Charlotte Miles: Motivation, emotional recovery, and purpose
What motivates someone to engage deeply in coaching, creativity, and physical training, and how do personal struggles and life experiences shape this engagement?
Charlotte Miles shares her motivations for coaching, why it’s important to her, and how it fits into her life. She digs into more difficult topics; energy and emotional recovery, personal struggles, and her experiences with mortality and grief. Charlotte discusses how parkour affects her life, her definition of success, and finishes with real life superpowers and finding purpose.
“Being strong, there is no frame of reference for that. There’s no ‘I once was’ and so there’s no return. It’s a completely new thing. It’s a blank canvas. And that can be as scary as it is exciting.” ~ Charlotte Miles (15:00)
Charlotte discusses her work as a coach, filmmaker, and movement enthusiast, reflecting on how physical training intersects with personal growth. She describes parkour as a therapeutic practice that forces her to confront fear and emotional barriers, emphasizing that her biggest obstacles are often mental rather than physical. Charlotte highlights the unique space women occupy in strength and conditioning and the importance of encouraging curiosity and strength in female athletes.
A significant part of the conversation explores mortality and how Charlotte’s personal experiences with loss shape her sense of urgency and purpose. She shares how storytelling and coaching allow her to uncover powerful messages within others and transform them into impactful narratives. Charlotte speaks candidly about balancing her intense work ethic with the need for rest, acknowledging the challenges of being emotionally open and the importance of staying present.
Takeaways
Training and curiosity — Emphasizing curiosity over performance allows for personal growth and encourages women to explore their physical potential.
Mortality and urgency — Experiencing loss reshapes priorities, fostering a mindset that values immediacy and essential tasks.
Storytelling as impact — Creating resonant, emotional stories can drive deeper personal and societal change than surface-level entertainment.
Fear in parkour — Mental barriers often limit physical capability, with parkour acting as a mirror to confront deeper personal fears.
Coaching intensity — Leading others into intense physical and emotional spaces requires equal responsibility to bring them back to stability.
Self-awareness and solitude — Balancing energy through solitude and movement helps manage the emotional demands of coaching and creative work.
Resources
Iron Heart Studios — Charlotte Miles’ media company focused on storytelling and film production.
Parkour Generations — Organization where Charlotte manages creative direction and media.
Barbell Shrugged — Podcast and strength and conditioning brand Charlotte collaborated with.
Going Right — Logan Gelbrich’s’ book on pursuing passion and purpose over conventional paths.
Women’s International Parkour Weekend (WIPW) — An event focusing on women in parkour and strength training.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
— Hello I’m Craig Constantine.
In the Movers Mindset podcast, I talk with movement enthusiasts to learn who they are, what they do, and why they do it. I’m interested in the nature and philosophy of movement and in exploring themes like independence, self-direction, and human excellence. My interests color each conversation and provide some structure to Movers Mindset. But since I like to take the scenic route, every conversation ends up going somewhere unique.
The purpose of Movers Mindset is to create and share great conversations with movement enthusiasts. Each conversation feeds my insatiable curiosity, but I share them to turn on a light for someone else, to inspire them, or to give them their next question.
I appreciate your time and attention, and I don’t take it for granted.
— Thank you!
My personal mission is creating better conversations to spread understanding and compassion. And Movers Mindset is one of the things I do in service of my mission. Drop by https://craigconstantine.com/ for my weekly email, my other podcasts, writing and more.
The Movers Mindset project grew from conversations I started having as part of my personal journey rediscovering movement. The project started late in 2015, and it was initially simply a web site that shared others’ writing. The project grew, and in 2017 I started the podcast. I’ve worked extremely hard, but none of this would have been possible without so much help from so many people.
Thanks for listening!
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