[00:00:00] Hazel Showell: Hello everyone. I'm Hazel Showell and I'm here to guide you through the toughest transitions in life, business, and even love. Welcome to Endings. And

[00:00:12] Charlotte Ashton: then the next thing I remember, I woke up in hospital probably about. Well, I think it was five or six days later. That's what I'm told. That's what

[00:00:20] In today's episode,

I'm speaking to Charlotte who survived a life-changing injury at 11. Through that, she learned the power of putting happiness first, but that would be tested when she had to decide between security and pursuing her dream.

But as I'm sure you're aware, saying you'll put your happiness first, and actually doing it, are two completely different things.

I hope today's episode will help you find a way to put it into practice.

Let's go back to the beginning.

Charlotte and her family had just left to UK. Her mum had recently remarried and decided to relocate the whole family to Cyprus because her husband was in the army and stationed out there.

It was Charlotte's birthday, she and several friends were heading into the city to celebrate.

[00:01:29] Charlotte Ashton: So there were 11 of us that got into a vehicle.

So it was, a minibus my stepdad was driving, picked us up from where we lived in Tekaia to go bowling, which. You know, for an 11-year-old, it's one of the most exciting things that you can do. we're all in this vehicle. Driving towards Nicosia, having a great time. As we got into the vehicle, hadn't given much thought to the fact that there wasn't a seatbelt on the seat that I was sitting on.

Anyway, we're going down the road and the last thing I remember is seeing two cars driving fast down the other side of the road. And then the next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital. Probably about, well, I think it was five or six days later. That's what I'm told

[00:02:14] Hazel Showell: At that time it wasn't clear to Charlotte what had happened but she later found out just how severe the car crash was.

[00:02:23] Charlotte Ashton: We'd been going down the motorway. My stepdad had tried to break quite hard because people had been distracted by these cars and they decide, and what he realized is brakes just didn't. Because he was in the military, he'd done advanced driver training. So what he'd managed to do was use the brakes to avoid us hitting other cars.

He'd hit the central reserve and it had careered us across the road. In Cyprus, they have six-foot storm drains. At the side of the road, we'd fallen. Gone straight across the road into the drain in this minibus. Minibus had gone in headfirst and the aide spun it completely round

[00:02:58] Hazel Showell: One by one, the passengers clambered out the vehicle.

In the chaos it became clear that Charlotte had not emerged from the crash.

[00:03:09] Charlotte Ashton: Everybody else had sort of managed to get themselves out and my brother had gone back down to look for me cause he realized that I wasn't there. And he'd found me inside the car and he said I was wide awake and, just chatting away and sinking this, singing this random song.

What happened to me is I'd gone out of the window, or my leg had gone out of the window and the vehicle had landed on me, so my leg was effectively trapped outside the vehicle, and I was inside it, and I was inside it.

[00:03:44] Hazel Showell: So you said you were happily awake and singing When your brother found you, do you remember what you were singing? Yeah.

[00:03:51] Charlotte Ashton: It's, it's a really bad song, an achy breaky heart by, um, Billy Ray Cyrus. Is that his name? Yeah. And I was singing, my brother said, my, my brother can't listen to that song anymore.

He said you were singing it over and over again, but instead of singing, don't Break my heart. I was singing, don't Break mine. because I think he must have said, oh, your leg doesn't look great. Oh. So I turned it into a fun thing, which won't have been that fun for my brother.

[00:04:20] Hazel Showell: No, it's like, that's quite traumatizing.

[00:04:24] Charlotte Ashton: what? Strange child.

[00:04:27] Hazel Showell: Well, you know, obviously that, that, again, it's really interesting the way our brains deal with trauma because your brain finds a way to cope with it. So you've done it in an almost dissociative. But using humor. Yeah. Well, meanwhile, your brother's listening to you singing, don't Break My Leg.

Oh, moment thinking, how

[00:04:44] Charlotte Ashton: thinking, how the hell am I gonna get out, get her out of here? Because he had to bless him. He had to help me out. But

[00:04:50] Hazel Showell: the wonderful thing is you did so even very severely injured, and then when you first came to in the hospital, obviously not brilliantly equipped, doing the best, but Yes, with a very severe injury.

From your perspective, what was your first thought? When did you realize the level of your injury?

[00:05:10] Charlotte Ashton: Um, I sort of realized over, well one, I came around in a separate hospital surrounded by Greek doctors. None of my family was there. That was pretty terrifying. I had no idea where I was When I came around again and my mom was there and she was saying, what do you know, like, what can you remember?

And I was saying, well, where, you know, where, where are we? Like, where is everybody? and she said, you've, you've hurt yourself and you have to stay still. Because I was trying to sit up and move around and she said, you, you've hurt your leg and we're trying to get you fixed, but we don't know if we can fix it.

I wasn't concerned about it cause I didn't think it was that bad. I thought, oh, you know, I didn't have any pain at all. Um, I just knew from my mom's face that it was serious.

[00:05:59] Hazel Showell: Still a lot to take in at 11. When do you think it did occur to you? This injury's quite serious.

[00:06:07] Charlotte Ashton: It took a long time for them to get me out of the hospital.

Uh, I then was taken by an ambulance thing, like missing my dog, which is like the best thing ever. The dog came into the ambulance and then we got picked up by a helicopter and got taken to Aqua and that's when I met Colonel Price. Went into a room and I've got so much respect for him because he spoke to me like, not like an adult, but he spoke to me.

He acknowledged the fact that I was a person in my own right and wasn't a child. And he said, then I'm not gonna lie to you. It's really bad. We might have to amputate your leg. And I, I said, what? Chop it off? And he said, yes, that's what amputate means. But it was that. I just remember that conversation with him so vividly and having so much respect for him at that moment because everybody else had sort of not given me the details.

And from that point, he always gave me, You know, I would always, even up until I was like 20, I'd go in and say like, what's the worst case? Like, just tell me exactly how it is. Don't sugar coat it, or just wanna know, I wanna know what I'm dealing with. And I think that helped me

[00:07:10] Hazel Showell: actually. Some would think they're being kind, I think they're helping by giving that, uh, say the sugar, the soft version, rather than people need to be able to make an informed.

especially when it's your body, your life. I think once children are old enough to understand the words, it's finding a way to help them to understand it in terms that they can get. Yeah, many adults would find that whole scenario difficult to confront. Do you want to just briefly share what it was that initially ended at that point?

[00:07:43] Charlotte Ashton: Initially it affected me in the sense of me being unwell and having lots of things to recover from.

but, in the sense of, you know, my family and the impact on them, it's sort of a very sort of violent ending to, well, I dunno, it's quite hard to explain, isn't it? No, nothing, nothing will be the same again, because you, you've, you've done all, you've all been in this, in this kind of situation together and it's, and it's sort of a traumatic event that everybody else.

But I was sort of in, and it wasn't until I was older that I started to realize the impact of what everybody else has seen on them. Do you know what I mean? And their relationship. ,

[00:08:23] Hazel Showell: it sounded like from that point, I know you went into a period of intense recovery and lots of surgery to have to deal with the consequences of that accident, but you came to a really interesting decision point at 20, which I don't know if many people would be able to maybe reach.

Do you want me to just maybe say a little bit about that one?

[00:08:44] Charlotte Ashton: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, as you say, I, I, you know, I, I was, I was severely injured. I lost a lot of blood and I almost lost my leg. My injuries were that I had a compound femur fracture, which meant that my femur bone came out of my leg.

Thankfully, the bone wasn't infected, but I lost a huge amount of skin. Uh, it, looked like, and we used to joke, That I'd been bitten by a shark. That's how I looked for a long time. What Colonel Price then said was, you know, we can, we can do something about this. This is, you know, we, we've gotta take it back and we can build it back up, but we've got to wait for you to get older.

We've gotta wait for you to grow. So that your body can sustain that. So I had the intensive surgery between about 11 and 12 and then waited until I was 16, or 17, and went back to Colonel Price. I was living in the UK, then went back to Colonel Price. He was based in Portsmouth, in Gosport, and then started surgery for another four years.

And I was having surgery properly every three to six months, which was plastic surgery to correct. And, they did tons of different things, these loads of innovation. Um, you know when people have, you know, head injuries and they, they, they, they used this thing at the time where they put something under the skin and inflate it with saline to grow new skin, and that's, that's basically what they did on my leg.

They put a bag inside my thigh and grew new skin. If you think about it now, it was amazing what they did, but at the time, As a 16, 17-year-old girl, it was horrific. You know, I was, I was constantly in agony, constantly having to kind of inject this bag to inflate the skin, so was constantly in pain. You know, and it was always the, when I was going to see the surgeon, he was saying, well, you know, and, and that because I, I think they felt that they had sort of a debt to try and make me look better because they'd taken up, they'd made it look worse initially, which all they were doing was, was, was, was trying to keep my save my leg.

But I think this kernel price he was, seemed invested in my kind of recovery. And if in making my leg look as good as possible. and I kind of got to the point when I was sort of 18, 19, I'd already had to defer my place at uni and I kind of just sat back one day on, you know, on my own and thought what this, this whole thing that's happened is, is holding my life up.

I started to realize that I didn't care aesthetically what my leg looks like, but I needed to start enjoying myself. It, took more time for me to convince them that it was the right thing for me to stop. So I had to be, really persistent to say, thank you. I'm grateful for what you've done, but enough, you know, I don't, I don't want anymore.

Let's just stop. Let's just get it as far as we can and let's just stop. And it was sort of the same with my family as well. My family from, I think from the point that had happened, they'd sort of just said, you do what works for you. You know, you do what makes you happy. And they'd, everyone had sort of just accepted that I was just gonna have surgery indefinitely.

I think because my family felt quite a lot of guilt about what had happened. They wanted me to get fixed. Um, whereas I was saying, well, but my leg works and that's all that matters. You know, I still have my leg, so I don't care about it, I no longer care about how it looks because, What's more, important is that I go on and make the most of the second, well, probably third chance by that point.

[00:12:05] Hazel Showell: Yeah. You got a huge second chance, didn't you? At life? I think some of the other elements and things that you've got through and, but you know, huge decisions you've made in your life. Those moments when you decided, for example, you know, to end your marriage and to walk out of a corporate job. I mean, these are huge acts of choice.

You and what you need in the big endings in your life. Can you pinpoint the moment that makes you say, actually, yeah, this has to end? , this is now not okay for me. For you, what is that

[00:12:40] Charlotte Ashton: moment? I've had a theme of making these big, big decisions, and it has been driven by, I've got to make the most out of this, you know, out of the fact that I only wasn't here.

That's always driven me rightly or wrongly. That has always driven me. It's always been about moving onto something because of this hope that there is something better in the future as opposed to, you know, just accepting. , um, you know, accepting kind of where you are. I think I think there are a lot of people in life, who don't think they can change things because it's too difficult or people would judge them too much and I don't know.

I don't know why, and I don't even know if it was, if it was kind of an accident when I was younger. That sort of made me think, well, what's worse? My fear of regret has always been stronger than the fear of failure. All the time. I know I've always believed that there's something better in the future.

There's something bigger and better in the future.

[00:13:41] Hazel Showell: In any of those moments, was there ever a moment where you thought, oh, blind may have made the wrong

[00:13:45] Charlotte Ashton: choice, never to do with the decision around stopping surgery? That's by far and away the best decision I ever made and I never looked back on that.

Neither my marriage, definitely not, again, not necessarily because the outcome would've been different, but because I've lurched. Some negative situations after that. And I ended up at, at like, like absolute rock bottom and thinking maybe I should have just, you know, um, maybe I should have just stuck where I was.

Maybe I should have just accepted that that was my fate. But still, I kind of looked and, you know, in the same, in, in changing, you know, when I, the first six months after I left, A, a job that I loved, that, you know, a team that I loved I felt lonely at periods that, and I did think, have I made the wrong choice.

But what I think got me through that is, is sort of remembering the feeling of not in the right place. This got to be something better than feeling like this. Yeah.

[00:14:43] Hazel Showell: Well, I mean, that's the interesting thing, isn't it, about looking at some of. Tactics that you've used, and you've talked about that positive mindset, and it's so important, and it was something I did want to talk to you specifically about is where do you think that initially came from?

You know, where did your understanding of a growth mindset first come in?

[00:15:04] Charlotte Ashton: Uh, my, my mom, like, she's okay. She's, she, my mom, my, my mom had a tough childhood. She came from, she's got a big family, left home, very young. Had children very young and just had a tough life. She, you know, we didn't have money when we were younger.

She was a single parent. She always had a really strong work ethic. And she's, even now, you know, she's, she's still going to, she's still going through tough periods. She's always the one who says, oh, well it is what it is. We can't change what's happened. Let's just move forward. And I think, because my mom has always had that positive attitude, it sort of seeped into me.

That's why I've always really loved running. You gotta run up a massive hill. You don't look at the top of the hill. You just look like two, or three feet in

[00:15:52] Hazel Showell: In front of you. For anyone who's listening, thinking you know what they are facing, it's really hard, is recognizing some of the techniques that work.

And for some people, who need to see the final destination, whether they're climbing a very steep hill or the climb in a very steep hill, what's the top of the hill look like? And they say for you, it's just, Stares feet, know the next few steps, and focus on those. And for some people, I mean, there's a whole new movement, um, around being an effortless entrepreneur around just don't plan, just do the next thing.

So I think there's a real movement to say sometimes when things are stressful if you just focus on the next bit. But I think combined with your positivity, it's, it makes yeah, a really interesting combination to show how. Got through some incredible changes in life, and of course, your last instinctive, uh, decision was about deciding it was time to set up something on your own.

So just tell us a little bit more about implicit.

[00:16:49] Charlotte Ashton: Yeah, so, so I'd spent. Sort of the last 20 years working in corporate finance. I'm an accountant working in corporate finance on, uh, buy side and sell side. And then I joined an investment fund. It's quite early stages. It raised their first fund and I, I stated them until they'd raised the fourth and they were on track for the fifth fund.

You know, talk about fairly any big numbers. It's sort of a billion of assets under management. And my job was to find investment opportunities. Um, and as I say, I, I enjoyed it and I, I like the... I loved working with the entrepreneurs. I loved spending time with them, understanding what was important to them around, you know, what their priorities were for example.

And at the same time, I, I was trying to, you know, give them the kind of what's and all around what, what, what it's like being invested by private equity because it's, it's not right for everybody. What I started to see more and more as the market developed, was that I felt like I'd done as much as I could do within the fund.

I'd spent a lot of time building systems and processes and was starting to think, I don't, I dunno what, I dunno what's next for me, other, other than more of the same, you know, and always being insanely busy, but not feeling like I'm, I'm, I'm, that, I'm developing that much. And at the same time, I was seeing these management teams who were going through these sale processes sometimes, you know, invested by us a lot of time, not because we could only ever invest in a small number of businesses.

and they just weren't prepared enough. A lot of the advice is focused on metrics. It's focused on how profitable the business is, how much it's growing, and how gas generative it is. Not that much of the advice is focused on the person, the individual behind the business. Someone who's invested blood, sweat, and tears over 20 to 30 years, and then they go through this really short period while they sell, sell the business to somebody else.

And I just didn't feel like there was enough support for those people. I was observing it in my role. I was seeing people who. Going through a transaction. And effectively when they're going through a transaction, they're own private equity owned, they become employees. Um, you know, they're formally unemployable and then they have stakeholders to manage them and they just weren't ready for it.

Not in all cases, and all funds are bad, you know, and I'm a big, big fan of private equity, but it's about getting the buyer fit right. And unfortunately, what happens at the moment is the focus is very much on value and very little on buyers. Um, and, and you can only get to finding the right buyer if you understand what you want from a deal.

Um, so what I decided to do was, after lots and lots of soul searching, so again, it wasn't an easy decision. I probably spent about three months making myself ill because I didn't want to leave something that I loved. But I felt this calling for something where there was a problem that I felt needed to be solved, and I felt like I had the skill set to.

So that's what I left doing last year in 2021 and set up an implicit focus around exit readiness. So anything to do with exit planning? I do focus on the metrics, but I spend a lot of time speaking to the people, trying to understand what's important to them, and helping them to understand the importance of developing a relationship with a new buyer, um, over time and developing that culture.

[00:19:59] Hazel Showell: So how are you now? , I think just be lovely just to get, an update for our story.

[00:20:06] Charlotte Ashton: How are you? How am I now? Um, I did, I was, I was, I was fair. , uh, what's the best word for it? When I was growing up, I was really kind of determined to prove that my leg still worked and that I could still use it. So I did all these crazy challenges a, against the advice of doctors and, and, and, and surgeons in, in particular, you know, I've run a marathon.

When I was 26, I never thought I'd be able to run a marathon. Cycled, you know, all over the world. I cycled down the west coast of the south island of New Zealand in winter. Um, and I cycled from London to Paris and I enjoyed every single experience, but it was horrendously difficult. You know, there were times when I'd been in lots and lots of pain and.

I, I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I'm a bit kinder to myself now, so I'm, you know, I've kind of got to a stage in my life where I still want to be fit and active. Still want to use my leg as much as possible, but I also acknowledge that if I keep on doing those extreme things, probably not gonna have that much mobility in later life.

So I just find different ways to kind of challenge myself. I've always wanted to do the marathon to serve, and I've always wanted to do it... I, I think I probably will do it at some point in the future. Um, but I'll, of course, sure. More training for it. I've had, I've, I've had, I've had some, I still have issues with my leg.

It's still something that I have to deal with. I have, um, nerve issues and stuff like that, but I'm mobile. You know, I, um, you know, I've, I've been lucky enough to have a child. I still feel grateful. Grateful. And that was, I think that was one of the big dawn things you asked about when I woke up in the hospital.

I felt grateful that I was alive and that I still had my leg. And then I felt grateful when I came around after the surgery where, where they said, you know, I was, I was gonna have my leg amputated up potentially. You know, it's happened every time I've had surgery. I've just felt like it's one step closer to being able to do all the things that I wanted to do.

So I still feel great. I probably feel more grateful now than I ever have to actually.

[00:22:12] Hazel Showell: So there are a few things I noticed when listening to Charlotte, and the first one is how important it is to have a growth mindset. And if you're not familiar with that concept, a growth mindset is linked to the psychology of success. And it was first coined by Carol Dweck. What it means is essentially learning from failure.

So every time something goes wrong, instead of beating yourself up about it or getting cross or getting frustrated and stopping, just be able to bounce back. Think, okay, I didn't get it right this time. I wasn't an expert this time. What can I learn from it? There'll be another time. And that ability that each time you learn and each time you grow and you get better.

That's why it's a growth mindset and you find some of the world's most successful people have this attitude. Even when things appear to have failed or gone wrong, they always find a way to say, right, but what worked about it? What can I learn from that and how can I take that? Incredibly powerful cause it means they don't get stuck or stopped when things have gone wrong.

So even as you heard at 11 years old Charlotte had a dreadful accident, that would've flawed many people. And the adults, she was able to find the positive, the. And find a way forward. But the other thing you might have heard has been her lifelong way of learning to use her instinct and learn trust, her instinct.

And it's incredibly important when you come to make big life decisions. And whether that's to stay in a marriage or leave a marriage, people can agonize over these choices for days, weeks, and years, and, it's incredibly painful. But I mentioned this idea of how you can use that powerful unconscious decision-making tool that we have.

So our brains are constantly working on different levels, and our conscious minds when we try to make decisions can only handle quite small numbers of bits of information. Whereas if you think about some of the most, Powerful decisions you probably ever make. The biggest decisions you make can include, you know, buying your first house or buying any house.

That's the biggest financial decision you ever make. You probably don't walk into the house with, you have spreadsheets out and decide, and all the different comparisons between the different buildings and rooms and roots and everything to figure out which house you're gonna buy. You walk in and you just feel something, click.

And it's like, yeah, mine and the person you're gonna spend your life with or a chunk of your life with, you meet and you don't get the comparative spreadsheets out again. I hope you just meet somebody and go to Mine. It feels it. It's like putting the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle in. There's a little mental internal click and something just feels true and right.

And that's what we're looking for is that sense of what does our unconscious mind tell us? That bit can process 8 million bits of data in about 450 microseconds. Incredibly fast processing. Daniel Carman won a Nobel Prize for his work on fast and slow thinking systems. This is all grounded in really robust neuroscience, but the tool I'd like to share with you has its roots in Buddhism.

The idea is that whenever you are faced with one of life's dilemmas where you think, oh, do I stay? Do I go whenever It's those ideas? Is it this or is it that you are in a dilemma? And all the research says when we come to making binary choices when we've only got two options, we are really bad at it. So we've got about a 33% chance of making a good decision.

I mean, shocking. Even some of the best stats suggest it doesn't creep up to more than you. 57%. So really you might as well flip or call, well, what can improve it by another 30%? So is much, a much better chance of making a good decision. Is if you can add a third option to those decisions? So once you get to three decisions, then yeah, okay.

You're gonna make a better choice. So what do, if you imagine you get a piece of paper and you draw a horizontal line, And on either end of that line, you write the two binary choices? So it might be staying or going. And then you create a horizontal line. So you form a cross, and at the top, you write the word both and at the bottom of the vertical line.

You write the word neither. Now, what you've essentially done are added four choices. So you've got your original binary choice and you've added two more. And what that creates is called a tetra, a way of creating much more options and giving your brain a much more complex choice. So this is where it might get a bit weird because you need to almost switch.

The part of your brain that does the thinking for five to nine bits of concrete information, and that's the bit of your brain you're used to using to make decisions. So if you've got your piece of paper with stay or go on the horizontal and both, and neither on the vertical, what you do, is clear your mind, and then you put both hands on the word stay and you just tune in to how your body feels at the idea of.

And then you shake that off and you move your hands over to go and you tune into, how do you feel at the idea of leaving, leaving that part of your life, leaving you that job, leaving that relationship, leaving that city, whatever it is that you think you need to leave. How do you feel? What you get back are big emotions, feelings, and sensations.

You might feel hot, cold, tension. You might feel pins and needles. You might feel, um, overwhelming sadness, or you might feel tension, excitement, buzz, fear, whatever it is. Just note it down and then you move your hands up. See if there's any energy in the idea of both. And cuz what that essentially means is you are not staying and you're not going.

It's a case for change. It's staying, yeah, I don't want to leave my company, but I can't stay doing this job. So is there a different job I could do for them? Could I look at a secondment? What are the options available to me? Could I look at a promotion? But I can't stay doing this, but what I'm not ready to do is to leave them.

And for completeness, you go down to the word neither. And if there's some energy in neither space, it tells you. Maybe there's something you haven't even thought of yet. Be more creative, ask around, talk to more people, and get more options. Because right now you're not thinking broadly enough. But if you get no energy in that space, then yeah, the right options for you are on the table and it's now time to figure them out.

One piece of paper and a pen could be the best thing you ever do.

Thanks to Charlotte for joining us today, and I hope you enjoyed today's episode of Endings. If you'd like to share your thoughts, I really would love to hear them, and you can reach me at Hazel Cs on Twitter or LinkedIn, and if you're interested in understanding how the endings are happening in your life a little better, then I have a perfect thing for you.

It's my five-step worksheet, and it's developed specifically for listeners of this podcast. It's based on years of my research, and the first step will only take you about 20 minutes to complete, but it will bring you a lot closer to understanding how to make some of these difficult decisions around endings.

Now you click the link show notes to download your Thriving through Endings worksheet. You can do that. And finally, if you know somebody who might benefit from hearing about the kind of decisions about, uh, ending relationships or starting your own business, or even dealing with life-altering illnesses, then please just share it with them.

I'm Hazel Showell and I hope you'll join me again for another episode of Endings.