That is why I wrote this book: to share knowledge so that you, too, can reap the rewards. It’s also to provide tools and examples for the people who support you and to help turn you into a game changer. This book is designed to help you—to help you help yourself and get results. So here it is, a step-by-step page-turner of stories and solutions that addresses the fundamental key to your success in hockey: overcoming the mental block that is lack of confidence.
Learning from the Best
THIS BOOK CONTAINS a collection of powerful techniques that work consistently. Use the tools, learn from the stories, and develop your own powerful confidence to help you deal with stressful situations. As you’ll see, some of the greatest hockey players in the world have used these very same action steps to change their game and their lives.
On our journey of profound personal development, we will be joined by some of the biggest names in hockey, and I’ll share stories of some of the greats, including Wayne Gretzky, Doug Lidster, Scott Niedermayer, Shane Doan, Darryl Sydor, Jarome Iginla, and Mark Recchi. They were all determined to make powerful, positive change happen, and they took action. They stepped up. Their intention and the right actions produced results—and in some cases, Stanley Cup championships. The key to their success was finding the right tools to help them deal with tough situations, and then using them. You, too, can learn from the best, from players who really know what it is to be hockey confident.
Confidence is a big part of everybody’s game.
JAROME IGINLA
Remember, great minds think alike. There is a phrase that many find inspirational: “Stand on the shoulders of giants,” which suggests that we all would do well to learn from our heroes who have gone before us. This is especially true in hockey! They can show us how to deal with our challenges by telling us how they dealt with theirs.
This is your time, this is your game, and this is your life. Stand on the shoulders of the hockey giants and learn from the best. Reach higher, skate faster, get consistently confident, develop your focus and accuracy, and become the champion you were meant to be.
Here, in this book, is a wealth of ways to get better, together with stories of action to inspire and create hockey confidence. Nothing complicated—just a collection of powerful tools to catapult you forward and help you win from within.
Power up your performance by getting hockey confident.
Skate like the wind,
IZZY
ONE
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR PROGRESS
Shift Happens
“Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.”
JOSÉ MARTÍ, Cuban revolutionary philosopher and author
WHEN YOU TAKE action, the right action, when you take one step a day in the right direction toward becoming more confident, strong, fit, fast, and accurate, you will get results. Those results may happen slowly at first, just as when you first stepped out onto the ice all those years ago. But you will quickly build momentum—first one foot, then the other; one thought, then another—and quickly you will see yourself making the shifts and changes you need to become a better person, a better player. A winner.
When you take the time to notice the positive changes you are making by taking these action steps, you supercharge the momentum of positive change—just as a fast-moving puck has more momentum when it’s hit with twice the power. The shift in the right direction is happening.
Keep a journal, or a record on your smartphone, or write notes directly on the pages of this book so that you can look back and watch your success build. Doing this daily will sow the seeds of success in your mind. The more you do it, the more quickly you will become more powerful.
One NHL player, who started working with me back in his CHL days, has sent me one email a day, every day, for three solid years. With those emails, he is taking the time to acknowledge and share his successes, and to make the most of the good feelings that generates—every single day. Now that’s what I call a player who is determined to be successful!
Do you know of anyone else who is prepared to take one action step a day to be more successful?
The Puck Stops Here
“Hockey’s a funny game. You have to prove yourself every shift, every game. It’s not up to anybody else.”
PAUL COFFEY, second all-time NHL defenseman in career goals, assists, and points
THERE IS SOMETHING very special about the hockey players I work with who make it big. Yes, they are hardworking. Yes, they are determined. Yes, they take action. Yes, they love the game. And yes, they look forward to getting more powerful every day, both physically and mentally. But what’s the biggest difference between the players who succeed and the ones who don’t? In my experience, the players who succeed take responsibility for their results and their progress.
Listen carefully to the radio and TV interviews after an NHL game. Pay particular attention to players on the losing team and listen closely for the way they take responsibility for their actions. Good or bad, players who succeed hardly ever use the word blame. They do not blame their linemates, the quality of the ice, or the words of the coach. The greatest players know that ultimately the only people who can take full credit for their progress are the players themselves.
What’s also important is that when we listen to those successful players talk about their upbringing, their home life, their family, their education—all their struggles and challenges—we learn something interesting from what they say and how they say it. Without fail, they never blame their life situation.
The most confident players—the ones who win consistently—hold themselves accountable. In spite of their problems and struggles, they take responsibility for what they have achieved, and all of them have had to deal with challenges along the way. Life challenges, like hockey pucks, will just keep coming right at you. It’s how you deal with them that counts.
What does this mean to you? Is there something these players are doing that you can use, that will shift how you look at your progress? You bet.
Starting today, learn from the greats. Know that taking responsibility for your progress is the first step. It is the key to your success, in hockey and in life. Start now to develop the habit of being accountable and taking responsibility for what you do, how you do it, what you say, and how you say it. Yes, absolutely, there will be times when you’ll kick yourself because what you said or did wasn’t what you would do if you could start all over again. Here’s the thing—we all mess up sometimes.
We All Mess Up
“Without mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on?”
PETER MCWILLIAMS, American self-help author
WE ALL WISH sometimes that we could take back our words or our actions—the ones that make us cringe when we think about them. It’s how we act when we mess up that turns us into champions. We can make a conscious decision to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We can resolve right now to do better next time—and make sure that next time we do in fact do better.
The beauty of being human is that we are born to learn, develop, grow, and get better every single day. At every moment, our brains are developing more fully—we are learning more every second. It’s a natural human state to be changing a little bit every day. By making the decision to change our actions and responses a little bit in the right way every day, we are guaranteed to become a better player and more confident playing the game of life, which means that we will inevitably