Applying the Actionable Truths 2: Self-Reflection

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible. It’s all too easy to start acting and moving without reflecting, and we’ve had people on the podcast that have been like this. It’s like, hey, nothing to see here. I’m moving forward and I’m tough, I’m strong, and I’m not going to let this get me down. I’m just going to move as quickly as possible. I’m not really going to think about what happened, why it happened. I’m just moving. I’m a strong person. Here we go.

Gary Schneeberger:
But where we going if after we endure a crucible we don’t take the time to self-reflect? The answer to that question is nowhere good which we talk about this week as we explore another actionable truth we must lean into in order to move along the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap to a life of joy and significance. Welcome, friends, to another episode in what we’re calling the series within the show, and it is us talking about a refreshed way, not an entirely new way, but a laser-focused way of helping you get from your worst day to your greatest opportunity, and it’s what we’ve named the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap. We describe it as this, and I’m going to read this right from my notes so I don’t get it wrong, we describe it as how we help people turn their worst day, people, by people we mean you, how we help you turn your worst day into your greatest opportunity. We provide the essential actionable truths to inspire hope and enable and equip you to write your own life-affirming story.
The roadmap has been built from our proprietary statistically valid research into how people experience crucibles and how they move beyond them. It’s also informed by the experience we had with podcast guests and those we’ve spoken to about how indeed they have moved beyond their crucibles. But the most revolutionary news about all of this, folks, is that in analyzing this roadmap we identified what we’re calling the actionable truths of the brand. To pass these life-changing truths along to you, our listeners and viewers, this year we are going to do, as I said, one episode every month that’s going to focus on one of these 10 actionable truths, and a couple weeks ago we did the first episode, this is our second episode. We’ll hold you in suspense before we know exactly what it is we’re going to talk about because, first, Warwick, I want to ask you to kind of level set our listeners and viewers about this second truth and explain why actionable truths. What does that mean? What do we mean by that?

Warwick Fairfax:
At Beyond the Crucible, we’ve always been focused on how do you get beyond your worst day to lead a life of significance which we define as a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. But what we have now is what we’re calling the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap, and this roadmap shows you how you go from trial or crucible to triumph or a life of significance. So this roadmap is very significant, so to speak, and we’ve found as you go from trial to triumph, from crucible to life of significance, there are 10 actionable truths. Think of those 10 actionable truths as catalysts, and they help you move along the journey from your worst day to triumph, to that life of significance. Without those actionable truths, you get kind of stuck.
So what’s interesting is we identified these actionable truths in the last few months, but they’ve always been an implicit part of our thinking, even though we didn’t quite realize it, and we’ll talk more about it in coming episodes, whether it’s authenticity or perseverance, vision, there’s a number of actionable truths. They were in my book, Crucible Leadership, and in what we’ve talked about on the podcast, but as we did our research and thought about it, how do you go from trial to triumph, really it’s these 10 actionable truths, these catalysts that really help you get from A to B, from your worst day to triumph, to a life of significance.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and it’s always interesting, isn’t it, Warwick, when we do these sorts of things, naming things, right? It’s hard to do, and the more I reflect on, the more I say the words actionable truths, the more I’m like, “That’s dead solid perfect what we’re talking about here is it’s truly, it’s got to be true or it’s not going to help you at all. It’s got to be actionable or it’s not going to help you any.” Put those two things together and you can conquer the world and conquer your crucible for sure. So that leads to the next question I want to ask you, again just to level set us at the outset, and that’s how do these actionable truths help those who receive them and act on them move beyond setback to significance.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s an interesting question, Gary. I agree with you. I do like the name we’ve come up with, actionable truths. A truth is good, but if you don’t act on it, it’s not particularly helpful, and we’ve talked about this before, but if you said, “I have a truth I believe in which is being honest, I just tend not to be in the workplace,” you know?

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
I believe in being authentic, but authentic is a bit overrated, so I just, so I’m a sales guy, and so I just like to be who my customers want me to be. Whoever you want me to be to get the sale, I’ll be. So, yeah, in theory I believe in authenticity, but in practice not so much. So that’s why we’ve called them actionable truths. They are truths you have to really live by. The one way to think about them is they are accelerators or enablers enabling us to move from your worst day, from the bottom of the pit as we sometimes call it to your best day in a sense, a triumph, your life of significance, and I think you can make a case that without these actionable truths you’re not going to get out of the pit. You’re not going to go from trial to triumph. You’ll be just stuck permanently, and over the course of this year, as we talk about things such as authenticity, perseverance, vision, each one of these is really critical to help you move forward.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And therein, folks, ends the preamble. Here we’re going to get into the meat and potatoes of this episode that is unpacking truth number two. The first truth, a couple of weeks ago as I said which we discussed, is the beginning of the journey from trial to triumph, and that’s the trial, that’s your crucible. That’s the first truth. The second truth is what we’ve determined is the second action we need to take to move beyond our crucibles, what we need to start journeying along the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap, what our research and our experience has shown us that that is is… and this is where I’m going to cue Scott, the producer. Scott, I need a drum roll. It is self-reflection. Warwick, how would you define self-reflection and why is it the critical second step after a crucible to begin the journey to recovering from a crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
So before we talked about the first actionable truth crucibles, and really with a crucible you have to make a choice not to be defined by your worst days. As we say at Beyond the Crucible, it didn’t happen to you, it happened for you.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
And so you’ve got to make a choice, okay, I’m going to get out of the pit. I’m going to get beyond my crucible. But then having made that choice, well, now what do you do? You made a decision, but now what? And we believe the next step, the next critical step is self-reflection. So self-reflection is an internal examination of what happened and who you are amidst the challenge that happened. It’s all too easy to start acting and moving without reflecting, and we’ve had people on the podcast that have been like this. It’s like, hey, nothing to see here. I’m moving forward and I’m tough, I’m strong, and I’m not going to let this get me down. I’m just going to move as quickly as possible. I’m not really going to think about what happened, why it happened. I’m just moving. I’m a strong person. Here we go.
That kind of sense of I’m strong and I can get beyond this, I can move forward, that’s very laudable, but if you don’t reflect, what tends to happen is history tends to repeat itself, and you might find yourself in a whole journey or sea of crucibles or roadblocks and brick walls because you’ll just do the same thing again and again or be in the same circumstance. And so it’s really important to reflect on what happened and why. One of the things we say at Beyond the Crucible is that the inner work precedes the outer work. We’re all for moving forward. We’re all for living visions that lead you to a life of significance. But for all that to really happen in a meaningful, sustainable way, you’ve got to do the inner work. You’ve got to begin to ask yourself some tough questions, how did I get into this crucible, what mistakes did I make, what can I learn from what happened to me, what can we learn about ourselves in the aftermath of the crucible.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. I mean, as you’ve talked about that, what comes to my mind is before you look down the road, you got to look in the mirror, right? But I mean, you’ve got to take a look at what’s going on within you, how did those things happen. What I did the first episode, I’m going to do it in the second episode, and I’m going to do it in every one of them, is I’m going to read a dictionary definition of it’s not self-reflection, it’s reflection which is the same kind of thing.
Here’s the dictionary. I use Webster’s, Noah Webster’s first ever dictionary. I call it the Webster 1828 because that’s when it was published. And this, I’ve not shared this, I love this, I’ve not shared this with you until now because I want to get your reaction to it, but this is what this dictionary says about reflection. It’s the operation of the mind by which it turns its views back upon itself and its operations, the review or reconsideration of past thoughts, opinions, or decisions of the mind or of past events. Is that not a perfect Beyond the Crucible explanation of what self-reflection is from 1828 which was a little bit before we founded this?

Warwick Fairfax:
It surely is, Gary. Yeah, just reflecting on your past thoughts, past actions, what happened. A wise person reflects on who they are, what they’ve been thinking, what’s happened, try to understand them, understand how those events or thoughts impacted you. Yeah, I mean, a wise person knows themself well and examines themselves and their motives and their actions and things that happened to them. It doesn’t mean that you don’t act and move forward, but you know who you are, why you are, what happened, why it happened, your part in it, the part that was not your fault. A wise person does do some reflecting, does do some self-examination.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and I came up with my own definition from the Schneeberger 2025 dictionary. What we’re really doing here, folks, is revisiting what happened to us so that we can revise the circumstances around how we move forward. So we’re revisiting to revise. I think that’s another good explanation of what we’re talking about. But there’s three stages, Warwick, of our research, which is both qualitative and quantitative, that we’ve discovered people experience after a crucible. The first one is this, limited awareness of the problem. How does self-reflection help us grow that awareness, make it less limited, and do that for our benefit of moving beyond our crucible? How does self-reflection kickstart that process?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, Gary. Without self-awareness, we typically don’t know what happened. At the bottom of the pit after our worst day, we feel pain, often searing pain. It is awful. We know something happened. It was terrible. We’re in agony. But we’re not always thinking, “Okay, what happened? Why did it happen? What am I feeling?” It’s just, “Oh my gosh, this is just awful. I’m just in such pain.” But to get out of the pit of a crucible in a meaningful and productive way we have to do the inner work which we sometimes call deep soul reflection, and that involves asking ourselves some very challenging situations. How did I get into this mess? Did I trust the wrong people? Was I in a role that didn’t match my gifting? Was I working for a company that was not in line with my beliefs and values? There could be a number of other questions that we need to ponder and reflect on, but these are a huge questions.
One thing that we need to remember is if we don’t self-reflect, history will tend to repeat itself. History does tend to repeat itself because we typically don’t learn the lessons. Nations very often don’t learn the lessons of their past mistakes. People typically don’t. Civilizations don’t. And so you just make the same mistakes over and over again. That is normal, unfortunately. For instance, we might keep trusting the wrong people. We might be in the wrong role or keep working for companies that just don’t match our beliefs and values.
So the best way to avoid a life of self-made crucibles is to self-reflect. Life is tough. Undoubtedly for most people it’s typically not one and done with a crucible. They might be of various intensities, but life is tough enough without you saying, “Okay, there are some dangers and minefields in the road up ahead. Let me put some more tacks in the road and more nails and more things ahead of me just to make life more challenging because, hey, I love a challenge.” I mean, that’s great, but life is going to be plenty challenging enough. You don’t need to add more to yourself.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And to hear you talk about it, to hear you sort of explain how you think about it makes me think of, we’ve all heard of if not gone through a 360 evaluation. Either we’ve done it for other people or it’s been done for us in our professional sense. This really what we’re talking about here, what you just described is a bit of a 360 on yourself. It’s what are all the things, and you named off a few of them, am I with the wrong company, is this not where my passions or my talents lie, and there really is no… you can’t ask yourself too many questions in this process of self-reflection because that’s going to be the raw material that you’re going to use to help you move on to the next stage of getting through the roadmap and getting through your crucible, right? I mean, this is where more questions to yourself about what happened that informed your crucible are pretty significant, aren’t they?

Warwick Fairfax:
That’s very true, Gary, and it’s interesting that you mentioned 360s. As an executive coach, international coach, Federation executive coach, I’ve done 360s with people, with clients, and it’s fascinating. There are some people that go, “Boy, this is interesting. I really need to listen and learn,” and other people have a different attitude. And just for folks that may or may not have done a 360, basically a 360 means that you get input from your supervisor, your boss, from your peers, and those that work for you. So hence 360, it’s above, below, and beside. I’ve had cases where feedback has come back in a work setting with people that really know that person very well, and the person will say, “Oh, well, I know…” because often it’s done confidentiality. Often it’s done with confidentiality. So it’s you don’t know who they are. It’s some online instrument. I mean, there’s several that are good ones. And so they won’t know exactly who those people are necessarily or who said which, put it that way, and they’ll say, “Oh, I know who that is. They never liked me.”
Whether it’s boss, peers, people who work for them, and it’s like if everybody around you says you’re not good at listening and you’re too hard driving and you’re impatient, they could all be wrong but they’re probably not. If everybody around you says that, your default should be, “Gosh, I never think of myself as somewhat short-tempered and impatient and poor at listening, but if everybody says so, my default assumption will be that that’s true unless proven otherwise.” But I have to tell you, there are some people that you could have the best 360 instrument in the world and they will ignore all the advice, they will ignore all the inputs. So that is really the opposite of what we’re saying. That is just refusing not only just to examine yourself, but to listen to feedback from anybody else. That’s sort of the worst-case scenario, but it’s actually more common than we would like to think. So yeah, it just brings back memories of doing 360s and go, “Huh. So nothing to see here. Nothing you can learn from everybody that knows you so well that you work with, nothing to learn. Really? Okay.”

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and when it comes to applying that concept to ourselves, doing the 360 about what we’ve been through, we can’t afford to do that. We really have to dive into that self-reflection because we’ll move on to the second thing that tends to happen to people after a crucible, and that is that there’s an increased awareness of the need to change is the second thing that comes out of that. Again, talk a bit about the ways in which self-reflection can help us overcome this blind spot that we have about the awareness of the need to change.

Warwick Fairfax:
So once we start doing this self-awareness, and sometimes it can be through your own self-examination, friends, colleagues, coworkers, family members can also help out with this, we begin to realize there are some things that we need to do differently. Maybe we were in a role that was not matching our gifts and abilities. Maybe we just, we became lawyers because Mom or Dad had a law firm or had friends who were lawyers and you can get a good job doing that. But maybe we thought, “Gosh, I really don’t like law. I’m not really gifted in that.” Well, you need to be thinking about why am I doing something that I feel I’m not good at.
Or maybe you work for a company that didn’t match your beliefs and values. Well, I just needed a job and they offered me really quite a great package, a great salary and benefits. Okay, great, but if every day is miserable because what the company is doing, maybe they have products that you just don’t believe in, that you believe are hurting people. Or maybe the way they treat people, even if it’s not you, maybe it’s your coworkers, you feel like it’s just not appropriate, people aren’t being honored and treated appropriately. Maybe we’ve had people on our team. If you own your own business, be it big or small, maybe you have advisors or people that work with you and for you that, yeah, they’re talented, but they don’t really have the same values that you do about how to treat people and how to do things, and they kind of get the job done but not always in a way that you feel is appropriate and not the way that you think things should be done.
Well, you just have to ask yourself some tough questions, and really we’re the sum total of the choices we make in life. So making some of these changes about what role we’re in in terms of our gifting, the beliefs and values of the company we work with, the kind of team members we have, it can change the direction of our lives. If we don’t make some of those changes once having identified the problems, and typically there’s more than one, we can keep going in the same rut, in the same path, or we can make a decision saying, “I want to do something differently. I don’t want to just keep being in a job for a company that I don’t respect, in a role that I’m not good at, with people that I don’t like working with because they just have different values than I do.” You have to make a choice and say, “I’m going to forge a new path.”
And so really after doing this kind of self-reflecting and inner soul work, we believe that there’ll be a lot fewer blind spots. I mean, life is a voyage of self-discovery. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never find another blind spot, but if you can take some of the major ones out, some of the false assumptions you have about who you are and what you’re good at or the environment you like working in, it can be a game changer in your life and significantly increase your chance of living a life of significance in going from trial to trial. So self-reflecting and this inner soul work is so critical and can be hugely valuable.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, right. The price to pay for continuing to resist change is, and you hinted at it a bit there in your answer, and that is it sort of puts you on a crucible loop, doesn’t it? If you don’t change the things that got you, that contributed to your crucible, whether they were internal or external, whether they were thoughts or actions on your part or on other people’s parts, you’re going to sort of… we talk often about the flywheel of hope, right? It can lead to the flywheel of despair because you’re in a crucible loop, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Or it could be the flywheel of doom, for instance. Yeah, things can get worse and worse. The thought occurs to me, in a summer series we did a number of movies and the couple that were challenging in a sense were Citizen Kane and The Godfather, and there was some of that flywheel of despair in those movies. People made choices and life seemed to get worse and worse in a lot of ways because of the choices they were making. Does that make sense, Gary, about those two movies-

Gary Schneeberger:
Oh, for sure. Yeah, oh yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:
… sort of emblematic of flywheels of despair?

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
It got worse and worse, right?

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and we do not want folks who are listening and watching us right now to end up in the flywheel of despair because, my chuckle aside, that is a bad place to be. So the resistance to change, overcoming that is a critical part of moving through Beyond the Crucible Roadmap. And here’s the last critical part, and that’s this, Warwick. One of the things that we found in our research is that there’s often fear. There’s probably always fear in the aftermath of a crucible. Resistance to change is a great example of that. How does self-reflection help us combat that, that fear of I know I should do something different, but boy, I’m afraid of trying to do something different? How do we combat that?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. Many of us don’t like change. I have to confess I will be one of them as my family can attest to. I mean, I have changed, growing up in Australia, and at, I don’t know, 18 or so going to university at Oxford in the UK and then working in New York where I didn’t know anybody in banking and Harvard Business School in Boston, and after the family business didn’t work out coming to America. It’s not like I’ve not changed, but I can’t say that’s my love language. I don’t like change. But in order to move beyond our crucible, in order to move forward beyond our worst day, we have to change.
Again, we’re the sum total of our choices, and I’m reminded, speaking of movies, of that other movie, The Shawshank Redemption, and this is set in a prison in Maine, I believe, and there’s a scene where one of the prisoners finally gets released and he can’t handle being on the outside. From what I understand, it is sometimes the case that prisoners who’ve been inside for quite a while, they get released and they commit crime so they can go back to prison because it’s the new normal and they’re not comfortable with change. They’re not comfortable with being on the outside.
So we can be like this in the metaphorical sense and not want to make tough decisions. We might be afraid of operating in our giftedness or with people that are aligned with our beliefs and values. It’s like, well, what happens if we fail at that, what happens if we find the wrong people again, or what happens if that doesn’t satisfy us. Change can be painful. Maybe we’ve been a lawyer for years, we hate it, but it’s all we ever knew. After all, we have a law degree and passed the bar, and gosh, maybe I want to start a small business or work in a nonprofit, or I don’t know. Change is tough and it’s like, I know I hate what I do and I’m not really that good at it, but it’s all I’ve ever known for the last 10 or 20 years. Change can be tough. I get that. What if I try some new job and I’m fail at that? So I get that, but we can’t let fear and uncertainty force us to be in prison for the rest of our life because we won’t make changes.
Yeah, it’s easy to say, “How can I find people that I’m going to trust? How do I know what my beliefs and values are? How do I know who I am?” You can get all so negative that you just want to hide under the covers. But we have to realize that if we don’t change, we’ll keep hitting brick walls, and there may be pain in changing, but think about the pain of not changing is likely to be so much more. So we need to make the decision to change. I think of a recent podcast guest we had, Maggie Warrell who wrote a new book, The Courage Gap, and she has this wonderful phrase when sometimes we’re afraid of taking, afraid of having the courage to change, she asked this question, for the sake of what.
So I would use that question that Maggie uses and says and I’d say, “For the sake of what do we want to change?” Maybe there’s a nonprofit we want to start, maybe there’s a new business, maybe there’s a new role that feels a bit scary, but we feel that it can help a whole lot of people. For the sake of what? That can often make you think, “Well, it’s going to be a bit scary to change, but it’s this new venture that I’m going to do, I wouldn’t say it’s too important to fail. I would say it’s too important not to try.” I don’t want to be on my deathbed saying, “Gosh, I could have tried to do X and I didn’t do it.”
Very few people have regrets about things that they… challenges they tried. It may not have worked out, but they tried. It’s often more the case people have regrets about the things they didn’t do and the risks they didn’t take. So don’t be that person. Just remember, you may be afraid of changing, but for the sake of what? Why do you want to do this new venture? Why do you want to change jobs? Why do you want to work with different people? For the sake of what? And typically, it’s not just about you, it’s about other people you can help, it’s about a cause you want to devote your life to. So think of the end goal, as they say, keep the end in mind. Think of what motivates you to really want to change, and that will hopefully give you enough perseverance and courage, frankly, to get beyond the fear of changing.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and I didn’t plan on doing this, Warwick, but I’m going to do it. In my own crucible, my own biggest crucible, and that is the alcoholism of my past, there was an enormous amount of fear about changing. There was an enormous amount of fear because I, in the nineties, through the eighties and into the early mid-nineties… I got sober 28 years ago this April. But my thought was if I quit drinking… because so much of my social life, so much of the way I hung out with my friends, so much of what I thought was my personality that was attractive to people, that made people like me, so much of that in my mind was tied into when I drank, how much I drank, the person I became, the happy drunk that I was when I was like that. I was terrified when I finally got to the end of my rope and realized that, “it was not working for me,” quote, unquote, anymore, I was terrified of what was going to happen in my life.
So here’s how that can work in a crucible. If I hadn’t quit drinking… I wasn’t thinking how terrible my life was going to be if I didn’t stop. I was thinking how terrible it was going to be if I did stop because it would take away, in my mind, I thought it would take away things that made me comfortable, things that made me attractive, not in a romantic sense but attractive to friends and people wanted to be around him. That was hard to overcome. It’s hard to overcome these fears when we’re looking, even when on the other side of overcoming those fears, tackling those fears and changing our trajectory can give us a life of significance, in my case ensured I had life.
I’ve said before, I was a guest on the show, you were gracious enough to interview me for an episode. I’m about to celebrate, by the time you hear this, folks, I will have celebrated my 60th birthday. I would’ve never gotten to 60, I don’t believe, if I hadn’t quit drinking. So if I’d let that fear that I was not going to be embraced by my friends, I was not going to be as comfortable around people if I quit drinking, if I let that win, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. I don’t know if you have anything to say about that.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s-

Gary Schneeberger:
I mean, I hadn’t thought about that until you started talking about fear.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s such a great example, Gary, and thank you for sharing that because I think it’s helpful because people’s challenges may not be drinking, it may be all sorts of other challenges, but it may be this is the only person I know or people like me, how will I come across if I’m doing a different job with different people. It’s like, well, this is who they know. Maybe nobody will like the real me or the changed me or the me in a different role. That’s a real fear. So I guess the question I’d have for you, Gary, is how did you get over that fear of change and being somebody different or the way you thought of yourself, people might see me differently. How did you get over that fear?

Gary Schneeberger:
You know, it was experiential. I had to insert myself, once I got sober, I had to go back into society, right? I had to go back into my friends, and people were gracious, and I began to discover over weeks and months and even years that who I was, who I am internally didn’t… it wasn’t alcohol that made me who I am. It was my personality that made me who I am. It was my God-given personality. That’s what fueled my friendships, not alcohol.
But I had to walk that out because I couldn’t imagine where that was. I couldn’t think my way there to the point of actionable truths, right? I couldn’t reach the truth until I took an action, if that makes sense. I had to go out. I had to go be with people who might’ve even been drinking and I wasn’t drinking so I could see that people could still relate to me. I could still tell a joke and people would laugh. I could still be both turned to people for counsel from them, I could still give counsel to others. I was really everything I was without alcohol that I was with alcohol. I was just a less self-destructive version of that.
It took me a little bit of time to reach that. But each, we say it all the time on this show, each small step, each little step, one small step at a time, each small step gave me more and more confidence, more and more courage to keep taking those small steps, and that’s how I did it. But I had to do it. I had to act. I couldn’t just think it. I couldn’t say, “Okay, I’m going to be fine.” I had to go out, test the theory, be with people and see that the way that they reacted to me overwhelmingly was not different than I thought it might be.

Warwick Fairfax:
That’s such a great point. It’s not like you were being less scary. I mean, you probably always were fun-loving, kind of friendly guy, sociable, caring, wanted to help folks. It’s not like that wasn’t there. The alcohol probably had its side effects, but it’s not like you were being less Gary. Maybe you were being more Gary without some of the other stuff that wasn’t helpful. So it’s not like you completely changed as a human being-

Gary Schneeberger:
Exactly.

Warwick Fairfax:
… and gosh, I can’t recognize Gary anymore. It’s like he’s a completely different personality. But that’s part of the fear, right? It’s like, oh, it’s only alcohol that makes me friendly.

Gary Schneeberger:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s only alcohol that makes people like me. And it’s like, that’s a lie. If you believe in spiritual warfare, which we do, it’s like that’s a lie from the enemy. It’s like, no, no. You were always like that. Alcohol didn’t make you a friendly, fun-loving guy. That’s just how you were born, right?

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Yeah, and then as I walked it out, I realized the times that I wasn’t catching were the times the alcohol made me the other guy who wasn’t a very likable guy and that’s what was removed. So going through that process and realizing that truth and being willing to take that change, yeah, it was scary, but doing it not just changed the trajectory of my life but made it worth changing and kept me on a trajectory to continue to live my life.
I planned to say none of this, so thank you for your forbearance as I said this, because we wanted to talk about, right, we wanted to talk about your crucible because I’ve said, folks, many times on the show that Warwick, when it comes to Beyond the Crucible, Warwick is kind of patient zero. He’s where it all started. This brand began in the life of Warwick Fairfax. And as we’re talking about the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap, as we’re talking about the actionable truth of self-reflection, I want to ask you, Warwick, and I want you to tell our listeners and viewers, how did self-reflection help you get moving on your journey from setback to significance.

Warwick Fairfax:
So, Gary, it’s interesting. A number of people are not very reflective. They just sort of move, they act, and no time to think or navel-gaze, let’s just move. I’m not really that person. For better or worse, I’m a very self-reflective person. This is just like breathing to me. It has its strong points, it has its annoying points, like anything. I tend not to move without doing a whole lot of thinking, as I jokingly say, other than when I did my fail 2.25 billion-dollar takeover of my family’s 150-year-old family business in Australia, other than that, and there’s all sorts of reasons that we’ll get into a little bit. But after that all failed in late 1990, this 2.25 billion-dollar takeover of my family’s media business in Australia, I did a lot of reflecting.
My wife’s American, so we moved in the early nineties to the US, and I certainly was in searing pain. I was thinking, “I’ve caused the loss of this 150-year-old family media business.” And it wasn’t just the business. It was started by my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, who was a person of very strong faith, faith in Christ. I’d come to faith in Christ at an evangelical Anglican church at Oxford. So I felt like there was some spiritual legacy that I destroyed. That was incredibly painful. My actions, the takeover, caused friction within my family, instability within the 4,000-plus employees of the company, and my ever present self-talk was actually not very helpful. It was how could I have been so dumb, how could I have assumed that other family members wouldn’t sell and would want to be in a privatized company controlled by a 26-year-old, as I then was in 1987 when I launched the takeover, and-

Gary Schneeberger:
Can I stop you just for a second, Warwick? Because you said a word as you were saying that.

Warwick Fairfax:
Sure. Sure.

Gary Schneeberger:
You said your ever present self-talk, and I just want to make sure people understand, right? Self-talk is not self-reflection. Self-talk in the way that you used it is sort of self-degradation, not self-reflection, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yes.

Gary Schneeberger:
The self-talk was not leading you to solving a problem, it was leading you to pile the cause of the problem on yourself, right? I just wanted to make sure people heard that. Say what you will about it and then move on. I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I wanted to make sure people caught that.

Warwick Fairfax:
No, it’s an excellent point. Self-talk is like, “I’m dumb. I’m an idiot. Nobody likes me.” It’s like in the case you were mentioning, Gary, negative self-talk is nobody will like me if I’m not drinking. The only reason people want to be with me is because of drinking. Without that, I’ll be shunned. I’ll be like a leper in biblical times. I’ll be in the outskirts of town and unclean. Nobody wants to see Gary. Nobody wants to see Warwick. That’s the negative self-talk, and it’s very real, those sorts of notions. So excellent points.
So for me, that negative self-talk was how could I have been so dumb, how could I have assumed that other family members wouldn’t sell into a takeover, being trapped by this young 26-year-old, all of which led us to having an unsustainable level of debt, how can I think that a hostile takeover was a good idea, that it wouldn’t cause incredible friction or that financially it would work. I remember telling people, gosh, one or two ahead of time, “I think this makes business sense, but gee, what does God want?” which I’m not sure I really got a great answer to the question. But the point of the story isn’t so much the second part. I thought this made business sense. This was 1987. I just graduated with a Harvard MBA. I’m meant to be not a moron, certainly not in business. How I could have assumed that this ever was going to be financially viable is still a bit mystifying to me.
So yeah, and so really, my assumption, my parents’ assumption was that the company was not being well-run and not being run along the ideals of the founder. But even if that’s the case, and you could make a case that that was true, was the cure worse than the disease, worse than the problem? I mean, my gosh, is that really the way to handle it? So self-reflection, in my case, while painful, it taught me some valuable lessons. I realized that the vision for this family company, John Fairfax Limited, it wasn’t my vision. It wasn’t even my dad’s vision who really at heart probably would’ve been a better philosophy professor. He was very intellectual, not really a business guy. He definitely could write very well. But I realized that vision, it wasn’t my vision or my dad’s vision, it was my great-great-grandfather’s vision, John Fairfax. So I realized that you can’t inherit a vision.
It was such a poor fit. I’m not a take-no-prisoners corporate executive. I’m more of a reflective advisor. Having me at least notionally in charge of 4,000 people and having to make all sorts of pressure-filled decisions, it just was a terrible fit. It was just not my role. I came to realize that this was always going to be a very challenging situation. There was infighting amongst the family going back decades. This wasn’t going to be easy for anybody to fix, let alone a 26-year-old me. I mean, this was a very tough situation. I learned or realized that I ignored the advice of good advisors who said the numbers don’t add up. Merchant bankers as we call them in Australia, investment bankers in the US, I ignored their advice, and then I retained advisors who’d done some takeovers with some of the biggest corporate traders, and yeah, sure, they said, “Yeah, that can work.” But I’m not sure that their values really lined up with mine. So I just made some poor decisions about the advisors that I ended up using.
One of the things I’ve had to learn about myself is, yes, I’m very self-reflective, but I have this tendency, I almost jokingly say this, that if there’s a problem in the world I assume it’s my fault. So my default is how could I have been so dumb, it was all my fault. And obviously I made some terrible assumptions and have my share of blame or accountability for what happened, but it’s too simplistic to say it was all my fault.
As I mentioned, there was infighting amongst family for decades. It was a very challenging situation. My dad had just died in early ’87. I launched the takeover in late August 1987. Other family members had removed my father as chairman at the company 11 years before in 1976. Subconsciously, although I didn’t quite realize it at the time, subconsciously clearly that affected the way I viewed certainly some other members of my family after what they’d done to him. So there was sort of a very challenging mix of elements that caused me to make the decisions I did. Doesn’t mean that I made good decisions, but there were reasons why and it was a tough situation.
So now I look at it in a more balanced way, understanding who I was, who I wasn’t, and just the very challenging situation I faced and the challenge situation I had with my dad having just died and subconsciously thinking other family members who were in charge, they’re the ones responsible for, in my view, unfairly removing my father as chairman. So it was a very, very challenging situation.
So yeah, I think I look at the whole takeover situation I think more objectively. I’ve learned so much about who I am and who I’m not. I’m not this business executive type. I’m more of a reflective advisor. I’ve learned that who you work with matters. It’s my belief I’d rather work with people that are 10 or 20% less qualified, if you will, but who have 100% alignment with my values. Obviously, I’m happy to get both, but it’s like if somebody is like a star in a certain area but I’m not sure if their values align with mine, I don’t care how good they are, it’s going to be no. Values alignment is so important from my perspective, and I think you can get both, great people who have the values that match up with yours, but if there’s a choice, you just say no. Don’t hire people or work with people that don’t match your values.
So for me now, I feel like I’ve learned the mistakes of that failed takeover bid. I love what I do at Beyond The Crucible. It matches my gifting as a reflective advisor, executive coach, podcast host. The vision of Beyond the Crucible, it is truly and authentically my vision, not somebody else, and I’ve surrounded myself with a team that believes in the vision of Beyond the Crucible and has a similar value set, has a similar set of values of how to treat people and what’s important in life. It’s not all about fame and success. It’s about giving back and having a positive impact on society and the people around you.
So these lessons are hard won, if you will, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot of lessons. I’m always learning more lessons and try to be a better person and do better with what we do at Beyond The Crucible. But I’ve learned so much about what not to do and what my gifting is not, and yeah, I love what we do and what I do. Yeah, it has been challenging getting here. There was a lot of fear, but just getting to this point where you have a vision that’s authentically yours and where, from my perspective, what we do at Beyond The Crucible we do lead lives of significance. It is about living a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. I feel like that’s what we all do. So I’m very blessed and grateful for it, but it was not easy. There was certainly a lot of pain getting here, but it was absolutely worth it.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, and here’s another reason why it’s worth it. I didn’t mention it to you while we were recording. This is episode 250 of the Beyond the Crucible podcast. So look at that. You’re talking about how rewarding it is, what a blessing it is, and it’s been a blessing now for 250 episodes which is pretty, pretty astounding, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. Amazing.

Gary Schneeberger:
So we’ve covered a lot of ground in this episode, Warwick. As always, when we do these kinds of things I like to have you sort of grab the balloon strings and talk about what’s the one takeaway that you want folks who’ve listened and watched this episode. What’s the one headline, the one thing you want them to remember from our discussion?

Warwick Fairfax:
Unless you self-reflect in a meaningful way… again, we’re not talking negative self-talk. We’re talking an accurate, sober appraisal of who you are. Unless you self-reflect and learn the lessons of your crucible, you cannot move forward in a meaningful, healthy, and productive way. Unless you self-reflect, inevitably you’ll be destined to repeat your crucibles over and over and over again. Life is tough enough, but if you keep putting yourself in a situation where it doesn’t fit your gifting and abilities, the people you work with, the company you work for, it doesn’t match your values and beliefs, if you just live a life out of line with your design and your beliefs and values, life is not going to be pleasant. Life is tough enough without you going down a direction that’s going to make it tougher.
So I get the fact that self-reflecting can be painful. Change is painful as we’ve discussed and as you said very eloquently, Gary, we can be very fearful of the change, will people like me, will people like the new me. And really the question is not so much the new you is will people like the authentic you, and I think the answer is yes. Being your authentic, true self is not something to be afraid of, and if there are people that don’t like that authentic self, then maybe you don’t need to be friends with them, you know?

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
They can go have other friends and that’s fine. But if they don’t respect your values and the person who you authentically and truly are, then it doesn’t serve them or you to keep being such good friends. It just doesn’t. People select their own values and what’s important, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean that you have to be in a situation that’s not helpful to you. So self-reflection is important. It’s hard to get out of the pit of despair. As I mentioned with The Shawshank Redemption example in prison, it’s easy to feel like this is painful, but maybe what’s out there could be so much worse, or maybe it won’t be. Just think if you’re being truly who, from my perspective, God designed you to be, I think you will be happy of being truly who you are, living a life of your values and beliefs. That’s a way to greater happiness and fulfillment, not to misery. Misery is just staying in the pit, being in a role that doesn’t fit you with people that don’t respect your values and beliefs and aren’t in line with it.
So we all want a life of joy and fulfillment. That only happens after a crucible by doing some self-reflection of what happened and why it happened, learning the lessons from your crucible and moving toward a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. When you’re using your gifting and your beliefs to help others, that fills you with joy and fulfillment. It can’t help but not do that. So I get we can be afraid of changing, but that’s why self-reflection is so important. To really move ahead out of the pit, to move towards a life of significance, a life-affirming vision, you’ve got to do the hard work of self-reflection. It’s not easy, it’s painful, but for the sake of what? For the sake of your future life, for the sake of people that you love and care about. It’s important to do the inner work so that you can have a flourishing life.

Gary Schneeberger:
And that, folks, brings the plane on the ground. One of these days, one of these times, I’m going to ask Scott, our producer, to do a sound of a plane landing. Not this week, Scott. Don’t worry. But this is just, folks, the second actionable truth we’ll be discussing in depth this year. Each month we’ll take a look at a new one and how it is connected to the previous one to build out the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap. Next time, Scott, get ready, because I’m going to call on you to do something. Next time we’ll be discussing, drum roll please, authenticity. So stay tuned. Next month, that’s what we’ll be getting into. But until the next time we’re together, please remember this. We want you to believe these truths that we talk about, but more important than that, we want you to act on them because that’s what’s going to help you along the roadmap from trial to triumph, and we will see you next week.
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