Scott´s Power of Choice coaching services empower people to get results in any area of life that is important to them - from unwanted habits, compulsions, all addictions, career blocks, family counselling issues to interventions for a loved one. 

Here is an excerpt from Scott´s book, The Power of Choice, where a client articulates results she personally experienced from Scott´s coaching.

Sarah Clarke is well respected in Cocaine Anonymous circles and is a trustee for another 12 step organization. Over ten years ago, Sarah recovered from an addiction to crack cocaine; however, she still struggles with a "self harm" addiction. By that I mean she regularly cuts her arms or legs with a razor blade or knife, in order to deal with a mental/emotional pain she has inside. That´s her form of unwanted habit.

When Sarah came over to see me a couple of days ago, she was really down on herself. "I can´t stop thinking about cutting, Scott. I just can´t stop thinking about it," she said. So I began taking her through this program - talking about the different principles I´ve described in this book, and how to apply them to her life.

We talked about her judgments and self-talk around cutting. About the power of her thoughts, and why the more she gives energy to them (about cutting, or trying not to), the more she will keep on doing it. And about how she could look for what´s right in her life, instead of always seeing what´s wrong.

I also told her about my own relapse recently (sugar, junk food and caffeine), and the fact that I thought it happened because I had stopped creating a future for myself. We then discussed her vision for her own future, and set up a structure or action plan to begin moving into it. We also talked a lot about integrity; about what secrets she has been hiding in her life and with whom. And I then had her make some small promises about when she would talk with each person to clean up these issues. At the end we set up an accountability structure for her to report her results to her best friend on a daily basis. In all, we spent about four hours together.

Two days later, Sarah told me: "I´ve stopped cutting!" She was ecstatic. She told me what had happened since we had met, and I was knocked over by the results. So I asked if I could record our conversation and share some of her experiences in my book.

Below are some of the things she said.

Sarah´s Story

"Self harm is something I´ve struggled with my whole life, particularly with cutting or self mutilation. Even during my most rigorous addiction recovery programs, it´s never been something I´ve been able to master - until earlier this week when I worked with you. The last few nights have been the first time in six months that I haven´t struggled with a craving and desire to cut myself. In fact, the idea didn´t even cross my mind.

When you said that we are "restless, irritable and discontent" when we don´t have a future to live into, that really connected with me. Those four words are used a lot in the 12-step fellowships I´ve been in, and I´ve always wondered why we feel that way. You helped me see it´s because we are without a vision. My strongest cravings to self-injure are in what I call the ´dead times´ in my life; times when I´m on a break from school or some other significant activity in my life. When I don´t have that vision active for myself, that´s when my cravings come back.

As I listened to you talk about this idea, it was like a spiritual resonance. Suddenly my spirit said, ´Yes, of course. That´s it. You´re without vision for your life.´ And I felt peace. It wasn´t just my spirit; it was my mind too. It made rational sense. I don´t have to sacrifice anything here by trusting in an outside power. It all comes from within.

During our time together, I saw what my deeper vision is and that I haven´t been allowing myself to live it, because I didn´t feel empowered enough to do that. Something in me shifted, and I´ve now made a decision that I can act on it instead of living somebody else´s dream. This is what really broke my addiction - understanding my need to live my vision."

Something Happens and We Make It Mean...

"For a long time I´ve known about the idea that ´something occurs in life and we make it mean something,´ and that that meaning either serves us or hurts us. But I thought that applied only to outside events, not to our own choices. I didn´t know that we use these ´meanings´ to disempower ourselves as well.

For example, I´ve always condemned myself for my self-mutilation. "This is bad and wrong. I shouldn´t be doing it. I don´t want to do it." Those thoughts are going through my head all the time and it had become a monster that bound me.

What I came to see from Scott´s coaching is that there is "nothing wrong" here; I can stop making myself wrong for what I´ve been doing. That seemed counter-intuitive to me. But when I made the decision to just accept it and open up to it, that there really is nothing "wrong" with what I´m doing, it completely diffused the power that it had over me, and I now had a choice. And all of a sudden I was free from it."

Out of Alignment with Herself

When I asked Sarah to look at where she was out of integrity and keeping secrets, four or five main issues came up. We then worked for several hours on what it would mean to come back into integrity with herself. And here´s what she said about that.

"The integrity piece is my next step to becoming powerful and happy. I just wasn´t happy before, and that´s partly why I´ve been cutting. I´ve been playing out all these anxieties, and lying all the time about these things. Even if it´s been in sort of non-offensive ways, there are tiny, little parts all over my life that need to be cleared up.

So over the last day or two, I´ve been ridding myself of these anxieties by exposing the secrets I have been keeping. I told my Mum about my cutting. I talked to my boyfriend about things that are blocking us in our relationship, and those have been cleared up. I also did a speaking engagement with the Boy Scouts tonight where I was completely honest with them. I said that what I´d been asked to speak about was "stupid" and that I wasn´t going to talk about it because it´s not relevant. That completely improved morale in the room, and the talk I then gave was awesome!"

Being With My Child

"One of the commitments I made to myself was being really present with my daughter more - for at least 60 seconds every day. (That was her ridiculously small promise.) In other words, to hug her, talk with her, or do whatever she wants to - but to just do that with her and be fully attentive. It completely took away her usual intensity of "Mommy, mommy, mommy." Now she´s not sucking the life out of me anymore. What´s also changed is that I´m now not a person who the life can be sucked out of either, and that´s why this is working. All from my commitment of being really present with my daughter for at least 60 second every day.

Of course what ends up happening is, I do more. But I don´t have to. Yesterday, I spent half an hour of close time her because I enjoyed it. The difference was your insistence, Scott, on making my promises so small that I can´t help but accomplish them. I can always do more if I want to, but now I feel like I have choice. It´s not a burden anymore. And that´s the only way I was able to do it."

Helping Others to Look Good

"One of the things I do in my life is help others by taking them through the 12-step process. But what our talk also helped me realize is that I´ve been doing a lot of that out of fear, and so I can look good to others.

When I came into the 12-steps, I was told that I had to help people so I could stay clean and sober myself. And that people with really "admirable sobriety" worked a lot with newcomers. As a result, I thought I needed to do that too - and if I didn´t, I would be wrong, shameful, or "not admirable."

The truth is, I only want to help enough addicts to keep my own recovery going, but no more. I also want to deal only with the hardest cases, the ones who really, really want recovery - and turn the other ones over to someone else. Some people see that as selfish or not giving back enough. But this is my truth and the fact is, when I pretend to help people and I don´t really want to, that´s out of integrity. I´m doing it because I want to look good for the fellowship. And that´s what is really selfish and destructive.

I´ve been thinking that way for 10 years, and programming my mind to feel guilty because of it. But now I´m working at letting that go. What is also going to free me is being honest with the people I´ve made commitments to, like the social service agencies I work at. I need to tell them to stop sending me people who aren´t "real" addicts and just send me the tough cases - because they´re the ones I want to work with."

Sarah´s Final Thoughts

"I have kept my cutting a secret, from almost everyone, for most of my life. It´s just one of many secrets I´ve had. And my experience of guilt, of seeing myself as wrong or selfish, have already started to change as I start exposing the secrets I´ve been keeping.

What struck me was how fast this process is, and how quickly it started working. Other recovery programs can take quite awhile, some of them years. But this happened right away."

One of the things I said to Sarah was that her feelings of "restlessness, irritability and discontentment" are actually a gift. They are telling us that we are out of alignment with what we are really here to do on the planet. So everything we did in our four hours together was about getting her back into alignment with herself, so she would be peaceful again. And that´s what happened.

I´m also Amazed by the Results...

When Sarah told me what had happened for her, I was amazed but not all that surprised by the difference we were able to make in just one session. I´m both grateful and humbled that Sarah has caused these results for herself.

It´s also what I´m seeing in schools and other organizations. Kids are getting off drugs and many other habits, and teachers are seeing improved student energy, morale and relationships. My most recent "corporate" client, which was experiencing low morale, poor team work and antagonism among staff, since my visit there they tell me that people are now way more positive and working together more closely. Employee productivity has increased and they´ve also asked me to come back in. And I´m seeing results with my other personal clients as well.

The point of this isn´t about tooting my own horn. (Okay, well a little... ) But it´s that something is going on here. These ideas, this power of belief stuff, and of finding ways to make ourselves feel better from the inside out, are working. I am deeply excited to see people reducing or ending their unwanted habits and addictions, feeling happier about themselves, and being more effective in their work and lives. And that´s why I do this work - because I know it´s making a difference.

UPDATE!

Sarah called us back about a month after she and I had our session together, and this is what she told my writer about her experiences since then.

"Something real cool has happened. There were some areas in my life where I wasn´t really doing what I wanted. And what Scott had told me was, "Take the things you want and boil them down to something really, really simple that you can accomplish every day."

For example, I had a stack of articles that I´d been wanting to read. And he said, "Promise yourself that you´ll read one sentence a day." I thought maybe I should commit to reading at least one page a day. "No, no," he said, "one sentence a day." Another one was drinking water. I´ve been telling myself that I should be drinking six litres of water every day. He said, "Start with one sip." So that´s what I committed myself to do. I´ve also been wanting to exercise more, so the promise I made was to do at least one sit-up each night.

Since I started doing these things, here´s what I´ve noticed. Some of the things I promised myself I have continued doing, and others I haven´t. And what I realized is that the things I stopped doing were things I was entirely uncommitted to. I was able to let them go without any feelings of guilt or shame, and just get them out of my headspace - which was actually quite liberating.

One example of this is the articles I wanted to read. Even though I said I would do only one sentence a day, I didn´t even follow through on that! But what I discovered was, I didn´t really want to read them. I then picked up a different set of articles that I do want to read, and I am now reading them on a daily basis.

Then there are the things I did want to continue - and those have just exploded and multiplied! Before our meeting, I was an almost belligerent non-water drinker. Now I´m drinking two bottles of water every day. One sip blossomed into two bottles! And from doing one sit-up a night, I´m now training almost one hour each day in martial arts. My body´s becoming like a machine! It´s really incredible.

These tiny little things have also now become a working part of who I am. And if on some day I don´t drink two bottles of water and only have one sip, it´s still okay. I don´t hurt myself over that, because that´s all I committed to do in the first place.

When you start doing these things, you start to realize how much your life has been affected by not doing them, how imprisoned you´ve really been. Now I feel a lot more empowered, a lot freer, and generally a lot happier."

Added Benefits

"What´s interesting too are some of the other benefits I´ve been getting. One of these is that I´ve stopped my consumption of nicotine. Some time ago I had switched from smoking tobacco to using electric cigarettes, which give you nicotine as a vapour. But now I have completely cut that out. And this wasn´t something I had even promised myself to take action on. I think it´s a result of the amount of exercise I´m doing and the water I´m drinking; these both push toxins out of your body. Anyway, I am no longer craving nicotine any more.

One of the things Scott had emphasized to me was, "You´re not going to keep all of these promises. You are going to break some of these commitments you´ve made." In my head I was thinking, "There´s no way. These are so easy. I can´t possibly not follow through with all these things - like one sentence a day, of course I can do that."

But what he said to me was, "The things that you don´t follow through on, don´t hurt yourself over it. Don´t make yourself wrong for it. Just acknowledge that it´s something you´re not committed to and be okay with that." And that is what happened with the articles. As a result, I began reading something different, but better.

This is a really significant shift for me. What it´s doing is, it´s giving me permission to analyze the things I really am committed to, and it´s helping me reshape my identity. In the past, my identity was completely constructed by what other people thought about me - and not about what I thought of myself and what I wanted to do. So this process is really reshaping me.

Finally, of course, there´s the most important result. The whole point of all these activities was for me to stop cutting myself. And this thing that I was battling and white-knuckling every day for over 10 years has not even crossed my mind during the past month. The other day someone asked me about it, and I had totally forgotten that I was even a person who used to do that. And that shocked me.

I feel like a brand new person. I´m not punishing myself any more. I´m accomplishing many more things now, and I feel better about myself.

I don´t know how it works. I just know that it does.