At 19, Ryan Campbell became the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world. Two years later, a horrific plane crash threatened more than the dream he birthed at 6 to make a life and a living streaking through the skies. Left a paraplegic after the accident, he fought back physically and emotionally to walk — and hope — again. Today, he’s an in-demand motivational speaker who inspires audiences to build a mindset toolbox to conquer their crucibles.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

How do you bounce back from an accident that could have killed you, leaves you a paraplegic and robs you of a passion that was birthed in you when you were just six years old? On this week's episode of our greatest hits tour, you'll learn it all starts with simply not giving up on your vision.




Ryan Campbell:

We started the airplane, you actually have to grab the propeller and spin the propeller with your hands, and start it by hand. So, it's very old technology. And we taxied to the end of the runway, we lined up on this short grass airstrip nice and early in the morning to take off and go and look at the beach. And I pushed the power forward, the airplane performed beautifully, and we lifted off the ground, the runway. And the fence at the end of the runway disappeared beneath the nose, and straight away at about 150 feet over the top of the trees the engine failed. And we had a partial engine failure, and within three seconds, despite everything that I could do, we had no... I don't know what I ever could have done different. We had nowhere to go, and we ended up in what was a horrific plane crash.




Gary Schneeberger:

You've just heard the traumatic low point in the story told today by our guest, Ryan Campbell. Ryan had loved flying, had loved the idea of flying since he was in single digits. At six years old he hatched a dream to become a pilot, that came true. So true in fact, that by the time he was 19 in 2013, he became the youngest person to ever fly solo around the globe. Things were looking bright for him and his future as a pilot in 2015 when the accident that he described at the outset of the show here, when that accident occurred. Ryan could have wallowed in what happened after that. He was left after that crash a complete paraplegic. He faced months, more than a year of arduous, arduous rehab. But he went through it all with a mindset focused on moving beyond the tragedy that had befallen him.




Gary Schneeberger:

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show, and on today's episode Ryan will explain in detail how he moved beyond that crucible experience. And he will also share with you some tips and techniques to help you move beyond your crucible experiences.




Warwick Fairfax:

Ryan, it's so great to have you on the podcast, and love your story and your book, Born to Fly. But before we get into your crucible and some of the amazing things you've done in flying, tell us a bit about Ryan Campbell, how you grew up, your family. Tell us a bit about, yeah, yourself growing up in Australia.




Ryan Campbell:

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks, Warwick. I explain myself as just a normal Aussie kid, any more laid back I'd be lying down. That's my favorite overused line. I grew up not in a poor family but not in a rich family, just a standard middle-class Australian establishment. We originated on a farm property, and then we moved down to the beach when I was about six years old. And I grew up by the salty, clear, blue water and the golden beachy sands, which I now miss. But my dad was a truck driver, he was a farmer, and he was a local milk man, and my mum was a stay-at-home mum. We had a family of five, two older brothers, and a family, I suppose you could say, much larger than that also. You know, grandparents and aunties and uncles.




Ryan Campbell:

And just an amazing upbringing, which the older I get the more I value and appreciate. So, a really cool upbringing. I was a young kid with a whole bunch of ideas that mum and dad normally rolled their eyes at, and many of those ideas just drifted away into the atmosphere. But a few of them landed and resulted in some wild adventures, not just for myself and then my family, but for a whole bunch of people who were involved in our little escapades. So, just a normal Aussie kid is my favorite way to talk about who I am.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, where did your sense of adventure come from? Was it your mum, dad, or relatives? Because you're somebody that just likes doing things that other people don't normally do.




Ryan Campbell:

I think the problem lies within me, to be honest.




Warwick Fairfax:

The problem.




Ryan Campbell:

I have a family who love travel, and we love to kind of see the world, and a very outside of the box thinking family. But I'm definitely the first person, and still the only person who's really ventured out on anything super left of field like I did, and continue to do. I've always been a very impatient kid, I always wanted more. I remember when I was a young kid, I used to unpack the dishwasher and ask for chores before school so Mum could save some money for me, pocket money and buy things. And when I wanted something, it didn't matter what it was, a piece of technology, or an ice cream, or a new CD or whatever, I was that kid who just did not let go. Didn't matter whether my parents knew I would never use the product when it arrived in my hands, but I've always been someone who is very fixated on a goal. And that I think in itself has led to the adventures that were had.




Warwick Fairfax:

So I understand that you have wanted to fly, or been fascinated by flying at the very earliest age. What was your first memories of this passion for flying?




Ryan Campbell:

So the first memory has attached to it a really cool business story, to give you a little bit of an idea of my family. So my dad was a milk man, as I said, mum was a stay-at-home mum, we didn't have a lot of money. But we worked for a company in Australia where they had an incentive program every year. Now, if we sold a certain amount of berry juice products, we would get a free ticket overseas. So, I remember at six years old, in a family that had never set foot outside of Australia, my parents bought a lot of juice. And like, I'm talking, we filled the storeroom with long-life apple juice and orange juice. And what that led to was the first overseas trip to Vanuatu, an island in the Pacific when I was six years old.




Ryan Campbell:

And we went on a business trip, and we swam in the pool, and they went to their little work events for a week. And it was an amazing getaway, and it was the only way my parents could afford to go overseas, because they'd then come home from the holiday and spend the next six months selling orange juice to anyone with a thirst to pay for that adventure. So it was on that first overseas trip, that was actually to be the first of four. So we were really lucky young kids to get to travel. The first of four of these incentive trips that I climbed into a Boeing 737 and we took off, and being the youngest and the cutest of the three, which I always say, they put me by the window, I got the window seat. And I sat there and watched Sydney appear in the window of that aircraft as we took off. And everything about the experience, I was just blown away by. It was just simply magic to me, the fact that everyone in Sydney has a red roof on their house, or-




Warwick Fairfax:

Exactly.




Ryan Campbell:

... just the size of Sydney. Or honestly, the biggest moment was the fact that we went through clouds. At six years old, I just didn't even believe you could reach the clouds, let alone do so over Sydney in an airplane. And prior to September 11th, which shows how old I am, we were invited up to the cockpit. And I walked up there with both my brothers, and I followed in trail, and we met the pilots, and we looked at the buttons and the switches. And from that point on, honestly Warwick, and you'll laugh at this, being an Aussie. But I would always tell people three things from when I was six years old, one is that I wanted to be a jumbo jet pilot, I wanted to fly for Qantas, that was great, that was a solid dream that lasted.




Ryan Campbell:

The second was that I wanted to own a Subaru WRX, which was a big dream for a six-year-old. The third, for some reason I wanted to live in Canberra. I don't know whether it was a small town kid, just kind of like saw the glistening lights and the shopping centers. But, I would not live in Canberra if paid me now, but-




Warwick Fairfax:

No, it's a pretty quiet place for a capital city, there's not much going on.




Ryan Campbell:

It definitely is. So, I was a six-year-old kid with three big dreams, and the one that truly lasted was this discovery of passion, and that was aviation. And it honestly has taken me, and provided the highest experiences of my life, the best, the most positive experiences. But it's also taken me to the deepest and the darkest places, so it really has provided a rollercoaster ride in a short period of time.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, after that trip to Vanuatu, and sitting in the cockpit, and having this passion for flying, you told your mum and dad, "Okay, I want to be a pilot." What was their reaction to this dream of this six-year-old?




Ryan Campbell:

Little did I know when I was six that my granddad had actually... He'd just passed away, but he had been a pilot. Not professionally, but he'd been a private pilot. Little did I know, my dad actually wanted to learn to fly, he'd always wanted to learn since he was a kid. Little did I know my uncle, who I didn't have a lot to do with, was a commercial pilot and owned a joy flight business in Merimbula, the little town I grew up on the south coast of Australia there. And little did I know all of that, which just makes me believe that aviation's in my blood. So my family probably didn't take it as a shock, and as we grew older that dream, as I said, really was set in stone. It was getting to 14 years old and saying, "All right, I need a plan.




Ryan Campbell:

"How am I going to work through school and learn to fly?" Well, common sense at that point for a 14-year-old kid said, "You know what, you're going to need two things. You're going to need money, a lot of it, and you're going to need at least a driver's license before they'll let you fly an airplane." I was incorrect on one of those fronts, I definitely needed money. But I was reading the local newspaper when I was 14, and I read an article about a kid who flew solo in an airplane on his own for the very first time on the day he turned 15. That was the first day he was legally allowed. Here I am at 14, not very good at math, but I was like, "All right, I don't have very long. If he can do it, why can't I?" Well, that led to an after school job, and that led to a weekend job, and that led to about...




Ryan Campbell:

What was I earning? $50 to wash a truck, and 45 at the supermarket. So I was earning around about, I think $190 a fortnight or every two weeks, and a flying lesson for an hour was 180. So I actually funded my way through flight training throughout school, I went solo much to my mum's stress levels, went through the roof. But I went solo on my 15th birthday just like this kid in the article, and I had discovered what I could do with a goal, and a little bit of hard work. And I'd ignited this passion, not just to fly more but to do everything I could at the youngest possible age. And the adventure just, it sped up from there.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's amazing. So yeah, have all the sort of unknown, maybe flying genes in there, or it's just amazing how these things happen. But so, you had this dream of flying. When did this idea to fly around the world while you were still a teenager... At what point did that dream start to form?




Ryan Campbell:

So, I'd flown solo on my 15th birthday. When I turned 16, I passed a flight test that allowed me to take friends and family flying in a restricted area. I wasn't 17 yet, so I didn't have a driver's license, I couldn't drive a car on my own. So, all my buddies at school who were older than me, we cut a deal with them and we said, "All right, you drive me from school to the airport. After school I'll take you for a fly, but you've got to drop me home." So, that was my deal throughout when I was 17... When I was 16, sorry. When I was 17 I had a private pilot's license, and when I was 18 I had a commercial. So, I really pushed for whatever I could every time I become a year older. It was at 17 that I read an article, again, I should stop reading articles.




Ryan Campbell:

But I read an article on a kid who was American, 23 years old, who'd broken the world record for the youngest person to fly solo round the world. And we're talking 2008, we're talking the prior world record being 37, so there really was no age record. And we're talking a time where more people had gone to space than flown solo round the world, so not a very common thing to take place. Well, here I was at 17, he was 23, and again, not very good at math, knew I had six years to pull this off. And I decided I wanted to find out more, but I kept it a secret. So I did what any wannabe 17-year-old teenager would do, and I Googled how to fly solo round the world, and I found a website called Earthrounders.com. And I printed off all the information, I highlighted all the important parts, and I hid it in my desk. I didn't want my mum, my dad, my brothers, I didn't want anyone to find it. I didn't want anyone to think that I was silly enough to believe this was possible.




Warwick Fairfax:

So were you afraid that they were going to try and talk you out of it or something?




Ryan Campbell:

Or judge me, or laugh at me. And I have the most supportive family in the world, so it was a very irrational fear. But I thought they would potentially just laugh and go, "What is this kid on," you know? Like, "This is wild." But I read those articles over and over again, and there wasn't a lot to read, given that not many people had actually done this. I got to the point where I wanted to know more, I wanted to know more than those articles. But what do you do at that point? My mum and dad couldn't help me. So, I decided I'd contact a gentleman I'm sure you know to some degree, Dick Smith, an Australian entrepreneur, businessman, aviation adventurer, previous round the world pilot. I decided I'd contact Dick Smith, and I thought, "Well, he has the power to help me, he has the knowledge, and he has some of the answers. And, if he laughs at me and this doesn't happen, I don't cross paths with Dick Smith very often so I'm not going to feel judged."




Warwick Fairfax:

And that's sort of amazing, because Dick Smith for the US audience, he has an electronic store chain, kind of like Best Buy in a sense in the US. I mean, it's kind of everywhere. So, he's a very successful... You reached out to Dick Smith, he's a busy guy, very successful, and he responded.




Ryan Campbell:

He did, and so-




Warwick Fairfax:

Which is amazing.




Ryan Campbell:

Everyone says, "How did you do that when you were 17?" I say, "I just Googled Dick Smith's email address." I hate to be telling anyone that, but I found five and I sent an email to all five. And I said, "Dear Dick Smith, my name's Ryan Campbell, I've got 200 hours and I want to be the youngest person..." I read that email now and just cringe. And he responded and he said to me, "Ryan," he said, "What you want to do is dangerous, it's very risky, it's hard, it's never been done before." And he listed all these bad elements to the adventure. But at the end he said a few simple words, and this was all that mattered. He said, "But it can be done. Go and find yourself a mentor, and if you find a mentor who tells me that you're the guy for the job I'll support you."




Ryan Campbell:

So I took that same email that I sent to Dick, and I crossed out, "Dear Dick," and I wrote, "Dear Ken." And I sent it to a guy called Ken, and he was the second person to ever hear about this adventure. He'd flown around the world with another pilot, he was an Australian based in a little town called Bendigo, he agreed to be my mentor. So I went back to Dick Smith, all of a sudden I had a team of three. Everything was very exciting, until I realized I had not told or asked my mum and dad yet, at 17 years old. So we went down the road of asking mum and dad, I washed the dishes one night, which I think helped. And I said to mum and dad, "Hey, what would you think if I said that maybe, potentially, one day I might want to fly a small airplane solo round the world?"




Ryan Campbell:

And dad said, "Oh, you'd see some amazing things." And mum said, "Oh, wouldn't that just be a phenomenal experience?" And I thought, "Here they are, my parents, going, 'Here's another idea this kid's got,'" you know?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah.




Ryan Campbell:

Well then I sat the folder of emails down in front of them from Dick Smith, literally a name they'd grown up with.




Warwick Fairfax:

Great.




Ryan Campbell:

And all of a sudden it wasn't a joke. Well, that started the two year planning, training, fundraising adventure where I didn't just plan and train and prepare as a pilot, but we fundraised a quarter of a million dollars on a laptop computer, the same laptop that would go round the world to write the blogs, the same laptop that we would write the book on. And we pulled together a team from literally myself to what became a massive team, and an industry who supported what was a history-making adventure. So, a really long two years, lots of fundraising, lots of lessons, lots of growing up for a young kid.




Warwick Fairfax:

But to raise $250,000, being at age 17, is amazing. Obviously your parents might have been nervous, but they were supportive, you had a plan. I mean, not too many 17-year-olds would come up with the plan and have the courage to just write to Dick Smith, and the wisdom to seek mentors when it was suggested. I mean, you pursued a goal just all out, but with a lot of wisdom. It was sort of courage and wisdom. I mean, as you reflect back, I know there's a lot of lessons in your life but those lessons leading up to that round-the-world flight, there are some key lessons for people in how you approached it.




Ryan Campbell:

Absolutely. And for me, I always say courage and commitment, courage to take it on, commitment to see it through. And I learned so many lessons the hard way, and we could talk for days about the little moments that I learned. I was a kid who couldn't make his bed, and I was trying to contact the largest companies in the world through these very average sponsorship proposals where I'd stolen their logo, full copyright straight off the internet, and had to refine the process to find success. And we did find success from a deal with 60 Minutes, and all sorts of large media outlets around the world. And you know, what resulted not just in a successful adventure but a book deal. And it was a phenomenal transformational time for a young kid to learn and grow, even before we took off to fly around the world. I mean, that two years was I think... More of the story lies in that two years than it does in the 70 days of circumnavigating the globe.




Warwick Fairfax:

And that was 2015, was it? When did the flight happen?




Ryan Campbell:

That was 2013.




Warwick Fairfax:

'13? Okay, got it. And so, how long did it take to fly around the world, did you say?




Ryan Campbell:

So I climbed into a rented, single-engine airplane, and it was a four-seat, piston-powered propeller plane. And I had 160 galleons of fuel in the cockpit with me in a big bag, and we could fly this airplane up to 16 and a half hours non-stop, and that's what I needed to cross all these big ocean legs. And I took off at 19 years of age, after that two years of planning we flew 24,000 nautical miles to 35 stops in 15 countries. I took off from Woolongong, just south of Sydney, Australia on the east coast, and I pointed that airplane northeast purely over the Pacific Ocean, and I did not stop until I made it to North America. I had about five legs to get across the Pacific alone, the longest being Hawaii to California, 15 hours nonstop, literally sitting in one little seat. So, a very long trip in a very little airplane.




Warwick Fairfax:

Not a lot of margin for error on that one, if you've flown 16 hours.




Ryan Campbell:

Very little margin for error, there's some stories from that leg for sure.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you did this remarkable journey in 2013, and that led to... I think the book you wrote, Born to Fly, was that written after that, but before-




Ryan Campbell:

I did, yeah. So the way that I explain the story, is when we deliver keynotes is, I tell stories not from an ego point of view. I hate nothing more than ego or manufactured drama in life, and we tell these stories to give people a little bit of an idea of how good life was at this point. So, when the around the world flight ended we were on 60 Minutes, I was invited to meet the royals, and named one of Australia's 50 greatest explorers, and I wrote a book that my Nan can tell you every page number of every spelling mistake in that entire book, and that's not a joke. And we shared the story, and the story spread, and life was great. We did so many wonderful things, Australia Day ambassador roles, and just had the opportunity to see a story which originated as a silly idea in a 17-year-old kid's head spread and impact the world.




Ryan Campbell:

Everyone from six-year-old kids who wanted to maybe fly one day like I did originally, through to ex-World War Two spitfire pilots who were writing me letters, just absolutely blown away by the story. You know, my heroes of the world were reaching out to me. So my life was amazing, I was on the Australian speaking circuit, and I was flying for a living, and speaking just to kind of subsidize the terrible pay that we get paid as pilots. And I could not argue with where I was at in life, and then it all changed.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. So life was going so well, you were talking about courage, commitment, go for your dreams, anything's possible, which is a great message. But then, for whatever reason the world, or fate gave you another message which you weren't planning on, didn't really want. So talk about that, I guess it's 2015, that fateful day. What happened?




Ryan Campbell:

Well, my six-year-old self wanted to not only fly a jumbo jet, but my dream was to fly for Qantas, our Australian airline. Following a speaking gig in Canberra, believe it or not, I was offered a job with Qantas Link, our regional Qantas airline, and I turned it down. Because my dream was to fly spitfires, I wanted to fly World War Two fighters, that was my dream. And I wasn't going to gain the experience I needed to fly those rare airplanes through flying for an airline, plus I was 20, 21. I needed to go and live a little bit more, and I turned down the job with the airline, and I took a job flying vintage airplanes to build up the experience I needed, and just to have a great, exciting living. So, my job was to fly a biplane that was built in the 1930s up and down the coast of Australia, and do some aerobatics.




Ryan Campbell:

And a beautiful machine, very old but beautiful. My job was to take one passenger at a time flying, and it was simple, but it was a very pleasurable job. And on the 28th of December 2015, I got up and went to work, just like any other day. No oceans to cross, no records to break, and we climbed into that airplane. I had a gentleman in the front with me, and I was sitting behind him. He was also a pilot, very, very nice gentleman. And we started the airplane, you actually have to grab the propeller and spin the propeller with your hands and start it by hand, so it's very old technology. And we taxied to the end of the runway, we lined up on this short, grass airstrip, nice and early in the morning to take off and go look at the beach.




Ryan Campbell:

And I pushed the power forward, the airplane performed beautifully, and we lifted off the ground. The runway end, the fence at the end of the runway disappeared beneath the nose, and straight away at about 150 feet over the top of trees, the engine failed. And we had a partial engine failure, and within three seconds despite everything that I could do, I don't know what I ever could have done different. We had nowhere to go, and we ended up in what was a horrific plane crash. It's just not explainable how bad it was, and I was cut from the wreckage, placed into a helicopter and flown to hospital, but I was the only survivor.




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh my gosh.




Ryan Campbell:

And I was taken to hospital in Brisbane, I was operated on immediately. I had shattered facial bones, five breaks in my back, my ankle was almost removed, my right ankle was shattered. And I was operated on immediately, and I was awake for the accident and most of the ordeal, blacked out from the pain and the impact for some minutes here and there. But overall, I remember every element of it. And I woke up in a recovery ward with no movement or feeling from my waist down, I was a complete paraplegic.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, obviously a lot's going through your mind. I mean, you're an experienced pilot even at that age. You're thinking... Well, obviously I'm not a pilot, but if you're 100 feet up, the engine fails, you've got no time to think of anything or do anything, and even if you could it sounds like there's nothing you could do. So was that like... Well, it certainly wasn't pilot error, "There's nothing I could have done."




Ryan Campbell:

The hardest part of this entire, especially with the outcome of the accident, the hardest part of this entire journey for me has been coming to mental grips with the outcome, what happened, why it happened, what could have been done, what was done, and analyzing those number of seconds. And I know in my heart of hearts that we made the best decisions on the day in that moment, flying what we were flying. It was just, if that engine had failed 10 seconds earlier or 20 seconds later, we would have been okay. But the devil himself pressed the button at that moment for me, and I don't know. Put me in a simulator and give me that 100 times again, I don't know what I could have done differently with all the elements that come into play when we consider an engine failure on takeoff, especially in 1930s technology.




Ryan Campbell:

And do I regret being in the airplane that day? No. Do I regret getting out of bed, and not sleeping in? No. Do I regret not having a flat tire and canceling that flight? No, I don't. We made the best decisions to be there that day, and I don't know what I could have done different. And that's my only way that I can come to grips with being the one who made it out, as opposed to the one who didn't.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, obviously you go through that, people talk about survivor guilt and all that, why was that me, and that's probably one thing. Not that it's fair, but we're human. I mean, logically you knew there's nothing you could have done. Yes, it's like, "Well, I could have given the engine another once over." I mean, even if you'd done that probably it wouldn't have been that obvious without, I don't know what... Pulling every part of the engine apart. Even then, you probably couldn't have found anything, but-




Ryan Campbell:

And it was. They pulled it all apart, and we don't know, you know? And it could be anything from a mud wasp to a little bit of water, we just don't have the answers.




Warwick Fairfax:

So logically, there's nothing you could have done. But because we're emotional beings, did it take a while for you to accept the fact there was nothing you could do? Like your brain said, "I did everything I could." But emotionally, were you kind of beating yourself up a bit, or...




Ryan Campbell:

I will always have that element in my life, I always will. That doesn't go away with time, it gets easier with time. I do not blame myself, and if I did I wouldn't be here, I couldn't live with that. I, however, live with the struggle and the triggers that will always come from that PTSD, whatever you want to call it, I will have that forever, and that's been hard.




Warwick Fairfax:

And you have to go through that to fully understand that kind of trauma. So, people who have gone through those sorts of experiences probably could understand better. But how did you get beyond that? Because intellectually, it sounds like you came to terms with that pretty quickly, because you're a pilot, you get it, you understood there was no room for error, it was bad luck. As you said, like 10 seconds earlier, 20 second later, I mean it would have been radically different. But how did you find a way to bounce back from that experience and live a positive life, rather than... The alternative is just to say, "Well, that adventurous, free-spirited Ryan Campbell is no more. I'm just going to be safe, cautious, just..." You know, not do much anymore.




Gary Schneeberger:

And I'm going to jump in before you answer that question Ryan, because you told me something when we talked before we started recording the show, that I think is a universal truth for anyone who's gone through a crucible. Our listeners know well, you probably know well Ryan being from Australia, the crucible that Warwick went through, the takeover of the family media business, that failed takeover, the slipping of the company after 150 years out of the family's hands, a $2.25 billion loss. Not at all the same thing as the physical trauma that you went through, but emotionally speaking, what could I have done differently, what can I learn, how do I bounce back, those experiences are universal with crucibles. And what you told me when we talked that speaks to Warwick's question about how you got through it, you said this to me.




Gary Schneeberger:

"We find the tools in our low points to power better times." And I just wanted to kind of get that out there, that perspective out there, because I think our listeners will definitely identify with that as you answer the question, how did you do it?




Ryan Campbell:

100%. And I am really big on this idea of tools and building a mindset toolbox, I'm really big on adversity being an opportunity. You know, adversity alone is adversity, but adversity with the right tools to utilize it is opportunity, it's simple as that. At 21 years old I was lying in that hospital bed, going through what you're talking about, Warwick. This constant reflection of what happened, trying to get my memory back, trying to pull all the pieces together, trying to work with the right teams of people around me to say, "Okay, what happened," and get answers. I know it's a really long process that, honestly, it's not as prevalent in my day-to-day life now, almost five years on. But I tell you what, it lasted many years.




Ryan Campbell:

And it's been very hard, and there are times where it comes back up again. When we look at that time in hospital, it was so hard in the beginning just to exist. For me, I would always tell people that I was at maximum capacity. You could have walked in and told me that I'd lost a family member, or you could have chopped off my leg, or from a pain and a mental point of view, physical and mental, I was at capacity. You couldn't have done anything more to me to make it any worse. But we started to crawl out of that hole with a real sink or swim mentality, and I remember sitting next to an Australian... I have many people, from Alan Jones, and all these incredible Australians that the US audience might not be too familiar with. But trust me when I say, incredible, incredible humans spending a lot of time with me at hospital. I remember sitting across from Paul de Gelder, an Australian navy clearance diver who lost his arm and leg in a shark attack in Sydney Harbor. And he looked at me-




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh my gosh.




Ryan Campbell:

... and he said, "Sink or swim." Now, I'd spent an hour and a half with an ex-Australian Wallabies coach, I had been to every psychologist known to man and ended up telling them how they felt, you know? I can't tell you how much help I had. But those three words changed everything for me, because when I looked at Paul I knew that at one point in his life he had to actually swim, and he chose to swim. And if we look at this crossroad we come to when we experience adversity or change, challenge, or crisis in our life, we have to make a choice, it's up to us. A lot of tough love is needed, a lot of harden up is needed. We have to sit back, we have to make our own decision to sink or swim. Sinking is a very long and slippery slope to suicide, and I am really blunt about that because I'm really big on young people losing their mental battle.




Ryan Campbell:

Swimming is the journey that we take to climb back up, to climb the mountain that's ahead of us, to get out of where we are, to end up in a better place physically and mentally. And if it's just one step at a time, that's okay. When I was in hospital I was battling the mental aspect of the accident, what happened, why, what could have been done differently? I was battling my physical state, I had no movement from my waist down, no feeling, my bodily functions had disappeared, I had no... I was a newborn baby in a hospital, my dignity was left at the door when they wheeled me in, and I spent the next six months in that spinal rehabilitation ward determined to not walk, but fly. And walking was merely a stepping stone on the way back to flying, and that was the end of the conversation for me.




Ryan Campbell:

I was naïve, and I thought, honestly, for that first 12 months that I was just going to get better. I mean, how naïve can you be? I flew around the world, I was like, "I'm going to be fine." And whilst I saw progress, and I released a video on this yesterday, and I talked about progress being the antidote to stress-induced... Or to change-induced stress, and how progress, even just a little bit of progress every day towards our end goal provides purpose to the pain. So for that first 12 months, especially that first six months in hospital, I went from a complete paraplegic with no movement or feeling from the waist down, a wheelchair that was custom-built for my body, to a human who was walking, albeit I look like I'd just sunk a bottle of Tennessee whiskey, but walking.




Ryan Campbell:

And that was a very long journey of pain, but with a lot of progress. I would see a twitch of a muscle, a little bit of sensation come back on some area of my lower body, all of these things were happening every day. When I got to that 12 month point where my recovery started to plateau, that lack of repair, that reduced rate of repair became one of the biggest challenges of my life. Because now it wasn't about, "Okay, just keep doing what you're doing, you are going to be okay." It was like, "Okay, this is it. This is where I'm going to get to, this is my new normal. We're going to have to start to get used to it, learn how to maintain it, and now I'm going to have to begin to adapt in my day-to-day routines to make sure that I can do as much of what I did in my previous life with these new injuries."




Ryan Campbell:

And I still have a whole bunch of things wrong with me, like a long list of things wrong with me. No calf muscles, no glute muscles, I have no feeling where I sit, no feeling on the backs of my legs, no feeling in my feet, very little control in my feet, no ability to push. I walk around on my heels all day, every day. No bladder control, no internal bodily functions whatsoever. But I walk, and I just look like I've had a bad night on the town. But that journey as a whole, we talk about... I mean, I speak purely on how did you get back up, how did you swim, what were all the elements of that? It all boiled down to building a toolbox. My overwhelmed state in the beginning of my time in hospital, parents, brothers, cousins, doctors, Alan Jones, incredible humans, shark attack survivors, they were all giving me advice, advice on how to climb the mountain ahead of me.




Ryan Campbell:

But it was too much, I had to take that crazy amount of advice, I had to take my overwhelmed state of mind, and I had to somehow turn it into clarity, and that's where the mindset toolbox was born. My simple way, born in hospital, to take the moments I was experiencing, moments that were easily forgettable, to turn those moments into tools, tools that I could use to navigate change, challenge, crisis, and adversity, and place them in my mindset toolbox, basically an unforgettable drawer that I have access to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the tools that I was going to use to climb the mountain.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. I mean, that's just an amazing journey, amazing story. Just for listeners, Alan Jones, former coach of the Wallabies, that's Australia's national rugby team, kind of a big deal certainly in Sydney and in Queensland, where rugby's pretty prevalent. But you mentioned early on that a former diver said, "Sink or swim." And it feels like that was a binary choice, it wasn't just plateau, or lead a quiet life. It was, sink might have been depression, suicide, I mean who knows what sink would have been? I mean, it's scary to even contemplate. So it's like, either swim or improve, or the alternative is very dark and almost unthinkable. I mean, I think a lot of listeners wouldn't think about it that way, that sink or swim. You either rise, or you fall into oblivion. I mean, it was that clear back then in the depths?




Ryan Campbell:

It was, yeah. And I think it has to be that clear, and when I first started the two year process of planning the round-the-world flight I had a team of five people, no-one else knew about it, not even my extended family. I had a flying instructor who sat down with me, the very man who taught me to fly, Big Al, and he said to me, "Are you going to do this or not?" And I said, "I don't know. One day I think I should, the next day I don't know whether I should, and I just don't know." And he said, "Look, zoom out and have a look at the big picture, where you are in life, what you're trying to achieve, and how bad you want to do it. And then we're going to make a yes or no decision on whether you even attempt this round-the-world flight.




Ryan Campbell:

"If you make a yes decision, you are going to work unbelievably hard every single day, until you get to the point where it is either A, a success, or B, an absolute failure that you just can't bring back. Or, you're going to say no, walk away and never look at it again." That yes or no decision is binary, as is the sink or swim decision, and I think we have to be clear in order to move forward and combat the mental... Life is won and lost above the shoulders, that's my deal, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Right.




Ryan Campbell:

We have to be binary, otherwise we just get buried.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, almost what I'm hearing you say is that two-year preparation for the round-the-world flight, are we going to do it, are we going to not, it almost in some sense prepared you for that next round-the-world journey in a sense, that next epic but tragic adventure which was getting back from that horrific accident. You look back and say, "That kind of helped prepare me in some strange way?"




Ryan Campbell:

Without a doubt, 100%, but... Yes, 100%. What I also say is that at 21 I was lying in a hospital bed, and I had experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. So, highs higher than most people would ever experience, but lows lower than most people would ever experience. And it took a while for me to see it this way, but I started to view it as an opportunity. I'd been given an opportunity to compare, we have mountain climbers, as keynote speakers we have people out there who have done incredible things. We have people out there who have suffered adversity kind of stories, we have those people as well. We don't have a lot of people who've experienced both, especially by that age. So what I was given was an opportunity to compare the highs and the lows and ask myself, where do we truly learn, where do we grow, what makes me me?




Ryan Campbell:

And it was 150% yes I did pull things from the round-the-world flight, yes it prepared me for what was to come. But I'd truly become Ryan, the person I am today, through the adversity and the hard times in my life, for sure.




Warwick Fairfax:

And that's an amazing thought of, nobody wants adversity but there are some lessons, who we are after a crucible is never the same as who we were before. So, I want to hear about the toolbox that you've created. But yeah, talk a bit more about how there's some... It's going to sound very strange, but I'd almost say there's beauty in adversity. But there's certainly a lot of lessons in adversity that can, I don't know, maybe make us a better version, a more refined version of ourselves? I mean, what's your experience with that?




Ryan Campbell:

I remember feeling so unbelievably sorry for myself, which is what we all do as a reaction to negative change, or adversity, or crisis. And I was feeling down, and I was in hospital with a whole bunch of reasons that probably allowed me to feel a little down at this point. And I remember that every day they would hoist me off the bed in hospital, so they'd put a sling under me, it was a very non-flattering kind of experience. And they'd lift me off the bed, and they'd let me hang above that mattress until my body hurt so much that they'd just put me back down and let me rest. Every day I could hang for a little bit longer, and then they originally put me out of that bed into a wheelchair, and they took me to the rehabilitation gym.




Ryan Campbell:

That first trip to the rehabilitation gym changed my life. The gym was a place where quadriplegics and paraplegics were doing all they could to bring their bodies back to life, and obtain what I call our maximum potential, which is a really important word in what I speak about now. So I was taken to this rehabilitation gym, and I was placed down on a low-lying mat, slung onto this mat. They told me my first challenge for the day was learning to roll over. Now, it was a whole lot harder the second time than it was the first time. But I remember loving a challenge, and thinking, "All right, how can I go from my back to my stomach?" Nothing worked from the waist down, but I can do this. Well, I concocted a plan in my head and I thought, "If I could just lift one of my chunky legs up and lie it over the other leg, and I could then lean over and grab the side of this bed, and pull with my arms.




Ryan Campbell:

"I'm going to kind of untwist, and I'll be not only lying on my stomach but I'll be victorious in this first challenge." And I remember doing that, twisting my legs, and then grabbing the side of that bed and pulling. And as I pulled the fire breaks in my back, and all the new titanium metalwork that I had just screamed in pain. So I stopped on my side, and my right arm was twisted all kind of trying to balance. I stopped just to let the pain subside, and I remember looking through a hole created by my elbow, and what I saw through that hole at a point where I was really down in life changed everything. What I saw was a guy called Ben, he was a young guy in his early 30s, sitting in a really big wheelchair.




Ryan Campbell:

He'd slipped over, hit his head whilst mopping his girlfriend's floor, he'd broken his neck, had no movement or feeling from his chest down, and very little feeling in his arms or his hands, he was a quadriplegic. And I remember looking up at Ben and seeing Ben stare back at me. I was feeling sorry for myself at this point, really, really bad place in life. The way Ben looked at me, I realized what he would have given for one chance at learning to roll over. And at that point, to say that I felt like the worst human on the face of the planet would be an absolute understatement. And I remember being put back into the wheelchair, and taken back to my ward, and put back in bed. And I remember my body resting, and my mind moving at a million miles an hour.




Ryan Campbell:

I knew at that point that I needed to remember the way that I felt when I looked at Ben, because it was that feeling, whatever it was, and I couldn't explain it at the time. It was that feeling that was going to allow me to get through the hard days, and there were plenty of hard days on the horizon. So I decided to come up with a concept, which is a mindset toolbox, to take those moments and place them somewhere where I won't forget them. So my concept is so simple, very, very simple, it's that we're all born with an empty toolbox. It's really big, it has wheels, lots of drawers, we take it with us wherever we go in life. When we get it in the beginning, when we're born it's empty. Our job in life is to fill that toolbox with tools that we can use to work through the challenges that we will all no doubt face.




Ryan Campbell:

Adversity is simply a byproduct of breathing. So we fill that toolbox with tools, tools that we can use to navigate change, challenge, crisis and adversity. It is our goal to learn how to find tools, how to use them, and how to keep them sharp. Throughout that six months in hospital, the year and a half in rehab, the four and a half years up until this interview, I continue to find tools every day and place them in that toolbox, and I have a really big, overflowing toolbox. And it's my way to not forget the moments that I need to navigate my life, it's my way to provide a tangible kind of learning experience in developing your mindset. And that's what this is, life is won and lost above the shoulders, we have to go out and better ourselves, we have to go out and learn.




Ryan Campbell:

We have all the information in the world at our fingertips, we have to understand that we have to build resiliency, ways of thinking into our day-to-day life as an individual or an organization, so that we can tackle our crucible moments, our tough days, our tough years, our 2020s. We have to be wired that way. My mindset toolbox not only saved me, but it's now how I encourage others to think of their own mental health and resilience.




Warwick Fairfax:

I want to hear a little bit about this mindset toolbox, but I want to go back for one second. Here you are trying to roll over, which for most of us is a pretty easy thing to do. It's like, you just roll over. But for you at that point it was you might have said "climb Mt. Everest", I mean it was pretty difficult. But then as you were going over, and bad things were happening, and you looked at Ben, what was it about Ben's look that almost was not a mini-crucible, but an inflection point in your recovery? There was something about Ben's look that kind of bore a hole through your soul, almost.




Ryan Campbell:

He was just a big boy sitting in that wheelchair, and he had elastic bands around his wrist, and he was moving his wrist in and out maybe an inch or two at a time, and that was his exercise for the day. And knowing a quadriplegic quite well by that point, just being in a spinal cord injury ward, and learning about a spinal cord injury, and what it does to your body, I knew what state Ben was in, and I knew the very slim chance of him ever getting back to a point where I even was at that point at the beginning of my recovery. It was just the loss in his eyes, and we went on to talk a lot throughout the next six months in rehab, and learn more about each other, and the struggles that we were both going through. And when I unpacked that moment with Ben into that mindset toolbox, at the surface level I obviously learned perspective.




Ryan Campbell:

I was like, "Oh, you know, look, I'm actually quite lucky, you know, really," at the surface level. But by unpacking that story into my mindset toolbox, that was a process that allowed me to pull so much more out of that moment than what I found at first glance. And that's the power of the toolbox, I learned so many things from gratitude, through to accepting what I had, and my ability as opposed to focusing on what I'd lost, all of these different lessons from Ben, they all boiled down to one thing, I was lucky to be a paraplegic. I was 21 years old, I'd just survived a plane crash, I'd just turned turned 21. I'd been in hospital for not an entirely long amount of time, and I could look at you and tell you that I was lucky to be a paraplegic.




Ryan Campbell:

I could look at you and tell you that this challenge was not physical, it was mental. Without Ben's injection of gratitude that day, without the concept of the mindset toolbox, I would not, and I just would not be where I am today, I just wouldn't.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's amazing, and that's really one of the key elements of your toolbox. Gratitude, confidence, resiliency, obviously you can connect the dots now in hindsight, a sense of gratitude that, "I'm glad I'm not where Ben is," you know?




Ryan Campbell:

Yeah, 100%.




Warwick Fairfax:

Ben would give, as you said, anything he could to be where Ryan was, you know? So, talk about how you use this toolbox to inspire others, both others who've been through physical challenges... There could be mental, physical, financial, abuse, I mean there's all sorts of challenges in the world. So, talk about how this can help not just crash survivors or paraplegics, but just people in general. What about this toolbox can really help people?




Ryan Campbell:

I encourage anyone who has a pulse to build their own mindset toolbox, because it doesn't matter where we live, the color of your skin, your background, religion, beliefs, geographic location, it just doesn't matter. If you are breathing right now, you will have experienced adversity in your life and you will experience it more again, by product of breathing. So, adversity's a common thread amongst every human on the planet. I encourage everyone to pull together their own mindset toolbox, to take the moments in their life and convert them to tools, to build resiliency and confidence in their ability to overcome. I did find, however, as I filled this mindset toolbox that even in a time of crisis, a really rough moment, even with a full toolbox it's hard to reach back into that toolbox and pull out exactly the right tool you need to overcome that challenge.




Ryan Campbell:

Whether it's an engine failure in that split second moment, whether you've just been furloughed, whether you've just found out that someone's been lost within your family, or any form of adversity big or small, we are so overwhelmed when it first strikes. I wanted to create a checklist that we could run through very quickly and very simply whenever that moment strikes. Now, I use my three favorite tools and most used tools out of my mindset toolbox to create that checklist. People often ask why a checklist, why did you do that? Well, as a pilot, when something goes wrong in an airplane, when a red light flashes or a warning buzzer sounds, we don't just start pressing random buttons and pulling random levers, despite what Hollywood may tell you. We use a checklist, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Right.




Ryan Campbell:

We go through a checklist of pre-determined potential problems, we work through the checklist items, and we hopefully end at what is a solution for the problem. So I created a checklist not for aviation but for life, a simple three-step checklist that will not solve all your problems. If I knew the checklist to solve all of the problems in the world I wouldn't be talking to you, I'd be on my yacht in the Caribbean drinking some form of alcohol. But this is a checklist that places you in a more change- and challenge-ready mindset, it is so simple. It's gratitude, confidence and resilience, and we can either go through that or we don't have to with timing. But that three-step checklist is a very quick, easy way to implement my tool.




Warwick Fairfax:

I'm just curious at least in summary, who those three, right? Because there's a-




Ryan Campbell:

They were my three favorite tools Warwick, it is as simple as that, you know? Everything I'd been through, everything I had... When I built that mindset toolbox I didn't just fill it from that day on, I went back to the round-the-world flight, and I unpacked stories, stories that we share in keynotes around America and around the world. We took stories that I had put in my past folder, we pulled them out and we unpacked them. And I learned more and more from the experiences I'd already been through, so these three tools in this checklist are simply my most-used, most transformational tools that have changed my life. And not only do I want other people to potentially implement my three-step checklist, but I want you to understand the power of a checklist culture, and start to create your own.




Ryan Campbell:

Grab your own mindset toolbox, go through the same process, fill it. Look at your top tools that you use every day, look at the challenges you face, start to put together little checklists that you can implement when times are tough, because this year's a tough year and we all need the mental resiliency to kind of bounce back.




Warwick Fairfax:

And I find that fascinating, because you're saying by all means use gratitude, confidence, resilience. But you're saying, make sure that it works if you develop your own, which is sort of a different approach. You could say, "This is three-steps, guarantee it'll work for everybody." But you're saying, "It might work for a bunch, but here's what I've done just so that you can get an idea what it looks like, but create your own." That's a different approach, that almost feels empowering to people rather than saying, "You've got to use this or else." You see, you have more of an open spirit.




Ryan Campbell:

No, we don't want the cookie cutter approach, it just doesn't work in life, it just doesn't, you know?




Warwick Fairfax:

Right.




Ryan Campbell:

Like we're not the same, we're all different. I remember having a lady say to me after a keynote, "Oh, the checklist won't work." She said, "Lists don't work for me." She said, "I write a list, I never get through that list," and I know a lot of people like that. And my pilot brain thinks, "Why?" Like, "This is the best thing in the world." But this didn't work for this lady, so I told her... We worked together and I said, "Let's take one step back. A checklist is a systematic approach, an implementable way that we can just apply whatever it is over and over again. Let's create your systematic approach, so what do you enjoy?" It could be a walk on the beach. Every time you struggle or you have a rough day, take your shoes off, get your feet in the sand, and go for a stroll, watch the sun set.




Ryan Campbell:

It could be anything, it could be the gym, it could be... It doesn't matter, we have to find our own little solutions to those moments of struggle and change. Every time we go through crucibles, or every time we go through adversity or have a rough day, we've got to have tools in that toolbox that we can apply.




Warwick Fairfax:

So-




Gary Schneeberger:

That is a... I'm sorry Warwick, go ahead. I'm sorry.




Warwick Fairfax:

I was going to say, as we kind of wrap up, one of the maybe last questions I have is, how does life look for Ryan Campbell now, these several years later? You've been through a lot, you're doing a lot of amazing things. How would you describe to people, what's Ryan Campbell's life like now?




Ryan Campbell:

Ryan Campbell lives conveniently close to the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee, that's where it... No, a lot of people wonder how my life went after the accident. I went back to walking, and as I said I do walk very... I've got a lot of things still wrong with me. I found my way back into the air, flying airplanes with modified brake systems. But then I went... As an incomplete paraplegic, I learnt to fly a helicopter from scratch, and now have a commercial helicopter license. My goal was to fly helicopters full-time, I was flying a helicopter one day, I had a rock in my shoe, I can't feel my feet, and that rock ate into my foot. So I ended up back in hospital, back in my wheelchair for two months.




Ryan Campbell:

That was my moment where I went, "Okay, we have to do more with these stories, we have to go out and help others who have been through similar things to me." I sold everything except a little airplane that got me back into the sky named Doug, and Doug and I moved to Tennessee. And I now live in the US as a professional keynote speaker, working with organizations from school groups to Fortune 500s, and delivering sessions from eight minutes to 90 minutes on navigating change, overcoming adversity and using our challenges in life to build a better future. And it is my passion, it's my drive, and I just find it unbelievably rewarding. So it's a pleasure to help others learn, and it's a pleasure to learn along with them.




Gary Schneeberger:

That is an excellent segue to our... And I always say this, as Warwick pointed out before we started recording, I always say this on every show, it's time to land the plane. But this really makes sense talking to you Ryan, we've come to the point in the show where it's time to land the plane. But one thing I'd be remiss if I did not, based on what you just said for sure, and everything that we've talked about, if I didn't give you the chance to let people know how to find you and how to find your services online and elsewhere.




Ryan Campbell:

Absolutely. So, we would love to help anyone and everyone, and 2020's rough, and we do a multi-camera virtual keynote. We've delivered this week to all sorts of large companies. You can find our details on all social medias @Ryancampbellspeaking, or you can find me and contact our team directly at ryancampbell.co. It's not .com, I cannot afford the M yet, www.ryancampbell.co. So reach out to us, we'd love to chat, we'd love to help.




Gary Schneeberger:

Before I close, we have with every guest that we have on the show, we have a little form that we ask people to fill out. And sometimes the answers are really interesting, and sometimes they're less interesting. And you gave an answer, I've got to know what the answer to this question that you asked. We have on our form, is that if there's only one question we could ask you, what would you want it to be? And this is what you said we should ask you, so I'm going to ask you this and see what the answer is. You said we should ask you, "What is the most unique purchase you've ever made?"




Ryan Campbell:

Gary, when I moved to America I got in the car, and I drove to Graceland in Memphis, to Elvis' place. I went into the gift shop, and I bought a model pink Cadillac. It was always my dream to own a pink Cadillac, and I spent about $30, and I bought this small model pink Cadillac that sits by my television. Four months later, the opportunity arose to buy a real pink Cadillac.




Gary Schneeberger:

Wow.




Ryan Campbell:

So, I now own a two and a half ton, 1960 pink Cadillac with white leather interior that we drive to Kroger, we drive it to the movie theater, we take it everywhere. I've never seen a machine in my life that brings so many smiles as what Flow, our pink Cadillac does. It led to a whole segment that we do called, "What's your pink Cadillac, what's the one thing you buy that's absolutely ridiculous?" It just makes you feel like a kid, and absolutely illogical. But my favorite ridiculous purchase in my life has been a genuine Elvis 1960 pink Cadillac.




Gary Schneeberger:

Wow, that beats mine. Mine is a seven foot tall Superman action figure in my office, so...




Ryan Campbell:

That is insane.




Gary Schneeberger:

Thank you for being with us, and as we do when we end listener, there's much great content here. But three things, sort of takeaways that you can take with you as you go from our conversation with Ryan. One, and he started talking about that from the outset when he was six years old, and that is pay attention to your passions at a young age. Not everyone who dreams of being a firefighter or a nurse as a child ends up doing so, but they can. Ryan's story is a testament to the truth that the passion of your childhood can be the vision of your adulthood. If you love it you can learn it and you can live it at any age, like Ryan did. A great help to making that happen is to find support and to seek mentors, and then go for it.




Gary Schneeberger:

A second takeaway I think is that we find the tools in our low points to power better times, that's something Ryan said in a conversation we had before this episode. Crucibles are painful, emotionally, financially, sometimes like Ryan physically. And there comes a time, as a friend of Ryan's told him after his plane crash, that we have to decide to sink or swim. So start swimming one stroke at a time, you will get to a better destination than sinking. And the third point that we've spent a really good dialogue here at the end talking about, is build a toolbox to help you as you go through your crucible, and fill it with the thoughts and practices that will help you navigate the steps you need to take to move beyond that crucible.




Gary Schneeberger:

Focus on filling that toolbox with items that build your gratitude, your confidence and your resilience. Ryan says that life is won and lost above the shoulders. We would only add from Crucible Leadership to that by saying that crucibles are overcome, and a life of significance is launched above the shoulders. So until next time we're together listeners, thank you for spending time with us in this episode of Beyond the Crucible. And please remember, as Ryan's beautiful story makes very clear, that your crucible experiences can be painful in a lot of ways, emotionally, financially, to your dreams, to your body, they can be very painful. But they are not the end of your story, Ryan's crucible was not the end of his story.




Gary Schneeberger:

Your crucibles can in fact be the beginning of a new chapter in your story, as they have been for Ryan. And that chapter can be, as it has been for Ryan, the best chapter of all. Because what it leads to, the path it puts you on, is towards a life of significance.

Let’s face it, life can be challenging…

Moving beyond your crucible and bringing a vision into reality that speaks to (and fulfills) your soul, is not easy. Especially when we think that we must do it all ourselves and can’t ask for additional help to navigate our way to a life of significance (a life on purpose dedicated to serving others).  We may even feel that asking for help is a sign of weakness. So, instead of looking to others for support, we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, “I’ve got this!”

But, as competent and gifted as we may be in some (and perhaps many) areas, I have learned that we all need help and community. This is what we at Crucible Leadership call a team of “Fellow Travelers”.

During my days at John Fairfax Ltd. and in the midst of my $2.25B takeover bid for my family’s 150-year-old media business in Australia, I sorely needed fellow travelers; people to help encourage and lift me up, as well as people with different skills than I had. While I did find people who encouraged me (and as a person of faith, prayed with me – which was such a blessing) some meant well but were not as helpful in their support. They viewed me more as someone that could restore the company to the image of the founder (my great-great grandfather), almost like some savior or conquering hero, rather than the person I was who was ill-fitted for the role of proprietor (as I was called) of such a large company. And since I was 26 at the time I launched the takeover, I also needed people with skills and experience that I did not have. Thankfully, I found a chief executive who had many years of senior-level global management experience.  He was both a very good CEO, but also had values that were aligned to mine, as he happened to be a person of faith as well.

After the takeover, especially during those difficult years in the 1990s once the company had fallen out of family control and had gone into bankruptcy, it was challenging, and I needed a lot of encouragement. I am blessed to have a wife who believes in me (which during those days after the takeover failed when I certainly did not believe in myself) was so helpful.  My wife’s love, support and encouragement were like drops of grace on my parched and dried-out soul.

So, what is a team of fellow travelers?  They come in two categories: those who encourage us and those who complement us (that is people with gifts and skills we don’t have).

1. Encouragers

In whatever situation we are in, whether we are in the pit of a crucible, feeling stuck in a job, or facing challenges in bringing the burning passion of our vision into reality, we all need encouragers.

Encouragers believe in us.  They respect us.  They value us.  Yes, they might at times tell us things we don’t always want to hear, but it is always because they want the best for us. They don’t judge or foist their agendas on us.  Instead, they listen, ask good questions and are there to support us in being our best selves.  They believe in us, respect us and lift us up.

Here’s what encouragers don’t do…  They are not naysayers.  They don’t tell us that they always knew we would fail when we have setbacks.  They don’t berate us or tear us down.  They are not judgmental of us as leaders or critical of us as human beings.

What is the action here?  Surround yourself with encouragers,  the fellow travelers with attributes we have just discussed.  Get rid of the naysayers, to the degree you can.  If some naysayers are family members, respectfully listen to them less or frankly not at all.  Life is too short, you, your life and your vision are too important, to be brought down by naysayers.  Besides, if your vision is one that has a higher purpose and serves others — in other words, your vision is part of you leading a life of significance — your vision is too important to be brought down by naysayers who may bring you and your vision down.

2. Complementors

The other type of fellow travelers we need are those who complement us, that is those who have gifts and skills we don’t have.  It is not a sign of weakness to ask for help, it is a sign of strength. A strong, self-confident man or woman knows that they don’t have all the gifts or talents, nobody does.  Again, their vision is too important, too many people are depending on them, for any potential insecurity to get in the way.  A great team enables you to accomplish things and serve others in a way that is simply impossible for you to do on your own.

In my case, I enjoy writing and reflecting.  I enjoy telling my story and the stories of others that enable people to get beyond their worst day, their crucible, or get unstuck from an unfulfilling job or career, to bring their visions to reality.  The vision is too important for me to feel like I can do it all.  Besides, I certainly can’t.  For instance, while I might enjoy writing and reflecting, there are some things I don’t enjoy and am not good at, some things I almost loathe doing.  For instance, I don’t like selling or promoting.

I am blessed at Crucible Leadership to have a great team.  We have people  who are very talented at selling and promoting, as well as people who are great at branding and marketing, and people who are superb at producing podcasts.

I could not bring Crucible Leadership to reality without them.  Fortunately, I don’t have to.  I have a great team with skills and gifts that complement mine; skills and gifts I don’t have.

What is the action here?  First make sure you know yourself; what your gifts and talents are as well as the areas that you are not good at or hate doing.  Surround yourself with people whose gifts and talents complement yours.  But most importantly, make sure that your teammates have values that are aligned to yours and that they absolutely believe in the vision that you are collectively pursuing.

Fellow travelers are essential to your journey beyond your crucible to a life of significance. Living a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others, is best played as a team sport.

Reflection

Order Crucible Leadership here

In this second part of our best-of series, we talk with Sarah Nannen. With four children under 6 — the youngest just a few months old — Sarah’s life was upended as both a mother and a wife when her husband, an Air Force fighter pilot, was killed in a training accident. A former naval officer herself, she understood how to navigate through the material and logistical details of the tragedy, but needed to learn how to move through the emotional upheaval of instantly becoming a widow and a single mother. In this episode, she tells BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax that she needed to lean into her pain to build a new and hope-filled future. Today she helps others who have been rocked by crucible experiences find the emotional strength to not be defined by their tragedies and setbacks. “There is more to your life,” she says, “than the thing that happened to you.”

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

We go so far back in our archives on this week's episode of our Beyond the Crucible greatest hits tour that you may notice the format of the show plays out a little bit differently than it does today. But the takeaways for you are as strong as ever, as you meet a woman who lost her husband in an unthinkable tragedy, but did not lose her hope. And she found her herself a new future.




Gary Schneeberger:

Welcome everybody to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I'm Gary Schneeberger, your co-host and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. And you have clicked play on, we hope you've clicked subscribe to, a podcast that deals in what our founder refers to as crucible experiences.




Gary Schneeberger:

Crucible experiences are those moments in life that are painful, those moments in life that are setbacks, failures, traumas, tragedies, things that happen to us, things that sometimes we have a hand in bringing about. The common thread though, of why we talk about crucibles on Beyond the Crucible, is that very reason the show's called that, how do you get beyond your crucible experiences? How do you get through that pain, not just deal with it and kind of shove it down, but how do you get through it? How do you move on to a better place, which we refer to as moving on to building a life of significance? And as we talk about this today, with me is the architect, the Lego master, if you will, of Crucible Leadership, our founder, Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, this is going to be, I think, a meaningful show.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely, yeah, very much looking forward to it.




Gary Schneeberger:

So our guest today is Sarah Nannen. And Sarah is the founder of Beyond Surviving, a movement that teaches a proactive and renegade approach to mental health and emotional resilience, while navigating grief and trauma recovery. She became a military widow and solo mother of four in 2014, when an aviation accident claimed her husband's life. Her personal journey through rock bottom now informs her work with those navigating painful life transitions who seek to live extraordinary lives. She's devoted her career to teaching sustainable wellbeing and a new paradigm of deep, systemic integration of mind-body healing to anyone seeking to move beyond surviving the ride of life; to move beyond just surviving that ride of life. Sarah's background as a Naval officer informs her leadership perspective with a community-focused model for cultivating resilience and sustainable wellbeing. She is the founder of Renkon Yoga Studio, and hosts The Other Side of Rock Bottom podcast, which launches this summer. Take it away, Warwick.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Sarah, thanks so much for being here, really appreciate it. Before we get into your crucible experience, which some people are like, "Yeah, I don't know if I've had a crucible." Sadly, you obviously do understand that, you know what it was, you know the date, it's... But tell us a bit about who you are, Sarah, and how you grew up, and a little bit about your family, and the lead up to your crucible. Just a little about Sarah Nannen.




Sarah Nannen:

Well, Sarah Nannen grew up in Central Illinois, it's in the middle of America, I guess. Good old farm community US of A, small town. Played sports, was pretty smart, played the violin. Went off to college, did the ROTC thing, became a Naval officer, married my college sweetheart. I was four babies in when I found out that he passed, and so I was just sort of doing that average life. My average life looked like living in Japan at the time, we were a military family on the move. He was a fighter pilot, and once I got out of the Navy, my whole job was holding down the fort while he went off and did the fighter pilot Naval aviator thing all over the world. And I had a lot of amazing experience with that. Our kids were five, four, two, and newborn that wild day that upended all of that everyday, average, American dream kind of thing we were doing, and changed the direction of our life forever. So, that's a little bit about me.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. So until that point, and that was obviously the defining crucible of your life, had you had any others? Had life seemed pretty normal? Wonderful family, siblings, parents, grandparents, was it like, "Life is good, I'm blessed", and was that your experience?




Sarah Nannen:

My mother-in-law described us as the golden couple; that we were both high achievers, and everything we envisioned, we managed to create. We were both very successful. Yeah, I grew up with great, supportive family. Everybody was healthy, we were running marathons in our free time, and short of the hardship and the crucible of going on a deployment and being locked on a ship with 300 men for six months, I would say this is certainly the defining crucible experience of my life.




Warwick Fairfax:

So what made you decide to go into the Navy?




Sarah Nannen:

The honest answer is that I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up.




Warwick Fairfax:

Okay.




Sarah Nannen:

I found myself heading off to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana with an undecided major and a lot of potential ahead of me. I knew that I could be anything, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't have a passion, a purpose, a direction, but I knew that I loved to travel and I knew that I had always been a natural leader. And so it made perfect sense to go off on an adventure, become a Naval officer, travel the world, and see if I could figure out what was important enough to me on the other side of that. So I ended up majoring in Spanish and business, because that seemed fun and useful enough. I got to study abroad a couple of times and then, upon graduation, off I went to meet my ship on deployment.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. And so it's funny, as listeners would know, that it's ironic that you had a Naval career because, even though I'm from Australia, for some reason, we ended up in Annapolis, Maryland, which, as you would know, is home of the US Naval Academy, so you see a lot of people in their uniforms and they all change... It's one particular day a year when they go from whatever it is, white to blue or other way round?




Sarah Nannen:

Mm-hmm.




Warwick Fairfax:

Navy football is big in our town. So yeah, not my background, but definitely we're a Navy town. So what kind of ships were you deployed on? What was your role in the Navy?




Sarah Nannen:

My ships were rather small, gas turbine frigates, destroyers, cruisers. And my role, surprisingly enough as a Spanish major, was engineering. And that's a unique thing the Navy likes to torture their young officers with, is offering them the role of leadership in an area that they have absolutely no idea what they're doing, and the only training you get is from the people who you're responsible for.




Gary Schneeberger:

That does sound like a government job.




Warwick Fairfax:

It does.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Gary Schneeberger:

For sure.




Warwick Fairfax:

So where did you meet your husband?




Sarah Nannen:

We met the first day of ROTC on campus at the University of Illinois, we both had high school sweethearts coming into college, but we had a connection and a friendship that first semester. And by New Year's Eve, we had ended our high school relationships and started one of our own. So...




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow.




Sarah Nannen:

... we go way back to 2000, was the year that we met in university.




Warwick Fairfax:

So I'm assuming you were never deployed together or anything like that?




Sarah Nannen:

I was a Naval officer, he was a Naval aviator, but he was a Marine, and he would not hesitate to remind you that he was not in the Navy, thank you very much. So we didn't ever deploy together. In fact, we were married several years before we lived together, because I was stationed in San Diego and he was in flight school in Pensacola, so lots of traveling back and forth, and getting well-versed at long-distance. Even when we weren't deployed, we weren't often together until I got out the Navy in 2009.




Warwick Fairfax:

So once you were married, how did your service work then? Because with four young kids, how did you manage balance Navy and kids?




Sarah Nannen:

I actually got out of the Navy six months after our first baby was born. I was at that decision point in my career that I had served the time that I was required to, based on the agreement that we created, and having a newborn was kind of a no-brainer. I took a lot of maternity leave and then finished out the last three months of... Really, I was on shore duty, so that helped nicely, that my work was essentially an office job. And when I got out of the Navy, then I transitioned full-time to stay-at-home mom, which was also a very interesting, in hindsight, crucible moment; going from Naval officer to commander-in-chief of the house, and all of the really big life changes that came with being at home with just my amazing baby, rather than fighting the ship all day long, every day.




Warwick Fairfax:

That was a big decision. But...




Sarah Nannen:

Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

... obviously everybody's in a different situation and totally understand that...




Sarah Nannen:

We were tired of living far away from each other, to be honest, Warwick, and I made the decision to get out so that we could finally cohabitate and have the same address.




Warwick Fairfax:

So I'm assuming, given he's a Marine, they don't fly off of ships, I'm assuming they fly off land or...




Sarah Nannen:

Sometimes they do.




Warwick Fairfax:

Okay.




Sarah Nannen:

They're often deployed to aircraft carriers, and they also will have land-based assignments, so...




Warwick Fairfax:

But it meant that you could actually be together as a family, at least a reasonable...




Sarah Nannen:

Theoretically.




Warwick Fairfax:

... amount of time.




Sarah Nannen:

Theoretically. We did have the same address, so that helped.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I understand. And so, how long were you married?




Sarah Nannen:

We were married in 2005.




Warwick Fairfax:

Okay.




Sarah Nannen:

And we were together since 2000, so 14 years, all told.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow, wow. And so it was in Japan when the... And it was a training accident, was it?




Sarah Nannen:

Yes, oddly enough I was in Japan, and he was in the US, in Nevada, at TOPGUN. You may have seen the movie.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah.




Sarah Nannen:

Similar but different in real life. He was at a high-level training command, learning some really exciting things that he was tasked to essentially bring back to his squadron, and train the squadron around, and had a aviation accident that we never saw coming, of course. When they go on deployment, you're worried all the time and anxious, but as a military spouse, I think you take training for granted so often. You know there's risks involved in things...




Warwick Fairfax:

But you think, assuming...




Sarah Nannen:

... but you truly don't expect it.




Warwick Fairfax:

Right, assuming the equipment works and there's no pilot, what have you, you would just assume that you'll be okay, so...




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

Now, you were in the Navy, you understand the Navy, Marine culture. So I'm assuming you see in the movies, and maybe I think you've recounted this; two officers, they're walking down towards your front door. And I think you mentioned, you knew why they were there. You knew...




Sarah Nannen:

It's just like you see in the movies. And even as I describe it, I can sort of feel my body remembering that moment, you have those crucible moments and you can't unsee them. And it truly is, you see them coming up the steps and you just know why they're there. Which is helpful because I don't think they wanted to have to say the words to me. And we both took a while to figure out how to talk to each other about what was actually happening.




Warwick Fairfax:

Do they say the words you just see, "On behalf of a grateful nation..." That whole thing?




Sarah Nannen:

That came more toward the funeral time, in that moment I think they were attempting to just say, "I don't know how to say this, but there was an accident." And at that point I was already in my complete dissociative psychology state of crying and shaking my head, "No", while welcoming them into my home, while remembering that my children were at the lunch table, and trying to navigate all of the complexity of that moment with as much grace and also the overwhelmingly human emotions that naturally come out when you find out that your partner has died.




Warwick Fairfax:

The fact that you were in the Navy, did that make any difference to how you experienced it, as opposed to any other spouse of somebody in the military?




Sarah Nannen:

I love that question. I think it didn't affect, at all, my grief experience and the intensity of the emotions, but it did afford me a comfortability in that environment, that I felt ease in asking questions to high-ranking members of the military that I think others may not have. Even though spouses don't worry about rank, there is this understanding of the structure and power, and I had no qualms about talking to the general in very clear terms and asking questions. And I think I maybe knew what questions to ask, in a way that someone who doesn't have as much exposure to that kind of thing might? So I do think it did help.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, you want to know, "Well, what happened? How could this possibly happen?" Because I'm sure, again, we don't need to get into details, but I'm sure your husband was very good at what he did, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to TOPGUN.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes. Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's not like he's some rookie, first time up in the air, "Where's the control stick? Where's the gauges again?" He knew what he was doing, so I'm sure that was one whole episode. And I'm assuming there's probably a good support system, sadly, this happens, other Navy spouses... You probably could talk to, not just spouses, but officers too, because you were an officer as well?




Sarah Nannen:

Yeah, I think that I had a relationship with a lot of his coworkers, that seems like a strange word, but his peers, that maybe other spouses didn't? Again, there was a mutual respect, perhaps, that I had earned, knowing that I had also served. And so I did feel, again, that I could call up or text someone who I saw as a friend, not just someone that worked with him and say, "I need you to tell it to me like it is, don't sugarcoat it. I know that you're trying to be careful with me, but I actually... I need to know the information, whatever you can tell me is appreciated."




Sarah Nannen:

And that really helped me make sense of it from an objective standpoint. I think a lot of people, particularly in the work that I do now, they are left grappling with what happened, how could this happen? And I think, in an attempt to protect us from what happened, they also rob us of some really basic information that helps us turn this horrific event into a very scientific matter of fact thing. And that was how my son, who was five at the time, engaged with it. When I told him what happened, "Daddy had a crash, they're not sure if he's okay, they're looking for him, but they don't think he's okay." And he said, "Well, Mom, there's helicopters with lights on them, so they'll find him, don't worry." He was just so matter of fact about the thing, because young children don't have all of those social stories to apply on top of the information, it's just information. And so having that access to information, and I guess the privilege, or the self-appointed privilege, to say, "I'm going to ask these questions that other people might not..."




Warwick Fairfax:

So you feel...




Sarah Nannen:

... "feel safe asking."




Warwick Fairfax:

... you at least had closure in the sense that you knew what happened and why, you felt like you were being given the truth, not some, I don't know, whitewashed or sanitized version for spouses, so that probably helped to a degree. And one of the things I think I've read is you have four children, and your youngest daughter, was it a few weeks...




Sarah Nannen:

Yes. Six weeks old.




Warwick Fairfax:

... old? So that's one of, obviously, the tragedies, when you have four kids, and even your oldest at five, it's still young, would have some memories...




Sarah Nannen:

Very young.




Warwick Fairfax:

... but your younger ones, probably, obviously though your little daughter wouldn't have...




Sarah Nannen:

She never met him, actually. She was born while he was already gone, so he watched her birth via FaceTime.




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh my gosh.




Sarah Nannen:

So, the pictures that we have of them together are screenshots of them looking at each other through technology.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, not only do you have the tragedy of your husband, but the sense of my youngest daughter and my younger kids are not going to know their father.




Sarah Nannen:

Mm-hmm.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I want to obviously talk about how you got beyond that, but I think it's probably obvious, but the listeners are still going to want to know, some have gone through your experience, some have not. What were you feeling about those two tragedies, in a sense? Your husband dying, and especially your youngest daughter never having met their father, your, probably, youngest two not really having many memories. So what was your emotions in those weeks and months afterwards?




Sarah Nannen:

I really appreciate you making those two separate things, because I think often people see the story as one giant tragedy with no way out. And it really was this very juxtaposed personal loss in figuring out who am I now without him, and also this overwhelming sense of pity, being too young to be a widow, as everyone liked to phrase it. That I was sort of clamoring to reclaim my autonomy and my existence without him. In a way, it was very projected upon me that my life was kind of over, and everybody knew it, and so they were there to help me suffer through the rest of my life.




Sarah Nannen:

But then there was this other, very clear, desire to protect my children from unnecessary pain and also to really help them experience the pain in an honest way, that was useful to their healing rather than hiding them from it. And so navigating what's the appropriate amount of disclosure and dialogue with a two year old or a five year old around what's happening, and helping them express that in ways that are age-appropriate and even accessible. And there was a lot of information involved, because young children really don't even understand the concept of death, so I had to teach them what that even meant before I could get to telling them what had happened.




Sarah Nannen:

So, luckily I had a really beautiful chaplain with me and he was able to help me create this lesson essentially, and talk about, "Some things are alive, and some things are not alive, and some things have that life in them, and some things don't have life in them. And sometimes the things that had life in them don't have life in them anymore." So we kind of looked at nature as an obvious teaching tool. "And you can see that this plant over here is alive. This tree was alive, but is no longer alive. Remember that time we went hiking and we saw that big tree on the ground? And then you can see a fake plant in the house that clearly does not have any life in it, but looks like it could." So just giving them some basic understanding of life and death, and what it means to be living, and what happens when you're not living was sort of our starting point.




Sarah Nannen:

And I think as they grow and as they continue to grow, they will have new experiences with their grief. They will have new questions, they'll have new understandings. As they learn to identify as themselves, they'll also look back and want to know more. And so one of the things that I've done to help them know him without having known him is that he's always remained a part of our conversations. And so they'll be able to describe him to you. They know what food he liked, they know what teams he liked, they know how he liked to spend his time. And so I've sort of posthumously created this relationship to him for them, that they feel as though they remember, even though it's simply information that I've continued to help them create this image of who he was. And I think that's really helpful, that even though they don't have a lot of memory of time together, they feel like they know who he was still.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. So I can picture just those first few months and years, where you're dealing with your own grief. You're obviously a highly intelligent person, you don't get into the Navy without being a leader, so intellectually you know what needs to be done. It's almost like it's a terrible mission. It's difficult, but I need to overcome, so intellectually you probably, in some sense, had an idea of what you needed to do, but then you're human being, and...




Sarah Nannen:

Yes. Thank you.




Warwick Fairfax:

... sadly, even though you might know the right things to do and you're getting counseling and all the rest, you still have to deal with just, we're all human and it's devastating. So you're trying to be strong, deal with your own emotions. But then you're also trying to help your children and just be in this, to use your phrase, this fetal ball weeping every day, that may be normal and totally fine, but that may or may not help your kids. So it's like, "Gosh, I've got to be strong for my kids, even if I don't feel like I'm particularly strong in any given moment." So, that's got to be... "And I've got to try and help them, when I'm having enough trouble helping myself. I don't think I have any energy to help anybody other than me." Having four children so young, that's got to have been a huge stretch on internal resources, to try to keep yourself sane, and be strong, and calm for your kids.




Sarah Nannen:

It's interesting that I actually had to reverse engineer my grief after that initial shock, because within the week we were on an airplane back to the States with 13 suitcases, and living with my folks, and then seeking a house, and buying a car, and finding a pediatrician. And so there wasn't actually space for me to be anything but strong and mission-driven, as you pointed out, that was my auto-default, was to go straight to strong. And it took, probably, a year before I was able to circle back around to, "Now that all that's done, and we have somewhere to live, and they have a school to go to... Now what do I do?"




Sarah Nannen:

And that was the point where I was capable to start interfacing with the grief and the emotions and the fears and the unknowns and all of the, "Who am I now?" And even the complexity of the social thing that continued where, as much as I would work to find strength in myself or find something to inspire me, my identity always came back around to his death for the people in the world around me. And so it took a lot to really reclaim my sense of self, and then even more to get to a point where I could stand in that and say, "Yes, and?" Because so many people could only see the tragic widow, no matter what I did.




Warwick Fairfax:

Right, so, "Oh, that's Sarah Nannen. Oh, she was the wife of that Navy pilot... I mean, Marine pilot, and TOPGUN, it was so tragic. Oh my gosh, how will she get through this?" It's sort of like, "Sarah Nannen, who is..."




Sarah Nannen:

Right.




Warwick Fairfax:

And the "who is" never changes, it's frozen in time. You're perpetually that age, and that grief-stricken widow, and there's no end. Does it feel like sort of a prison? They don't let you out of the box. That's who you are, and that'll never change.




Sarah Nannen:

It did feel as though I was supposed to climb into that widow box, and let everybody sort of seal me in there, and set up shop, and be happy. Like that, "This is your job now. Your job is to grieve and remember your husband, and help us grieve and remember your husband, and for the rest of forever, this is what we will do. And when Memorial Day comes around, when his birthday comes around, we're going to come back around to you, so that we can grieve together, and that will be your life." And it felt so small.




Gary Schneeberger:

And this is a fascinating point to hear you talk about that, Sarah, you began several minutes back where you said something along the lines of people looked at you like your life was over. And Warwick, listeners who know your story, there's a very similar emotion happened to you when the takeover bid failed. And in some ways, what you just described in talking to Sarah about you're supposed to be in this box, and you're the widow of this pilot, you, in many perspectives, people thought, "Okay, you're the young man who tried to take over the family business and it didn't work." And you were seen like that too.




Gary Schneeberger:

And I think a lot of listeners who've been through crucibles, through really heart-rending crucibles, have felt that experience. That they are frozen in time, to use your words, Warwick, they're frozen in time as a widow. They're frozen in time as a failure. They're frozen in time as someone who's been injured in some way physically, and they've lost some physical part of who they were. And what's great about this conversation is we're about to turn a corner here in talking to you, Sarah, where you did, you have created a new life from the ashes of what was, from even the expectations of people that you were going to stay there. You created a new life just as you created a new and rewarding life, Warwick, from your crucible.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, it's so well said. Obviously don't want to compare tragedies, because it's one thing losing 150-year-old family business, but a spouse? That feels pretty up there as about as bad or tough a thing as you could possibly go through. But in a sense...




Sarah Nannen:

It is a meaningful comparison though. It absolutely is, and I think it's a very universal thread that when we have what you call a crucible moment, on the other side of that, we're asked to identify as a cancer survivor, or as a survivor of that person, or he figured out how to fix that failure, it always comes back around to that...




Warwick Fairfax:

They always see you, and...




Sarah Nannen:

... moment.




Warwick Fairfax:

... in my case, as listeners know, I was 26 year old, just back from Harvard Business School, launched this 2 billion plus takeover, wanting to ring it back, ideals of the founder. It fails. And so, for Australia... It's funny, my dad has the same name as me. He was knighted, so he was Sir Warwick, so I was always called young Warwick. And that's 30 plus years ago, it's a long time. But in the Australian media's eyes, I'm perpetually 26 years old, the idealistic, naive, foolish kid who let a 150-year-old family company go, and I'll forever be young Warwick. I'm in my fifties now. I don't feel like young Warwick anymore, but I'll always be young Warwick. So yeah, the people put you in that box.




Warwick Fairfax:

So in your case, in terms of how you moved on, I love the fact you talked about, even though you're a very strong, driven person, you were sensible enough to say, "I actually need to experience the grief." Some people would say, "You know what? I'm moving on. I'm not doing this grief thing, because I'm not going to be a weak little jellyfish. I'm not going to do grief. I'm going to be strong."




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

I think you had the wisdom to realize being strong doesn't mean to say that you can't move on without grieving. So talk about some of the steps, in terms of how you moved on, and then obviously how that gets into how you help others, because I have a feeling that was... Maybe step one is you got to feel the grief before you can move on.




Sarah Nannen:

It's one of the strongest things we can do, is turn toward it. And what I find over and over, and I did this myself, is that we have this model of grief that the statute of limitations ends when the funeral happens, and then everyone starts looking at their clock and watching how you behave. "Well, isn't it about time you..." Fill in the blank. And so we have that sense of urgency of get on with it, and get on with your life, and figure it out, you'll be fine. And when we choose to come toward it, something changes and that's, I believe, the only way that healing can actually happen.




Sarah Nannen:

What's tough is that the model we're given, to fake it till you make it and put on a happy face, creates this really ruptured reality where, externally, everyone sees us as incredibly strong and powerful and inspiring and doing great. And internally, day by day, we are imploding and crumbling and hurting. And something really damaging happens to the psyche of a human being when you're asked to live in two realities at the same time, and neither of those realities involve your truth. Neither of those realities involve healing. So the performative external world is happening, and maybe you're succeeding at the performance of life, but you're not reaping any of the rewards. You can't experience any of the richness of your lived experience, because internally you're so devastated, and your physiology and your psychology are in such a dissociative, distressed place that you feel like you're sleepwalking through the world.




Sarah Nannen:

And I think there are a lot of people on the planet who have experienced a variety of crucible moments that are stuck in that place because it feels like success. It looks like you're making it. And when we have those moments of pain, we sort of chalk it up like, "Oh, I'm having a bad day. Oh, it's just a hard day today. Or maybe I'm depressed. Maybe I just need some medication. I don't know. I just can't stop crying." And I always invite those people who come toward my work with curiosity to just turn toward that, whatever you're feeling. The fear, the overwhelm, the anxiety, the heartbreak, the tears, turn toward it and be curious about it. What's coming through? What hasn't been expressed? What hasn't been said? What tears haven't been cried?




Sarah Nannen:

Because my experience isn't that unique, in that when something devastating happens that ruptures our reality, interrupts our sense of self, whatever it is; a death, a loss, a failure, a health crisis, there is always a huge amount of stuff to do to triage the moment. Whether it's hiring lawyers, filling out paperwork, packing bags, moving houses, going to the hospital, there's so much to do externally, that that becomes the new dissociation. You distract yourself with the busyness of the work. And we're wired to be capable of delving into what must be done, because humans are amazing and that's part of our evolution, is that our nervous system actually has the capacity to override itself with all of these incredible, useful hormones to make the body parts do the things that must be done to keep survival happening. Very few people have said, "Well, I just laid on my bed for a year and waited for it to get better." No one gets the opportunity to do that.




Warwick Fairfax:

Right. You had four young children, there was stuff to do.




Sarah Nannen:

There was a lot to do.




Warwick Fairfax:

Kids to school, kids to change. But I like what you're talking about. There's the being and the doing. Yes, you got to get on with life, lawyers, probate, homes, moving halfway around the world, but yet you've also got to deal with who you are, because you can't be your best self to your friends and especially your children, unless you deal with that. If you don't help yourself, your kids will be affected, like it or not.




Sarah Nannen:

Absolutely.




Warwick Fairfax:

And you were smart enough to know that. It's for yourself, but it's also for your family. So, that sounds like a cornerstone, what are some other steps which, as well as you help others lean into the pain, but that seems so profound. A lot of people say, "Well, I don't want to lean into the pain."




Sarah Nannen:

It also seems very cruel.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, it does!




Sarah Nannen:

Your work here is lean into the pain. Don't you want to do that?




Warwick Fairfax:

Just jump into the cauldron of molten lava and just feel that fire burning and... Why would anybody want to do that? But obviously...




Sarah Nannen:

A lot of people who start working with me say, "I expected this to be heart-wrenching, painful, excruciating, and I can't believe that it wasn't those things." And what you're asking me to get to is like, okay, well, how do we do this? How do we lean into the discomfort? How do we make time to feel it? And how do we get the resources to feel it in a way that doesn't actually completely annihilate us? Because that's what we expect. And so, I apologize in advance that what I'm going to say is going to sound really simple, and it always sounds almost too simple to even be useful to the people who work with me. And then they're all, of course, amazed later on how life-changing it is. But one of the things that I started with, don't tune me out, is breathing practices and a yoga practice.




Sarah Nannen:

And the reason that that was so incredibly important to me was I was very adept at facilitating an out-of-body experience. I think that was part of why I could be so strong. I will just turn off this part of me, and do what must be done. And so there was a very dissociative experience in the moment of hard times where I wasn't really there, and I wasn't really present, but I could do the things. And so the breathing practice and the yoga practice helped me become more fully embodied. And I realize that this is getting into yoga language, but when we learn how to stay present, physically, physiologically, psychologically, socially, in this human being container that we're walking around in, we suddenly have a whole new experience of our life and ourselves.




Sarah Nannen:

And so these two practices not only helped me come back to myself fully, and fully inhabit myself, and be aware of myself, and be capable of witnessing myself more honestly, rather than just performing my experience. But they also helped me reset my physiology. And I think that that's something very important that we miss, as humans on this planet, in the game of mental health and winning at life, is it's always this external thing. Cognitive behavioral therapy, "I'll just go to a therapist and I'll talk it out and I'll use my intellect and my language to just fix everything." And you can go to all the therapy you want. If your physiology doesn't know that you're safe yet, the therapy will never really actually land. Part of the work on the other side of anything that ruptures your identity, and your existence, and sense of self is that you have to learn how to teach your body that it's not in danger anymore.




Sarah Nannen:

And so the breathing and the yoga was actually this very accessible modality that I could practice without being perfect at it. To, every day, say, "I'm going to learn how to let my nervous system come back to neutral, and out of survival mode, so that not only can I be here in this moment, but I also have access to my modern brain now." Because when we're in survival mode, we go down, down, down the evolutionary chain, way back to that place where everything is dangerous or safe, good or bad. We don't have access to this incredible intellect that's capable of immense and endless solutions to life's problems.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. It's that whole fight or flight, primitive, human being notion. So yeah, I love what you're saying. Yeah, I guess, from my perspective as a person of faith, there's different tools to do, I think, what you're talking about. When I've gone through some different crucibles, for me, prayer, spiritual meditation, for me, maybe it might be reading scriptures. Is there a thought that, for me, some spiritual thought, that some wise person, perhaps up there, is trying to tell me? Obviously there are different ways of doing it. Some, for people of faith, it might be one language, but it can be others. Whether it's meditation, yoga, there are different ways to try to understand what's going on. What am I feeling physically, emotionally? For me, if I feel depressed, frustrated, I have to, "Okay, why am I feeling this?" I'm a reflective person by nature, that's just like breathing to me. So I'll always think, "Okay, why am I frustrated? Okay, what's the issue?" And then I'll try and... I don't know, maybe "deal" with it's the wrong word, but at least name it, recognize it.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes. That's a tremendous tool, is cultivating that emotional intelligence and articulation, so that you understand what's actually happening. Because so often, our language around crucibles is very rudimentary. I'm sad. I'm grieving. I'm angry. And we don't go beyond that. And so, one of the things, another tool, and I want to come back to something you said in a minute, but another tool that I teach people is intentional language use. Being very intentional about what they say and how they say it. Because when you say, "I'm aware that I'm sad right now", it has a completely different energy and meaning, experience, in your physical body, than, "I'm sad". There's this permanence when we say "I'm sad. I'm sad, and I will be sad forever." But, "I'm aware that I'm sad right now" helps you get curious about, "Okay, well, why am I sad right now? Let me name all the reasons." And then what might I be able to do to either express that more completely, or to support the sadness so that it can move through?




Sarah Nannen:

But the thing I wanted to come back around to is when you offered up being a man of faith, I think that spirituality has many directions and flavors and labels and options. And I think that prayer and meditation are accessible to everyone.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely.




Sarah Nannen:

And I think what's the best way that I heard it described was that prayer is speaking and meditation is listening. And so I think we innately do both when we're either in meditation or in prayer, I think, naturally, both happen.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's so important to deal with these things. Everybody's different, but for me, if I get really anxious or something's weighing on me, it affects my stomach, which it does for many people. And I start getting more sensitive to tomatoes or acidy foods, and there's certain foods that, if your stomach is out of whack, you stay away from. But other people, maybe headaches or something, I don't know. But for me, it's the stomach. So if you don't deal with this stuff, not only will affect you emotionally, it will affect you, as you say, physiologically.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

More and more, our science is understanding there's a direct relation between the emotions and the physiology.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes. There's a very good reason.




Gary Schneeberger:

I want to hop back a few seconds to what you said, Sarah, about the importance of language. I'm a word guy. I'm an old journalist, I'm a PR guy now. And I love the fact, as I was reading through your materials, I love the fact that you called your coaching business Beyond Surviving. I love the fact that you have a quote on that website that says, "Let's interrupt the pain and shake up the pattern so you can move beyond surviving. It's time to enjoy the ride." I did a very quick search before we hopped on this interview, because Warwick loves history and he loves historical perspective on subjects like we're talking about. And I went back farther than you usually go, Warwick. And that was Aristotle. And this is something Aristotle said about this very subject, about moving beyond surviving. This is what Aristotle said.




Gary Schneeberger:

"The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation, rather than upon mere survival." Why, in your estimation and your experience, Sarah, why is survival not enough? Why should that not be where we point our compass, our GPS?




Sarah Nannen:

Wow. First, thank you for that quote, what a beautiful contribution. I think anyone who is feeling unfulfilled, feeling alone, feeling unhappy, feeling hopeless... Depressed is kind of the word we like to use in modern America. I think any of us who describe our life that way are in survival mode. And what's so tragic to me is that we've sort of been taught to settle for that, and believe that that's the best we can hope for. That life is hard, and some people get lucky, but most of us just suffer and struggle. Life is hard. And so few of us understand how self-empowered we are, how many resources we have all around us, how much life is a proactive, participatory experience rather than one that's only in receiving mode. And I think we are wired for survival, of course, so that is the default when stuff gets hard, but we've also been taught and programmed and modeled that that's the best you can hope for.




Sarah Nannen:

And what's really important for me, and I'm so grateful for your work, Warwick, and others like us who are preaching this gospel of, "There is more than the thing that happened to you." Jung said, "I am not what has happened to me, I am what I wish to become" or "what I choose to become." And I think it's so often that we, in America, in the modern day, are so quick to still completely identify with our hardships, rather than identifying those as one moment in the time of our life. And I do this exercise with my clients pretty early on, I ask them to create a timeline of their life. And I remind them that when you were seven, your crucible moment was the wrecking of your bike and the bloody knee that you had. And that is such a blip in your past now, but it was a defining moment that you can remember, you can totally go back to in your mind's eye, and feel, in real time, what that was like for you.




Sarah Nannen:

And so I teach people to see that this is not the ending of your story. It's one chapter in this broader context of what's possible. And when you have a crucible, I call it a catalyst moment, when you have a crucible experience, it wakes you up to your life and the ownership of your life and the value of your life in a way that you didn't have consciousness around before. We take it for granted. We'd sleepwalk through life. Our job is to get a retirement plan and a picket fence and a couple of kids and the right car, and we should be happy. And we are not taught to gauge our life by the fulfillment that we experience, or even how to get fulfillment beyond the external and the material.




Sarah Nannen:

So these crucible moments are a gift, and I don't mean to dismiss or minimize anyone's suffering, because no one deserves to suffer. And yet, time and again, it is those individuals who experience some kind of hardship that activates or awakens them to the richness of life, in a way that they will never take it for granted again. They deepen into their relationships, they deepen into their ownership of their life, they create something meaningful. And I know that without this experience, my life would've never taken the trajectory that it did, to the place where I'm incredibly enriched and fulfilled and joy-filled and inspired... Excessively, actually, because of what happened to me, and because I understand how much of a treasure it is.




Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about how that tragedy you went through was a catalyst, just to take you on a whole, maybe mission's the wrong word, but a whole new mission. Talk a bit about that, because it sounds like it was a defining moment in an obvious way, but yet in a way that's not so obvious. So talk about how that launched into a whole new direction, which is fulfilling and, is it wrong to say, in some sense, gives you joy? What you do?




Sarah Nannen:

No, please, I am absolutely joy-filled with my life and my work. And that's one of the challenges, honestly, is that people still want me to be in the widow box. So for me to say I'm joy-filled, and I'm in love, and my life is beautiful, is confusing, because people cannot conceptualize how that could be possible.




Warwick Fairfax:

Do you feel some people might say, which would be a bit cruel, very cruel, say, "Well, to really honor the memory of your husband, you shouldn't be happy." I mean...




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

I don't think anybody would say that, but do you think they're thinking that?




Sarah Nannen:

I don't think they would say it out loud, but I am certain people think that maybe you just didn't love your husband that much, if you could get on with the show so easily. And that is something that I think we grapple with within these catalyst moments, is what does it mean about me if I'm not devastated for the rest of my life by this? And there's a lot of clients who come to me who are afraid to let go of their grief, because the grief is the thing that feels like love now. "I can't see them, I can't touch them, but I can grieve."




Warwick Fairfax:

But the obvious thing is if it were possible to speak to your husband in some strange, metaphysical sense, he wouldn't say, "No, I want you to grieve and be sad the rest of your life." He would say what you would've said if, heaven forbid, your roles were reversed, you'd say, "I want you to get on with your life. Don't forget me."




Sarah Nannen:

Yes. Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

"But get on with your life and live a happy and joyful life." He would say that, right? I'm sure there's no doubt.




Sarah Nannen:

Absolutely. Absolutely.




Warwick Fairfax:

And you would've said that to him if the roles... So how is that dishonoring his memory? I know this is obvious, but as you say, people put you in a box. So...




Sarah Nannen:

It's a demonstration of how small, I think, the concept of love is within our humanity. People are like, "How could I ever love anyone again?" And I say, well, "I have four children and I don't only love my first son. I actually love them all quite equally, perhaps even more expansively because there are four." I think we're so much more capable of vast love, and deep intimacy, and connection, and joy than we realize, because we're sold this story of find your soulmate and live happily ever after, and they'll complete you, and everything will be grand. And so really tearing down the wallpaper of that belief system that the American dream seems to be built upon, and getting real with the fact that there's no person who can complete you or make you feel loved. Unless you are deeply connected to and in love with yourself, you'll never really actually experience intimacy or connection or fulfillment, no matter how great you think your marriage is.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, and that's... I'm not into marriage ministry, so to speak, that's what you hear people say, is if you feel like your husband or wife is the one that's going to complete you, you're in trouble, because you've basically got to be happy with who you are, not seek fulfillment from some other person. So yeah, talk a bit about more what you do, and just how you try and come alongside other people. And I love that phrase, leaning into the pain, and very countercultural. And obviously I'm sure you're not against counseling, but it's "counseling and"...




Sarah Nannen:

No!




Warwick Fairfax:

... right?




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

So, talk about some of the "and", so to speak, that you do to help other people going through grief.




Sarah Nannen:

I'm going to answer this by also answering the question I didn't answer yet, which was, "How did you get here?" I did what I was supposed to do, which was go to all the resources that were thrown at me to solve the problem that I had. And I very quickly realized that many of these people didn't actually believe in my healing either. They also saw me as a permanently wounded project that would need therapy for life, and would always have this deep rift of emotional baggage dragging behind me. And I found myself doing a lot of BSing with my therapist, like, "I know what to say right now because I am a Type A overachiever. So, the right answer when you ask me that question is, I'm doing just fine."




Sarah Nannen:

And I never really got to this place of vulnerability, nor did they ask me to go there. They couldn't guide me there, because I don't think that was a part of their service. And so I had to sort of go off-grid in search for resources that could see me as a human, and could really challenge me to become more curious about what my actual experience was, rather than projecting onto me what they thought it would be and what they thought I should be doing. And what I found there was really useful, but I had to look quite hard for it. And it wasn't packaged as the normal mainstream, "Here's what you do when you're grieving."




Sarah Nannen:

So I decided that I would create it, because one day I did come to a moment in my life where I looked up and around and thought, "Geez, I'm really happy." And this is the thing that nobody told me was possible, let alone real. And here I am. So I guess it's my job to let other people know this is a thing we can do, just in case they're also sort of buying the line that the best we can hope for is surviving.




Warwick Fairfax:

And it's okay to be happy.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

You don't have to apologize, no matter what the tragedy is.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's okay. Give yourself permission. It's okay to be happy. Don't feel guilty. Because I'm sure you have people saying, "I feel so bad, I'm happy."




Sarah Nannen:

Absolutely. I think that's a general theme anywhere you go, if someone experiences pain and then finds themselves happy, they feel it's confusing, it's disconcerting. "How could I be? How dare I?" So essentially what I've done is create this coaching program that's built upon community, and mind-body resourcing, and teaching people tools, and language, and the ability to self-reflect rather than deflect and disassociate. And I started out working primarily with widows, and it was really, and continues to be, really powerful and exciting, to watch them evolve beyond navigating their widowhood, to navigating their lives in a broader context, beyond that label. They can now see themselves as human beings, not widows, and it's exciting, because then we get to do the fun stuff of finding out "Who am I without that identity? I don't have to leave behind what happened. I don't have to forget to heal. I can always have that love story as a part of me and, looking forward, what do I desire to create? What do I desire to experience?"




Sarah Nannen:

We don't get there overnight, of course, there's a lot of terrain to cover, but that is, ultimately, where we head, is getting to the place where the pain feels like a part of the story that they're very familiar with, rather than one they're grappling with. And after a while, I noticed there were a ton of threads that were coming through, because I was also working here and there with people whose father had passed, or their brother had died, or their friend had died. And I just noticed that it wasn't any different than working with the widows. The language was slightly different, but the same fears and concerns and lack of ability to express what they were feeling, and didn't know how to, "I don't know where to go, I don't know what to do!" Was all the same.




Sarah Nannen:

And so this has evolved with time, looking at the psychosomatic experience of navigating a painful life experience, and what is missing in the culture that we operate in. Filling that in with tools, and self-resourcing, and the ability to turn to ourselves with curiosity, and notice what we're experiencing so we can be honest about that, and make choices, and express ourselves in new ways to find our way to the truth of who we are, rather than staying in that box, whatever the box might be.




Gary Schneeberger:

And this is a good time, sorry, this is a good time for us to do a couple things. One, it's about time to shelve the book back on the shelf. But the other thing, Sarah, I would be remiss if, after you explained all of that, I did not give you the chance to let listeners know how can they find out more about what you do and get in touch with you?




Sarah Nannen:

Thank you for that. I'm on Facebook and Instagram, and also have a website. My name is Sarah Nannen. It's lots of letters, so I'm hoping you have show notes somewhere, but if you look for me on the Facebook or the Instagram or connect with me at sarahnannen.com, S-A-R-A-H-N-A-N-N-E-N.com. Write that down for them, so they don't have to remember.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, I will. And you got nothing on Schneeberger for long letters in your name. But I digress. Warwick, I'll give you the last question.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, thank you so much, Sarah. I love what you do. I have this image in my mind, I think of that whole Scarlet Letter thing from, I don't know, Salem, Massachusetts, and it's almost like for some widows, they feel like they have the big W on their forehead.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's okay to have it somewhere, but it doesn't have to be that big. It doesn't have to... You are more than your tragedy, your tragedy doesn't define you.




Sarah Nannen:

Yes. Any of us.




Warwick Fairfax:

I remember in the nineties, I wasn't, as listeners know, wasn't in particularly good shape. And there were some well-meaning people that said, "Gosh, after that tragedy that Warwick went through, and losing all that family business, and he's in pretty bad shape. He'll probably never amount to more than that. He'll always be just a pile of broken pieces." Now, they wouldn't say that to my face, but I felt that. Yeah...




Sarah Nannen:

You knew it.




Warwick Fairfax:

... probably resented it a bit at the time, but it's like...




Sarah Nannen:

Sure.




Warwick Fairfax:

... to me, you want to get in touch with what you've been through. But for me, as I've been on a couple of church board, and a school board, and now with Crucible Leadership, there's sort of a healing balm, healing element, as you're focused on using your pain to help others. It doesn't mean it totally goes away, there's always a scar. But the culmination of just understanding who you are, dealing with that, being real with that... I love that phrase, leaning into the pain, but then finding a purpose for your life, in our language a life significance. That's also part of not being defined by your tragedy. You're more than just that day in Japan when those two Marines, or whoever it was, came down your front walkway. You're more than that hour, that day, that minute. And everybody is.




Warwick Fairfax:

So yeah, I love what you do, and thank you so much. And yeah, it's a great mission, ministry. And obviously it gives your life meaning, purpose, and joy, and wholeness. You now can probably say you're a whole, you're not a disassociated person, you're a whole person, right? Mind...




Sarah Nannen:

I strive to be.




Warwick Fairfax:

... body, spirit. That's the goal, right? Be a whole person with a mission to help others, which you have. So, I think you can really help a lot of other people, and you have, and it's a message people really need to hear. So thank you so much.




Sarah Nannen:

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.




Gary Schneeberger:

And this is when I know it's been a great show, when I have, and I'm going to show it to our YouTube viewers, when I take notes about, "Here are some takeaways you can have for the show" and then Warwick steals a couple of them when he summarizes his statement. So I normally have three takeaways, I'm only going to have two today. So Warwick took number one, which is don't stay in the box. You don't have to stay in the box. That's number one. The way I sort of phrased it was we hear, all the time, that you're never too old to move beyond your crucible. I think what Sarah has proven, and what Warwick has proven in his own story, is it's also true that we're never too young...




Sarah Nannen:

Yes.




Gary Schneeberger:

... to move beyond our crucible, that we are not frozen in time, even if we're young. That's not our destiny forever. And Warwick just unpacked that a little bit, and Sarah talked about it...




Sarah Nannen:

Perfect.




Gary Schneeberger:

... much in our conversation.




Gary Schneeberger:

Another thing that Sarah really made clear in our conversation, listeners, is do not fake it until you make it. Healing is a proactive experience that requires intention and support. Projecting everything's okay while everything isn't okay can deepen and actually worsen the pain of your crucible. Even though it may appear to those people who are onlookers that you're winning, you really aren't. You're only surviving, and survival isn't healing. Do not be an actor in your own life, be a character in your own life.




Gary Schneeberger:

And then the third point, I think, that we can walk away with from this really meaningful conversation, is never settle but strive. Life is hard, but it's also a proactive, as Sarah put it, a proactive, participatory experience. There's more than the bad thing that happened to you. And you can move beyond that bad thing that happened to you, and you can grab a good thing that's waiting for you. And that is what we hope to point you to each week on Beyond the Crucible.




Gary Schneeberger:

So, until we are together the next time, listener, thank you for joining us, and remember that your crucible experiences are indeed painful. They can knock you off balance. They can change, as they did for Warwick and Sarah, the trajectory of your life. But they are not the end of your story. In fact, if you lean into the pain, as Sarah says, if you learn from those experiences, as Warwick has talked about, they can be the start of a new story, a new chapter in your life that can become the most joyous and most rewarding because it leads you to a life of significance.

In this first episode of our best-of series, we talk to Tracy J. Edmonds. From the outside looking in, her life couldn’t have been sweeter: A high-profile executive job with a Fortune 30 company at which she excelled. But on the inside, where she discovered it really counts, her career had come at a high cost because of a self-imposed crucible: not being her authentic self. So she decided to embrace both her figurative and literal wild hair — trading her corner office for a cubicle and tackling a vision that not only meshed with her gifts and passions but also allowed her to live who she truly was rather conform to some corporate mold. She’s found her life of significance in coaching leaders — focusing on other women of color — that to be the best versions of themselves, they have to be the real versions of themselves.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Gary Schneeberger:

When you've done more than 130 episodes of a podcast, you have favorites. More importantly, listeners have favorites, guests who shared inspiring and equipping stories and insights. That's why we're taking the next several weeks for a Greatest Hits Tour, and our first stop is this look at the importance of living an authentic life of significance.




Tracy J Edmonds:

When we talk about being authentic and living your best life, having the career that you want, it always comes down to four components. Self honesty, you've got to look yourself in the face and face the demon, whatever that may be. Or just clearly articulate what you want out of your life and your career. You have to have the courage to own that. So once you say it out loud, you've got to own sometimes what's very ugly, but also the big dream of what you could be.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Then you have to have the confidence to work it out and the resilience to stick with it, because it's never just a straight shot. There's going to be hills, valleys, turns, things you're going to have to navigate, times like I had in my career when I restarted my career where people say, "You're not so good at this." Whoa, ego blow. Never heard that before. But I didn't give up, and I cried about it, and then I said, "Okay, here's the plan."




Gary Schneeberger:

So what is the plan? Your plan to learn and leverage the lessons of your crucible, to put yourself on the road to authenticity and the life of significance that flows from it. The woman dispensing the wisdom you just heard is leadership coach and author Tracy J. Edmonds, whose new book Wild Hair: A Courageous Woman's Guide to a Bold and Authentic Career offers plenty more insight and inspiration where that snippet we just played came from.




Gary Schneeberger:

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. In today's episode, Tracy tells Warwick about the breakthroughs in her personal and professional life that she set into motion by embracing both her figurative and literal Wild Hair truths. She chose to move from a corner office to a cubicle in her career because the success she achieved in the former didn't give her the purpose she found in the latter. She explains it all in truly poetic terms. Keep listening all the way to the end and you'll learn why that word poetic is very, very intentional, and quite beautiful.




Warwick Fairfax:

We're going to get into your book here in a bit, but I have to say that I loved reading your book, Wild Hair, and we'll get into it more. Why? Because not everybody's viewing this on YouTube, people might think, "Well why wild hair?" And it's not just a physical description, it's a meme of your philosophy of life that can help so many women and so many people in general. So I love that whole concept of Wild Hair and the subtitle of the book is A Courageous Woman's Guide to a Bold and Authentic Career. So you've been through a bunch of experiences, some successful corporate career and a lot of successes and challenges, as there is with anybody's career. But I'd love to start just with who is Tracy Edmonds, how'd you grow up, parents, background, what's the story behind the story, if you will, of who is Tracy?




Tracy J Edmonds:

Well, first of all, thanks for having me. This is exciting to be able to have this kind of conversation and talk about crucible moments, because in fact I have a chapter about that in my book. So I'm super, super excited. One of the things though I am not is a poet, so I appreciate the distinction, but to be honest, when I thought about what we could talk about with your listeners, it was important for me not to describe myself in the more traditional ways, but to describe myself in terms of my life experiences, and who those life experiences have changed me into and how I'm ever-evolving. So that's just what came to mind. I did not have it prepared. I wrote it and said, "Hopefully they won't send me a note back and say, 'Okay, this is not what we're looking for.'"




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh, I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was terrific.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Well thank you.




Gary Schneeberger:

It was so good that we didn't know that we could look for it, if that makes sense. I mean truly it was informational and beautiful, so thank you.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Well thank you. Thank you. Who am I? The African American child of two alcoholic parents, who came from very different backgrounds. A mother who came from the south, in Tennessee, who struggled and had a difficult life and who was very, very dark skinned, and a father who came from a sleepy river town and was as fair as you, Warwick. And I share that because I am the mix of that. I am the mix of two people who come from the same race who had very different experiences being Black in their own skin, because that shaped me into who I became and I think quite honestly drove me to address issues of diversity. They both had their challenges, which meant I grew up in a household full of love. I have two younger brothers, we are extremely close. But I also grew up in a household that was emotionally unstable very often, and I found myself stepping into, as the oldest, more of a leadership role to help sometimes my brothers to eat that night, because my parents were struggling with their own addictions and their own issues.




Tracy J Edmonds:

And so those things kind of shaped me into this young woman who believed education was everything and went off to college to be an engineer, two years at Cornell University, and realized that I hated the science classes I had to take, and found her way back home and back into college, but also working while I was going to college. And that began a 31 year journey with an organization, with one organization, honestly, that evolved over time, and a career where I could learn to bring all of that that I just shared with you into who I was as a leader and to help other women, and men, but women especially to lead in their lives.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, one of the things I observed from reading your book is that you're a driven, passionate person, has a heart for the world and to help folks. Where did that drive and passion come from? Did you have a role model? I mean, where were the seeds of that, of who you became?




Tracy J Edmonds:

In my family, quite honestly, my mother and father. And it sounds like such a contradiction because we were not a perfect family by any stretch of the imagination. As I mentioned, my parents had their own addictions and their own struggles, but we were loved and we were taught to be fierce and strong. I can remember my father setting me down on the edge of his bed when I was 12 years old and saying, "Tracy, you are a Black woman in this world. You will have to fight for what you get. You will have to be better than everyone else. And we never give up. We never quit. That's what it's going to take for you to be successful in your life, but you've got it in you. You can do it."




Tracy J Edmonds:

And my mother was an extremely compassionate woman who had struggled a lot in her life growing up as a child in the south. Horrific things that had happened to her and finding her place in the world without losing that compassion. I mean, she was a victim of incest. She was a victim of racism in some of the strongest ways. And for her to still have compassion and love and to see the good in people, I think she passed that on to me. So I have this fierce desire to succeed in this life, whatever that looks like, but a desire to take my challenge and pay that forward. So whatever the journey is, it's there to make me a better person, and hopefully I can share that with others and help them along the way.




Warwick Fairfax:

One of the chapters in your book talks about the value of mentors, and in particular those who are truth tellers.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Yes.




Warwick Fairfax:

You had a dad who was a truth teller. In a sense, he was your first mentor perhaps. And he was giving you encouragement, but he wasn't sugar coating. He said, "This is going to be tough." For a Black woman, certainly, as you were talking. As a young woman, it's probably not easy today. It was probably worse back then, and not that it's great, but there's sadly often always worse. And he wasn't sugar coating it, yet he was encouraging you. And yet you often think biblically they talk about balance of truth and love. Your dad gave you truth, your mom gave you love. I'm sure your dad gave you love too. But boy, truth and love, that will make a lot of folks grow, done in the right way and the right balance. So even though they weren't perfect, did you look back and say, "Look, they weren't perfect but they were gifts in many ways, they were blessings as parents."




Tracy J Edmonds:

Gosh, absolutely. They were absolutely blessings. I would not trade my life growing up as a child for anyone else's. And it was not perfect. I mean, I can think of times when my parents were arguing and I was sitting outside just crying, "Why is my life like this?" You know, you think of everyone else's life as perfect. Of course, we know as we grow older that that's not always the case. But I can remember crying and thinking, "Why can't I have a better life?"




Tracy J Edmonds:

And a moment came in my life when I had the opportunity to pay forward the gift of being a child of an alcoholic family. I had the opportunity to say to a woman sitting across from me at work who was struggling, that I am a child of an alcoholic and I know how that feels, because she had a son. And to be able to have that conversation with her and get her on the right track to get the help that she needed and to turn her life around and become a productive employee. So I don't trade that, because we don't know when those moments of what we perceive to be negative experiences will come back and be the gift that we give to someone else.




Warwick Fairfax:

And that's such a profound thought. And again, I'm being authentic when I say this, there were so many profound moments when I read your book, and that was, I forget exactly how you coined it, but sometimes crucibles can be a blessing. I mean the crucible of growing up with alcoholic parents, you were able to, as you just said, pay it forward and help that woman that I think you describe in the book. Just it's sort of vulnerability for a purpose. You can be vulnerable about things that won't help anybody. It's oversharing. It's like, "And you're telling me this why?" You did something stupid in high school or took drugs or, "Okay fine. So what? What's that got to do with my situation?" And if it has nothing to do with, it's like, "Thank you boss, this is not helping me at all." But in this case it was sharing for a purpose.




Warwick Fairfax:

So that's such a key lesson. Just one last thing on your mother, and obviously she was, as you recount, one of your best friends, cheerleader, you speak very movingly about her, her ability to go through unbelievably difficult if not horrific circumstances and, I'm guessing, not countenance what was done, but yet not be bitter, not let anger and bitterness destroy you. I mean, that's powerful. Forgiveness doesn't mean acceptance, it doesn't mean condoning. It's a very, very big difference. But that must have been remarkable, because she probably didn't, I don't know if she told you everything that happened, certainly as a kid she probably would have maybe given you the PG version or the G, but that sense of not being bitter, that's also a remarkable example as I'm sure you look back.




Tracy J Edmonds:

It was a powerful example and I think what it gave to me, what her example gave to me is that we have the capacity to forgive, for one, but also what we can take from the experiences that we have. I think a lot of times negative experiences happen and we're quick to say, "We just want to push that out, we want to forget about that, we want to move on." But what I have found is that every crucible moment, every one of those times when I thought it was horrific, there was something in there that I could take from it to forge a better version of myself. So that was one of the big aha moments. I spent my twenties just being angry. I mean I grew up in this environment where there was constant emotional upheaval. My parents couldn't hold it together. They were struggling and fighting some real demons.




Tracy J Edmonds:

And once I got through my twenties and got into my thirties and went through that moment where I had a child, I lost my mom... I had lost my father, I lost my mom, I bought a house, I had a child, got the big job, when all those things happened and I didn't know how to juggle that and I essentially started falling apart, I would sit in the rocking chair with my new baby, she was three months old when my mom passed, and I would cry. I could barely keep her my arms because my mom was my best friend and she died suddenly. Didn't know she was sick, found her on the floor, took her to the hospital, dead in five days. And I was distraught. And I can remember saying to God that, "I hate you for doing this." How do you let a woman who struggled so difficultly in her life, who finally was getting over alcoholism, loses her husband, starts drinking again, and then dies.




Tracy J Edmonds:

It's not right. It's just not right. But what that ended up being, first of all, I had to vocalize that, to be brave enough to vocalize that, and then also to realize that this experience of losing her taught me how to be my own woman. I was a mother now and I needed to step up and be that mother. I had immersed myself in work because that's what I knew how to do well. I didn't know how to be a mom. My own mom left me. How was I going to be a mom? I didn't know how to manage my marriage. I was only a few years into it. And what I had been doing since I was in my early twenties was working. So I dug in on that, and I had to realize that that was not what I wanted from my life. We have to think about what do we really, really want?




Tracy J Edmonds:

Self honesty. So I had to be honest with myself and say, "What's most important to me is not work. What is most important to me is this child and my husband and family." So how do I create that? How do I forgive myself for being so angry at my mother and at God, and what do I learn from this? Because my mom had that heart of forgiveness. It was like, "Oh, you have to understand. You don't know someone's journey and what brings them to the point where they show up like they do and not always in the most positive way." And what can I learn about me out of this? And I learned that I was a lot stronger than I ever knew.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's a remarkable thing that your mother said. I mean, to be able to say, "Oh you don't know their journey." And I don't need to know the details, but you do, or least many of them I bet, for her to say that, it's like how can you possibly say, "Oh, you don't know their journey"? I mean I understand intellectually, but how in the world can you say it and mean it? It just blows my mind. I think for most people it's like, "I don't get it." You talk about kind of superwoman, if you will, that's sort of a level of superior character quality that's mind blowing to me.




Tracy J Edmonds:

I think she was phenomenal. I'm a little biased, but what I learned, like you just articulated so well, was her capacity to love, to forgive, and to understand that our journeys do create our testimony. They do create how we show up. And that a lot of things that she forgave people for because of the challenges they had in their lives that created the worldview that they had, the actions that they took, even the ones that hurt her. And so she was amazing in that capacity. And as I sought to emulate that, or actually do the best I could with my environment, I drew upon those things that were taught to me. And I talk a little bit about this in the book, when we talk about being authentic, and living your best life, having the career that you want, it always comes down to four components.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Self honesty. You've got to look yourself in the face and face the demon, whatever that may be, or just clearly articulate what you want out of your life and your career. You have to have the courage to own that. So once you say it out loud, you got to own sometimes what's very ugly, but also the big dream of what you could be. Then you have to have the confidence to work it out and the resilience to stick with it because it's never just a straight shot. There's going to be hills, valleys, turns, things you're going to have to navigate, times like I had in my career when I restarted my career where people say, "You're not so good at this." Whoa, ego blow. Never heard that before. But I didn't give up, and I cried about it, and I said, "Okay, here's the plan." So I think I learned those things from her.




Warwick Fairfax:

Remarkable. So I want to talk a bit about just some of the professional path you've gone through and really led to the book, and now you have your own kind of consulting company to try to help and uplift women, and particularly women of color. And it's probably your mission in life, and maybe that's your God-given calling or universe calling, however you frame it, which is awesome. But you had a very successful career and became Chief Diversity Officer of a very large company. So talk about some of that journey, because there seemed like a sort of a challenge in which, and I think as you articulate very well in the book, for many women, and I think as you've mentioned, women of color, there's a sense of, "Oh I need to do certain things to be corporate to fit in," because otherwise you don't rise up the ladder, you'll hit a glass ceiling.




Warwick Fairfax:

Talk about just that journey that you and others have been through, and why that whole Wild Hair metaphor is so important, because I thought that was just a brilliant way of articulating that message and your journey. So talk a bit about that whole Wild Hair meme and the whole wanting to fit into the perceived corporate mold.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Absolutely. I kind of grew up in corporate America. So I started my career in my early twenties in a frontline role. Worked for a major insurer in the state of Ohio really just processing health insurance claims. And I spent, as I mentioned before, 31 years at that company. And that company went from being just a statewide small insurance company to a national Fortune 30 public company, one of the most prominent in the field. And during that time, I went and achieved degrees, got married, had children, and navigated my way through that. But for a good portion of that part of my life, for almost 20 years, I would say that I wasn't really authentic. I wasn't really owning my career. I figured out what it took, or what I thought it took, to succeed in that environment. And that meant keeping my hair straight, looking as close to white as I could, and playing the corporate game, being the corporate soldier.




Tracy J Edmonds:

And that worked very successfully for me until I reached a level where I was right below the executive ranks, just about to make it into all the big bonuses and packages. And I was pregnant with our third child, and I kept hearing this voice in my head that was going, "What are you doing? How did you get here?" I'm like, "What? How did I get here? Well, I worked really hard and I did all these things and how did I get here?" And it wouldn't go away. It stayed in the back of my mind saying, "How did you get here?"




Tracy J Edmonds:

And the reality was, I was miserable. I had achieved success. I was making good money. I had the corner office, literally I had the corner office that overlooked a little brook in the back. It was beautiful. I had an assistant that sat right outside my door. And I was miserable. I was on the phone from morning to evening; I was exhausted when I got home. I wasn't as fully engaged with my children. And I'm going, "I've worked for this company 20 years, but how do I reach this point?" I was doing something I didn't even care about. I came to a company for tuition reimbursement and 20 years later I'm a regional vice president of operations with 300 employees and I'm going, "Okay, how the hell did I get here?"




Gary Schneeberger:

And that's an interesting crucible to discuss because, in essence, it's a crucible experience of success, right? There was a feeling of, I think you wrote somewhere, sort of a feeling of being trapped in the success. And most people don't think of crucibles as "good things that happened to us." But as the old saw goes, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. And as you bore more deeply into that good thing and explored that corner office and explored that assistant outside your door, you realized what it took to get there was to subjugate your personality a bit, to subjugate who Tracy was. And that was the crucible.




Tracy J Edmonds:

That's absolutely right. I realized that the "success" that I had in my career was primarily due to what others saw in me. And now don't get me wrong, I benefited by a great paycheck, a lot of perks, nice house, nice car, wonderful things that came from that. And I didn't take a job I ever didn't want, but it was because others saw something in me, and they wanted that. It was never about what I'd want. And so I had succeeded myself right into the crucible and I was burning up; I was literally burning up because I was miserable, it was inauthentic. I came there for tuition reimbursement, my God, and I'm still there 20 years later doing something that I found myself not caring about. And so my moment was when I realized when the dissonance and the voice in my head got so loud, I had no choice but to answer it.




Tracy J Edmonds:

How did I get here? And that's where those four steps we talked about, and I talk about in the book, of being self honest, having the courage to face what you learn about you, the confidence to execute a plan to make that happen, and the resilience to see it through, come into play. The Wild Hair was the moment when, even after I made the transition and I left what I knew and moved into human resources, so I did the soul searching, the self honesty, I navigated a path into a new role and I built myself up. But even as I was in that space, I still was kind of playing other people's game, until finally I said, "You know what? I need to be me. I have got to do me."




Tracy J Edmonds:

And my hair was an expression of that. And not because I was trying to do some big thing that stood out and shocked people, but simply because I had been tired for years of the process of making my hair look like white hair. That process took a lot of time. That process damaged my hair. That process was not what I really wanted. So it was a big decision to say, "I'm going to let this wild hair out, simply because this is who I am and what I want at this moment in time."




Tracy J Edmonds:

And when I did that, oh my goodness, let me tell you. There were people who could not close their mouth. They literally jaw dropped, "Oh my God." And you could see the look on their face because it was something so unexpected for them to see me look in this way. There were others who absolutely loved it. It was like, this is you. This feels like you. And it was my kind of Wild Hair moment. But what it really stood for is finding that Wild Hair, that thing that you are at a crossroads over, and handling it and addressing it and doing yourself in the process, being authentic.




Warwick Fairfax:

And it inspired other people, right? They said, "Wow, maybe if Tracy can do it, maybe I can do it," right? They admired your courage, and was like, "I can't believe she did that. I'd be too scared to." But you sort of laid a trail, if you will, for other women, other women of color. Because you write in the book, you'd spend hours on a Saturday or something, we're not talking five minutes. And there's a beautiful moment where the person did your hair, said something like, "Finally," or cheering you on. And yeah, people don't like to say anything, but when you do something it's like, "Oh, hooray."




Tracy J Edmonds:

Well you know what? I took a stand, and in this case I took a stand on my own beliefs and what I wanted for myself. But it has become symbolic for me in terms of what I'm really trying to do. So when you talk about purpose, I stand unapologetically for women. I stand here, all women, no matter what shade we come in, I want to be that inspiration. I want to be a source of affirmation more than anything. I want to affirm them, that when we don't look like the majority, it's still okay. You are affirmed. And I want to be that strength for them, for them to lean into their own leadership and show up in the way that is most comfortable for them.




Warwick Fairfax:

And you mentioned some statistics in the book, which I think most people are probably pretty familiar with, about women getting paid less than men, less women in the boardroom, the corporate C-suite, and the stats, according to your book, which I'm sure is true, it's even worse for African American women or women who are minorities relative to women in total. So it's not easy, but you are really preaching a different message, a different sermon, if you will, than some. Some women would say, "Well the key to success is: fit in. Be like the corporate folks. Be more like the male executives." And you are saying there's a different road, and it might actually be more successful, but at least you'll feel better about yourself whether it works or not. I think, not to put words in your mouth, I think you believe not only will you be more true to yourself, it actually might be more successful than trying to be somebody you're not. Is that kind of a fair summary?




Tracy J Edmonds:

I think that is a fair summary, because I have found, at least for me, and it's not just for me quite honestly, the women that I've coached, when I was true to myself, whatever that meant, if that meant the hair, if that meant putting my voice in the room, whenever I didn't allow that dissonance between what others expected of me and what I wanted to be, when I closed the gap between those two, I was more successful. I had more impact. My career evolved, and it happened for other women as well.




Gary Schneeberger:

Now Warwick, said he doesn't want to put words in your mouth, but I will put words back in your mouth, Tracy, because you and I have worked together a little bit on a press release for your book, which is coming out soon, which in fact by the time this airs may indeed be out. But you said this, I wrote this note down on something you said on this very subject, you said this, it was so good, I wrote it down and put quotes around. So I'm putting these words back in your mouth here on the show. "No matter where you work, it always comes down to your values," you said. "If you can't express your realness, you don't need to work there."




Tracy J Edmonds:

Absolutely. I wholeheartedly believe that and I advise others on that every single day. I had a really powerful moment with a young woman who met with me after I participated in a panel for the United Negro College Fund. So working with UNCF, they have a leadership program for their college students and they bring professionals and executives together to speak all the time. And I had my natural hair at that point. And afterwards this young woman comes up to me, beautiful, long natural hair, African American young woman, and she says, "I have to talk to you. I am beginning my interviews for internships, and I've spoken with my mom and my aunt and they both are telling me to relax my hair and to straighten it. And I really don't want to do that. That's just not who I am. But I'm afraid I won't get jobs."




Tracy J Edmonds:

And I told her, I said, "You know what, I'm going to stand up, I'm going to counter your mom, but are you comfortable with your hair?" "Yes." "Are you able to style your hair in ways that you believe will be professional? Because let's be real too, we have to know our environment. So can we style our hair or shape it in a way... I mean even people who have straight hair come to work with styles that are appropriate, colors that are appropriate, for the career that they want. If you're able to do that, my advice is for you to wear your natural hair. Because if they cannot accept you for who you are, when you show up in a professional manner, and you are capable of doing the job, then you don't want to be there." You don't want to be someplace where you have to subjugate who you are.




Tracy J Edmonds:

The challenge is when we get into environments, there's so many cues that we get, even when no one says directly, "Be less, be different, be straight-haired." What you see around you sends you those messages. So when I looked up, as I was growing in my career, and I would look up, no one looked like me, no one. When I would sit in the talent conversations and they would talk about the successful leaders and the folks who should move up in the succession ranks, typically there was something wrong with the folks who came in a little bit browner skin. There was something they just had to work on. "We love her, she's great. If we could just hone off this edge."




Tracy J Edmonds:

And so that, as you listen to that, you start to say, "Oh I better hone that edge down. I better straighten the hair," because when I see what is successful, it doesn't look like me. So part of what we have to do when we embrace our authenticity, part of it is we are creating the path for others. We are breaking new ground, we're breaking glass, to say this is what it takes and this is how it can look. Look at our vice president. This is how it can look.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely.




Tracy J Edmonds:

And be successful.




Warwick Fairfax:

It takes courage to be authentic. It won't work always. I mean I'm sure part of what you counsel is be careful where you want to work for, some environments are more friendly than others. None will be easy, but there's impossible, difficult, challenging, maybe perhaps you'll get there. But okay, if you can go for the maybe rather than you are sure to fail, because no matter what you do, they won't give you a chance, well maybe you avoid those ones. But there is, I think, the power...




Warwick Fairfax:

And we live in a culture where increasingly a lot of young people of all backgrounds, they want authenticity, they want vulnerability. We had a guy on our show, Chris Tuff wrote a book, The Millennial Whisper, and a lot of HR research shows that young people, they want real, "Give me the straight scoop, Don't tell me the pandemic's going to be over tomorrow. Be real with me. Tell me what's happening. Be authentic, be vulnerable." So there is part of a societal trend in that manner. It doesn't mean it's going to solve everything, but it helps a little bit. Even a couple little ripples or waves can be helpful.




Warwick Fairfax:

But it takes courage because you think it may not work, and it probably hasn't worked for decades or hundreds of years, but just being who you are and being willing to share some of your experiences, which may be very different than your boss', your coworkers', your life experiences. But that provides a basis of connection, of sharing stories. And sometimes we can be our own worst enemy, again, not saying it's people's fault, but by not sharing and trying to fit in I actually think it makes it harder in some ways. I don't think it makes it easier. You may think it might, but it's like people might say, "I don't really know who that person is, they're just so tight lipped." If you want to have an excuse, you're just actually giving them excuses in some sense. You're not helping yourself. I don't know, in some ways it's a bit like jumping off a cliff, but by being authentic and being vulnerable, it actually can create more connection and give you a greater chance of getting promoted. And not always, but that sounds like radical stuff. Does that make any kind of sense?




Tracy J Edmonds:

No, it makes total sense to me. When we're vulnerable and we are ourselves, we create a human connection, and that's very natural. Humans desire connectivity and connection. That's part of why mother has a baby, they lay the baby skin to skin. They want connection. It's a part of who we are as human beings. And it's interesting, because I'll tell you another story that when I was Chief Diversity Officer and I was doing a tour, if you will, where I was speaking about our plan for diversity, but I would talk about my hair, because what I wanted leaders to know is that there are subtle cues, like we talked about, that say, "You don't fit in." And I talked about my journey to my hair, what I shared with you all. And after that, lots of people come up to me, primarily women come up to me, because women can relate from, not just African American women, but keeping their hair from being gray.




Tracy J Edmonds:

I have a woman who told me directly that she had a leader tell her, "And get rid of that gray because you look old." Because she grayed early and she was in her twenties when she started to gray. But here's what really got me, is a white male came up to me afterwards and said, "Thank you for sharing your story." So I was a bit shocked. I said, "Okay, sure." Because he's in the majority, look around the room, there's a bunch of him. So I'm like, "Sure, you're struggling. You're really struggling to make it to the top."




Tracy J Edmonds:

But he said, "I have often not felt that I could fit in because I like to wear a beard, but none of the men here wear a beard. And I'm going to start wearing a beard because that is what I like to do in the wintertime. But none of the men here, none of the executives here, none of the folks who report to the CEO, they don't wear beards. And I didn't want to be unsuccessful, but that's who I am." And I was just so surprised that that resonated for him in terms of how he wants to show himself to the world.




Warwick Fairfax:

And there's a sort little secret here that people I don't think fully realize; every human on the planet is insecure. Some show it by their shyness and reticence, others by their bravado and arrogance. But arrogance is just a sign of insecurity, deep insecurity frankly. And so we're all like that. I mean, it's funny, I mean grew up in about as different a background from you as is possible.




Warwick Fairfax:

I grew up in Australia from a very wealthy, affluent, 150-year-old media dynasty, very respected family in the community, because we owned the equivalent of The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. So it's one thing to have money, it's another thing to be respected for generations as positive contributors to society. So you sort of hit all the benchmarks. You can have money but be vilified. But yet, Australia being a very egalitarian place, which is good in a lot of ways, even though I went to a very good boy's private school, everybody would say, "So you think you're better than us, do you?" Because their dads or mothers, they were bankers and lawyers, which you make a fair amount of money, but that's not media mogul level.




Warwick Fairfax:

So in my own small little way, it's like I wanted to be normal, I wanted to fit in, but I felt like I was in a class of one, because nobody was sort of like our family. So very different background, not trying to compare, not saying, "Oh it was also terrible." It wasn't. Nothing compared to what your mom went through. But my point is, as I was starting to talk about my story, it's like, "Who would want to hear my story about losing a 150-year-old, $2 billion business? Who would care?" And the time that changed for me is... We go to a non-denominational church in Maryland and I shared my story with just some regular folks and it's like they said, "Thank you, Warwick, your story helped me."




Warwick Fairfax:

How in the world can my story help any other human on the planet? Because nobody's gone through what I've gone through in that sense. Not that it's so bad. But it's, in a small way, a bit like your story. How in the world can a Wild Hair example of an African American woman help some white guy? How in the world? But it could. So I've learned in my own small way how your truth, your story, if it's shared with authenticity and vulnerability, can actually help other people. We think, "Oh nobody can relate to me, because I'm so different." In a very different way. I've sort of, not felt what you felt, but you get what I'm trying to say, is people tend to be insecure and tend to be, "Nobody really would understand me. If I tell them about who I am, nobody will. They'll laugh or they'll reject me," and every human's like that.




Warwick Fairfax:

So when you share your truth, it allows other people to do that. And it won't solve everything but it'll help more than you know. Anyway, a long winded way of saying I agree with you, but does that kind of make sense at all?




Tracy J Edmonds:

It totally makes sense and I think that that's a very powerful point in these times in particular. So when we think about how divided our country has been, and continues to be quite honestly, that power of human connection is where we can start to build communication. So my story and your story may seem like they don't relate to the people that we tell them to, to our audiences, but invariably we have someone who says, "You know what? I get that, because here's my story." And what that created was communication and dialogue and understanding between two people at a human level. And once we can start to really humanize one another, we can build from there, in terms of the issues that we address. And we may not always agree on things, but we've reached a place of commonality, of human kind.




Tracy J Edmonds:

And I think that's what's so critical in resolving some of these issues today. Because, like I said in my bio, I am an intelligent mother of a Black son, and I worry daily for his life simply because of the skin he's in. And so for me to be able to make connections with others who don't look like me and have a different point of view, that's powerful. That's how some of these issues can be resolved. And maybe one day I won't worry every night.




Warwick Fairfax:

I think what you're saying is so profound, because when you know somebody and their story and you humanize them, it's hard to hate somebody that you view as a human being. I'm not an expert in racism; I'm not a psychologist; I'm not a sociologist, but just looking at history, people who are hated, often it's because of gross ignorance, and you don't know them as people. You think of them as objects, whether it's Nazi Germany, or wherever. There's a lot of terrible examples of racism and inhumanity.




Warwick Fairfax:

But you start to know somebody's a real person, you might have all sorts of baggage and all sorts of screws loose, but it will tend to maybe melt the iceberg a little bit if you treat them as a human, if you try to seek to understand them. I love that phrase of St. Francis of Assisi's: "Seek first to understand, then be understood." Which sounds really radical, what do you mean? But your mother was actually living that in a lot of ways. Again, I'm not excusing anything, but the more we can try to understand people who are different than us, it's hard to hate people that you like and care for and understand, and it makes it harder. And why wouldn't we want to make hatred harder and coalitions more possible?




Tracy J Edmonds:

And we move from labels putting me in a category of Democrat or Republican, Trump supporter. I mean we get away from the labels and we go down a layer and we start to see each other as like you said, humans, individuals, feelings. There's a lot of similarities amongst the diversity.




Gary Schneeberger:

And a key way of doing that is what this conversation has been sort of orbiting around, and that is Wild Hair, right? It's the metaphor of Wild Hair, meaning the true essence of who you are. You are far, far more, Tracy, than your hair, but your hair is emblematic of who you are, and to suppress that denies the world the opportunity to know you, denies you the opportunity to be known by the world. And that's why it's so important, why you've discovered such freedom to pursue new things in your career, when you've made that decision to let that essence of yourself, that emblem of yourself, show through.




Tracy J Edmonds:

No, absolutely. It's about kind of giving yourself that gift of acknowledging and being everything that you can be. And that means you can't deny part of your essence. We can only rise to the level of our authenticity. So we only go as high as we keep it real. And so we have to be, again, that self honesty comes in, and sometimes that's depicted externally, like in my hair, but other times, sometimes, most times, it's that inner work, of what I really want and having the courage to pursue it in your career. So that's really important.




Tracy J Edmonds:

What I try to do with everyone that I coach is tap into the sense of what really defines them, their values, what is important to them. It starts being from a place of values and what you value in your life and the change you want to make in this world. And then we can define our careers in lots of different ways. We can't let other things dictate who we are and what we value.




Warwick Fairfax:

And I just want listeners to understand what you just said, because it's so profound. I love in your book you talk about authentic values alignment, more than just work life, which is related but slightly different. But just helping listeners, whether it's African American women, women in general, or people in general, is just be true to who you are and what you believe and follow a purpose that's in line with those values. We actually talk about this, in a sense, in crucible leadership is understanding your values, belief systems, faith, wherever it comes from, and having a purpose that aligns with that. And then as you start to make career and job choices, it's like, "Okay, does this organization, is this going to embrace who I am and my value? Can I be my authentic self?" If I'm not, then see ya. Moving on to the next place. And if you have some drive, there will hopefully be some options.




Warwick Fairfax:

But that is so true, especially with young people starting out. And you can obviously help folks in their forties, fifties, beyond. But helping young people learn this at the beginning, rather than later on, that's so huge. I mean when you talk to people, especially let's say young women of color, do they hear what you're saying, or do they say, "That's good for you, Tracy, but this isn't the real world." You said, "Well, I've lived in the real world for decades." But do you have some challenging conversations in which they say, "I'm not buying it, I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid. This is Disneyland. I mean, what are you talking about?" I mean, how do people that you're trying to persuade of your message, how do they respond? Do they hear you or do they just think you just full of it and just don't know what you're talking about?




Tracy J Edmonds:

Sometimes it is challenging for the younger generation in those conversations, and I test this out on my children, who are 35, 32, 23, 20, the ones that are out there in the workforce. And I find that those that are a little bit older millennials, the thirties, tend to pick up on this because now they've lived a little bit and they've seen this. But the conversation with the 20 year old, 23 year old, they come from an environment, and I don't like to label groups, but I think what we can say about that generation is they are a generation that had access to technology from birth. Unlike me, I didn't. I grew and then technology came in and I learned it. And what that has done is it's created this sense of hyper connectivity, this sense of immediate gratification, this sense of access. And so those things are happening constantly. And there isn't always the time made to reflect on values.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Values honestly get shaped by what they are connecting to and seeing thrown at them in so many ways. So I literally had a conversation with my son a couple of days ago where we were talking about the amount of crime that we're seeing in our city, in the city of Indianapolis, and especially the Black men who are being killed or killing one another. And the conversation centered around what kids or young adults their age want. And it's money, it's success. And when you come from an underrepresented and a socioeconomically challenged area, you don't always see the ways to get that that are safe and honest and values-based. What you see is, "How can I get this in a way that may not always be legal, it's the quickest way to get there." So sometimes I think that the much younger end of the millennial generation does struggle with defining their values.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Now I was pleased to say, and I have to give my son a plug, that he talked about what he had learned at home. And while he shares their perspective of, "I want it now," there are just absolutely some things he won't do to get it, in terms of illegal things that he just won't do to get it. And so we as parents, we play a strong role when we show up authentically and drive a values-based family system. But also we have to remember that our children are impacted by so many things outside of our control.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's really a values war that they're going to learn these lessons at some point, but hopefully it's not like on their deathbed. And one of the things we talked about is legacy. When you're having your last breath, or it's your kids and grandkids at your funeral, what is it you want them to say about you? At that point you don't want to say, "Yep, I was married three times, my kids don't know me. Oops." You don't want to be having that as your last thought.




Warwick Fairfax:

And we talk a lot about success versus significance. I mean there's a reason we talk about lead a life of significance. And again, this is an area where I know something about, because I grew up in about as wealthy a background as you can. And I can tell you there's a lot of wealthy people that are unhappy, kids on drugs, on their third or fourth marriage or beyond. I mean, okay, you have all this money and you're miserable. So what? It is possible to be successful, have money, and to be a blessing. Let's say you are focused on others, perhaps, maybe philanthropic, but there's a way that money can be a blessing. It doesn't have to be a curse, but the idea that money makes you happy, that's a lie that some of the world preach. But everybody realizes that at some point. But you don't want it to be on your deathbed when it's like, "Oops."




Warwick Fairfax:

I get why a lot of young people are thinking that way, but it's a false god, it's an idol, at the risk of getting spiritual. You can be successful, you can achieve, you can go for it, and be happy. You want to be happy? Think of others on the way up, think of the bigger picture. Don't just think of yourself. A self-motivated vision won't lead to joy, if that makes sense.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that is a perfect time, I think I heard the captain turn on the fasten seat belt sign, it's getting close to the point that we're going to land the plane. But before we do that, I want to do a couple of things, and, Warwick, I'll give you another chance of course to ask Tracy a question. But first, Tracy, first thing is how can listeners find out about your book, Wild Hair? Where can they find out more about you and about your book?




Tracy J Edmonds:

Absolutely. They can go out to my website. It's tracyjedmonds.com and it's Tracy with a Y.




Gary Schneeberger:

And Edmonds with an O.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Edmonds with a O. That's exactly what I was going to say. And on there you'll find out everything about me and you can scroll down to the bottom of any page and subscribe to get information about the book release and to stay in touch with me.




Gary Schneeberger:

Fabulous. That last bit of conversation that you and Warwick had, Warwick was talking about legacy. And, listeners, if you've been with us from the outset here, you heard early on in the conversation, Tracy said to me, "Well I'm not a poet." And that comment came from something that happened, unless you're watching us on YouTube, if you're listening to us just in a podcast app you didn't hear the whole thing, and that is we ask guests to give us their bio. And most guests copy and paste from their corporate page. Here's their bio.




Gary Schneeberger:

Tracy did something different and I think better and beautiful. Tracy wrote what I described, what Warwick described, as a poem. And I'd like you, Tracy, as we do begin to land the plane to just read for listeners, because I think this is a perfect legacy. If one's going to leave a legacy, what you wrote here is a great legacy of your life from stem to stern. So would you read what you wrote to us as your biography?




Tracy J Edmonds:

I'd be happy to. I am a daughter, sister, mother. A wife, a friend, a survivor of loss, a rebuilder. I am an entrepreneur with depression, a speaker with anxiety, a successful Chief Diversity Officer, and a recovering corporate soldier. An author, a listener, a fearful, intelligent Black woman with a son. An open mind, an open heart. A leader, a Lakers fan. I am a failure fighter success, complicated, multidimensional, unexpected. A coach, a consultant, a fierce believer in possibility, always growing, real.




Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick, you're braver than me to say something after that. I would wrap, but I'll let you have the last question and then I'll wrap the show after you and Tracy have a chat.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I just want to say thank you, Tracy, for being here, and I just found your message really inspirational, just that metaphor of the Wild Hair. It's funny, in spiritual circles, actually baptism, they talk about an outward manifestation of an inner transformation. You go to baptism class and a baptist church. I mean my church isn't Baptist, but I guess philosophically I guess it probably would be. And that's, in a sense, what you're talking about. It's an outward manifestation of the inner transformation, being authentically yourself. I love that. Just championing women of color, in particular women. But I would say your message is focused on that.




Warwick Fairfax:

But I think it is helpful to all human beings on this planet, being yourself, not compromising, being true to your values, living a life of purpose that's based on your values. That's a message everybody needs to hear. And I'm an optimist by major, so all things being equal, that will help you be more than less successful, though I'm not naive. But that's a message that I'd say all people need to hear. So I just found it very inspiring and thank you so much for being here.




Tracy J Edmonds:

Thank you.




Gary Schneeberger:

Well that's interesting. I say to Warwick, do you really want to follow what Tracy just said? And then Warwick steals what I was going to say. That's pretty much the summary I was going to give. The idea about crucibles being an opportunity to ask, "What can I learn?" The idea of embracing authenticity and following your values, as Tracy calls it, authentic values alignment. So Warwick, it's funny you didn't really follow Tracy, but you stole from me, which is great because you're the host of the show and that's the way it should be.




Gary Schneeberger:

So with that, listener, we want to thank you for spending this time with us today. And we have a little bit of a favor to ask you, Warwick and I do. If you like what you've heard here, please click subscribe on the podcast app on which you're listening right now, trundle over to the spot where you can leave a rating for us as well. What those things do is allow us to get the show out to more people and more conversations like this one with Tracy Edmonds, that offer hope and healing through times of crucible.




Gary Schneeberger:

And speaking of crucibles, remember this as we part for today. Your crucibles are painful. There is no doubt about that. What Tracy described here today was some painful times, what Warwick has described from the outset of this podcast that we've had here, has been some painful times. Your crucibles are real and they are painful, but they are not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning of your story, and that new beginning for you can be the start of a chapter in your story that's the most rewarding chapter yet. And the reason why is because, what Warwick said and what Tracy explained, both of them in their own ways have made this to be true, why it can be the most fulfilling time of your life is because in the end, that road you're on, when you learn the lessons of your crucible and apply them, is a road that leads to a life of significance.

This week we tie a bow on the package that has been our special summer series, LIGHTS, CAMERA, CRUCIBLES: What Our Favorite Movie Heroes Can Teach Us About Overcoming Setbacks and Failure. Host Warwick Fairfax and cohost Gary Schneeberger discuss five key learnings from the eight episodes that comprised the series – spotlighting such highlights as Captain America’s oft-repeated mantra of “I could do this all day” as he faces challenges to John McClane’s never losing his sense of humor as he encounters an endless barrage of crucibles in DIE HARD.

Added into the conversational mix are additional stories that spotlight the takeaways from the series with some examples from prior podcast guests and Warwick’s and Gary’s own experiences.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Speaker 1:

Who are you under there? What are you hiding?




Speaker 2:

My son dreamt of a better world. That's why he saved me.




Speaker 3:

You can go to any timeline, any universe. Why fight to save this one?




Speaker 4:

What could be greater than a king? The hero.




Speaker 5:

I just got goosebumps.




Speaker 6:

If we don't stand up, no one will.




Speaker 7:

Come with us. It's a glorious world out there waiting for you.




Speaker 8:

Are you in?




Gary Schneeberger:

Are you in? Perfect question to ask this week as we tie a bow on the package that has been our special summer series, Lights, Camera, Crucibles: what our favorite movie heroes can teach us about overcoming setbacks and failure.




Gary Schneeberger:

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of this show. This week, Warwick and I discuss five key learnings from the eight episodes that have comprised the series, spotlighting such highlights as Captain America's oft-repeated mantra of, "I could do this all day," as he faces challenges, to John McClane's never losing his sense of humor as he encounters an endless barrage of crucibles in Die Hard. We add into our conversational mix additional stories that spotlight the takeaways from the series with some examples from prior podcast guests and our own experiences. It all adds up to a discussion we hope is as rousing and inspirational as that clip we played at the top, focused on the superhero films already released or coming soon from DC films this year. We're in and we hope you are too.




Gary Schneeberger:

We did eight episodes in Lights, Camera, Crucibles, of eight movies featuring heroes. Just to run through them, they were superheroes, action heroes and sports heroes. Let's see if I can recall all eight, Warwick. There was Spider-Man, there was Captain America, they're here. There was Ironman, there was The Natural Roy Hobbs, there was Robin Hood, there was Batman, there was Die Hard, John McClane. And there's one more that was eight. There was... I'm missing one that is falling out of my brain.




Warwick Fairfax:

Was that, have you already got Hoosiers?




Gary Schneeberger:

Hoosiers! That was the last one we did. You'd think I'd remember that. So yes, Hoosiers and Norman Dale, the coach in Hoosiers who's a great redemption story. So those are the folks that we tugged on for insights in equipping you, listener, for how to overcome crucibles. And there were a bunch of lessons and we're going to hit on some of those here, but before we get into the nitty gritty, the meat and potatoes of this, Warwick, one of the things we both said during the series was that these are all movies that we love. These are all movies that we've seen more than one time in most cases. And yet, watching them with this lens on, for Beyond the Crucible, made them richer than they had been before just watching them as popcorn entertainment, having some chuckles while you're watching the movie. Watching them to pull out actionable lessons for how to move beyond the crucible and lead a life of significance. These movies came alive in fresh ways, didn't they?




Warwick Fairfax:

They really did, Gary. Typically, as you say, when you watch a movie it's to be entertained. You don't watch Ironman saying, "What are the leadership and life lessons that can help me lead and be a better human being?" whether it's The Natural in Roy Hobbs or Robin Hood. So watching all these movies and just trying to understand what are the drops of redemption, the lessons learned, the character of growth in all of these heroes. It was really instructive. There's a lot of lessons.




Warwick Fairfax:

When you look at movies with superheroes, it's easy to think, "What can I learn from the superhero? Because I'm not a superhero." But often the lessons we learn is how they dealt with human emotions, with loss, with their own agenda and aggrandizement versus serving others. These are all lessons that all of us can learn, so it was really fun looking at it through a different lens.




Gary Schneeberger:

And it's interesting, one of the things that never came to me until right now when you said that through any of the eight episodes that we've done before this one, this wrap up one, was, for superheroes in particular, most of them have "secret identities." There's what the public knows of them on one sense as the individual and then as the hero.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that's sometimes our stories too. We have inner lives that maybe other people don't know about and that can be in itself a challenge to navigate as we're walking through a crucible. People expect, perhaps, we're going to react in a certain way because they don't quite know our secret identity, what's roiling around in our heart.




Gary Schneeberger:

Is that fair? That sometimes what makes crucibles difficult is that what we project to the world may not be how we're living inside.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. That is always one of the challenges. We might seem to be confident, outgoing, we've got it all together and inside we're broken or in bad cases dying inside. So yeah, it's an interesting thought that a lot of these superheroes have secret identities. We might have a secret identity inside and the secret identity might be I feel like a loser, I'm messed up, I'm broken. You shouldn't love me. You shouldn't care for me if you had any common sense.




Warwick Fairfax:

So yeah, I think we all need to deal with the inside because the inside that negative self talk can damage our ability to lead, can damage our ability to live. So yeah, the inner demons, the inner conversations we need to deal with, certainly. And most of these superheroes have inner demons, have inner challenges. It's hard to think of any superhero that doesn't have inner challenges.




Gary Schneeberger:

And not just the superheroes that we talked about, but also the other heroes, who talked about inner demons, talked about problems. Norman Dale, the coach in Hoosiers, this sort of hidden thing where he assaulted one of his players in college and got banned from the NCAA. John McClane who has troubles with his wife and his family is falling apart. There are things going on in life that if I've heard you say it once, I've heard you say it a 100 times, we have to do the soul work that is required of bouncing back from a crucible as well as some of the practical work. That, it's fascinating to me that this is the ninth time we've talked about movie heroes and that just popped up into my head, is that's something else that we have to learn from this process, that we can't always keep our secret identity secret. Right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. I think we can't help others until we help ourselves. I think in the faith-based world, they talk about evangelism begins at home. You've got to preach to yourself before you even contemplate preaching to others. And so, getting beyond a crucible, which is the title of this podcast, typically means doing a lot of soul work. Until you deal with your inner demons, your inner issues, you won't be able to help anybody because you'll be weighed down. It's like trying to run a marathon with five tons on your back. You won't get very far. You will just stop on your tracks.




Warwick Fairfax:

So yeah, for all those people out there, I'm a very reflective person but lot of people aren't. It's like, "I don't want to do this inner stuff. I'm too busy. I want to help a bunch of other people." You want to help other people? You need to help yourself. Otherwise, you're not going to help anybody. That should motivate even those non-reflective people out there.




Gary Schneeberger:

Amen. And that's a good thing, right? That's one of the great things about this series has been the things that come to our minds as we're talking through this, that was a point that we had not planned to make. And look at that, we made that point.




Gary Schneeberger:

But listener, you may be wondering in a fuller sense why did we spend eight weeks? Why did Beyond the Crucible spend eight weeks talking about movie heroes, superheroes, sports heroes and action heroes? And just to level-set us as we get going and talk about what we're calling Five Ways to Transform Into a Crucible Busting Hero, that's the theme of the episode today. But before we get there, we're going to do a little crop dusting here with just some ideas about why we're talking about heroes at all.




Gary Schneeberger:

And we're going to revisit something we talked about in the first episode, not in depth, but just to give you an idea of why we chose these types of movie characters. And that comes from a Psychology Today article about how heroes can improve our lives. What is it about heroes that improves our lives? And the first point of that article was that they produce in us an emotion called elevation.




Gary Schneeberger:

It goes back to an article in 2014 which says that research suggests heroes and heroic action evoke a unique emotional response that scientists have labeled "elevation." Thomas Jefferson used to talk about this as the way people felt moral elevation when they read great literature.




Gary Schneeberger:

How do heroes elevate us in that sense, Warwick? How do you think that plays out?




Warwick Fairfax:

I think heroes, they kind of sweep us along in this sort of tide of, I don't know if it's euphoria or encouragement, they really just lift us up. They inspire us. They make us think, "That's who I want to be, that kind of save the day, help people." They appeal to our better angels. You've obviously got Spider-Man who rescues Mary Jane as he defeats the Green Goblin. Batman, obviously in the movie that we looked at, saves Gotham City from the Joker who is terrorizing everybody. And obviously, poor John McClane is going out to the coast to have some fun with his wife.




Gary Schneeberger:

And a few laughs, yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

Have a few laughs and ends up having to combat terrorists at Nakatomi Plaza. With all of these, we tend to see ourselves in the role of hero in the sense of, "I'd like to be the one to save the day even in a small way to do something good for my family, friends, coworkers. I'd like to do something right for a change." So there is this sense that it elevates ourselves, it elevates the sights and how we look at ourselves. So yeah, I think the heroic movies can have really great effect on us.




Gary Schneeberger:

It's kind of like the clip that we played at the beginning of the show, which is the trailer for 2022 from DC Films, the people who do Batman, Aquaman, The Flash, this idea that the world needs heroes. There's a sense of awe when you encounter heroes, when you see what heroes do that just can't help make you feel elevated. Can't help but make you stand up and cheer. And that's an important thing for us, especially as we're battling a crucible, is to just have this sense of having your spirits lifted.




Gary Schneeberger:

That's the first point of why we dug deeply into heroes for this series. Second one is that heroes can heal our psychic wounds. I thought this was fascinating, that this article in Psychology Today talked about how in ancient cultures tribe members huddled around a big campfire together at the end of the day. They gathered for warmth because they didn't have heat in their caves. They gathered for warmth, but they also did something else: they told stories. The physical warmth of huddling together was lifesaving, but in some ways, life enriching the stories that they told, it made life more attractive, easier to get through. It inspired them.




Gary Schneeberger:

Again, going back to the first point, there was awe in those stories, there was exhilaration, there was elevation in those stories. That worked out again in what we talked about here and the films that we addressed on this show, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, absolutely. Cultures for thousands and thousands of years have talked about heroes. I don't think there's ever been a culture in the history of the world that doesn't have heroes, that people will gather around the campfire telling stories. Obviously, one that we've spoken about is Robin Hood that goes back to, I don't know, 1100-1200s. And people have been telling stories about Robin Hood that is a mythic person and the stories have changed from original Robin Hood was Robin Long Stride, a common man, a common yeoman. Then later, a few hundred years later, it became a Saxon noble that was oppressed by the Normans that controlled England at the time.




Warwick Fairfax:

But Robin Hood has been around for hundreds of years as this guy that would defend the defenseless, the oppressed, the poor, the common man, the common woman against the tyranny of Prince John and his henchmen. So there is something about just telling stories of heroic figures, it just touches us. I think back to the ancient Greek heroes of Odysseus and the Trojan Wars taking 10 years to get back from Troy to his native Greece, and Achilles and Agamemnon, all of these great heroes. Greeks have been telling stories about the ancient Greek and heroes for thousands of years. So it's a part of our culture, part of every culture of just telling stories of heroes. It's healing, it's soothing. We all love doing it.




Gary Schneeberger:

Our third point from the Psychology Today article, again, which we're not getting into in any depth, we're just doing a drive-by with it. But the third point is heroes nourish our connections with other people. "Storytelling," the article says, "is a community-building activity. The sense of connectivity it builds is critical to human emotional wellbeing. Hero stories create a strong sense of social identity."




Gary Schneeberger:

I haven't shared this with you, Warwick, because I just got it yesterday. By yesterday I mean the day before we're recording this episode. And if you remember, listener and Warwick, when we talked about Ironman, I made reference to watching that movie and the funeral of Tony Stark in that film. And I mentioned how my nephew, a young man in his twenties, late twenties, was so moved by that experience. I did not tell him I mentioned him in the podcast, but yesterday he sent this text to me. Listen to what he wrote in light of what I just said, "Storytelling is a community building activity, a sense of connectivity. It's critical to human emotional wellbeing."




Gary Schneeberger:

This is what my nephew Luke wrote me, "You know, every now and again I will see videos people took in theaters during Avengers End Game at the end when all the Avengers come together and how everyone just loses it." In other words, there are videos going around about everybody crying when all the Avengers come together during Tony Stark's funeral. And my nephew says further, "I remember being very depressed at that time and unmotivated to really do or enjoy anything and that you invited me along opening weekend to see it. I got to experience that. And every time I get to look back at these kinds of videos, I still feel the rush of excitement and how groundbreaking that movie was and that everyone who enjoyed the MCU got to experience it together. It's one of my most treasured memories." That is the power of social connection, the power of emotional connectivity that can come from hero movies, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

It really can. I think in heroes in general, it's funny, just as you were saying that, talking about your nephew, the way that my father and I connected was through stories about heroes. That was the language that he communicated love to me. We were living in England when I was about, I don't know, six or seven or so. He read me a book speaking of Greek heroes, like a, I don't know, 1800's book called The Heroes by Charles Kingsley. It talked about all the Greek heroes, Perseus, Theseus, just some different mythical folks.




Warwick Fairfax:

When I was small, I would say, "Daddy, just tell me some history." I didn't care what it was, just some historical story. And he was like an encyclopedia, he'd read every... About every hero he loved, British heroes in particular. So there'd be stories of Admiral Horacio Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar 1805 and Duke of Wellington and Waterloo in 1815. That's the way we communicated.




Warwick Fairfax:

And with these movies, you and I obviously talked about how much we like The Natural and Captain America and Hoosiers, one of the all-time favorite sports movies with Norman Dale and that sense of redemption, as you mentioned, after getting banned from basketball. So yeah, it's a source of connection. When you talk about the heroes that you love. It's a way of creating bonds between father and son, mother and daughter, brothers, sisters. It's a point of connection.




Gary Schneeberger:

That text that I just read from my nephew, that he says going to Avengers End Game with the family, with my immediate family, was a treasured memory. That text from him is a treasured memory. That's a connection between the two of us.




Gary Schneeberger:

The fourth point in that article, which is the natural progression. If we're elevated, if we're in community, if we're feeling connected, at the end of the day then heroes show us how to transform our lives, turning us into heroes ourselves. And if you've been with us, listener/viewer from the beginning, if you've watched Beyond the Crucible you know that I'm not adverse to wearing outfits. So because it's true that heroes turn us into heroes ourselves, I've worn a hero shirt today that says Super Step-Dad.




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh, that's-




Gary Schneeberger:

You see it behind my microphone.




Warwick Fairfax:

That is awesome.




Gary Schneeberger:

But there it is. That was a gift for my stepchildren for Christmas a couple years ago. These movies do encourage us to become in some ways heroes in our own spheres of influence.




Gary Schneeberger:

Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell said in 1988 that all of us undergo a hero-like journey throughout our lives. It's only by having the courage and faith to risk change and growth in our own lives that we reach our own potential. And it's nearly impossible to watch any of these movies that we're discussing and not feel that. Not feel that pull to heroism and all different kind of shades of it. It's impossible. It was impossible for us to watch these movies, it's been impossible for all audiences to watch these kinds of movies without feeling the pull to wanting to do that yourself.




Warwick Fairfax:

For me, as I mentioned, I grow up just hearing about heroes from my dad and figures in history. And so I would obviously watch heroic movies, read books about a few English kings and queens as well as American heroes. I've always loved American history. So reading books about Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln, and it would inspire me.




Warwick Fairfax:

Just one example, Franklin Roosevelt was somebody that in one sense I identified with because I grew up, as listeners know, in a very privileged 150 years old family media business in Australia, and Franklin Roosevelt grew up in sort of New York state aristocracy, if you will. The Roosevelts were prominent folks. He transformed his character to being maybe this fun loving party guy, a man about town. And over time he became somebody that was concerned about others, becoming one of the great presidents in the Depression, World War II.




Warwick Fairfax:

So I would look at Franklin Roosevelt, not so much that I could ever be Franklin Roosevelt, but if somebody from a background like mine, which was wealthy and privileged, could actually focus on others, then maybe I also could transform myself and be focused on helping others, not just about money, power, or fame, or what have you. So heroes can inspire us to be better than ourselves and transform ourselves.




Gary Schneeberger:

And I had not thought about this again until you just said that, but Franklin Roosevelt in some ways early in his life, was a little Tony Stark early in his life, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yes.




Gary Schneeberger:

He was that guy who had everything to live for, but not really much to live with. No one was as hedonistic as Tony Stark, but there were some similar beats there. You had some of the same background perhaps, but you maybe channeled that more into Batman, not the dark parts of Batman, but Batman is never really depicted as a playboy, as a guy who spends his money on himself, he's always dedicated to helping others.




Gary Schneeberger:

So that's just kind of a fascinating way of it's interesting how a lot of the heroes that we talked about, at least a couple of them here, came from means, and yet they went in different directions, kind of starting out, landed in the same place, which is the goal of why we're doing this series is to get everybody from the origin story to the life of significance at the end. That's what we're hoping to bring to you, listener, as we talk about these things.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. And just a brief point on Roosevelt and Iron Man, and we'll get into this later, Iron Man gets captured by folks and it sort of changes his character in a way from hedonistic to maybe caring for others. While the equivalent of that for Franklin Roosevelt, as listeners would know, in the early 20s, he got polio, which was very rare for adults. And back in those days, if you got polio your political career was over, you were meant to stay home.




Warwick Fairfax:

It was almost like this social disease, not just a physical disease, it was almost shameful, which is ridiculous. It's not your fault. And so he had to fight through that and both Iron Man and Roosevelt went through different tragedies that transformed their characters. So sometimes real life, R-E-A-L and R-E-E-L can imitate each other.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. Absolutely. That's one of the things that makes movies like that so resonant is that they do have their beats in the real life, R-E-A-L experience that we know of. And sometimes we have ourselves.




Gary Schneeberger:

All right, we're going to pivot now and get into the meat of what we're going to talk about today. And that's just to put a bow on the package that was Lights, Camera, Crucibles. And that is this idea of here are five ways to transform into a crucible busting hero, using examples from, and we're going to do it interestingly, I think, we're going to do it from R-E-E-L life and also R-E-A-L life.




Gary Schneeberger:

So we're going to touch on, talk about what we learned from the heroes we went through, but then we're going to comb back through the archives of some podcast episodes, tell some personal stories to kind of emphasize, put an exclamation point on the points that the heroes teach us.




Gary Schneeberger:

So here's the first of those five ways to transform into a crucible busting hero that comes out of our series Lights, Camera, Crucibles. And then number one is to develop perseverance.




Gary Schneeberger:

Captain America does a great job of spotlighting this need. It tells the story of Steve Rogers who's a slight sickly guy, young man, we meet at the outset of the film. It's during World War II and he wants desperately to go to war. He wants to fight for America because he can't stand bullies and he sees the Nazis as exactly what they were, bullies, but he gets turned down because he is so small and he is so sickly.




Gary Schneeberger:

Every time he actually breaks some rules about going to different recruiting stations, trying to get into the war effort. But one of the times he gets rejected, a doctor sees him from the shadows, a guy named Dr. Erskine sees him. He is trying to find a soldier to give this Super Soldier Drug he's developed, which if it's successful, can then be given to all people, all men in the military and that's going to help us win the war.




Gary Schneeberger:

What he sees, what Dr. Erskine sees, in this Brooklyn kid is a kindness and humility and a never say die attitude. He refuses to take the military's no for an answer. And that's one of the reasons why Dr. Erskine gives it to him. But we as viewers, Warwick, see a scene with Steve Rogers earlier than that, when he gets in a fight, because he wants to hear the reels at the movie theater that he's at, he wants to hear these news reels talking about the war effort. And these guys are making a lot of noise while that's going on. And he gets in an argument with one of them. The bully takes him outside. What happens at that point that really hammers home, this idea of developing perseverance?




Warwick Fairfax:

They start kind of attacking him and beating him up. And at the time he is just this relatively slight, short, slim of build, and they just keep beating him up and he keeps getting back up and is bloodied. And he says, "I could do this all day." It's like he won't quit. He's getting pounded, but he just won't quit. That's just amazing. Is he going to win that battle? It's hard to see how he could, pre-serum, but he just won't quit. He just keeps getting back up.




Gary Schneeberger:

The bully from the theater, who the first time we hear, "I could do this all day," from Steve Rogers, the bully in the theater says to him, as he keeps punching him and Steve keeps getting up, "You just don't know when to give up, do you?" And that's when he says, "No, I could do this all day." And that is a critical thing that we see throughout the movie from him. And not just in this movie throughout, that line, if you're a familiar with Captain America's arc through all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he says it more than once.




Gary Schneeberger:

He actually says it to himself one time when he travels back in time and he gets in a fight with Captain America of several years earlier, who's trying to beat him up and he's like, "Stay down." He's like, "I could do this all day." That in some ways, as we watch the arc of Steve Rogers, that attitude of, "I could do this all day," even more than the strength and agility he gets from the Super Soldier Serum is one of the things that qualifies him as a hero. Isn't it?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. It's fascinating how Dr. Erskine chose Steve Rogers. It was this what fueled his, "I could do this all day" attitude. He was humble. He hated bullies. He just had this sense of righteousness, this desire to defend the defenseless. And Dr. Erskine said a strong man, somebody who's had all the gifts. He's not necessarily going to have your sense of compassion, your sense of caring for others.




Warwick Fairfax:

And so Dr. Erskine shows character first. And really when you think about what fuels Steve Rogers' perseverance post serum, when he is a strong, powerful guy it's because it's not about him. It's about this humble attitude of serving others. It's set in World War II. So it's defeating Nazi Germany.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's he could do this all day because people are counting on him, people are counting on him and his team, and he will never quit because quitting would mean letting down the defenseless. He will never let the defenseless down. He will always take the bullies on. So really his character is what fuels his perseverance.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that is such an excellent point. And it's the reason why you're the host of the show and I'm the cohost of the show because that's pulling meat out of what's going on there. That's exactly right. Never once does Steve Rogers, Captain America say, "I could do this all day just to win a fight." It's always to win a fight that has a purpose at the end of it. There's always a grander purpose than just being victorious for him.




Gary Schneeberger:

Here's now where we're going to transition from reel life, R-E-E-L to real life, R-E-A-L. And we're going to, as I was kind of preparing for how we were going to go about this discussion, one of the past guests from this podcast popped into my head as a great example of, "I could do this all day," even though she never said those words that way.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that guest was Lucy Westlake, a young girl, young woman, who was 17 at the time we talked to her who we featured in our Harnessing Resilience series. She already holds a world record. She's the youngest female to ever scale the highest peaks in every US state think about that. She climbed mountains that sometimes stretch more than 20,000 feet into the sky. And to do that, you've got to have kind of a purpose and a vision, and you've got to be able to deal with some setbacks.




Gary Schneeberger:

In fact Lucy Westlake encountered some crucibles and some setbacks, and she needed to muster, in her own way this idea of, "I could do this all day," didn't she?




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. Here she is desiring to climb all the peaks in all 50 states, and one of the hardest is Denali in Alaska. And at age 13 she went to climb that. And I think with her dad at the time, she didn't make it. The wind was just massive. It was a lot tougher, the weather than she had hoped, and she would not do it. And it was four years before she was able to successfully climb it, which was age 17, which was relatively recent.




Warwick Fairfax:

But she has this phrase, I guess the equivalent of Steve Rogers', "I could do this all day." And she says, "Failure is inevitable. How you react to it is what matters."




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, that's great.




Warwick Fairfax:

She did not give up. It's like, "Okay, you're going to fail. Sometimes the weather is horrendous and what are you going to do? It happens. Try again. Don't give up." Maybe it will be several years later, but she was not defeated by that defeat, if you will. It was a temporary setback, not a defining defeat. And she was not going to give up. For somebody so young, it is so inspiring.




Gary Schneeberger:

And again, what she was after was not just personal aggrandizement. She had a goal, a vision, a mission to accomplish this thing, to prove to herself that she could do it. And so the takeaway here, listener, from both Steve Rogers, Captain America, and Lucy Westlake is this idea of perseverance of, "I could do this all day." This idea that, "Failure is inevitable, how you react to it is what matters."




Gary Schneeberger:

That's what Warwick talks about in his book, Crucible Leadership. It's what this podcast is built around. This idea that failures and setbacks don't define you. They're not the end of your story. They can be the beginning of your story. And Steve Rogers getting beaten up in an alley was the beginning of his story, of his life of significance. And Lucy Westlake not getting to the top of Denali at 13 was just a midpoint in her story that has then moved on to world record status. Pretty impressive, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. And while we're speaking of Lucy Westlake, I'm reminded of Lisa Blair, and she was the Australian woman that we had on the podcast who sailed around Antarctica. She wanted to be the first woman to sail around Antarctica and break the record for the fastest trip around.




Warwick Fairfax:

And what's interesting is she did do that, but she was trying to do it uninterrupted. And at one point I think a mast fell and she had to go north out of the lane, so to speak, that was going around Antarctica and head to Cape Town South Africa for repairs. And what's interesting is a few years later, I think it might have been even earlier this year, she finally completed it. And she has this great phrase which is, "Failure is not trying." It's very similar to Lucy. Westlake's, "Failure is inevitable. How you react to it is what matters."




Warwick Fairfax:

It's very similar notions and what's remarkable about Lisa Blair, as she puts it, is she is not particularly tall, not particularly athletic, and this is her perspective, she would say she's an every woman. She'd say, "There's nothing special about me. I'm just like any other woman."




Warwick Fairfax:

But what's special about her and what's special about Lucy Westlake is their character, their perseverance, they never say die. That's their superpower. It's not physical or any other particular attribute, physical attribute anyway, it's more internal. It's that sense of, "Never say die. Failure is not trying. You've just got to keep going." They're similar stories, but they're remarkably motivating.




Gary Schneeberger:

And when you say that, Warwick, what that triggers in my mind, go back to the Captain America episode. What impressed you so much about his fight, Captain America's fight with the Red Skull? Who also had received that serum and it made bad worse. It made him evil. And he was, tell the story. What was he trying to get out of Captain America about why he had the Super Serum too?




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. Well Red Skull was saying, "Well, why you? You're aren't the strongest, the best, the smartest, the whatever that America has to offer." And he said, "I'm nothing special. There's nothing special about me. I'm just like any guy." And it just floored Red Skull because he was meant to be this super Aryan German who took it before from Dr. Erskine back when he was sort of trapped in Germany and just without Dr. Erskine's blessing, he just couldn't understand how, this super Aryan guy, "Of course I should have it. I'm the best of the best. I'm the best, the most German of the Germans. Who's this guy? Some kid who's nothing special?" He just couldn't process that from Steve Rogers.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. So Steve Rogers and Lisa Blair both talk about themselves as just average everyday people and Lucy Westlake would do the same thing. And that's the takeaway here, listener. You can learn this idea of never say die, failure is only if you don't try, and I could do this all day. That's the takeaway. You're going to hit crucibles, have that attitude, and that will help you become a crucible busting hero.




Gary Schneeberger:

Point two from our R-E-E-L life that we talked about is find a team of fellow travelers. And you talk about this a lot in Crucible Leadership, Warwick, the importance of having a team of advisors who don't just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. And early on in Iron Man, when Tony Stark is sort of depicted, his backstory is depicted, Tony Stark doesn't have a whole lot of fellow travelers who are anything more than admirers.




Gary Schneeberger:

They're not a lot of people speaking truth into his life, but then he's attacked while demonstrating some of his weapons in Afghanistan, he's a weapon's manufacturer. Some of his missiles get fired upon where he's at. He suffers a very traumatic injury and his life is saved while he is in captivity by another man who's in captivity, a fellow scientist named Ho Yinsen, puts a magnet in his chest to keep the shrapnel from going in his chest.




Gary Schneeberger:

But Ho Yinsen does a lot more than that for Tony, does a lot more than just save Tony Stark's life. He actually makes it worth saving. How does he do that?




Warwick Fairfax:

He saves his life physically, but he saves his life spiritually, emotionally. In a sense, he saves his soul and he does what maybe nobody has done before to Tony Stark, he's in captivity, he's in a dark vulnerable place. Maybe he's in a place where he would listen as opposed to before he is going to parties, drinking, gambling, driving fast cars, it's all about, "Hey, I'm making money. I'm making money out of weapons. Who cares? It's all about me."




Warwick Fairfax:

When you think of superheroes, it's hard to think of anybody more narcissistic than a pre-captivity's Tony Stark. He gets the gold medal for narcissist, I think. Ho Yinsen, his fellow prisoners says, "Basically you can be more than this. Is this all you're going to be, just making weapons and Mr. Party guy? Is this what you want your legacy to be? Is this what you want your life to be? You could be so much more than this. You could use your money for so much more."




Warwick Fairfax:

He just really puts a knife in his soul. Yes, he's got this new heart from technology, but in a sense, not only does he give him a heart transplant, for the technology, he gives him a soul transplant. He just puts a knife into his soul and it doesn't make Tony Stark a perfect altruistic human being but he makes a significant change in his character from that moment.




Warwick Fairfax:

And he begins to realize, "I'm using all my technological engineering brilliance to make weapons that in some cases are coming back to kill Americans, because it's hard to control where weapons end up and maybe I should use technology to save the planet, to make the world a better place." So that fellow traveler, that's speaking truth to power, took a lot of courage, and it changed his life. And in a sense helped redeem his soul.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. And it changed the trajectory of what he was able to do. In other words, his vision, his vision changed. We talk a lot about vision here at Beyond the Crucible and Crucible Leadership and his vision changed from really having no vision but living day by day.




Gary Schneeberger:

Ho Yinsen says to him at one point, "You have a lot to live with, but nothing to live for." And what he discovers as he has a team of fellow travelers and Ho Yinsen, being the first one of those, Pepper Pots, his assistant, who he kind of loves but he learns how to love as the movie goes on. And certainly as the arc of Tony Stark's story throughout all nine movies he appears in in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he develops that.




Gary Schneeberger:

But you're absolutely right. He's not perfect. And, listener, as you listen to this, my guess is you're not perfect and don't think you're perfect either. I know I'm not perfect. Warwick would say he's not perfect. I think, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. I think one of the things, what saying is it's fine to aspire, maybe not to superhero physical attributes, maybe to have the character of Steve Rogers, the perseverance, the humility of him. Or as we're talking about Tony Stark to use your qualifications, your attributes, to serve others. But none of us are going to have superhero level characters. It's a journey. We can aspire, but we're all going to fail.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, it's not a matter of, to quote Lisa Blair, "We're going to fail in our characters. It's not failing, it's are you going to get back up and try again? Are you going to keep going? Or you going to let one bad mistake define you?" And so that's really the journey of character is we're never going to be superhero in character, but we can aspire to keep getting better and moving forward and not letting one bad day define us.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that's one of the reasons why this point find a team of fellow travelers is so important to us, as we move on our journeys, is when we feel like we can't go on, when we feel like we're not worthy of going on, those fellow travelers can speak encouragement to us. They can remind us of things that we've done well, they can offer their perspective on maybe some things we should try.




Gary Schneeberger:

And as we talk about this, Warwick, it brings to mind for me, a key point that we make in, and get your pens out, listeners, because you'll want to know more about this. It brings to mind what we're going to debut soon. And that is an E-course called Discover Your Second Act Significance.




Gary Schneeberger:

And it's all about facing that tough question that comes to many of us when we consider our life and career. That question is, is this all there is? When we reach that moment, is this all there is, I feel stuck. I feel like life could be more. I feel like I should be doing something different. We all come to that point at some time.




Gary Schneeberger:

This E-course is going to drill down deeply and to help people who take it, learn how to do that, how to answer that "is this all there is?" Question, identify it, answer it, and then chart a course moving forward. And it will guide you, truly, this course will guide you on a journey of discovery to awaken your passion, to craft a vision rooted in your talents, and unleash a more fulfilling life. That leaves a legacy you'll be proud of.




Gary Schneeberger:

More details to come very soon, but you won't want to miss it. So stay tuned. And in that E-course, Warwick, one of the things that you say and you talk at some length about it is your own fellow traveler's journey of moving beyond your crucible and charting a course to a life of significance. A life of...




Gary Schneeberger:

A life of significance is a team sport you discovered, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. As we're doing the e-course and reflecting on this, I think there's really two types of fellow travelers. You want those who encourage you and at times be truth tellers. We need people who will do both. There are times when we need to be picked up and saying, "You know what? Your worst day doesn't define you. I believe in you. I'm with you." It could be a spouse, a friend, a coworker. And it may be, "You know what? You are better than that mistake. You kind of left the trail. You left the mission." So encouragement and truth, two sides of the same coin.




Warwick Fairfax:

But then there's another type of fellow traveler, which is those who complement you. By that, I mean that they have attributes and skills that you don't have, compliment in that sense of the word, not in terms of flattery. So yeah, as I was thinking about that way, that could be misunderstood. But anyway, for me, with Crucible Leadership, I am blessed to have a fantastic team. They encourage. They absolutely do truth telling and says, "Yeah, I don't know that we should be doing that." And we wrestle with things and figure out a path forward. But they have attributes that I don't have. I'm a reflective person. I like telling stories, my own story and stories of others on this podcast. But I don't like selling. I'm just phobic about that. Some people are scared of heights. I can't do the whole selling thing. So we've got people that are great at selling, promoting, marketing, branding, production on this podcast. You can't do everything. There's a few things I like to think I'm actually pretty if not very good at. But there's many things I am both bad at and just don't like doing.




Warwick Fairfax:

And there are always reasons, but I think none of us have all the gifts and all the experiences to do everything. We just don't. So a smart man or woman realizes their own limitations and their own phobias, we all have them, and say, "Okay, some of these things, I'm going to overcome. Some, I may not overcome." You're not going to overcome lack of gifting in certain areas. If you're a good writer, and, "Hey, I want to be a genius at math," probably you won't be. Or there's a bunch of engineers, mathematically minded people say, "I love numbers. This whole word thing, I don't get it." That's being human. So surround yourself, yes, with people that will encourage and tell you truth, but surround yourself with the people with different skills and abilities than you have. And that's what I've tried to do in crucible leadership. And certainly as you're trying to chart your second act, you got to have a team to be able to help you get there.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. And that's one of the reasons why there's Captain America and Spider-Man here on the desk as we're having this conversation because let's circle back to Tony Stark and Ironman. One of the things that helps him find a life of significance and helps him truly find his calling and helps him truly save... I mean, he couldn't have saved earth from the things that he saved earth from without the Avengers, right? These guys are Avengers. He knows that. His team of fellow travelers goes from Ho Yinsen, who's the first one, Pepper Pots, who's always been there for him. But he eventually builds the Avengers, and that is what ends up stopping Thanos, the intergalactic villain in the final Avengers movie that we talked about was so moving that people posted YouTube clips of it all over the place of the reactions of the crowd. That's the ultimate fellow travelers from this series of Lights, Camera, Crucibles, is the Avengers, right?




Gary Schneeberger:

Without all of them together, they would not have accomplished anything that they've accomplished. So that's a great place, I think, to land the plane on this one. Now the third point of the five that we're going to talk about here on transforming yourself into a crucible busting hero is to live life on purpose dedicated to serving others. And the example, we're going to go from Ironman to Spider-Man. Right here, Spider-Man, Peter Parker's a brainy high school kid, and he's picked on and labeled as nerdy by his classmates. But when he's bitten by a radioactive spider during a field trip, he develops the proportional powers of an arachnid. The new abilities come with new crucibles for Peter though. His "me first" attitude in the beginning, he's focused on trying to get money, to earn money with his strength to buy a car to impress the girl he secretly loves.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that obsession, even short-lived obsession, to make money to focus on his own advancement, to focus on himself, use his powers for himself, not for a greater good, ends up leading to his beloved Uncle Ben, who raised him like a son after Peter's parents died, it leads to Uncle Ben being murdered. And it's at that point in the story of Peter Parker and Spider-Man, right, Warwick, that he really begins to learn the lessons, as we say all the time, if you learn the lessons of your crucible, you can move beyond it. That's when that starts for Peter.




Warwick Fairfax:

It really does. Sometimes those we love will say worse to us that we don't really get at the time, but we come to understand later. And that's what happens with Peter Parker. He's in a car with his Uncle Ben, and his Uncle Ben says, "With great power comes great responsibility." And Peter doesn't process at the time as the time he's into, "Hey, I have these powers now, and I'm going to make money, wrestle. It's all about me. And I'm going to get enough money to get a car," to impress the girl he has a crush on, Mary Jane. And he's just not thinking of it.




Warwick Fairfax:

And then partly because there's somebody, some bad guy, that he could have helped stop, and it's like, "Hey, it's not my problem." And that bad guy ends up killing his beloved Uncle Ben. So then those words I'm sure haunt him, "With great power comes great responsibility." Because he didn't heed that warning, it leads to his beloved Uncle Ben getting killed by this bad guy. So it really just transforms his perspective, and he uses his powers for others, to help Mary Jane at one point, which he's being captured by the Green Goblin and takes on the Green Goblin as he seeks to kind of wreak havoc on the city of New York. So those words do transform his life.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. I mean, he becomes a hero because of the crucible that he gets through, because of the crucible and the lessons he learns from it. And that's what we talk about all the time here on the show is if you learn the lessons of your crucible, and you apply them moving forward, you can create a new vision for your life, and that new vision leads to a life of significance. And no one would say at the end of Spider-Man, the first movie with Tobey McGuire, there had been a bunch of them, all of them end up with this young kid picked on, when a loved one dies, he learns from this terrible experience a lesson that he then dedicates his life to serving others, to living on purpose, focusing on serving others. In fact, within that first Spider-Man movie, he's in love with Mary Jane, and Mary Jane says she's in love with him. And the stage is set for them to have a life together. And Peter doesn't do it. Why doesn't Peter do it?




Warwick Fairfax:

Peter has taken to heart the advice from Uncle Ben to such degree that his whole life is about living a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So his fear is if he continues a relationship with Mary Jane, and she says at the end of that movie that she loves him, it's very clear that Peter Parker loves her, but he says, "Look, I just want to be friends." And basically the inner monologue that goes on is his concern that everybody he loves, somehow bad things happen to them.




Warwick Fairfax:

Whether it's Aunt May, who's terrorized by Green Goblin at one point, or Uncle Ben, he's thinking, "If I have a relationship with Mary Jane, something bad's going to happen." So in this movie, he sacrifices his happiness for what he perceives as the greater good. I mean, that to me is the ultimate live a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. Nothing, not even the love of his life, will get in the way of serving others. He puts his whole happiness, his whole sense of self on the back burner. It's all about serving others. It's one of the most selfless scenes you'll see in any superhero movie. It's just astounding.




Gary Schneeberger:

And again, I hadn't thought about it until you just said that because we've said the phrase, "Live a life on purpose dedicated to serving others," maybe a thousand times, up to a thousand times on this show and in your speaking appearances and those kinds of things. But we could edit it, maybe add a phrase in front of it, "Live a life on purpose dedicated not to serving yourself only, but serving others." That's where Peter lands. Serving himself would be, "I get to be with this girl I love, but she'd be in danger. And my job is to protect people." That's my calling. That's my purpose. And that's what he's walking out and what he's living. That is our R-E-E-L life example of what it means to live life on purpose dedicated to serving others.




Gary Schneeberger:

We also had in a previous series that we did, Warwick, a guest that... It's funny. When we have team meetings from your team of fellow travelers and crucible leadership, her name comes up all the time. She really has made an impact. And that is Nancy Volpe Beringer, who we featured in our series, Second Act Significance. And Nancy was in her late 50s when she let herself not just dream of a career in fashion design, but to pursue it.




Gary Schneeberger:

She explains that the success and security she'd built professionally over several decades didn't fully scratch the creative itch she felt as a young girl who loved to sew. She had a "is this all there is" moment while she's living this life that would've led to retirement, and everything would've been great. And she was close to retirement. She's in her 50s, her late 50s. But that's when she pursued her passion with a vigor. She earned a master's degree and ended up on season 18 of TV's Project Runway. And even that, being on Project Runway, was not the true life of significance. That happened in the show, it wasn't the show, what happened to her that truly brought her the purpose of serving others.




Warwick Fairfax:

Project Runway was sort of interesting. I mean, just before we get to that, I just love the whole story of Nancy Volpe Beringer. As we'll get into with the Discover Your Second Act webinar that's coming up, she's a remarkable person because she had the successful career in the New Jersey Teachers' Organization. And she had the courage to say, "I'm doing great. I'm getting paid well. But what would I do if I was my younger self?" And it's like, "I'd go into fashion." I mean, to do that in your late 50s is remarkable. There aren't too many folks in their late 50s in fashion design school. That takes courage, but she-




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, and she said she was the only one there.




Warwick Fairfax:

Right. Yeah, she did it. And so at a second attempt, she gets on Project Runway. And one of the things they do is sort of at random. They give you these things, challenges. Well, the challenge she was given was to create fashion for those who had disabilities. So it could be paraplegic, quadriplegics, people that lost limbs. Now her fellow competitors, they were breathing a sigh of relief, dodged a bullet, "Phew, I'm glad I didn't get that one," because that would be tough.




Warwick Fairfax:

But it just shows Nancy Volpe Beringer's character. She was like, "Yay. This is awesome. I'm so glad I got that." And so yes, she designs high fashion couture for a lot of different folks, but she has a special design passion to design fashion for those who were disabled and haven't historically had access to fashion. So that just shows her sense of passion to serve others. It's not just about her own fame and fortune, "Oh, look at me. I'm a top fashion designer." She's focused on helping others. And just that moment at Project Runway when she was filled with elation and glee and her competitors were filled with relief that they didn't get that one, tells you everything you need to know about why Nancy Volpe Beringer is a very special person.




Gary Schneeberger:

And her life is a great example of the mile markers, if you will, of what the path to a life of significance can look like because she started out, "Is this all there is?" She's got a job, paying the bills. She's successful. She could retire. But there was an itch that was not getting scratched. And then she goes through that process. She takes a shot, learns some lessons from what doesn't make her feel alive, come alive. She applies those lessons. She casts a vision. She pursues it. It's not easy. She fights through it. And then in the end, she is, right, living a life of significance. She's gone from, "Is this all there is," to, "Wow, this is all I want." That is a remarkable arc. And that's the thing that we are trying, that you are trying to encourage people through the work of Crucible Leadership, through what we're doing on this podcast, and what we're going to be doing in this E-course, right? That's the goal that you have for people, from, "Is this all there is," to, "This is all I want." That seems fair.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's incredibly well said, Gary. I mean, from, "Is this all there is," to, "This is all I want." This is all I want means I'm serving a higher purpose. I'm serving others, and it's filling me with so much joy. I have more joy and fulfillment than I could ever possibly imagine. We all want joy and fulfillment. That comes from a higher purpose. That comes from serving others. Certainly true for Nancy Volpe Beringer, and it's pretty much, I would say, true for every hero we've covered in this series. It's not about them. It's about serving some greater goal, some greater good. And that's why we love these heroes and heroic figures so much.




Gary Schneeberger:

But here's the rub. That journey isn't always a straight line, right? It's not always a straight line. It was not always a straight line for the heroes that we talked about. And that's point four in our five ways to transform into a crucible busting hero. Point four is when the road gets crooked a little bit, and that is, do not lose sight of your mission or the values that undergird that mission. And the example of that that we want to talk about here is in The Natural, Roy Hobbs, right, the other worldly, talented baseball player, whose aspirations to be the best who ever played this game are sidetracked, frankly, when he's shot as a teenager by a woman he didn't recognize as a threat.




Gary Schneeberger:

He beats the odds, finds his way back to the majors many years later to become the era's top player, even as an unscrupulous owner and this wily shady gambler try to pull him down. He gets there. It wasn't a straight line to get there, but after he is there, it also gets to become a little crooked line. Roy has... I don't know if you'd call it, he falls back into some bad habits. His blind spots still show up. There's something that happens to Roy Hobbs even after he's achieved success on the baseball field, when he finally got there, that keeps him for a while from his life of significance, right?




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. I mean, in some sense, Roy Hobbs is a troubled soul. There's a phrase the ancient Greeks used, "Who the guards would first curse, they first raise up." Sometimes when you're a young baseball player, in this case, and he believes he could be the best there ever was. And that's no idle boast. His ability to pitch and bat was as good, maybe better than anybody. He's not a Steve Rogers.




Gary Schneeberger:

He struck out the Babe Ruth character, right.




Warwick Fairfax:

Right. Exactly.




Gary Schneeberger:

He struck out the Whammer. Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

Exactly. Steve Rogers doesn't grow up thinking, "I could be the best there ever was. Me? No. I'm short and slight of build." He's not thinking that, but Roy Hobbs is. And so then when he gets kind of seduced by this dark angel, if you will, in Harriet Bird who shoots him in a hotel room, and that wound to the stomach basically torpedoes his career for years. And he comes back a lot older. And yet that lesson of, be careful who you associate with, he doesn't really quite learn that. And along comes these gambler's maul, Memo Paris. And she just, again, seduces him. And when he's with her, his batting average goes through the floor. She's just like a one person wrecking ball to his baseball game. Talk about back to Greek hero, Achilles, his Achilles' heel, if you will.




Warwick Fairfax:

But what I love about The Natural, there is a like in Star Wars, if you will. There's a battle between good and evil, between the dark angel and an angel of light. And the girl he knew way back when when he grew up in the corn fields was Iris. Variety of reasons, they get to meet up. And in one game where he is in his slump, she stands up, and she has this beautiful white dress, and it's illuminated by the light. And she does look angelic. She inspires him to be better. There's a great scene when he's in hospital after being poisoned by some bad guys. And he says to her, "Gosh," to Iris, "I could have been the best there ever was. I mean, I could have walked down the street of my town, and like, 'There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was.'"




Warwick Fairfax:

And she says, "Well, and then what?" Basically, is this all there is, in not so many words. And she says, "Roy, you are so good now. Look how you inspire young people, young boys. You're an inspiration." So she helps him realize there's more to life than just being a great baseball player, there's being a great person, being an inspiration to future generations of athletes, of baseball players. And so eventually good does win out, as it should in all good movies. And the angel of light overpowers the dark angel. It's a great movie, but to your point, life is not often smooth. And he is very gifted, but he has challenges with his course. He gets sidetracked in part by his own inner demons and his own mistakes.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. And I love what you just said about the way that Iris reacts to him wanting to be the best there ever was in this game. And one of the things we did in the episode we talked about The Natural is I have a prop card that had his statistics on the back that weren't shared in the movie. And he was like, his home runs per at bat were better than Babe Ruth. He had the enormous success. But you use that phrase, she was telling him basically, "Is this all there is?" Is success all there is, right? And that can be true, too.




Gary Schneeberger:

Sometimes that itch that says, "Is this all there is," isn't born out of being in a place where you can't pay the bills or in a place where you have financial struggles. Sometimes that place, "is this all there is", is born of, you got a lot of money, Tony Stark, you've got a lot of accolades, Roy Hobbs. You can get to that place, and it can look different for different people. And one of the people who we talk to on the podcast who exemplifies some of this point, this idea of keeping your eyes on your mission was Hank McLarty, who was a guest we had... Gracious. I think when I looked this up, Warwick, it was almost two years ago when we talked to Hank, it's hard to believe. He was in his own words, an intense goal setter from the third grade. He achieved most of what he set his mind to like Roy Hobbs, very much like Roy Hobbs. He got a scholarship to Auburn, Hank McLarty did. He built a financial services career at prestigious firms, got recognition and wealth as one of the youngest and best in his industry. Then something happened that got him sidetracked, got him off his mission. What was that?




Warwick Fairfax:

It's very similar to Roy Hobbs. He was drinking the Hank Kool-Aid as he puts it. He was hitting the numbers out of the park as a financial advisor. He was doing fantastic. Somebody said to him, "Hey, why don't you jump ship, come to my firm. I'll make you a partner." He threw all sorts of stuff at him that he couldn't resist. Well, no sooner than he joined the firm I think the company went under before he almost joined it.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. Before he could start.




Warwick Fairfax:

He burned all his bridges at the previous firm. I'm leaving. He was at a point where he threw everything he had into this new firm. It went bust. He was humiliated. At one point, he was living in a hotel for I think a couple years with his two boys just requiring the free breakfast at the hotel to get by. He was humiliated. This successful guy that was young, the golden boy, he'd lost his cape. It was tarnished. There was an episode of the Spider--man franchise when he gets covered in some black goo and he becomes not the Spiderman we know and love. There was a bit of a war for his soul.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, that was a bit like Hank McLarty here. He got some black stuff on him and he was not the person he wanted to be, but so he really had to dig down deep and say what kind of person did he want to be for his boys, for his family? He did recount his vision from success to significance.




Warwick Fairfax:

The company he has now, Gratus Capital. Yes, absolutely it's focused on helping its advisor, its clients and this financial advisory firm be successful, but he has got these principles of gratitude and humility. He no longer sees himself as the golden boy almost like Wayne Gretzky, the great one. He doesn't really view himself that way anymore. He has this humility to focus on others, listen to his team, and he really wants it to be a place where his team loves to work. It's not just about him. He wants to serve clients, but he wants to serve his fellow coworkers. He was really transformed by that crucible, if you will, to focus more on others and really dig deep down to what values do I really believe. He's a great, great example of digging down deep and focusing on your values.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. That is the key part I want to emphasize for the listener here is that you call it all the time, Warwick, mission drift. I hear you say it all the time when we talk to beware of mission drift, of losing sight of your north star as you're traveling. Roy Hobbs did it, Hank McLarty did it. But good news you can find your way back. Hank's kids helped him do that, in The Natural Iris helped Roy Hobbs do that. Again the importance of fellow travelers, the importance of those people who will support, encourage goad, exhort, sometimes correct you. That is critical to continuing to walk on this road to a life of significance, especially when there are detours to it.




Gary Schneeberger:

All right we're to point five in the five ways to transform into a crucible busting hero. This is my favorite one I think probably because I'm a little goofy myself and the guy that we're going to talk about here in this point is keep your sense of humor. It's important through all of this to keep your sense of humor. We've all heard the phrase, laughter is the best medicine. This is true even and especially when the sickness we're fighting is moving beyond a crucible. In Die Hard John McClane is a cop who finds himself doing battle all by himself with a group of terrorists that seize the office building where his wife Holly works. Even as life threatening crucibles pile up, and we talked about this in the episode. I mean, it's like a tennis machine firing balls at John McClane all the time, crucible, crucible, crucible, crucible, even as those things piled up, he never takes himself too seriously does he?




Warwick Fairfax:

No, he doesn't. It's kind of funny. It's a wonderful movie. He is in this crazy situation that he's going out to Los Angeles, he's kind of separated it would seem like from his wife, Holly. He's a New York cop. He's going out to LA and he's just going for Christmas. He's going to this Christmas party at Nakatomi Plaza in LA. He's not thinking he's going to be fighting bad guys. He's not thinking as cops say, I'm on the job. He's like, no, and all these things keep happening. He is like, seriously?




Warwick Fairfax:

In one scene, he is navigating himself with a Zippo lighter in these air ducts. He kind of quips thinking of Holly, his wife, as she says to him, come out to the coast, we'll get together, we'll have a few laughs and he's sort of laughing and grimacing. He's got no shoes on, he's getting shot at, and he is sweating, and it's like in this claustrophobic air vent. Later on he takes on Hans, this terrorist guy with his gang of bad guys who were holding hostages. He takes one of the bad guys out, plops him, I think on a chair, goes down an elevator. When the elevator opens on the shirt, it says, now I have a machine gun, ho, ho, ho. It's like, he tried to keep a sense of humor, which I think the reason we're raising this is when everything is falling apart around you, sometimes laughing helps clear your head and keeps your focus.




Warwick Fairfax:

If John McClane doesn't keep its focus, people are going to die. The terrorists could well take out the innocent hostages. So by laughing, it just cleans his head and helps him keep going on. He certainly needs a lot of perseverance, but there are some incredibly funny lines, but it's humor for a purpose.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. We don't laugh in those situations, going through crucibles, we don't laugh because what we're going through is funny, but because it helps stabilize our spirits to meet the challenges emotional and otherwise that we'll encounter on our path to significance. We're all going to be faced with those moments. Things that can be upsetting, tragic, again on that path even when the path doesn't go completely crooked in some cases, on that path you can have bad days. On that path you can have bad outcomes. Keeping as light an attitude as you can keep through it helps you get through it.




Gary Schneeberger:

I'm going to tell an example from my own life, just from last year. I've always tried to live by that principle, right? Am I always Mr. Chuckles? No. Can I get depressed? You bet. Do I have a temper sometimes? If anybody else in the house here were home right now, I would bring them out to testify yes I can. They would testify to that. But I also endeavor to find humor to take the edge off of painful, frustrating, challenging situations and circumstances. Again, not because they're funny but because it lets the air out of the tension that builds out of the pain that builds sometimes.




Gary Schneeberger:

The example I'm going to use my dad died last year at age 93 and I delivered his eulogy. I titled it 93 things I want you to know about my dad. It is brimming with loving recollections of the things he taught me and my siblings and the love and security he provided us with. I also found some humor in going through some things. Among those 93 points I'll just give a couple. The second one was I started out funny. The second one was he cheated at solitaire, wait, I'm a public relations professional let me frame that properly. He played solitaire by alternate rules. That was one.




Gary Schneeberger:

One was that he himself had a sly and relentless sense of humor. When my sister Dale was battling cancer a decade or so ago; Dean, my brother got lost driving to the hospital in Milwaukee. He did not want to hear any jokes about it he made clear when he got there, but dad could not resist. When the three of us got on the elevator to go get some food, very somber my dad's daughter, my brother and I's sister is battling cancer. Quiet moment. My dad says very softly and simply when we got on the elevator, he asks Dean, "Need some help finding which button to push?" Dean had gotten lost. He was mad. Nobody make fun of me that I got lost. Dad couldn't help break the tension and the pain and the worry we all had with a joke. Just like I couldn't help telling that story when I was eulogizing my father in the midst of all the things that he did that were wonderful.




Gary Schneeberger:

That's an example of what I was going through wasn't funny. What we were going through on that elevator wasn't funny, but you keep your sense of humor so you can keep your sanity if you will. You can keep your focus if you will. Warwick I know you have through your own crucible, I've heard you do the same when you've talked about that, for sure.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I mean, growing up in a large family media business, something about money attracts betrayal as a light attracts, I don't know, moths or something. There was a time back in my takeover days as listeners would know, my 2.25 billion dollar takeover in 1987, there were times in which I almost felt like I had a sign on my back that said, betray me. It's like in middle school. Advisors, different folks would let me down, I've had family members, friends, and I would just almost grimace and smile, say to myself, "Hey X person, I just forgave you for the last thing you did. Can you just give me a break? I can't catch up. I mean, come on really? I mean, can you just dole out the betrayal or the terrible things one at a time, give me a few weeks, few months. Don't do it more than one at a time. Just come on. I mean give me a break."




Warwick Fairfax:

It's just the sense of, I must have had a note pinned to my back saying betray me and can you just give me a moment? I'm trying to catch up. I would use that to sort of grimace and grin to myself like seriously, come on. By kind of like, I wouldn't say making light of it, but maybe having a wry smile, or smirk about it. Frankly, a little bit like John McClane, he has plenty of wry smiles and smirks as he's going through things. So maybe channeling, I'm not John McClane, but channeling a little bit of John McClane, that wry smile as I was going through my own crucibles.




Gary Schneeberger:

I'm going to let you sort of have the last word, but I have to tell a story now about my own sign hung on my back when I was in gosh, junior high school. I was a bit of a heavy kid in junior high school. It is funny. I'm laughing about it right now because it's creative and funny. Somebody hung a sign on my back that said kick me. The old kick me sign. But this was a creative kid. It said, kick me I'm fat and won't feel it.




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh no.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, was it terrible? Yes. But was it creative and could I find something in that kept me from, I don't know if it kept me from crying, but kept me from just giving up, putting my head under the covers and pulling them up. I found something. I met what was brought to me with a spirit of, I could do this all day. I can get through this. Failure is not an option as we go forward.




Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick we've talked about a lot here. We've talked about reel life from our series Lights, Camera, Crucibles, and how you can become a crucible busting hero. We've talked from real life. Some of the guests we've had on the podcast, some of our own stories. I love how you end most of our episodes with guests when you say what's a message of hope based on the conversation we've just had for listeners. I'll ask you that question. What's your message of hope that you have for listeners as we wrap up this series, Lights, Camera, Crucibles?




Warwick Fairfax:

You know, I think it's easy as you look at superheroes and heroic figures to think I'm not Spider-Man, I'm not Roy Hobbs. I'm not Robin Longstride and Robin Hood who in the movie helps take on Prince John, defeat the French. I'm not any of these people. I'm just a regular guy, regular woman. How can I relate to this? What does it all mean for me? I think it's really through these different folks, it's not so much the greatness of their superpowers or their great deeds. It's the greatness of their character. It's their humility. It's learning to overcome your mistakes or Roy Hobbs learning to overcome your inner demons. If you're Tony Stark, learning it's not all about you, it's about others. It's Peter Parker realizing it's not about me, it's about serving a wider purpose with humanity. It's Steve Rogers I can do this all day and it's not about me, it's defending the defenseless against bullies.




Warwick Fairfax:

I think all of us can learn these character lessons about perseverance and humility and purpose and serving others and values and not letting one mistake define us, of failure is not trying. We all fail, you just get up and try again. All of us, whether it's at home with our families, our businesses and whether we lead, as we often say from the boardroom to the living room; wherever we are, we can all learn character lessons from these heroic figures. They're very applicable. It's easy to think, oh, that's not me, but take your eye a little bit off the superpowers and look at the heroic examples of character that each of these folks showed that we've been discussing. We can all learn how to be a bit more heroic in our character and how we live our lives.




Gary Schneeberger:

That is the perfect ending where I normally would say the plane's on the ground. The captain's put the plane on the ground, but because we're talking about superheroes, I'm going to say Nick Fury has ordered the Avengers Quinjet to land and it has indeed landed. Like we like to do when we do these kind of wrap up episodes and certainly dialogue episodes with just me and you Warwick. I want to leave listeners with a few reflection questions to look at, to ponder as they take your very excellent words that you just wrapped up with and they move forward.




Gary Schneeberger:

Our hope here is that the episode doesn't end when I say a life of significance in a few minutes, the episode will continue on as you ponder these questions and ponder some of the points that we've raised here today. Reflection question number one is how would you rate your perseverance skills? What can you do to be even better at meeting challenges with an "I could do this all day" attitude? That's one. Second point of reflection to ponder. How do you deal with distractions that threaten to pull you away from pursuing your vision? When the Roy Hobbs distractions come up, the Hank McLarty distractions come up, how do you deal with those things? Then maybe how can you deal with them better if you don't deal with them so well? Then the third point, in what ways can you bring a humorous perspective to your crucible? Remember, critical - it's not about making light of what you're going through, but lightening the load of its impact on you.




Gary Schneeberger:

This is not a question of reflection, but I am going to pose this question to you listener before we sign off, and that is go back to the beginning of this episode. You heard that clip play from the DC films superhero movies about how the world needs heroes. Do you remember the last line in there? The very last line in that when all these heroes are shown doing their thing, talking about why they're heroes and how they do it; the last line was, are you in? So ask yourself that question, all the things that we've talked about here about pursuing a life of significance, overcoming your crucible and pursuing a life of significance. Are you in?




Gary Schneeberger:

If you're in stay tuned in the weeks to come we'll have more to say about our e-course, which will help you get in, which will help you navigate your way to finding, to discovering your second act significance. Until the next time we are together listeners, thank you for spending, not just this time with us today, but all now nine episodes hopefully you've spent. If you haven't spent all nine episodes of Lights, Camera, Crucibles with us, guess what, good news. They're all at crucibleleadership.com. You can go find them there. We will be back soon. Until that happens, please remember that we understand that your crucibles are difficult. We understand that they can knock the wind out of your sails and change the trajectory of your life.




Gary Schneeberger:

We also understand, we also know from our own experiences and from the experiences of the guests we talked to on this podcast and the heroes that we've discussed on this podcast, that you can get your life back on a course dedicated to serving others, leading toward something that allows you to get rid of that feeling of "is this all there is?" There is hope to move beyond your crucible, and that is casting a vision that you're truly passionate about and recognizing that your crucible is not the end of your story. In fact, it can be the beginning of your story as it was for every hero we talked about because when you learn the lessons of that crucible or those crucibles, like John McClane, the destination that they can lead you to is the destination they led all of our heroes to and that is a life of significance.