If you’ve had a crucible experience, you are going to have to persevere through feelings of loss and fear, as well as additional setbacks, as you chart your course to a life of significance. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax shares stories from his family history (his great-great grandfather John Fairfax) and world history (Winston Churchill), while also discussing his own efforts to claw his way back emotionally and practically after losing $2.25 billion — and the company itself — in a failed takeover of the family media dynasty he inherited. Perseverance is so critical to the stories of these men — and every man or woman who seeks to bounce back from a crucible experience — that it should be considered a gift that flows from our most challenging circumstances. “In our lowest moments,” Warwick tells co-host Gary Schneeberger, we find strength and courage and perseverance we never knew we had.”
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Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everyone to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, your co-host of the podcast and the Communications Director of Crucible leadership and you have clicked play. You have subscribed to, you have loaded, uploaded. You are listening to a podcast that helps people live and lead with significance. That’s the goal of Beyond the Crucible, to help you live and lead with significance, and we do that through the prism of crucible experiences. Those moments in life, we all recognize them. We may not call them crucible experiences when we have gone through them, but we recognize them as painful failures and setbacks that can feel like the world has changed. The course of the river of your life has been altered.
Gary S:
The trajectory of where you’re headed has shifted. They are painful experiences, but they’re not the end of your story. They are in many cases, the beginning of your story, if you do what we encourage you to do on this podcast, which is to learn the lessons of those crucible experiences, to apply those lessons, to craft a vision, to make that vision a reality, and to live a life that’s pointed to a life of significance. That’s what we talk about here at Beyond the Crucible. With us as always, is the architect, the author of Crucible Leadership, and the host of Beyond the Crucible, Warwick Fairfax.
Warwick F:
Hey, Gary, great to be here.
Gary S:
Warwick, we’ve got an indispensable subject I think we’re talking about today, and that is perseverance. One of the things, before we really get into talking about how perseverance works in our lives and how specifically it applies to leadership and Crucible Leadership, is that it seems that crucibles are the soil from which perseverance can grow. In other words, it’s really hard to envision a circumstance where you can move beyond your crucible, without having a measure of perseverance in your life. Is that a fair statement?
Warwick F:
Yes, Gary, absolutely. Many of us will go through a crucible of one description another it could be a business failure, getting fired, health challenge, loss of a loved one, and it’s not easy to come back from devastating setbacks. But without perseverance, it’s really tough to come back, and we’ll talk more about this as our discussion continues. It’s almost a choice to get out of bed or not. Do I this day, get out of bed and say, okay, I’m in a direst of circumstances, the lowest of lows, but I’m going to keep going. Perseverance is really the key to bouncing back from a crucible experience and certainly, the key to a fulfilling life or even to be a successful leader. I can’t think of any leader that I can think of that succeeded in their field without perseverance. You could pick business, athletics, the arts. It’s just tough. There’s setback after setback, disappointment after disappointment, but that sense of perseverance is the key to life and leadership and the key to bouncing back from crucibles.
Gary S:
It is true that it’s very hard to be a leader, to make your mark on society in whatever way that you choose to do it, without having some measure of perseverance. I do, as I always do when we do one of these episodes where it’s just the two of us talking about a principle of crucible leadership, I did a search for quotes about perseverance, like I do a search for quotes about character, and quotes about humility and about transparency and it returned, that search on Google returned 35,000 results. Perseverance is a topic that people talk about and that people who have achieved some level of significance slash success have had to muster in their lives. That’s why they talk about it.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Gary S:
You said something when we were talking about how we were going to go through this episode yesterday. You said something I thought was just really poetic, where you talked about the gift of a crucible, and that the fruit of that, and one of the fruits of the gift of a crucible is perseverance. Explain what you meant by that.
Warwick F:
Crucibles are never fun, but out of the ashes of your crucible experience can come a vision. It could be to help others that have, if you’d been through terrible circumstances, whether it’s bereavement, losing a loved one, or abuse, you can have the sense of you want to help other people and so out of the ashes, a crucible experience can come as a sense of perseverance, a sense of wanting to help others to make a difference. Sometimes in our lowest moments, we find strength and courage and perseverance that we never knew we had. It’s really is, somebody once said, one of our recent podcast guests, we learn the most during the low points rather than the high point. It doesn’t feel fun at the time. It feels agonizing, excruciating but years down the track we’ll never really say, gosh I’m so glad I went through it, but there are things we learned about ourselves and about who we are and what our deepest desires and passions about and just how much character and strength and perseverance we have. That can be the fruit of a crucible experience.
Gary S:
That gift can truly be knowing that we can persevere. Knowing that we can survive. We talk about crucible experiences, difficult things that occur in life. One of those 33,000 quotes that I did pull is from Dr. Martin Luther King jr, and I just thought it was just extraordinarily phrased when he said this, “If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” At its core, especially in relation to leadership and crucible leadership moving forward, keeping in motion, keeping pressing toward the vision and the goal. That’s really what perseverance looks like in the universe that we’re talking about here, isn’t it?
Warwick F:
It is. That’s a very good quote and that is so true. Part of it is getting up every morning. It’s what am I going to do positively to move forward? If you’re unemployed, okay what is it I can do to find a job? Where can I go? Places I can volunteer, employment agencies who do I know? Maybe if you’ve been through some bereavement or abuse, how can I turn this experience to help others? So It’s really getting up in the morning and saying, okay, what positive step can I take today? I may not have the end vision or the total clarity about where this is going, but what’s something positive I can do today? To use an over worn sports analogy, what could I do to move the ball a few yards down the field?
Warwick F:
The touchdown may be so far away you can’t even see it, but don’t get so focused on, okay, there’s these millions of things that I got to do, how am I going to do at all? It’s what one thing can I do today that’s a positive step to move forward? Really that’s probably the key to perseverance as we were discussing earlier. It’s a choice. It’s a choice to move forward. There are several things that’s a bigger a topic, but I think of forgiveness. You can be sitting in bed saying, I’m not going to get out of bed today and do anything positive because I’m just going to sit and be angry at those people that hurt me or did me in or I’m going to be angry at myself.
Warwick F:
If that’s holding you back, which anger and resentment and lack of forgiveness can, it’s like a millstone around our neck. I don’t have to agree with things. I don’t have to say what happened was right, but I’m going to put that aside and I’m going to move forward because if it’s not serving me time to toss those negative emotions away. What positive thing can I do today? It’s really a choice to say, okay, no matter what’s happened in the past, how can I move forward? What one positive thing can I do today? That is the key because over days, weeks, months and years those series of positive things will almost inevitably lead to a very positive direction. If you keep doing that or at least it’s certainly better than the alternative.
Gary S:
That’s very wise to point out that no matter what happened in the past, you have to move on, move forward as that quote from Martin Luther King indicated. But there’s also sometimes no matter what may happen in the future, sometimes what can lead us to not want to get out of bed figuratively or literally is that we fear something that’s coming up. Fear of something that’s coming down the road. We fear where things might lead. It’s interesting that perseverance can be tied to what has come before and what may be coming up ahead that might be fearful to us. What would be your advice, Warwick? There are people listening right now and they’re in an emotional place where they don’t know if they have perseverance, they don’t know if they can muster perseverance. I know you said get up, put one foot in front of the other, but from an emotional perspective, how can listeners orient themselves to take that step? To put that left foot in front of the right foot and get moving.
Warwick F:
I think of two words and that’s hope and fear. Follow hope, not fear. I think of Margie Warrell who had on the podcast a bit ago and she is all about helping women and men be brave and toss away fear. She uses this phrase for the sake of what? We cannot let fear control us. It’s often fear is an emotion. Sometimes it can be helpful, there’s primitive men and women we’re out in the wilderness and bears coming, okay it’s understandable to be fearful. Let’s run. I get that.
Gary S:
Survival instinct.
Warwick F:
There’s a reason for it but don’t let the fear of the unknown or what if I fail again? What if I’m humiliated again? What if, what if, what if? It’s like, okay, that could happen, but you’ve got to be willing to take a risk. That’s a key part of perseverance is be willing to take a risk and that’s where, again, I love the phrase that Margie uses for the sake of what? It helps to have a vision. It maybe you’re a cancer survivor or again, an abuse survivor, your notion, maybe I want to help other people who are in my situation. That’s for the sake of what? I know I’m fearful. I know I might be rejected but this is too important. This is more than just me. I want to help other people.
Warwick F:
It’s that sense of hope, it’s that sense of cause it’s the vision. Maybe you’ve got a business that you have an idea of that you think will really help people. I’m a big believer with significance for the sake of being something that is more than just focused on yourself because to me to overcome fear and inertia when it’s for the sake of other people that to me is a higher wattage lamp or it has greater strength to pull you out of a funk and out of a, it’s all hopeless. Fear is a natural part of being human but I think it’s for the sense of hope, for the sake of what that says, okay, I know I’m fearful, I get that but I choose not to let my fears define me.
Warwick F:
Yes, I’ll be willing to fail. Maybe I’ll be mocked and rejected but you know what? This is too important, it’s not about me. It’s about helping others. That’s probably the key to conquering fear, which is the biggest reason you just don’t want to get out of bed. It’s like I was hurt badly last time. I’m never going to emerge again because I don’t want to get hurt. That’s understandable but you can’t let fear control your life. That leads to despondency and I think Margie Warrell also uses this phrase from Thoreau, which I love, which is we don’t want to lead lives of quiet desperation. You don’t want to be that man or that woman. You don’t want to be that person. The way to avoid living a life of quiet desperation is one foot in front of the other, get out of bed and just what is it that’s going to motivate you to take that next step? How can helping people really be part of that? That’s the key. It’s hope of a fear.
Gary S:
It sounds like as you described that, and I hope you hear this listeners, it sounds like the fuel, the same fuel that fuels being able to have perseverance, the same fuel of perseverance is the fuel of significance. Those things, a vision, a vision will lead you to a life of significance. If you know what it is you want to accomplish to help others, that will drive you. But that same vision will lead you to perseverance and lead you to bounce off walls that want to block you and find ways around walls that want to block you.
Warwick F:
Exactly. You have to have fuel and the fuel is vision, significance. That’s what helps you with perseverance. We’ll talk later about some examples from history and my family, in fact, my own life but that’s pretty much the key is got to be something that’s motivating you. Maybe you kind of destitute and your family is sort of in and out of halfway homes for the sake of what could be, I want my family to have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs and that’s motivating, that’s a powerful vision too. It’s for the sake of what, what is your why that really can fuel you to be able to move forward.
Gary S:
Okay. You’ve just jumped ahead and what I was going to do by saying that it’s so fascinating. We did not talk about this listeners, we did not use the phrase, what is your why prior to this recording, but I pulled for the end of this podcast, I’m going to list three things that come from top business magazines about how you can find perseverance, how you can live in and pursue perseverance. One of the things, I’m going to give one of them away now, I’ll give two more at the end but one of the three things I was going to talk about, Success Magazine pointed out that fuel for perseverance is to remember your why. What is your vision? From a leadership perspective, a business perspective, that’s what Success Magazine in addition to you Warwick say is extremely important. We have two more coming towards the end. You mentioned Warwick, no go ahead.
Warwick F:
Just on that one real briefly. Especially in the world of crucible leadership, you’ve gone through a crucible, a devastating failure, a personal setback. The why can be rooted in, as I mentioned before, the ashes of that crucible experience. Whether it’s business failure or getting fired, a divorce, abused, loss of a loved one, it can be, okay, how can I use my pain to help others? When you’ve gone through certain experiences, it gives you a unique empathy for others. That’s really the key I find is often the why will come out of the ashes of the crucible. Doesn’t have to, but it often does.
Gary S:
That goes back listener and Warwick, that goes back to what I said at the top of the episode. That word that you said about the gift of the crucible, the gift of the crucible is the why for what it is that you’re going to pursue. You mentioned Warwick that we’re going to start talking about some examples and I’d like to have you, if you would start with a family example, your great, great grandfather, John Fairfax, because I have here, if you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see it. I have here the book that you quote often on the life of John Fairfax. After you set up the story, Warwick about how perseverance played such a big role in John Fairfax’s founding of the media company that you were heir to, I want to read a couple of paragraphs from the book that really hammer home that really elucidate the perseverance that he and his wife Sarah had. Share with listeners a little bit about your great, great grandfather and his truly, truly perseverant life.
Warwick F:
John Fairfax came out from Australia in the late 1830s. He had started a newspaper in Leamington in England and he was sued by a local lawyer twice. The judge ruled in John Fairfax’s favor that the story was accurate, that it was not liable, but the court costs ended up bankrupted him even though he was justified in the court. He comes out to Australia with his young family with almost nothing, but that really didn’t discourage him. He had this vision of a paper that would in this young colony of Australia, and just a couple of things that he said to me it’s interesting. This dream kind of wouldn’t die. He was the local librarian in what’s now the State Library of New South Wales. He and the guy Charles Kemp, who would become the editor of the paper while John ran the business side they would sit long into the night and they had this vision of this newspaper, which would be the Sydney Morning Herald.
Warwick F:
They called it the plan because they wanted to buy it and run it collectively. This newspaper would be without fear to express opinion without their approach of self-interest. Sworn to no master and free from the narrow interest of sectarianism. It was a vision of how it would serve people without being beholden to one party or another. He talked about doing their utmost for the improvement and growth of the colony. John would handle the business side. His partner Charles Kemp would handle the journalistic side and together they collaborate on the editorial. They would fight for just causes and expose abuses. It was very idealistic, a very strong vision and it carried them through. One other brief thing almost within the same year that they bought the paper Sydney Morning Herald in 1841 Australia went through a big recession and the company was on a knife edge.
Warwick F:
They had to rally their employees and say, look, we’re going to have to cut wages back a bit. We’re going to cut back what we receive as partners, but I promise you’ll have a job and we’ll do our best to pay you back. It wasn’t easy, but what got them through that first crisis after they bought the paper, it was their belief in the vision that this was too important. They were going to do their level best to keep going. The vision really enabled John to get over his past disappointment in England, prior bankruptcy of his paper, the unjust treatment of that lawyer and just ability to get through the 1841 recession.
Gary S:
It also I’m going to read from this book the story of John Fairfax published in 1941 this was the hundredth year of Fairfax Media, the company that your great, great grandfather started. His vision also led him over the fear of what it was like moving from England to Australia. I want to read just a couple of paragraphs from this book because it’s so compelling about where perseverance comes from and how to live it. The book says this as they approached the coast, this is John and his wife Sarah. “John saw the stark forbidding barrenness of the land. He felt a terrible despondency and a concern for Sarah and her sick baby and the fear he felt for the future weighed upon him. He stood alone on the spray swept deck with his arms folded, bracing himself against the lurch of the ship as she pounded onwards and looked out at the sterile hope shattering strip of coastline that was the Southern border of his future homeland.”
Gary S:
“He thought of the responsibility, which was his of providing for a wife, a mother, and four children, and he thought of the 12 sovereigns, just 12 sovereigns which stood between them and starvation. He bowed his head and fear like ice stole over his heart better surely to have remained poor in Leamington than to starve in that sandy soulless wilderness.” Then this happens. “He felt a touch and a hand stole into his.”
Gary S:
“It was Sarah. She looked pale and ill and she staggered in her weakness as the ship plunged and shook”. This is a quote that I’ve seen you use before Warwick, but this is what Sarah John’s wife said to him, “Do not worry about me or the children. I will be brave and helpful and whatever God may send or may take away my love for you is the strongest thing I have in life and it will have no death. I do not worry about you. I know what you can do and it is much. I know your strength of purpose, your sound vigorous brain and your sense of honor. You are well armed John for any fray and you will win and I will win not only success but content and great happiness.” One of the aspects of perseverance for him was the support of his wife.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. It’s really quite remarkable as they were headed to Australia in the late 1830s it’s a four to six month voyage, they had young kids, one was very ill and sadly died soon after they made it to Sydney and she was not doing well, John was on the deck of this ship, they were looking as they were headed past West Australia, south, they looked at the barren wasteland and it just looked forbidding. It just looked like a terrible place. What are they doing? Yet she sensed it. She came up and just gave him this such love and unconditional support that having family and friends who are for us no matter what, that’s also one of the keys to perseverance.
Warwick F:
People that believe in you. There aren’t too many people that have achieved great things, men or women that don’t have a spouse, family or friends that were for them. There might be one or two, but it’s so much easier when you have people that believe in you that can keep you going just that one more step. He did in Sarah, a woman of great faith and she believed in him and believe in the vision that they were going to craft in this new colony of Australia.
Gary S:
That’s just one of the examples. You have some other examples from history of other, again, people that you have heard of and people that you haven’t heard of necessarily but there are people throughout history as we said at the outset to become a quote unquote great man or woman, a woman who’s left a mark on society of significance. You have had to exhibit persistence. True?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I think of another one when I think of great leaders in history who had perseverance. I think of Winston Churchill, he was somebody that he made mistakes. He tended to challenge leadership, which leadership doesn’t tend to like I’m afraid. Sometimes he was on the right side of history and sometimes not. But in the early thirties I think it was Stanley Baldwin was prime minister he challenged him maybe one too many times and he was back on the backbenches. In other words, he wasn’t in the Cabinet, he was in the wastelands so to speak of politics. The thirties are called wilderness years for Churchill. During that time from somewhere around about 33 on, Adolf Hitler started rising to power in Germany and Winston Churchill could see the danger, could see that if we don’t do something, things are going to get so much worse.
Warwick F:
He kept almost like a voice in the wilderness, like a Don Quixote saying, you got to watch this guy. They said, well, there’s old Winston. He was old even at the thirties, warmongering running around, shaking his fist at windmills. Just ignore him. It’s hard to ignore because he’s eloquent and bombastic, but let’s do our best it’ll all go away. Basically they were saying, let’s hide under the covers and maybe everything will just solve itself. But yet he never gave up. He kept speaking and trying to warn the nation, indeed the world about the dangers of Adolf Hitler but many didn’t listen. Gradually things started turning when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and it’s like, maybe Winston was right and then he invaded Poland, then in September 1939 World War II started and eventually the miraculous happened and he became prime minister and that’s where his perseverance came to the fore, some of the greatest speeches in the English speaking language occurred during those years.
Warwick F:
Just after he took power in May 1940, he gave this speech to parliament, which has these famous phrases, “I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” He said in the same speech, “Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be. For without victory, there is no survival.” At that point it was really, it was before the US got in the war in December 1941, it was in 1940 those were dark years. It felt like Britain and the Commonwealth against all of the might of Germany. Then a few months later in 1940 he gave this famous speech. He said, “We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans…”
Warwick F:
“We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the field and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.” That sense of belief that they would prevail when it didn’t look so good at the time the sense of perseverance and if you bring it back to, well how can we relate to this, but what was his why for the sake of what? Well, it was for the sake of the preservation of Britain as a free country and not being slaves to Nazi terror and the horrors of what the Nazi regime brought to the countries in Europe that they conquered. It was just this belief that we will find a way.
Warwick F:
Somehow they did. They found a way in the Battle of Britain to hold off the mighty Luftwaffe with the RAF. It was grim but that sense of perseverance being completely focused on the task at hand. He never let resentment or grudges hold him back. He just threw them off. He didn’t have time for that kind of stuff, and so he didn’t. He was totally focused on his goal, which is preserving his nation. That was a very compelling vision and he was able to inspire a nation like few others ever have. You heard Winston Churchill speak, it’s like you know what Winston thinks we’re going to do this. We’re going to find a way. We’ll find a way to survive. Just one more day, one more day of freedom in this particular case.
Gary S:
Now, I can imagine there are listeners right now who have just heard the story of John Fairfax, your great, great grandfather and Winston Churchill, two men who left pretty big legacies. Winston Churchill, as you pointed out, saved Britain, may have saved civilization in some sense as we know it. Your great, great grandfather created this media dynasty that lasted five generations and created deeper legacies of faith and character that are now in their sixth generation with your children and there may be people who hear that and go, my goodness, I can’t be a John Fairfax and I can’t be a Winston Churchill. I don’t know that I can do that. But that’s not the point. Perseverance leading to significance does not have to be that grand, does it?
Warwick F:
No. I can think of an example in my own life. As listeners will know from a prior podcast, after my $2.25 billion takeover failed and ultimately failed in late 1990 company went bankrupt. I felt responsible, certainly significantly responsible for the company falling out of family hands. It was a crushing blow. I tried to find work, but it’s hard when you got a resume that says out of work media mogul. I tried to persuade people look, I’m humble, I work hard. It’s like, right, forget it. I was desperate and it’s just sometimes the smallest, most insignificant steps, one of the things about perseverance is you’ve got to park your desire to not do things that are beneath you, you’ve got to be willing to do anything basically. One of the things I did is I went to some temp agency that found temporary positions for accountants and financial analysts.
Warwick F:
Well, a number of years before I’d worked on Wall Street and I knew I could do financial analysis and say, okay, great, well we have this little program that will test your understanding of spreadsheets on Excel. At the time I was actually pretty good. It was like, you scored well, you actually know how to do spreadsheets. I guess I do. I ended up having a temporary job at some sports company actually was a pretty big sports manufacturer. It just had an office in Maryland and I did some budgeting work and I seemed to do that okay. The same temp agency said, well, you’ve got good reviews from that employer. We’ve got another temporary position at a local aviation services company doing financial analysis. That temporary position at that company in Maryland turned into a permanent position where I worked for about six years.
Warwick F:
Then from there I went to coaching and moved on, but it was just taking one step. Okay. It feels a bit humiliating as a Harvard MBA to go to some temp agency that are looking for, paying in a minimal hourly wages for some financial analyst thing and I have a Harvard MBA. People in my class are working their way up to be vice president somewhere. But that was just one small step on the journey. I didn’t know where that was going to lead and that’s one of the other secrets of perseverance is I didn’t know that from this temp job at a sports company to an aviation services company to coaching, to writing a book on my experiences, leadership and now Crucible Leadership, I had no idea that was going to end up there.
Warwick F:
How could I possibly know? But just be willing to take that next step. It seemed logical at the time and don’t be too proud. If you feel like this is what you need to do, then do it. That’s a really small baby step to go to a temp agency and say, do you have anything for me? That’s not a big vision. It wasn’t really for me financial survival, it was more emotional survival. I have to do something to feel like I can contribute in some positive way using my skills and I’ve got to be able to get out of bed and do something constructive. That was a baby step. Just take a baby step. It doesn’t have to be saving Britain or a big newspaper from calamity. It can be just, what’s one thing I can do to help me and my family today?
Gary S:
That is an excellent place for us to drop the landing gear and begin to land the plane. I want to leave folks with one more quote I’ve found, which this one surprised me. This is from Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein said this, it’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. Your story makes me think of that Warwick, it took you a little while to find your vision to find your footing and move beyond that crucible experience but now you are living a thriving life of significance. You stayed with your problems longer. You worked at those very things that you’ve encouraged listeners to do. I promised that I was going to end us with persistence tips from top business magazines. Some takeaway for you, listener, as you’ve heard this discussion about perseverance, what are some practical steps you could take?
Gary S:
We’ve already touched on one to remember your why, what’s your vision? It doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be focused on helping others. That’s really what significance is found in helping others. If you’re stuck in a place and you feel like you can’t go on and you need to muster perseverance, remember your why Success Magazine suggests that one. Another one, and Warwick, you’ve exhibited this from the moment I met you. Forbes included this in their list of tips for having persistence in the wake of trials. Have a sense of humor. How important is a sense of humor when you’re talking about perseverance?
Warwick F:
It is. You’ve got to be willing to, I take life pretty seriously, but you got to be willing to laugh at yourself and your own foibles and it’s funny I do take life pretty seriously I have to confess, but you’ve got to be able to have a sense of humor in the process and really a sense of hope. Absolutely. I’m pondering this as Albert Einstein talked about, his work ethic, there’s a lot of things in life we can’t control, but we can choose to get out of bed we can choose to keep at it, to not give up, to keep finding a way. I like to think I’m as fearful as the next person. Maybe some people don’t have fear.
Warwick F:
Well, I’m a pretty fearful person. I have a vivid imagination about what can happen and what can go wrong. I’m a strategic planner. I get that, but it’s like, okay, I will not be conquered by fear. I will remember the why remember for the sake of what I’m doing it and have hope. That’s really the key and another one when we’re thinking about perseverance and significance is be open to things, opportunities that come our way. Be open to subtle shifts. One example that people know from the past, in about 12 years ago now, in 2008 the pastor of my church wanted me to give a message of what I’ve been through and somehow related to David who is a righteous person, falsely persecuted while that wasn’t me, I thought, okay, fine, I can give my story somehow even though I’m not a natural public speaker.
Warwick F:
Somehow that story provided hope as I was able to share what I went through and maybe some things that helped me get through it, that was okay. While I’m not necessarily a natural speaker, somehow my story connected. That’s what led to me working on a book on my experiences and ultimately to Crucible Leadership. When things happen in your life, pay attention and say, okay listen, this went well, why did it go well? What does that mean? Maybe I need to make a subtle shift in direction. Keep moving forward and be open to the subtle shifts that will maybe ultimately take you to your vision and to that life of significance. You may not see exactly where it’s all headed, but you sense, I think this is the good next step I’m sensing this is positive. Embrace hope, reject fear and listen for the subtle shifts that will take you to a life of significance.
Gary S:
Believe it or not, you did it again of the three things I was going to talk about, you mentioned the first one before I talked about it, I did get in the sense of humor idea from forest, but what you just said summarizes perfectly what Inc Magazine said about perseverance and that is to recall your past persistence. To recall the incidents in your past where perseverance has worked out. Where you’ve put one foot in front of the other and you just mentioned it Warwick, aviation services company and that led to you know, the speech to the church which led to the book which led to the Crucible Leadership. Those things become building blocks of perseverance that allow you to continue to pursue your vision toward a life of significance.
Warwick F:
One baby step of success gives you a bit of motivation to go the next step and it doesn’t have to be a big win. Just a little baby win or a little step, little positive step, okay, let’s keep going. That’s moving forward, reject fear, embrace hope and it’s for the sake of what? What’s the why? What’s the vision? What’s the life significance? Those are all keys to having perseverance.
Gary S:
That sound you heard listener was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign. Warwick is going to get the last word because that was a great place to land the plane. We want to thank you Warwick and I want to thank you for joining us on Beyond the Crucible and if you found this discussion insightful and helpful as you pursue your own life of significance, we have a favor to ask that will help us help more people like you who are seeking a way to move beyond their crucible experiences and to find the perseverance to do so. Here it is. Please subscribe to Beyond the Crucible on the app you’re listening to it on right now. If you do so, it will allow you to make sure you do not miss an episode and it will make it easier for others to find us, listen to us and share the podcast with their friends and coworkers.
Gary S:
If you’ve heard something on this podcast that you’d like to learn more about, we encourage you to visit us on the web at crucibleleadership.com. One of the things that you can do there is read Warwick’s blog, sign up for emails to receive Warwick’s regular blogs where he writes about the very subjects we talked about here today. You can also take a free short assessment that will help you discover where you are on the path, on the continuum to your life of significance. What is the areas that you can work on in your life as you’re moving from crucible to significance? Where are you at in that journey, and what are some resources that we can offer to help you along the way? Until next time, please remember that yes, crucible experiences are painful and difficult, but they’re not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning of a new story, a new chapter in your story that can be the most exciting and joyous one of your life because it’s a path and a chapter that leads to a life of significance.
Craig Perra admits he’s the last person you’d expect to be a life coach. He was a corporate lawyer on the C-Suite track when his sexual and drug addictions left him at rock bottom in his career and his marriage, bringing him so low he attempted suicide. Then a mentor who had walked a similar path helped him overcome his demons through structured behavioral change that allowed him to understand the underlying causes of his destructive ways, create new, healthy habits … and save his relationship with his wife. Perra talks with Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax about how life’s most painful moments can actually be gifts if they are harnessed to help us craft an intentional vision for moving forward with a purpose rooted in serving others. He’s helped clients in 27 countries reclaim hope and joy in their lives with his Mindful Habit system, which offers behavioral change insights anyone can apply to recover from crucibles of all stripes.
For more information on Craig Perra and the Mindful Habit System, visit www.mindfulhabit.com
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everyone to Beyond the Crucible, the podcast where we discuss crucible experiences, crucible moments, those things that are painful setbacks, can be tragedies, can be traumas, can be failures. And we talk about them for the reasons of not dwelling on them, not wallowing in them. But what we hope to have out of our conversations is to provide hope to the listener, provide insights to the listener on how you can come back from your own crucible moments, move beyond your crucibles, and then also action steps, what are some things you can do out of this conversation that you can then take with you to live your own life of significance. And with me, as always, is the founder of Crucible Leadership and the host of this broadcast, Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, we got a good conversation today.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Good to be here and great to have Craig with us.
Gary S:
And I’m not sure if I introduced myself. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the show, as well as the communications director for Crucible Leadership. That’s only so you know, listener, when Warwick or somebody says Gary, who he’s talking to. That’s me.
Gary S:
But more importantly is Craig who Warwick did indicate there. And I’m going to introduce Craig. And one of the things, listener, that we do that’s very exciting and interesting for us is we ask every guest we have on to provide us a biography. Craig did that. And throughout the conversation, please don’t think when I finish the last sentence of what Craig provided as his bio, that that’s the end of Craig story. And you’ll hear through the conversation with Warwick that it’s not. But I think what you’ll glean from this is kind of the character of Craig and where his heart lies in terms of his life of significance.
Gary S:
So, this is Craig Perra’s biography as he gave us. Adopted as an infant into a loving Catholic family. Mom and Dad tried their best. Mother was physically and verbally abusive. Dad worked his butt off from poverty to master’s degrees to being a famous regional sports coach. This instilled in me a drive for success. Never feeling good enough was a powerful motivation. I met my current wife and soulmate, Michelle, in college at UConn. What followed, lawyer, executive, fired two times. Liar, cheat, drug user, suicide attempt. That’s the snapshot of Craig’s life that will begin this discussion between the three of us. Warwick, take it away.
Warwick F:
Well, Craig, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it. You have a powerful story and love what you’re doing with mindfulness, which we’ll get to in a bit. But share a bit about your story and as that led in to your crucible experiences. Yeah, tell us a bit about Craig Perra.
Craig P:
Sure. Craig is born in failure. When I got asked to be on this podcast, Warwick and Gary, I was so excited because I’ve literally built a career, a life around colossal failures. And they were big. The last one was on the heels of a failure. I was back in Massachusetts where I used to live with my family about 12 years ago. I was assistant general counsel for $3 billion company. And anyone who’s done the corporate thing knows those are nice jobs. Lawyers really, really like them. They have their own pressures, but not the pressures of private practice. Had an amazing boss, and it was a great company. But I got fired. I got fired not because they caught me doing anything wrong.
Craig P:
I got fired because I wasn’t performing, plus I lied to my boss about something trivial. “Craig is that a coffee mug?” “No boss, that’s not the coffee mug.” “Are you sure that’s not a coffee mug? I’m looking at it. It looks like one, Craig.” He gave me 30 opportunities to answer a small trivial question and I’m literally, it wasn’t about the mug obviously, it was about did I do something. “No, I didn’t do that.” “Are you sure, I’m positive you did. Three people told me you did.” No, but I had gotten stuck in the lie. I just didn’t have the courage to say, yeah, I goofed. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that. That little small, trivial insignificant thing that would have been a normal learning opportunity for normal people.
Craig P:
I got fired from that job, become the comeback kid, I get a better job. I now am in charge of Esurance’s compliance department. I’m taking on a role and responsibility that I hadn’t before, national responsibility, leading a bigger team for the first time. And that was like literally jumping off a cliff. It was at that low point, I mean, I was so low, I tried to kill myself. 10 months after getting fired from the first job, I got fired from my second job. I was out of my mind. I was using drugs. There was a scene in one of the Christmas movies where Chevy Chase is intoxicated and he’s shoving the salmon in his Santa coat and he’s stumbling around drunk. I wasn’t that bad, but there was one time where I was clearly under the influence at work.
Craig P:
I had a long successful career, I didn’t get to that job where I would have, you know, if I continued to be successful, I would have been running the compliance department, chief compliance officer for a billion dollar a year company. And I hated my life, I hated the job. I did not get along with my boss. I didn’t see people around me that I wanted as mentors. I saw a lot of unhappy people and that realization that here I am in California, I’m stuck, there’s no way out. I stuck my face in a pile of bath salts, that’s that synthetic chemical you might have read about 15 years ago where people were losing their minds, now illegal, thank goodness. Worse than PCP and meth put together. I thought that would be a good idea. And so I got addicted to that chemical.
Craig P:
I did not kill myself, obviously, it was an unsuccessful attempt. More of a cry for help. But what that did is that forced me into getting help. And that’s when things turned around in a pretty significant way. So, I’ll stop there to see if you have any questions and then I could keep going regarding the comeback. But I wanted you to see this, I get fired and I’m screwed, what am I going to do. I’m a lawyer, I don’t have a license to practice in California. I’m out in California, I’m stuck. I tried to find another job, there wasn’t another employer that needed my skill set for 80 miles. I would have had to move again. I felt so trapped, I felt so trapped. I was so unhappy in so many aspects of my life.
Craig P:
I remember sitting in the car and pouring all the drugs out and just said, you know what, if this does it, fine. Clearly a cowardly move and one I’m glad didn’t work. But that was the low point.
Warwick F:
One of the things you’ve said, which really amazes me is on your website, you are so open about all the challenges that you’ve been through. It sort of blew my mind reading it, to be honest. It’s like, wow, you lay it all out there. One of the things you talk about as well as in just videos you’ve done is your relationship with your wife, I think somewhere around that time was in a pretty bad place. So talk a bit about because it’s getting fired and drug addiction, all is one thing, which is just horrendous. But then on top of all that, your relationship with your wife and just for a variety reasons, that was in a bit of a challenging space. Talk about that on top of everything else. It just felt like you were just hit with a tsunami of just different challenges.
Craig P:
And so, part of my coping strategy has always been as a man, doing what “guys do.” Having affairs, lying, cheating. I had rationalized clearly under the sign under the light of day deviant behavior, but I had rationalized that for so, so, so long. At the core was my heart. It wasn’t anything my wife did. It wasn’t anything that she could have done differently. You can’t give what you don’t have. And I hated myself and I wasn’t able to open myself up to connect with her as a husband should. I blamed her, and this is so common in my work. There’s so much resentment and projection onto the wife. The wife becomes mother, my wife had become my mother. She wasn’t trying to be my mother, she was trying to keep the ship rolling and dumping out the water. We have two beautiful, incredible children.
Craig P:
And she’s my best friend. We met in college, I’ll never forget. We met by the subway truck, the sandwich truck, the little portable truck where you get your Subway sandwiches. I joked and I saw her reflection off the BMT sandwich and she had this black leather jacket on. We were listening to the same music. And I literally said to myself, I’m going to marry this woman someday. And I was in no position at that time to get married, but I knew there was something special about her and we became best friends before we started dating. She is my soulmate, she is my best friend. I crapped all over that relationship. And it was so bad, her intention. Now, she did look down at me. She looked down at me, and she extended her hand, said, “Husband, you’re the father of my children, I want to help you. I don’t think we’re going to make it. I don’t think we’re going to make it but I want to help you.”
Craig P:
And it was that that act of kindness, that just showing of love moves me in a deep way. And it has been my inspiration since then is helping other men heal from the lies and betrayals and the secrets they’ve kept from their wives. We just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. We’ve never been happier. We do calls together for the wives that are in my program. And she said something two weeks ago that I’ll never forget. She said that she wouldn’t go back and change a thing. She would not change a thing. And the reason why she said she wouldn’t change a thing because while she didn’t like the pain, didn’t like the suffering, didn’t like the feelings of insecurity and not being good enough for her husband, it made her who she was.
Craig P:
And it’s because of those experiences that she was forced to grow in ways that she couldn’t imagine. And clearly, I was forced to grow in ways that I didn’t realize. But it also forced us to grow together because when I kind of woke up from that low point, like wait a minute, there’s got to be other options. There’s not one job. I had such blinders on. But yeah, we just celebrated 21 years and we’ve never been happier. I put that poor woman through hell.
Gary S:
I’m going to jump in here because you use the phrase low point a few times, Craig, both in relation to your experience professionally, personally, and in your marriage and how your wife felt. And one of the things that really intrigued me about some of the information that you sent to us, and it’s very interesting in light of what crucible leadership talks about and what Warwick has gone through himself and what he offers people through Crucible Leadership. But you said this, which really struck me, “Your lowest point is an incredible gift.” Warwick talks about it as I said at the top of the show, your crucible experiences can be not the end of your story, but the beginning of a new chapter in your story if you learn the lessons from them.
Gary S:
So, it’s extremely interesting, you hear Warwick tell his story, listeners have heard him tell his story. Very different practically, very different in detail from your story, Craig. Yet, the emotions and the perspective that comes out of that, from that low moment, can come healing, hope, the best moments of your life. It’s extraordinary how, and listeners, I want you to hear this too, your stories probably differ from Warwick’s and Craig’s both, but those emotions that you feel by digging in, by recognizing that your lowest point is an incredible gift, by recognizing that your crucible experience, if you learn from it and apply those lessons can lead you toward a life of significance is a truism.
Gary S:
How do you guys react to that knowing that your stories are so different, and yet the emotions behind them in the way that you crawled back from them, you clawed your way back from them are very similar?
Warwick F:
That is such a profound point that our lowest moments can be a gift. It’s not a, push pause for one second because I want to make sure that listeners understand what was the motivations that led you to that low point because by understanding the motivations, it then helps the listeners understand how you bounce back from that. What were the things, because you got this stuff on top of the surface, which was getting fired from a great job, drug addiction, cheating on your wife. Was a variety of different challenges. But typically, there’s something beneath that that causes the behavior. If we don’t understand the behavior, we can’t help stop that, turn the ship. So what was the underlying thoughts or motivations that led you to just that incredible low point that you went through?
Craig P:
Great question, Warwick. It was, I felt trapped. I felt trapped. I saw my life unfold. Now I’m peeking into the C suite, I’m now in the room. I’m now in the room, the C level executives. I’m not there yet, but if things go as planned, I am the Chief Compliance Officer for this billion dollar company. So much excitement, so much opportunity. I didn’t want that. I never wanted that. I remember back in college I want, mom, dad, I want to be a teacher. I want to be a teacher, I want to teach people. My dad was a teacher, became a very successful teacher administrator, big soccer complex named after my father. And no, you’re better than that, be a lawyer, be a lawyer. And I had the natural skill set to be a lawyer, and I loved it.
Craig P:
But I never felt like I was in charge of my destiny. I remember when we were putting together the specs of our new house together that my wife and I built in Massachusetts, I’ll never forget how resentful I was about the granite countertops. It’s like, this is what I’m working for? This is what I’m doing in my life? I was so unhappy. I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do. I was following that trajectory and I was so, so unhappy. I wasn’t fulfilled. I felt trapped, Warwick, that’s what it was.
Warwick F:
And it’s interesting, getting back to Gary’s question, that I can relate to. So it almost feels like you were living somebody else’s dream. Every parent likes to think that their kids will do better than they did. But better often for some people means more status, more money, more prestige. Better doesn’t have to be defined that way, but it sounds like for you, it’s like, hey, I was a teacher, you need to do better than that from his perspective. I think teacher is a wonderful profession but I get your dad’s perspective. Almost felt like you were being forced into a role you didn’t want to and you were medicating the pain in a variety of different ways, including marital cheating and drugs and what have you. Is that like a fair comment? It was almost like you were being forced into a role you didn’t want to be and you were medicating the frustration.
Craig P:
Yes, that’s exactly right. There were these different parts of me. There was the part of me that went to work, that enjoyed analyzing compliance related issues because it’s a fascinating field, it’s where the law and the business intersect, and I was very good at it. I had an executive business background, I had a legal background. It was perfect. It was perfect. That’s exactly what someone with my skill set should do. But I was miserable. I did not feel fulfilled. I didn’t like the job. Not the company, the company was a great company. And thousands of people have very successful careers there. But I felt I wasn’t me. And instead of finding me, I instead escaped from being me. And at various points in my life, I escaped from being me with drugs and prostitutes.
Craig P:
And those two things collided in a big ugly way 10 years ago, because now, not only was I trapped in a career, now I’m trapped in this job. I can’t go anyplace else because I looked online, there’s no other company that needed someone with my expertise, they were 80 miles away. I knew that I’d have to lose a big chunk of income and I lacked the courage to say, I am unhappy. I lacked the courage to say I am unhappy. That is the truth for so many of my clients, and I see it all the time. They lack the courage and the intestinal fortitude to say, hey, I’m on the wrong track, I need to get back to my center to do something that’s going to lift me up.
Craig P:
And for me, it took a rock bottom for that to happen. So that’s back to where Gary was talking about this being a gift. The thought of me being a life coach with my background is preposterous, it’s ridiculous. People laugh. People laughed when they heard it back then. Here we are eight years later with clients in 27 countries, a successful program, world famous client base. It took that low point to help me forge the path that was going to fulfill me and enrich me and inspire me.
Warwick F:
And I want to hear in a brief second about that inspiration. But as you share your story, it’s very different than mine, but yet there are similarities that a lot of our listeners would know growing up in a 150 year old, large family media business in Australia. The expectations are very clear, you will go into that, you will prepare yourself, and you will make the company even greater than it was before. You will do better than previous generations and you have no other options because why wouldn’t you want to be in a family media business that does great service to the community, don’t you care about your country, about your community. How could you not want to do that? So hence, Oxford, Wall Street, Harvard Business School, I wasn’t really that interested in business, to be honest. Still I’m not. I’m more of a reflective advisor.
Warwick F:
But I never thought to rebel because I loved my parents and how could I let my parents down. Not quite the nation, but how can I let people down. So, yeah, I was miserable and totally out of my depth. And it was, yeah, grim. So everybody deals with that in different ways. But that sounds eerily similar. So I guess, I mean, obviously, I have my own ways I try to claw myself back, but how did you claw your way back? You mentioned that failure can be a gift. How did you change your perspective to see it as a gift, to get your career back on track, your marriage back on track? How did you, because a lot of people listening to you are saying, that’s irrecoverable. You can’t recover from all those things. It’s kind of game over. How did you bounce back?
Craig P:
I found a mentor who had been through my struggles. I had done a lot of counseling, I had done a lot of therapy in my life. And that was valuable, that was valuable. But none of those people had walked in my shoes. And in fact, when push comes to shove, they probably had no idea beyond what they read about in their books what I was going through. I found somebody who, his name was George Collins. He is a therapist in Walnut Creek, California. He specializes in working with men struggling with compulsive sexual behavior. And that’s what mine was, and the drugs of course. He did it, he was happy. So then maybe I can be too.
Craig P:
And so, having a mentor, having a therapist, a counselor is critical. And as someone who provides those services, I acknowledge to clients how self-serving that statement is. And it is what it is, you know, and it is what it is. So that was very important to me.
Warwick F:
Okay. So being a mentor …
Craig P:
Having a mentor.
Warwick F:
That was a key. You mentioned there’s a sense of therapy almost in helping other people. I’ve certainly found that as I talk about failure and getting the odd letter from folks as I did the other day from a woman classmate at Harvard Business School. Sharing about some of her business challenges and feeling like, hey, there’s somebody else that’s been there, she felt like she wasn’t alone. It’s a different area. So, a mentor is helpful. So what was some of the other things that helped you get your life back on track? Your marriage, for instance? That’s a miracle in of itself. There are many marriages that wouldn’t survive.
Craig P:
And in fact, my wife was done. She was pretty clear on her intentions. She had been down this road before with me. Clearly, I wasn’t somebody who could be faithful. She said that she was going to stick around to help me get back on my feet because I was the sole provider. I was the guy who made the money to feed the family. And so, she was going to support me till I got back on my feet. And then she’d separate, then she’d end the marriage.
Craig P:
A lot of things happened at that low point, a lot of things happened to me at that low point. So I found a mentor. I also started to find purpose, purpose, like, wait, there’s something very liberating about being at that low point. In other words, there’s only up. Down was death. And I decided that I wasn’t going to do that, I’m a father, what are you thinking, man, snap out of it. There’s got to be another way besides that. I said to myself that as long as I am in the house, as long as I am in her presence, I’m going to do everything humanly possible to show her that I can be a kind, caring, compassionate, loving husband and save the relationship. And that’s what I did. And it wasn’t easy.
Craig P:
Clearly, I have intimacy issues, I have issues around connecting. I was sexually abused as a child, so sexual anorexia, which means it just doesn’t flow naturally when there’s love involved. Stranger, boom bada bing, easy peasy. But when there’s love and connection, that was a challenge for me. And we saw, we met each one of those challenges together and had an incredible time in the process. And there were no resources out there for the partners of someone like me.
Craig P:
And the only resources that were out there was either she’s codependent or she’s a co-addict. It was all framed around 12 steps, which is a treatment modality 85 years old invented for alcohol that’s now applied to other things. That didn’t resonate with me. It didn’t resonate with her. So she started blogging and just sharing her experience, sharing her story. Well, that took off. Then came the Anderson Cooper Show. Then came the Katie Couric show and then came Lifetime. Now I’m kind of cramming a whole bunch of things together. But together, we just had so much joy helping people. And that’s how it all started, that’s how it all started.
Warwick F:
One of the things I think you’ve said, and correct me if I’m wrong, is you’re at a low point, marriage, business, all sorts of things going on. But you made a decision of the will, I’m not going to abandon my kids. Suicide is not an option. I am going to resurrect this marriage. I’m going to do whatever it takes to deal with these very difficult issues. Maybe 12 step programs are great programs, maybe didn’t quite fit your situation. There’s no one size fits all. But you and your wife were determined. And she was obviously incredibly courageous too that you just felt like we were going to make a decision of the will to get through this, to get your career, life, marriage on track. Does that feel right that you made a decision?
Craig P:
Yes.
Warwick F:
And many people would say, that’s a silly decision because there’s no hope, but even where you didn’t feel like much hope, you made a decision of the will. Was that a key turning point for you?
Craig P:
Key turning point, key turning point. And as ridiculous as it sounded, in the moment, you’ve got to imagine the dinner tape. So my wife and I just had been anonymously helping people. Responding to comments on a blog, just little, very basic stuff. But it was growing, and there was momentum. And I saw a void that I could fill. I used to, one of the things I got trained in was how to build curriculum. I saw that the treatment modality that most people were using didn’t address habits, didn’t incorporate mindfulness, didn’t really have a sense of purpose. Didn’t specifically create healthy in that area. And I said, you know what, I can build a course, I can build a better program that’s going to move the right guy further faster. That is what drove me.
Craig P:
But there was a time, I’ll never forget this time, we’re sitting there at dinner with her parents, my wife’s parents. They know everything, they know rock bottom, they know that I had done it again, I’d gotten fired again. And I remember looking over at my father-in-law to tell him that his daughter and I decided to be life coaches. And you could see the look on his face, like what are you thinking? He had 50 questions. Now we had answers for all those 50 questions. He’s a business-minded man so we knew, we were like, we’re going to meet with an investor. We were prepared for those questions. But it was in making the decision together and then realizing that we had something special, there was a hole that we could fill, and that hole was massive. And that really inspired us to keep pushing and keep chugging along to bring us where we are today, which is, we’re just getting warmed up today.
Warwick F:
I want to talk about mindfulness but I just want to recap for the listeners a couple key takeaways that I’m hearing so far. One is you made a decision of the will that these challenges, business and marital, were not going to define you. And the second was just this sense of purpose. I’m sensing you saying the healing power of purpose, which I have a feeling might be part of mindfulness. Talk about the healing power of purpose and how that plays into the whole mindfulness program, which sounds amazing. So talk about purpose and mindfulness.
Craig P:
The whole thing is mindfulness. Some of it is mindfulness in disguise. When I talk about habits, other parts of my program, I’m explicit when I’m talking about traditional mindfulness. But one of the things that I’ve learned about human beings is that we are needs-seeking organisms. Everything we do, from what we say to what we do is a conditioned response to get needs met. If, if, if, if, you can align that need with what you’re great at and what you love to do, well, life is going to be a heck of a lot easier for you because as we all know, life is hard enough as it is to be doing something that you hate, where you don’t feel fulfilled, where you’re never feeling good enough.
Craig P:
And there’s something very mindful, which means, like, wait, what is it that I want to do that’s going to contribute value to the world, and how am I going to use that to inspire other people? Really, I think, as you said, it’s a mindful principle because it’s being mindful about what drives you, what feeds you, what inspires you. So that journey from rock bottom forced me to answer all those questions because I was not going to make that mistake again.
Craig P:
And so, that’s where the mindfulness comes in. It’s mindful around who I am, what do I love to do, how am I going to serve, and what feeds me, the Native American story of feeding the right wolf is a great inspiration to me. And it’s an old story, but these old tales have an awful lot of science wrapped up in them and understanding, how you’re going to feed that right wolf inside you and me helping clients get there, and of course, me finding my own sense of purpose. It’s like mindfulness at its core in a sense of how are you going to feed that part of you that needs significance, that needs loving connection, that needs community? So yeah, I hope I answered your question.
Warwick F:
Yeah, yeah. No, you did. I’d love to hear, personally as I’m sure the listeners would, what meeting those needs meant for you. But in addition to purpose, we all have needs, but trying to meet those needs in a constructive way that fits in with your innate gifting, passions and talents to accomplish, and we use this term a lot, a life of significance, a life of helping others, it feels like that was the key to mindfulness for you is meeting those needs in a positive way that’s in line with what you love to do in a constructive way. That feels like that was key. So what does it look like for you? You’re wired a very specific way, as we all are. How did you meet those needs in a constructive way in a way that helped you live a life of significance?
Craig P:
So it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s Speech called The Drum Major Instinct had a massive impact on me. Of all the things that I listened to, there was something about him recognizing that we all have this drum major in us. And the drum major is the guy at the front of the parade with the shiny outfit waving the baton. To some degree, maybe we don’t want to be him, but we want that attention and we want that significance. And there was something about that that I had gone the eastern way, which is to not desire and I didn’t want anything and I took jobs that wasn’t very fulfilling because I thought I was being mindful, but I wasn’t. I was still unhappy, I was still seeking. And it was literally that alignment of me realizing that if I have this need to be significant, to get positive attention, then I’m going to do it in the service of others.
Craig P:
And it was like in that moment, where like, I have the skill set, I have the aptitude, I have the writing skills, I’ve got the personality. I just saw that all these things were in perfect alignment and that’s how I learned that I had to feed the right wolf, and that’s when things changed for me in a dramatic way. I recognized that I had these needs, it didn’t make me a weak person because I want to be important and want to be significant. But if I am going to be an important significant, do it in the service of others and be the biggest star in the world. But if you’re helping other people, rock on.
Warwick F:
So when you said the right wolf, to summarize it in like a sentence or two, what does the right wolf look like for Craig Perra? When Craig Perra is being who Craig Perra needs to be kind of in service of others, what does it look like?
Craig P:
He is driving results where other people haven’t. My niche, Warwick and Gary, I’m in the sex and porn addiction. field. And so, my clients don’t share on Facebook that they work with me. If they did, I’d be on Oprah, I’d be on Ellen because I have worked with titans of industry, professional athletes, professional, Hollywood icons. There’s a list that goes on and on. Hey, can one of your guys just put on Facebook how life-changing this program was. But when my wolf is being fed, I’m taking what I’ve learned, and I’m helping other people change their lives and driving results quicker than they were able to get someplace else, better and bigger than they were able to get someplace else because most of my clients come to me on the heels of inpatient stays, years and years and years of therapy. So that’s when I’m on fire when I’m driving those results, and that’s what feeds me.
Gary S:
As we say on Beyond the Crucible, it’s not time to land the plane yet, but the captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. And one thing that we want to make sure that we get to is for listeners who are hearing what you’re saying, Craig, and who believe that you may be able to help them in some way, how can folks engage with the Mindful Habit and with you?
Craig P:
Sure. Absolutely. Thank you, Gary. First is I have a podcast available on all major platforms called Sex, Afflictions and Porn Addiction. So, a whole bunch of great episodes there where I speak my heart and my truth, and some great interviews as well. My website is www.themindfulhabit.com. There’s some free training there, there’s ways to contact me, there’s a phone number. I’ve got a receptionist who’s ready for your call. So yeah, go to the website and reach out if you are struggling and you need help.
Warwick F:
One question I have is obviously, you mentioned, you have a particular focus on people with sexual addictions, that kind of thing. But I have a feeling this mindfulness concept of living a life on purpose, feeding the right wolf, kind of being who you were designed to be helping others, that that could help people with other addictions, even other challenges. Maybe they got fired and they feel worthless. They’re in the wrong slot or round peg in a square hole. So I know you have a particular focus, but do you feel like that your whole mindfulness concept can help a broader group of people too?
Craig P:
Yes. And so what I’ve done is I’ve taken certain aspects of mindfulness and made them very practical, being mindful of your triggers, of your thoughts. And quite frankly, for every addiction, you know what I think the real addiction is, the addiction is to our thoughts, those repeating thoughts over and over and over again. So, I’ve got a five year plan. I talked about that, all these people say how great I am. Warwick, you’re absolutely right.
Craig P:
My next product is a general addiction addicted to your thoughts product. We’re moving from my narrow, safe, secure place of sex and porn addiction into mainstream, and that’s happening in 2020. We’re super, super excited about that. And that’s I think going to open up just people to say, oh yeah, check this guy out. Now you can’t do that because if you refer someone to me, a friend, the friend is going to say, wait a minute, how do you know about him even if the principle is deep and profound. So yeah, we’ve got a five year plan and we’re taking over and it’s going to be really exciting to see where this goes.
Gary S:
And it could lead to more people sharing on social media that they’re working with because you’ll be expanded and people will know exactly what they’re doing.
Craig P:
Exactly, exactly. That’s right. I mean, if I, I can’t, but if I did share my client list or if they shared that they worked with me, my life would be so dramatically different. Guys, it really is crazy, crazy, crazy. You’d be like, oh my god, wow. And what I’ve done is I created a system, it’s called the Mindful Habit System, and it goes back to my corporate days, which is, when I’ve got to teach a compliance item, I need a desired outcome, and I need learning objectives that are going to support that desired outcome. Those were things that were missing in my therapy. And those are things that my executive clients love that give them a framework, give them a structure, and they’re off to the races. And so, I built this system that’s centered around mindfulness and habits. I see them as these two opposites almost. And teaching people to be mindful of their habits has led to significant life change. So, we really got some fun things in store for sure.
Warwick F:
If we have to sum this all up, somebody might be listening right now, they’re at a low point, could be sexual porn addiction, addictions in general, or it could be just depressed life has just not turned out the way they want to, maybe they’re even thinking of suicide. Why should somebody at their lowest point see that as a gift, and as importantly, why should they have hope? Why should there be hope at your lowest point?
Craig P:
Think of the scene in the movie, I’m 49 so I remember the Rocky movie, Rocky is the boxer, the American boxer. And anybody who’s seen that movie remembers that scene in the movie, where he’s down, he’s down, he’s down, he’s been beaten again, he hasn’t blocked the punches, he’s getting older. And then there’s this step, this conscious choice to get up, and there’s that little shred of hope that at least that there’s something that’s better than this. And so I tell people, you are going to look back on this low point with a sense of pride, with a sense of learning and reverence, where this low point where you’re so out of alignment with who you think you are and who you want to be, that’s your gift. This is your body telling you that things are off and this is your inspiration and your motivation to get them back on. And that journey is incredible.
Gary S:
To continue the Rocky metaphor, I think I just heard the bell ringing. I think our bout, our round is done. The plane’s going to land. Let me summarize for you, listeners, what we’ve learned here today. And the first thing is the last point that Craig just made that Warwick asked Craig about and that is, your lowest point can be a gift. Warwick talks about it a lot, Crucible Leadership talks about it a lot. From your Crucible Experiences can be birthed a change in trajectory of your life that will lead you to a better place, a new chapter. It can feel really bad when you’re in it, it can feel devastating when you’re in it. But if you learn the lessons of it, if you’re mindful of it, as Craig talks about, you can write a new chapter to a new story that leads to significance and purpose. That’s really takeaway number one.
Gary S:
I think the second takeaway from what we heard Craig talk about today, and it’s so encouraging to me in working with Crucible Leadership to see when Crucible Leadership concepts are mirrored in another person’s concepts whose story couldn’t be more different from Warwick’s, but the bounce back and the insights are the same. And that’s this, Craig said, it takes courage to say I’m on the wrong track for my life. It takes courage. And so, we encourage you listener, if you’re in that place where you feel like you’re on the wrong track, if you feel like your purpose is not being fulfilled, you can muster that courage and you can look to something different that more aligns with what Warwick talks about, your vision and values, and what Craig has talked about about habits and mindfulness.
Gary S:
And then the last truly practical step that you can take, listener, is this. Craig mentioned it, it turned his life around. Warwick’s talked about it too. Find yourself a mentor, and not just any mentor, but look for someone, as Craig put it, someone who has walked in your shoes. When that moment happened for him, after failed attempts in therapy, failed attempts in bouncing back from these addictions that plagued him, that changed everything. He found a mentor who had walked in his shoes, and that mentor led him to a place that allowed him to get to where he is now. Both Warwick and Craig are examples of people who have leveraged the power of a mentor who understands to turn their life around and to live a life of significance.
Gary S:
So, thank you listeners for spending time with us, and we have a couple of quick favors to ask of you. One, if you liked what you heard here today with Craig Perra and Warwick talking about their crucibles and about how Craig came out of his through developing some mindfulness and some habits that changed the way he thought and acted, if you enjoyed this conversation, if you’ve enjoyed previous conversations, right now, you’re listening to this podcast on an app. There’s a subscription button somewhere on that app, we would ask you, please, to subscribe to the app. Helps you because you’ll never miss an episode, helps us because it helps us get this message out, get our guests out to more and more people.
Gary S:
And then the last thing that we would ask you to do because we think it can help you along the journey that you’re on. Warwick’s been on a journey, Craig’s just described his journey. We have at crucibleleadership.com an assessment you can take. It’s like a three minute assessment, very short. But what you’ll get out of that is a read back, some feedback that will tell you where you are on your journey from your Crucible Experience to establishing that life of significance. Where are you at and where do you need to focus your efforts to make sure that you’re successful in getting yourself towards significance, as Craig has been, and as Warwick has been, and as so many of you have told us already, you’re on that road and you’re pursuing your passions, you’re pursuing your purpose, and you’re off on a run to your life of significance.
Gary S:
So, until we get together next time, thank you for listening. And remember, your crucible experience is painful, it can be devastating. It can feel like it’s the end of the world. You can feel like there is no hope. But as Craig pointed out here today, that low point is a gift. And if you lean into that gift, you learn the lessons of that gift, you will begin to write a chapter in your life that is far from the end of your story, but is a new story that will lead to purpose and significance.
A crucible is a cauldron where metals are thrown together and heated to very high temperatures. The metals combine to form an alloy, something that is different than it was before. A crucible experience is one that Typically, when we face an obstacle, especially a major obstacle, we tend to think, at least in the moment, this is the end. Especially if it is a serious health diagnosis, the loss of a loved one, or losing your job or the company you started. That is normal. Our first reaction is almost never, “Oh joy! An obstacle! I am sure this will be a great learning experience. I can’t wait to see what unfolds.”
Significant obstacles set you back. They are often crushing. If it is an adverse health diagnosis, you might be thinking of the shortness of life, or perhaps the pain of treatment and the effect it will have on those you love. If it is getting fired, you might be angry at those who fired you and/or mad at yourself for not doing better. Major obstacles can lead to a range of emotions: anger, depression, self-doubt, fear, immobilization. Just thinking about next steps can seem impossible. You can’t get your head and emotions out of the bottom of the dark valley you are in.
So how do you get beyond obstacles? Can you reframe obstacles as opportunities, and how do you do this?
Reflect
The first step is to reflect on what happened and why. In an adverse health diagnosis for instance, often it is not your fault; it can be because of genetics or what you feel is just bad luck. Perhaps you smoked many packs of cigarettes a day or led an unhealthy lifestyle. You must come to terms with what has happened. Forgive yourself if part of the situation was your fault; or try not be angry at the world or God, depending on how you view things.
If part of it is your fault and it affects other people, perhaps there are words of contrition that need to be said; and some relational healing may be needed.
What are the lessons you may need to learn from this situation? In a business setting, getting fired, or in my case losing a business, should make you want to consider what happened and why. Did you make some mistakes? Were you in the wrong position given your gifts? That would be yes to both of those questions for me.
Glenn Williams is a great example of someone who stopped and reflected after leaving a high profile leadership position in a major nonprofit. He could have instantly leapt into another corporate-type job. After listening to some good counsel, he wisely did not. For more on Glenn’s story, here is the link to our BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE podcast.
Filmmaker and actor Robert Krantz also did some deep reflection after twin crucibles – one professional, one personal – hit him hard in the early 2000s. After the movie he sunk all his money and talent into failed due to circumstances largely beyond his control, his wife received a health diagnosis that threatened the lives of their unborn triplet sons. Krantz took a long look at what was really important in his life, and dedicated himself to his family rather than his career until his sons were old enough … and he pursued his professional calling with renewed passion. For more on Robert’s story, here is the link to our BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE podcast.
Reframe
Probably the biggest step forward after reflecting and forgiving yourself or others for what happened, is to reframe how this obstacle can be used as an opportunity.
Reframing an obstacle as an opportunity might seem impossible, but it is possible. People who have gone through great pain and suffering, have endured huge setbacks, typically have in common the desire, indeed the drive, to use that setback to help others.
David Charbonnet, a Navy SEAL, used the crushing setback of a parachuting accident that ended up with him being paraplegic, to head a veterans clinic designed to give veterans as much mobility as possible after enduring physical trauma like he did. He transformed a tragic thing that happened to him into an opportunity to do wonderful things for others. For more on David’s story, here is the link to our BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE podcast.
Esther Fleece Allen used her setback of being abandoned and abused to become a writer and speaker dedicated to helping others overcome tragedy and find a new sense of purpose. What had felt like lost years growing up, she saw as learning years as she matured. For more on Esther’s story, here is the link to our BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE podcast.
When your life is dedicated to serving others, there is tremendous healing. Your life has a sense of purpose, a sense of significance. Getting your mind and emotions off your own problems and challenges and getting them focused on others and how to help them is the key. It also importantly brings purpose to your pain. You might not like what happened to you and wish it hadn’t happened, but using your pain to help others does help.
Cast a Vision
Finally, as you reflect on your desire to serve others, to use your pain for a purpose, might there be a vision here that needs to be explored? Talk to friends and family and advisers. Tell them you want to find a purpose to the pain and let them know some of the people you are trying to help. Together you might be able to take what you are already doing to help people to a whole other level; and indeed, a whole other level of giving purpose to your pain.
Jim Daly, president of the global family-help organization Focus on the Family, began life as a boy in desperate need of family help. He was abandoned by his alcoholic father, his mother died of cancer and his stepdad skipped out on the family the day of her funeral: all before Jim was 10. Jim says, “Oftentimes, our pain bears our passion” – and that’s just what it did for him as he embarked on his ministry career. For more on Jim’s story, here is the link to our BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE podcast.
Ed Kressy, at the lowest point of his life after drugs and substance abuse left him destitute and homeless, began helping people through community groups, the local police in San Francisco, and the FBI. Helping others was the key to his path back. You can hear Ed’s story in an upcoming BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE podcast.
Obstacles, especially devastating setbacks, can be crushing. They can feel impossible to overcome, and impossible to bounce back from. But if you reflect on what happened and why, consider how your pain can be for a purpose, and think how that can lead to a vision to serve others; you can indeed get past a crushing setback. You can see your obstacle as an opportunity to make a difference in the world by serving others.
Reflection
Why did your devastating setback happen and what can you learn from it?
How can your pain be used for a purpose, that in some way can help others?
What vision do you have that would use your pain to serve others?
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel and be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Jim Daly was abandoned by his alcoholic father at 5, lost his mother to cancer four years later and had no one to turn to but his four older siblings when their stepfather emptied the family home and left them to fend for themselves on the day they buried their Mom. Before he had turned 10, he was living with a dysfunctional foster family and thinking it was all just part of the “normal” life all kids lived. But buoyed by a hopeful spirit, he embraced the structure his teenage years brought at school and through sports — and gradually charted a course for the kind of life he once never dreamed possible. Today, fifteen years into his role as president of the international nonprofit Focus on the Family, he surprises the press by meeting with ideological opponents and continues to oversee innovative programs that in just the last year have helped 780,000 couples build stronger marriages and 950,000 moms and dads raise happier, more resilient children. Daly talks with Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax about why a life of significance has nothing to do with job titles and how all that childhood pain now fuels his ministry passions and accomplishments.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Gary S:
Hey, everybody, welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And our podcast is focused on crucible moments, those experiences in life that can be extraordinarily difficult, very painful, can change the trajectory of our lives. But we talk about them in the context of this podcast, not to camp out on them, not to dwell on them in a negative way, not to sort of wallow in them, but to use them as jumping off points to lead a life of significance. And with me, as always, is the architect of Crucible Leadership and the host of the show, Warwick Fairfax.
Warwick F:
Hey, Gary.
Gary S:
We got a good one today and I know this because I’m about to read his bio, but I know this because one thing not in his official bio is that I called him boss for about 10 years and I still call him friend. So that’s something that’s not in the official bio, but this is how I know it’s going to be a good show. So, our guest today is Jim Daly. Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family and host of its daily radio broadcast heard by more than 6.6 million listeners a week on more than 1000 radio stations across the US.
Gary S:
In March of 2019, Jim celebrated, hard to believe, his 30th anniversary with Focus on the Family. Jim’s personal journey from orphan to head of an international Christian organization dedicated to helping families thrive is we’ll discover a powerful story. Abandoned by his alcoholic father at age five, he lost his mother to cancer four years later, a wound deepened when his grieving stepfather emptied the family home and left Jim, the youngest of five children and his siblings to fend for themselves after their mother’s funeral. Several tough years followed, including time in foster care, before Jim became a Christian in high school and found meaning, purpose and a sense of belonging.
Gary S:
Jim was named president of Focus on the Family in 2005. Under his leadership, the organization has taken on a role nationally in encouraging and helping facilitate foster care adoptions, earning recognition from the White House and Congress for its efforts. The ministry also has reinvigorated its traditional focus on helping couples build strong marriages and raise healthy and resilient kids. I love this part, in just the last 12 months with the help of Focus on the Family, research indicates that 780,000 couples have built stronger marriages, and 950,000 moms and dads build stronger, healthier and more God-honoring families.
Gary S:
Jim has been married to his lovely wife, Jean, since 1986. They have two sons and reside in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Warwick, take it away.
Warwick F:
Wow. Well, Jim, it’s just such an honor to have you. I mean, Focus on the Family, as you know, I grew up in Australia and listened to that in Australia and Dr. Dobson, and years ago and the work that your organization does in helping families, especially in the world we live in, which is so many single parent families. It’s just tough out there. Your organization’s a beacon of light, just helping families and has done for decades. So, love to hear more about that just in a bit.
Warwick F:
With crucible leadership, we love hearing people’s stories of adversity. Clearly just with your bio, you grew up in some pretty difficult challenges. So, just talk a bit about, I know we heard in the bio, but how you grew up and just some of those pretty tough challenges. You had it about as rough as anybody growing up.
Jim D:
The great thing about being a child you don’t know any better. Fundamentally, you think everybody’s in the same boat. That’s kind of the attitude I had. I was sure that others had it worse off than I had it. And I don’t know where I found that little sliver of wisdom to figure that out. But at least I was eating and I was sleeping in a warm place. And it’s just so funny when you’re a kid, you think, okay, that’s good enough, I can handle the rest on my own. It was an amazing thing.
Jim D:
I think the other key thing that I’ve come to learn is how much resiliency is in a child’s heart. Being in a marriage and parenting organization, I think from a perspective of faith, which is where I come from, it’s a great design that God put that kind of resiliencies in children’s hearts because parents let kids down all the time for all variety of reasons. We don’t come with a perfect parenting approach. And I think, even like the love I had for my alcoholic father was deep even though he was a disappointment as a dad, but I still loved him, despite all those things. And all the promises he made but never kept.
Jim D:
So, for me, it was just part of my story, it was the short straw. It’s one of the hardest questions I get asked when I’m speaking is how did you get keep your joy as a child. Again, my faith is the only thing that explains that, that I believed that I was made for a purpose and that God was with me even in my valleys. I had a lot of them.
Warwick F:
So your father abandoned you first, it was at age five or?
Jim D:
I was the youngest of five kids. I was six years from my closest sibling, so I was the accident, the oops baby. They were all one year apart, so they ran kind of as a pack in high school, they were almost all in high school at the same time. And then I was probably starting kindergarten at that time. I was really distant from them in every way, emotionally, age, everything. And then when my mom got cancer, she died of colon cancer, they kind of kept it from me because nobody felt like a child can handle it. So, one piece of advice I have for people is if you’re going through difficulty as a parent, let your kids in on it in an age-appropriate way.
Jim D:
For me I had to go from having a normal dysfunctional family to all of a sudden learning one Saturday morning that my mom had died the night before. And it wasn’t expected, I wasn’t anticipating it, I couldn’t read the signs and put it all together. So, it was a jolt to me to learn that the person who was the most loving kind person in my life all of a sudden was gone. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to her.
Warwick F:
I understand that your stepfather left pretty soon after that.
Jim D:
Well, it was crazy. Hank, I called him Hank the Tank, he was a former military drill sergeant, and he fit the stereotype. He loved my mom, and as I got older, I had better appreciation for that than I did at the moment. He didn’t like the kids. He even called us baggage at one point. We knew that we were not something that he cared for but he loved my mom enough. And I think ironically, my mom needed that kind of support as she was dying. They were only married a year and a half. But it was the day of her funeral we came back, she accepted Christ the day before she died again as a spiritual element here. It was phenomenal. Her funeral was amazing. The clouds made like a staircase leading up into the sky and my oldest brother Mike, that was the beginning of a spiritual journey for him.
Jim D:
But we got back to the house after the funeral and everything was gone, all of our furniture, and it was our furniture, not Hank’s furniture. But he had sold it. We had little boxes in the living room of our stuff, my handful of toys and my clothes were in one box and the other sibling stuff was in a box of their own. And Hank came out of the back bedroom with his luggage packed and he had two big suitcases in each fist. And he just said, “you know, I can’t take the pressure of raising your kids so I’m gone.” And we were like, well, what do we do? And we went into foster care.
Warwick F:
And how old were you at the time when your step dad left?
Jim D:
I was nine years old, nine years old.
Warwick F:
At that point, obviously, you’ve lost both parents, a step father’s just walked out. It’s probably a dumb question, but where were you at that point just emotionally and everything? Were you like, the world is over and like, if there’s a God, how can this possibly happen? What’s the deal here?
Jim D:
I think it was a bunch of emotions. I mean, the one was abandonment, but I wasn’t mad at my mom. I knew she couldn’t control a disease. I was cognizant enough to understand that. But at the same time, I felt like everybody was walking out on me. In Hank’s case, literally. And so, I think it was a lot of despair and loneliness. That’s the best way I could describe it. Yet there was a normalcy to everything else. School, friends. It’s the strangest status to be in that moment. I remember the fourth grade class at Bixby Elementary, they sent me a handmade card, a big card with everybody’s note in there. We’re sorry, Jim, we hope you have a good life.
Jim D:
And then of course, the funeral was on a Saturday, and by Monday, I was moving into foster care 160 miles away. Little town called Morongo valley with this family that my brother knew one of their sons, Paul, and ironically, their last name, we got to find God’s sense of humor in all this, but it was the Real family. They were like the most unreal family. And I always say the precursor is they did provide for us. They gave us shelter, which was nice. If we were dysfunctional, they were very dysfunctional and that was unfortunate. They had four sons all in a state of disarray.
Warwick F:
So it sounds like it didn’t really get a whole lot better with foster care. You had a roof over your head but it wasn’t like you had this ideal picture perfect family.
Jim D:
I can remember walking, it was Mr. Todd, my fourth grade, I was ending my fourth grade year. My mom died in March, and so April, May. And I remember just walking out of his class. During instruction, he’d be up there talking about conjugating verbs or something, they were in a different place, educationally, they were covering different material than I was at Bixby Elementary. And I just remember feeling like I can’t do this, I’m sad, I’m lonely. And I would literally just walk out of his class and sit on a sand hill and cry at Morongo Elementary School. A little nurse would come out, Nurse Bandy, and she’d put her arm around me and say, “You’re going to be okay, Jimmy. Things are going to be okay.”
Jim D:
And I would think to myself as a nine year old boy, she doesn’t know what I’m walking back into. I get on that bus and I go back to the Real family, and hunker down and try to hide basically emotionally, physically because I just didn’t want to engage them. They were just not healthy people.
Jim D:
And so, I ended up living there for a year and then my bio dad found me. My biological father, my alcoholic father, he learned that my mom had died, he didn’t know what happened to us. He had been trying to track us down. It kind of took him that year to find us through social services. He came out to visit at the Reals. It was at about probably the one year point. And he came out and I kind of just clung to his leg like a kid does. As he walked around all day, I just held on to him. And at the end of the day, being at the Reals, he said, “Would you want to move back in with me?”
Jim D:
And it was kind of that, for those people who are watching that maybe grew up in an alcoholic home, it was kind of the Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde response, which was yeah, yes. And then quietly I was thinking, which dad am I going to get. But it had to be far better than this. And that’s that resiliency of a child’s heart I was talking about. I was all in. Dad, I don’t mind if you’re still drinking, I just got to get out of this place. I didn’t say it but it’s what I was thinking. I moved back in.
Warwick F:
With a few years with your dad or?
Jim D:
Actually only one year. Moved in for a year. We ended up having a family gathering because my sister closest to age in me was now turning 18 and she was going to be moving out. And the siblings didn’t think I should remain with my dad who was still struggling, not as bad, but there were episodes where he would binge drink and be passed out. I would step in to make sure everything got done. Yeah, at the end of that year, my family said, we need to get together, you’ve got to tell dad because he’s not going to understand it from us. I think I’m 11 years old at this point.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
Jim D:
I remember having the family conference and I remember looking at my dad, saying, “I don’t think I should live with you anymore.” I’m looking this way because that’s where he was sitting, at the moment, it was off to my 11 o’clock. And I remember looking at him and just saying, “Dad, I don’t think I should live with you.” And he looked at me and he said, “Well, why not?” And nobody had prepped me for that question which would have been very helpful as an 11 year old. But I just looked at him after a moment, which felt like eternity and I sat there going, how do I answer this, how do I answer this. And I’m afraid, I’m scared that I’m not going to answer correctly, I’m going to wound him. All those emotions are running through my heart.
Jim D:
And I just looked at him and this is what came to my mind, and I looked at him, I said, “Because of how you treated mom, I don’t think I can live with you by myself.” Imagine your 11 year old saying that. To his credit, he stood up, walked across the room to me, he hugged me, which was very much like my father. Some of the fondest memories were him just putting his hand through my hair and saying, I love you. And he came over and he hugged me. And he said, “I understand that I wasn’t a good husband, I’m not a good father.” And he walked out of the room out of the house, basically moved to Reno, Nevada. That was the last time I saw him. He ended up dying within about four months of exposure. He was drunk and went into an abandoned building in the winter and froze to death. And that was hard.
Warwick F:
That was just an amazing, it’s amazing you had the courage to say that. And he obviously heard that at least at some level. So that’s an incredibly tough upbringing. How did you get beyond that? Where you are now. If you looked at who you were there at 11, and somebody said, you know, he’s got a head up a massive nonprofit, you would have said, probably not, not seeing it. How did you get beyond such terrible circumstances?
Jim D:
The one thing that I always had, it was a strange thing, it was just this hope, I always had hope. You can knock me down but I always got up. There’s always tomorrow, there’s always something better around the corner. I just had that attitude in my heart. When I was that five year old and my dad left. Going back to that five year old state, I remember my dad saying to me, he wasn’t living with us, and this is something in my own parenting that I really remembered and tried never to do, which is to break a promise. And the reason was that when I was five, or seven, I was having my seventh birthday, and my dad, I had seen him briefly for a moment, he said, “Hey, I’m going to bring you a baseball mitt for your seventh birthday,” which was only about a week or two away.
Jim D:
I remember on that day, my birthday, a friend of mine was over at our house spending time with me. And I’d run to the curb every 15 minutes and look up and down the street looking for my dad. And he never came. I remember Ricky, my friend at the end of the day, it was probably like 6:37, the evening was there, the sun’s going down and it was our last trek to the curb to look for my dad. And I remember him just kind of hitting me gently in the shoulder saying, “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.” And he went home and I remember walking back into my house thinking that it’s not okay. And it was that great lesson for me with my own boys that are now 19 and 17, one thing I always tried to do is to make very few promises. And then when I had made a promise to always keep it because of the pain it caused me, my dad let me down, that I wasn’t worth it, that he couldn’t keep his word. Even if he didn’t bring the mitt, I could care less. I just wanted to see if he would show up on my birthday. Man, absolutely.
Jim D:
So then, what did I learn and where did I go from there? I moved in with my brother who was 19 married to his 16 year old girlfriend and that had its own challenges. I went to junior high and high school living with my brother, who at that time went through two wives. And we lived as bachelors for a period of time during that. I remember playing football, varsity football at the high school. I’d say, “I’m going to be out after the game tonight going to party.” He’d say, “Okay, that’s no problem.” I’d say, “what time you want me to come home?” He’d say, “two, three in the morning should work.” And I literally would walk out thinking I’ll try to stay out that late. It became a challenge for me, I could stay out till three in the morning. That’s the kind of parental leadership I had.
Warwick F:
Kind of non-existent. But I-
Jim D:
You know, go ahead.
Warwick F:
I was going to say, you said you had hope, but there must have been something that led you to follow a different path and your dad stepped out or even some of your siblings. What led you to have a path that was a bit more constructive in life than what you’d grown up with?
Jim D:
One of the things for me, structure became important and I found structure in school and in sports. So I played sports, I played football, basketball, baseball through the school year. I was good enough, I made the teams, I started, and it was all fun. It kept me really busy in every way. I think with my siblings, I don’t share this very often, but living with my brother, watching him make the choices that he made in a weird way, it opened a window of wisdom to me because I can remember, why would he go out with that woman? Can’t he see that she’s no good. And then they’d be married for eight, nine months and then divorced. And it upset me. I think in some ways, I had resentment toward him, that he didn’t have better decision making ability. But it also informed me in an indirect way about making better choices. And so I think that really helped me.
Jim D:
And then, when I was 15, I had a football coach, Paul Morrow, who just died last year, I was at his funeral, I spoke at his funeral because we got him his rookie year out of Cal State Long Beach. And he was gung ho, and he just really kind of the typical thing, when he saw me kind of lagging on the football field, he’d grab my face mask and kind of jerked me around. “If you’re going to lead this team then you must finish the wind sprints first.” Probably illegal today, but it got my attention. This was like, the first time in my life I had a man calling me out to be something more than a wounded boy.
Jim D:
And I responded, thankfully. I didn’t resent it. In fact, I loved it. And the harder he was on me to perform in the football sense, the more I responded. And then one day he said, “Hey, I’d like to go to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp at Point Loma. I’ll pay the money for you to go but we’re going down.” Probably about eight of us from that football team went, there’s probably 40 guys at this camp. And then we had a professional, actually a quarterback from San Diego Chargers came down and he said, “Have men let you down? Has your stepfather let you down?” I was like, oh my gosh, he’s talking to me. Thought he was going to say, Has Mr. Real let you down. But it was that close to my heart and it just compelled me and I became a Christian. And believe me, I wobbled. I was 15 but I still was doing things I shouldn’t do up until about 22, really. I had this battle going on in my heart up until 22.
Jim D:
And then at 22, ironically, I went to college, paid my way through college. I worked. I ended up going to the University of Waseda in Japan on overseas study program. And again, I think just all of that structure where I could excel and succeed, I leaned into that. So I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t fall in that direction, which I easily could have. I think from my perspective, it was God’s hand, it was just the Lord saying, it’s a better way, let me show you a better way. It’s the book of Proverbs.
Warwick F:
I think there are some really important insights, just the power of both positive role models in your coach but negative role models as listeners will know from my story growing up in a very wealthy family media business in Australia. It was founded by a strong believer but at the time I grew up, there was a lot of power of money, pride, arrogance, some other family members who were just sort of about the money and didn’t work that hard.
Warwick F:
And yeah, so for me, I can relate at one level as that sort of negative role model was like that’s not going to be me. I’m going to work hard, I’m not going to be some arrogant Fairfax, which in Sydney, meant a lot. Positive role models, I don’t know, I probably had some faith was certainly a cornerstone. But it is amazing, the power of a negative role model to say, I’m not going to be that person, I’m going to be different. You make a choice. Maybe it’s, obviously, from our perspective, it’s God’s hand putting people in your life. And for me, I came to faith in Christ at an evangelical Anglican Church at Oxford. He has his hand on each of us.
Warwick F:
So it sounds like you chose a different track. You didn’t go obviously from college right to Focus. You had some other things that you were doing. When you were in college, did you say gosh, I want to be a missionary or?
Jim D:
Are you kidding me? When I was in college it was how do I make money because money is what you live on. There was a point in college, this is one of the saddest, probably, I was a sophomore, I was at Cal State San Bernardino. I got in at UC San Diego and a few other schools in California, but I decided I wanted to be close to my brother. I mean, again, just that weird attachment probably like PTSD. I thought, okay, he might need my help or I might need his help so I’ll stay close. So I turned down UC San Diego, which would have been great. Went to Cal State San Bernardino. Probably told you more about my SAT score than I want to share.
Jim D:
When I was there as a sophomore, I remember there was one point I really wasn’t connected with my siblings, they were all struggling in their own way, they were living their own lives. They were older than me. Some were married, some were having children, some were struggling with other issues. But I just wasn’t connected, I wasn’t talking to them on the phone. They didn’t know what my situation was. I remember Christmas was coming my sophomore year at university. I had nowhere to go. I mean, literally, I had nowhere to go. So I had to go to the school and petition that I could live in the dorms for that three weeks that we were going to be out.
Jim D:
And I remember them saying, there’s not going to be any electricity on. You can stay there and we’ll make an exception, but you literally outside of the security team covering this 400 acre campus, you’re going to be the only person here. I was like, I’ll do it, I have no choice. That was a lonely experience being on this sprawling campus and going back to these seven or eight dorms with literally no human being there. I’m the only car in the parking lot. And with no electricity. I had a candle, a flashlight. I was very lonely. Again, it was this feelings as a nine year old boy losing my mom. That was kind of the theme through all those years was just this desperate loneliness. I’m so thankful to say today I don’t have that feeling any longer.
Gary S:
I know that we’re going to turn a little bit here in a bit and talk about the life of significance, Jim, that you’ve built. But I want the listeners to really focus on something extremely important about what we’ve heard, not even what we’ve been talking about. Jim has described some truly traumatic, painful experiences in his life. And have you heard listener, the joy in his voice, the joy in his heart? It is possible to come out on the other side. If you’re going through a crucible experience right now, remember this conversation because I know Jim, I know what he’s been through.
Gary S:
But just listening to him, he’s not making light of the situations that happened to him, but he’s got joy because he found opportunities, as he said, he looked for hope, he always had hope. He always tried to find hope in the most, what some people would see as hopeless situations. That is an important thing for listeners who are going through their own crucibles to remember. You can have joy, which isn’t circumstantial, that’s internal. You can have joy even in circumstances that are terribly, terribly difficult.
Jim D:
So true, so true. And I think that’s the core again, with my Christian faith, it informs me. There’s a wonderful verse in the Bible that says he is close to the brokenhearted and saves those crushed in spirit. In many ways, that’s my life verse. I think the differences, I have friends that have had only mountaintop experiences, kind of what you were describing, your family experience. Money brings a lot of ease to life. You can pay for things like education, you can go to the best colleges and all those things. If you have a golden touch and you’re capable, you can write bestselling books, you can start organizations, you can do a lot of good things.
Jim D:
But I’m telling you, your character is formed in the valley. And some of the weakest people that I’ve encountered are people that have never had valley experiences.
Warwick F:
And that’s something that’s hard for people understand, there is blessings in setback. My setback is very different. For me, it was the $2 billion takeover to try to resurrect the company in the image of the founder. And I was young, naive, idealistic, a person of faith. That ended, and so I was responsible for ending 150 year old family business. I still have a Wikipedia entry and it’s not particularly favorable. Young hot-headed kid who could have had it all, naive, made stupid decision and lost at all. If you google me, that’s what it is. You obviously don’t want to be defined by Google or Wikipedia, at least in my case. It gives you a sense of humility, it makes you less prone to judge other people when you’ve made your own.
Warwick F:
I didn’t deliberately try to hurt anybody but I just made a lot of dumb mistakes. Yeah, it does test your character. So, obviously, you live an incredible life of significance. So you’re in college, don’t really have a community. How did you get to a point where you feel like you are serving other people, serving a higher purpose, serving what God called you to? How did life change from college?
Jim D:
Again, I did a business degree. I thought the best thing I could do, one, to take care of myself and my hopefully future family is I have to do well, I have to earn money. So I went to work, I worked for International Paper, I worked in the paper industry for about seven years. And again, I found a great mentor in that environment too, Jeff Eaves who was a tremendous friend, much like coach Paul Morrow, he kind of picked up where Paul Morrow left off and kind of hewned me in a great way and develop even my moral principles. He was not a Christian but he was a very good guy.
Jim D:
I evolved into that, I ended up going on a plant tour. I was working out of college, I worked for a Christian organization briefly and I ended up on a plant tour at the International Paper. And I ended up accepting a job offer they made me about a week later. They called and said, “You impressed us on that plant tour and we’d like to hire you.” So I did. And so I went seven years in that industry. And then I got a call from a friend. And one of the things that’s so important, I think, again, from the Christian perspective, I was just willing to get up every day and do the best I could do, to work as hard as I could work that day. And then, I’m going to trust God for the rest.
Jim D:
I mean, this thing really unfolded in such a miraculous way. So I had a friend that I met at Campus Crusade, that organization I worked for briefly, Ron Wilson, who’s still here at Focus on the Family. And I called him because there was a gentleman that was a customer of mine and I wanted to introduce him to other Christians. I just felt that, his son worked at Campus Crusade, ironically. I was up in the Bay Area, but I wanted this man to be surrounded by people that knew God and I thought he had a heart for those things and was open.
Jim D:
So I ended up calling Ron. And at the end of the conversation, he said, “Have you ever thought about working in nonprofit again?” I said, “Not really because I want to eat.” That’s a good orphan kid response, I want to eat. I’ve made up for it, obviously. But the point of it is, he said, “There’s a position coming open at Focus on the Family. I’d love to call you. Should be two or three weeks.” I said, “Okay, give me a call, I’ll take a look at it.” And 10 months went by. And I remember just praying, saying, God, I don’t want to push a door open, and so I’m not going to call Ron back. If you want to make it happen, I’ll just sit patiently.
Jim D:
Well, these 10 months go by. Wednesday night, I go out to dinner with the plant manager at IP in San Francisco. And he says, “Hey, we’re going to give you a promotion.” I went, “Wow, that’s great.” And here’s what it is. And I thought to myself, this is why the other thing didn’t open up. I get home and my wife Jean says, “Hey, there’s a message on the machine, I didn’t really listen to it.” Well, that was Ron calling me back 10 months later on the very night I got the promotion offer, saying, “Hey, we got the position.” So I called Ron back the next day on Thursday. I flew down with Jean on Friday to interview with Dr. Dobson, everybody at Focus, Saturday, they made a job offer. And I think I turned down 150,000 for 32,000. I remember my dear, amazing wife, I said, “What do you think we should do?” And she said, “I trust whatever you’d like to do, I believe God will be with you.” Isn’t that awesome?
Warwick F:
What led you to make that choice because given the way you grew up with nothing, turning down that much money, it’s not like you didn’t understand the consequences.
Jim D:
Absolutely. But I think the thing is, to your point earlier, oftentimes, our pain bears our passion. And that’s the case for me. I thought of those kids that could be helped if I went to Focus on the Family. What an amazing thing as an orphan kid, I could maybe help other children not suffer the things that I suffered through divorce, through addiction, etc. And that was just always in the back of my mind, what little role could I play in this organization. And to your point earlier, little did I know, 30 years later after being here at Focus that I would become president at Focus on the Family. That’s still a bizarre.
Warwick F:
Well, it is. I don’t know. I mean, for me as I tell my story and try to help others, there is a little bit of a healing balm when you can use your pain to help others. Obviously, for me, it’s my faith in Christ and the fact that he loves me unconditionally was the cornerstone of my recovery and having a wife like you who loves me unconditionally. I have three kids, two boys and a girl. That’s all part of a wonderful plan. My dad was married three times, my mother twice, I was from the last marriage of each. I tell them, you have no idea how lucky you are. To be married 30 years and they have a wonderful mother. I mean, they’re just clueless as to how blessed. I’m sure you probably with your two boys. Maybe you don’t tell them that, maybe you do.
Jim D:
No, I do.
Warwick F:
You don’t realize there are alternatives. But did you feel like as you’re working with Focus that there was a healing element as you were able to use your pain to help others in some fashion?
Jim D:
I think there was. Did I recognize it? Probably not like I should have. I think, again, it’s funny, I’ve always had this mentality of waking up each day and just putting my left foot in front of my right foot. It’s just been one of those things. It’s kind of like, I can remember, to give you an area where I fell short. I remember 15, 16 years ago, my wife’s brother committed suicide. Life’s experiences come to the surface in these moments. I can remember my wife really struggling, obviously, with the fact that her brother had died. And much to my discredit, I mean, my orphan survivor mentality was to try to encourage her by saying, “You know what, we got to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got to get moving. We’ve got to overcome this.” I thought that was a positive thing to say.
Jim D:
And I remember she looked at me and said, “Jim, not all of us can do that. You can but I can’t. I’ve got to grieve.” Man, it put me right back on my heels because I, then I’m going, okay, have I grieved properly? And I don’t think I ever had really. I just got up every morning and started going. And I don’t think I ever stopped-
Warwick F:
That’s a challenge. You have to keep moving on but certainly one of the things I found is unless you can grieve and deal with some of the pain and the past and the anger and disappointment, yeah, it stops you from fully moving on. It’s a process. It takes a while.
Warwick F:
So, just this last couple minutes here. You’ve been president of Focus for quite a number of years now. Everybody thinks Dr. Dobson but you’ve been president-
Jim D:
15.
Warwick F:
So, it’s always challenging, just looking at it more broadly when you inherit the mantle from a beloved founder. Inevitably, every new leader wants to put their own stamp or they might feel called to move things in a different direction. Obviously, Focus is an organization that people know something about. From what I’ve read, I think you, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but you wanted to sort of maybe return it to its roots or refocus its mission. I don’t know how you would describe it. Does that make sense? I’m trying to think of the right diplomatic way to put that.
Jim D:
It comes down to a meeting I had with Dr. Dobson right toward the end of his time in 2010. He stepped out of February 2010. But I can remember probably around December, January, right before he stepped out, he asked me to do an audit on the broadcast just to take a measure of the content that we had done in the previous three years. I was kind of eager to do that because I thought I knew how it would turn out, and it turned out the direction I thought it would but even more intensely.
Jim D:
And what happened is we had only had one new marriage program recorded in that three year period. So we did re-airs but we weren’t recording new programming. For three years, only one new marriage program. We had about 26 parenting programs that were new in that three year period, but we had 128 policy programs. And that’s where his interests lied. It was in this idea, understandably, that if I work hard in that government area, we can get some things corrected. And he had said to me one day, “I’ve kind of said all I could say about marriage and parenting, and that’s why my energy is directed here.” So I get it. As a 70 something year old man, I think he was turning to the handles that he felt he could make some change.
Jim D:
Yet at the same time, our audience is 68% females, a lot of moms who were saying, how do I keep my marriage together? How do I raise children that honor God and can succeed? So I really wanted us to get back to those basics which now we’re at 80% programming on marriage and parenting, proud to say.
Warwick F:
And again, another lesson for leaders, I’m reminded of a book, Mission Drift, that you’re probably familiar with.
Jim D:
Exactly right.
Warwick F:
And it doesn’t mean to say other missions are wrong, but Focus was founded to help families. And there’s a huge need for that, you can get into other areas that can be more controversial. There’s absolutely a place for that. But the question is is that Focus’ role versus some other organization because if you start trying to do everything, you tend to do nothing particularly well. And that’s not a right or wrong thing, it’s just a matter of a choice. And you obviously, with your background, had a huge passion for the family, huge need. It shows a lot of courage to say, I respect and revere the founder, but with all due respect, I just feel like we need to focus on the family, so to speak, that is the name of the organization, right?
Jim D:
So true. It was so hard in that moment because Dr. Dobson like Chuck Colson or Billy Graham, he’s an iconic figure, beloved, and I got that. It’s interesting, when you’re doing a transition like that, I remember the first question I received and Gary was nearby as our VP of media at the time. And the first question, I think it was an AP reporter when the transition had been formally announced, we did the invocation. And then Dr. Dobson and I went to a media moment, and the reporter said, “How are you going to fill his shoes?” And I remember just thinking for a minute, and I just quickly responded, “I can’t, I can’t fill his shoes. I got to get my own pair of shoes.” And that’s true.
Jim D:
And I think for those who are taking over, particularly from a founder, you’re going to have some turbulence, because you cannot do it the same way. And anything you can convey to that founder to say, I love you, I respect you, but I can’t think like you always. Some things like dress code or some of the other things, we’re going to do it differently. And I remember one of the best questions I asked, I felt Dr. Dobson, I said, you know, he said, “Just stay true to the principles.” And I think wisely I said, “Well, in your mind, what’s a principle?” And that was the question because he even responded in the context of the dress code is principle. Everything in the orbit of Focus was principle. And it can’t be, being pro-life, being pro marriage, being pro family, those are the core principles.
Warwick F:
One of the things I really admire is, obviously I understand the organization’s pro-life, pro-family, pro traditional marriage. But yet from what I’ve read is you’ve tried to meet with people who have different viewpoints. Doesn’t mean that you agree but in our divided political culture people just hurl insults at each other, which I personally don’t think helps. You can disagree with somebody strongly without calling them names. Talk a bit about that because that seemed, it’s different than some, like you disagree with them but you’re willing to meet and dialogue. That’s pretty impressive.
Jim D:
Absolutely. Actually, it should be the standard way that Christians go about living their lives. But unfortunately, you’re right, we get caught up into the human side of debates and conflict, and we lean into our human nature rather than God’s spiritual nature. And it’s hard. I mean, because it goes against the grain. But that’s been one of the things to reach out to the LGBTQ community, to reach out to the abortion community, to develop friendships so that we can have dialogue.
Jim D:
The one thing that, well, there’s many things that I’ve learned in that context, but a couple, one, for us, as Christians, if you’re calling yourself a Christian, then there’s two great commandments that God gives us and that’s to love him with all of our heart, soul and mind, and then to love our neighbor as ourself. The great thing is, especially that I’ve recognized in the LGBTQ community, those friendships that I reached out to, they responded very beautifully. And I can tell you, those friendships are genuine, they’re deep and they’re real, and they go on today. Things are changing.
Jim D:
When you sincerely show love and respect for another person, I think God has wired us in such a way that our hearts crack open to that person. We can’t resist that kind of love. And that’s why I think he said, love your neighbor. And when you do that, it’s amazing the connection that you’ll find. You don’t have to agree on everything but you can love your neighbor. God gives us that capacity, and that’s a good place to start.
Warwick F:
And it breaks down the barrier of people thinking that Christians are bigoted, judgemental, holier than thou, hypocrites, that a lot of other people think. I mean, that’s not helpful to the cause of Christ or the cause of Jesus if that’s what people think. But you loving other people, being clear about your position, it’s like, gosh, this Jim guy, he seemed like a decent human being. Who knew?
Jim D:
I appreciate that. One of the best compliments I received from one of these people that I reached out to, he’s the kind of guy I’d like to go have a beer with. I thought to myself, that’s probably something they may have said of the Lord. He hung out with that crowd. He seemed to be comfortable with them. When you said that, I mean, here’s a point for the Christian community listening, if the fruit of the Spirit is not present in our lives, there’s a problem because the Lord said, they’re going to know you and they’ll know me through the fruit, my fruit that they see in you.
Jim D:
So if you don’t have it, I would go back around and ask the Lord to make sure that his fruit, and this is love, joy, goodness, kindness, mercy, self-control, patience. If you don’t possess those things, it’s not a restaurant menu that you get to choose from. These things should be in your life and growing as a Christian. We can’t expect the world to operate from those principles.
Jim D:
Funny story quickly. I had lunch with David Horowitz, the former communist, he wrote a book called, How the Left is Trying to Kill Christianity, something like that. We’re at lunch and he goes, “Jim, Jim, don’t you realize that you Christians you’re in an alley fight and the other side has switchblades.” I said, “David, we’re not that stupid. We know they’re armed. The problem is we have to bring into the alley fight love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, mercy. Not the best implements in an alley fight, but they are God’s tools.”
Warwick F:
And think of Jesus, he’s in the garden, and Peter’s trying to get out the sword. And what does Jesus say? Okay, let’s go for it. No. Put down your sword, that’s not the way of Jesus.
Gary S:
In the time that we have left, Jim, I want to make sure that you get a chance to talk about this, talk about a life of significance. One of the things that Focus on the Family’s doing this summer, Alive 2020. Tell our listeners a little bit about what that is just so they …
Jim D:
Again, it’s something thankfully Focus has always been doing and that’s to help in the pro-life movement. And we started probably 15 years ago now, maybe a little longer, something called Option Ultrasound. And that was to place ultrasound machines in pregnancy resource clinics around the country. There’s a lot to that. We had to get them medically ready, we had to work with them, etc. But we’ve had over 800 machines placed in these locations, which has resulted in about I think now we’re at 459,000 babies saved. So these are women that have walked into the clinic, basically said, I’m abortion-minded, they see the ultrasound of their baby, they walk out saying, I’m going to keep the baby or let the baby be adopted. So that’s a great victory for what we believe.
Jim D:
So in New York, New York had gone so liberal on these laws and Governor Cuomo had signed into law basically that an abortion was doable up until the birth canal. And boy, just the energy of that, the negative energy, high fiving each other in the state legislature when that was passed, etc, it was repulsive. Even if you can pass it, do it with a heavy heart because you’re taking innocent human life. So that led us to do Alive from New York, and yes, I was sitting in my office I thought we need to call it Alive from New York. First, my general counsel, my lawyer’s saying, “You can’t do that.” He said, “Well, let’s wait till we get the letter.” The letter never came. My response in my mind was going to be, hey, I thought you guys were comedians. This is funny. But it never came.
Jim D:
And so we did it, we had about 20,000 people in Times Square. We did a late third trimester ultrasound of Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood clinic director, who was pregnant at the time, eight months, and her baby Fulton was kicking away. And so, we did the live ultrasound along with great music and everything. We had about 400 protesters there and I just remember the first three speakers were African American Alveda King, Christina Bennett, and Benjamin Watson who played NFL football 15 years, just ended his career with the Patriots. I remember, one of them got up and said, “Hey, more black babies were killed in New York City last year than were born.” And I remember, the Black Lives Matters people, they looked at each other, threw their signs down, their protest signs and joined our group. And that was awesome. That was probably one of the greatest victories of the day.
Jim D:
But when that ultrasound came on, the protesters, their signs came down, their jaws hung open, they could hear the heartbeat. Probably the first time in their life they’ve actually seen an ultrasound and heard the heartbeat. And they simply walked away, they just walked away. And so we’re coming back May 9, a simulcast of five cities, LA, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, to celebrate life, to show people the baby, and to make a simple statement that these people deserve our protection. This is the greatest human rights campaign in the country. And that’s what we’re going to stand for these voiceless children.
Warwick F:
Wow, that is so impressive. I remember watching that video that you talked about in New York just to see people’s faces just stop talking, stop shouting and look at the screen.
Jim D:
It was an amazing moment, it fell quiet.
Warwick F:
You obviously feel as we, I mean, obviously living a life of significance, doing what God is calling you to do. One of the things I always tell people is, leaders are at all levels. Few people are going to be heading up an organization as big as Focus on the Family. And it’s easy to think, well, gosh, Jim Daly is doing all this, what can I do? But to me, it’s, I don’t think God really cares whether you’re head of Focus on the Family or some neighborhood nonprofit or just helping a neighbor down the street. That’s all the same to him, not to minimize what you do. A lot of people will say, well, I might as well just pack it in because I’m never going to be Jim Daly and that kind of thing. I’m sure you have people sort of say that to you. That’s not the way God looks at it, right?
Jim D:
Not at all. Not at all. I mean, for me, I can remember I went to pick Trent, my oldest son up at school one day. I think he’s a freshman, I’d already been president for five years, and he jumped in the car and he goes, “Are you the president of Focus?” I said, “Why?” And he said, “Well, my friends told me you were the president, but I told them all you just worked at Focus.” That’s how insignificant the title is because it didn’t matter to me. And I said, “Yeah, I’m the president, but it doesn’t matter.” Probably the best parental lesson I ever gave my sons was in that moment.
Jim D:
And I would say, wake up every day to try to do your best in whatever you’re doing. Don’t let the ball and chain of your past bog you down. It shouldn’t, it doesn’t have to. Don’t live with that crap that took you down. And if you stay there, you’re in bondage. I’m telling you from a Christian perspective, that’s what life in Christ is all about, is freeing you from that. I meet so many people that were wounded in ways worse than me and maybe not as bad as me. But they’re stuck there. And I’m telling you, that is not the place to spend your one lifetime stuck in that kind of emotional bondage. Cut it loose, don’t hold it against your father, your mother, your sibling, whatever happened to you. It was probably very painful, but I’m telling you, it doesn’t work to live back there in the past. Cut it loose, live every day and do well and you’ll be blessed.
Warwick F:
That’s probably a final message. I know one of Gary’s phrase is time to land the plane, and certainly that. But what you said about forgiveness, certainly something I’ve had to learn just, certainly I’ve had my collection of people I needed to forgive as well as myself. You can’t move on and be whole unless you forgive. And you’ve had a lot of people that would require a lot of soul work to forgive. Biological father, foster parents, stepdad. But you obviously must have because you couldn’t be doing what you’re doing if you hadn’t. A huge lesson for everybody. Doesn’t mean that what they did is right, but for your own sanity and your own emotional well being, you got to be able to forgive. And so you’ve done that, which is such a blessing. So Gary, over to you.
Gary S:
Yes. Thank you, Jim Daly, for spending time with us. Thank you, listener, for spending time with us. It’s kind of fun for me to be talking to my old boss and my current boss at the same time. I get the last word which is fabulous. If you’ve heard anything in this podcast, listener, that you want to learn more about, you can visit us at crucibleleadership.com. We also have a favor to ask of you, if you found this enlightening, to help us get the message out to more people. And that is, on the app you’re listening to this podcast on now, click subscribe. That will make sure that you don’t miss any episodes and that you will help us share this with other people who’ve gone through crucibles and need to find the hope that Jim and Warwick talked about here today.
Gary S:
So until we’re together the next time, remember, the crucible experiences as we’ve discussed here can be painful. They can change your life, they can be difficult, but they are far, far, far from the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning, if you learn the lessons of them, if you apply the lessons of them, they can be the beginning of a new chapter in your story that can be the best chapter of all because it leads to a life of significance.
What do you hope your friends and loved ones remember about you after you’re gone? What words would you like spoken in your eulogy? Written on your headstone? In this thoughtful and insightful new episode, Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax explores practical ways we can live today in a manner that leaves a legacy that outlives us well into tomorrow. The key, he and co-host Gary Schneeberger discuss, is pursuing your career and caring for your family with the kind of character you want to define you in life … and beyond. “If it matters to you on your deathbed,” Warwick notes, “why not get a head start and do something about your legacy now?”
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to this episode of Beyond The Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And you have clicked play, you have clicked download, you have clicked subscribe on a podcast that deals with what the title says; crucible experiences. It deals with them in the context of your leadership. Your crucible experiences are those things that can be failures, that can be traumatic, tragic, difficult circumstances in your life. It’s those pain points that we all experience and we talk about them in the context of this show to not wallow in them, not to live in the past, but to bring the past forward to the present and the future and to help us come away with hope for overcoming those crucibles, strategies for overcoming those crucibles, moving past those crucibles and then ultimately to charting a course to a life of significance.
Gary S:
I am joined as always by the founder of Crucible Leadership and the host of Beyond The Crucible, Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, it’s great to be back together again.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. Looking forward to it.
Gary S:
I talked at the outset about how we talk about crucible experiences in order to not live in the past, but to bring the past into the present and then bring the past through the future and the subject that we’re going to talk about today is really one that is focused on how we live today in the present and how that affects the future. We’re going to talk today about legacy. And it’s something that comes up an awful lot in Warwick’s writings, an awful lot in just the conversations he has as he talks about what crucible leadership’s about.
Gary S:
So Warwick, I’m going to sit back and let the listeners know a little bit about what legacy is and isn’t and how we go about building a good one.
Warwick F:
Thanks, Gary. Legacy is sort of a bit of a loaded word. For me, like for a lot of people, you think of legacy, how do you want to be remembered by? For me, growing up, I think a lot of listeners would know, in a large family media business in Australia, legacy was an intimidating word. Sort of a concept that brought almost fear because the company was founded by my great, great grandfather, John Fairfax. He’d come out from England in the late 1830s and he founded this huge media company that, by the time I was growing up, had newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, magazines. It was an enormous company with thousands of employees. So the legacy was huge.
Warwick F:
So I grew up in an environment where my parents were hoping that I could continue the legacy of the founder. They would say to me, “You could be one of the great Fairfax’s,” which, to me, translated to having a legacy that would impact Australia, where I grew up, the nation, the landscape. Somehow make it a better place. My name would live on for, I don’t know, long time.
Warwick F:
So if you’d asked me then what’s a legacy, it would be carrying on the ideals of the founder and making a name that would somehow make its mark in history. I mean, that’s a mammoth benchmark. And what made it worse in a sense, as I’m reflecting on it, is my dad loved history. He was a big Anglophile, loved everything in terms of English history. So we would read about, talk about some of the great heroes, whether it’s the Duke of Wellington, the Battle of Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars, or Admiral Horatio Nelson before the Battle of Trafalgar sending a signal to the fleet saying, “England expects every man to do is duty.” I mean, stirring stuff. That was kind of the model.
Warwick F:
I loved American history. So whether it’s Lincoln, Washington, all these great leaders in history and it’s like, “Well, that’s what it is to leave a legacy,” I suppose in my naivety and youth. So yeah, it almost felt like leaving a legacy. What’s your chances of that, like one in a million? I mean, I have a different view now, but legacy felt so intimidating. It’s like, “Well, why bother?” Who could leave a legacy like Churchill, Lincoln, Nelson, even my great, great grandfather? It’s like you just give up.
Gary S:
And here’s the good news to all of our listeners. You do not have to be Churchill. You do not have to be Washington. You do not have to be Admiral Horatio Nelson. What we’re going to talk about today, the aspect of legacy that we’re going to talk about, is not that grand, is not that historic making necessarily. Nothing wrong if it is, but the legacy that we’re going to talk about is a bit more personal in the sense that it affects a smaller group of people and it reflects on the way that you lived your life.
Gary S:
One of the things that you didn’t mention, Warwick, that is part of the story of your great, great grandfather’s legacy, he was a big name and Fairfax Media was a huge operation in Australia. But there was also, and we think about this a lot when we think of legacy, sometimes we go there first. Legacy is about money. Legacy is about what you leave materially to the generation that follows. And I know in your own case that was true with part of the legacy that John Fairfax left.
Warwick F:
Yes, no. It’s a good point that certainly he came out from England in the late 1830s with pretty much nothing and built this huge media business. And yes, over succeeding generations, it led to his kids, grandkids, great grandkids having a far better lifestyle. Certainly wealth, money, power. Yes, all that was there. But there’s really a greater legacy, which was helpful to me because his listeners will know, when I launched the $2.25 billion takeover in ’87 and several years later the company went under my stewardship, if I was just focused on the family business legacy, that would be a little devastating because I ended it.
Warwick F:
But yet I would say there was a greater legacy and it was more his character. He was a wonderful dad, a wonderful husband. His kids loved him, wife loved him, his employees loved him. When he died, these employees felt they’d lost a very valued friend, somebody that they really admired.
Warwick F:
So really the way he treated people, his character, he was a person of great faith, an elder of his church. There was a legacy in terms of faith and character that was passed down in my family through the generations. So while at the time the faith became a bit more traditional, there was always this legacy of service. Our family members never tried to manipulate news to push any particular agenda. The goal was always to try to have it independent and fair, and it’s not always a challenge and that can be in the eye of the beholder. But certainly there wasn’t a sense of trying to manipulate things.
Warwick F:
And it was a sense of just service to the community. So the values and character, and certainly for me, the model of his faith, that was a legacy that was carried down through the generations. And ultimately now that’s more what I think of. Not so much, “Oh, what a great boss and he founded this newspaper business,” and that was good. That was a good legacy. I won’t shortchange it at all. But there was a greater legacy. And the greater legacy was more a combination of his character, faith, values how he treated people, and we’ll get to this more later, but think of the scripture, “What should it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul.”
Warwick F:
And I think, so what if you build this big empire, but your family and friends just think you’re a jerk? What’s the point? I remember many years ago listening to a radio station about somebody who founded one of the biggest nonprofits in the world and helps people in pretty much every country, especially where poverty is an issue. And I remember his daughter was on this radio program and she was so bitter because he had this notion, which as unfortunately a person of faith because he said, “I’ve done this deal with God that he’ll look after my family while I go off and do all these wonderful nonprofit things,” which totally distorts, I think a true faith position.
Warwick F:
And she was angry. She was bitter because she didn’t really see much of a dad because he’s running around saving the world. I remember listening to that saying, “I don’t want to be that person. I don’t care how much good I do, I do not want to abandon my wife and kids. That’s not going to be me.” Okay. He founded this great organization, but at what cost? Is that really the legacy you want to live? I mean, I don’t want to be that guy.
Gary S:
Right. And that’s another bit of good news for you, listener, is you do not have to leave $2.25 billion companies behind for the next generations. But those things that Warwick was talking about that we’re going to get into now, we’ve talked a little bit about what isn’t the legacy that necessarily Crucible Leadership is urging people, is trying to help people establish. We’ve talked about what it may not be. But let’s unpack, Warwick, what it might be.
Gary S:
And you recently wrote about this in a blog and one of the things that struck me about one of the things that you wrote was that we have to be intentional about our legacy and to think about it in terms of what do you want your epitaph to be? What do you want people to say about you after you’re gone? How do you want to encourage people? How do you want them to look back? And the way that you look back on John Fairfax, how do you want the future generations in your own family and perhaps if you have a somewhat larger footprint in society or in your spheres of influence, how do you want people to look at you? So unpack for listeners a little bit about what are a few of the things that we can all be thinking about when we’re thinking about establishing a lasting legacy.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean, I’ll start with work because that’s often what we think of legacy and it’s so far beyond that that I don’t want to say it’s wrong to be successful, nor do I want to say it’s wrong to make a mark. But it’s more, as I’ve come to realize, it’s less the size of the organization that you might be involved in or your position in it. From a work perspective, it’s more are you doing work that you feel is meaningful, that it’s contributing to society in some way? That you feel like is helping lead a life of significance, help others.
Warwick F:
So yes, that is part of it, but the size, size doesn’t matter. But it’s more than just work. We often think our legacy just about what we do. We’re going to do some wonderful thing. But it’s more about, as much about how do you want to be remembered? Whether it’s your tombstone or somebody’s giving a eulogy at your funeral. Do you want to just be, “Hey, Fred or Mary made millions or billions.” Is that it? It just seems so empty.
Warwick F:
Typically when we’re on our deathbed, we’re not thinking that way. We’re thinking, “What does my wife or husband think? What do my kids think? What of my friends, what of my coworkers?” That’s often a legacy that’s more important. That really gets more into character. How do our beliefs and values translate into how we treat those that love us? Values and beliefs are the cornerstone, our careers, everything we do needs to be in line with that. And to me, if we have a family, and this is certainly my position, if you’re going to have a family, you can’t neglect it. You can’t just abandon your wife, husband or kids and somehow feel like, “Oh, I’m serving some greater cause.” Some people may think that’s okay. I think that’s just wrong. That’s just, I mean, if you’re going to have a family, care for them.
Warwick F:
I mean, I think in my own family, I love my dad very much. I was born when he was in his late fifties. He was married three times, my mother was married twice and I think especially the kids from his first marriage, he was in his 20s, 30s, 40s. He was very involved in the newspaper, was in there all hours working very hard. He was wealthy and so people in the 30s, who were wealthy, they might take a trip to England or Europe for a year. Well, he left his kids at home. There was a nanny looking after them. Now it’s almost like child abuse. But believe it or not, it was not uncommon in society in those days. I loved him very much, but I would never just leave my kids, they were very small, for a year.
Warwick F:
I was a little bit off topic, but he was raised by nannies. I had a nanny when I was small. My kids grew up comfortably, but there’s no way we would have a nanny raise our kids. We took our kids to soccer or recitals. That, to me, is important. And one of the things as I reflect in my own, obviously nobody’s perfect, but what’s interesting to me is one of the things we do on birthdays is we say what we admire about whoever the person’s birthday is and we have some writers in the family and so we write cards and all. And over the years what’s staggering to me, and my kids are all in their twenties now, my boys who played soccer, my daughter did color guard, which is people wave the flags with marching band and concerts and stuff. They all basically said, “Dad, I really appreciated the fact that you were there at my game. At my soccer games, marching band, color guard, concerts. You were there.”
Warwick F:
And I’m not perfect. I’m sure that a lot of things I’ve done wrong, but I’m glad they didn’t say, “Dad, you know what? You were never there at my game. You were never there.” So that’s something that I’m just so grateful. It’s staggering how every single card they ever write, they always say that year after year after year. So all that’s to say is, I know I’m harping on this a bit, but I believe in a strong, if you’re going to have a family be present because that’s the legacy ultimately. It may be the most important legacy that your kids, your grandkids, you want to be admired and respected. You don’t want to say, “Yep, guy or woman was really successful, but I hardly ever knew them. They were never there.”
Warwick F:
You just don’t want to be that person. When it comes to legacy family first, so to speak, friends, coworkers, that’s a legacy that you can influence no matter how prominent or not prominent you are. You might live in a big city, a small town. That’s a legacy we can all influence. And trust me, not many of us are there and listening to this, and hopefully it isn’t anybody in their death bed listening to this podcast. For most of us, we’re not there today. You don’t want to be on your death bed saying, “I blew it,” because there’s no second chances. And what would will you be thinking? You’ll be thinking about those that you love; spouse, kids, friends. That’s the legacy that ultimately will matter to you. So if it matters to you on your deathbed, why not get a headstart and start worrying about it now and start doing something.
Gary S:
Right. It’s interesting that you bring that up about on your death bed and how you want to be remembered on your tombstone. You and I’ve talked about this many times, but I did a little research and if you go back and you look at arguably the three most successful well-known musical stars of the last hundred years. Those would be Elvis Presley for rock and roll, Johnny Cash for country, Frank Sinatra for jazz standards. All of them have passed, and I didn’t tell you this as we were prepping for this podcast, but I did some research. Of those three, they had 42 number one singles in their careers. That is Herculean success when it comes to their chosen careers in music.
Gary S:
How many, listener, we’ll ask you this question rhetorically because you can’t answer to us, but how many of those number one records do you think are mentioned on their tombstone? Warwick, you want to answer that question?
Warwick F:
I have a feeling it’s none.
Gary S:
You’re right, it’s zero. Just very briefly, here’s what is on the tombstones of those three individuals that I spoke of. Frank Sinatra’s tombstone simply says, “Beloved husband and father.” Johnny Cash’s tombstone simply contains the text, or one of the verses from Psalm 19. Psalm 19:14, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, Oh Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.” A man with 13 number one hits, that’s what he chose to be remembered for on his tombstone. Elvis Presley, there is some mention down a very long tombstone, there is some mention of the fact that he changed music and he did some things like that, but no specifics about gold records, big hits, none of that stuff. And it says simply at the top in the biggest letters, “Elvis Aaron Presley, son of Vernon Elvis Presley and Gladys Love Presley and father of Lisa Marie Presley.”
Gary S:
Here you have these people who have every reason to boast in their accomplishments, every reason to focus on their legacy being what they accomplished. And instead they focused on the things that you were just talking about, their family and their faith.
Warwick F:
And that to me says a lot. So think of these three, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash. They’re on their death bed. Do you think they’re thinking, “Boy, I’m so glad for those 41 hits, all the amazing songs?” I think they were grateful. I think they enjoyed it, but that wouldn’t have been their last thoughts. I can’t imagine. They’d be thinking of their kids, their spouse.
Warwick F:
So I don’t want to say don’t pursue your dreams, but there’s nothing wrong with being the next Walt Disney or George Lucas or Steven Spielberg. People that have founded a huge, in this case, movie empires and brought a lot of joy and happiness to people through their work. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you don’t have to be at that level. It could be a small business in a small town or you could be a factory worker for some local plant for 50 years. It doesn’t really matter that much in the whole some scheme of things. It’s more how do those who you’ll leave behind, how will they remember you, your family, your friends, your spouse? How do you want to be remembered? Ultimately, that’s what was important to these three, to Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
Warwick F:
So I think we can learn from them. Again, I keep saying is I don’t want people to say, “Okay, so just stick your head in the sand and do nothing.” No, meaningful work where you’re leading a life of significance to help others, that’s fine. But the size of your accomplishment doesn’t matter because for most of us, we’re not going to be remembered by history, 99% of us won’t be remembered now still less in 10, 20 years, 100 years, 1,000 years. It’s kind of meaningless in the whole sum scheme of history.
Warwick F:
Can any of us remember who were some of the great figures in 300AD or something. You know? I mean, maybe there’s a couple of historians, most of us, no. Most of us don’t care. So just how you treat others, how you’re remembered by those that love you. As Gary said, “What do you want on your tombstone?”
Warwick F:
And just picture this. Imagine somebody is giving your eulogy. Now imagine you could give them some notes. Not suggesting you write your eulogy before you die and hand it to your descendants, to read. But just think about what would you like them to say about you? And then do an assessment of your own life and say, “Okay, how far off am I from what I would like that eulogy to look like?” And if you feel like there’s a gap, and for some of us that might be a big gap, what can we do now?
Warwick F:
And that may mean choices. If you’re a traveling salesman and you’re gone 52 weeks a year, well maybe you need to find another way to help support your family so that you’re going to be around a bit more. Life’s about choices, but make choices in your life that are in line with your values and beliefs and your legacy and in line with how the eulogy that you want to be given, not the one that may be given, but the one that you want to be given. The time is now to make those life defining, legacy defining choices.
Warwick F:
Don’t wait on your death bed and say, “I blew it.” Now’s the time to change the course of your life, assuming it needs changing, to leave a legacy that you want to leave. A legacy that your family, friends, coworkers, will admire. That’s something that every single listener here can make a significant difference in. That is in your control to change. Other things in life, you can’t control. Your legacy, I don’t know about control it, but you can significantly influence your legacy. Everybody can do that.
Gary S:
Right. I want to circle back to your great, great grandfather, John Fairfax, because yes, there’s an ending point. There’s a natural point to talk about legacy on the death bed, on your tombstone. But there’s also what we talk about, a living legacy. And Warwick, I would submit, and I’d like to hear your comments on this for the listeners, but John Fairfax’s legacy is still living today beyond his tombstone, beyond his eulogy. It’s still living today in you and in your children. Fair?
Warwick F:
It is and it’s interesting. There’s one other quote that I want to read because I think it has a different meaning than I think I maybe originally thought. So, john Fairfax was a man of great faith, went to the Pitt Street Congregational Church in Sydney, which is still standing. It’s in downtown Sydney. And the pastor, at his funeral, he chose as his text, 2 Samuel 3:38. And in the King James, which is kind of what they used back then, says this. “Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel.” And you think, “Okay fine. So he was kind of like a king and did really well.” He did well.
Warwick F:
But when I look at that, it’s more why did they consider him a prince and a great man? I would say it was far more about his character, about how he treated people, how his employees looked at him, how his wife and kids looked at him. That, to me, is what made him a great man.
Warwick F:
And so it’s that model of faith and how people should be treated, it’s certainly influenced generations of my family. And for me, when I came to my own faith journey, came to faith in Christ, it was really, even back then in my 20s, it was more about who he was as a person and how he treated people. There’s a biography of him written in the 1940s that’s sort of a loving portrait and the person it paints him to be is just awe inspiring in terms of character. So that was a model for me and in my own way tried to live it to hopefully pass down to my kids. That’s a legacy of both faith, family, how you treat people with respect.
Warwick F:
Also a sense of humility, which to me, I’m sure he had. Humility is a hugely important value, especially when you come from such wealth as I did. So that sense of just not thinking that you’re better than other people and just respect others. So there was a legacy of character that’s been passed down from him through generations that my wife and I, I think are trying to pass onto our kids. So that’s a legacy that’s lasted… I’m the fifth generation. That’s a legacy that’s lasted five generations.
Gary S:
Six if you obviously weave your children into it. Yeah.
Warwick F:
So you might say, how in the world could I leave a legacy that last five or six generations? A legacy of character can last that long. A family business, well, ours lasted five. Few businesses last that long. No matter how good a job you’ve done, it’s not going to last.
Warwick F:
But character, in some sense, can be eternal. Character, the values, that can be passed on from generation to generation. From an economic perspective, that’s a better investment. Character. It’s going to last a lot longer. So yeah, it’s had a huge impact.
Gary S:
One of the things I keep thinking about as we talk about this and we’re getting to the point where we’ve got to land the plane soon. The landing gear is down. But I want to hit this point because we talk a lot at Crucible Leadership. You, Warwick, are the author of this sentiment as it applies to Crucible Leadership. You talk a lot about living a life of significance and Crucible Leadership is about ways in which you can recover from crucible moments, learn the lessons, discover how you’re designed and how you’ve been refined, what your vision is so that you can point yourself toward a life of significance. But it strikes me that what we’re talking about here in legacy, if the end result of Crucible Leadership on Earth is to have lived a life of significance, is it fair to say that where we should aim our legacy is to be a legacy of significance? Is that fair?
Warwick F:
It is because when we talk about a life of significance, it’s a life lived on purpose in some sense, a higher purpose however you define it, that’s devoted to helping others. And so a legacy of significance, it’s one where you’re remembered as somebody that’s focused on other people. You’re kind, you’re humble, you want the best for your spouse and your kids and your friends. You’re a giving selfless person. So whether it’s at work or at home, that sense of significance, a life, not devoted to your own ego or own aggrandizement of riches, power and money, but more a life dedicated to the service of others. That kind of life of significance will leave a lasting legacy, a legacy of significance. If you live a life of significance, you have a much greater chance of having a legacy that you’ll be proud of. And a legacy that will last.
Gary S:
Well, as the copilot of this plane that we’re about to land, I’m going to take the liberty of addressing the passengers on the plane as we close up. I found on Inc Magazine, for those of you listeners who are saying, “Okay, this all sounds great. How do I do it? What are some things I can do?” Warwick talked about, your family needs to be a priority, but here are five practical tips that Inc Magazine, which is a business magazine, offered for leaders that are also applicable to all of us every day.
Gary S:
But here’s five things that you can do to leave a meaningful legacy just very quickly. One, prioritize people over results. Two, invest your time and money, and they put time first. Invest your time in people invest your time in things that you care about. Three, I love this one. Connect in person. In this day and age, we spend so much time connecting electronically. We’re grateful that we have the opportunity to connect electronically with you, listener. But in your lives, connect in person. Warwick talked about it, about your family, about your friends, connect in person, make time for that.
Gary S:
Another thing that Inc suggested was to model behavior that you want to last. Do the things in your life that you want to be remembered for. Do the things in your life that you want people to follow. Create disciples in that sense. Be a mentor to someone in that sense. Those are just five very practical takeaway steps as you’re looking at this idea of legacy. You’re looking to lead a life of significance out of your crucible moment. How then do you make sure that in addition to doing that, you’re also leaving a legacy of significance? Those are just four things that one publication, Inc Magazine, suggested.
Warwick F:
What’s interesting to me about that is some people might say, “Okay, is he saying I can’t pursue success and I got to care about coworkers, friends, and family?” Well, if you listen carefully, those points at Inc Magazine, the reality is if you treat your employees and your coworkers well, they’re more likely to work harder to stay. You’ll attract the best and the brightest. Who wants to work for somebody that cheats, steals or takes all the adulation for them, brow beats them, treats them badly? Those who have a choice leave. The best and the brightest, they’re the first ones to go and say, “Forget this.”
Warwick F:
So treating people well with care and respect actually makes good business sense. So the bottom line is by caring for your family, treating them well, loving, respecting them, respecting coworkers, leaving a legacy that you’d be proud of, that you will be remembered by. You might just find, maybe you want to have some multimillion dollar business, but whatever you’re doing it will probably have done better than if you had lived a life differently.
Warwick F:
So the bottom line is commercial success and treating people well and leaving a legacy that you’d be proud of, those two things, rather than being against each other, I think at least in some sense, one can support the other. It’s not either or. So I think what that Inc Magazine says is really very telling.
Gary S:
Well a wise co-pilot knows when to let the pilot have the last word when it’s a good last word. So we’re going to sign off now and we’re going to thank you listeners for joining us on Beyond The Crucible. If you found this discussion insightful and helpful as you pursue not only a life of significance but hopefully a legacy of significance, we have a favor to ask that will help us help more people just like you who are seeking a way to move beyond their crucible experiences. Here’s the idea. Very simple. Here’s the favor. Please subscribe to Beyond The Crucible on the app that you’re listening to right now. It will allow you to make sure you don’t miss an episode and it will make it easier for others to find us, listen to us and share the podcast with their friends and coworkers.
Gary S:
And if you’ve heard anything today that you’d like to learn more about, we encourage you to visit us on the web CrucibleLeadership.com. And one of the things that you can do there as you begin to walk out, as you continue to walk out this path toward a life of significance, a legacy of significance, one of the things you’ll find there is a free short assessment that will allow you to see where you are, give you insight to where you are on this road from crucible experience on one end to life of significance, legacy of significance, on the other. Visit CrucibleLeadership.com and you’ll be able to take this assessment for no cost and really jumpstart your quest for a life of significance.
Gary S:
So until the next time that we’re together, do remember that crucible experiences can be painful. They can feel like your entire world has collapsed in upon you. But the good news is, as Warwick proven himself and as Crucible Leadership talks about, those crucible experiences aren’t the end of your story. Those crucible experiences can actually be the beginning of a new chapter in your story that leads to something phenomenal, a life of significance and a legacy of significance.
