The Success Nuggets

Success Nuggets #36 - Harnessing Resilience and Heart Intelligence with Charlie Cannon

• David Abel • Season 2 • Episode 16

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Charlie shared his story of overcoming a life-altering car accident, an experience that not only reshaped his perspective but ignited a path of post-traumatic growth. 

Despite excelling as a team athlete, Charlie felt an overwhelming drive to challenge himself further in a solo capacity, a testament to the demanding pressure he places on himself to constantly evolve.

In our conversation, Charlie delved into his coaching philosophy, focusing on the "Inner Game"—the mental and emotional landscape where true potential is unlocked. 

He emphasized how this inner work can expand possibilities in the "outer game," leading to extraordinary achievements. His approach marries skill-building with heart intelligence, creating a powerful synergy that cultivates empathy and emotional wisdom.

This episode unravels the science behind heart, head, and gut intelligences, spotlighting the crucial role of heart coherence in achieving biological flow and focus. 

We discuss why a leader's mental and emotional state can ripple through their team, cultivating alignment and success, and this episode offers a treasure trove of practical tips for harnessing resilience and encouraging positive change.

Nugget of the day: No mud, no lotus." – Thich Nhat Hanh

Special thanks to One Golden Nugget and Maxwell Preece for production support and conversation editing. 



Speaker 1:

Amazing, amazing wisdom.

Speaker 2:

Entrepreneurs success, success around the world.

Speaker 1:

This is the Success Nuggets podcast. Have you ever wondered what you could learn and how inspired you'd be if you asked incredible people from around the world about the patterns that drive progress? Get ready to dive into a world of insights and inspiration. This is the Success Nuggets podcast, with the founder of the Digital Lightbulb and your host, david Abel.

Speaker 3:

Welcome back to the Success Nuggets, where we dive into the journeys and insights of those who inspire us to live authentically. And today we have an exceptional guest joining us Charlie Cannon. Charlie has not only represented England in rugby and excelled in multiple sports, but he's harnessed these experiences to become a sought-after mindset coach, well-being consultant and motivational speaker. His journey is an incredible example of perseverance, transformation and the enduring power of resilience. So, whether you're looking for motivation, practical tips or an inspiring story, stay tuned as we welcome on the line Charlie Cannon. Hi Charlie, Hi Dad, Great to be here with you, Wonderful to have you. Let's jump in. Welcome to the show. Your life journey from a talented athlete to a mindset coach and speaker is nothing short of inspiring. Let's start how sports have shaped your life. You've represented England at rugby, qualified for Wimbledon at tennis and captain county level at hockey teams, I believe. What roles have they built in playing resilience in your life? So?

Speaker 2:

yes, sport was my big love at school. Then I struggled in the classroom. To be honest with you, I'm passionate about it, and when you said playing rugby for England, it was at a schoolboy level. I just want to highlight that.

Speaker 2:

But one of the things that I became aware of at a young age even though I was very talented at sport and played at a very high level, I actually struggled to perform under pressure. I was quite sensitive to criticism. I didn't have a great attitude towards failure and wasn't great with feedback. So these were all signs of having more of actually a fixed mindset than a growth mindset. I relied a bit too heavily on my talent.

Speaker 2:

Sport gave me huge amounts, but it was the first start where I started seeing how important resilience was for life. And then, if we fast forward to the tennis thing, I didn't really take up tennis until about 10 years ago. I'm 48 now but I wanted to play a sport that was incredibly psychologically demanding and tennis is one of the most demanding sports. And sports I played as a kid were team sports and you can kind of hide psychologically in team sports. You cannot hide on a tennis court. The biggest battle is the battle within and I started to play very, very seriously that and compete at my level and end up captaining my county, which has been an amazing journey because it's taught me huge amounts around how to perform under pressure and I can translate some of those things into the work I do with business leaders and teams.

Speaker 3:

Did you purposely sort of set on tennis to build that skill, or was it something that came along the way?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the toy was about building that skill. And also you may get onto my adversity story, but I had a terrible car accident. I was very fortunate in accident, but I damaged my hand seriously badly. They thought that I would never be able to play sport again. That's what medical professionals say, and I believe that because I couldn't actually grip anything. And then I suppose it was about 15, 20 years ago I picked up a tennis rack and thought maybe I can do this double-handed, both sides, which is obviously not the way most people play tennis, and I found I could do it and I had a coach. He goes well, you could be quite good at that. There are a few tennis players out there who do it that way. And that was the catalyst. An aspiring coach who saw in me, believed in me, and then, ah, okay, so it also then informed my own adversity story. If I could then perform at a high level, being potentially physically impaired, that will fuel my own what I would call post-traumatic growth. There's more.

Speaker 3:

Running a marathon was a turning point for you. Yeah, um, did that help you? That helps you find some purpose?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so, yeah, look, after I had this really tragic car accident, it took me a long time to make sense of what happened and to heal from it. Quite frankly, I was pretty damaged and traumatized and the way that I coped was predominantly pretty unhealthy. To begin with it was more drink and drugs, but one of the catalysts for me finding my way out of the darkness was when my dad suggested that I ran a marathon. He knew I loved being physically fit because sport was my love at school and the process of training for that marathon and running with someone else kind of reignited me to things I loved as a kid, to things that I loved as a kid.

Speaker 2:

And then, plus that, the person I trained for the marathon wanted to give up at 19 miles, which is the dreaded wall. If anyone's read the marathon, 19 miles is when you can hit the wall. And I was doing it in London, going over the cobbledy steps near the Tower of London, and I wouldn't let him give up. I was in his ear, I was just like there's no way you are going to walk, you and I are going to cross that line together. And then we we did that together and the feeling that I got from helping Ben, um uh, cross the line was like it was magical, it was amazing and it was. It was a moment where I went that's how I want to make a living. I want to make a living having those types of experiences of feeling of helping someone and that was a catalyst of journey for me to kind of head into the health and fitness industry. Nelson Mandela said exercise was the saviour of his soul. It certainly was one of the many saviours of my soul and my way back to recovery.

Speaker 3:

Have you run any other marathons since?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I did. I did one more where I I trained a client actually. So when I was a personal trainer, I ran with a client. Yeah, that's it. That's the only one. I have no aspirations to to run any more marathons. Tennis is my thing, but look again, if I relate it to resilience, there's something about physical challenges. I always promote that for people because it can push us into perseverance and endurance and test us and challenge us. You know, let's face it, life is continuously testing us and challenging us. So we might as well put some training in on a physical level to kind of give us sense, of sense of proof that we can do it I go swimming a lot, charlie, and there's a woman in my club who's 76, who swims 81 lengths a day.

Speaker 3:

Wow, and her secret was that she did 10 lengths one week because she had a bad knee. The next week she did 12, 14, and so on and so on, and, and I believe people put too much pressure under their physical health I agree with that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so one of my philosophies for change was not mine, but the one I speak about a lot is the compounding effect. Small, smart choices, done consistently over time make a big difference. So I feel if we're going to make a change in any area, start small, be consistent. You know 80, 90 percent of the time like perfection. You know it's just about progress and for me that feels a much more compassionate way to change. Similar to you know a wonderful story of the lady that swims at your club who just kind of incrementally improved over time and then before you know it she's doing 81 lengths. I think that's a really healthy way to look at change.

Speaker 3:

Personally, it is very it's very cool when it's so measurable and other people just sit there going. I can't get past five lengths without putting those steps in. Moving on to some of the non-athletic stuff then, you've worked with some of the uk's top consultancies on mindset and resilience. Can you explain the concept of the inner game and how we now can perform under pressure?

Speaker 2:

yeah. So look, we're all playing an outer game in life, aren't we? You know that's.

Speaker 2:

I like to look at life as a bit like a game to me. We're all playing a game and I think to play this game of life maybe you're driven by success, ambition, maybe it's something in your career, maybe it's about your family we're all playing a game that's important to us and I think to be able to play that game well that's important to us, we need to play the inner game well, and the inner game is our relationship to ourself. Essentially, it's the relationship to what we think, it's the relationship to how we feel, it's the relationship to our energy, and the better relationship we have around that, the better we play that inner game, especially in response to life difficulties, the better we can play that outer game. So I'm a big proponent of of learning and teaching and training our inner game. Obviously there's a correlation to sport here as well, and all the great athletes in the world will tell you how important the inner game is to get their results in the outer game yeah, this is it.

Speaker 3:

I work with many businesses and it's just numbers, numbers, numbers, and I believe 50 is people. Yeah, first as well. When we talk about family though I like to think moment to moment heart interactions and energy is overlooked. Heart to heart hug, for example, something I picked up. I give my son every night for at least 20 seconds as a habit, and I believe I'm creating more harmony, more trust, and I can see both of our emotional well-being and our progress together is coming through. What do you know about heart interactions and the energy we can transfer to each other?

Speaker 2:

yeah, what a great, a great point. I think we have three intelligences, david. We obviously people talk about intelligence of the brain, of the head, but we've also got and I think we all know this intuitively we have intelligence of our heart. This is where intuition comes from. We all have this, we all know this. We have sense. We may need to be a little, train it a bit more, but we also have gut intelligence as well. So I think you know thinking of three intelligence is important.

Speaker 2:

I think heart intelligence is something that's so important for our world right now. I love that example of you know giving yourself a hug. You know that produces oxytocin, which can create safety, which helps us bond, which very, very important for healthy relationships and having a healthy life. But for me, I talk a lot about coherence, having heart coherence, which is part of the inner game. Many people don't realize that the heart actually sends more signals to the brain than the other way around. All right, so there are certain things the heart rhythm. So when we are in a positive emotional state let's say a feeling of appreciation, maybe when you're hugging your son, or a feeling of love, care, kindness or courage then we get into what's known as a coherent state where our heart is in coherence and is sending healthy signals to the brain.

Speaker 2:

And this has a huge impact on the whole of our biology, because the heart is known as the biggest oscillator within the body. You know, just like an old fashioned clock. You get a very, very large, old fashioned clock that chimes like this. Every other clock let's say there are 100 other clocks there would entrain to that large clock, would entrain to the rhythm of the large clock. We would entrain to the rhythm of the large clock. So if our heart, which is the biggest oscillator in the body, gets into the right rhythm, it can entrain all of the other systems in the body. We get into a place of coherence, which is a fancy word for biological flow. You know the state in sport where people say, oh, I'm in the zone, or if we're playing a musical instrument, I'm in flow. Well, actually, actually there's a biological term called coherence and we can do that through heart breathing Super simple technique where we bring our attention to our heart rather than thinking.

Speaker 2:

We first of all put our attention here and we just come into our heart and then we breathe five or six seconds in, five or six seconds out through the heart. Super simple. You can do it through your nose, you can do it through your mouth. The important thing is the rhythm. So four seconds in, four seconds out, it is good. That is a perfect rhythm for you, the things that are important, that your attention is on your heart and you're breathing in a smooth way, with the same amount of the in-breath, same amount of the out-breath, and that's the first start becoming really coherent in our hearts well, thank you for that.

Speaker 3:

And for people who don't meditate, that sounds like something you can just do sitting at your desk or anywhere to be honest, I think it's almost a better start than meditation.

Speaker 2:

It can be quite terrifying for people suddenly to sit by themselves and realize what's going on in themselves. I'm a big fan of meditation. What does meditation mean? To become familiar with yourself. But mindfulness is not suited for everyone. But this type of technique is, and what I like about it is it also helps develop focus and concentration, and we have a major issue at the moment. A lot of our internal stress and struggling is our inability to focus and get hooked by unhelpful thinking. So when we focus the breathing, we're not only helping regulate the nervous system, we're also training our ability to be focused. And look, you do not need to do any more than a minute to begin with. Super simple, keep it simple. Remember small, smart choices done consistently. Start with a minute a day breathing in and out of your heart. That would be a great start. And if you want to go look at the research of this, go look at heart math.

Speaker 3:

I find it extremely fascinating how we send more signals from our heart to our brain on a daily basis and again it just underpins with a whole load more love in this world. You will create, you'll create more progress.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. And look what also is fascinating about the heart the electromagnetic waves of the heart can be measured many, many feet outside of the heart. So you're a business leader, I'm in business, so this says how important it is for people who are leading teams to be in a coherent state, because they influence the people around them by their mental and emotional state. We know this intuitively. If you walk into a room and someone is really angry, you sense that straight away. But it's also the opposite. If someone is really angry, you sense that straight away. But it's also the opposite. If someone is really calm and has a presence about them, then that calm presence and if they're coherent, then has a ripple of thought out to the other people who they're leading and influencing and then we can get group coherence, which is when we have a team together working in alignment towards a purpose, and goals.

Speaker 3:

This is the dream. I have actually seen this in one company before in my life, never replicated again.

Speaker 2:

Maybe not heartwise, but they were in perfect adherence to that business times five in five years amazing, amazing, but you might, and you you may find that it might be, and I think that's it's a point of fascination for me. I mean, it's hard to do on a cultural level, but maybe we can do it on an individual and team level. And anyway, an organization is just a group of teams, isn't it? Responsibility for their mental and emotional state and then also take helping others, take responsibility for theirs. I think it can be a big drive of not only well-being we know this in mental health but also performance.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and they say people, planets and profit as well. Yeah, okay. Um, finally, charlie has been brilliant having you on. What is your one golden nugget of wisdom that you'd like our listeners to take away? Okay?

Speaker 2:

so my one golden nugget of wisdom that you'd like our listeners to take away? Okay, so my one golden nugget is look, I think resilience is the skill of our times. Resilience is about being able to positively respond to adversity and withstand pressure. I think you would agree we all need this and we need to train it. So how can you do it? Well, resilience is a dynamic interaction between the resources that you have in life and the challenges you face. The more you have resources, the more that you can meet the inevitable challenges of life. It's up to you to go and find out what those resources are that help you. Is it physical resources, like getting fit? Is it something to do with mental resources, like mindset or mindfulness? Is it about other people and connection? Is it about the right environment? Is it nature? All of those are resources that enable us to have resilience.

Speaker 3:

Excellent. This has been fantastic, Charlie, For our listeners who want to learn more or attend one of your sessions. Where can they find you?

Speaker 2:

On LinkedIn is probably the best bet, or on my website, charliecannoncom easy to remember guys.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for coming in again, charlie. It's been brilliant having you here.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, loved it join david and his incredible guests next time on the success nuggets podcast and to find out more, visit one golden nuggetcom. Thank you for listening.