my twelfth marathon, I visualized a sub 3:10 qualify time required to run in the Boston Marathon. I saw each mile marker along the 26.2 mile course fell within the time I needed. I pictured myself at the end of that race celebrating with my wife and calling my coach to tell him the good news that I qualified for Boston.

3. Be Persistent

It took me more than a decade to achieve my dream of running in the world’s greatest marathon. It is said that Thomas Edison tried 10,000 different combinations before he was able to find the right one and successfully create a light bulb. How bad do you want it?

4. Do Something Unusual That Will Give You Uncompromising Faith in Yourself

Challenging your established belief patterns by stepping outside of your comfort zone will help develop confidence and faith in yourself. For me, walking over a twenty foot bed of hot coals gave me the mindset that I could accomplish anything.

5. Exhibit Discipline

Discipline is a key component required to achieve your goals. When working toward your dream think of discipline as giving you the ability to flick the little doubting man off your shoulder. Holding the vision of yourself achieving your goal in the forefront of your mind will help you stay disciplined. Do not let self-doubt destroy your dream. Flick that doubting man or woman off your shoulder.

6. Utilize a mentor or coach

The ability to seek out and learn from others, specifically those who have already accomplished similar goals and dreams, is an invaluable resource. I found a former Olympic marathon runner to help support and inspire me. Through the advice of an experienced coach after 12 marathons and 12 failed attempts to qualify for Boston, I changed my strategy for the Boston Marathon and finally achieved my goal.

7. Have gratitude

Every morning make a habit of spending five or ten minutes reflecting on the many things you are truly grateful for in life. Maybe it’s a spouse, kids, friends, football season or running your personal best in the Boulder Backroads Marathon.

Scott Armstrong is the president of Boulder Coaching Academy and author of “Boston Marathon Or Bust: How to Achieve Your Dreams.” Boulder Coaching Academy donates 25% of all proceeds from the sale of the book to the Special Olympics. For additional info, visit: http://bouldercoachingacademy.com.