As we wrap up six weeks of exploring what resilience is and how to build it, BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax and co-host Gary Schneeberger discuss the insights and inspiration offered by guests Stacey Copas, Katie Foulkes, Heather Kampf, Lucy Westlake and Dr. Craig Dowden. Among the wisdom and practical action steps they offered that are discussed in depth here:

To listen to each episode in the series, visit https://beyondthecrucible.com/podcast/

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Gary S:

And I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show, saying hi as we settle in for the final part of our six-part series, Harnessing Resilience. Warwick and I will unpack this week what we found to be the most insightful and inspirational takeaways from the five remarkable guests we've spoken to the last month and a half. So sit back, dial in and learn some best practices in the art and science of moving Beyond your Crucible.

Gary S:

So, you may ask yourself, listener, why did we decide to talk about resilience? One of the things, I said at the outset, in the video version of the show is that without resilience, you really don't have a shot at bouncing back from your crucible. It's so critical to moving beyond your crucible that you can't really talk about crucibles without talking about resilience at some point, unless you want to talk about just staying in your crucibles.

Gary S:

And one of the things, Warwick, and I think this is true, pretty much every guest we've had on the show. We've had more than 75, 70, 75 guests so far. Is it fair to say that every guest has a resilience story or a resilience shading to their story as they move beyond their crucible?

Warwick F:

Yeah, absolutely, Gary. I mean, life is tough and we've had 70 plus guests with every kind of crucible from physical to abuse, to business failure. And really, we often talk a lot in Crucible Leadership that when you go through a crucible setback and failure that can be devastating and painful, typically is, is you have a choice to make. "Am I going to just hide under the covers and just give up for the rest of my life, 20, 30, 50 years? Or am I going to choose to persevere and really try to bounce back?"

Warwick F:

That requires a huge amount of resilience to decide to not give up on life and move forward in any direction. It's life is tough and so with that resilience, you'd probably stay under the covers and you don't make the choice to try to bounce back and moved beyond your crucible. Without resilience, you're not living beyond your crucible at all. You're stuck.

Gary S:

Right. And that's, we talk a lot at the start of the show sometimes about the reason why we talk about crucibles. We don't talk about them I say, so that we can build a virtual campfire and sit around and swap war stories and feel bad. We talk about it to offer hope and healing. And helping people understand how individuals have harnessed resilience in their lives in their crucibles. And also what the science says about it, I think has offered a great perspective.

Gary S:

Where some of this stuff comes from, listener, where you'll be able to revisit some of what we're going to talk about here is there's a blog that is live now on the Crucible Leadership website. The blog is titled, What Resilience Looks Like and How to Build It. That blog is at Crucible Leadership.com right now. And you'll see you'll be able to read some more about some of the things that we're going to talk about.

Gary S:

But what we had is we were coming to, and I wrote that blog because Warwick work is way too busy right now, readying the release of his book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, which is out on October 19. So, I stepped in. I was honored to write the blog about kind of what we've been talking about on the podcast.

Gary S:

And one of the things that we did is we surveyed. There's more than five hours of content in the first five episodes. This is the sixth episode as I said. In that five hours of content, there was all kinds of insightful things said about what it takes to harness resilience. We tried to pull one or two things from each guest and really shine a spotlight on that because we think those are the key learnings of what this series has brought to the table.

Gary S:

So, we will start with Stacey Copas. Stacey Copas was our first guest, Week 1. And Stacey, you may remember was injured in a diving accident when she was 12 and that diving accident left her a quadriplegic. She described what followed as not being pretty. She lived life aimlessly. She lived life hopelessly. She lived life listlessly. She had some drug issues. She had some depression. She just wasn't really, in her teen years, life didn't hold much hope for Stacey Copas. She was caught up in the what ifs and the why mes of what her crucible did.

Gary S:

And then one day, she decided she couldn't feel bad about something she was grateful for and she began to view her accident as a gift. And one of the things she said, and I'd love to get your reaction to this, Warwick. One of the things she said in our episode, when she talked about resilience was this: Resilience is a skill that can be learned just like building muscle in the gym. How do you react to that?

Warwick F:

I mean, that's just, it's so true. I think so much of leadership and life is sort of the inner game, is the inner qualities of being resilient of watching your mindset and the way you think, it's so critical. So, with Stacey, she had to reframe what she went through. A lot of it was, she's an Australian.

Gary S:

Two Australians.

Warwick F:

She was diving into an above ground pool.

Gary S:

And there's two Australians in this series, by the way.

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean-

Gary S:

As usual, we're favoring the Aussies.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Who knew? I wonder why that happens. But yeah, I mean, what's interesting is her mum told her, "Stacey, don't dive into that pool. It's an above ground pool." And like a lot of kids, just ignored her parents, so she had to live with the fact that it was her fault. She was in a wheelchair because of her own mistake in her youth. Now, it's easy to say, "Oh, she's just 12." But she had a hard time letting that go. So, she had to get to the point where rather than, "I'm an idiot, why did I do that? Why me?" And get to the point where she got to "How can I use what I went through in service of others."

Warwick F:

And she now is a resilience coach and author/speaker. But when she said that she viewed what she went through as a gift, I mean, that's astonishing statement of you being paralyzed/quadriplegic as a gift? And you might say, "I can't. That makes no sense. That's abhorrent, that's wrong." But I think it's a mindset is this gives her a platform to help others. And so, I mean, it's funny, we just chatted later with Craig Dowden that we'll get to, he talked about that whole reframing and why that's so important.

Warwick F:

But she is such a stunning example of reframing what she went through to help her think of it differently and serve others. And so, it's that reframing and that mental gymnastics, in the literal sense of that word, that has enabled her to be resilient. It's that mindset shift in Stacey that is the key to her resilience. And so that she could stop with the destructive behaviors, and move in a new direction. It's just astonishing what she's done, and how she views what she's doing now and the change.

Gary S:

And it's interesting, there's something else that she said that dovetails or is sort of an on-ramp into this part of what she said, because when she said, her accident and the injury that came with it was a gift, she's not talking about being paralyzed was a gift. She's not saying that and we've had other guests who've talked about those things about how their physical disabilities, what they've gone through, their physical ailments, accidents, traumas and tragedies, they've talked about them as gifts. They're not talking about the physical ramifications.

Gary S:

What Stacey said it wasn't because the accident left her paralyzed that led her to view it as a gift. It's that the accident presented her with opportunities she almost certainly would not have had without her injury. And I think that without doing deep dive research on it right now, I think that's probably true for all the guests we had, who when they talk about their crucibles, they see something in them where they learn something. And I know that's true, Warwick, for your own crucible.

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking that as you were saying that. There's no question. I mean, I've had to do plenty of soul searching listening to these guests in my own life and just the concept of a gift. I mean, what I went through losing 150-year-old $2 billion company, after a $2 billion takeover, to view that, I almost listening to folks like Stacey say, "Well, in some ways, it was a gift. In some ways, it was a blessing." Was it painful when, would I rather have not gone through that pain? Of course. Nobody wants to go through their crucible pain, but yet, it gave me a platform to talk about and identify and empathize with other people about setbacks and failures and they're painful.

Warwick F:

And try to help others get beyond them and lead productive lives, lives of significance as we call them. Lives on purpose dedicated to serving others. Well, what I do now in my book that comes out October, none of that would have happened without the pain of the crucible. So amidst the pain, there was a blessing and a gift there, which I don't know. Before this series, would I've quite used those words? I don't know, but it's making me think a lot about it now. So, I mean, it's true.

Gary S:

And that's a big statement to make about the series that we're concluding here. You've been the host of all 85 episodes that came before and for you to say that listening to the guests and the concentration of having guests talking about resilience and harnessing resilience led to you changing the way you deal with your own crucible or or how you think about your own crucible. I mean, you're the founder of Crucible Leadership does so that that's a pretty good endorsement of the series as a whole, I think.

Warwick F:

Yeah. And I think one of the other things that says is we all want to be lifelong learners. I might have had some Inklings, yeah, some good came out of the takeover, I just don't think I would have said blessing or gifts. So, listening to people in this series, we can learn a lot that helps us in our lives. It's helped, I mean, every single guest we've had has said something that I found profound and it helped me, so there's no question.

Gary S:

Speaking of that, by the way, you are doing a remarkable job at playing me in this thing. I'm doing a terrible job at playing you, I think, but you're doing a remarkable job of playing the co-host here. Because that leads me to we have identified, I said one of the quotes that Stacey said in her episode. And we identified some other things that they said that are really insightful and encouraging and inspiring. And some of them we're going to actually play throughout this episode.

Gary S:

I'm not going to shine a spotlight and say, "We're going to play a clip now on all of them." But based on what you just said, I think it's important, primarily because Stacey didn't actually say what we're about to play. I said it. And the reason that I said it is it was so inspiring and she put it in the form, we have all guests fill out in advance that I just got impatient while we were talking to her, and I blurted it out. But here, we'll play what I said, based on what she said. It's her perspective, my mouth, but listen to this idea of how a crucible, a setback a failure, use it like she says, like a trampoline. Listen to why she says that is the case.

Gary S:

There are a couple of things I love in your book, this I've just decided is the thing I love most about what you write and you say this and listener, get a pen out, get a pencil out, get chalk out, draw it in chocolate on something, but you wrote this. "Another way to visualize this is to think of jumping on a trampoline. The lower down it goes, the higher up you are launched." That is some powerful insight into what resilience really allows you to do.

Gary S:

And that idea that that we were talking about there, Warwick, about your own pain is your own pain, your worst experience is your worst, don't compare, right? The lower down you go that you get to determine that, but you also get to determine as you practice resilience, how high you go. And I think that's the example that both of you set and hopefully, our listeners hear that and draw hope from that.

Gary S:

Is that not one of the most profound things you've heard, simple and profound things you've heard in our time hosting this show?

Warwick F:

Absolutely. Gary, I mean, the idea that the lower down you go, the higher you get launched. I mean, that is positive thinking. And it's just the idea that the depth of your pain can fuel such empathy, passion, and a desire to help others. It's sort of like for every, I mean, I'm not a physicist, but for every action, there's a reaction, so it's almost like for every negative, maybe there can be a positive if you look at it that way.

Warwick F:

And that's just a profound statement and she's living that with her speaking and coaching and really her desire to help other people, other people with injuries. I mean, she's just having an enormous impact on so many people. But it's a stunning thing to say, "The lower down you go the higher you get launched." I mean, yeah, again, that's everybody in this series would win an Olympic gold medal for resilience, but also shifting mindset.

Gary S:

Yeah, for sure.

Warwick F:

I mean, that is just, that is what pretty much all of our guests on the podcast we've ever had, it's yeah. She's an amazing person.

Gary S:

So, I've not told you this, Warwick, I'm going to surprise you right here live. So one of the things I did when we started to talk about doing a series on resilience is I went online and I found the 50 best resilience quotes that are out there. So, as we move from one guest and their insights to another, I'm going to throw out a random quote I pull out of this and just get your reaction to it about resilience.

Gary S:

Here's something that Robert F. Kennedy said about resilience. And I want you to tell our listeners your reaction. Robert F. Kennedy said this, "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."

Warwick F:

We've had a number of at least one other person in the series talk about that. I think Lucy Westlake gets into that a bit. But yeah, you've got to be willing to fail. You've got to be willing for that bold achievement. I'm not going to remember the exact quote. But it reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt, that has this famous quote that Brené Brown talks a lot about of talking about the man in the arena that's willing to go out and to dare greatly. I think is his words, it's similar concept. And part of being resilient is being willing to fail, willing to go outside your comfort zone, in a cause of something beyond yourself.

Warwick F:

All of these people that we've had were they believe leaders in history, whether it's Abraham Lincoln or so many others. They were willing to fight for a cause beyond themselves, where failure was a distinct possibility. But in service of humanity and what they thought was worthwhile, they were willing to dare greatly to even fail greatly. And so, that's part of what's needed. It's not for the timid, resilience, but you've got to be willing. If you're not willing to fail, you'll never succeed.

Gary S:

Well said, well said. Our next guest, we'll move on. We'll turn the page to our next guest, who also happens to be our next Australian guest. In the Harnessing Resilience series on Beyond the Crucible. That was Katie Foulkes, and it was interesting you mentioned a few beats back, Warwick. You mentioned something about gold medal winners in Harnessing Resilience. And Katie Foulkes is someone who actually was in the Olympics on two occasions. And the crucible that she explained with us came from, I believe it was her second trip to the Olympics was in Athens, right? Yeah.

Warwick F:

Yep. Yeah, you got them.

Gary S:

In 2004, she was, and help me out with some of the details of this. She was on the rowing team. So, maybe you can tell the story better than me of kind of what happened with Katie Foulkes.

Warwick F:

So, Katie Foulkes was the cox of the Australian rowing crew or rowing team, eight, in the 2004 Olympics, and they made it into the final. They came out of the blocks. They were going super fast. They felt like they really had a shot at medaling. And then about partway through the race, maybe halfway, one of the women in the boat just stopped rowing. And when one person stops rowing and lies down, the person that's next to her behind her, I'm guessing, can't row either, so that takes two out of eight, out of the boat from rowing. And so needless to say, they finished last.

Warwick F:

To stop rowing in the middle of a race was stunning and that the challenge was there was no good explanation. It wasn't equipment failure. It wasn't injury. There was nothing that their public relations team could say, "Oh, it was unfortunate, but..." There's no easy "but." And so, it is not something that Katie could really talk about because it's not her story to get into why this other woman in the boat stopped rowing, so.

Gary S:

And it's important to say, let me stop here just for a second. It's important to say before you go on to say that the crucible for her wasn't losing the race, right? That's fair to say.

Warwick F:

Right. Totally.

Gary S:

The crucible, what she went through, the difficult thing that she went through was not that they didn't win Olympic gold. What was the crucible was what, was what?

Warwick F:

It was the condemnation in the Australian press, as I often say.

Gary S:

Good word.

Warwick F:

US press isn't easy, but Australian press is another level, especially when it comes to things like this. Australians love sports. And so, this poor woman she was called all sorts of names in the press, even the then Prime Minister of Australia called that crew and what happened Un-Australian.

Gary S:

Yeah, that's just crazy to me. That's just crazy.

Warwick F:

That's as a bad thing is you can never be called in Australia as Un-Australian, because it's this huge ethos of what it means to be Australian. It was a horrendous crucible and there was no easy way out of that one. There was no easy way to rehabilitate your reputation. Even though Katie did nothing, she was part of that boat that went through this horrendous crucible.

Gary S:

Yeah. And yet, she found a way to do it, because we featured her, not only because we feature on the Harnessing Resilience series, but also because she learned some things in moving through her own crucible that led her to study resilience. That led her to see scientifically, research wise, what does it mean to harness resilience. And for me in this series, her comments were the first real big eye opening moment I had. I was one of those people who thought resilience is a matter of digging down deep inside. The deeper you can dig. Grit it out, tough it out, dig deep, find the answer within.

Gary S:

And what she discovered both what she went through and then what the science backed up is that that's only part of the resilience equation, digging down, digging deep. It's also casting wide. It's going and harnessing the resources you have around you. Here's the quote that she gave us, that's included in the blog that's on crucibleleadership.com.

Katie Foulkes:

Well, I've got these research opportunities. This is really interesting. It's showing me that something like resilience as an example, we simplify, show parallels to my rowing experience here. We simplify these complex events. We tell someone just to be more resilient. We sometimes point the finger at people and say they're not resilient and it was all very simple.

Katie Foulkes:

And as I started doing this research and thinking about my own experiences when I'm resilient to some things, not to others, resilient at some times, not at other times, I was fortunate enough to work with a gentleman called Dr. Michael Cavanagh at Sydney Uni, who had this new definition of resilience, which is really exploring what is, now I'm going to use dorky language for a second, what's in our surrounding systems. What's around us that helps us be resilient? And so the research is showing that if you have accesses to the resources you need to meet the challenge you're facing, you'll be more resilient. It's kind of obvious, right?

Gary S:

That blew me away. What was your reaction when you heard her say that?

Warwick F:

It's okay to ask for help. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. I would say it's a sign of strength, a sign of courage.

Gary S:

And it's a sign of resilience. It's a sign of harnessing resilience.

Warwick F:

Right, absolutely. It's rare that you will get through a crucible without help. And bouncing back yourself, it's very, very hard. So, she realized it was important for her and for others to get help.

Gary S:

Before we turn the page to the next guest, who's not Australian, this time by the way, the next guest we're going to talk about, let me throw another random resilience quote at you, Warwick. This is from Thomas Edison. And Thomas Edison said this, "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to always try just one more time." What do you think?

Warwick F:

The amazing thing is I feel like many, if not all of them, people in our podcast Resilience series have said that. It's basically, failure is not trying. It's not failure. I mean, Lucy Westlake, Heather Kampf may have indeed mentioned that, too. It's the notion that if you do your level best at something, that's not failing. That, again, is something that I don't know if I heard that or not, but it's such a profound, because then so long as you do your best, that's not failing, you've tried.

Warwick F:

So by reframing, because often the F-word, the failure word makes it go, "I don't want to try because I might fail and that's going to hurt my identity." But if you say it like, "It's not really failing if you've tried your best." "You're entering into the arena," as Robert Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt said. So, by all means, entering the arena is not failing.

Gary S:

Our next guest that we want to talk about, to me, was they're all remarkable. Her story was most remarkable to me because there was video evidence of it. And that is Heather Kampf.

Gary S:

Heather Kampf was in college. It was in 2008. She was a runner. She was in the big 10 championships running the 600 meters. Six hundred meters is a three-lap race over a 200-meter track. And she was, she had a lot of stuff she told us. She ran two other races that day, so she was kind of holding back in the first two laps, and she was ready to really turn the burners on for the third lap, and she tripped and fell. And she didn't just, as she put it, "It isn't like my hands just touched the track," she fell and skidded across the track.

Gary S:

And we have a clip that we showed with the episode on our social media, you can find it of both Heather talking about that incident and her actually falling and what happened next. And why that was so remarkable is that she got up. The other runners had, what, six, seven body lengths ahead of her. And she ended up in the last 200 meters sprinting and winning her heat.

Gary S:

I mean, what was your reaction when you saw that video? When I showed you that video, when we were thinking of having her on, what did you think?

Warwick F:

I mean, it's amazing. I mean, if anybody's familiar with running, at least in that indoor track, you're running as a pack, in her case with some other women. And I think somebody behind her caught her heel, maybe more than one person, just, it's a tight bunch of people. And she fell flat on the stomach. I mean, she didn't even realize how bad it was until her dad showed her the video. And she got up and somehow came back and won.

Warwick F:

I mean, it's just like out of the movies. I mean, it's like, "How does that happen?" It was remarkable for just whether she had won or not, for her not giving up and says, "Okay, I'm going to try and win this thing," and she did. It was just, that video was stunning. It's like, how can that be possible? How can you do that? It was amazing.

Gary S:

And the thing that she said in the show, I mean, she's very matter-of-fact about it. My favorite part about that interview was that video that we just discussed that you can see in our social media on Facebook at Crucible Leadership and at LinkedIn for Warwick, you can see the video. It's been viewed by tens of millions of people. And when she was talking to us about it, she said something like, "And that video that's been viewed by 6 million people," she didn't even know. That tells you everything that you need to know about the character of Heather Kampf is that she doesn't have a tally board about how many millions of people have watched her remarkable feat.

Gary S:

That's not the thing that's important to her. And nor was just "never give up," the message, even though that's the title on a lot of the videos that you'll find out there on the internet of her race, it will be Never Give Up. She said, "It's never give up and then add to it." And really her add, the learning she draws from that was have a plan. What she said fueled her resilience in that moment where she had a plan for that race and the plan did not include falling and not finishing.

Gary S:

And she talks about how her coach said, "Even if you only get one point, that's one point that helps your team and you get one point, if you finish. You get zero points if you don't." So, she was when she got up, she wasn't never quitting just to never quit, she was never quitting because she wanted her team to win. She wanted as she said later, "Significance is success shared." She wanted significance. She wanted success to be shared with her teammates by going through and winning that race.

Gary S:

And the other thing that she said, that sort of is a great takeaway for a series on Harnessing Resilience was this.

Heather Kampf:

For me, it's like never give up because you never know when your greatest obstacle becomes your greatest opportunity to do things you never imagined you could. Because I would never have pictured that I could have gotten up with a 200 meters to go in a sprint race and win. But that gave me so much confidence going into the Olympic trials that summer and to follow through in the rest of my professional career to believe that I have this gear somewhere within me that I might need at some point again. And it could be another magical moment like that.

Gary S:

I think every guest we've ever had on has had that experience, too.

Warwick F:

I mean, that's so true. Yeah, just I think of my own life and the whole takeover, the greatest obstacle become the greatest opportunity. Yeah. I mean, I've chat to people, today, yesterday. And when I say talk about the losing $2 billion, which is a lot of money even in the US, I'm willing to be vulnerable about it, which I am because it's I want to help people and its vulnerability for a purpose. I'm willing to be open about it and say, "Yep, I screwed up and made some big mistakes." People tend not to talk about failure, business failure in particular, and they don't tend to do it in an open vulnerable way.

Warwick F:

So, that's my specific way of how my greatest obstacle has become my greatest opportunity. It's not like a speech or a message I was looking to have, but whether you think it's God or some sovereign power somewhere, I guess that was the path that's been laid out. And if that can help people then I'm happy to do it, but I wouldn't have had that opportunity without that obstacle. So yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with Heather's viewpoint. It's profound.

Gary S:

And it is. You can almost mash up her comment here with Stacey Copas' first comment that we talked about. And you could say you never know when your greatest obstacle will become your greatest opportunity and your greatest gift. You can mash those things up because it's again, to your point very, very astutely made. It's a mindset shift.

Gary S:

It's the mindset shift to what was I think remarkable about what Heather did in that race was that her mindset shift happened in an instant. A lot of times it takes days, weeks, months, years, decades to get over beyond our crucibles. It took her a few seconds to get over that one crucible, and there's video evidence of it. I think that's what makes it so evocative.

Gary S:

All right. Here's my random quote that I'm going to throw at you before we move on to our next person. You're going to love this one, Warwick because I know you love, you're a big fan of this person. Winston Churchill said this, "If you're going through hell, keep going." What do you think of that?

Warwick F:

Yeah, that's boy, that's pretty amazing. I think of World War II and I guess probably his way of saying, when things are at its darkest, which it was in 1940 for Britain. America hadn't entered the war yet. It was pre-Pearl Harbor. Germany had conquered all of Europe including France. Battle of Britain was happening. They were vying for dominance over the skies. It seemed like invasion of Britain was likely. I guess, maybe he viewed that time it was, almost literal, living hell at the time for Britain. But you keep going, you just don't give up.

Warwick F:

And he gave that, probably, I guess you could say maybe the most famous speech on resilience that any leader has ever given. In which he said, "We will never give up. We will never give up. We will fight them on the landing grounds. We will fight them in the villages, on the streets, in the countryside, in the cities. And even if they would overwhelm us," back when Britain had an empire, "Our Commonwealth countries will come to our rescue."

Warwick F:

And yeah, it was like, talk about power of positive thinking. It's, "We are never giving up no matter what." And that galvanized the whole British people of, "Yeah, we're not giving up," even though life couldn't have looked more dark than it was. So, yeah, it's a great quote. And if he was about, he would win the all-time, potentially all-time, Olympic gold medal for resilience. I mean, Lincoln is up there, definitely. But Lincoln and Churchill, amazing.

Gary S:

Yeah, they were both legendary harnessers of resilience to use the title of our series. Speaking of legendary harnessers of resilience, our next guest, was Lucy Westlake. And for me, Lucy was, and I noticed this when we were doing the videos, snippets of the best bits from the show, is there's just, she's a 17-year-old girl. And she's just so sweet and charming. And Lucy's claim to fame, if you can believe this, listener, is by age 13, she was in the position to have ascended the highest peak in every US state.

Gary S:

So, at age 13, she had done 49 states and she was trying to ascend Denali in Alaska. And that's when her crucible moment hit, and she needed to harness her resilience. What happened there, and it's amazing that at age 13, she spent 20 days, she and her dad trying to find a way up to the top of the mountain. They were up at high camp, she called it and they were trying for 20 days to find a way around this, do that, it was bad weather. Then some things happened with their guides that that that made it impossible to try the ascent.

Gary S:

And it wasn't until 20 days had passed that she decided, she and her dad decided, they weren't going to be able to do it on this attempt, so she wasn't going to hit the peak. But one of the things she said to us in that conversation was at that moment, on like day 19 trying to get up the highest peak, 20-some thousand feet at the top of Denali. Nineteen days of just living through hunger and tiredness and cold, she said, "I wasn't going to go down without a fight."

Gary S:

And I'm thinking, "You've been there for 20 days. I would have said that maybe after a day if I even got there. But I mean, you've already been fighting for a long time." That's the kind of spunk and spirit that she brought to it. And she said this to us, which I'd love to get your take on because it's in the same zip code of what we've been talking about. Lucy said this, "Failure is inevitable. It's how you react to it that matters."

Lucy Westlake:

If someone just quit after the first failure, if they're like, "Oh, that defines me. I'm not good at this sport or at this job or at this role," then you'll really never reach your full potential in that because just like quitting after one failure. Failure is going to happen no matter how good or bad you are. And I think, I mean, I've definitely learned the most when I failed, that's when I reflect the most on it. When I win, I'm just like, "Okay, good job, well done." But when I fail at something, that's really when I look at what I'm doing more closely and can improve based upon those reflections. So, I'd say yeah, failure is a great learning tool.

Warwick F:

It is. I mean, in this case, it wasn't really her fault. They had some guys that were with her that were called away from some other accident, difficult situation they had to deal with. So, it wasn't like she did anything wrong, or lack of planning or lack of, I don't know, quite what. But yet, she still viewed it as a failure. Now for most people, for age 13, not being able to climb all 50 peaks in the US doesn't seem like a big failure, but for her, she's a driven person, I mean, it was devastating.

Warwick F:

She had almost have reached the pinnacle of what she was trying to achieve, literally and figuratively. And yet, she failed. Well, if you're going to go for bold adventures, bold tasks, just go for things that are not easy. I mean, most things worth having are not easy to obtain. Otherwise, you wouldn't value them that much. Yeah, it was disappointing, but she was also not going to give up. She ended up trying again, a lot of years later, and she finally made it. But it's-

Gary S:

Yeah. Four years later, when she was 17, just this past summer, she and her dad scaled Denali, and she did become the youngest female ever to hike all 50 highest peaks in the US.

Warwick F:

But she wasn't going to say, "Okay, I'm not doing that again or it's too hard. And what happens if that happens again. We don't have the right help." And it didn't go perfectly this last time, but they got it done. And she's not afraid of failing. That's one of the big lessons from Lucy Westlake. She is not afraid. She's not afraid to fail. And that just does not hold her back.

Gary S:

She told us, one of the many things she told us that was just wise beyond her years, not to be insulting, but true, she's a 17-year-old young lady. "Failure is a great learning tools," one of the things she said to us. And another thing that she said to us that I think is tied with Stacey Copas talking about the trampoline effect of the crucible, the farther down you go, the higher up you can launch. Lucy said this when you asked her at the very outset of the show.

Gary S:

And it was like it was one of those things we're trying to get warmed up at the start of the show. And you're like, "Hey, Lucy, how would you define resilience?" And this is what she said to you at that time and I think both of our, I don't remember seeing it, but it felt like both of us went, "Wow," or we might have actually said, wow. But she said this to that question, "The best way to build resilience is to try something." I mean, that's a mic drop moment in the pantheon of Harnessing Resilience, isn't it?

Warwick F:

It really is. I mean, I'm a reflective person, so I tend to think, reflect, think, reflect again before doing things. So, I do get things done, but I tend not to, other than when I jokingly say, make $2 billion takeovers. I tend to think very carefully before I do anything, especially now. But just this idea of just trying, of just trying something. Being willing to say yes, she said in another comment. People who succeed, as we keep saying in the series on resilience, they're willing to fail. And being willing to fail means you've got to try things.

Warwick F:

I mean, I think of Thomas Edison, who we mentioned, he tried like a thousand different filaments before he found, I don't know, it was like cotton with I don't know, what some substance on it for the filament for the light bulb. Well, that was probably 999 failures before he reached success. Okay, but we wouldn't have the light bulb if he said if he tried 100 filaments and it's like, "I'm giving up. This is all too hard. Forget about it."

Gary S:

Right. Like Lucy, he did not give up without a fight.

Warwick F:

Indeed, indeed.

Gary S:

I've got one more quote before we move on to our next guest. Here's this quote, "Great leaders keep going. They never give up. Their crucible experiences are never the end of their stories. They learn from and leverage them as opportunities to write a new chapter of their stories." Wait, I didn't say who said that. Who said that is Warwick Fairfax, author of Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. That's so important, right? I say that not jokingly. I say that. You wrote an entire chapter about the importance of resilience and perseverance. So clearly, this is something that you've been thinking on for quite some time.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, it's one of my highest values. It's funny, in the book, I write about a lot of things I'm really poor at, perseverance or resilience. It's actually one of the areas I'm actually okay in. But yeah, I think I used the example of Churchill in that chapter on perseverance and we just talked about World War II. Well, in the 1930s, he was out of power, in part through his own injudicious political statements and actions of anger at his own party.

Warwick F:

So, as Hitler and Nazi Germany was rearming and posing a great threat, a bit like Don Quixote sort of chasing at windmills, he kept saying to the British people and the public, "You got to watch out for Hitler and Nazi Germany, we've got to rearm." And everybody said, "Oh, there's old Winston, warmongerer and what does he know?" And that had to have been frustrating. Did he give up? No. What were the chances of him being Prime Minister at that point? Really slim. He was getting older.

Warwick F:

His party, which probably thought of him as brilliant, but a bit of a pain in the neck, but somehow his time came when it's 1940 and the war is on. Who are you going to call? You're going to call Winston Churchill. But he could have easily given up in the 1930s. "Look, this is all too hard. We're probably going to be conquered by Germany. These other politicians are too stupid to listen to me." He didn't give up. And it would have been easy to back in those days. It was really, really tough. So, just this idea of as you're saying, great leaders, whether it's Lincoln or Churchill-

Gary S:

I didn't say it, you said it. I didn't say it, you said it. You wrote.

Warwick F:

Fair point, as you were reading what I said. But they don't give up. That is one of the hallmarks of great leaders, they are resilient. Think of a great leader. I can't think of any of them that don't have superhuman qualities of resilience, almost, they all do.

Gary S:

And the beautiful part of this conversation now as the captain turns on the fasten seatbelt sign and it's getting time, we're going to talk about our final guest in the Harnessing Resilience series. We did this on purpose. Our first four guests were individuals who went through crucibles themselves and had to harness resilience and talked about how they did it.

Gary S:

Our final guest is Dr. Craig Dowden and Dr. Dowden studies resilience. He studies the science around resilience. And we talked to him specifically last because we wanted to get a big picture look at, "Okay, we get it anecdotally what leads to resilience, but what does the science say leads to resilience?" And he said some just truly fascinating things. I'll start with this one. Much like Katie Foulkes said kind of experientially and then also from research, harnessing resilience is really a two-part process. And here's how Craig Dowden described it.

Gary S:

First, it's finding our way back to baseline, where we were before the crucible struck. Second, charting a course to move beyond that. To not merely bounce back, but bounce forward. That to me was one of the, that combined with what Katie said about dig deep, reach wide is probably what I'll take away from this series most. What was your response to Craig saying that?

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean, it's really profound. It is not just merely getting back to baseline and that's certainly the first step. It's moving forward, moving beyond it. In our time, moving your life towards a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. A life that's focused on other people. A higher cause, a higher purpose. It's using your crucible to fuel a passion for a vision that you never had before. It's making something beautiful out of something that's awful.

Warwick F:

I mean, Craig was remarkable in that as we recounted what we'd seen with our guests on resilience or indeed, pretty much every guest we've had on the whole series of Beyond the Crucible, he was able to say what we have experienced anecdotally through our own lives and other people. He said, "The science supports this. So just in terms of how important it is to have a strong mindset to reframe what you went through, to see what you went through as a gift or a blessing."

Warwick F:

All these things he said, the science supports that, in terms of how you get back from a devastating experience, is just that sense of reframing it and seeing, making meaning and purpose of the devastating crucible you went through. It's absolutely crucial. So, it was so affirming to hear that the science supports. It was really the perfect capstone to the series because the science supports what the rest of the folks that have been on this series have said. So, it's not just good for them, it's good for all human beings was what he was saying. It was so encouraging.

Gary S:

And he said a couple things that, to talk about baseline, right? Where we're at right now, our baselines. Right now, I'm not facing any big crucibles, I'm at baseline. He said this and we didn't get to talk about this before we started recording because I just sort of listened to and processed through the episode. He says this in the episode, "We as human beings are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for." That heartens me. That is, to know that at baseline as he describes it, we're more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. That's an important thing to kind of take and tuck into our pocket, isn't it?

Warwick F:

It really is. I mean, just the human beings have a capacity for resilience. It's just unthinkable. I mean, I just think of the woman who sailed around Antarctica, Lisa Blair?

Gary S:

Lisa Blair, yep.

Warwick F:

Yeah, yeah.

Gary S:

Australian. Australian.

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

Gary S:

Look at that.

Warwick F:

I mean, those are the toughest waters in the world. I don't know if it's 100-ft. waves, 50-ft. She's in a sailboat trying to be the first woman to circumnavigate Antarctica. I mean, there was so many days and she's a seasoned sailor when she just wanted to give up, but somehow, amidst, the worst weather in the world, freezing subzero temperatures, she kept going. One more hour, one more day, one more step. But how is that possible for a human being?

Warwick F:

And she would say to anybody, she's not a remarkable person, she would say. She'd say she's not big in stature. She's not particularly athletic. She is not the superhuman person. She will consider herself unremarkable athletically is how she would view herself. So, most of us would tell, "Oh, we could never be Lisa Blair and do that. There's no way." But the human spirit is remarkably more resilient than we think.

Warwick F:

And so what Craig Dowden said is profoundly true. And I think all our guests on the series and indeed on the podcast, in general, bear that out. They have accomplished things if you said to them before, "Do you think this was possible?" They'd say, "I'm not sure. I don't think so." But they did.

Gary S:

Yeah. And he said something also that I think's a great bookend to what we said, what we talked about Lucy Westlake saying. Lucy Westlake's definition when you asked her, "How would you define resilience?" And she said, "Try something." It's all about trying something.

Gary S:

Craig Dowden talked about the opposite of that, the negative of that, the reverse of that, the dark side of that, and that is avoidance is a roadblock to resilience. Not doing something. Being too afraid or too timid.

Craig Dowden:

Resilience is a skill that we can grow. Well, if we're avoiding something we're not, it's just like being afraid to go to the gym or jump on the treadmill. And, "Oh, I don't want to raise the speed of my treadmill, because what's going to happen if it breaks or I fall off or what." Well, are we going to enhance our cardiovascular health? Well, we're only going to stay at that level. So, what's essential is we have to put these things in practice, so I love the linkage you're making because if we avoid it, we're not doing anything about it. So, we're missing an opportunity to be resilient.

Gary S:

To me, that inspires me to dismiss avoidance. It inspires me to follow Lucy, not the warning that Craig gives us, that avoidance is a roadblock to resilience.

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean, that's probably one of the most profound things for me. Certainly, it's up there in the top few, and it's hard to separate, because they're all so profound what we heard from our guests. But avoidance is really the dark side. It's the opposite of resilience and avoidance can take many forms. It was like, "I'm going to be angry and bitter about what they did to me. It was so unfair. I'm going to be angry at myself." In my case, "I was an idiot, how could I do what I did with the takeover?"

Warwick F:

I know, there was probably a few other people I could have been angry about if I really wanted to go there. But anger is certainly avoidance. Not admitting your own mistakes is avoidance. Not saying, "Okay, I've got to accept what I went through, but how can I bounce back? How can I use this in the service of others?" So, avoidance means taking no steps, doing nothing, feel angry and bitter, hiding out of the covers until life somehow melts away. That's avoidance. Avoidance equals misery and agony for potentially decades. That's what avoidance means. And so, you don't want to be in that place.

Warwick F:

And typically, when you go through a crucible, you do have a binary choice. It's avoidance, pain and misery or it's not acceptance of, or condoning of what happened to you, but accept that what happened, happened and then how can I use this to bounce back maybe even bounce back further, as we heard, in service of others. And that's the path of resilience and joy and fulfillment.

Warwick F:

Really Craig's statement about avoidance is a roadblock to resilience, it really indicates two paths, agony, defeat and misery or joy, fulfillment and significance. And typically, when you go through a crucible, those are the two paths. There's typically not any other path. That's one of the strange blessings of the crucible. Just living same old, same old life. That's not a choice that exists for most people.

Gary S:

Now, I almost feel like I should just end the show now, because that was a beautiful way to end. But I want you as the host of the show and not just the host of this show, Warwick. But as the creator of Crucible Leadership, as the man who wrote Crucible Leadership, out October 19, who has been offering hope and healing to people that they can overcome their setbacks and failures. We're more than our setbacks and failures. This idea of harnessing resilience is so critical to that.

Gary S:

What's your biggest takeaway, final word, encouragement? What do you want to leave listeners who've spent the last six weeks with us in this series? What do you want to leave them with as you wave goodbye to the series?

Warwick F:

I would say, you and your life are not defined by your worst day, your worst moment. It's incredibly painful if today is that day, it's hard to believe that tomorrow will ever exist, because all you can think of is agony. And in my own way and our guests have all encouraged us, you can't compare crucibles.

Warwick F:

Many guests, including David Charbonnet that was a Navy SEAL, who was paralyzed in a training accident. He said this, "Your worst day is your worst day. It's not a competition." But just this notion that you're not defined by that worst day, that there is hope if you just take steps of resilience, try things, be willing to fail, that life can get better. Even in the darkest of pits, there is hope. And all of these guests bounced back from extremely difficult crucibles as have all our guests on the podcast.

Warwick F:

So, even in the darkest of times, remember, there is hope and the key is resilience and being willing to fail, and be willing to take one positive step. Yes, get help, dig deep, but don't avoid what happened. Lean in and be willing to take one positive step forward, because one positive step forward leads to another. And eventually, it can lead to a life of significance if you're willing to take that first step forward, out of from the crucible.

Gary S:

That, listener, is a mic drop moment. It wasn't actually a mic. It was the case for my earbuds, because my mic is more expensive. But that is the end of our series Harnessing Resilience. Thank you for spending the last six weeks in this focus study of something that's so critical to coming not just back from our crucibles, but moving beyond our crucibles. Not just coming back to baseline, but setting course for that life of significance that Warwick talks about.

Gary S:

So, until the next time when we're together, remember, your crucible experience is painful, but it's not the end of your story. In fact, it can be the beginning. Often, is the beginning of a brand new story that can be the best story of your life because it leads, as Warwick said, to a life of significance.

Dr. Craig Dowden describes his coaching practice as bridging the gap between what science knows and what leaders do. What science has found, he says, is that harnessing resilience is two-part process: first, finding our way back to baseline – i.e., where we were before our crucible hit; and second, charting a course to move beyond that point. To not merely bounce back, but bounce forward. “We as human beings,” he tells us research has shown time and again, “are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.”

To learn more about Dr. Craig Dowden and his research on resilience and positive leadership, visit www.craigdowden.com.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Gary S:

Welcome to episode five of our series on harnessing resilience. I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Up till now, we've been talking to guests who've spoken in detail about how they mustered the resilience to overcome their setbacks and failures. This week, our focus shifts from anecdotes to evidence as we speak to a researcher who offers practical insights and action steps all of us can take to strengthen our ability to rise above when the crucibles come. That researcher is Dr. Craig Dowden, who describes his coaching practice as bridging the gap between what science knows and what leaders do. What science has found, you'll hear him tell us is that harnessing resilience is a two-part process. First, finding our way back to baseline. That is where we were before our crucible hit and second, charting a course to move beyond that point to not merely bounce back but bounce forward.

Warwick F:

Well, Craig, thank you so much and love all your work on resilience and obviously you've also written a book, Do Good to Lead Well, which we'll have to have you on again to talk about. I love the concept of leaders often believe they can be values driven or they can be successful by just the whole concept of doing good to lead well. Values driving your leadership, a great concept, but we're here today to talk about resilience. We live in a pandemic ridden world where everything's so uncertain. If ever we needed resilience, it's it. One of the things I'd like to start off with, you have this great phrase in which you say that... Your definition of resilience is our ability to bounce back, how quickly we take to bounce back to baseline in order to move ahead. Talk about just this concept of moving back to baseline to move ahead and what your definition of resilience and just give us an overview as we get into the subject.

Craig D:

Well, thanks so much Warwick and Gary for inviting me on your podcast and it's such an important topic. I love the thesis of what you have in terms of, well, it's about what happens when we encounter these events and how do we push forward. I think that's really critical, and appreciate that question because that comes from the decades of research that have been conducted around, so what does resilience look like? What does it mean when we're talking about resilience?

Craig D:

Fundamentally across all of the different pieces of research, it's essentially how quickly we bounce back to "normal" and how do we move ahead after we encounter challenging events. It makes a whole lot of sense because the quicker that I can restabilize and then move forward with purpose. Well, then now that by definition represents enhanced resiliency. The longer that takes, the longer that recovery period, the more challenging it is, well then the less resilient I am because once I get back to that balanced state, now I'm able to step forward with intentionality.

Warwick F:

That's such a good point. I think you used the image of a slinky, which some of us remember from our childhood going down the stairs and just this elasticity, this flexibility, talk about what does that mean elasticity, flexibility in enabling us to get back to baseline as quickly as possible.

Craig D:

Absolutely. Invariably, when we encounter setbacks, it's really challenging. It's tough and we can get into that negative mindset and cycle around that. Yet from the neuro-scientific research and elsewhere, we, as human beings are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. We can come back from these pieces. What's critical is to shifting our thinking, shifting our emotional management system, if you will, in terms of reframing things. Daniel Gilbert out of Harvard University talks about how we're far... His research has shown how much more resilient we are.

Craig D:

When you ask people to anticipate how they're going to respond when a particular challenge comes up, one of the worst imagined scenarios possible, and they think, "Oh, I won't be able to do this." When the moment comes, we are extraordinarily resilient. We are able to dig deep and move forward. I appreciate your appreciation of the slinky because that's fundamentally, it. It continues to move. It can get stretched. Then the critical part is it reforms and moves ahead each step. It's a really great metaphor for us in terms of how we approach our lives and how we move.

Gary S:

I want to jump in for a second and emphasize a point so clear in the beginning of this discussion because we've done now... Gracious, we're in the mid eighties for the number of shows we've done, Craig. One of the things we hear from time to time when we're talking to a guest who's been through a crucible, they talk about how it's not about bouncing back because they say bouncing back means you're just back to where you were. You are saying though something I think somewhat different. It's a both and. You have to bounce back to where you were first. Then part two of the process is bouncing forward from there. Is that a fair enough layman's understanding of what you're saying?

Craig D:

Absolutely. I think it's a great way of looking at it because also one of the interesting things we talked about at the beginning about being in the midst of a pandemic and one of the key insights from a lot of the thought leaders and researchers is that how agile are we, how adaptive are we to those circumstances? I think what's critical is that when... Again, invariably things aren't always going to go our way or turn out as planned. Then when we return to baseline, that's fantastic. Now it's, how do I take the insight, the learning, the teachings that that experience has shown to me and now integrate that into the future?

Craig D:

Now, I'm better equipped to deal with similar challenges or the same challenges. This is where I find, and to me, the research in this space is fascinating around mindset and perspective is around, so now how do we evolve, how do we grow as individuals once we've encountered this particular situation? I think that's where there's even additional motivation is that, so now I can expand myself as a human being and my capacity.

Warwick F:

What's interesting is every guest we've had on is almost a superstar in resilience. Their mindset is unbelievable. I can think of just a few stories that really illustrate I think the point you're making about mindset. I can think of somebody that we didn't have on the podcast, Joni Eareckson Tada, who has a top-rated Christian podcast, really Christian radio program and certainly did have. She became a quadriplegic in the '60s in a diving accident in Maryland. Funnily enough where I live most of the year. It took a while. She's been in that wheelchair, it's got to be 50 plus years. She says something that makes no sense. She talks about her wheelchair as a passport to joy. That, to me, makes no sense. It's almost obscene to say that. There's mental shifts and then there's crazy mental shifts. That makes no sense.

Warwick F:

But we've had an Australian woman that was injured in a diving accident, became a quadriplegic at 12, has some movement now. She talks about how it was a gift. There's this sense of some of these folks that obviously nobody wants to go through that physical crucible but used it, they've reframed it in a unbelievable way to help them move forward. Talk about this, not everybody's going to talk about that. I'm not suggesting that's a good thing but it seems reframing and seeing value in what you've gone through and being able to use it to help others, there's something about that, that really helps you not just come back but spring forward a whole heck of a long way. Does that make sense from your perspective?

Craig D:

Absolutely makes sense. I think what's crucial around that, it's also... This is where sometimes it can, as you say, just seem completely out of bounds to frame it that way. I think sometimes that can, again, that profound search for, "Okay. Look how great this is." It's not meant to minimize the experience. I think that's the other piece about it because it is challenging. It can be extraordinarily traumatic and it's essential and decades of psychological research highlight that as well. It's essential for us to acknowledge our emotions and accept them, not try to move past them too quickly. But then I think once we've gone through that, then the power is... You make such an important point, Warwick, which is around, "Okay. Now, what do I do? How do I move forward?"

Craig D:

Just like the pandemic, really interesting. I facilitate CEO forums and leadership forums. One of the powerful questions that we've reflected on and talked about is that, okay, what are some of the insights? What are some of the benefits of this experience through the pandemic? People talking about, "I spent more time with my kids." Or, "Now, I'm much more reflective about how much time I'm going to spend in airports and what kinds of meetings do I need to go to versus not." It doesn't mean that the pandemic has been joyful and wonderful yet at the same time, there are things from it that, hey, it shifted my perspective. I love that you talk about that mindset shift. As another quick example, I remember speaking to this CEO on one of my webinar series of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association here in Canada.

Craig D:

She talked about she reports to a board of 40 members. People were saying, "Yeah, exactly. Oh boy, six or eight is challenging enough. Now, you have 40." She had such a powerful insight where she said, "Well, you know what? What I do is I choose to look at them as 40 really smart, highly accomplished people who are looking out for my best interests and the best interest of my organization." Now, rather than fear the exchanges or try to avoid it, what she does is look to facilitate relationships. I think again, the same situation can be viewed very, very differently. Looking at what can we control?

Craig D:

What do we move forward? What do we learn through this experience? Again, decades of research has shown us that we are incredibly meaning making creatures. As human beings, that's something that defines us. I love, again, the core thesis around moving ahead with purpose that you talk about. That is at our core as people. Now, finding ways to be able to do that successfully once again doesn't minimize the experience. It enhances it and it brings us forward in a different way.

Warwick F:

It's so true. Really, we've had maybe 70, 80 guests on the podcast and this is, I guess, qualitative, not quantitative research. But qualitatively, every single guest who has bounced back, whether it's a physical tragedy or a business failure or victims of abuse, every variety, we've had different genders, race, nationalities, they've all sought to seek meaning in their crucible and they've all bounced forward, if you will, by looking at it in terms of how can I use what I've been through to help others, whether it's other victims of abuse, other people of physical challenges, other people who have had a business failure?

Warwick F:

Every one of them, they've not held grudges because that can pull you down. As we often say on Crucible Leadership, lack of forgiving other people puts you in prison. It's almost like drinking poison. It's not good for you irrespective of how bad and how wrong other people may have been to you in that incident. But just this concept of using what you've been through to serve others, to serve a bigger purpose from your perspective, does that show up in the research too as being one of the factors in resilience and bouncing back?

Craig D:

Absolutely, and in a parallel line of research around accomplishing goals. In other psychological motivational research, they... The bigger than self goals. Once we look at serving a purpose bigger than ourselves, outside of our own self interest, and we all have self interest to some extent, that's absolutely natural and wonderful. Then it's now, how am I contributing to my broader community? I love the point that you're making because now what I can do is elevate the meaning that I extract from that challenging experience, because now not only can I grow and extend end as a human being and test the limits of my potential, I can also support others in their pursuits and I can let them know and give them a red flag, some warnings in advance, "Hey, this tripped me up."

Craig D:

You see that, mentorship. That's a lot around what that is. Taking my lived experience and supporting others so that they cannot encounter some of the challenges that I did or adopt different strategies. The more we can reframe that, look at it in that lens... I think the power within that as well is that it's more balanced. It's a more balanced perspective on things that, "Yeah, this is..." I love Gary, you said earlier too, an and idea. This has been incredibly challenging and I can learn forward from it and move ahead as a more developed individual. I've expanded my toolkit as a result of this experience.

Warwick F:

That's so well said. I guess in my own way, as listeners would know, growing up in a 150-year old family business in Australia and did a two billion plus takeover, which I made a lot of mistakes. I was fresh out of Harvard Business School, young, foolish, naïve and idealistic, within three years company went under. That was painful. Most of the '90s were painful years. Look what I did. I hurt other family members. I'm a person of faith and felt like, "Gosh, maybe God had a plan." I blew that, which poor theology, but didn't matter. It was still painful. Lost a lot of money, which wasn't so important to me but just that sense of loss of self-esteem, self-belief. Eventually, I clawed my way back and focused on serving others. Hence, with my book coming out this fall, using my pain for a purpose to use that off used aphorism. It's somewhat similar now. Is there still a scar?

Warwick F:

Of course there is. Do I have regrets? Sure. But when I'm somehow using what I went through to help others, it does make meaning out of it. It does bring a sense of fulfillment and joy. It's somewhat similar but you're right. It's not like it wasn't painful. It's not like it didn't take years to bounce back. It's not like, "Oh, if you read this book and have the right mindset, you can get over this in five easy lessons or your money back in six weeks." Lose 50 pounds in four weeks, guaranteed. That's not what we or you are saying about resilience. It's not easy and it can take... In my case, it took years to fully bounce back.

Gary S:

That's the great thing, I think, that we can't emphasize enough here on the show. That is, there is no statute of limitations on your crucible, on coming back from your crucible. Warwick, I love that you just described your story. I was sitting here hoping you were going to do it thinking, "Am I going to have to jump in and play interviewer and ask Warwick this question?" Because your story, as you just expressed it, is what Craig's been talking about. That one, two punch, that getting back to baseline, deep breath, and then moving beyond that to what you call a life of significance. We've never looked at it. I don't know. I've never looked at your story in that context before but it fits perfectly for your story. While you guys are talking, I'm sitting here going, "That was this guest's story and that guest's story and that guest's story." Clearly, the science proves this to be true. Right Craig?

Craig D:

Absolutely. I think what's really powerful as well... This is critical is that the way in which we approach our lives, as you say Warwick, it's decades. These are habits and ingrained frames that we have. Then to move beyond those, I love that you say it right, it's not a, "Oh, we'll follow these five steps and in a week, this will..." This is constant level of awareness. One of the other things that I think is so powerful, resilience is a muscle, leadership is a muscle. In order for us to grow that muscle, we have to practice it. If I want to improve my stamina, I got to jump on the treadmill. I got to go for walks. I got to go for jogs. If I want to build lean muscle mass, I got to go in and do the reps.

Craig D:

That resiliency requires intentional practice, dedicated practice, every day looking for opportunities for how can we be more resilient? How can we test ourselves? That's really crucial. That is one of the key ways in which we can continue to grow and expand. Here's where I think is so powerful because you've talked about how the common thread amongst all the guests is, "Well, look what they've done." Encountered this extraordinary setback, this unbelievable challenge, then what they've done is figured out a way, "Okay. How do I move forward?" They're looking at, and Warwick in the same space for you, "What do I take from that? Now, how do I move forward within it? I'm not stuck in the past or I'm not stuck where I was. Now, I'm moving ahead with a very different perspective and as you said earlier, one of the other... Blessed with that or that was a passport to me to have different frame on things.

Craig D:

I think that is what's really key. All of us are going to go through challenging situations and now the critical choice we all must face is that, "Okay. What do I do with that? What do I now do when I have this crucible moment and then what's really..." Back to the resilience research that now I have a choice about how I'm going to respond. It doesn't take away from the process of mourning, of grief, of frustration of anger. It's just that now once I move through that, what do I do? Where do I go from here?

Warwick F:

Absolutely. I want to get to something else you said but before I do, one of the things you said, I think I love of your metaphor of exercise, it's like a muscle. It's not a one and done thing. "Oh, I got over that crucible. I'm good to go." Life keeps hitting at you. It's funny. We had a former prime minister back in the '70s who in a moment of madness before an election said, "Life wasn't meant to be easy." That's political suicide for a prime minister or president running for reelection but he did. He might have even been reelected. I don't know. Wow. Crazy talk. Life isn't easy.

Warwick F:

But I think of this example as Gary would know, I don't know it was a month or two ago. I've largely gotten over if you will, air quotes, which for the listeners as best as I can, but the book's coming out and I guess there's a free chapter available online and some Australian journalist gossip columnist picked it up and read it and just read a really snarky column. It was like Warwick will give you his advice in his book for a price. It's like, who sells their book for nothing? Come on. Then it's like, well Warwick will tell you how to bounce back from failure, well, he's an expert in that, isn't he? It's like one after another snarky comment. Was I bulletproof? No. Did that hurt my feelings? Yes, I got over it.

Warwick F:

I don't know if it took me a few days or whatever it wasn't immediate, but it's like, stuff's going to come at you. Unless you are a machine and no human being is at least not with current technology anyway. We're all flesh and blood, it's going to hurt, but the question is, do you wallow there for... This wasn't worth wallowing for weeks, but you're going to get hit with something, it's going to hurt your feelings. It's going to take you off the rails. Well, have you built enough resilience muscle and friends, like in this case, Gary, who can say, "Hey boy, this hurt my feelings."

Warwick F:

This part of the muscle is, and I think you talked about this, the internal and the external. Talk a bit about, it's not one and done and you got to build that muscle so that when stuff comes at you you know what to do because your feelings are going to get hurt. Your self-esteem is going to be under assault from time to time. You write a paper and let's say 99 people love that peer reviewed paper. There's one loon out there somewhere that says what Craig Dowden it's stupid, it's idiotic. You might know who that a person is and the guy doesn't have a clue, but it's still going to hurt your feelings even though 99 people said it was brilliant because you're human.

Craig D:

So many amazing things there that you're touching on Warwick. Number one thing I want to share back to the science, there was a paper done. I think it was about 20 years ago on the annual review of psychology. The title was bad is stronger than good. They reviewed about five decades of research. We as human beings have a strong negativity bias. This is why we tend to react more strongly to negative news and stories. When negative events happen, it's much more challenging for us to recuperate from them when they occur, which is why once again, that mindset, that perspective, that shift, that dedicated focus. It's just absolutely natural that's going to happen. I think to your point, it's funny you sharing your story. I remember I wrote an article for the Financial Post, first article on national paper here in Canada was online.

Craig D:

I was super excited. I was talking about positive leadership and there were many helpful comments. Then one person said, "No wonder this guy is shilling positive psychology. I wonder what pays his bills." I was like, "That hurt." That was the first comment on my column. Once again, going back to the science, to the practices. Okay, I acknowledge that. That did hurt and it did challenge. Then it was accepted. The reason that I felt this is that I care about the column and I wanted to add value. Then when I sat back and took some time to have that sting and go to people say, that was hard then recognize, okay. My message is not going to connect with everyone. People are going to have different perspectives and that's okay.

Craig D:

Now I can have different conversations as a result. That process, and I think this is really key and you touched on it as well, Warwick and Gary is that it's that awareness. Once things happen, fully acknowledge that they're happening and not to run away, not to avoid, because basically, and this is what I think is so powerful, our emotions are designed. They are the best early warning signal we have. They're absolutely and one of the things that I talk about with my clients it's almost like taking a Sherlock Homes' approach to emotions. Whatever is being triggered in whatever experience we're feeling, our emotions are the most valuable data points we have. Unfortunately, sometimes what we do is then if we feel we're being irrational, we then judge the emotion and try to not feel it anymore, which is not an effective way to go about it based on the psychological research.

Craig D:

What we want to do is exhibit curiosity and say, okay, I totally get I'm feeling irrational about it. 99 people said this was awesome. What's going on with that one person? Now if I can get closer to, and let's link it back to again, the thesis around beyond the purposeful. What's the purpose? What's driving my reaction. Now, what it does is two things. Number one, I can make a stronger linkage because it's meaning making creatures, this is important. Now in the future, I can equip myself when someone else has an equally unhelpful thing to say, or even nastier I can go, okay, I can return back to that, reframe it, and then move forward myself.

Craig D:

What's interesting, emotions we can see them as messy and mucky and unreliable and all these kinds of things, which is for us, that's what's beautiful about being human. Now when we sit back and look at them with curiosity, it's such a powerful perspective in terms of building our resiliency.

Warwick F:

What you just said Craig is so profound. I want the listeners to really reflect on that. Just the idea of getting in touch with your emotions and a bit like Sherlock Holmes, as you say, solve the puzzle, solve the case. Again, anecdotally, I'm a very reflective person and analytical and certainly in the last X amount of years, if I'm feeling bad, I have to know why. Often for me, I've been blessed to be married to my wife for the over 30 years. Our spouses, partners, good friends, family members, they know us. People who you trust obviously. And I'll say, "I'm feeling down. I'm just not sure why." After we talk it through, once I know why then I can do something about it. It can be as simple as, we have kids from like 30 down to 23 and a few years ago, let's say, hypothetically some of it's not that hard to figure out, but your oldest goes to college, most parents or many will start feeling a little down.

Warwick F:

"My kids were at home, they're not home anymore." Well, you'll still have that relationship, but it's going to change. There are certain times in life and it's okay to feel that, sometimes it won't be as easy to diagnose but some people, when they feel bad they stuff it down. Talk about why from a research perspective, how stuffing it is not the way to go and just the value of solving the puzzle, solving the case, understanding what those data points mean and why that's so effective in building resilience.

Craig D:

It's so powerful. Let's use a parallel track because I think this is so compelling. It's like medical research. What's one of the things they tell you? Early warning signals, go get it checked out. Early intervention is key. Let's go to another area of psychological research, conflict and conflict management. What's one of the top recommendations? Get to it early. When something surfaces if you and I Warwick or Gary and I are having a challenge, well, it's better for us to talk about it early on because otherwise what happens? Does it go away? No, it doesn't. What does it do? Festers.

Gary S:

That was the exact word I was thinking of, festers.

Craig D:

Good. What's really interesting is right. Then once we don't explore it, what's happening with our mindset? Then we're drawing a stronger conclusion around it. What is happening? Now I've got a stronger and stronger frame. The critical piece for us is just to sit there and say, okay, what are our emotions trying to tell us? We need to figure that out earlier. Then because if we avoid, what do we do? We procrastinate. We can engage in maladaptive coping, like binge drinking or binge watching all kinds of things, which once again, in the moment may prolong or extend the time we're going to take before we address it, but it's not addressing that core issue. It's essential to acknowledge it. Sometimes we're so uncomfortable with our emotions we try to push them away. It's a natural part of being human. Acknowledge it. Then to your point, and here's what's really interesting, just to build on the example.

Craig D:

My oldest is going to university, going to college. Okay, yes, I'm feeling that. I acknowledge that emotion and this comes from the science of emotions. Acknowledgement is the first step. The second step is acceptance. You know why I'm feeling this emotion? Because I care. I care about my child is going to university, going off. Our relationship is going to shift and adjust and all those kinds of things. Then I can be mourning the loss of what was, and then what's to be. Now afterwards, so that's the first two steps. Then the third one is commit the energy that I have now from that emotion. I acknowledge it, I accept it. I have activation energy. That's what emotions also provide us.

Craig D:

Now I get to choose what to do with that. If I'm thinking about, well my child going off to university or what have you then I can sit down and say, "Hey, how are we going to stay in touch? What would work?" Once again, investing that into a purposeful activity that addresses what's at its core as opposed to ruminating or procrastinating or trying to avoid it, pretending they're not going to go off. Then what happens? How many times have you heard people say, well, I wish I had that conversation or I wish I had done something earlier. Once again, we have this energy, it's part of our natural biological and genetic disposition. Well, let's choose to use it wisely.

Gary S:

Hearing you both talk about the dangers of avoidance of our emotions. I'm just going to throw this out here. This is dangerous because I'm doing it in front of a PhD who can tell me I'm wrong, but it strikes me that is it in some universe true that avoidance is the opposite of resilience or in some ways blocks resilience. It's an inhibitor of resilience. If you're avoiding something you can't by definition, be resilient. Is that close to fair?

Craig D:

I think it's a wonderful linkage. I absolutely agree because looking at the thesis, that resilience is a skill that we can grow. Well, if we're avoiding something, it's just like being afraid to go to the gym or jump on the treadmill. I don't want to raise the speed of my treadmill because what's going to happen if it breaks or I fall off or are we going to enhance our cardiovascular health? Well, we're only going to stay at that level. What's essential is we have to put these things in practice. I love the linkage you're making, because if we avoid it, we're not doing anything about it. We're missing an opportunity to be resilient. We're missing an opportunity to explore how could we be resilient? This is the other piece because it diversifies our thinking because there's a lot of different ways in which to approach a particular situation.

Craig D:

The most critical to me because I think this is another really important point. If we avoid because we feel like we have no other choice, but to avoid that can be incredibly psychological damaging. If I'm avoiding engaging in a difficult conversation with my boss, because I've made an intentional decision that the consequences of moving forward now are going to negatively impact me, that's entirely different. We may say, hey, the same choice was made. Yes. One was made with intention. One was made with more purpose, again, linking it back, because I can say, for me, I'm a single income earner for my family and now we have a more this and that and the other. I'm in an unfortunate situation. I'm going to choose not to engage on this particular topic. Once again, that's resilience building because I'm making a choice. I'm not avoiding, I'm acknowledging and I'm accepting it and now I'm choosing to stay and here are the reasons I'm going to do that. That is once again we can see almost counterintuitive. You can build resilience even if the choice is, well, I'm not going to take action right now.

Warwick F:

It's so profound what you're saying about intentionality and what you're saying Gary about avoidance and resilience being the opposite of resilience. Use another analogy. It's like gardening, you want to get the weeds early before they grow and overwhelm the garden. In my own way, I try to do that but it's just so important. There's so many elements that are tied together, it's like forgiveness. If you are bitter against somebody that grows and it certainly won't help you be resilience and sometimes you have family members or friends that I like to call the gift that keeps on giving. It's like I've just forgiven you for that. Can you stop because I'm having trouble catching up. Some times we're "blessed with those people." Especially if they're family, there's nothing you can do. You just got to deal with it.

Warwick F:

Again, forgiveness, as we've talked about, it's not so much for other people it's for your own mental health. Just whether it's forgiveness, fear, loss of self-esteem, whatever the issue is that's holding you back the sooner that you deal with it, identify and come up with an action plan, whether it's to talk to somebody or not talk to somebody, have an intentional plan. That is the way it seems to both mental health and resilience and the passive stuff and not deal with stuff and letting anger conflict loss of self-esteem grow. You don't want to be endlessly visiting the psychiatrist or psychologist, not because it's good to receive help, but if you're not doing anything and you're making things worse, no professional wants to see somebody endlessly because they're making their life worse. The goal is to heal the patient, not to have a patient that never leaves because they won't deal with stuff.

Craig D:

Well, and I couldn't agree more with what you said and I want to build on. This is awesome because I love that you talked about forgiveness and then what I'll play with that and build on it and say self forgiveness is also extraordinarily important. Then the psychological research self-compassion. How do we, again, forgive because we're all human beings. Guess what? I've made countless numbers of mistakes today and that's all right. Now the critical part is, okay, so what happens? I encounter a setback, how forgiving am I of myself? This is what's really interesting too about that research. Again, Warwick, I'm so glad you talked about forgiving others because that's powerful and that's a really important linkage for own resilience our own mental health.

Craig D:

What's really interesting about the research around self-compassion is that we tend to be, the average person tends to be better at forgiving others than they are forgiving themselves. We tend to give other people far more leeway than we do ourselves. That counteracts our resilience. That's another core finding in the research, the less self-compassionate we are, the less resilient we are because what we're doing is holding ourselves up to an incredible standard that we never expect someone else to hold up to meet. This is really important. It's essential for us again, when we look at this, in our relationships, it's relationships with others, for sure. It's also the relationship we have with ourselves.

Warwick F:

Unfortunately, profoundly you are right. I am unfortunately a very good example to justify your thesis. As Gary and listeners would know with the whole takeover, the most of it was my fault. In the 90s, most of the pain was how could I be such an idiot? I have an undergrad degree from Oxford. I worked on Wall Street. I have an MBA from Harvard Business School. I'm meant to be somewhat intelligent. How could I do that? Okay. I was 26, but then over time I cut myself a bit of slack, but it took years to go over with, I hurt so many people, hurt myself, family members. How could I have been so dumb? How could I have been so dumb? How could I have been so dumb? It's like an endless negative mantra. Eventually through faith, prayer, friends, and family and some work I could do and not mess up, I was able to bounce back. For many people forgiving yourself, that's hard and you cannot move forward until it doesn't mean that you don't. If you've wronged other people, yes. There's accountability and restitution, but you've got to find a way to be able to forgive yourself.

Gary S:

We've seen that so often, listeners go back in your mind to some of the previous guests we've had on this show. Warwick asks of many guests who've gone through crucibles that they played a role in, or they feel they've played a role in who've had physical traumas. Who've had financial traumas. Who've had relational traumas. Warwick will ask at some point did you blame yourself for that? Many of them will say, yes but, and then they'll talk about the but is the important part. They'll talk about how they got past that. Initially they were like that they blamed themselves like you Warwick. They were like, it was my fault. It was my fault. It was my fault. They can't get unstuck off that. It's almost like a record that's stuck.

Gary S:

For listeners who were too young to know what records are google it, but it's like a record that skips and what we're saying here, what I'm hearing you saying Craig is, we've got to push the needle forward. We've got to get beyond that. When that happens, that's when resilience can kick in, our resilience muscle is no longer atrophied but it's being strengthened. Then that's where we move forward to that second stage that you talked about, which is beyond baseline, going into something new and better.

Craig D:

Absolutely, I think what's really interesting in and Warwick you mentioned it yourself, that accountability piece. I'll link it back, Gary to what you opened with. Again, I love that you did the connector, it's an and. People can look at self-compassion as like, well, I don't want to absolve myself of that accountability and that's not... Self-compassion is the balance. It's, hey, I did something and I did something quite unfortunate. I did something catastrophic or I was a part of something that was really challenging. Then the other side of the equation as well. It's bringing that balanced perspective.

Craig D:

One of the best things, one of the best insights from that research, they'll say, okay, if so for your listeners who are maybe struggling with self-compassion one of the best pieces of evidence informed insight that has come out of that work is that ask yourself if you're in a space where you're just constantly that self critical voice is going on ultra blast, ask yourself, what advice would I give to a friend who came to me in the same situation? If they shared exactly a loved one and a family member, a friend, they presented to me what I'm going through right now, what would I say to them? Would I sound as harsh and be as negative and ruthless in my dialogue? Then if I wouldn't be, so then what makes it okay for me to say this to myself if I wouldn't say it to someone else?

Warwick F:

One of the questions I'm curious about is you deal with a lot of CEOs. You obviously coach them in how to help their organizations and their teams have more resilience. I know you've got several things you say, like what talents do you have? What do you need? What are some of those key things that leaders of any organization can help their teams be more resilient?

Craig D:

I love that question. I'll start with there was fantastic work out of the Center for Creative Leadership and they separated the difference between pressure and stress. They defined pressure as the extent of the demands that our external environment places on us. They define stress as our belief in our internal ability to deal with those demands. This is so powerful because this exemplifies why two people can go through the same situation and have entirely different stress responses. For the leaders I work with, the CEOs that I work with, I will talk to them about and this is born out in the resilience research as well, taking a resource based approach and customizing it to every individual employee.

Craig D:

Hey Craig how are things going? Checking in, there's lots of data that shows just checking in and saying, how's everything going today, Gary? How are you doing Warwick? Then here are the really critical things. What do you need from me as a leader? What do you need from the organization? In what areas are you finding things are going well? Like you don't need additional support, being curious, being empathetic, exploring things from a resource perspective, extraordinarily powerful in building resilience in our team members and resilience in our organizations.

Gary S:

That brings up an excellent point about resilience in general. It's come up a couple of times in this series and we tend to believe if we're just doing a drive by thought about resilience we think it's all within. We say things like suck it up, or power through or you'll figure it out. We say those things like all we have to do is dig deeper within, but we've discovered, and I hear you talking about it now, Craig, in the science we've discovered in talking to guests, it's not just digging deeper within it's reaching out wider without externally to the resources that are out there. There are resources within and there are resources without those two things have to come together for resilience to be robust.

Craig D:

I couldn't even have asked you for a better... Because one of the most scientifically supported resilience building exercise really builds on that, takes that framework. Here's again an exercise for your listeners today. Do you want to build resilience? Here's a great way to do it based on the science. The first step they'll say is think of a challenging situation you've faced in the last six weeks, six months. Doesn't matter what, where you thought that it was impossible. I'm never going to make it through this. Then you made it through. Then you ask yourself three critical questions. First question, what strengths did I draw upon? That's really cool because you start to think about, and Gary I'm going to build on it, that internal side. That's an internal resource that you have, my strengths. Great. how did I leverage them?

Craig D:

This is really interesting because now, hey, this can give me some insight about how I want to apply them right now. Then the second question you ask is that what resources did I draw upon? This represents the external community, friends, family, colleagues. Did I take a course, read a book, attend a webinar, listen to a podcast. All of those things are resources. Then the third question is what did I learn about myself? What's so great about these three steps. The first question gets us focused internally. What do I have that I bring to the table right now? How does what I have apply to this current situation? Or what other strengths do I have that are better suited in this situation that I'm facing? Same thing with at the resource side, what resources did I draw upon?

Craig D:

Do they apply in this situation now that I'm facing today? If they don't, what process did I go through to identify the most appropriate resources? Then the last step, which I think is so important as well, what did I learn? I learned that I can overcome a situation that I felt was impossible and I did it through applying my strengths and drawing and leaning into my community. If I did it then, and I thought it was impossible, why can't I do it now? I just love that three step process because what it does is it reminds us, we move through life so quickly. We can forget about our profound successes, how resilient we have been. We have our own data to support it.

Warwick F:

I love that bounce between the internal and the external because one of the things about advice is they're going to be more objective. Maybe it's a slight nuance on this. Talk about how by getting advice it helps you get some objective information to acknowledge that in some areas of our life, we are not going to be objective and our brains are just not going to be able to think straight.

Craig D:

Absolutely. You captured it quite, quite well around. Everybody around us is going to have a different line of sight on us and, and they're not going to have same emotional potentially and not the same emotional connectivity that we will have around the different challenges that we're facing. Then the more we can lean into that support network, and ask for their advice. Ask them what would you do in this situation? This is also really important. This comes back to building our resilience muscle once again. I remember speaking to Doug Stone who wrote the bestseller Difficult Conversations out of Harvard. We were chatting and he said, just because people provide you with feedback, doesn't mean that you have to do anything about it. We're empowered to, and then what you can do is crowdsource lots of different perspectives, lots of different insights.

Craig D:

Then we choose the path that authentically connects with who we are. That's what's so powerful. Once again, once we back to mindset shift. Which is, hey, these people are all here trying to give me some insights, some guidance that I can apply to move me ahead in something that it's important to me. What's going to prevent me from hearing it. It is so, so important. One other piece, because I love you talked about the support Warwick. My dissertation on entrepreneurs looked at over a hundred entrepreneurs, the top predictor of entrepreneurial success and over a hundred entrepreneurs that I studied was level of emotional support received by the people around.

Craig D:

It wasn't about any business idea. It wasn't about all these other things. There were smaller weaker predictors. None of that meant what was crucial was around did they get support from the people that they cared about most? Were they there to offer a caring ear, some insight, some advice. I think again, entrepreneurship, we can feel like, well we're going it alone. It's all around. No, no one is an island. Don't forego the extraordinary strength that we can get from the people around us as well as the extraordinary insight. The emotional support as well as the information, the perspective they can provide absolutely invaluable.

Gary S:

It is sometimes difficult in my co-hosting role to know when I jump in and say, that sound you heard was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign and it's getting time where we're going to have to land the plane. The reason why that's normally hard is because you have to judge when you think a conversation is kind of coming to its natural conclusion. What makes it a little easier for me here is that we've been sort of gathered around different facets of it, but this idea of the elasticity, the two axes on which we find resilience internal and external. Dig deep reach wide.

Gary S:

We've talked great other examples about it, but we've kind of stayed in that zip code for a while. It seems like a good time to to say the captain's getting ready to bring the plane on the ground. Not quite there yet, but before we let Warwick ask you the last question or two Craig, I would be remiss in my role if I did not ask you to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you and your services online.

Craig D:

Well, thank you. You can go to Craigdowden.com and my Forbes talk is there. Lots of articles that I've written for different publications are available that you can access. You can also sign up for my newsletter as well and there's an assessment online if you want to take it and happy to connect with people on LinkedIn, follow me on Twitter. Always love. I have extraordinary passion around the science and practice of positive leadership and resilient leadership. Love opportunities like this to talk about this essential topic and to join because we're all part of the same community. Thank you for asking Gary.

Gary S:

Sure. Warwick put the wheels on the ground. Ask Craig the last couple questions here.

Warwick F:

Well, thanks so much, Craig. I love all your wisdom on resilience. I wanted to ask about the F.E.A.R. Acronym but before we do that, just one last beat of what you shared because some people when they hear, "I'm going to get all this advice and gee, what do I do with that?" I think if you are a leader or really a human, trust your informed gut. When you get wise advice, you will know what to take and what not to take. You will know. Trust that. Don't fear advice. You'll know what to discount. Then once you've got informed advice and you in a relatively level peaceful place, not in panic mode, trust your ability to make the right decision. Otherwise, the reverse is that way lies madness. If you don't trust yourself ever, then that's not healthy. Anyway, let's just for this last question, I love this F.E.A.R. Acronym, False Evidence Appearing Real. Talk about why that's such a valuable concept this F.E.A.R. acronym as we conclude.

Craig D:

Thank you. I love the acronym. I share it all the time and I think what's really... We all have fears. Once again, they're there for a reason. I mentioned Daniel Gilbert out of Harvard earlier and his work. He talked about anticipatory anxiety, his area of focus and that our fears... What can happen is that we fear our fears right now and get all derailed around them. Then in the future, we go through the exact same process again. What's really powerful about the research and they've done this in a variety of different domains, one study in particular, they looked at what percentage of our fears actually come to fruition? I could ask you what you think that percentage is. It's actually less than 10%.

Warwick F:

Wow. That's amazing.

Craig D:

Then here's what's even more, ready for the mic drop on this one, over almost a third of cases, people say it turned out way better than they could have ever imagined. Not only did it not come to pass, which is baseline, in almost a third of cases, it was way better than... It was a gift to them only in, again, less than 10%. I think this is really powerful when it comes to okay, how do we build resilience remembering that acronym, False Evidence Appearing Real? I'll say, "Okay, great. You have a fear. Don't judge it. Acknowledge it. Write it down. If you've got one, if you've got 10, don't judge the number of fears you have." Then what you do is systematically walk through each fear and say, "What evidence do I have supporting that fear?" Then the, I know what's going to happen is not legitimate evidence. You wouldn't go to a court and say, "Well, I know." Okay, tell me what that is.

Craig D:

Then what's really powerful, again, from taking that approach is that now we can take a more balanced view of what's happening and we can look at the evidence in the light of day and then say, "Is this just me anticipating worst case scenario, which as we talked about earlier is a natural human thing to do, or is this something legitimate? If so, now what actions do I take based on my evidence? What do I do to prepare for that? What's the worst case scenario? What are going to be my fallback strategies if this comes to friction?" Very, very powerful way of reminding ourselves what fears actually are.

Gary S:

The great thing about this discussion on fear here at the tail end and yes, the captain has put the plane down on the tarmac. But why I love that discussion at the end of this conversation about harnessing resilience is that everything that you just described about fear is a road block to resilience. If you're caught in fear at any of those points, if you're trapped in those kinds of things, fear can block us from pursuing resilience to use your words, Craig, can block us from exercising, can keep us out of the gym, keep us from exercising that resilience muscle.

Gary S:

Speaking of exercising your resilience muscle listeners, we hope you have had a chance to do that over the last five weeks that we've had this series, harnessing resilience going on. We will now turn next week to the sixth episode of this series. That is where Warwick and I are going to talk about everything we've learned from all five of our guests now that we've had. We're going to pull out the key learnings, the key insights and action steps that you can take as you move on beyond your crucible, harness resilience on your own.

No template or checklist exists for moving beyond a crucible experience. The mixture of emotions, actions and mindset perspectives needed to overcome setbacks and failures is as unique from person to person as the nature of the setbacks and failures themselves.

That’s not to say, though, there isn’t a common throughline in the stories of men and women who have been knocked down by life, or by their own decisions and behaviors, and gotten back up to continue their journeys toward lives of significance.

Emerging on the other side of traumas and tragedies is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, but there is something common to all of our journeys down that road: resilience.

It’s so critical, in fact, that we’ve been examining this trait since the last week of August (and will continue until the last week of this month) on our podcast, BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE, in a series called Harnessing Resilience. Warwick and I (I’m his co-host) have interviewed guests who found the resilience to overcome their crucibles, as well as experts whose studies of resilience offer practical insights and action steps to strengthen our ability to rise above those crucibles when they come.

We’ve collected the most meaningful bits of wisdom each guest has shared to help you find the hope and healing that comes from harnessing resilience.

“Resilience is a skill that can be learned just like building muscle in the gym.”

A diving accident at 12 left our guest Stacey Copas a quadriplegic. What followed, she told us, was not pretty – aimlessness and hopelessness fueled by drug use and depression. The “what ifs” and “why mes” were hard for Stacey to sidestep throughout her teens.

Over time, though, she decided she couldn’t feel bad about something she was grateful for. So she began to view her accident as a gift. Not because it left her paralyzed, but because it presented her with opportunities she almost certainly would not have had without her injury.

She continually exercises her resilience muscle by embracing the opportunities adversity has brought. She has built a life of significance born from her accident, inspiring and equipping others as a resilience coach, author and speaker. One of the greatest truths she has learned, she says, is that crucibles are like a trampoline: the lower down you go, the higher up you can launch yourself. That’s great counsel for harnessing resilience.

“If you have access to the resources you need to meet the challenges you’re facing, you’ll be more resilient.”  

Our guest Katie Foulkes endured a crucible with effects so lasting that after she emerged on the other side, she began to conduct research into the building blocks of resilience.

Foulkes was the cox for Australia’s 2004 Olympic rowing team, which was engulfed in controversy when one of its members quit rowing in the midst of a race. So intense was the firestorm that followed that Foulkes and her teammates, in addition to being the subject of derisive global news coverage, were called “Un-Australian” by their nation’s prime minister.

Foulkes emerged stronger after the emotional ordeal by drawing on what she later confirmed through study is an often-overlooked truth about resilience: It’s not found just by digging deeper within for personal fortitude, but also by reaching widely outside ourselves to gather relational resources. Foulkes discovered harnessing resilience, like Olympic rowing, is a team sport.

“You never know when your greatest obstacle will become your greatest opportunity.”

We usually talk about a crucible experience as a setback or failure, but we could also describe it as a “fall.” Sometimes literally. That’s what our guest Heather Kampf discovered in 2008 when she tripped and landed flat-out on the track during a 600m race at the Big Ten championships while competing for the University of Minnesota.

But Kampf is not known for her fall. She is known for what happened after she rose. As documented in a viral video seen by tens of millions, she sprinted the last 200 meters of the race to win her heat in you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it fashion.

The internet is full of copies of the video, many of which title its message as “Never give up.” But Kampf, who went on to a successful career as a professional middle-distance runner, sees her improbable triumph as much more than giving it a gritty go. To her, it’s evidence that resilience is built before it’s needed. The key to picking herself up, dusting herself off and starting all over again was having a plan for the race – to finish, no matter what. That way, she would tally at least one point for her team in the standings, critical to their pursuit of the title. When she tumbled to the track, having that plan propelled her to harness the resilience to turn that obstacle into a great opportunity. 

“Failure is inevitable. How you react to it is what matters.”

Our guest Lucy Westlake is 17 and already holds a world record. She’s the youngest female to ever scale the highest peaks in every U.S. state. A feat like that – climbing mountains that sometimes stretch more than 20,000 feet into the sky – is a breeding ground for falling short. For needing to regather your strength, refocus your mind and craft a new strategy for achieving your goal.

Westlake has learned, inch by inch, that resilience is built from the lessons every failure teaches us. Being mindful especially of those small failures that can teach big lessons is critical when the larger, weightier failures come. For her, the failure that laid her particularly low was her first attempt to scale Denali, at age 13. A combination of nasty weather and emergency circumstances outside her control left her short of ascending her 50th peak. It would be four years before she tried again.

But she did try again. And this time, she succeeded. That satisfaction would not have been possible, she told us, without the disappointment that preceded it. You’ve heard the phrase “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat”? Lucy Westlake harnessed resilience from her refusal to allow a devastating outcome to be her final outcome.

“Avoidance is a roadblock to resilience.”

Our final guest in the series is Dr. Craig Dowden, who describes his coaching practice as bridging the gap between what science knows and what leaders do. He ties an eye-opening bow on the package of our discussion of harnessing resilience, noting that it is, at its core, a two-part process: first, finding our way back to baseline – i.e., where we were before the crucible hit; and second, charting a course to move beyond that point. Not to merely bounce back, but bounce forward.

Dr. Dowden did not specifically say the words at the top of this section, but he did stress the necessity of facing the emotional and circumstantial fallout of our crucibles if we hope to find the life of significance that lives beyond them. It was from his astute observations that Warwick and I were inspired to compose the pithy statement about avoidance.

It is our hope you will be similarly inspired, by what all our guests share, in your own efforts to move beyond your crucibles by harnessing resilience.

Reflection

Download Your Free First Chapter of Crucible Leadership

Seventeen-year-old Lucy Westlake is an accomplished mountain climber (she started at age 7) who is the youngest female to have ascended the highest peaks in all 50 U.S. states. But you can’t have a peak without a valley – and Lucy also describes the low points she’s faced in learning this resonant truth: the ideal way to build resilience is overcoming small failures, so that when the big ones come – and they will — we have a reservoir of grit to keep climbing.

To learn more about Lucy Westlake, visit www.lucywestlake.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Gary S:

Welcome to week three of our six part series, Harnessing Resilience. I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. We're doing a deep dive on this subject because without resilience, there is no moving beyond our crucibles. We're hearing from guests who found the resilience to overcome their setbacks and failures, as well as experts with practical insights and action steps to help you bolster your own ability to rise above life's inevitable, unavoidable crucibles. Warwick and I talked this week with Heather Kampf, a champion distance runner who quite literally picked herself up, dusted herself off, and started all over again when she fell during a high profile race. She harnessed resilience on the spot in a way that has amazed tens of millions of people, including myself.

Warwick F:

Well, thank you so much, Heather, for being here. And yeah, we'll get to that 2008 event in a moment. And listeners may be curious as to why something like that will get 12 million views on video, and you'll find out soon why that is. And you'll also find out what the lessons from it are, and maybe different than you'd think. I'd love to hear just a bit about the backstory. But as we're recording, the Olympics have just finished. And I'm guessing, I don't know, growing up in Australia, we always watched the Olympics. I'm guessing you were probably watching some of it and seeing what happened. And we just had some incredible athletes, the 400 meter hurdles were Sydney McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammad. Actually something that'll interest you Gary, Molly Seidel from Brookfield, Wisconsin.

Gary S:

Yeah, shout out to the Midwest!

Warwick F:

She won the bronze in the women's marathon, which is amazing. And then for me being Australian, there was the great tussle between Ariarne Titmus and Katie Ledecky in the women's 400 and 200. My kids had asked me, "Who are you cheering for?" And I wouldn't answer. But since I'm dual citizenship, it's hard not to cheer for the Aussie. So everyone's got Olympic fever. So just tell me about the backstory, where you grew up and family, and what led you to have this just passion for running.

Heather K:

Yeah. So I grew up in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, just south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. I have an older sister, and we were pretty active kids doing a lot of just outdoor activities and things like that. But I think that my first sport love was really gymnastics actually. I love to just sprawl out in our backyard and do tumbling tricks and everything like that. So it was actually my gymnastics coach in my freshman year of high school who was challenging us all to races down the hallway of our high school as part of our conditioning drills. And he was a pretty fast guy, so he always would try to get the girls to give him a head start and then he would chase them down. But I was the first girl on the team who could give my coach a head start and still beat him in a flat sprint of a race.

Warwick F:

Wow.

Heather K:

So as much as I love gymnastics and spending time upside down, he was like, "You know what Heather? You should really think about trying track." And I had a few other people in my life who had mentioned to me that that would be a good idea. Just in the US we have the presidential fitness testing by ed class. So we would do a mile run twice a year. And my goal was always to beat all the boys in my class. And so that was a point of pride for me to be the fastest kid in my grade. And I guess I didn't really think that I would really love track as a full time sport. I thought it was just a nice thing to do a couple of times a year, because it seemed like it was just running in circles and it would be really boring. But it turns out I'm pretty competitive, and I really like things where I can see my progress, put the work in. And it really just translate well into the results later for the most part.

Heather K:

So I became really in love with the sport my freshman year. I made it to state as a relay member in two events. And then as they say, the rest is kind of history. I won a couple state titles in high school and got the attention of some amazing coaches at the University of Minnesota who brought me on board to run with the Gophers. And yeah, I think I was a competitive recruit to bring onto the division one scene, but I wasn't by any means amazing. My primary event was the 800 at the time. So I ran 210.42 was my best in high school, if anyone likes to follow the times and the numbers in the track world. But my freshman year, just being around better competition and people that race, I went from 210 in my first ever collegiate race. I matched my best from high school to 203 in my second race.

Warwick F:

Wow.

Heather K:

It just suddenly put me on a completely different caliber and trajectory with some of the best in the nation in the NCAA. And I won the NCAA title as a freshmen indoor that year. So a few people asked me afterwards, "Oh, do you think you'll go pro after this?" Because I just had developed so quickly there.

Warwick F:

Sure.

Heather K:

But I really valued my team and I valued getting an education for free, so stuck around college and then went pro after graduation.

Warwick F:

Wow. So do you have a history of athletes in your family or competitiveness? Because often you see people that are athletes, I mean their genetic pedigree is like wow. Like Sydney McLaughlin, I think both her parents raced at LSU or something. Did you have that kind of gene pool there?

Heather K:

Well, we have tried to trace some lineage to figure out just exactly where this is from. I had a great uncle who was a pretty good track athlete, and my dad was... he liked to pride himself in being most improved in wrestling. So he carried that trophy around the house, and he ran track as well. But I think that he joked that he was a varsity senior drinking team member, and like party, and wasn't as serious about the athletics or just being very diligent and things. And I think my mom maybe is the one who is a little bit more diligent and, I don't know, just really works hard towards whatever she's doing. So I think that I just got between both of them. Once my dad grew up, that message that you get out what you put into things. And that really resonated with me to just give my best. And then the genetics, I guess, is a mix of many things.

Warwick F:

But it sounds like you loved running. I mean, sometimes high school athletes and tennis or wherever, you've got a really pushy parent saying you can do this, and they take him to all of the special clinics and all that. But it sounds like in your case, I'm sure your parents supported you, but it was you that really had a passion for running. It wasn't like people were saying. Your parents saying you have to do this and this is your ticket. Was it more just you, your love of it?

Heather K:

Yeah. It was fairly organic for me to fall in love with it. And I actually was originally preparing music scholarship pieces to try and become... Go to school for music. I was a flutist. And so that was the thing that I was really good at and could have maybe had a future in, but my mom really had to force me to practice every day. And it wasn't my passion in the same way that athletics was. So when I found out that I had a full scholarship opportunity for track, instead of having to continue perfecting my music, I was like, "Well, this sounds nice also." And just decided to gear a little bit towards that. And no regrets about that. I'm really happy about where running has taken me and all the people that I've been able to connect with, because I really think what makes people fall in love with it at any level is the community of people that you find yourself surrounded by.

Warwick F:

Because obviously any athletic endeavor is hard. And it seems like the people that do well do it just for the love of the game and love of the sport. I think of Roger Federer, who's like 40 years old playing tennis, and obviously he's worth a huge amount of money, but it's clear that he just loves playing tennis. I mean, eventually he's going to have to stop soon, but he just loves it. He loves the competitiveness. Is that the same for you in the sense you love... I mean, what is it about running that you love? What makes you just want to get up in the morning and train and keep going?

Heather K:

Yeah, I think that it feels like this was a gift given to me by God. So from this time that I've been competing, it felt like to give anything less than my best is to sacrifice the gift, to quote Steve Prefontaine, a pretty famous runner.

Warwick F:

Right.

Heather K:

So yeah, I think for me it's all about just bettering my best and seeing what I'm made of, and what potential I have and chasing that. Definitely as you age, it is a challenge because you might eventually get to a point where your best days are behind you, specifically for that time period.

Warwick F:

Right.

Heather K:

But what I'm looking forward to now in my post retirement life here, at age 34, is being able to chase new bests in this body that I have now, and just have personal bests every year and try new events and everything, because it really is a sport that you can do for life and I anticipate continuing to do that. My husband is a runner. He's training for the Twin Cities Marathon this Fall. So a lot of times it's just the best time of day for us to really connect and have conversations when we're parallel running with each other, versus the intimidation of face-to-face contact that some men don't love. So we have our best conversations on runs and everything.

Warwick F:

Well, I want to get to this 2008 event. But those listeners might be hearing it's great to have conversations when you run. You've actually got to be reasonably fit, because if you're totally out of breath, it's hard to have a conversation. So you want to have a good conversation, you got to be somewhat fit.

Heather K:

That's a reason to try and hang on to that.

Gary S:

It is absolutely true that the older you get the harder it is. I picked up running about 10 years ago, and I mean, I'm slow, okay? In little league in baseball, it took a triple to score me from second base. That's how slow I was. And I'm still pretty slow, but there's something about it that when you do get under your normal split for a mile, even if you're just going around the neighborhood, there's something about it that is very endorphin creating, very confidence creating. There's just something about it that I love. So even though I'm a turtle, I still go out there and do it. And I am not. We'd be remiss if we didn't say this, you earned the nickname during your career, which was Queen of the Road Mile. How did that come about?

Heather K:

Yeah. I totally agree with you on how finishing any run feels fulfilling.

Gary S:

Yeah.

Heather K:

But then yes. So I found myself just jumping into a few of these road races. It's just a one mile road race. A lot of times it's just a straight shot or sometimes you go out, take a left turn or whatever down one block and then come back the other way so that the start finishes close for people to watch. But for whatever reason, it just seemed like I had a knack for sniffing out the finish line and those, I guess you'd say. I just inordinately have had more success in road miles than I have in track miles or other races to a point where I haven't made an Olympic team. But just watching the Olympics, you saw Laura Muir who got second in the 1500.

Heather K:

I finished within half second of her in a road mile before. So it's just entertaining to recognize that your own strengths can borrow to different events a little bit better. And I think being more of a speed and power athlete background in gymnastics and shorter events have just the ability to put a little bit more force through the ground in the roads. And so I can power on pavement a little bit more. But mostly I think it's just the purest form of racing. You don't know where you are most of the time, because there aren't clear markers on the course of exactly where you're at.

Gary S:

Right.

Heather K:

So, you do this. For me at least I found that doing a long slow grind of just building up building up speed all the way to the finish would thin out the field, and then you just try to make the final punch to get to the tape first.

Gary S:

It sounds to me like it's a little like the Fast and the Furious of running, right? It's like everything's a quarter mile at a time, right?

Heather K:

It's drag racing. Yeah.

Gary S:

It's drag racing sort of thing, but it's running. Since this is a series about resilience, it seems like that might be a resilience point, or might've been a resilience point for you. And that you did these longer races, you did these longer things, but you found as you were trying different things that this one really fit you and you threw yourself into that. And there was some both success and satisfaction in doing so. Is that fair?

Heather K:

Definitely. It's confidence producing to win races, and it's joyful to be somewhere where you don't feel the same pressure that you might feel on the track. So for me, I was just always happy to be there. And I was the person that was pulling everyone in to do warmups and cooldowns together, and sharing racing tips and everything, because I always thought if I'm supposed to be the expert at these, I can still win even if I tell someone else what I usually do on a certain course or something like that. So yeah, I think for me it was definitely taking some of that pressure off than just enjoying it.

Warwick F:

That's awesome. So I want to get to what has brought you to prominence, which is a strange thing. So talk a bit about... There might be a few people that hasn't seen that 2008, I guess, 600 meter indoor run, but..

Gary S:

And we will put that link in the show notes. And again, the context for why we do that will come out in our conversation here, but we'll put it there so you can see it, because, as Heather will explain, it does not define her life, her experience, and her career, but it's important to see as we talk about resilience. So we will have that in the show notes, for sure, just so you know.

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

Heather K:

Thanks Gary. Yeah. So I guess context first, this was the 2008 indoor Big Ten Championships at the University of Minnesota. So we were hosting that meet at home. My team, the Gophers, had just won their first ever Big Ten title, my freshman year indoors in... oh, sorry, excuse me, outdoors in 2006. And we won our first ever indoors in 2007. So our team was just on a bit of a tear of our own of feeling that momentum and success of working together. So this was the time of the season where my coach said that every athlete who had a potential to earn a point in any event would go to the well. They would do everything they can to try and earn points and succeed for the team. So as a fairly talented and versatile athlete myself, I was running both the mile and the 600 meters individually alongside the four by four on the last night of the event as well.

Heather K:

So, this occurred over two days. Usually the mile and the 600 meters prelims were on the first, and then you are referring to the 600 meter final, which happened maybe 45 minutes after the mile.

Warwick F:

Oh my gosh.

Heather K:

Yeah, it was definitely a very hefty schedule for anyone who's followed track and field to know this, how tight those races were together.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

So I would wake up in the morning on Big Ten final days with my heart beating out of my chest, just knowing what I would need to accomplish that day. But as I said, I rely on my faith and in my racing and in competition. So I told myself all things are possible through Christ. And my other mantra was I'm a machine for the team, because it really didn't seem like the kind of thing that a person could humanly do. So I like to think of myself as just this mechanical being that just would do what needs to be done to achieve what we wanted to do together. So that's how I would enter into these events and what I was thinking about on the starting line of the race. And if you want, I can talk you through the race a little bit from my perspective.

Warwick F:

Yeah, please.

Heather K:

Sure, sure. Okay. So, the race started and as I had just finished my last race shortly before, I decided that I would just be a little bit conservative in the first two laps and let anyone who wanted to lead the race, lead the race, because Big Ten Championships are not about time. You don't have to run the fastest, you just need to be first to earn the most points. So I followed behind a Penn State runner named Fawn Dorr, who was actually a really good 400 meter hurdler as well. And I just was biding my time until that final lap, where I started to make a move around the outside of her to really get into charge in the last lap and try and speed away with it. And just as I was going around her and cutting back into the inside lane, I felt a little bit of a nick on one of my heels. And as I was trying to correct for that foot feeling out of place, the other one felt like it got stepped on from behind. And I was just going down fast.

Heather K:

So from my recollection of things, I know that my hands hit the track, but what I pictured happening was that I just fell to a kneeling position, smack my hands on the ground, which is never a good place for your hands to be during a race, and then just got up and started running again. But it was really shocking to me once I did get up just to see how much distance the race has gapped me by at that point. I was like, "Man." I really felt I don't know why they got so far ahead of me, but I just really wanted to finish the race because I knew even if I got dead last in my heat that I would still earn one point for the team. And it was going to be a very tight finish for the championship overall.

Heather K:

So got back up and started running, and just started surprising myself because I was catching one person on the backstretch, and I thought, "Wow, that's a lot better than I thought you were going to do. Pat on the back. Nice job, Heather, you caught one." And it wasn't until coming around the final curve of that last lap that I heard the in-house announcer say, "And watch out for Heather Dorniden," which was my maiden name at the time. And I was like, "Yeah, watch out for me." I just got this incredible surge of momentum where it felt like I was speeding up and everyone else was slowing down. And I had just enough gas in the tank to be able to sneak by my own teammate at the finish line to win my heat. So, that was my experience of it.

Heather K:

And I think afterwards, when everybody was just celebrating and telling me how amazing it was and how they couldn't believe I did that, I was like, "You guys, I don't really understand. It wasn't that big of a deal." And then my dad pulled out his video camera and showed me how I had actually fallen. And I didn't just touch my hands to the track for a second, I fell on my stomach and was skidding on the track and really took some time down there for a second. And that was just completely not a part of my memories. I don't know if I just shut my eyes really tight or what was going on there. But I think that when you have a really strong vision of what your goals are before you even start something, that positive vision is so much stronger than any obstacles that might step in your way. So for me, I think that that vision and my goal was just so prominent in my mind that it made everything else fall by the wayside so that I could still focus on what I was there for.

Warwick F:

I mean, for listeners who haven't seen it, it's a really incredible video of Heather falls down and gets up. And it's like a movie except it's real life. It's somehow you overtake folks and edge out the other person to win. I mean, it's unbelievable. And somehow this video, as you say, has gone viral, but I think you've hinted at it. But when people look at it, what's the message that a lot of people get from it which is not the message you take? So talk about that, because you could watch the video and be inspired. But what's the typical inspiration when people see it? Most people see it. What do they think?

Heather K:

I think the first thing that a lot of people say, well, one of two things, either never give up is the phrase that's dropped on a lot of the versions of the videos with the music of choice and everything that people drop in there, or they just say, "Wow, that girl's a beast." I'm this competitive animal. And I'm like, "Man, I'm actually this really Midwestern polite girl who..."

Gary S:

Right.

Heather K:

This really only comes out in me in competition, which is partially why I love track. But yeah, it was a pretty magical moment.

Warwick F:

So the message for some people is, "Hey, when you fall down, don't give up. Pick yourself up, you can still win." But I think as you've just hinted, that's not the message. I mean, I'm sure you're not against that message, but the real message for you is somewhat different. What's the real message for you?

Heather K:

Yeah. I think two things really, the first being what I'd mentioned about how I barely realized I fell. I think it's really important to visualize whatever you plan to achieve in your life to really have that clear vision. And also I can adopt the whole never give up phrase, but I think I just need to add a little bit more beyond that to say, "Sure, never give up for all the reasons that people say about resilience. And you never win if you never try," and stuff like that. But for me, it's never give up because you never know when your greatest obstacle becomes your greatest opportunity to do things you never imagined you could, because I would never have pictured that I could have gotten up with 200 meters to go in a sprint race and win. But that gave me so much confidence going into the Olympic trials that summer and to follow through in the rest of my professional career to believe that I have this gear somewhere within me that I might need at some point again and it could be another magical moment like that.

Heather K:

And I've had so many opportunities throughout my life to speak in New York City for companies, and for schools and churches, and teams all over the world that are just interested in this compelling story, because anyone can look at a race and identify a moment in their life where either they've literally like me or figuratively at some point in their life felt like they fell on their face. And it can be really tough. And it usually doesn't happen from fall to finish in 30 seconds.

Warwick F:

Right.

Heather K:

But it's still is so important for you to stand back up and keep trying, because it might parlay into an entirely different career opportunity for me. It has to be able to speak and connect with people and just share a hopeful story.

Warwick F:

Yeah. What's interesting, we talk a lot on this podcast about success versus significance and... Like you, both Gary and I, are people of faith, and so that has a certain context from that worldview. But you've achieved a lot of success at University of Minnesota and just some of the professionally and all, but yet you've had challenges. From what I understand, you've been injured a lot, which seems to be part and parcel of being an athlete. It's just how many surgeries have you had. And just seems like it's enormous for whatever reason. It just takes a toll on your body. So from understand, you've had a dream of making it to the Olympics and the Olympic trials, injuries and whatever made that a challenge. So talk a bit about that. Both what happened in terms of injuries, Olympic trials, and that whole success and significance. Because I often find that whatever success you have, if that's what owns your soul, there's always another level.

Warwick F:

We talk on it's tough to be considered the greatest of all time, whether it's in track or tennis or whatever it is, because somebody else like... Yeah, I love tennis, Roger Federer, he's got like 20 majors, Rafa Nadal is at 20, and Novak Djokovic. If he's healthy, he stands a pretty good chance of winning the US Open, winning four majors in a year, which hasn't been done since rod Laver in '68 or something. And so in all probability, he won't be the greatest of all time. So you get the point is, you could translate that to track. So talk a bit about just the injuries, the Olympics, and the whole, if you had your self-esteem all wrapped up in success, and goals, and times, and... Anyway, does that make sense with all that?

Heather K:

Yeah, definitely. And I totally agree. I think even if you are the greatest of all time for now, time is still moving on, so the greatest is yet to come as I think we've seen with a lot of the young people at the Olympics.

Warwick F:

Especially in track, is there one time that's 30 years old in track that still exists as a world record? I don't know, but it'd be hard for me to believe.

Heather K:

Yeah, they're moving along quickly.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

Yeah. I guess for me, the interesting part of my story is that I had been very durable for a very long time in my career. I had no major injuries that took me out of training or race in high school or college, or the first several years of my professional career. So my first major injury was the spring after I turned 30 years old. So I joke that it all goes downhill after 30, although that's not the case.

Gary S:

It's after 50.

Heather K:

And I think what's challenging too about it is that a lot of times I think runners who stay healthy take up a lot of... It's a point of pride to stay healthy because it's a responsibility of yours to prioritize recovery and nutrition and stuff like that. But I just happened to fall on the ice while I was walking my dogs on a Minnesota winter day, and probably got a bone bruise on my sacrum. But I was literally walking the dogs before I was heading to the airport to go race in Scotland to that day. Not that day for racing, but flying out.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

And I think just all the sitting and then the competition and doing a long run and coming straight back into training 75 miles a week was too much to heal a bruise bone. So, that turned into a stress fracture a couple of months later. So, it's like, I don't want to say through no fault of my own, because I definitely should have been more respectful of the pain that I was having, but I just thought it's because I fell, and it's fine. So I'm just going to keep training. And I was preparing to try and make another world championship team outdoor that year. So, that was injury number one in 2017. And thankfully I got back from that one fairly quickly and was still able to race at the US Championships, albeit I had been running for about a week prior. So it was not the best performance I've ever had.

Heather K:

So following that, I think we just did so much physical therapy on that left side of my sacrum that I ended up having two consecutive stress reactions on the right side of my sacrum shortly thereafter in December in the spring of 2018. So after that, we're just like, "You know what? You're not as durable as we thought you were. We can't just rush back into things. So let's take a significant amount of time off just to really be able to get through this." And from there, most of my injuries were mostly just soft tissue, tweaking hamstrings or calves or quads or something like that. But the timing I think is particularly what you're referencing. That's been really tough for me. So I was probably the fittest I've ever been then, and maybe ever will be at this point now. I ran my personal best in the 1500 meters and the 800 meters just before the Olympic trials in 2016.

Heather K:

And I really felt like I had a good shot to make that team. But I was doing a workout maybe a week or two before the trials, and was limping a little bit between sets, but didn't really think too much of it because I just never had an injury like that before. But that turned into a full on blow out of my calf that I wasn't able to walk or run at all really for the days leading up to the Olympic trials. And we did a lot of praying and a lot of care for it, and I was able to be back on my feet, but again, just didn't perform the way I would want to given that you need to be basically at a hundred percent fitness and sharpness to be able to make a team in the US in such deep events.

Heather K:

So, that was probably the most heartbreaking one for me, because I really knew that everything was aligning perfectly for me. And then just so close to the actual moment where you really need that fitness, it didn't align. And then since then, it's just been similar stories of injuries popping up right before really important races, and trying to not freak out and manage them responsibly and get back on my feet to be able to perform well. But you have this time enough of getting into really good fitness and then never really being able to demonstrate that the way you want to, and knowing that that potential still exists within you, but feeling thwarted a lot of times. So it can be pretty frustrating.

Gary S:

In that situation, what you just described, what does resilience look like for you in that moment? What you just described. You're getting in shape and you want to perform, and then you come to a point where you're not able to perform. How do you move beyond that? How do you manifest resilience in that moment? Because throughout whatever crucible our listeners have been going through, there comes a time where they hit a wall. There are obstacles and there are walls which are a little bit harder to get through. How do you manifest resilience to get beyond that wall and maybe go to a different place or have a different goal? How does that work for you?

Heather K:

Yeah. For me personally, I think it's a combination of things. The first would just be an unyielding optimism and belief in myself that I am capable of those things that I've set out to do, and a belief that I still have purpose and meaning throughout the process. So even if I'm not performing at my best, if I'm showing up and I'm sharing my story and I'm letting people know where I'm at, I think that is oftentimes more powerful than just watching someone who's on the top of the world win everything.

Gary S:

Right.

Heather K:

Because that's not very relatable. So I've been very intentional in involving and sharing my story with my fans and people who want to follow my experience in this sport, so that they know that even these people that you might elevate to superhuman levels because they've achieved great things at one point or another go through these hard times as well. And then as my coach would say, I'm a very developed goal setter. Whenever we have goal setting sessions, I'm coming with pages and pages of process-oriented goals along with the outcome oriented goals that I want to achieve. And it's always important for me I think to focus on those processes, I guess, of the things that I can do on a daily basis, on a habitual routine that will in all likelihood lead towards success. And if I'm managing my sleep, and my recovery, and my nutrition, and listening to my body, and being an advocate for the things that I think I need in training with my coach and with my doctors, then in theory, things should work. And I get a lot of confidence and faith in that.

Heather K:

And then at the same time, if I'm hurt, I decided that I just want to be able to do 15 pull-ups in a row, and just start using my upper body in ways that I haven't before, because I know that will lend new strengths for me later. And yeah, I don't know how much of a math nerd you might be, but when I speak with kids, I always pull out this graph of an asymptote, which is basically Y equals one over X, so as a denominator.

Gary S:

Am so not a math nerd. I had no idea what that word meant when you said it. But I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Heather K:

No, it's okay. So, if you picture a fraction where it's one over X, any number. And that number is continually getting bigger and bigger. That fraction is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller, approaching zero but never actually reaching zero.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

So this has been my approach to my entire career. I think that on any given day, if there were no wind, if the weather were perfect, if I had the right people in the race, if I felt amazing and most perfectly healthy, maybe my absolute potential could be achieved. But most of us never actually have that perfect moment or the zero on this graph that we're reaching towards. But as long as you're still moving forward, as long as that denominator is getting bigger, you're still learning, you're still gaining experience, you're still developing different skills you didn't have before. For me, I think that that has been the process that I've decided to pursue is maybe I'm not exactly where I want to be, but I'm exactly where I need to be right now. And I'm going to gain as much knowledge and strengthen fitness as I can from this, and use it to push closer to that perfect day that we all keep chasing in the sport.

Warwick F:

What's interesting, Heather, is a lot of us watch athletes and sports. And I always love the post game interviews. The vast majority of the successful ones talk the way you've just spoken. They say, "I focus on the process. What can I do today to get better?" The results and the outcome will take care of itself if I've trained well, eaten well, cooled down, warmed up, all of the things I need to do, analyze tactics. I've done all of the process well, then they're able to accept the outcome as best as anybody can. They tend to be process orientated, the successful athletes. I mean, is that makes sense in your perspective?

Heather K:

Yeah. I think if you're only focusing on the outcome, then you forget a lot of the things that you need to do to actually reach that outcome. And a lot of times in track and field, it's not entirely in your control because there's 10 to 12 other people on the starting line for me who have been trying to focus on their process and outcome as well. So you can only control yourself in those situations. And you see people fall down in races, which has happened to me plenty more times than just the one that we discussed today, that haven't resulted in the same magic necessarily. So sometimes you think you're doing everything right, and that's all you can really control to have confidence on the starting line. But most recently at this Olympic trials, that was the case for me, where I thought I was doing everything right and was feeling really good, and then just started feeling a little bit off before the trials, only to learn that I had two stress reactions in my pelvis that I was just unfamiliar with what that pain is supposed to feel like.

Warwick F:

And this is the most recent ones for this year's Olympics?

Heather K:

Yeah, in 2020.

Warwick F:

Yeah. So I just want to go back for a second, because what you went through, especially in 2016 was devastating. You thought I have a real shot of making the team and making my first Olympics, and then some injury comes at the worst possible time. And you've from what I understand in the last relatively recently retired from, I guess, I don't know if you'd say professional athletics or just competitive in that sense with Olympic or national all age level. I mean, how did you get beyond this? Because I know you're a person of faith like we are, but you're still human. I mean, how in the world did you get beyond that? Because it would be easy to say, "Well, be angry at God, the universe." It's like, "Hey, this is so unfair." I mean, I had a real shot. I was doing everything right and injury comes on. I mean, come on. I mean, really. How did you get beyond that? But it felt like this is so unfair.

Heather K:

Right. Yeah. I think partially for me it was a bit of recognizing that we make plans and God laughs.

Warwick F:

Right.

Heather K:

You think you can assign a purpose for yourself and you can tell yourself, "God has made me to be an Olympian." I thought that this was my purpose and what I was meant to achieve and that I could use that platform to do good things in the world. And so, yeah, especially in 2016, I just felt like, "Okay, then what do we do all this for if we're just going to take it away at the last second?" And he gives and takes away in all aspects of life. So I think just recognizing that maybe in those moments it's an opportunity for me to recognize that, I was trying to impose my will on God instead of letting God's will happen for me. And similarly, I raced at the World Championships indoor in 2014, and it felt like one of those God moments, because I actually didn't qualify.

Heather K:

I was the alternate to make the team. And then days before the competition in Poland, I got a call that said, "Hey, Heather, the winner of the National Championship is injured, so we need to send the alternate. Can you get to Poland in two days?" And I'm like, "Wow, this is grace that I do not deserve, but I'm just going to go and try and make the most of it." And I ran a personal best in the prelim, made the final, and I'm like, "Okay, I'm ready to medal. This is God's perfect for me. He wants me to medal."

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

And I got tripped up and fell and knocked my knee out of the joint and got up and still was able to finish the race. But I just remember that you always wear a race bib on your chest.

Warwick F:

Sure.

Heather K:

And it was flapping from having fallen on my chest, and it wasn't staying really in place. So, in that moment I just tore it off and threw it to the track to just finish the race in that really embarrassing, really far off distant last place. And it was in that moment that I was like, "Wow." I forgot that I wasn't representing myself, I wasn't representing Team USA, I was here to represent God. And somewhere along the lines, I decided that I need a medal. And I think that He's been entirely a little bit too Old Testament for me in terms of how quickly He roots me back into putting my faith in Him, instead of believing that I am just deserving of all the success. But it's humbling for sure. So I think if anything, in those moments, it's a chance for me to retool where I'm investing my identity and why I'm doing these things and what my purpose is in the sport, and making sure that I try to put God first in what I'm doing

Warwick F:

As listeners would know, I mean, it's a different parallel, but I'll try and make it short is, again listeners would know I grew up in this 150 year old family media business, very large, founded by a very strong believer. So I felt like as a person of faith, clearly it's God's plan for me to resurrect the company in the image of the founder and have it be well run. So I did this $2 billion plus takeover at age 26, which ended up failing spectacularly for a number of reasons. So I felt like I knew God's purpose, and clearly if He'd want it to happen despite a lot of the setbacks I've faced, which most of them were my fault, still if God wanted to happen, it would have happened. So clearly He had another purpose. But to me it was pretty certain, "Hey, I'm going to be prominent in the country of Australia and I'm going to do this wonderful thing through this newspaper company." Just seemed evident.

Warwick F:

And so I went to Oxford like other ancestors, worked on Wall Street, Harvard Business School. I mean, I'd did the equivalent of training my level best to be qualified for this position. And it didn't work out. So that's like 30 plus years ago. And so I've had some perspective. So talk about... As we're in this resilience series, your professional career is now ended. Some of the goals you achieved, some didn't. But what are the lessons that you've learned from that, and what do you see as your future, maybe the message maybe God has put on your heart or... Because people are going to be thinking, gosh. What's the lesson in all this for Heather for us? And what's Heather's purpose now. So how do you look at all that?

Heather K:

Yeah. I mean, I think I'll always look back fondly on these years of being able to compete at the highest level, and just test myself to see where I stack up against some of the world's best. And I think that what I've learned from that, or what I'll take forward from that is that if I put my everything into whatever I decide to do next, I can do something great there also. And just to have that sense of belief that there are more, I guess, adventures that I can explore and try to apply the same level of discipline that I have with this. But yeah, it will be memories that I will be very excited to share with kids that I coach. I coach some adult athletes, and regardless of whatever level you're at, I think that it can still be so applicable and relatable to be able to share those kinds of stories.

Heather K:

So it just made me who I am as a person. And I think you're molded through both the triumphs and the failures, and it will just make me more resilient, as we've been talking about, to be able to face whatever's happening next. And yeah, I definitely think that I've applied what I've learned through athletics in facing challenges in my employment, and in my marriage, and in friendships and family and stuff like that, that I don't know how else I would have gotten such clear evidence in a world where it's safe to make mistakes. If you screw up in a race, it's sad and maybe it will be for me a reason that I don't get another opportunity or I don't make as much money in the sport.

Heather K:

But you have those four and a half minutes in a mile to really put yourself out there and take risks and see what you're made of. And then you can go back and eat dinner and go to bed and start your next day over and keep training. So it's like a really short way to just test yourself, giving everything that you have to something, and then apply that to the things that are most important, long-term.

Gary S:

I have to say, do you say four and a half minutes in a mile? I'm thinking, "Oh, come on." It's like nine minutes and 45 seconds in a mile for me, but that's a whole different story. I thought it was really interesting Warwick that you told your story in the context of our conversation with Heather. There was a story. One of the things that I did some research on as we were preparing for this, Heather, was a story that the Mankato Free Press did on you, off of a speech that you gave to some marathoners. And in the second sentence of their story, they're talking about the 2008 fall, get up, finish the race, and win. And then they say, "Search her name plus fall, and you can see it for yourself." So I thought, how big is this? So I searched Heather Kampf and fall, and it returns 6,170,000 results. Now, Warwick, I know you feel like... And there was a book written the Fall Of The House Of Fairfax about your takeover.

Warwick F:

Sure.

Gary S:

And you said many times you feel like that's all people know you for. You'd be happy to know, I think, that Warwick Fairfax and fall only has 2,270,000.

Warwick F:

Thank you so much for telling me.

Gary S:

No, here's my point though. Here is my point for bringing all this up, neither one of you are defined by the falls, right?

Warwick F:

Right.

Gary S:

You're defined by the resilience and how you came back from that. Heather, you're speaking in that story. Warwick you're hosting this podcast and writing your book coming out October 19th. You're not defined by what Google says you should be defined by. So it doesn't matter what terms people put in there. You're living lives with resilience, focused on achieving significance not just success. And that's something I think I hope listeners can take away from this conversation as we continue.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, such a great point. I mean, what I'm curious about really in this vein, Heather, is there's a dance between... there's nothing wrong with going for your goals, for trying to achieve success. I think most of us have seen Chariots Of Fire. And I guess as an athlete, you probably have seen that movie. And there's a great line when Eric Liddell, the great Scottish runner, says, "I feel like God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure." I mean, that's just such an incredible line. So talk about how it's okay to strive for goals. But how do you stop having your whole sense of self wrapped up in a goal? So, how do you be both as excellent as you can be, which I believe scripturally we're meant to give our all as if we're doing it unto the Lord, there's scripture backing that up? But how do you give it your all, but yet not have the result own you? How do you achieve that balance?

Heather K:

Yeah. I would say that I have worked on it a lot over the years because I definitely have had moments in my life where my identity was more wrapped up in running. And I think this beyond just the learning moments of recognizing, "Wow, I cried for days over false starting at this one race," and life will go on and more opportunities will exist. And just getting the benefit of hindsight in those situations, but also just grounding myself in real things and recognizing what my priorities are, and knowing what will be there for me no matter how things turn out. So for me it was like my coach in college would always say, "Well, the sun will rise tomorrow and your mom will still love you." So regardless of how you perform, the sun is still going to come up tomorrow and you're going to still have people that care for you, the person, instead of just you, the athlete.

Heather K:

And I've been so blessed to be surrounded by just the best coaches and the best teams of people who have supported me because they want to see me do well and they want to share in that success with me. Because I think when you talk about success versus significance, Gary, it's just really to me like significance is success shared. And what I love most about that Big Ten video that nobody gets to see because they cut it off right after the race is over, is that A, I didn't actually win the Big Ten 600 meters in 2008. I was second. And that is because they split the race into two heats. And my heat was usually considered the fastest heat. They put all the fastest heats in that one. But there was a girl who ran two tenths of a second faster from the first heat.

Heather K:

And I didn't realize that until the very end of the meet, everything had already been tabulated for the team results. But we knew that we had won the meet as a team. So I'm really excited for everyone. We'd won by eight points. And it wasn't until they're having us each come up for our individual medals that I was standing at the medal podium waiting to take my first place medal for the 600. And this girl had to tap me on the shoulder and be like, "Heather, I actually won." And so I had to hop down to the second place podium spot.

Heather K:

But for people who are aware of track and field, you get 10 points for winning a race and you get eight points for getting second. And our team margin of victory was eight points. So it was just that moment where it's like, "Wow, if I hadn't gotten up, or finished the race, or finished just exactly where I did, we would have tied or lost at best." So it's just like those things you never really know how it's going impact the hundred women that were on my team and the coaches and the people who have had the pleasure of watching this video, all 6 million of them or whatever it is. And I just think that is the definition of significance is when you can touch people's lives and give them hope and a reason to keep thriving for whatever they're chasing in their life. So yeah, just being able to share that success and being humble enough to know that it wasn't just all you, but it came from somewhere beyond. That is pretty great.

Gary S:

And this is the moment in the show where I customarily say, "Did you hear that? That's the sound of the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign." But Heather gave me a tip beforehand that I can say, "Did you hear that bell? That bell means we're entering the final lap of the race." So we're getting to the point where the tape will be broken here in a little bit, and we're going to finish our conversation. But we've got a little bit more time left, so stick with us listener.

Gary S:

I want to point out one thing that you just said, Heather. You probably didn't even realize it in the same way that you didn't realize exactly everything that happened in that viral video when you fell down and how far you fell down. You said in that video 6 million or whatever people who watched it, right? There was at least 12 million people who saw that video based on the story I saw, which was from two years ago. The fact that you don't know that number speaks volumes about what's important to you, what your character is like, what significance versus success looks like for you. Because you don't have a tally somewhere in your house where you check off each new million person that gets in. And that's a critically important thing.

Gary S:

I want to read something from the article that led me to even find you. And that was Forbes Magazine in 2018, did a story called the Three Strategies Experts Use to Overcome Failure. And they cited your fall, your getting up and winning that heat. And this is what they say here, "Everyone would have understood if she'd stayed there on the ground, convinced she'd failed and there was no chance of recovering from a fall like that. But she didn't stay on the ground. She got up, she finished what she started, and she emerged the champion." Well, they didn't get that right. The champion of that heat will say that Heather went on to become a four time US national champion, and now professionally competes internationally as a middle distance runner.

Gary S:

Here's the end of this thing that I want to pose to you because it's a question. And I would like you to answer this for our listeners. What if she had let that moment define her? What if she had stayed on the ground admitting defeat? What if it had changed the entire trajectory of her career or her life? How would you answer those questions?

Heather K:

That's heavy. Yeah. I don't know. I think in some ways maybe what they don't realize, because it was less on anyone's radar, was that I had done that once already. I had stayed down. I didn't finish a race after I fell in high school, and I realized that I never wanted to do that again. It was the state meet my senior year at cross country and I tripped and fell and was completely falling off the lead pack of the race where I thought I should finish. And I got up and was a little delirious, and I was weaving around, and somebody asked me, "Are you okay?" And just looked right at me. And I just started bawling and I didn't finish the race. And A, it was really embarrassing to be ranked in the top 10 in the state and not even to finish the race, but B it gave me a lifelong lesson that I never want to feel that way again.

Heather K:

So I think maybe if I hadn't had that experience then, and I had stayed down in college instead, it would have probably given me just knowing my personality, the same general trajectory of knowing that after that day. I would never want to feel that way again. I know I'd still keep fighting and trying and just showing up. But yeah, I guess if it maybe had some deeper impact on me that made me realize that maybe I'm not cut out for this, I'm not as tough as I need to be, I probably wouldn't have continued in this sport after college. And that would be the end of my running story as far as people who follow it. But no.

Warwick F:

Wow. Well, I guess as we conclude Heather, thank you so much for sharing. People listening will have had setbacks, failures. What kind of message of hope would you give them? Because sometimes when we're young, we have this dream of what we want to achieve. And we might achieve some goal but maybe not all of them. Sometime maybe the gears have to shift, like in your case, competitive running at least in terms of all age groups as you've now moved to a different phase. So talk about what would a message of hope be for people that have had setbacks, or maybe the original dream they had was partially achieved, but maybe not completely, they've had to move on. What message of hope would you give people?

Heather K:

Yeah, I think first of all, it sounds trite, but it's all about the journey, not about the destination. So if you've made the most of your journey along the way, then you can rest peacefully knowing that you gave everything you had to get to wherever you did. And that is commendable. And then I guess now from the perspective I've been, when Gary and I first spoke to decide that I would be coming on this podcast, I wasn't able to talk about retirement without crying.

Gary S:

Yeah.

Heather K:

So the fact that I am getting through the entire podcast to be able to define myself as a retired professional runner is a good sign. And what I didn't expect to find on the other side of this was a little bit of relief or peace, and just recognizing that you put so much into something and you still... As much as I try not to invest my entire identity into it, it is a little bit of a trap. And when you escape from that trap then you give yourself the chance to just look at the world as your oyster in this new opportunity.

Heather K:

I'm headed after this interview to go probably accept a new job offer. And it's really exciting to just have a new avenue to explore in my life. And I guess I perhaps maybe even held onto the stream for a little bit too long and looking back at things now and just recognizing the ups and downs of my injuries that weren't healing, that perhaps I could have had this experience sooner. But for me it was the right time. And I was really glad to get one more shot. This was my fourth Olympic trials this summer. To just feel like I left it in a place that I can be okay with no matter the outcome. So if you can be intentional about that and just get to that place where you know you gave it all, then just get really excited for whatever's on the next page when you turn it over.

Gary S:

Wow. I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the final word is spoken on a subject, and Heather has spoken the final word, broken through the finish line tape, won her heat, and I'm going to award her the gold medal on this one for her perspective on resilience. Before I go into and do a wrap up of what I think are three excellent takeaways from what you said here, Heather, I'd be remiss if I didn't give you the chance to let listeners know how they can find you perhaps on social media so they can follow what is next in your life as you continue to use resilience to chart your course forward.

Heather K:

Sure. I am primarily most active, I would say, on Instagram and Twitter a little bit, just because everything posts there as well. But it's just my full name at Heather Rae, R-A-E, Kampf, K-A-M-P-F. And that's my handle on both of those things. And yeah, you can follow whatever's next in my hobby jogging and my dogs, and whatever else I do in my career.

Gary S:

Awesome. Well, here listener are those three takeaways really quickly in this episode of our resilience series that come from Heather. First one, never give up. There's a caveat to this. I'm going to keep talking, because it's not just never give up period, exclamation point. It's never give up in the short-term or the long-term, because as Heather says, you never know when your greatest obstacle will become your greatest opportunity. That's something that Warwick talks about a lot here at Crucible Leadership as well. Number two, have a plan and stick with it. Heather's plan was not to fall during the final third of that Big Ten race in 2008, it was at least to finish and win her team a point in the competition. That was what got her up off the ground. The rest was the result of that resilience to follow the plan even against long odds.

Gary S:

And the third point, and I love this phrase to the point that you should copyright it, Heather, because it's good, develop an unyielding optimism. I'll say it again, an unyielding optimism. That's what Heather said she has developed. You can inspire people often in deeper ways by continuing on in pursuit of process oriented goals rather than achievement oriented goals, which to me sounds a lot like pursuing a life of significance not just a life of success. It's fitting in episode three of our Harnessing Resilience series, featured a distance runner, because we're now halfway through our journey to the finish line in our exploration of this critical aspect of moving beyond our crucibles. Be sure to join us next week when you'll meet Lucy Westlake, a young mountain climber who was barely a teenager when she tried to scale Denali, the highest peak in North America. She did not succeed, but she also did not give up. She harnessed resilience and tried it again four years late. What happened, you'll have to listen September 14th when part four of Harnessing Resilience goes live.

It was moment seen by tens of millions of people across the globe thanks to a viral video: Heather Kampf falling during the final lap of an 800-meter race in college, then springing to her feet to not just catch her competition, but win. Yet Kampf cautions those amazed by her triumph to take a deeper message away from her 2008 feat than “Never give up.” What fueled her miraculous comeback was having a vision for the race long before it started and sticking to that vision when the crucible came. What she discovered about herself during that final lap — and in the setbacks and struggles before and since — is that her faith gives her access to another gear critical to harnessing resilience on and off the track.

You can watch Heather Kampf’s remarkable fall-and-finish during the 2008 Big 10 Track Championships by watching the video in this news story: www.bit.ly/harnessingresilience1. You can also follow the now-retired Kampf’s post-running career on Instagram at @heatherraekampf

And don’t miss part 4 of “Harnessing Resilience” with guest Lucy Westlake, debuting Sept. 14.

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Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

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Transcript

Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Gary S:
Welcome to week three of our six part series, Harnessing Resilience. I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. We’re doing a deep dive on this subject because without resilience, there is no moving beyond our crucibles. We’re hearing from guests who found the resilience to overcome their setbacks and failures, as well as experts with practical insights and action steps to help you bolster your own ability to rise above life’s inevitable, unavoidable crucibles. Warwick and I talked this week with Heather Kampf, a champion distance runner who quite literally picked herself up, dusted herself off, and started all over again when she fell during a high profile race. She harnessed resilience on the spot in a way that has amazed tens of millions of people, including myself.

Warwick F:
Well, thank you so much, Heather, for being here. And yeah, we’ll get to that 2008 event in a moment. And listeners may be curious as to why something like that will get 12 million views on video, and you’ll find out soon why that is. And you’ll also find out what the lessons from it are, and maybe different than you’d think. I’d love to hear just a bit about the backstory. But as we’re recording, the Olympics have just finished. And I’m guessing, I don’t know, growing up in Australia, we always watched the Olympics. I’m guessing you were probably watching some of it and seeing what happened. And we just had some incredible athletes, the 400 meter hurdles were Sydney McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammad. Actually something that’ll interest you Gary, Molly Seidel from Brookfield, Wisconsin.

Gary S:

Yeah, shout out to the Midwest!

Warwick F:

She won the bronze in the women’s marathon, which is amazing. And then for me being Australian, there was the great tussle between Ariarne Titmus and Katie Ledecky in the women’s 400 and 200. My kids had asked me, “Who are you cheering for?” And I wouldn’t answer. But since I’m dual citizenship, it’s hard not to cheer for the Aussie. So everyone’s got Olympic fever. So just tell me about the backstory, where you grew up and family, and what led you to have this just passion for running.

Heather K:

Yeah. So I grew up in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, just south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. I have an older sister, and we were pretty active kids doing a lot of just outdoor activities and things like that. But I think that my first sport love was really gymnastics actually. I love to just sprawl out in our backyard and do tumbling tricks and everything like that. So it was actually my gymnastics coach in my freshman year of high school who was challenging us all to races down the hallway of our high school as part of our conditioning drills. And he was a pretty fast guy, so he always would try to get the girls to give him a head start and then he would chase them down. But I was the first girl on the team who could give my coach a head start and still beat him in a flat sprint of a race.

Warwick F:

Wow.

Heather K:

So as much as I love gymnastics and spending time upside down, he was like, “You know what Heather? You should really think about trying track.” And I had a few other people in my life who had mentioned to me that that would be a good idea. Just in the US we have the presidential fitness testing by ed class. So we would do a mile run twice a year. And my goal was always to beat all the boys in my class. And so that was a point of pride for me to be the fastest kid in my grade. And I guess I didn’t really think that I would really love track as a full time sport. I thought it was just a nice thing to do a couple of times a year, because it seemed like it was just running in circles and it would be really boring. But it turns out I’m pretty competitive, and I really like things where I can see my progress, put the work in. And it really just translate well into the results later for the most part.

Heather K:

So I became really in love with the sport my freshman year. I made it to state as a relay member in two events. And then as they say, the rest is kind of history. I won a couple state titles in high school and got the attention of some amazing coaches at the University of Minnesota who brought me on board to run with the Gophers. And yeah, I think I was a competitive recruit to bring onto the division one scene, but I wasn’t by any means amazing. My primary event was the 800 at the time. So I ran 210.42 was my best in high school, if anyone likes to follow the times and the numbers in the track world. But my freshman year, just being around better competition and people that race, I went from 210 in my first ever collegiate race. I matched my best from high school to 203 in my second race.

Warwick F:

Wow.

Heather K:

It just suddenly put me on a completely different caliber and trajectory with some of the best in the nation in the NCAA. And I won the NCAA title as a freshmen indoor that year. So a few people asked me afterwards, “Oh, do you think you’ll go pro after this?” Because I just had developed so quickly there.

Warwick F:

Sure.

Heather K:

But I really valued my team and I valued getting an education for free, so stuck around college and then went pro after graduation.

Warwick F:

Wow. So do you have a history of athletes in your family or competitiveness? Because often you see people that are athletes, I mean their genetic pedigree is like wow. Like Sydney McLaughlin, I think both her parents raced at LSU or something. Did you have that kind of gene pool there?

Heather K:

Well, we have tried to trace some lineage to figure out just exactly where this is from. I had a great uncle who was a pretty good track athlete, and my dad was… he liked to pride himself in being most improved in wrestling. So he carried that trophy around the house, and he ran track as well. But I think that he joked that he was a varsity senior drinking team member, and like party, and wasn’t as serious about the athletics or just being very diligent and things. And I think my mom maybe is the one who is a little bit more diligent and, I don’t know, just really works hard towards whatever she’s doing. So I think that I just got between both of them. Once my dad grew up, that message that you get out what you put into things. And that really resonated with me to just give my best. And then the genetics, I guess, is a mix of many things.

Warwick F:

But it sounds like you loved running. I mean, sometimes high school athletes and tennis or wherever, you’ve got a really pushy parent saying you can do this, and they take him to all of the special clinics and all that. But it sounds like in your case, I’m sure your parents supported you, but it was you that really had a passion for running. It wasn’t like people were saying. Your parents saying you have to do this and this is your ticket. Was it more just you, your love of it?

Heather K:

Yeah. It was fairly organic for me to fall in love with it. And I actually was originally preparing music scholarship pieces to try and become… Go to school for music. I was a flutist. And so that was the thing that I was really good at and could have maybe had a future in, but my mom really had to force me to practice every day. And it wasn’t my passion in the same way that athletics was. So when I found out that I had a full scholarship opportunity for track, instead of having to continue perfecting my music, I was like, “Well, this sounds nice also.” And just decided to gear a little bit towards that. And no regrets about that. I’m really happy about where running has taken me and all the people that I’ve been able to connect with, because I really think what makes people fall in love with it at any level is the community of people that you find yourself surrounded by.

Warwick F:

Because obviously any athletic endeavor is hard. And it seems like the people that do well do it just for the love of the game and love of the sport. I think of Roger Federer, who’s like 40 years old playing tennis, and obviously he’s worth a huge amount of money, but it’s clear that he just loves playing tennis. I mean, eventually he’s going to have to stop soon, but he just loves it. He loves the competitiveness. Is that the same for you in the sense you love… I mean, what is it about running that you love? What makes you just want to get up in the morning and train and keep going?

Heather K:

Yeah, I think that it feels like this was a gift given to me by God. So from this time that I’ve been competing, it felt like to give anything less than my best is to sacrifice the gift, to quote Steve Prefontaine, a pretty famous runner.

Warwick F:

Right.

Heather K:

So yeah, I think for me it’s all about just bettering my best and seeing what I’m made of, and what potential I have and chasing that. Definitely as you age, it is a challenge because you might eventually get to a point where your best days are behind you, specifically for that time period.

Warwick F:

Right.

Heather K:

But what I’m looking forward to now in my post retirement life here, at age 34, is being able to chase new bests in this body that I have now, and just have personal bests every year and try new events and everything, because it really is a sport that you can do for life and I anticipate continuing to do that. My husband is a runner. He’s training for the Twin Cities Marathon this Fall. So a lot of times it’s just the best time of day for us to really connect and have conversations when we’re parallel running with each other, versus the intimidation of face-to-face contact that some men don’t love. So we have our best conversations on runs and everything.

Warwick F:

Well, I want to get to this 2008 event. But those listeners might be hearing it’s great to have conversations when you run. You’ve actually got to be reasonably fit, because if you’re totally out of breath, it’s hard to have a conversation. So you want to have a good conversation, you got to be somewhat fit.

Heather K:

That’s a reason to try and hang on to that.

Gary S:

It is absolutely true that the older you get the harder it is. I picked up running about 10 years ago, and I mean, I’m slow, okay? In little league in baseball, it took a triple to score me from second base. That’s how slow I was. And I’m still pretty slow, but there’s something about it that when you do get under your normal split for a mile, even if you’re just going around the neighborhood, there’s something about it that is very endorphin creating, very confidence creating. There’s just something about it that I love. So even though I’m a turtle, I still go out there and do it. And I am not. We’d be remiss if we didn’t say this, you earned the nickname during your career, which was Queen of the Road Mile. How did that come about?

Heather K:

Yeah. I totally agree with you on how finishing any run feels fulfilling.

Gary S:

Yeah.

Heather K:

But then yes. So I found myself just jumping into a few of these road races. It’s just a one mile road race. A lot of times it’s just a straight shot or sometimes you go out, take a left turn or whatever down one block and then come back the other way so that the start finishes close for people to watch. But for whatever reason, it just seemed like I had a knack for sniffing out the finish line and those, I guess you’d say. I just inordinately have had more success in road miles than I have in track miles or other races to a point where I haven’t made an Olympic team. But just watching the Olympics, you saw Laura Muir who got second in the 1500.

Heather K:

I finished within half second of her in a road mile before. So it’s just entertaining to recognize that your own strengths can borrow to different events a little bit better. And I think being more of a speed and power athlete background in gymnastics and shorter events have just the ability to put a little bit more force through the ground in the roads. And so I can power on pavement a little bit more. But mostly I think it’s just the purest form of racing. You don’t know where you are most of the time, because there aren’t clear markers on the course of exactly where you’re at.

Gary S:

Right.

Heather K:

So, you do this. For me at least I found that doing a long slow grind of just building up building up speed all the way to the finish would thin out the field, and then you just try to make the final punch to get to the tape first.

Gary S:

It sounds to me like it’s a little like the Fast and the Furious of running, right? It’s like everything’s a quarter mile at a time, right?

Heather K:

It’s drag racing. Yeah.

Gary S:

It’s drag racing sort of thing, but it’s running. Since this is a series about resilience, it seems like that might be a resilience point, or might’ve been a resilience point for you. And that you did these longer races, you did these longer things, but you found as you were trying different things that this one really fit you and you threw yourself into that. And there was some both success and satisfaction in doing so. Is that fair?

Heather K:

Definitely. It’s confidence producing to win races, and it’s joyful to be somewhere where you don’t feel the same pressure that you might feel on the track. So for me, I was just always happy to be there. And I was the person that was pulling everyone in to do warmups and cooldowns together, and sharing racing tips and everything, because I always thought if I’m supposed to be the expert at these, I can still win even if I tell someone else what I usually do on a certain course or something like that. So yeah, I think for me it was definitely taking some of that pressure off than just enjoying it.

Warwick F:

That’s awesome. So I want to get to what has brought you to prominence, which is a strange thing. So talk a bit about… There might be a few people that hasn’t seen that 2008, I guess, 600 meter indoor run, but..

Gary S:

And we will put that link in the show notes. And again, the context for why we do that will come out in our conversation here, but we’ll put it there so you can see it, because, as Heather will explain, it does not define her life, her experience, and her career, but it’s important to see as we talk about resilience. So we will have that in the show notes, for sure, just so you know.

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

Heather K:

Thanks Gary. Yeah. So I guess context first, this was the 2008 indoor Big Ten Championships at the University of Minnesota. So we were hosting that meet at home. My team, the Gophers, had just won their first ever Big Ten title, my freshman year indoors in… oh, sorry, excuse me, outdoors in 2006. And we won our first ever indoors in 2007. So our team was just on a bit of a tear of our own of feeling that momentum and success of working together. So this was the time of the season where my coach said that every athlete who had a potential to earn a point in any event would go to the well. They would do everything they can to try and earn points and succeed for the team. So as a fairly talented and versatile athlete myself, I was running both the mile and the 600 meters individually alongside the four by four on the last night of the event as well.

Heather K:

So, this occurred over two days. Usually the mile and the 600 meters prelims were on the first, and then you are referring to the 600 meter final, which happened maybe 45 minutes after the mile.

Warwick F:

Oh my gosh.

Heather K:

Yeah, it was definitely a very hefty schedule for anyone who’s followed track and field to know this, how tight those races were together.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

So I would wake up in the morning on Big Ten final days with my heart beating out of my chest, just knowing what I would need to accomplish that day. But as I said, I rely on my faith and in my racing and in competition. So I told myself all things are possible through Christ. And my other mantra was I’m a machine for the team, because it really didn’t seem like the kind of thing that a person could humanly do. So I like to think of myself as just this mechanical being that just would do what needs to be done to achieve what we wanted to do together. So that’s how I would enter into these events and what I was thinking about on the starting line of the race. And if you want, I can talk you through the race a little bit from my perspective.

Warwick F:

Yeah, please.

Heather K:

Sure, sure. Okay. So, the race started and as I had just finished my last race shortly before, I decided that I would just be a little bit conservative in the first two laps and let anyone who wanted to lead the race, lead the race, because Big Ten Championships are not about time. You don’t have to run the fastest, you just need to be first to earn the most points. So I followed behind a Penn State runner named Fawn Dorr, who was actually a really good 400 meter hurdler as well. And I just was biding my time until that final lap, where I started to make a move around the outside of her to really get into charge in the last lap and try and speed away with it. And just as I was going around her and cutting back into the inside lane, I felt a little bit of a nick on one of my heels. And as I was trying to correct for that foot feeling out of place, the other one felt like it got stepped on from behind. And I was just going down fast.

Heather K:

So from my recollection of things, I know that my hands hit the track, but what I pictured happening was that I just fell to a kneeling position, smack my hands on the ground, which is never a good place for your hands to be during a race, and then just got up and started running again. But it was really shocking to me once I did get up just to see how much distance the race has gapped me by at that point. I was like, “Man.” I really felt I don’t know why they got so far ahead of me, but I just really wanted to finish the race because I knew even if I got dead last in my heat that I would still earn one point for the team. And it was going to be a very tight finish for the championship overall.

Heather K:

So got back up and started running, and just started surprising myself because I was catching one person on the backstretch, and I thought, “Wow, that’s a lot better than I thought you were going to do. Pat on the back. Nice job, Heather, you caught one.” And it wasn’t until coming around the final curve of that last lap that I heard the in-house announcer say, “And watch out for Heather Dorniden,” which was my maiden name at the time. And I was like, “Yeah, watch out for me.” I just got this incredible surge of momentum where it felt like I was speeding up and everyone else was slowing down. And I had just enough gas in the tank to be able to sneak by my own teammate at the finish line to win my heat. So, that was my experience of it.

Heather K:

And I think afterwards, when everybody was just celebrating and telling me how amazing it was and how they couldn’t believe I did that, I was like, “You guys, I don’t really understand. It wasn’t that big of a deal.” And then my dad pulled out his video camera and showed me how I had actually fallen. And I didn’t just touch my hands to the track for a second, I fell on my stomach and was skidding on the track and really took some time down there for a second. And that was just completely not a part of my memories. I don’t know if I just shut my eyes really tight or what was going on there. But I think that when you have a really strong vision of what your goals are before you even start something, that positive vision is so much stronger than any obstacles that might step in your way. So for me, I think that that vision and my goal was just so prominent in my mind that it made everything else fall by the wayside so that I could still focus on what I was there for.

Warwick F:

I mean, for listeners who haven’t seen it, it’s a really incredible video of Heather falls down and gets up. And it’s like a movie except it’s real life. It’s somehow you overtake folks and edge out the other person to win. I mean, it’s unbelievable. And somehow this video, as you say, has gone viral, but I think you’ve hinted at it. But when people look at it, what’s the message that a lot of people get from it which is not the message you take? So talk about that, because you could watch the video and be inspired. But what’s the typical inspiration when people see it? Most people see it. What do they think?

Heather K:

I think the first thing that a lot of people say, well, one of two things, either never give up is the phrase that’s dropped on a lot of the versions of the videos with the music of choice and everything that people drop in there, or they just say, “Wow, that girl’s a beast.” I’m this competitive animal. And I’m like, “Man, I’m actually this really Midwestern polite girl who…”

Gary S:

Right.

Heather K:

This really only comes out in me in competition, which is partially why I love track. But yeah, it was a pretty magical moment.

Warwick F:

So the message for some people is, “Hey, when you fall down, don’t give up. Pick yourself up, you can still win.” But I think as you’ve just hinted, that’s not the message. I mean, I’m sure you’re not against that message, but the real message for you is somewhat different. What’s the real message for you?

Heather K:

Yeah. I think two things really, the first being what I’d mentioned about how I barely realized I fell. I think it’s really important to visualize whatever you plan to achieve in your life to really have that clear vision. And also I can adopt the whole never give up phrase, but I think I just need to add a little bit more beyond that to say, “Sure, never give up for all the reasons that people say about resilience. And you never win if you never try,” and stuff like that. But for me, it’s never give up because you never know when your greatest obstacle becomes your greatest opportunity to do things you never imagined you could, because I would never have pictured that I could have gotten up with 200 meters to go in a sprint race and win. But that gave me so much confidence going into the Olympic trials that summer and to follow through in the rest of my professional career to believe that I have this gear somewhere within me that I might need at some point again and it could be another magical moment like that.

Heather K:

And I’ve had so many opportunities throughout my life to speak in New York City for companies, and for schools and churches, and teams all over the world that are just interested in this compelling story, because anyone can look at a race and identify a moment in their life where either they’ve literally like me or figuratively at some point in their life felt like they fell on their face. And it can be really tough. And it usually doesn’t happen from fall to finish in 30 seconds.

Warwick F:

Right.

Heather K:

But it’s still is so important for you to stand back up and keep trying, because it might parlay into an entirely different career opportunity for me. It has to be able to speak and connect with people and just share a hopeful story.

Warwick F:

Yeah. What’s interesting, we talk a lot on this podcast about success versus significance and… Like you, both Gary and I, are people of faith, and so that has a certain context from that worldview. But you’ve achieved a lot of success at University of Minnesota and just some of the professionally and all, but yet you’ve had challenges. From what I understand, you’ve been injured a lot, which seems to be part and parcel of being an athlete. It’s just how many surgeries have you had. And just seems like it’s enormous for whatever reason. It just takes a toll on your body. So from understand, you’ve had a dream of making it to the Olympics and the Olympic trials, injuries and whatever made that a challenge. So talk a bit about that. Both what happened in terms of injuries, Olympic trials, and that whole success and significance. Because I often find that whatever success you have, if that’s what owns your soul, there’s always another level.

Warwick F:

We talk on it’s tough to be considered the greatest of all time, whether it’s in track or tennis or whatever it is, because somebody else like… Yeah, I love tennis, Roger Federer, he’s got like 20 majors, Rafa Nadal is at 20, and Novak Djokovic. If he’s healthy, he stands a pretty good chance of winning the US Open, winning four majors in a year, which hasn’t been done since rod Laver in ’68 or something. And so in all probability, he won’t be the greatest of all time. So you get the point is, you could translate that to track. So talk a bit about just the injuries, the Olympics, and the whole, if you had your self-esteem all wrapped up in success, and goals, and times, and… Anyway, does that make sense with all that?

Heather K:

Yeah, definitely. And I totally agree. I think even if you are the greatest of all time for now, time is still moving on, so the greatest is yet to come as I think we’ve seen with a lot of the young people at the Olympics.

Warwick F:

Especially in track, is there one time that’s 30 years old in track that still exists as a world record? I don’t know, but it’d be hard for me to believe.

Heather K:

Yeah, they’re moving along quickly.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

Yeah. I guess for me, the interesting part of my story is that I had been very durable for a very long time in my career. I had no major injuries that took me out of training or race in high school or college, or the first several years of my professional career. So my first major injury was the spring after I turned 30 years old. So I joke that it all goes downhill after 30, although that’s not the case.

Gary S:

It’s after 50.

Heather K:

And I think what’s challenging too about it is that a lot of times I think runners who stay healthy take up a lot of… It’s a point of pride to stay healthy because it’s a responsibility of yours to prioritize recovery and nutrition and stuff like that. But I just happened to fall on the ice while I was walking my dogs on a Minnesota winter day, and probably got a bone bruise on my sacrum. But I was literally walking the dogs before I was heading to the airport to go race in Scotland to that day. Not that day for racing, but flying out.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

And I think just all the sitting and then the competition and doing a long run and coming straight back into training 75 miles a week was too much to heal a bruise bone. So, that turned into a stress fracture a couple of months later. So, it’s like, I don’t want to say through no fault of my own, because I definitely should have been more respectful of the pain that I was having, but I just thought it’s because I fell, and it’s fine. So I’m just going to keep training. And I was preparing to try and make another world championship team outdoor that year. So, that was injury number one in 2017. And thankfully I got back from that one fairly quickly and was still able to race at the US Championships, albeit I had been running for about a week prior. So it was not the best performance I’ve ever had.

Heather K:

So following that, I think we just did so much physical therapy on that left side of my sacrum that I ended up having two consecutive stress reactions on the right side of my sacrum shortly thereafter in December in the spring of 2018. So after that, we’re just like, “You know what? You’re not as durable as we thought you were. We can’t just rush back into things. So let’s take a significant amount of time off just to really be able to get through this.” And from there, most of my injuries were mostly just soft tissue, tweaking hamstrings or calves or quads or something like that. But the timing I think is particularly what you’re referencing. That’s been really tough for me. So I was probably the fittest I’ve ever been then, and maybe ever will be at this point now. I ran my personal best in the 1500 meters and the 800 meters just before the Olympic trials in 2016.

Heather K:

And I really felt like I had a good shot to make that team. But I was doing a workout maybe a week or two before the trials, and was limping a little bit between sets, but didn’t really think too much of it because I just never had an injury like that before. But that turned into a full on blow out of my calf that I wasn’t able to walk or run at all really for the days leading up to the Olympic trials. And we did a lot of praying and a lot of care for it, and I was able to be back on my feet, but again, just didn’t perform the way I would want to given that you need to be basically at a hundred percent fitness and sharpness to be able to make a team in the US in such deep events.

Heather K:

So, that was probably the most heartbreaking one for me, because I really knew that everything was aligning perfectly for me. And then just so close to the actual moment where you really need that fitness, it didn’t align. And then since then, it’s just been similar stories of injuries popping up right before really important races, and trying to not freak out and manage them responsibly and get back on my feet to be able to perform well. But you have this time enough of getting into really good fitness and then never really being able to demonstrate that the way you want to, and knowing that that potential still exists within you, but feeling thwarted a lot of times. So it can be pretty frustrating.

Gary S:

In that situation, what you just described, what does resilience look like for you in that moment? What you just described. You’re getting in shape and you want to perform, and then you come to a point where you’re not able to perform. How do you move beyond that? How do you manifest resilience in that moment? Because throughout whatever crucible our listeners have been going through, there comes a time where they hit a wall. There are obstacles and there are walls which are a little bit harder to get through. How do you manifest resilience to get beyond that wall and maybe go to a different place or have a different goal? How does that work for you?

Heather K:

Yeah. For me personally, I think it’s a combination of things. The first would just be an unyielding optimism and belief in myself that I am capable of those things that I’ve set out to do, and a belief that I still have purpose and meaning throughout the process. So even if I’m not performing at my best, if I’m showing up and I’m sharing my story and I’m letting people know where I’m at, I think that is oftentimes more powerful than just watching someone who’s on the top of the world win everything.

Gary S:

Right.

Heather K:

Because that’s not very relatable. So I’ve been very intentional in involving and sharing my story with my fans and people who want to follow my experience in this sport, so that they know that even these people that you might elevate to superhuman levels because they’ve achieved great things at one point or another go through these hard times as well. And then as my coach would say, I’m a very developed goal setter. Whenever we have goal setting sessions, I’m coming with pages and pages of process-oriented goals along with the outcome oriented goals that I want to achieve. And it’s always important for me I think to focus on those processes, I guess, of the things that I can do on a daily basis, on a habitual routine that will in all likelihood lead towards success. And if I’m managing my sleep, and my recovery, and my nutrition, and listening to my body, and being an advocate for the things that I think I need in training with my coach and with my doctors, then in theory, things should work. And I get a lot of confidence and faith in that.

Heather K:

And then at the same time, if I’m hurt, I decided that I just want to be able to do 15 pull-ups in a row, and just start using my upper body in ways that I haven’t before, because I know that will lend new strengths for me later. And yeah, I don’t know how much of a math nerd you might be, but when I speak with kids, I always pull out this graph of an asymptote, which is basically Y equals one over X, so as a denominator.

Gary S:

Am so not a math nerd. I had no idea what that word meant when you said it. But I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Heather K:

No, it’s okay. So, if you picture a fraction where it’s one over X, any number. And that number is continually getting bigger and bigger. That fraction is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller, approaching zero but never actually reaching zero.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

So this has been my approach to my entire career. I think that on any given day, if there were no wind, if the weather were perfect, if I had the right people in the race, if I felt amazing and most perfectly healthy, maybe my absolute potential could be achieved. But most of us never actually have that perfect moment or the zero on this graph that we’re reaching towards. But as long as you’re still moving forward, as long as that denominator is getting bigger, you’re still learning, you’re still gaining experience, you’re still developing different skills you didn’t have before. For me, I think that that has been the process that I’ve decided to pursue is maybe I’m not exactly where I want to be, but I’m exactly where I need to be right now. And I’m going to gain as much knowledge and strengthen fitness as I can from this, and use it to push closer to that perfect day that we all keep chasing in the sport.

Warwick F:

What’s interesting, Heather, is a lot of us watch athletes and sports. And I always love the post game interviews. The vast majority of the successful ones talk the way you’ve just spoken. They say, “I focus on the process. What can I do today to get better?” The results and the outcome will take care of itself if I’ve trained well, eaten well, cooled down, warmed up, all of the things I need to do, analyze tactics. I’ve done all of the process well, then they’re able to accept the outcome as best as anybody can. They tend to be process orientated, the successful athletes. I mean, is that makes sense in your perspective?

Heather K:

Yeah. I think if you’re only focusing on the outcome, then you forget a lot of the things that you need to do to actually reach that outcome. And a lot of times in track and field, it’s not entirely in your control because there’s 10 to 12 other people on the starting line for me who have been trying to focus on their process and outcome as well. So you can only control yourself in those situations. And you see people fall down in races, which has happened to me plenty more times than just the one that we discussed today, that haven’t resulted in the same magic necessarily. So sometimes you think you’re doing everything right, and that’s all you can really control to have confidence on the starting line. But most recently at this Olympic trials, that was the case for me, where I thought I was doing everything right and was feeling really good, and then just started feeling a little bit off before the trials, only to learn that I had two stress reactions in my pelvis that I was just unfamiliar with what that pain is supposed to feel like.

Warwick F:

And this is the most recent ones for this year’s Olympics?

Heather K:

Yeah, in 2020.

Warwick F:

Yeah. So I just want to go back for a second, because what you went through, especially in 2016 was devastating. You thought I have a real shot of making the team and making my first Olympics, and then some injury comes at the worst possible time. And you’ve from what I understand in the last relatively recently retired from, I guess, I don’t know if you’d say professional athletics or just competitive in that sense with Olympic or national all age level. I mean, how did you get beyond this? Because I know you’re a person of faith like we are, but you’re still human. I mean, how in the world did you get beyond that? Because it would be easy to say, “Well, be angry at God, the universe.” It’s like, “Hey, this is so unfair.” I mean, I had a real shot. I was doing everything right and injury comes on. I mean, come on. I mean, really. How did you get beyond that? But it felt like this is so unfair.

Heather K:

Right. Yeah. I think partially for me it was a bit of recognizing that we make plans and God laughs.

Warwick F:

Right.

Heather K:

You think you can assign a purpose for yourself and you can tell yourself, “God has made me to be an Olympian.” I thought that this was my purpose and what I was meant to achieve and that I could use that platform to do good things in the world. And so, yeah, especially in 2016, I just felt like, “Okay, then what do we do all this for if we’re just going to take it away at the last second?” And he gives and takes away in all aspects of life. So I think just recognizing that maybe in those moments it’s an opportunity for me to recognize that, I was trying to impose my will on God instead of letting God’s will happen for me. And similarly, I raced at the World Championships indoor in 2014, and it felt like one of those God moments, because I actually didn’t qualify.

Heather K:

I was the alternate to make the team. And then days before the competition in Poland, I got a call that said, “Hey, Heather, the winner of the National Championship is injured, so we need to send the alternate. Can you get to Poland in two days?” And I’m like, “Wow, this is grace that I do not deserve, but I’m just going to go and try and make the most of it.” And I ran a personal best in the prelim, made the final, and I’m like, “Okay, I’m ready to medal. This is God’s perfect for me. He wants me to medal.”

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Heather K:

And I got tripped up and fell and knocked my knee out of the joint and got up and still was able to finish the race. But I just remember that you always wear a race bib on your chest.

Warwick F:

Sure.

Heather K:

And it was flapping from having fallen on my chest, and it wasn’t staying really in place. So, in that moment I just tore it off and threw it to the track to just finish the race in that really embarrassing, really far off distant last place. And it was in that moment that I was like, “Wow.” I forgot that I wasn’t representing myself, I wasn’t representing Team USA, I was here to represent God. And somewhere along the lines, I decided that I need a medal. And I think that He’s been entirely a little bit too Old Testament for me in terms of how quickly He roots me back into putting my faith in Him, instead of believing that I am just deserving of all the success. But it’s humbling for sure. So I think if anything, in those moments, it’s a chance for me to retool where I’m investing my identity and why I’m doing these things and what my purpose is in the sport, and making sure that I try to put God first in what I’m doing

Warwick F:

As listeners would know, I mean, it’s a different parallel, but I’ll try and make it short is, again listeners would know I grew up in this 150 year old family media business, very large, founded by a very strong believer. So I felt like as a person of faith, clearly it’s God’s plan for me to resurrect the company in the image of the founder and have it be well run. So I did this $2 billion plus takeover at age 26, which ended up failing spectacularly for a number of reasons. So I felt like I knew God’s purpose, and clearly if He’d want it to happen despite a lot of the setbacks I’ve faced, which most of them were my fault, still if God wanted to happen, it would have happened. So clearly He had another purpose. But to me it was pretty certain, “Hey, I’m going to be prominent in the country of Australia and I’m going to do this wonderful thing through this newspaper company.” Just seemed evident.

Warwick F:

And so I went to Oxford like other ancestors, worked on Wall Street, Harvard Business School. I mean, I’d did the equivalent of training my level best to be qualified for this position. And it didn’t work out. So that’s like 30 plus years ago. And so I’ve had some perspective. So talk about… As we’re in this resilience series, your professional career is now ended. Some of the goals you achieved, some didn’t. But what are the lessons that you’ve learned from that, and what do you see as your future, maybe the message maybe God has put on your heart or… Because people are going to be thinking, gosh. What’s the lesson in all this for Heather for us? And what’s Heather’s purpose now. So how do you look at all that?

Heather K:

Yeah. I mean, I think I’ll always look back fondly on these years of being able to compete at the highest level, and just test myself to see where I stack up against some of the world’s best. And I think that what I’ve learned from that, or what I’ll take forward from that is that if I put my everything into whatever I decide to do next, I can do something great there also. And just to have that sense of belief that there are more, I guess, adventures that I can explore and try to apply the same level of discipline that I have with this. But yeah, it will be memories that I will be very excited to share with kids that I coach. I coach some adult athletes, and regardless of whatever level you’re at, I think that it can still be so applicable and relatable to be able to share those kinds of stories.

Heather K:

So it just made me who I am as a person. And I think you’re molded through both the triumphs and the failures, and it will just make me more resilient, as we’ve been talking about, to be able to face whatever’s happening next. And yeah, I definitely think that I’ve applied what I’ve learned through athletics in facing challenges in my employment, and in my marriage, and in friendships and family and stuff like that, that I don’t know how else I would have gotten such clear evidence in a world where it’s safe to make mistakes. If you screw up in a race, it’s sad and maybe it will be for me a reason that I don’t get another opportunity or I don’t make as much money in the sport.

Heather K:

But you have those four and a half minutes in a mile to really put yourself out there and take risks and see what you’re made of. And then you can go back and eat dinner and go to bed and start your next day over and keep training. So it’s like a really short way to just test yourself, giving everything that you have to something, and then apply that to the things that are most important, long-term.

Gary S:

I have to say, do you say four and a half minutes in a mile? I’m thinking, “Oh, come on.” It’s like nine minutes and 45 seconds in a mile for me, but that’s a whole different story. I thought it was really interesting Warwick that you told your story in the context of our conversation with Heather. There was a story. One of the things that I did some research on as we were preparing for this, Heather, was a story that the Mankato Free Press did on you, off of a speech that you gave to some marathoners. And in the second sentence of their story, they’re talking about the 2008 fall, get up, finish the race, and win. And then they say, “Search her name plus fall, and you can see it for yourself.” So I thought, how big is this? So I searched Heather Kampf and fall, and it returns 6,170,000 results. Now, Warwick, I know you feel like… And there was a book written the Fall Of The House Of Fairfax about your takeover.

Warwick F:

Sure.

Gary S:

And you said many times you feel like that’s all people know you for. You’d be happy to know, I think, that Warwick Fairfax and fall only has 2,270,000.

Warwick F:

Thank you so much for telling me.

Gary S:

No, here’s my point though. Here is my point for bringing all this up, neither one of you are defined by the falls, right?

Warwick F:

Right.

Gary S:

You’re defined by the resilience and how you came back from that. Heather, you’re speaking in that story. Warwick you’re hosting this podcast and writing your book coming out October 19th. You’re not defined by what Google says you should be defined by. So it doesn’t matter what terms people put in there. You’re living lives with resilience, focused on achieving significance not just success. And that’s something I think I hope listeners can take away from this conversation as we continue.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, such a great point. I mean, what I’m curious about really in this vein, Heather, is there’s a dance between… there’s nothing wrong with going for your goals, for trying to achieve success. I think most of us have seen Chariots Of Fire. And I guess as an athlete, you probably have seen that movie. And there’s a great line when Eric Liddell, the great Scottish runner, says, “I feel like God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” I mean, that’s just such an incredible line. So talk about how it’s okay to strive for goals. But how do you stop having your whole sense of self wrapped up in a goal? So, how do you be both as excellent as you can be, which I believe scripturally we’re meant to give our all as if we’re doing it unto the Lord, there’s scripture backing that up? But how do you give it your all, but yet not have the result own you? How do you achieve that balance?

Heather K:

Yeah. I would say that I have worked on it a lot over the years because I definitely have had moments in my life where my identity was more wrapped up in running. And I think this beyond just the learning moments of recognizing, “Wow, I cried for days over false starting at this one race,” and life will go on and more opportunities will exist. And just getting the benefit of hindsight in those situations, but also just grounding myself in real things and recognizing what my priorities are, and knowing what will be there for me no matter how things turn out. So for me it was like my coach in college would always say, “Well, the sun will rise tomorrow and your mom will still love you.” So regardless of how you perform, the sun is still going to come up tomorrow and you’re going to still have people that care for you, the person, instead of just you, the athlete.

Heather K:

And I’ve been so blessed to be surrounded by just the best coaches and the best teams of people who have supported me because they want to see me do well and they want to share in that success with me. Because I think when you talk about success versus significance, Gary, it’s just really to me like significance is success shared. And what I love most about that Big Ten video that nobody gets to see because they cut it off right after the race is over, is that A, I didn’t actually win the Big Ten 600 meters in 2008. I was second. And that is because they split the race into two heats. And my heat was usually considered the fastest heat. They put all the fastest heats in that one. But there was a girl who ran two tenths of a second faster from the first heat.

Heather K:

And I didn’t realize that until the very end of the meet, everything had already been tabulated for the team results. But we knew that we had won the meet as a team. So I’m really excited for everyone. We’d won by eight points. And it wasn’t until they’re having us each come up for our individual medals that I was standing at the medal podium waiting to take my first place medal for the 600. And this girl had to tap me on the shoulder and be like, “Heather, I actually won.” And so I had to hop down to the second place podium spot.

Heather K:

But for people who are aware of track and field, you get 10 points for winning a race and you get eight points for getting second. And our team margin of victory was eight points. So it was just that moment where it’s like, “Wow, if I hadn’t gotten up, or finished the race, or finished just exactly where I did, we would have tied or lost at best.” So it’s just like those things you never really know how it’s going impact the hundred women that were on my team and the coaches and the people who have had the pleasure of watching this video, all 6 million of them or whatever it is. And I just think that is the definition of significance is when you can touch people’s lives and give them hope and a reason to keep thriving for whatever they’re chasing in their life. So yeah, just being able to share that success and being humble enough to know that it wasn’t just all you, but it came from somewhere beyond. That is pretty great.

Gary S:

And this is the moment in the show where I customarily say, “Did you hear that? That’s the sound of the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign.” But Heather gave me a tip beforehand that I can say, “Did you hear that bell? That bell means we’re entering the final lap of the race.” So we’re getting to the point where the tape will be broken here in a little bit, and we’re going to finish our conversation. But we’ve got a little bit more time left, so stick with us listener.

Gary S:

I want to point out one thing that you just said, Heather. You probably didn’t even realize it in the same way that you didn’t realize exactly everything that happened in that viral video when you fell down and how far you fell down. You said in that video 6 million or whatever people who watched it, right? There was at least 12 million people who saw that video based on the story I saw, which was from two years ago. The fact that you don’t know that number speaks volumes about what’s important to you, what your character is like, what significance versus success looks like for you. Because you don’t have a tally somewhere in your house where you check off each new million person that gets in. And that’s a critically important thing.

Gary S:

I want to read something from the article that led me to even find you. And that was Forbes Magazine in 2018, did a story called the Three Strategies Experts Use to Overcome Failure. And they cited your fall, your getting up and winning that heat. And this is what they say here, “Everyone would have understood if she’d stayed there on the ground, convinced she’d failed and there was no chance of recovering from a fall like that. But she didn’t stay on the ground. She got up, she finished what she started, and she emerged the champion.” Well, they didn’t get that right. The champion of that heat will say that Heather went on to become a four time US national champion, and now professionally competes internationally as a middle distance runner.

Gary S:

Here’s the end of this thing that I want to pose to you because it’s a question. And I would like you to answer this for our listeners. What if she had let that moment define her? What if she had stayed on the ground admitting defeat? What if it had changed the entire trajectory of her career or her life? How would you answer those questions?

Heather K:

That’s heavy. Yeah. I don’t know. I think in some ways maybe what they don’t realize, because it was less on anyone’s radar, was that I had done that once already. I had stayed down. I didn’t finish a race after I fell in high school, and I realized that I never wanted to do that again. It was the state meet my senior year at cross country and I tripped and fell and was completely falling off the lead pack of the race where I thought I should finish. And I got up and was a little delirious, and I was weaving around, and somebody asked me, “Are you okay?” And just looked right at me. And I just started bawling and I didn’t finish the race. And A, it was really embarrassing to be ranked in the top 10 in the state and not even to finish the race, but B it gave me a lifelong lesson that I never want to feel that way again.

Heather K:

So I think maybe if I hadn’t had that experience then, and I had stayed down in college instead, it would have probably given me just knowing my personality, the same general trajectory of knowing that after that day. I would never want to feel that way again. I know I’d still keep fighting and trying and just showing up. But yeah, I guess if it maybe had some deeper impact on me that made me realize that maybe I’m not cut out for this, I’m not as tough as I need to be, I probably wouldn’t have continued in this sport after college. And that would be the end of my running story as far as people who follow it. But no.

Warwick F:

Wow. Well, I guess as we conclude Heather, thank you so much for sharing. People listening will have had setbacks, failures. What kind of message of hope would you give them? Because sometimes when we’re young, we have this dream of what we want to achieve. And we might achieve some goal but maybe not all of them. Sometime maybe the gears have to shift, like in your case, competitive running at least in terms of all age groups as you’ve now moved to a different phase. So talk about what would a message of hope be for people that have had setbacks, or maybe the original dream they had was partially achieved, but maybe not completely, they’ve had to move on. What message of hope would you give people?

Heather K:

Yeah, I think first of all, it sounds trite, but it’s all about the journey, not about the destination. So if you’ve made the most of your journey along the way, then you can rest peacefully knowing that you gave everything you had to get to wherever you did. And that is commendable. And then I guess now from the perspective I’ve been, when Gary and I first spoke to decide that I would be coming on this podcast, I wasn’t able to talk about retirement without crying.

Gary S:

Yeah.

Heather K:

So the fact that I am getting through the entire podcast to be able to define myself as a retired professional runner is a good sign. And what I didn’t expect to find on the other side of this was a little bit of relief or peace, and just recognizing that you put so much into something and you still… As much as I try not to invest my entire identity into it, it is a little bit of a trap. And when you escape from that trap then you give yourself the chance to just look at the world as your oyster in this new opportunity.

Heather K:

I’m headed after this interview to go probably accept a new job offer. And it’s really exciting to just have a new avenue to explore in my life. And I guess I perhaps maybe even held onto the stream for a little bit too long and looking back at things now and just recognizing the ups and downs of my injuries that weren’t healing, that perhaps I could have had this experience sooner. But for me it was the right time. And I was really glad to get one more shot. This was my fourth Olympic trials this summer. To just feel like I left it in a place that I can be okay with no matter the outcome. So if you can be intentional about that and just get to that place where you know you gave it all, then just get really excited for whatever’s on the next page when you turn it over.

Gary S:

Wow. I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know when the final word is spoken on a subject, and Heather has spoken the final word, broken through the finish line tape, won her heat, and I’m going to award her the gold medal on this one for her perspective on resilience. Before I go into and do a wrap up of what I think are three excellent takeaways from what you said here, Heather, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you the chance to let listeners know how they can find you perhaps on social media so they can follow what is next in your life as you continue to use resilience to chart your course forward.

Heather K:

Sure. I am primarily most active, I would say, on Instagram and Twitter a little bit, just because everything posts there as well. But it’s just my full name at Heather Rae, R-A-E, Kampf, K-A-M-P-F. And that’s my handle on both of those things. And yeah, you can follow whatever’s next in my hobby jogging and my dogs, and whatever else I do in my career.

Gary S:

Awesome. Well, here listener are those three takeaways really quickly in this episode of our resilience series that come from Heather. First one, never give up. There’s a caveat to this. I’m going to keep talking, because it’s not just never give up period, exclamation point. It’s never give up in the short-term or the long-term, because as Heather says, you never know when your greatest obstacle will become your greatest opportunity. That’s something that Warwick talks about a lot here at Crucible Leadership as well. Number two, have a plan and stick with it. Heather’s plan was not to fall during the final third of that Big Ten race in 2008, it was at least to finish and win her team a point in the competition. That was what got her up off the ground. The rest was the result of that resilience to follow the plan even against long odds.

Gary S:

And the third point, and I love this phrase to the point that you should copyright it, Heather, because it’s good, develop an unyielding optimism. I’ll say it again, an unyielding optimism. That’s what Heather said she has developed. You can inspire people often in deeper ways by continuing on in pursuit of process oriented goals rather than achievement oriented goals, which to me sounds a lot like pursuing a life of significance not just a life of success. It’s fitting in episode three of our Harnessing Resilience series, featured a distance runner, because we’re now halfway through our journey to the finish line in our exploration of this critical aspect of moving beyond our crucibles. Be sure to join us next week when you’ll meet Lucy Westlake, a young mountain climber who was barely a teenager when she tried to scale Denali, the highest peak in North America. She did not succeed, but she also did not give up. She harnessed resilience and tried it again four years late. What happened, you’ll have to listen September 14th when part four of Harnessing Resilience goes live.

Katie Foulkes had to harness resilience as a member of Australia’s Olympic rowing team in 2004. After one of her teammates stopped rowing during the race, the outrage that erupted (the country’s prime minister called the team “UnAustralian”) rocked her to her core. Now a leadership coach who researches what builds resilience, she’s found it’s about more than just digging deep within yourself. It also requires casting wide outside yourself — calling on the resources around you to help you survive your crucible and thrive beyond it.

To learn more about Katie Foulkes, her research and her leadership coaching practice, visit www.katiefoulkes.org

And don’t miss part 3 of “Harnessing Resilience” with guest Heather Kampf, debuting Sept. 7.

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.

Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

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Transcript

Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Gary S:
Welcome back to our series, Harnessing Resilience. I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. We’re dedicating six weeks in all, this is week number two, to this crucial topic, because without resilience, there is no moving beyond our crucibles. We’re featuring guests who found the resilience to overcome their setbacks and failures, as well as experts with practical insights and action steps to help you bolster your own ability to rise up when the bottom falls out. This week Warwick and I speak with Katie Foulkes, a member of Australia’s 2004 Olympic rowing team who found herself and her teammates at the center of a national firestorm when the unimaginable happened in the middle of the race. She not only harnessed resilience to merge from those trials, she studies resilience today to help others do the same.

Warwick F:
So, Katie, tell us a bit about what got you into rowing? I mean, I think you mentioned you grew up in Ballarat, but tell us about family, background, because not everybody does rowing, so it’s not like you’re on the ocean. I don’t know if there’s a river near Ballarat, but so talk about your family and how that all ended up lining up to rowing?

Katie F:
Yeah, absolutely, and great to be here. And I think we have a similar passion. I too love rowing, as much as I’m not so involved these days. So they’re really, a bit of background. I grew up in, mostly in Australia as you can probably tell by the accent, but also was fortunate enough to live overseas. My dad was a pilot and he, and you’ll see probably hear some similarities as we talk today, he was really passionate about learning and trying new things. So where that fades into it is, as I was growing up, dad with his passion for flying and airplanes would go to different companies and different organizations to fly different airplanes. So what that meant for one of the kids is that we moved around the world, which was fantastic.

Katie F:
And where all that fades into rowing is when I was, goodness, I must have been about 11 years old. We were living in a country called Brunei. And in those days I think I was the only person with blonde hair in the country and obviously cut my hair. But the long and short of it is, I was shipped off to boarding school, and I still say I was an angel, they weren’t trying to get rid of me. That’s all right. Shipped off to boarding school to a town that you mentioned, Ballarat, which is about an hour or so out of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. And I was on an academic scholarship there, and I am naturally height-wise quite petite. So I’m just over five foot. So when I joined this school, the PE teacher, physical ed teacher came up to me very, very early on in my first few weeks and said, “I think we need to get you to the boat shed.”

Katie F:
So they had a rowing program at the school. And of course, I didn’t even know what the sport was. The reasoning he said to me is, “You’ve got two things going for you for this role of a coxswain. And that was, you need to be small,” which I was, “and you need to be smart,” and he’d seen the academic scholarship and he said you could do this. So I headed down to my first session at the boat shed and that was it for a couple of years. I was hooked. I was literally thrown in a boat and I can’t remember if I was told what to do, but you know what it’s like, you get to go out on the water. Here I was in year seven and I got to be in boats with year nines, 15, 16 year olds. And then as I got older, I sometimes got to talk to the boys when I was in year eight, they’re hollering me around the school and lots of wonderful experiences. So, that was my entry into the sport.

Warwick F:
Was that a co-ed school, or?

Katie F:
It was, yeah, it was a co-ed school.

Warwick F:
Because in Australia, at least when I was growing up, a lot of the schools were boys schools or girls schools, and maybe it’s changed a bit, but you know, so.

Katie F:
I think yeah, very much still in Sydney it’s like that. Outside of Melbourne, the couple of schools in this area, I’m back in Ballarat now there’s a number of co-ed schools. And the other thing I should mention there, you mentioned about a lake or a river. We just happened to be sitting, our boat club was sitting on a lake and that lake was where the 1956 Olympic rowing event was held. So right through the middle is a proper Olympic rowing course.

Warwick F:
So that was where they had the Melbourne Olympic rowing, wow.

Katie F:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

So it was actually all set up for that? Wow.

Katie F:

Yeah. It’s a little rundown and when I was there-

Warwick F:

I understand.

Katie F:

… it is a straightish line and good water, so.

Warwick F:

Well who knew when you think what are your qualifications, small and smart. I mean, you don’t tend to think, “What does that qualify me?” I mean, in of itself you don’t think those two things correlate to a particular line of work, but that is, boy that is amazing. So, and obviously I’m sure most listeners would know, but the cox is the one who steers the boat, directs it. It’s almost sort of like a coach, maybe a bit. They tell the crew when to row faster, “And hey, we’re gaining on them.” And all of that. You sort of, so you’re not just, so you do a lot of coaching and managing and leading really in a sense?

Katie F:

Absolutely. Yeah, I often describe it as being a coach in the boat and my career post coxing was initially coaching in rowing and then progressed to more broad coaching conversations. But your role, and I’d think about it as I got a little bit better in the role was that if I was to speak, I either needed to make the boat go faster, or maintain boat speed and help the athletes do it more efficiently.

Warwick F:

Because there’s a lot of encouragement that goes on. And yeah, I’m sure you were a smart cox, because here’s an example that I can remember of one that’s, wasn’t quite at your level of motivation, even let’s say in high school. We were racing one time in a regatta. And I think we’re in a four and the cox decided in the middle of the race to tell the crew, “I’m tired.” As a cox you never tell your crew who are rowing and you’re not, “I’m tired.” Because we want to throttle the guy and throw him in the water or probably worse, but yes, you never tell the crew that you’re tired, right?

Katie F:

No. Well, I wouldn’t even use that word about them. I’ve heard some people say, “I know you’re feeling tired.” And I’m like, that’s not really the most inspiring message in there, is it? But I guess maybe it was a strategic trying to make you angry and get some adrenaline in maybe?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, we were like 14, 15. I don’t think he was that smart at that point in his life. So no, it was not a swift move, but I know you’ve got a lot into resilience. Is there anything about your mom, your dad, just siblings, or something that really helped shape who you are, whether it’s a way to spring back from adversity, resilience? Does that come from anything in your background, or examples?

Katie F:

I’m sure it’s come from a lot. The person that comes to mind, and if I’m honest comes to mind on a daily basis is my dad. Dad and I were very, very close. He passed away, oh goodness, about 15 years ago now, I think. But I grew up hearing these stories of, and many of us have these wonderful role models in life, don’t we? But these stories of this man that in his day was sort of breaking the boundaries and shaking off the shackles if you like. From what I understand his dad, my grandfather was experienced. He was a prisoner of war, et cetera, and so he had this very difficult life, and then became a plumber. And so there was an expectation that my dad too would follow in those footsteps and become a plumber.

Katie F:

And dad, from what I understand, in his very early teens rejected this view and ran away to become a pilot. And of course, if you don’t come from, certainly in those days, if you don’t come from a family with wealth that can facilitate that, it’s a pretty difficult career to get into. So I heard stories about him influencing people at the local airfield that in return for him mowing the grass, they might teach him to fly and all of these wonderful stories.

Katie F:

And then it wasn’t just that, just constantly seeing this man that would be looking for an adventure or asking questions somewhere to find out more about something that really curious and, what’s the word I’m looking for? Just came to actually get out there and explore and try things out and get better at what he did. So there were many times in life if I look at through that resilience lens where I think it was modelled that things could have been a challenge, yet what I saw was someone turn towards them and see them as opportunities to do things differently or try something.

Warwick F:

I mean, that’s really a great role model and not everybody has it, but we’re blessed when we do. Because I’m sure in that era, when your dad was growing up it’s easy to think, “Okay, plumbing is a good job. I can get you in. We’ve got contacts. It’s a good life. It can sustain a family. And how are you going to afford all these fees?” And nothing against your grandfather, but it would be easy for him to say, “Look, this is unrealistic.”

Katie F:

Oh, absolutely.

Warwick F:

“Get your head on the ground, stop with all these pipe dreams that probably won’t work. You’re setting yourself up for failure,” and just to have, and you can understand that perspective if that’s how you’ve grown up, but the fact that your dad fought through that, I’m sure respected, loved his dad, but to like, “I hear what you’re saying, but respectfully I want to go for it, and I think I can make it,” and did.

Warwick F:

I mean that takes a lot of courage to go against what’s normal for where you grew up. Not everybody goes against that. So it takes a lot of bravery and courage. So yeah, that was a great example.

Warwick F:

So I know you’ve got a fascinating story. So you obviously coxed in high school, and then tell us about what happened after that? And then the Australian Institute of Sport came up. So what, did you go straight to there, or what happened after high school from there at the Australian Institute of Sport?

Katie F:

Well, I’ll go back a step actually, because in high school, by the time I was, so our equivalent of what we call year nine, so I’m about 15, so I’ve still got a few years left of high school. I made the school top boat and we won the local regatta, the local competition. And when I was 15 and growing up in a smaller town, although, Warwick, you might know the head of the school boys in Sydney is the equivalent of what we had here. It actually feels like it’s the biggest event in the world. So here I am in my rowing career and we won this race, and at the ripe age of 15 I retired from rowing, because I thought I’d reached the pinnacle of the sport. I’ve done it all.

Katie F:

And so I did a little bit of coaching at school after that, and did a lot of other activities. And then it was back when I went to university, went to Melbourne University and went to a college there. And it was kind of expected as part of my, I guess, selection to get into this residential college. I put on my CV that I rowed, and therefore it was expected that you row for your college. And so there I was convinced to get back into a boat and really, really quickly that led me to join the university. And a number of selectors and state bodies were able to listen to what I was doing. And I hit the radar of the Australian Institute of Sport.

Warwick F:

So you started off with a college at University of Melbourne, and then ended up rowing for a crew for the University of Melbourne?

Katie F:

Yes.

Warwick F:

I kind of think, I mean, these days in men’s rowing you sometimes have women who are coxes, or not? I try to remember, it can be-

Katie F:

Well yeah, it’s recently changed, so you can. So that was a bit of a battle in my day, but I was the exception. So even at the college I convinced them that I could cox the men’s boat. It was the faster boat, I wanted to go fast. Who’s going fastest, and how do I get in that boat?

Warwick F:

Fair enough, fair enough. But obviously at a certain point you felt like, “Now I want to be the cox of women’s eights and ultimately Olympics. And you made that, obviously. I don’t know if it’s a choice or just the way it worked out, but?

Katie F:

Yeah, well, it was interesting. So I started getting invited to camps at the Institute of Sport, which is in a city called Canberra. So I fly up and get to attend these camps.

Warwick F:

That’s for U.S. listeners, that’s the capital of Australia. So somewhere in between Sydney and Melbourne, kind of.

Katie F:

Yeah, ish, yeah. And in those days, this is before the Sydney Olympics, if you wanted the, I guess the golden ticket to get to the Sydney Olympics in rowing, then the best way to do that was to be based at the Australian Institute of Sport. And they had one spot there for a female cox. And so there I am going on these camps and been flying back to Melbourne to university and keep these various other aspects of life alive. And I was offered this one spot to the AIS to be their cox. And I think I was 22 at the time, and I decided to turn it down. Now, at the time, my thinking was that I look back and I think, “Well, I was coming up against every camp, I was coming up against other coxes and I would see them come to a camp and they last a few days. And my version of it is they’d be spat out the other side and you never seen them again.”

Katie F:

So I think at the time, only 22, I had the sense that I wasn’t ready, and if I wasn’t ready, I’d just be spat out of the system and that would be it. But you can imagine the head coach’s response when this young, his words, “Arrogant 22-year-old” turns down a V-ticket to the Olympics, basically. And so I was sent back to Melbourne, tail between my legs, and that was it, I think. A lot of people said to me, they thought they’d never hear of me again in the rowing world.

Gary S:

In the vernacular of Beyond the Crucible, that’s your crucible moment, that moment right there. You’re invited to be on the team and you say, “I don’t know that I’m ready.” And they don’t care why you’re not ready. They just sort of put a label on you and you go back, as you said, with your tail between your legs, you realize perhaps later that was a crucible moment for you. How did you handle that? Because your career obviously didn’t end there. So you handled it in a very proactive way, I think.

Katie F:

I did. I did. So I had a couple of months where I had focused on my university and I think was telling myself this story that, “Oh, it’s fine. I’ll find some interesting career whilst I’m studying statistics, at university type of thing.” And it was a couple of months later, I had this real physical, I remember this physical response that it’s time, I’m ready, and I want that spot. So it was a really short timeframe. And I rang the head coach up at the Australian Institute of Sport. And I don’t remember what I said. I have this vision of saying, “Dah, have you waited? I’m here. ”

Gary S:

I’m ready.

Katie F:

I’m ready, have you waited? And not surprisingly, he had no interest. So being told no at that point. So the previous one was my choice, this time someone else was saying no. So my response then I knew that the National Championships were coming up, the rowing nationals. I knew that the Australians tutors for women in their eight were going to be pretty much the Australian team. And I also knew that they had never been beaten at the nationals. So I thought, “Well, I’ll just put a boat together and beat them.” And so I literally cold called these names of these women in Victoria, my state, and introducing myself, most of them didn’t know who I was. And it turned out that a number of us had a common interest, and that was to beat that crew.

Katie F:

And so I was really, really lucky that I was able to pull together this fabulous women’s eight, mixed abilities, but some straight off the Atlanta Olympics, others up and coming, most had felt frustrated, even burnt by the AIS, the Australian Institute of Sport at one time. So there was this desire to beat them. And I bribed my way or influenced my way into borrowing a boat from a school and borrowing oars, and begging my parents for the plane ticket to get to the nationals to race.

Katie F:

Anyway, long story cut short. We got there. We didn’t have a training row. We jumped in the boat on the day to race them, and rowed up to what we call the starting blocks at the start line. Really windy day, really crazy windy day. And when you’re in rowing, as you would know Warwick, you need to back your boat into the starting line. And the Australian Institute of Sport boat were up to their third attempt and they just were not backing it in. And I arrogantly zipped up there, based on my years of rowing in windy Ballarat, zipped it into the starting pontoon. So we already had eyes on us, and then came flying out. And in the end, we beat that crew by about 12 seconds, which in rowing world is-

Warwick F:

Is a lot. I mean, how many, what does that translate into boat length?

Katie F:

About four lengths of a women’s eight. Yes, it’s a…

Warwick F:

Four lengths? I mean, that’s a colossal win. That’s like, that’s, I don’t know what that would be in football, Gary, that would be like 30 nothing or something. It’d be a big score.

Gary S:

I can tell by the look on your face, Warwick, that it was quite astonishing, so.

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean, four boat lengths is wow. I mean, that’s sort of astonishing. I wonder if part of you was channeling your dad is like, “Ah, so I can’t do this, can’t be a pilot. I don’t have any money. I’ll beg, borrow, kind of barter, kind of.” I don’t know, genetic influence or yourself combination it’s that is stunning.

Katie F:

I kind of beat the system, bit of fun.

Warwick F:

Right. Who doesn’t want to, so who are you, you know? So as you look back, it’s kind of interesting there was a time in which you didn’t row at the end of high school, maybe beginning of college. Do you think in hindsight that was helpful that you just had it, because some people can get burnt out. I mean, you would know, obviously I think of Ash Barty, I think she’s, was anyway, the number one women’s tennis player and she got burnt out playing tennis and then a few years ago she just stopped and played women’s cricket at a fairly elite level. And then she found a love of the game and is back and is doing phenomenally. But do you think there was a sense where you just wanted a break, or?

Katie F:

I think so. And I think again, if I look at that modeling of my dad, as much as he loved being a pilot and he loved airplanes, he had so many other hobbies and interests. And so, these days I’m more strategic about that. In those days I think I listened a bit more to my intuition. And so I certainly had those few years off in my later school years, but even between the two Olympics that I went to, so I went to the Sydney Olympics. Then I walked away from the program again, it’s like, I just needed to repeat this whole be named arrogant. And I went over to the Netherlands for a year and a half and coached rowing over there and then came back onto the system. And even then people were telling me, “What are you doing? You’ve got the top spot. Why would you walk away?” And I had this intuitive feeling that I needed to grow. I needed to do more. And I wasn’t going to get the learning that I needed in the one space.

Warwick F:

Right. And you just followed, so there’s a real lesson I think for people is, don’t ignore that gut instinct that says, “You know what? I think I need to do this.” Obviously you got to make sure it’s your gut instinct, not some strange voice, but I think you know when it’s really you and not channeling some other negative vibe or thought, but just trust your gut. If you’re deep down, you feel like, “You know what, Katie, I need to do something else.” You listen to that, right?

Katie F:

Absolutely. And do you know, I know now that I’m a bit older, I find it harder to do now, because of course there’s more responsibilities now, but I think in those days I did trust it more. And I also acknowledge, I was really fortunate that I had those choices. So, I had backup plans, which a lot of people would potentially dream of. I had a backup plan of going back to a good university and continuing your degree. So I was in a fortunate position to have those kind of choices.

Warwick F:

You wasn’t just jump off a bridge without thinking, but I want to go back to just some of those, that first crucible, because it’s not easy somebody thinking of you at 22 as being arrogant, and how could you possibly say no? Do you look back and say, “Gosh, was I just scared? Or was I wise?” Was I really not ready?” Do you kind of look back and say, “Well, it all worked out.” But was that the right decision? Or I don’t know, as you look back, how do you assess that first decision not to be part of the program?

Katie F:

Yeah, it’s really interesting that I now, 20 plus years later, I actually think about a few points of that in life quite regularly. And I encourage myself now at times to tap into a bit of that. I mentioned now about responsibilities, but the other thing I did back then is I had this, I think this greater, how would I say that, almost this greater inner confidence that there would be options. And I remember thinking to myself, “Okay, I make a choice. I don’t make the Australia team.” I’d feel better about giving it a really red hot go and not making it. I’d feel pretty good walking away from that if I given it a really really red hot go. And the same university I remember thinking, “Well, have I chosen the right degree?” Maybe I haven’t, I’ll find something else. So I had this real, whether it was right or wrong, I had this sense that there were opportunities that I could find. It might not be easy, but I’d find them. And I’d find goals that I wish to strive for, and that that process would make me happy.

Warwick F:

And another really important learning point that I think listeners should pay attention to is, trust your gut and trust the choices. And you make a choice. You never get to play out the what ifs. I’ve certainly had a lot of that with my own whole takeover thing and what if, and if I talked to my family. And you never get to play out the what ifs, but trust your gut, trust the choices you make and then move on accordingly. Spending your life going back and second guessing. But yeah, when you went back to the Institute of Sport and they said no, and forming your own crew. I mean, nobody does that. I’m assuming that probably has never happened since that somebody did what you did, right? At least not in Australia, formed their own crew? I mean, that just takes remarkable courage, confidence, chutzpah, however you want to express it. I mean, where does that come from? Because that’s not normal what you did, and you were what, in your 20s then, where did that come from?

Katie F:

I don’t know if I have a direct answer. I mean, I do attribute a lot of that to watching dad operate, and him making choices and even watching family members disagree with certain choices he made and he was still making the choice and it working out from my perspective really well, and having an enjoyable and great upbringing. And so whether it was that, I do, I have to wonder sometimes whether, and this word can be used quite negatively, but certainly in that era that I was much more selfish. And that could be, I instead could use the word driven, some have positive lenses others don’t. I think about a time when I was in Victoria and I was really frustrated, I was part of the rowing club and they didn’t have women’s boats going to a certain event, and they wouldn’t even give me a tryout for the men’s boats because I wasn’t male. And I horrified everyone then, because I quit the club and negotiated with the other club down the road that if I joined them, they’d let me jump in the men’s boats.

Katie F:

Now, I didn’t even realize at the time that the impact that that had, and all the negative talk that apparently was associated around this arrogant girl.

Warwick F:

Do you think some of it may be, and obviously we’re in a different era, some of it could be sexist, if men stand up for themselves, it’s like, “Look at that guy, guy has self-confidence, yeah, good on him.” But if a woman does that, it’s like, “Oh, she’s driven. She’s just,” there’s probably more colorful words for it, but do you think there was some of that, like if it was a guy, it would have been, “Good on him,” but if it’s Katie, it’s like, “Ah.”

Katie F:

Yeah, absolutely.

Warwick F:

Know your place, who are you to?

Katie F:

Oh goodness. Absolutely.

Warwick F:

But I mean, but good for you if not buckling to the system. And it’s nothing wrong with being driven. It’s one thing if you’re driven and mowing over other people and being successful at other people’s expense, that’s exploitation, that’s not drivenness. But I don’t think that’s, and obviously I don’t know you well, but that’s not you. You’re driven, but you’re not trying to get ahead at the expense of other people.

Katie F:

No. And I think this is where the role that I had is maybe, as you’re saying that I’m thinking the role I had is a little bit different too. So sure it was about me getting to the Olympics. But a lot of the time, the way I would frame my growth, my learning, my drive, was to help the boat go faster. And the boat contained eight other people plus all the surrounding squads.

Warwick F:

Right.

Katie F:

And so there were times as we’re talking, I think, “Yes, some of the choices I made were really, really difficult.” But I’d often step back, and it wasn’t about me. If I really felt strongly that this was for the good of the boat, which ultimately was for the people, my team, then I moved forward and it didn’t matter.

Warwick F:

It was for the good of the team. So I think you deserve to give credit. So I want to get a bit into what you do now, before we get there, you had a second crucible. I think it was, was it the Athens Olympics 2004? So that’s, that was pretty challenging too. So just help the listeners understand what happened with that one?

Katie F:

Yeah, I will. And I will say, of course there were a number of other crucibles in between as many of us face many challenges, and I’m sure you’ll hear in my voice. This is not a topic I talk about often, but I’m turning towards it now. I feel I need to talk about it. So going into Athens second Olympics, we had just an amazing, amazing crew. And I’m talking here about shore boat speed, but I’m talking about people to. And anyway, so what the general public would have seen, and it was all over the Australian media, is they would have seen an Australian women’s eight that I was in, competing in the final of the Athens Olympics. They would have seen the Australian eight come flying out of the start and being up there in medal contention until about halfway through the race.

Katie F:

And then they would have seen, it’s much easier to talk from a third party perspective. They would have seen someone in the boat stop rowing, and lay down as a result of that. And then our boat came sixth in the final, which was last place in the final, because we were rowing for the second half of the race with I think about six people, because one of them was laying down then others around her couldn’t row. So, that was one thing. This is one part of it is this, many of us, eight, 10 years towards this race, and this thing happens, and we’re trying to get our head around all of that is that one piece of this moment. The other piece of this moment, which I had no anticipation of was the media response to this. And our crew were, I’m going to say felt like front page of every newspaper.

Katie F:

I know it was international as well, but from a national perspective in every state for a number of weeks, dishonest stories, narratives around, the girl that stopped rowing was a bad person to the team, are awful people to they’re a bad team, right through to the prime minister of Australia saying that we were un-Australian. I’m not sure why, but we were, I don’t know if that’s because of the result or because of what the media said we did. Anyway, this really enormous moment in life, which as I talk about it, and I can imagine some of the listeners thinking, “So what? A race went wrong.” And it was just a race that went wrong. But the ripple effect of that on so many people was just enormous, including myself.

Warwick F:

Oh, I can imagine. I mean, and again, you don’t need to get into details, but it’s not as simple as, “Oh, there was a physical injury,” and there wasn’t a simple, pre-packaged explanation that the media or the prime minister would say, “Oh, okay, now I understand now we’ll back off.” It wasn’t that simple.

Warwick F:

So that, I mean, when you’re spending years trying to get to the Olympics and you’re in the final, which means that because you probably had to go through the semifinals, there’s probably a couple of different rungs to get there. Not only is that horrendous with media, you’ve probably got team members, potential conflict there. And again, you don’t need to get into those details, but there’s all these dynamics, potential internal conflict, vilification by the media without any easy explanation. And you don’t want to dob somebody in, as they say in Australia, we don’t want to get into the details because that’s their story, and it’s not your story to tell. But I mean, there’s nothing really you could say that would be helpful that you’re able to say, right? So you probably in this box, there’s no win box where this is one event where there’s no way to win this event it would seem, right? The event of public opinion.

Katie F:

Absolutely. And you’ve just articulated that so beautifully, because for so long, and particularly coming from that environment, I just talked about these other examples where I could make choices or I could plan, or I could work harder, it all in some ways felt very controllable. And then all of a sudden, if I speak from my perspective, we’re in this situation where, as you said, there was no win. There was no guideline on how to manage this. And so there was a point where we were told to say certain things to the media, like that they was a breakage in the boat. And in hindsight, would that have been easier? Absolutely. But of course, you’ve got the values kicking in. We weren’t trained in media where you have this group of women who was very passionate about saying, “Look, we don’t know what we should be saying. In fact, we don’t really even want to talk to them. We don’t care about that. But we want to talk to our families right now.” And also not lie.

Warwick F:

But don’t ask us to say something that’s not true, just because it might help other people, because we have to live with that.

Katie F:

That’s right. So we felt really strongly about that as well. And I think the other piece in there that often gets missed when people do still to this day talk about this story is, the media caught wind of this particular teammate of ours had scenarios in the past where she had stopped rowing to varying degrees. And so this became another thing to put out on front covers. The piece of that story that got missed, which I think was the part that I grappled with the most, is no one talked about the fact that we as a team knew that history and still in many ways trusted our teammate, because it was more than just whether you were going to row at full capacity from the start to finish. I mean, there’s much going on here. There’s much more to a person than that. So ultimately I trusted all of my teammates. And as part of that, I knew that we all came with our strengths and we all came with these areas we were working on. And that was the complexity of working in a team. But yeah, the media never showed any interest.

Warwick F:

I’m sure. And I’d love to hear what you learned from that, because it wasn’t something you could control. It wasn’t, not that it matters, it wasn’t “your fault.” I mean, there’s not a whole lot you could do at that point. But one of the things we say in crucible leadership is, you’re not defined by your worst day. I mean, I made as listeners would know, and Australian listeners would know I made a cataclysmic mistake, failure, to launch a $2.25 billion takeover that ended a 150-year-old family business that had, Sydney Morning Herald and Age in Melbourne and et cetera. And yes, there probably was a better path. I’m not quite sure what other paths would have been better, but certainly couldn’t have been worse than the one I took. Okay, so that was a bad day when I launched the take over.

Warwick F:

That was a bad mistake. But should I be defined by that one day, should this poor woman be defined by that one day? And again, we don’t need to know any more details on that. It’s like, well, I don’t think so. Is that fair, irrespective of all the reasoning? So, but people tend to want to define you by, especially in the Olympics. It’s that one day in the Olympics, “Oh, you lost.” If you were a swimmer you lost by two tenths, or two 100ths of a second or something ridiculous. You lost, you fail. Okay, sorry. I tried.

Gary S:

And one of the things that you said, Katie, one of the things that you said when we talked off air was that, and I wrote it down, that you held onto that narrative for a bit, that impacted you. That first time you were like, “Okay, you don’t want me on the team. I’m going to go pull people together and I’m going to beat you.” And you did. The second time a crucible hits that’s kind of a big thing. You say you held onto the narrative. Why do you think they were different? Those two situations were different?

Katie F:

Yeah, I think for me, so as I mentioned, there were a number of other crucible moments between the one I’ve talked about and getting to Athens. And in all of them, I felt like I had a choice. The way I turned up, the way I behaved. So it all felt controllable. The outcome didn’t feel controllable, but it was all about me. Where this one felt different is, I was aware of that things can go wrong on race day. And I had plans for every scenario you could possibly think of, including boat breakages and et cetera. And so that was my controlling component. I never anticipated the level that it could go wrong, so that was one piece. And that shook me, because if you talked about Katie and her performance she, I visualized everything possible.

Katie F:

So I was like, “Oh wow, I missed something.” So there’s a bit of that playing out. But I think the other component for me and, Warwick, you just said it, is I could not, and still can’t work out what the better path would be. So every other scenario in life up until that point, and I say this knowing I’ve had a very fortunate life. I felt like the mistakes I made at times weren’t that big a deal because it’s like, “Well, I look back and I should have just done this instead.” And I can focus on the learning. With this particular scenario I could not work out, what should I have done differently? And I, goodness, trained as an Olympic athlete to reflect and look at yourself. And I hammered myself, as I’m sure many of my crew mates did as well about themselves. Down to the detail, that look I saw that day, that conversation I had, should I have not had it, should I have had a different one?

Katie F:

Should I, everything you can possibly think of. And so I made it all about me because that’s the way I operate best, bring it on me, make the choices, move forward. But for the first time that didn’t work for me, and it became this almost debilitating, “I don’t have the answer. I don’t know what my learning is. How can I not know what my learning is?” It’s like this kind of, I needed this happy ending, “This thing happened, and here’s what I would have done differently, and I’ve lived happily ever after.” I had this sense from somewhere and I couldn’t work it out. A number of things happened around the same time, which, as we know we are complex as beings. So I came back from Athens. I found out that my dad who I have spoken highly of had terminal cancer, he passed away a couple of months later. So even though they were very separate events, it sort of got packaged I think.

Warwick F:

It was like a cataclysmic crucible, if you will, because it happens, here’s your dad, dearly loved, role model and then this is happening and yeah, I mean, you can’t control cancer or your dad’s, there’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent what happened. He, I’m sure he had the best of care. And sometimes there’s a learning, there is sometimes things happen and it’s not easy to know what would have. Like in my case, I can think of what I did was horrendously stupid, but it’s hard for me to think of scenarios that would have been better, at least in terms of made me happy or more fulfilled. That’s a lot more, I’m a strategic planner by nature, so it’s hard for me to think that.

Warwick F:

But in this case, yes, you could say, “Maybe we could have, we knew this person’s history, maybe we could have not said let’s not have that person in the boat.” Probably wasn’t your call I’m guessing, it would have been somebody higher up. But even then it’s like, I mean, how do you know that? You make the best decision and it’s not always your fault. There’s not always an easy alternative.

Katie F:

No. And this is the thing, I mean, lots of people, and I’m no doubt you’ve experienced the same thing, can give you their simplistic answer. And it wasn’t simple. I mean, using that example, I’ve had many people say, “You should have just gone to the media and gone around at the boat.” Like, “Well, hang on, I had 10 years of high performance history that told me that trusting your teammates led to boat speed. So why a couple of months before the Olympics would I just decide to not trust my teammates and go public with it?” And also remembering that everyone in that boat in the lead-up made the boat go as fast as it was going, and it was going really fast. So you can’t just pull a piece out and expect it all just to function.

Warwick F:

You’re not going to know the future. So you can only know what you’re going to know. So just as we sort of round this turn, talk a bit about what you do with resilience, because I love you talk about team synergy and resilience. You’re doing a lot of research on what resilience is and what it isn’t. So you’ve really pivoted from rowing to team performance, which makes sense. You spent your whole life in team performance. And I think one of the things, I believe we haven’t mentioned it yet, but I believe you had a pretty amazing career. It said you were ranked number one in Australia for close to 10 years as a cox, so that is pretty amazing. That says you, at least objectively, you were best of the best from a rowing perspective and that whole strategy, it’s big, a brief aside.

Warwick F:

I don’t follow Oxford, Cambridge sports that much other than rowing and what they call the boat race, which then as of the last few years had men and women on the same course. So more power to both those universities are doing that. And I think it was the men’s race, it was raced on Cambridge local waters that they normally don’t do, but it sure seemed like the Cambridge cox, and you’ve probably followed it more than I, had it all over the Oxford cox. I mean, just the strategy, home waters, he came really close to fouling, but not quite. You push the envelope real close, but it seemed like, okay, they won. So clearly the cox did something right. There’s a lot of strategy there, but I digress. Anyway, getting back to resilience, talk about how you pivoted from rowing to resilience, and talk about how what you do now and really what your passion is. What is your mission with your research and everything you do in team synergy and resilience?

Katie F:

Well, I think, if I’m really honest, my passion post rowing was in high performing teams, yet the narrative I held from that experience of Athens, plastered all over the front pages of the not being good teammates is I turned away from that a little bit. I hid from that, even though, as you said, that one event doesn’t define you, I still let it define me. And so my way around that, and we’re talking now 20 years, 20 plus years later was firstly for the first 15 years, you just worked harder on something else.

Katie F:

Don’t talk about it, keep moving, to more recently going well, “I’ve got these research opportunities. This is really interesting. It’s showing me that something like resilience, as an example, we simplify, show parallels to my rowing experience here, we simplify these complex events. We tell someone just to be more resilient, we sometimes point the finger at people and say they’re not resilient.”

Katie F:

And it was all very simple. And as I started doing this research and thinking about my own experiences when I’m resilient to somethings, not to others, resilient at some times, not at other times, I was fortunate enough to work with a gentleman called Dr. Michael Kavanagh at Sydney Uni who had this new definition of resilience, which is really exploring, what is he now? And I’m going to use dorky language for a second. What’s in our surrounding systems? What’s around us that helps us be resilient? And so the research is showing that if you have access to the resources you need to meet the challenge you’re facing, you’ll be more resilient. It’s kind of obvious, right?

Gary S:

Yep.

Katie F:

So if I look back, all the other challenges, all my other crucible moments leading into Athens, I had the resources around me. I had a state Victoria I could go back to, I could talk to people to find boats and people. And so to meet that challenge, beating a crew, I could find the resources. Post Athens, every one of my good friends, my teammates was feeling enormous stress. So I didn’t have, well none of us had those social connections and resources we may have needed.

Warwick F:

Well, your crew mates, they were in the same crucible you were?

Katie F:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Warwick F:

So, not really resources, because they’re in there with you.

Katie F:

Absolutely. Our family and friends, were also, dealing with this. So we didn’t have them that we could access.

Gary S:

I want to make sure the listeners hear what you just described and pull those balloon strings together here. We think so often that resilience is just personal, right? It’s we have it in us or we don’t, we develop it or we don’t. What you’re describing is a more full throated kind of resilience. And that’s not just from your experience, but also from your research, the idea is

Katie F:

Absolutely.

Gary S:

… you do indeed have to dig deeper, but that’s not all of it. You also have to cast wider. You have to cast your net wider for those assets and relationships that can help you through it. So it’s not just about your “resilience” it’s about the resilience you can muster through reaching out and drawing on the strength of others. True?

Katie F:

Absolutely, absolutely, beautifully said. And the other piece in there, if you don’t mind me adding another layer?

Gary S:

Oh please.

Katie F:

Is when we are using resources for a challenge, as we’ve know for particularly the last few years, we often are not facing one challenge at one time. So then we try and use the same bucket of resources on all of our challenges, and it’s finite. So we have to keep going wider, or make choices. I’m okay to not be resilient on that challenge, because I’m going to focus on this challenge. Does that make sense?

Warwick F:

I mean, what you’re saying is, pick your battles.

Katie F:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Warwick F:

You don’t have to be resilient in every area. I’ve got a book coming out later this year, and it’s been a culmination of years and I have a great team, but there are other areas where I don’t know, I don’t go bungee jumping or ropes courses. And I’ve never been particularly physically brave, but you know what, that’s not a challenge I choose to overcome, at least not in my stage of life. And you know, if I wanted to, and I have a pretty high level of perseverance, I’d probably figure out a way. But you know, you don’t have to face every fear if you choose not to. I mean, it’s like, that’s not being scared, it’s being making choices. Where do you want to be resilient? And it’s not wise to say, “Okay, I’m going to tackle 15 massive challenges at once.” Well, you’ll probably fail, because who can do that? But pick your battles, right? Where do you want to be resilient? Does that make sense?

Katie F:

It does. And the thing is, when we talk about it, it just, if we have lots of expressions around this. So it’s kind of common sense, but I think about myself, I think about a lot of the clients I work with and I am thinking about a number of them right now. And I’ll talk about some of the women I’m working with at the moment through some executive coaching work. They’re very smart women, and they know this in principle, yet in day-to-day they’re trying to face the challenge of raising children, building a career, navigating that particular project, buy a house, wanting the garden clean, putting on the best party. And I can hold the mirror up and say the same about me.

Katie F:

So do you know, we know it in principle, but I don’t see sometimes, including myself, that we are particularly deliberate about it, deliberate about going wide for all of those resources and engaging them for when we need them, and engaging things we don’t even know we need yet, and kind of holding onto them to be ready, nor about making those choices when we have those choices to make.

Gary S:

Now, this is a perfect time. And normally what I say is the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. It’s getting to the point we have to land the plane. I was going to think of some kind of thing I thought was clever about bringing boats into dock. But I know with you guys, so not only experts in rowing, but for an Olympian in rowing, I was going to make that a terrible analogy. So I’m just going to stick with the captain turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. And we’re getting to the point where we’re going to put the plane on the ground soon. But, Katie, before we do that, I would be remiss if I did not give you the chance to let listeners know how they can find out more about you and the services that you offer to folks to help them build teams, live high performance lives and engage with their and their community’s resilience.

Katie F:

Absolutely. So the best way to find me is probably through my website, and it’s www., all one word, katiefoulkes, do you want me to spell it? Will it be somewhere?

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Gary S:

Yes, please.

Katie F:

K-A-T-I-E-F for French, O-U-L-K-E-S for Sam.org. And always open to have conversations. Love dialogue.

Gary S:

Awesome. Warwick, the last question or questions, your decision is, are yours.

Warwick F:

Wow. I mean, this is such a fascinating story. Just your crucibles are so different, but it sounds like you’ve learned so much. And one of the things I love about what you’re saying is yes, I think, like I’m somebody that I’d say has high perseverance, so I’m not somebody that tends to quit once I start something. So I get where you’re coming from, but yet, you’re right. I think understanding we need to have resources, but the resources that we’ll need may be different, depending on the challenge. It’s not the same team. If it’s a different sport, different challenge.

Warwick F:

So, I mean, maybe this shouldn’t be the last question, but I guess one of the things I’m curious about, knowing what you know now, I mean, can you think of what team you would have assembled to help you get through the post-Athens Olympics? I don’t think, objectively I don’t think there’s anything he could have done once it happened. I mean, you can’t know what would have happened. You’ve got to trust your teammates. Totally makes sense. But in terms of how you handle with the aftermath, is there something, “Gosh, what would have helped me get through that from a resilience perspective?”

Katie F:

That’s a really good question, and it depends how wide we want to go. I mean, if we start with a couple of things, I think, it’s so easy that these things are seen as a ticker box, like bring a psychologist in, tick. But really the resources needed absolutely with some professional skills, but also that space, a way to bring us together with there’s media not around, to feel supported, even if it was just to sit with each other and just be in that space. Then of course there would be resources like whether it’s counselors, psychologists, people that care about us. And then you could go more broadly as we go to helping people. I mean, it’s a whole nother issue with those that have been in high performance environments. How do they transition into the normal world? And that’s challenging enough, never mind when it’s been as high profile. So resources that support in that space.

Warwick F:

Well, and I’m sure it’s a whole nother discussion, but post-Olympians, it’s a challenge. And Michael Phelps, I think, has been pretty open about his mental health challenges and it’s a different subject. But yeah, I think in my case it took years, decades to get over the fact that I ended a 150-year-old media dynasty that has been prominent in Australia and what could I have done differently? And now what am I going to do with my life? And sometimes getting through a crucible experience, it takes more than months, more than a year or two. It can take years and maybe there would have been things I could have done to bounce back quicker, but sometimes it just takes time. Sometimes there’s no easy road back and you just got to in hindsight give yourself a break.

Warwick F:

I know you’re an Olympian. You could say, “Olympians should have Olympic recoveries. It should just take a week, because that’s what Olympians do.” But you’re human, you know? And sometimes the feelings and emotions, it can take time, if not years. And that’s not failure, that’s just reality. We’re human. So maybe just giving yourself a break a bit. Maybe that would be something. You probably have had that self-talk over the years, right? It’s like, “Look, I’m doing my best. I did my best. Quit beating myself up.” You’ve probably had those internal dialogues over the years, I’m guessing.?

Katie F:

Yeah, tell myself to shake it off. But the other component that’s come out in the research, because I did interview a number of Olympians last year with this research on resilience, was talking to people that understood. So, Warwick, I don’t know if it was the same for you, but a lot of people that I speak to that maybe want to ask some questions and they haven’t competed at an Olympic level or equivalent team sport or life, they kind of go along the lines of, I don’t know why you would be bothered, you got to do that, that’s great. Lucky you got to do it. And of course there’s a piece in there. Of course, we’re very fortunate. So, being around the right people that can understand-

Warwick F:

Who can understand.

Katie F:

… and amplifies.

Warwick F:

Like you spent your whole life trying to reach a goal. It’s a big deal. So as we close here, there’s a lot of folks listening. Not many of them will have been rowers or Olympic rowers, but there’ll have been through crucibles, and resilience seems like a pipe dream. They’re just tough to get out of bed every day. What would be a word of hope that you would give people that are struggling now? What’s a word of hope, would you say?

Katie F:

Yeah, I think the word that comes to mind is connection. And this is where I am drawing on my research, as well as my experience. But I really encourage, even if you use the word, looking through my lens and resources, but social connection, it’s almost like a vaccination, dare I use that word, for negative mental health. And so if you can connect with people and even if it’s a Zoom coffee or a walk, if you can. Be with others, that will help you connect with yourself as well.

Gary S:

All right. That is a wrap on part two of our series, Harnessing Resilience. If you thought our first couple of episodes were entertaining and insightful, you will not want to miss our next episode. Warwick and I interview distance runner, Heather Kampf. You will be amazed by how she harnessed resilience when she fell during a race. It was, this is not an overstatement, a miraculous effort that has been seen by tens of millions of people, thanks to a viral video. You’ll hear all about it on the next episode of Beyond the Crucible.