Jonny Wilkinson CBE | Extraordinary Life Stories

22:14John Reynolds:I, in a very simplified way, I think what I've come to understand about what my career was about, was the only thing I could do is I have my lane and I have the other lane, which is the universe. Everything else in the universe is coming through me, through you, through anything. But there's my lane, there's me. I've got to look after me. I've got to turn up and give everything a chance. if I want this to be a beautiful conversation I've got to start to and to turn up and give that a chance and now I'm starting to learn all the time where hold on when I turn up like this and I've got this part of me that wants to force you I'm too much into what it needs to be I don't give it a chance I'm starting to work all the time with the problem is a lot of the messaging is there's I think well not the problem but certainly something that was would have led me astray when I was younger a little bit is the fact that you've got so much it's all about taking control and winning and being the man and all this and what you do is you as we said I was saying earlier that same hole when you create that this is who I am I'm the man you can be pressured and there's the other side of it a little bit is that you also when you close that space you disconnect from two things one from the universe which is one thing and everything in it so you feel disconnected when you become the man I'm going to talk about men not women because that's my experience when you become the man it's a lonely place I became the man in rugby and And it was lonely, and I treated people terribly.

23:58John Reynolds:Not terribly as in like, but terribly to my own view in terms of how it could have been different because I became the man. Because I thought, I've done it, I'm at the top. And I closed off and went, I'm this, I'm distinguishable now. You can distinguish me from everyone else because of this. And what it means is, yes, you can distinguish. Now we're separate. Now I can't connect. I longed for that. It destroyed me to be the man. There's something so beautiful about, like I said, doing your bit but staying open, as you said. And what does open mean? It means that this is who I want to be, but I'm open to who I'm meant to be.

24:34John Reynolds:And that's that constant thing. And this whole drive to being like, you've got to be who you want to be and be the man and this, and this is what it means. It's kind of like there's opportunities to always, from everything, take what feels good, discard what doesn't, but you've got to bring you. If you don't bring you, that's the part, and you is way more important. And I think that turning up, just doing, give everything a chance. So this is beautiful preparation for a kick. You think, right, I want to get this kick over. I'll use sport analogy, because it's always worked for me, but you've got this kick and it's from a long way and it's out wide and it's a tight angle and all these kinds of things.

25:14John Reynolds:And you go, right, what do I do? Well, you give it a chance. but you're like no no no i need to get it all right well go for it then you make sure you get it and it's like well i need to do it as soon as you cross that line you start going but it's so big it's um yeah it's overwhelming it's like yeah that's pressure just because you closed off you that whole power of just saying give it your best shot so cliche but as long as you know here's the boundary i look after me i turn up and the rest is open i i have this with you know with a player came to me and was kicking a ball and was talking about oh you know i'm missing here and i'm missing there and it's all over the place and i'm worried about this on the weekend i'm like right this to someone might be like okay it's a technical thing or it might you need to do this it's like well let's explore first have you just stepped over that line have you closed off and the one other way of looking at that is you're in a different energy state so you kind of go right let's have a little walk around the field before we start and when we're walking around we're sort I'm sort of saying, right, let's just really loosen your shoulders, a bit of a skip, trying a few little jokes with the ball, spinning around.

26:22John Reynolds:Nothing to do with kicking the ball, right? Nothing to do with kicking, just that. And then you come back in and say, all right, now we're just chatting about something else, whatever. And he puts the ball on the tee, looks at me and goes, did you see that comedy show last night on TV? And I'm like, oh, here we go. Putting the ball down, looking where he wants it to go, totally focused. was talking to me about comedy. I'm like, this is an interesting balance. Fully present, but not overstepping that line. Just crushes it down the middle. Next kick, right, I need to do that again. It's like, no, no, no.

27:01John Reynolds:Now you've crossed the line. You've just pretended that you did that. You didn't. You turned up. You did your bit. The other bit was also done. It's a collaboration. As soon as you try and take the universe's role, it hurts. That's a proper mindset. And that's what I mean with parenting is that I haven't got a clue who my daughter's supposed to be. I know what I want her, the life I want her to have, and I can do my bit, but not more. And finding that line is a constant challenge. But the way I think I understand it is by constantly looking at me in every other part of my life. How can I turn up for this conversation?

27:41John Reynolds:I'm waiting out there to do this conversation. I feel my energy comes up a little bit, and I can see I start moving a bit quick, and I start, my breathing's not quite right. I'm like, now, if I have the tools and techniques to stop and go, I'm going to bring myself down, engineer myself into being how I need to be to give this a chance, not to make it how it needs to be, social media. This is how you need to look. This is what right is wrong. But just how do I give this a chance for it to be all it can be? and then I do that work. Now through that work comes all my revelations about life. I don't get any revelations from controlling anything.

28:21John Reynolds:What revelations do I get other than just do it again? Boredom, anxiety, overwhelm, pressure, they're symptoms of stepping over that line. But you want a life of surprise, of magic. Then you've got to understand the collaboration. you see a magic trick on TV and it always blows me away it's like fascinating I'm like oh my gosh and suddenly my world turns into pure possibility it's like what the hell and then you read in a book how they do it and you go and you see it again next time you go now every moment in life for me is either magic or mundane depending on whether you think you know how it's done and that's it so my whole life is as soon as I overstep that line I think I know how everything's done it's fascinating so i bring myself into the unknown i think i know who how my daughter should be yeah i think i know how this game that she's playing should turn out what's good what's bad what's acceptable what's not what i can respond to what i won't be able to and you just say that's going to hurt me to do that bit and i don't know how to help i'm not a specialist i don't know how to help kids do these things but i'm like well i've got to do my bit first and out of that will come the revelations i need and just like the whistle in a rugby game i've never been left short.

29:39John Reynolds:Life has never left me without what I need to handle my moment. But it's up to me to be open enough to receive what life is offering me.

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30:19John Reynolds:my day kicks off with a refreshing celsius energy drink then straight to the gym pre-k pickup back home to meal prep time for my fire station shift one more celsius gotta keep the lights on when

30:30Jonny Wilkinson:the three alarm hits, I'm ready. Celsius. Live. Fit. Go. Grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com. Powerful. Just listening to you then about parenting and trying what to do like a helicopter parent and you coming from a position of incredible leadership where people would listen to you and effectively lead you by example to then have people follow it. Now you're a dad. You've got this whole scenario actually you already have that mindset but it's not for you to kind of expect your daughter to do what you're saying but then to find no way and you're just there to actually kind of just chaperone in any way keep within a certain amount of life because i've got that that whole i'm trying to fix and i had a bit of a light bulb moment in a in a different conversation but in here where someone actually said that to a parent who gone to the end and key undertow to this is this sort of whole conversation is mental health the voices in your head that the self-imposed rails we put in when we we got a chance to talk at the 2003 champions so basically the whole team and the main topic of conversation and all this reason to be it was mental health i really then realized was anyone in any one way most of the players you played with have been one way or that affected me and it's particularly after their playing days that loss of identity that lack of support from having been successful in playing days heroes with the world cut so then not necessarily having any mental health support support in life is that is that something that um

32:10John Reynolds:yeah i mean i i do my journey through life from the age of you know as a as a child you know like not sleeping, baby not sleeping, as a kid not being able to go to school, just fingernails, you know, scrapes on the door handle, on the door frames, you know, just anxiety, panic, all these kind of things has meant that it's been my entire thing. It's never really been rugby did this. It was almost lived through rugby as well. What I mean by that is that brain injury, I don't know anything about. It's a really tricky one. It's a physical sort of interruption or whatever it is that can create whatever.

32:54John Reynolds:I get that. And the identity thing, I translate it all back to this thing. It's almost like there's two of these energy states. One is everything's a problem, and that's survival, because you've got to survive those problems. Or anything's possible, and that's a create state. That's where you create your world. And I think this shifting between those two energy states is kind of it. I was just saying with identity is that when you live in a certain identity, the structure of beliefs of that creates a kind of, if you like, that's what I would describe as an energy state. Now, if you can't change that energy state, you go from being in an environment where the energy state fits and you come out of that and now you're like a plug that can't find a socket anywhere else.

33:41John Reynolds:And I'm not saying this for any of my teammates at all. It's just my experience. And people will always be able to say, oh, it's okay for you because of that, because of that, of course. But the thing that I've always done, which has been difficult, is that when I'm in a certain energy state, survival one, my thoughts will come up that are survivalist. What if this happens? What if that? What if that? So whenever I have those thoughts, I used to answer them. thinking that if I answer these survival thoughts, these fearful thoughts, it will create a beautiful state of energy over here, but it doesn't, it's like feeding a stray cat.

34:22John Reynolds:I've done that before in Mallorca. We had a stray cat and it was just there, and we fed it, and we're like, oh yeah, but it looks like this, and we fed it. We had it for 10 years, and it's beautiful, but it comes back, and it also gets hungrier. It ended up being on our sofa for most nights, and it's beautiful but you realize what you're doing is once you start that thing of being like here's a what if thought so I'm walking around the changing room telling the guys before a game if their winger does that you've got to be there will you be there and I'm what if but what if he kicks it what if the fullback does a chip over the top and no one's there and I'm like well hold on and you're like and what I'm doing is I'm I'm solidifying that energy state I'm validating it with each time I answer that thought so my understanding of mental now a little bit through my healing journey is that the energy state if i want different thoughts i've got to shift the energy answering the thoughts doesn't shift the energy necessarily it gives you a temporary relief that brings the cat back looking for more reassurance you're praising the habit as well exactly and so shifting the energy without going through the level of thoughts is really interesting but that's where all these techniques come in about the opening, the mindfulness, the facing vulnerability, and basically when you feel survival instincts, you have to work to do the opposite.

35:45John Reynolds:When your breathing speeds up, when you speed up your walk, when you tense your shoulders, you do the opposite in a conscious way to show yourself that actually this isn't that situation. I'm going to at least ask, are these thoughts true? I know, you know, if If my car's been stolen, then it doesn't matter how much I shift my energy, I've got to deal with the fact my car's been stolen. It's a real thing. But when you can have this thought about what if the winger does that? And then you go, like I said, with the kicker, you turn up, what if this ball misses here? And by the end of the warm-up, you're like, what about what you were saying before?

36:18It's like, that's right.

36:20John Reynolds:And that's my work with the mental health. But it's so difficult because, like you said, the habit is to chase the threat. and I've done that my entire life and it's ruined me and I still do I still get caught but I can get I've gotten to periods of anxiety and panic and not sleeping but the answer has never been to realize if I want to if I want to get to create state I have to settle into this vulnerability and sometimes it means relaxing into a space which feels like anything about relaxation but that's courage. People are showing courage everywhere. And when you do that, you take this contracted sort of energy of survival and you expand it.

37:04John Reynolds:You take the darkness of survival and you bring light. When people do that, they become transformers in our world. So people going through mental health who are able to take solid and make it expansive and connected and open, closed to open and dark to light they're the people we need we don't you know the people that come and who are mostly light that's great but if you want to create a society where we can transform and evolve we need people consciously doing that so people facing the struggle they're it's they're on the pitch playing and they're there to be supported and it seems there's lots of as you mentioned before there's people in certain generations which seem to be facing things but the the question for me is how can we work to to help explore that energy shift to see what's what's really possible rather than sort of come in with these straightforward i don't know sometimes reactive which is what my thing was doing it here's a problem oh my gosh let's sort this and then suddenly you've got more problems down the line just having that time to come together open all do our own work and see what the result that is one common denominator through this

38:14Jonny Wilkinson:conversation and what I feel like to be in your life is this, even when you've tried to bend your rails and so on looking at you now, you're in fabulous shape, keep fit you had to keep fit as a player because it's part of the physical side of the game and it was really important to you but there's a discipline that's still made you do that I'm interested to know how that relates to your mindset, your mental health if you like and the fact that you aren't training necessarily for the next game, the next World Cup which is a part of your life previously and so where do you manage to keep that because there's things you've changed you first things there's a maturity about how you thought about things and mindset we are now how have you managed to sort of maintain that discipline on the physical exercise if you like i definitely agree i think

38:58John Reynolds:discipline wherever you can learn it it becomes a huge value and it's really powerful um and it's disciplines about that how do i want to turn up yeah that's that's right up to the line perfectly but it doesn't tip over the line into this is how things should should be the discipline is just i look after me and i think that's a control as well you can go to the gym you can work your own so that and i think the discipline side is really important to give things guidance um definitely um and i think for me personally i i there's areas that i struggle in definitely um and there's things where i don't perhaps have the passion and the and the immediate joy or it doesn't resonate and there's things that i need to do that maybe it takes me a while to get around to for sure and that's my work in terms of establishing boundaries and to drive just as it's my work to also come back so there's always that push the discipline of you know whatever it is in terms of but it's hugely hugely helpful um no doubt and i think that's what i was going to say about the parenting side is that that's the difficult thing it's like there is you that discipline is an incredible asset and so there's that kind of like you know let you just be you but there's also like right but it's another one and this is i think a constant challenge for society we want everyone to just feel free and be themselves but there's also a need for

40:27Jonny Wilkinson:discipline and and what have you well there's values though isn't there so you got certain pillars because i can imagine that's where you probably excel as a as a dad as a parent is like yes have so much reading but as manners there's certain things that are important but i but i'm i'm on a healing journey so i can be sometimes less inclined to go down the discipline

40:50John Reynolds:route because i've lived so down disciplined in terms of in certain fields and i felt yeah the pain of that that kind of maybe just because i've tipped over the line in other ways i've associated that with discipline but the beauty of the discipline being that the world cup in 2003 the ball hits you in the hands and you just hit a kick and you hit it and you why the hell am i hitting this kick at the end of extra time in a world cup final with this foot from here and you look back and i've hit 100 000 easy on the way in easy and the number of times i've turned up at a rugby stadium with a bag of balls on my back not saying that i wasn't present whilst i was driving but I've turned up and been like I didn't even know I chose to be here and it could be habit but it's also deeper in terms of just like this is what I'm here to do and sometimes that is so powerful you realise that discipline and where you feel it and you can go there and if you can get there it's also going to reveal things it's part of that you know why you're here I think for me yeah discipline huge in terms of why do I stay in shape because my passion is to explore mastery and I get most of my revelations through sports.

42:09John Reynolds:Sports is one of those that feeds you back immediately. You shoot a ball at a basketball hoop, you know immediately where it is. Sometimes in business you make a decision, you never find out whether it was what it was about and even if you do you don't even know what was down to you and what was not. That can be really challenging too but when you go to basketball, you shoot a ball, you see where it lands and this constant feedback for me and same with playing tennis or kicking rugby balls or whatever it's just I'm literally just using that as a to say right here's the energy of what I want to happen I have to match that on the inside and when you do it just happens and it's such a it's like this mastery thing instead of like oh your hand must go here everything comes out of that energy the intelligence of you create the energy inside the vision of it your body will do what it needs to do if that's your thing yeah like you could tell me about another sport that i have no idea about and i'd be like let's i need to do some work before i get there or it may never get there but for the sports i go to it makes sense to me and i suddenly start feeling like i come alive so i stay in shape to do that my body forms around what it is i want to do um and i want to be able to do it for as long as i can yeah i can tell going back to the discipline

43:23Jonny Wilkinson:but consciousness of time and something to kind of almost wrap up but purpose it feels like you're still searching about any one time your purpose could have been to win the World Cup to win the competition to be the next team you're playing but an undertow of a bigger purpose of what you'd really like to achieve and I don't think it's a destination which is something that you're trying to achieve right now but sitting here right now in May 2025 what would you say is your purpose and what have you not achieved yet you really want to?

43:55John Reynolds:I have a business which has been going since 2017 called One Living which sells. We, with the health and well-being brand, we operate in the drink space. That's again come out of my energy and desire. I know what my, right now I know what my purpose is because it's what I spend all my time trying to do having these conversations you leave me long enough with someone if you if you sort of introduce me to your dog leave me for two minutes i'll be talking to the dog about yeah unfolding potential and that's what i do um and i and i find it everywhere and sometimes i get intuitive things about yes doing this i do kicking coaching this is where i find it i know that's what right now i feel is my purpose is to do that how it fits into society is a different thing you know i keep thinking oh maybe i should try and make a living out of this because it would probably help me because it's why i spend 90 of my time doing it and i never get i never get not that i want to get paid for it but i i sort of just i i just don't want to really get paid to do it i can't I can't get paid to do it.

45:13John Reynolds:I just don't. And so then I have a business which works deep into the health space. I mean, properly really going for it with the products that we do. Just really, this is everything in there. And I know that's kind of, that's where the business side is for me, but it's still purely out of my passion. That's all I talk about with people. You start me on any topic and it'll end up here. Because I think that's part of what I feel during my rugby career, that stepping over the line and the suffering that it caused, but also as a kid that desire to be perfect and stepping over the line and closing off and the suffering that caused means that what I'm after now is perhaps in that healing space is connection because I disconnected.

45:56John Reynolds:I want to connect. I want to open up. I want to explore. I don't want to control. I want to explore. I want to connect. I don't want to disconnect. I want to feel. I don't want to see. So I'm not doing stuff that people look at and go, oh, my gosh. you know but i might be doing stuff when i kick with people where they kick next to me and they go there's something different about this because i'm i'm enjoying a relationship with the ball it's not me trying to get this damn thing over the post it's me and this thing going let's see what we can get and i'm trying to bring that opportunity as a pull to this amazing push that so many people are bringing with such amazing gift and and i everywhere i go that's what i find but it used to be about how does it fit into society.

46:42John Reynolds:What do I look like? How do I distinguish myself? But I'm just happy away doing this and turning up where it feels right to be. And I just, like I said, turn up, bring me, look after me, give everything the best chance. And in that space, often there is a connection and it's often to magic, I think, instead of that the the predictable or even the the desired is so much less than the magic

47:15Jonny Wilkinson:but that's super relatable to this conversation but you know i i made it very clear to you how keen i was to talk with you you chose to come here which i thank you for um and in some way this is therapy for me i've learned the articulation i will i will watch this back because there's a moment i'm fully present but also there's things going here but there's so many things you've said that i can learn from and anyone watching and listening to you as well

47:40John Reynolds:so thank you no no my pleasure i get a chance to come and um to be me connect uh and it it just yeah it's just such a different feeling to walking away going how did i do it's like it doesn't

47:54Jonny Wilkinson:matter i just was well you've made me super happy i really appreciate it johnny awesome

48:00John Reynolds:Bye-bye.

48:30John Reynolds:Rinse. It's time to be great.