Name: Isabelle Hamptonstone
Book Title: Hockey Confidence: Train Your Brain to Win in Hockey and in Life
Your book’s Amazon purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Confidence-Train-Your-Brain/dp/1771642017
What is your book about?
Confidence affects how we deal with stress and how we fulfill our potential to achieve the results we desire. In sports and in life, confidence is the underlying factor determining mental and physical performance, leading to overall success. This book by experienced mental performance specialist Isabelle Hamptonstone contains a collection of powerful techniques and tips to help hockey players overcome lack of confidence.
Clear instructions and illustrative case studies show how training the brain to develop and sustain hockey confidence can upgrade results and help players make smarter, quicker decisions under pressure. Hamptonstone shares step-by-step guidelines gleaned from her years of research working with the giants in the game of hockey. Some of the greatest hockey players in the world have used these very same steps to change their game and their lives. Added to this base of personal knowledge, the book references inspiring moments of mental performance by Wayne Gretzky, Doug Lidster, Scott Niedermayer, Shane Doan, Darryl Sydor, Jarome Iginla, and Mark Recchi.
This pragmatic and positive book is a game-changing guide and valuable resource for anyone interested in high-performance hockey, as well as a valuable tool for self-development.
What inspired you to write your book?
Each day I meet people who don’t see themselves as I see them. While I see their eyes sparkle when they talk about their love of their game, or the love of their family, I don’t see that same sparkle when they talk about themselves. In my day-to-day work I specialize in working with NHL players, Olympic athletes, and CEO’s of multi-national companies. Yet, I knew that there were so many more people I wanted to help. I had heard of a hockey player taking his own life and I knew I had to act. If one player begins to reignite his own spark of self-belief from reading this book, then this book has been a major success.
Can you describe your writing process?
Yes: Post-its, Post-its, and more Post-its!
I lay out the ideas for the book on a huge, wall-sized piece of paper and make (what seems to me) logical groups of ideas. From there the chapters flow into areas of the wall; then, I rearrange the wall…I mean I rearrange the Post-its…so that the chapters flow.
How did you come to do what you’re doing today?
I never meant to work or write for hockey players. I was working with an incredible skier, one who wasn’t reaching her potential, and together we worked to develop important and powerful paradigm shifts in her mind. She became a North American Champ and then represented Canada at the Sochi Olympics.
The huge hockey team in my city had a head coach who was always looking for the best for his team. He called and asked me to help him. That year, his team won more than 20 games in a row, a franchise-breaking record. I like to work with people like that head coach. His warmth and hard-working nature matched so many more I met in the hockey world. I had immigrated alone to Canada from Wales many years before, and now hockey had taken me in as one of its own. I was hooked.
Can you describe a typical day in your life?
Meditation twice a day, weights, yoga, and something outdoors. Either laps off the ski hill where I live, or I miss-aim a few golf balls at our local gopher population.
Then, I prep to work Skype or Facetime with my clients wherever they are in the world and I go to work, on average four clients a day.
I hang out with my two Maine Coon cubs throughout the day and catch up on writing deadlines or answering enquiries.
At the end of the day, I relax with my lovely Partner Will and we thank our lucky stars that luck and hard work has gotten us to live a lovely and happy life. It wasn’t always this full of happiness.
What do you most enjoy about what you do?
When I see a person light up inside with a profound level of self belief, I know that the question “Why am I here?” has been answered.
Are there any people and/or books that have inspired you along your journey?
Yes, absolutely. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. That book allowed me to see that there was more to my emotional breakdown (in my early adult years) than just negative thoughts.
Can you share something that people may be surprised to learn about you?
I used to hate how much I’d lose my partner to hockey each winter!
What’s next for you?
Completion of my PhD and counting down the days to the snow flying for the winter!
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Are you dissatisfied with having a mindset that is exhausted, a brain that is overloaded, and performance that doesn’t reach its potential? Conventional solutions to stress and average performance only address the symptoms of brain overload. Our one-to-one trademarked and guaranteed training with my company, Brain Train International, is different.
* Our training provides specific and measured results to upgrade the brain’s performance.
* You will deal with your root causes of stress to develop Olympic levels of mental performance—including patterns and habits that have led to sleepless nights, poor work/life balance, self-doubt, poor self-care, and challenging relationships at home and in work.
Our clients are trained to use NLP, Time Empowerment, and the cutting-edge C.P.I. MatrixTM to eliminate performance roadblocks and bottlenecks, and to increase focus, confidence, and inner strength. The results are evidenced and measured.
For more information visit: www.braintrainwin.com
