Applying the Actionable Truths 4: Faith

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. When you’ve gone through a crucible, when you’re in the pit of despair, if ever there’s a time that you really need to get in touch with what you believe, it’s at that time. Because just to get out of the pit, it is tough. Without faith in something, whatever that something means to you, it’s going to be extremely difficult to get out of that.

Gary Schneeberger:
Faith. That’s the subject we explore this week. Discussing it as the fourth actionable truth on our Beyond the Crucible roadmap, that will lead you from trial to triumph. It’s a deep dive discussion of how and why your most cherished beliefs and values, which form the guiding light of your journey through life, are indispensable to getting back up and moving forward, when setbacks and failures knock you for a loop.
Welcome everyone to another episode where we talk about what we call the Beyond the Crucible roadmap. And within the Beyond the Crucible roadmap, what we call our actionable truths. Okay, what does all that mean? Stay tuned, you’ll find out in detail what that all means. But here’s an overview to kind of get us started as we move. This is our refreshed way at Beyond the Crucible, it’s not entirely new, but it is more laser focused, in which we help you get from your worst day to your greatest opportunity.
It’s what we’ve named, as I said, the Beyond the Crucible roadmap. This is how we describe the roadmap, and I always read it right off my sheet here, so I’m going to pull my eyes away from saying, “Hi,” to you and I’m going to read this. This is how we describe the roadmap. “How we help people turn their worst day into their greatest opportunity. We provide the essential actionable truths to inspire hope, enable and equip them to write their own life-affirming story.” That’s what we’re all about here, especially as we start talking about actionable truths in our roadmap. The roadmap, you should know, and you do know if you’ve listened to the previous episodes in this series within the show, as we call it, has been built from our research, our proprietary and statistically valid research, into how people experience crucibles and what it takes to turn trial into triumph.
The most revolutionary news for us through this entire process has been the identification of what I said before and 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’re going to do something similar to what we did last year with this series within the show concept. Every month, we’re going to have one episode like this, it’s going to unpack another actionable truth, all through 2025. So if you’ve missed any of them, you can find them at beyondthecrucible.com, you can find them on your favorite podcast app, you can find them on our YouTube channel. So there’s no excuse for not keeping up with the actionable truths. As we do this once per month work, I always start out when we do one of these episodes, just to have you level set us, helps us get in the mood for this, and it helps listeners and viewers know where we’re going, is to ask you this question. Why actionable truths? What do we mean by that?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Thanks, Gary. It’s a great question. At Beyond the Crucible, we’ve always been focused on, how do you get beyond your worst day? How do you get out of the pit of despair 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 Beyond the Crucible roadmap. And that really shows you the journey of how do you go from your trial, your crucible, to triumph, to a life of significance. And what we’ve found in our research is that there are 10 actionable truths. Well, think of them as catalysts. And they help you move along your journey, from your worst day, to a life affirming vision. That vision, that life affirming vision is, you know you’ve reached there when you are triumphing and you’re living a life of significance. These actionable truths have actually always been implicit in our thinking at Beyond the Crucible, and they’re actually in my book, Crucible Leadership. What we’ve done now is make these 10 actionable truths explicit.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Well, it’s fun to do this every time we do one of these episodes, because you get more succinct in the way that you do it, which is great. I think that really helps it stick with folks who are watching and listening. And the second question I always ask when we do one of these episodes is, okay, you’ve explained what actionable truths are. Now, talk a little bit about how they actually help us move from setback to significance.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, Gary, these actionable truths, they’re really accelerators or enablers that help us to move from crucible or trial, to a life of significance or triumph. You think of it almost like oil in an engine. Without oil, the engine’s going nowhere. So you need an accelerator to help you move from extremely challenging circumstances to get beyond it, to live a life-affirming vision, a life of significance. And I think you could make the case, without these actionable truths, you’re not going to get out of that pit of despair. You’re not going to get beyond your worst day. So these actionable truths, they’re enablers, they’re accelerators, they’re catalysts, but what they are is they’re absolutely essential to be able to move beyond your crucible. And that’s the whole point of what we do at Beyond the Crucible, is we want everybody, us included, to get beyond your crucible. Without these actionable truths, the beyond doesn’t happen.

Gary Schneeberger:
And what I love about the phrase, actionable truth, and it wasn’t something that just instantaneously popped in our heads as we were going through the research, right? It took some dialogue and some workshopping and, what exactly are we going to call it? But I think why I’m so happy with where we landed is that neither one of those, actionable or truth, is more important than the other, it doesn’t seem like. In other words, truths are great, but if you don’t take action on them, they’re not really much help to your journey moving forward. They’re not much of an accelerator to your point. But if you’re just doing a bunch of action and there’s no solid truth behind it, that’s not going to take you anywhere that you really want to go. So it’s just, to me, very, very much an astute way of talking about this. You really have to have those two things together. Truth and action, those two things are going to be what drives you forward, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. It’s a really good point. I mean, think of… Some of my highest values are integrity and humility, and I talk about that quite a bit in the book. So let’s pick humility. Let’s say that’s for you, one of your most important truths. But at work, you come across as sort of this arrogant boss, and my way or the highway with your family. So it’s like, that’s not really an actionable truth. It’s really not a truth. A truth that is really a truth has to be lived out. It has to be actionable. And as you say, you can take a lot of actions, but for what purpose? Where are those actions leading? So a truth is only really a truth in my book, in our book, if it’s truth in action. A truth to be a true truth has to be lived out. In other words, has to be actionable.

Gary Schneeberger:
That could go on a bumper sticker. It’d have to be a long bumper. But that’s good. I mean, that’s a succinct way of putting why these things are so impactful, why these actionable truths are so meaningful. And we have arrived now, folks, at the fourth actionable truth. We began this journey, just to revisit where we’ve been, we began this journey through our roadmap talking about where the trial begins, and that begins at your crucible. And where it begins to move toward beyond is self-reflection. So those are the first two things that we talked about. Most recently, third episode, we turned to what we have determined is the critical turning point to begin forward motion in changing the circumstances we find ourselves in after a crucible.
That is the second step in which we move into truly processing what we’ve been through. The first truth in this area of the roadmap, which we discussed last month, was authenticity. And now we move on to what our research and experience has shown us is the next step. And this is going to be a robust discussion, folks, because the next step is… I’m going to call for the drum roll, Warwick. Drum roll. Scott, give it to me. Next step is faith. Warwick, let me ask you right off the bat, why is faith such a critical fourth step after a crucible, to begin the journey of recovering from a crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s a good question. So yeah, as you said, we’ve discussed how the critical first step after a crucible is some self-reflection. What happened and why? And after self-reflection, we have to be authentic. We have to be authentic to who we truly are. It’s not about making others happy, it’s just being authentic to our true selves. But after that step, we need to have an anchor for our soul, a guiding light for our journey, something that will keep us on track and in touch with who we really are to the depths of our soul. And that’s what we call faith. It’s really about being true to your own internal belief and value systems, and not shying away from that. And making sure that that’s what’s guiding you, not somebody else’s belief system.
Or for a lot of people, they live life on autopilot without even thinking about what their belief and values are. And that’s living life on autopilot. If you get to where you want to go, that would be called luck. And as some have said, luck is not a plan. Even with the plan, it’s not easy. But without any plan, chances of success are low. So let’s talk a bit about what we mean by faith at Beyond the Crucible. It could include different belief systems, such as some of the major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. It could include different philosophical or spiritual ways of thinking. And so the point is, it’s not so much what others believe or maybe what we think we should believe. It’s about getting in touch with what we believe at our very core. I think it’s really important that we get in touch with what we believe.
Again, it’s not about what others believe. It’s what do we believe at our core. And for many, or at least some, it’s not something that maybe people have thought about. But we need to do this internal journey of self-reflection to uncover, well, what do I believe about life and the world? And what are my own most deeply cherished and deeply held values and belief systems?
And frankly, when you’ve gone through a crucible, when you’re in the pit of despair, if ever there’s a time that you really need to get in touch with what you believe, it’s at that time. Because just to get out of the pit is tough. Without faith in something, whatever that something means to you, it’s going to be extremely difficult to get out of that. And as we begin to move out of our crucible, unfortunately, crucibles don’t always come in one. Sometimes we can have [inaudible 00:12:44]-

Gary Schneeberger:
Multipacks.

Warwick Fairfax:
… crucibles.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yes.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yes, exactly. And obviously we hope that we have a wonderful life, not a crucible life. But even if it’s not as big as a crucible we’ve gone through, there will be speed bumps. And so we need to have a guiding light to withstand the storms of life, an anchor for our soul, a guiding light that will help us chart our way through. Often in life, we’ll be faced with challenging decisions. It could be a career, a personal, a life decision. Well, how we make those decisions, in certainly large part, is heavily influenced by our belief and value systems. Where we work, who we work with. Those decisions can be heavily influenced, should be heavily influenced by our beliefs and value system. So you want to get beyond your worst day, that’s where if ever there was a time, you’ve got to really dig down deep and ask yourself, what is it that I believe? What are my most cherished values?

Gary Schneeberger:
What I do every one of these episodes when we talk about an actionable truth, which is usually one word, couple words and phrases maybe, as we go through it, is I pull out the dictionary. And the dictionary I like to pull out is the American Dictionary of the English Language, written by Noah Webster in 1828. His first ever dictionary. And here is what Noah Webster… And he has a lot of definitions of faith in here, but the one that I think hits the most of what you’re talking about and how we define it here is, he calls it the object of belief. “A doctrine or system of doctrines believed. A system of revealed truths received.” So it’s things that… It’s a system. System’s a great word for this because as you were just describing it, it’s how you process certain things that happen to you through the lens of your beliefs and values, which are sort of cocooned up into your faith.

Warwick Fairfax:
That is a really interesting definition. Certainly when you look at any of the major religions we talked about, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, they all have systems of beliefs. They have a way of explaining the world. And I think robust philosophical systems do have that system of beliefs that, at least to the person who believes in it, would seem coherent and helps to make sense of the world. So yeah, I think there’s some wisdom there that I guess one question to ask yourself is, how coherent, how systematic is my belief and value system? Is it something that can withstand the storms of life? Is it something that could be an anchor for my soul? Is it something that can help guide me forward? Is this a coherent system? And coherence, at least from my perspective is, it’s up to each individual to judge that.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. An interesting part of this whole thing, Warwick, is that there are two stages that our research has shown us people experience in this still early section of the roadmap. And the first one is overcoming fear. So this is the processing stage of our Beyond the Crucible roadmap, and this is one of the things people go through, is overcoming fear. How does faith help us to overcome fear?

Warwick Fairfax:
When you’re in the midst of a crucible, when you’re in the pit of despair, typically you are gripped by mind-numbing, abject fear. And fear tends to prevent us from thinking coherently. It tends to prevent us from moving. You have an image in your mind of being curled up in a ball of just terror and fear. And it could be because something horrendous was done to you. Maybe you’ve made some mistakes that had huge consequences, and you just feel incredibly guilty or remorseful, and how can anybody forgive me? And we’ve had people on a crucible, many, who’ve been in the pit of despair, and they’ve also, in that pit, been gripped by just tremendous, numbing fear. And so, you can’t move forward without dealing with fear. So that’s where faith is so important because beliefs and values, they can really give us a guiding light to be able to deal with fear.
Fear doesn’t necessarily always go away, but it gives us an ability to make that more manageable. It gives us an ability to make coherent, logical decisions amidst the challenging circumstances that we’re going through. One of the things that’s interesting as we look back at, I would say many, if not most of our guests that we’ve had on this podcast, when you go through a crucible, it either strengthens your faith, whatever that means to you, or it weakens it. There’s no in-between. Strengthens it or weakens it. Now, the people we’ve had on our podcast, obviously we want to have guests that we can learn from. So they’ve gone through a crucible, they’ve bounced back, they’ve found a way to get beyond their crucible, and they’re living lives of significance, lives on purpose dedicated to serving others. So those that have got beyond their crucible, I would say in every case, their faith has been strengthened.
And obviously, what that means depends on the individual and what faith and belief system they happen to embrace. But I can’t think of anybody that said, “Yes, I had strong faith before and it vanished during the crucible.” Sometimes there are setbacks and people feel like, for instance, how could a loving God allow this to happen to me? Or how could a loving God forgive what I’ve done? Yes, you can go through those periods. But whatever the faith system might mean to them, it’s really… It’s been strengthened. So I think what all this says, when you look at my story, Gary’s story or the stories of everybody I think that I can think of, that we’ve had on our podcast, is that faith is actually strengthened by a crucible, for those that get beyond it. So to get beyond your worst day, to get out of the pit of despair, faith is absolutely indispensable.

Gary Schneeberger:
And this idea of overcoming fear, I don’t think that means… I mean, experience has told me it doesn’t mean, okay, I’m not afraid anymore. Fear’s gone, everything’s fine, right? I mean, overcoming fear really means having the fortitude, having the bravery, having the wherewithal to push through the fear and deal with the fear. It’s not like it cancels it out and it never crops up. What faith allows you to do is walk through the fear of the fires, the crucibles, the things that happen to you. That’s a fair assessment, right? We’re not talking about wiping fear out forever, canceling it out. We’re talking about getting through fear, getting past fear, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. Somebody said that, “Courage is the ability to move forward even when you’re gripped with fear.” People who are brave, and I’ve never been in the military, but when you hear stories of those who have, and they’ve taken heroic action that maybe it leads to the Congressional Medal of Honor in the US for instance, if you ask them, “So were you afraid?” They say, “Absolutely, I was terrified. But because of my buddies, because of the other soldiers in my unit, I had to do what I could to save them, to do what I could to make sure we got through this very challenging circumstance.” So they made choices to be brave, even though they were afraid. That is the essence of bravery. And so I think with faith, it gives you tools.
Like for me and my Christian faith, when I get fearful, and I’m certainly as fearful as anybody, there might be scriptures I call to mind, like 1 Peter 5:7, “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” I mean, there’s a number of scriptures that talk about anxiety and fear. And so for me, they do help. Doesn’t mean it all goes away, but it enables me to move forward. So having a system of beliefs and faith, it doesn’t necessarily make fear go away, but it helps you make positive steps forward in the face of fear. So that’s why faith is important. So it’s an important distinction that you made.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, thank you. The second point that comes up when we’re going through a crucible in the processing phase, and that is committing to change. That’s something that we have to do if we’re going to get beyond our crucible in this stage. Talk a bit about how we commit to change and how faith helps us do that.

Warwick Fairfax:
To get beyond our worst day, to get beyond a crucible, we have to make a commitment to change. We have to make a commitment to get out of that pit. What one small step are we going to make? And that’s where I think faith can be very helpful. We need to really dig down deep into our beliefs and values, make that commitment that our faith will be an anchor for our soul, a light in the darkness. And it’s really clinging to that faith more deeply than you ever have, that will help you make those minute, even micro steps forward, step by step.
Again, from my perspective, whether it be, “Lord, I just need enough courage to make this one step, to make this phone call, to apologize, to do what I’m convinced you want me to do, just give me the strength to do it. I just need… I’m not asking for strength tomorrow. I’m not even asking for strength this afternoon. I just need strength today, right now, in this minute, to make this step that I know is right to the depths of my soul.” So faith can be very practical in guiding the path we make. And really, for faith to be actionable, it can’t be just something that’s on a bumper sticker or even a nice scripture on a wall, as much as scripture can be helpful. That has to be something that you use. It needs to guide every decision and every action that you make.

Gary Schneeberger:
And you mentioned a couple of the scriptures. One that comes to mind here for me, and again, what I love about this scripture is you don’t have to believe in… You don’t have to be a Christian to hear it in the context of what we’re talking about here, why this is important. And I think of James 2:26. All right. “Faith without works is dead.” Now there’s a context for that in Christianity for sure, but just in what we’re talking about, right? Faith, the value system that is your guiding light, without works, without acting on it, is no good. It’s dead. So I think that scriptural truth in Christianity can be extrapolated out to everything we’re talking about here, right? That faith as we’ve defined it here, without works, without action, is dead, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. And yeah, I love that scripture in James. You could say about this whole series of podcasts we’re covering, that truths, without them being actionable, are dead.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
That’s a direct correlation to what we’re saying. And it’s true. You say you believe a bunch of things. Like, “Hey, my values are humility, integrity. But nobody thinks I’m humble. They think I’m arrogant, integrity. I say what’s convenient to get the job done, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s true. I just live a life to help maximize my own success, and truth is optional. If truth serves me, great. If it doesn’t, I lie. It’s all about winning.” Okay, well, that’s not living a life of integrity. In that case, the integrity is relatively dead to you. Humility is relatively dead. As other people would say that on the whole, yes, he or she has brief glimpses of integrity and humility, but really over the course of the last 20, 30 years that I’ve known them, those are glimpses. And by and large, they lack humility and lack integrity. You don’t want that to be you. So it is great to have values and beliefs, but you’ve got to live them. Otherwise, what’s the point? They’re not actionable and they’re dead in a sense.

Gary Schneeberger:
Well, speaking of people who live actionable truths and who live by faith, I love this part of this series within the show here, Warwick, this is where we take a look at… And part of the reason I love it is I get to call… I get to refer to Warwick, our host, as patient zero in Beyond the Crucible. Because his crucibles were the seeds that grew the brand. So we always take time in episodes on the roadmap, talking about the actionable truths, to talk to Warwick about his experience with them. And so, I’ll ask you this question, Warwick. How did Faith help you begin to move beyond your crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I grew up in Sydney, Australia, in the Anglican Church. We didn’t go that often. We were more sort of Christmas and Easter kind of Christians. It’s funny, as I sometimes say, I know in the Catholic Church, which my wife grew up in, you can use the term Catholic guilt. And you shuffle into church on holidays and all that kind of thing, and feel a bit guilty. There’s no such thing as guilt in the Anglican Church. The pastor, the reverend is just happy to see you. So what could be better? No guilt.
They’re just happy to see you. So anyway, so I grew up in the Anglican Church, and what’s interesting is there’s really a great story of faith in my family. My great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, the founder of the family’s a 150-year-old media business in Australia, he was a man of great faith. He was an elder in his church, a wonderful husband, wonderful father. He absolutely lived his faith. Pretty much every nonprofit that existed at the time in Sydney, was either founded by him or significantly funded by him. If ever there was somebody that lived their faith, that their truths were truly actionable in his life, it was him. So for him, faith in Christ was the anchor for his soul, the guiding light of everything he did.
Now as generations wore on, I think faith was important, but it became a bit more traditional. Maybe not quite so Christ-centered or evangelical, so to speak. And my father definitely had a faith, but as I said, it wasn’t really as evangelical as John Fairfax’s. He was a very philosophical person. He would write books, trying to make a synthesis between different religions, and definitely thought deeply about religion and philosophy. Now, my mother, her family were Jewish, but they were not religious. They were Zionists. And as I’ve heard explained, Zionists at the time, were concerned about the founding of the state of Israel, which it didn’t happen until I think about 1948.
So they were more political than religious. My mother though, she did believe in God. It’s interesting, she studied chemistry at the University of Sydney. And she would look at the table of elements and would say, “If you look at just the perfection of those elements, about how it was all designed, you cannot but believe that there is a God.” She may not have had maybe a Christ-centered perspective, given her Jewish upbringing, but she absolutely believed that there was a God, there was a creator, no question. So growing up, I did believe that there was a God, but I wouldn’t say it was the animating or driving force of my life. So while I was at Oxford, during my last term there, last semester, a friend of mine invited me to an evangelical Anglican church. And he invited me a few times, but it was Sunday and I really wasn’t that interested. And I was never anti-faith, it just wasn’t a central part of my life.
So I attended this church, and they sang Christian choruses. The sermons were incredible. And this was just before my last semester. So one of the things I heard at church is, there was going to be a retreat for Oxford and Cambridge students at this Anglican retreat center, on the Devon Coast, in sort of the south of England, south-west coast of England. And so, I was there studying for my final exams. I needed a break for a week. And it was during that retreat that I heard people give testimonies, sermons, singing Christian choruses. And so it was during that retreat that I made a profession of faith in Christ, and it’s been the driving animating force of my life ever since.
And I definitely needed that anchor for my soul. As listeners have heard, in 1987, I launched a 2.25 billion dollar takeover of my family’s media business. Part of the reason for that was that I wanted to restore the values of the company to the beliefs and ideals of the founder, John Fairfax. I mentioned a person of great faith. And it was more not to have Christian editorials. Although, as an interesting sidelight, we as a family didn’t really determine editorials, at least not through most of the time that I was growing up. But Christmas and Easter, there was a Christian editorial. They must’ve got some pastor somewhere to write them, which is amazing since day-to-day, it didn’t come across that way in the news columns. But in any case, I wanted, in terms of how people were treated, and just the fairness in reporting to be in line with that kind of his worldview in a sense.
Well, three years later, after the takeover, the company had to file for bankruptcy in 1990. The company had too much debt. So those were tough years, after the takeover failed in the nineties, I felt like I let my father down, my parents, other family members, even the thousands of employees at the company. In some strange way, because we had the major opinion leaders of the country, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age in Melbourne, The Australian Financial Review, which is sort of like the Wall Street Journal here, in some ways, I even felt like I let down the nation of Australia.
The worst part about it for me was, I felt like God had a plan to resurrect the company in the image of the founder. I was a believer in Christ. Therefore, it would seem to be pretty clear to me that God’s plan was for me to be part of that as some leading figure. So in some strange way, I felt like I’d let God down, which when you let down your most cherished beliefs and values, that’s about as crippling as it can be to any human being. So when you’re faced with that kind of crucible, which was devastating to me, you either abandon your faith or you dig down deep further into your faith. And that’s what I did. I sort of clung to my faith like a, I don’t know, drowning man on a ship amidst a storm. I mean, I was ever tighter. I never… Some people blame God when bad things happen.
In my case, a lot of it was because of my own naivety and stupid decisions. And yes, there was infighting in the family going back generations. But yeah, I felt like that was all me, or a lot of me, and then poor decisions and other family members. So I never blamed God for that, at least in my case. But I came from my perspective, to realize that God loves us unconditionally. He didn’t need my stuff and all the things maybe I could have done. But God doesn’t measure our significance in terms of size. It’s not about whether you save your nation or save your town or… It could be just being at a local nonprofit, or how you treat your employees or fellow workers or family members. We talk about the size of the significance doesn’t matter. I think God looks at it the same way, from my perspective. So that was helpful as I kind of realized maybe my belief system wasn’t as systematic as it should have been, and I was making errors in my systematic theology, so to speak, and how I looked at God.
And so I don’t look at it in the same way about all the things I’m going to do for him, which it’s more about, “Lord, what is it you want me to do?” And let me get on board with his plan, is more my perspective these days. So really the bottom line is, through the years afterwards, my faith in Christ did become the anchor to my soul, the guiding light that’s helped me chart my way forward beyond my crucible. There have been a number of instances in my life which I felt like God has given me a lot of wisdom.
So one such example for me was, in the nineties, through the early two thousands, I was working in an aviation services company in Maryland, and I was doing business and financial analysis. And I was doing well, and I got good performance reviews, which is good. But I just felt like… There’s a passage in the Old Testament, talks about God’s still, small voice. God didn’t always speak in the mountains or the storms, but just through that still, small voice. And I just felt that, just that sense that God was telling me, “Warwick, you’re playing small. You’re not using all your gifted abilities for me, that you could.” And there’s this phrase, you know when you know. And I was convinced… It wasn’t about arrogance, it’s just about, it doesn’t honor God or your belief system, to hide your skills and abilities and your passions.
And so I quit my job. And through a coach that helped me with mid-career coaching, I became a certified executive coach. That led to eventually me writing my book, Crucible Leadership, after a talk in church, and to this podcast. But that was a moment where faith was absolutely critical, that it was really, as one of our guests have said, Michael Lindsay, President of Taylor University, he wrote a book, Hinge Moments.
That was a hinge moment for me when I felt like God saying, “You are playing small.” So my decisions was directly guided by this actionable truth of faith. It led me to make a life-changing decision. I wasn’t in a crucible. Life wasn’t terrible. But it helped me make a very wise decision. When I look at where I am now, I just feel like I’m being so blessed. And a huge part of that is my faith. And for me, it’s my faith in Christ. I’m an elder in an evangelical church, where I just love being a part of. I was on the board of my kids’ Christian school for many years. I’m involved with Taylor University, a Christian university where my kids went. And one of the things I believe is, whatever your faith and belief system is, it’s good to have systems… Back to the Noah Webster thought, maybe philosophy, if you will.
It’s good to have systems to make that truth actionable in your life. So for me, I have systems in place. I believe in systems and rhythms. So I want to make sure that my faith in Christ is central to everything that I do. So I read my Bible each day. I pray regularly. I’m in a variety of groups with other people of faith in my church. And so all of those systems, scripture memory is something that I do. Depending on what I’m going through, I try to call them to mind to help center my soul. So I want to ensure that my faith guides every decision that I make. And so, whatever your faith and belief system is, it doesn’t have to be mine, it doesn’t have to be Gary’s, it doesn’t have to be your parents’ and friends’, but whatever that is, you’ve got to have practices you put in place, so that you are getting in touch with your belief system.
It could be journaling, it could be meditating, it could be talking with friends who share your belief system, whatever that is, you’ve got to have systems and practices in place to make sure that your faith, whatever that means to you, is actionable. And in that way, it not only helps you get beyond your crucible, it helps you make wise, spirit-led decisions each day. Which is to me, critical to getting to a life of significance.

Gary Schneeberger:
I haven’t thought about this until you’ve just told that story of how faith has been your guiding light, has been your guiding beacon as you’ve gone through crucibles. Not just the big one, the $2.25 billion one, but other ones that have come up. And you’ve used the word several times in our conversation about the actionable truths in the three episodes we’ve done before this and this one, about how these actionable truths are accelerators. And what’s interesting to me is, hearing you tell your story from stem to stern, in terms of crucibles like you just did, they’re not just accelerators that get you to really, really good places, right? They’re also accelerators that get you beyond bad places, right? I mean, it’s not just the final few good steps to cross the finish line. It’s those sloggy steps that you have to take to get off the starting gate, right? The actionable truths help you at any point along the journey. And that’s why the roadmap concept is so valuable, I think. Right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. It’s a great point. Just to kind of dwell on what you’re saying for a moment. In those dark days in the nineties, especially the early nineties, some of those truths, like Philippians 3 as I’ve mentioned, “Forgetting what is behind, as turning toward what is ahead, I press on toward the gulf, which Christ Jesus has called me heavenward.” Earlier on, I think it’s Philippians 3:7-14 that says, “I counted as rubbish the things in the past compared to the passing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.”
So basically, when I was going through those moments of not clinical depression, but depression or feeling terrible about myself, and how could I have been so dumb? I was a Harvard MBA, how could I have assumed that other family members wouldn’t have sold out at the takeover? One of many really incredibly dumb decisions I made, those scriptures, that belief system helped me say, “Okay, the most important thing to me is my faith. Yes, I’ve made poor decisions. I recognize that. I acknowledge that. It wasn’t all my fault, but I recognize that. I’m going to move beyond that. I’m going to forget what’s behind. The notion that God loves me unconditionally, he doesn’t need my stuff. He doesn’t need the family media business per se. That he loves me for who I am.” Psalm 139, “We’re beautifully and wonderfully made.” So all of those scriptures, all of those biblical truths, at least as I see it, helped me baby step by baby steps say, “Okay, I’m going to move beyond my crucible. I’m not going to continually self-flagellate and keep beating myself up for poor decisions.”
Certainly a significant amount were my fault, but I was in a very difficult situation with family infighting going back decades. So it was a very challenging situation. I was able to look at it more objectively. So in those dark days, that belief system helped me step by step, change my perspective, which then helped me to move on. But if you’re in that self-flagellating, every problem in the world, every sin that’s ever been is all my fault, you can get really despondent, really angry at yourself, and just feel like, “I’m worthless.” Obviously, to the extreme, bad things happen when you have that kind of perspective. But a solid belief system can help you combat those negative thoughts and start having thoughts that are helpful. Thoughts beget actions. You’ve got to have right thoughts to have right actions. And so in those early nineties, changing the way I thought, forgetting the past, nothing is more important than, to me, faith in Christ.
And obviously you’ve got to live that out. But clinging to power, money, not that those really issues for me, but even, family business, my sense of significance was a lot in the family business and the wonderful things it did for Sydney and Australia. So yeah, it’s like, you got to let that go. Your sense of significance is not even in good things. It’s about in some higher power. In my case, faith in God. So it was very practical for me in those early days in the nineties, changing my perspective bit by bit, so that I would not think, “Oh, look what I did.” It’s like, “Okay, that’s in the past. Let’s forget what’s behind and move forward.”
It wasn’t one and done. I had to go back to the well many, many, many, many times. But little bit by little bit, it was life-transforming. Didn’t happen overnight. But like a lot of things, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” that ancient Chinese proverb. I mean, that’s true. You just make one step of faith, one change in perspective, and eventually, your perspective in your life changes. But it does start with having a belief system that you cling to, that helps you move forward.

Gary Schneeberger:
Well, there you go. Naturally coming to a place where you’ve landed the plane on the conversation in a good spot for folks to help them understand that actionable truth and this particular actionable truth of faith, can serve you when things are at their worst and can serve you on the precipice of things at their best. It truly is something that serves you all along the road that we’ve built the roadmap for. So as people, as listeners and viewers think about this episode, what’s the one big takeaway you hope they come away with to help them on their journey to a life of significance?

Warwick Fairfax:
Crucibles are extremely tough. They’re tough to go through, they’re tough to survive. Both Gary and I know that. Both Gary and I have gone through very challenging crucibles. But to get beyond our worst state, we need to have faith. And again, what we mean by faith is a belief and value system, that’s an anchor for our souls, that’s a guiding light as we seek to move forward. Now, that belief and value system, it’s not about what others believe, parents, friends, neighbors, what we think we should believe.
It has to be authentically ours. It’s not something that could be inherited just because you grew up in some belief system, whatever that may be. So you’ve got to do the inner work. We talk a lot about the inner soul work. You’ve got to do the inner work to understand, what is it that I believe and value? What are my most cherished belief and values? And let me own that. Let me not run away from that. Let me cling to it as tightly as I can, because only in that way can we get beyond our worst day. I’d say in summary, to get beyond a crucible, faith is absolutely indispensable.

Gary Schneeberger:
Well, wow, that was a quick summation. And I’ve got another question because what you said when you were talking about that right there, you said that, “The belief and value system must be authentically yours, authentically ours.” And that just makes me think, all of these actionable truths that… So far we’ve talked about actionable truths of self-reflection, authenticity, and now faith. All of those are sort of freestanding things, right? Self-reflection is a thing of and by itself, and it can mean different things to different people. Authenticity, a self-standing thing. Faith is an existing thing.
But to make these work for you, they have to become actionable as well. So the actionable truths get you beyond your crucible. They’re universal truths, yes, but you have to adopt them as unique to you in order to make them work for you, right? Does that make sense? This idea of… Even authenticity, which is something by itself, you have to lean into whatever authenticity is for you, and that’s going to help you get propelled forward to triumph from trial. And as we go through this, I suspect that all of the actionable truths that we talk about, the truth is universal, but the action has to be conformed to us as individuals. Is that fair?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s very well said Gary. And I think it also means it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to require a lot of work. You go through your worst day, whether something terrible happened to you, or you did something terrible, or you’re in an incredibly difficult situation, it’s going to require a lot of self-reflection. How do I forgive myself? How do I forgive others? Which as we often say, it doesn’t mean condoning, but without forgiveness, you’re sort of trapped in a prison, if you will. How do I get beyond this? How do I learn the lessons from this? That requires a huge amount of work for that actionable truth of self-reflection.
Authenticity, a lot of people spend a lifetime being somebody else, who they think they should be or what’s going to sell in the company they work with, or the friends they’re with, are going to be the cool people. But being authentic, the true you without the mask, that’s pretty scary. As we’ve said before, it’s one thing to reject the mask, it’s another thing to reject the true authentic Warwick or Gary, whoever you are. So that requires courage and a lot of work. Same with faith. It’s again, not about what everybody else thinks, but you’ve got to do a lot of work to say and to explore, “Well, what is it I truly believe about the world? And what are my inherent beliefs and value systems? And how will they guide me moving forward?” Many people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about, “Well, what do I believe about the world?” It’s like, “I don’t know. I just make decisions every day and see what happens.” Well, I would suggest that that’s not really a good plan.
Because that means that making good decisions is as much luck as anything else. I mean, maybe you have an instinct about what the right thing to do is, but why not make that instinct explicit? Know exactly why you should make decisions the way you feel you should. But that requires, just as it does with self-reflection, authenticity, a lot of inner soul work to get in touch with, what do I really believe to my core? What value systems make sense to me? And what systems and practices am I going to put in place to help make sure that every decision I make is in line with my faith, with my belief and value systems? That requires a lot of work. People tend not to do the inner work. They tend to focus on the outer work. We’ve said this so many times. The inner work precedes the outer work. And certainly one of the most critical elements of that inner work is getting in touch with your faith, your belief and value systems. It’s absolutely critical.

Gary Schneeberger:
And just to put a bow on this idea of how all the actionable truths, they’re universal in the sense that the truth is universal, the actionable part of it has to be unique to you. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Because your crucible is unique to you. So if your crucible’s unique to you, the path back from your crucible has to be unique to you too, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Indeed. Well said.

Gary Schneeberger:
All right. Well folks, I love it when Warwick says, “Well said.” That means I’ve done something right. So I’m feeling good about that authentically. That does bolster my faith that I sort of sometimes know what I’m doing here as the co-host of the show. This is just the fourth actionable truth that we’re going to talk about this year in 2025. Each month, we’ll take a look at a new one and how it’s connected to the previous one, to build out the roadmap, the Beyond the Crucible roadmap. And next time, we are going to be discussing… Scott, I’m going to wake you up, drum roll please. We’ll be discussing character. That’s where we’re going next month, we’re going to talk about character. So until the next time we’re together, Warwick and I have a couple of favors to ask you, or ask of you. If you’re watching this on YouTube, we’d ask you to subscribe to our channel, and to leave a comment on what you thought about this conversation, what you think about the show in general.
If you’re listening on your favorite podcast app, we would ask you to subscribe, so that you don’t miss an episode. And then rate the show. What do you think about the show? And until we are together the next time, please remember this. We want you to believe these truths that we talk about, but we also want you to act on them. Because that’s what’s going to help you move along the roadmap from trial to triumph. And we will see you next week.
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