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

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.”

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.

By Eric Schmidt, Camera Staff Writer
May 28, 2006

After 10 weeks of training for the Bolder Boulder, the Beyond Limits team is pumped up for the race.

The team of about 25 runners with physical and developmental disabilities took its final practice laps Thursday at the Boulder Valley Ranch trailhead. The goal, organizers said, is for every runner to finish Monday’s race and inspire others with disabilities to do things they never thought they could.

“I’m ready,” Kam Burns said before hitting the trail with a buddy. “I feel good.”

The 4-year-old program pairs runners — who range in age from 16 to 43 — with mentors for training and encouragement. The group has been running twice a week at Boulder Valley Ranch and the East Boulder Recreation Center since March.

Beyond Limits pools efforts from several local organizations and enjoys a $10,000 sponsorship from Nike for running gear. Boulder Running Company manager Henry Guzman and Sherri Brown, of the Boulder Parks and Recreation Department’s Expand program, are among the organizers.

Guzman said it’s amazing to watch the runners come into their own leading up to the race. He said one participant enjoyed the sport so much she’s now on Longmont High School’s cross country team.

“This is bar-none the best group — the most cohesive group — of athletes we’ve ever had,” Guzman said of this year’s team.

Scott Armstrong, president of the Boulder Coaching Academy, said his first year as a volunteer with the program has been productive physically and satisfying personally.

An author and life coach, Armstrong wrote the book “Boston Marathon or Bust: How to Achieve Your Dreams,” which uses completion of that race as a metaphor for personal success. He is donating 25 percent of proceeds from the book to the Special Olympics.

“It’s really been rewarding,” said Armstrong, who has been running the Bolder Boulder for more than 10 years. “It’s great to get out with the kids and have a good time. They just get so excited to be out here running.”

Lizzy Creech, 25, said it’s fun to be part of the team.

“I like the exercise and the friends,” she said.

Louisville resident Carol Creech, Lizzy’s mother, said the runners have shown commitment, training in rain and snow for an opportunity they would never have had otherwise.

“It’s wonderful to see the glow these athletes project with the success they’ve had over the last four years,” she said.

Kathy Leszcynski, of Lafayette, said she’s been running the Bolder Boulder “forever” but has never been more satisfied than when her 26-year-old son, Jason, shaved his time by 22 minutes when running the race for a second year.

“My dream had always been to do it with Jason, and now that’s happening,” she said.

Boulder Coaching Academy Helps Special Olympians achieve BolderBOULDER 10K Dreams

Boulder, CO – May 2, 2006 Scott Armstrong, personal success coach and marathon runner, “walks his talk.” Or rather, he runs it. That’s why the president and founder of Boulder Coaching Academy volunteered to be a pacer for Boulder’s Special Olympics program, training local kids for the upcoming Celestial Seasonings 28th Memorial Day BolderBOULDER 10K Race.

“If you really want to make major improvements in your life, you need someone to help you get moving forward, and to show you what to do to get better results than you’re getting right now. It’s an absolute must!” says Armstrong. “I’m delighted to share both my love of running and my recognition of the importance of constantly pushing one’s limits with these Special Olympians. Their racing success will be life altering.”

His first Boston Marathon was a big achievement, but Armstrong’s most influential and life-changing experience was fire-walking at an Anthony Robbins seminar. “Once I used my mind to overcome my fears and walk across 20 feet of hot coals, I knew I had to share this knowledge,” he says. The walk raised his “mental game” to a new level, and inspired a new career: success coach. Since then, Armstrong has helped people from the four corners of the world.

Armstrong, president of Boulder Coaching Academy, recently penned the book, ” Boston Marathon Or Bust: How to Achieve Your Dreams,” which uses the metaphor of his preparation to compete in – and successfully complete – the 100th running of the Boston Marathon. It’s a must read for the steps one takes to turn a dream into a goal – and then into a reality.

To help support the Special Olympics program, while simultaneously sharing how he used goal-setting techniques to achieve his dream of running in the Boston Marathon, Armstrong is donating 25% of all proceeds from the sale of his book to Special Olympics. For ordering details, visit Armstrong’s web site: http://bouldercoachingacademy.com.