Building a Life You Don’t Want to Escape From

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. So I outline the whole concept of wanting to design a life that you love and just some of the core concepts of it. And so, Margaret, as we were chatting, came up with this incredible phrase and she said, “Really, I guess what we’re talking about is you want to have a life that you don’t want to escape from.”
We want to have a life that we don’t want to escape from. And I thought to myself that is exactly right, because so often we lead lives of quiet desperation.

Gary:
So how do we swap that quiet desperation for a life lived joyfully and purposefully out loud? That’s the focus of this week’s episode in which we unpack Warwick’s latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com. Want to build a life that you don’t want escape from? If you do, we’ve got all the questions you should be asking yourself, from what is your true calling, to what are your beliefs and values? From how do you want the rhythms of your life to look, to how does this all add up to a life of significance?
Well, folks, this is one of those episodes that we do every month that is based on a blog that Warwick has written. Think of these, I just thought of it this way this morning. It’s kind of like when a famous book gets made into a movie. That’s what we’re talking about here. Warwick has written a blog, and now we’re going to put it on camera and on microphone for you. Or on speaker, I guess, on your end. And this blog is called Want to Build a Life You Don’t Want To Escape From? It’s kind of a catchy title. That’s what we’re going to talk about. Do you want to build a life you do not want to escape from? You’ll find out where that phrase came from and where the idea for this blog came from right after I asked Warwick this question. What was, Warwick, the inspiration for you to write this blog that is now available at beyondthecrucible.com? Something clearly was moving in you to want to do this. What was that?

Warwick Fairfax:
So Gary, we had a meeting towards the beginning of the year, I guess it was a few weeks ago now with Beyond the Crucible team, and a lot of organizations, a lot of companies do this as the beginning of the year. What do we want our goals to be and what are the targets? What’s the vision for this year? And that’s a very normal thing that a lot of folks do.

Gary:
Annual plan, right? Annual planning. Yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:
There you go. But we started with a question that is not normal, at least I don’t think it is for most people. And the question was, what does Warwick want? Now, it wasn’t like somebody else asked this question, it was me. And you might wonder, “Well, that’s a bit strange, isn’t it?”
And really for me, it was a very un-Warwick-like question, because I tend to be focused on what does our audience want? Being a person of faith, maybe what’s some higher power, what does God want? I tend to be others focused and that’s good. But really, the thought is here is that I want to make sure that what we do at Beyond the Crucible fits into what I want out of life, what I want to do, because this is something that I founded. I have a lot of help, but ultimately it’s the organization, it’s the concepts that I founded. And so, just like everybody else, I get to choose, well, I get input, but how much do I want to do this?
Do I want to do this 24/7? I mean, what does that look like? And so, it was a very difficult subject for me to talk about. And I didn’t really start off with, well, it was sort of a rhetorical question, what does Warwick want? Because ahead of time, being a reflective person, if I asked myself that question that I wrote down some notes of what that was, and I wanted people to understand that I love what we do at Beyond the Crucible. We’re about helping people not be defined by their worst day, helping people bounce back from the pit, if you will, to what we call a life of significance, life on purpose, dedicated to serving others. To use a phrase we often use here, I am off the charts passionate about that, but what’s interesting is there’s actually a number of activities beyond Beyond the Crucible, so to speak, that I’m very passionate about.
And so, I kind of outline with the team in more detail than I usually go into some of those things. So just to give listeners and viewers a bit of an idea of what that is, I’m an elder at an evangelical church, non-denominational church in Annapolis, Maryland. And I’ve been an elder there for many years, since, I don’t know, 2007. It’s a grace-based church, perfect balance in my view anyway, of love and truth. So I feel very blessed to go there and very involved. I’m on the campaign committee of Taylor University, that’s a Christian university in Indiana where my kids went. It’s thriving under a great president of the last several years, Michael Lindsay. It’s always been a tremendous university. And Michael Lindsay is really helping to take Taylor to another level, so I feel blessed to be part of that. And then, there’s a local Christian organization called Estuary, and I’m on the strategic advisory committee of that organization.
This is led by Joey Tomassoni, and that seeks to help people be disciples at home, in their workplace, just have an impact in their neighborhoods, which can mean very different things. And so, they partner with churches, just helping set up curriculum and groups to help facilitate that. So all of these three organizations outside of Beyond the Crucible, my church, Taylor University and Estuary, I feel like they’re having a big impact and really helping people from my perspective, being a person of faith, they’re all faith-based organizations. So I’m very passionate about that.
What that means is, when I’m thinking about what I do at Beyond the Crucible, I want to make sure that we’re doing what we need to be doing. But if we start launching all sorts of initiatives, such that it eats into the time that I have for those three other organizations, maybe it’ll do more than eat into that time. Maybe it will just consume it so much, I won’t be able to be involved at all. Then I will feel bad about that, because I’ll feel that part of my calling is using my gift and abilities to have an impact. I like to think I’m having an impact on all three organizations, because I’m using my skills and abilities for organizations I passionately care about, and I love the variety. It’s like, nothing wrong with having one kind of vegetable or protein, but variety is okay. Variety makes life interesting. And so, one of the things I had to consider is life is about choices, and we get to choose our own adventure, and in this case, I get to choose my adventure.
And so, what does that mean practically? Well, I’m a certified executive coach. I’ve done some speaking, it’s not a natural gifting of mine, but through some training and help, I think I’ve got to the level in speaking where I’m actually competent, if not reasonably good, which to me is quite remarkable, but it seems to be the case. That being said, I don’t do as much speaking and executive coaching as I used to. Not because I don’t find them fulfilling and enjoy them in a sense. What I love is doing what we’re doing at Beyond the Crucible, having these conversations, learning from the guests we have, the blogs we write. I mean, that’s at the top of the list of what I love doing, because I’m a reflective advisor. So I had to make a choice, which is basically, I don’t want to be traveling 10 times a month speaking all over the place. Could I do that? Maybe. But that would mean it would be almost impossible to be involved in some of the other activities with these three other organizations.

Gary:
Good summary. And I think it would be, I’m going to try to get WDWW, What Does Warwick Want? I want that to become something that we say as a group. WDWW.

Warwick Fairfax:
It almost feels like heresy to me, which is, it’s like, what does Jesus want? What does Warwick want? It’s hardwired into me that that is such an irrelevant question, but it can be relevant in the right context.

Gary:
Absolutely. And in the context of the teamwork, I just thought about it as you were talking. What you did was set yourself in the same place as the team, because none of the team members are full-timers. The team members all have other clients that we work with, and we’re living that out every day. You should have the same opportunity to live that out every day, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yeah, it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

Gary:
It does. And I hadn’t thought about it until we started talking. That’s why I love these episodes, because things come out that would not normally come out. So something else came out of this that was born from a discussion with a member of the team, and it was a member of our team who came up with the phrase that resonated so much with you that you named the blog that, it shaped the blog. Talk a little bit about that inspiration, and how and why that moved you so much.

Warwick Fairfax:
So one of the things that we do before we write a blog, at least before I write a blog, and then the podcast comes from the blog, is we have a team meeting. And in this case it was you, Gary, myself, and one of our team members, Margaret Herbert. And so, I outline the whole concept of wanting to design a life that you love and just some of the core concepts of it. And so, Margaret, as we were chatting, came up with this incredible phrase and she said, “Really, I guess what we’re talking about is you want to have a life that you don’t want to escape from.”
We want to have a life that we don’t want to escape from. And I thought to myself, that is exactly right, because so often we lead lives of quiet desperation. I think it might’ve been Thoreau that said that, that we just hate what we do. And so, it was really a brilliant phrase. So this concept of wanting a life that we don’t want to escape from really sums it up. And for many of our listeners and viewers, today they’re living that life of drudgery. Maybe it’s more than drudgery. Sometimes it can be boredom, sometimes it can be active persecution. They might hate their boss, hate the products the company produces, but they might feel, “Well, it’s a paycheck and maybe there aren’t a whole lot of options in my town.” Or they might feel like it’s some prison they can’t escape from, but they hate what they do and they would just love to escape from that life. So yeah, it’s a brilliant phrase and that’s really the whole concept about what we’re going to talk about is designing a life you love that you don’t want to escape from.

Gary:
And before we move on to do that, I have to make a confession. It’s a good confession. I have earned a living arranging words into sentences as a writer for more than 40 years. And I have a thing that I say to fellow writers, people who string words together, that when they do a particular stringing of words together that I find really, really good, my response to them is, “I don’t like you very much.”
And the reason behind that is… So I don’t like you, Margaret, as you listen to this. I don’t like you, because of that phrase. Here’s why I say that. I know all the words that you used. I know that, I know we, I know don’t, I know want, I know to, I know escape, and I know all the words you used in that phrase. It never occurred to me to string them together like that. So when I say that, it’s the highest compliment, one writer can pay another. I was like, “Hmm, I didn’t come up with that. You did.” Bravo for you. So let’s give you a clap.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s like listening to a wonderful symphony by Mozart or Beethoven. You might say, “I know that chord. I know the note, D, B, F-sharp, what have you, but I wouldn’t have thought to put it together in quite that order, in that timing.” So it’s kind of like that. That’s the genius of musical or written composition.

Gary:
Absolutely. Well said. All right, let’s move on. As always folks, you’ll probably be a little surprised, and by a little, I mean, this big, very little, that there’s seven points in the blog, seven points of how you go about building a life you don’t want to escape from. And let’s run through those points, Warwick. The first one is that folks can ask themselves as they look to build a life they don’t want to escape from. The first point is, and it’s where it all starts. What is your true calling? Talk about that a little bit.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, Gary. So I mean, this is a very big question and the answer may not come overnight. And one of the things I’ve found in my life and I have a feeling in your life too, Gary, is a calling can evolve. You may have always known you loved writing. I think you’ve mentioned you knew you loved writing at a young age, elementary school or before, but the particular nature of that writing evolved, the arenas. And so, for me, I also like writing and thought leadership, but of course I wasn’t as clear as you were, frankly, on what my true calling was at a young age, because we’ll get to that later.

Gary:
Yeah, you had good reason not to be, so don’t beat yourself up about that.

Warwick Fairfax:
No, indeed. And so, we’ll get to that later, but yeah. The question is huge, and you may not come up with the answer to that overnight, but wrestling with that question is a huge first step that will lead to greater fulfillment than living a life you don’t want to live. So ask that question of yourself, “What is my true calling? What is my purpose in life? Why was I put on the earth?”
A lot of people don’t ask that question. It’s like, well, life’s about just providing for my family getting a paycheck. And that’s true, but it’s my belief and it’s our belief of Beyond the Crucible that yes, it’s important as those things are, as providing for your family, getting a paycheck, that we all should be asking ourselves, what is our true calling? Because it changes the nature of how we think about who we are and what we do. There can be situations in which we don’t necessarily change jobs, but by asking ourselves the nature of our true calling, how we think about our job can be radically different, and how people perceive us can be radically different. So it’s a big question, and the answer typically doesn’t come overnight, but just ask yourself, “What is my true calling? What does calling mean? What does purpose mean? What does that mean for me?” Just wrestle with that question. You won’t get that answer overnight typically, but that is the first step. You’ve got to give yourself permission to ask yourself that challenging question, that big question.

Gary:
Yeah. And this is a great time to say it is a big question and it’s a question, folks, that you’ve heard before at Beyond the Crucible. We’ve talked about it in the past. We’ve talked about it often in the past. In fact, a couple of podcast episodes, blog episodes ago in January, Warwick had another topic of a blog that he wrote about the power of saying no, and that was one of the first points in that blog as well. Here’s the thing, we’re not repeating ourselves just because we have no other ideas. These are fundamental concepts to the Beyond the Crucible architecture for what it takes to move from trial to triumph. So frankly, you’ll hear a couple more phrases in the points that Warwick’s laid out that you’ve heard before, and the reason why is because there are certain things that are indispensable to overcoming your crucible. Does that sum it up pretty well, Warwick?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it does. Really at Beyond the Crucible, we have core constructs, which is your life is not… Core constructs like your worst day doesn’t define you. That life, if you want a life of joint fulfillment, it’s about living a life, a significance of life on purpose dedicated to serving others. You talk about forgiveness, which doesn’t necessarily mean condoning. Perseverance, and a lot of these are summarized in the actionable truths that we’ve been going through once a month.
So there are core constructs, but sometimes the arena is different. So with just say no, it’s about a particular opportunity that comes up. If it doesn’t fit into your calling, your vision, belief, and values, then start easy. It may be from friends and family, which is a very high bar for saying no, but you’ve got to say no. So this is really looking at some of these paradigms from the lens of, okay, so I’ve said no to a new opportunity, but what about my life as a whole? Maybe my life as a whole is not designed right. I’m not living a life I want to live. So great, I’ve said no to some bad things or things that don’t really fit into what I want to do, but do I enjoy what I’m doing now?

Gary:
Yeah. So here folks is point two from the blog, Want to Build a Life You Don’t Want to Escape From, copyright 2025, Margaret Hibbard. The second point from the blog, Warwick, is this, what are you truly passionate about? Again, we’ve talked about it before. Why is it so important specifically to this topic?

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, as you’re thinking about what is your calling, one of the ways to maybe it’s almost like finding buried treasure to figure that out is to ask yourself, what are the things that really motivate and move you? It could be something in the world that you think, “It’s so messed up that this exists in the world.” It could be challenges with environment, with people being abused, persecuted, lack of freedom in certain other countries. It could be all sorts of things that animate you and move you, that make you think, “This is not right. This shouldn’t exist. People shouldn’t have to suffer this way.”
And so, it could be something negative, it could be a new invention or something in which you think, “Boy, life would be so much better for so many people if this invention existed.” So one of the clues to what your true calling is, what are the things that keep you up at night when you’re thinking, “Gosh, I wish this wasn’t so, I wish this was different. I wish this particular technology existed.” So it’s really another stepping stone, if you will, to try to figure out your calling and try to figure out a life that you love, that you don’t want to escape from, is what are you off the charts passionate about? And it’s okay to be off the charts passionate. Sometimes we think, “Oh no, it’s irrelevant. My passion’s irrelevant.” It’s wholly relevant.

Gary:
Yeah, I mean, the phrase is not off the building passionate. You’re not going to fall from a great height and hurt yourself. Falling off the charts, okay. If you’re off the charts passionate about something, good thing. And I love, Warwick, that you mentioned that they’re stepping stones, because really it is connected and sequential. So we’ve been through the first two, and the third one follows naturally from the second one, and that is this. What are your beliefs and values? Again, I’m going to say this a lot in this episode, but not an unusual topic for Beyond the Crucible. Fits great here. Why does it fit so well here in this discussion of creating a life that you don’t want to escape from?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I mean, beliefs and values are the core of who we are. Now, we might believe in particular religion. It could be major religion, such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism. There could be a philosophy, a way of thinking. A lot of people today are more spiritual than religious, but we all have beliefs and values. To be human is to have a soul, to have things that animate and govern how we live. And so, we have them, they exist. We need to make sure that we’re fully in touch with what those beliefs and values are, that really resonate with us to the depths of our soul, and we’re leading our lives in accordance with those beliefs and values.
I think it’s really important to understand what are the most cherished belief and values? Write them down. I mean, there are exercises you can take to identify your values, and I think we’ve talked about that on Beyond the Crucible before. But don’t be afraid of just journaling and writing down what are your most cherished beliefs and values. We all have them. It’s not about what other people think that they should be for you, but what does it mean for you? It’s fundamentally important. Again, back to your true calling. Your calling is going to be in line with what you’re passionate about. And also, it’s going to be in line with your beliefs and values. It has to be, as you rightly said, Gary, they are like stepping stones. And it will help you come back to question one, frankly, as we progress with these points.

Gary:
Excellent advice that it does, it adds up to, because you mentioned for people who aren’t sure what their true calling is, it can seem like it’s an odd place to start, but you can, as you said, you have an idea. These other questions that you’re asking here will help solidify that idea for you, as you just said. So let’s move on to four. And again, now we move into how do your skills and abilities fit in? And I love that you used the phrase fit in, because here we’ve listed these three previous. Now, okay, now you’re asking how do your skills and ability fit in with all the stuff we’ve just talked about? So how do they fit in when we’re building a life that we don’t want to escape from?

Warwick Fairfax:
It may seem obvious that we should follow a calling, a job that we have skills and abilities for, but so many people actually don’t do this. So I’ve known friends or friends of family members who maybe their mom or dad was a doctor or a dentist, and maybe had the intellectual capacity to do that, but they’re all thumbs when it came to working with their hands. They just couldn’t do the actual fine dexterity work that you need to do with a dentist. That’s great you got good grades, but you’ve got to be able to get your hands in somebody’s mouth with tools and do stuff without hurting them.
If your fingers and thumbs, it’s like, well, maybe you should follow another profession. It’d be like, gee, my mom or dad’s an accountant, but I hate numbers. Well, then don’t do that. I don’t care if it’s a great job or it’s a great business. So it sounds obvious, but there are so many people that ignore this and try to be practical. It’s not practical to do a job or profession that’s not using those skills and abilities, because ultimately you’ll fail and you’ll disappoint people. So why do that?

Gary:
This point four has been the one that has gotten me closest to a life I wanted to escape from. Of all the ones that you listed here, and because it is, you use the phrase soul-destroying, soul crushing sometimes about just being, playing out of position, being in the midst of a crucible, rooted in what we did or what was done to us. When I graduated from college, I graduated with an English degree, which doesn’t really qualify. I used to say, doesn’t qualify me to do anything except talk like, no one’s going to know who this is, Richard Dawson. He used to host Family Feud, who was English. That’s what my English degree allowed me to do, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
And I remember him and just for TV fans, he was also in Hogan’s Heroes.

Gary:
That’s right, that’s right. So I graduated with that English degree and I pursued teaching that I didn’t want to do that. And then, what do I do? Where do I go? And I, for my brother sold cars. And he was like, okay. I’m like two weeks. He said, “In two weeks, come sell cars for me.”
Because I couldn’t find a job. And talk about feeling like you are at a place where you wanted to escape. I wasn’t even in the job yet. I was just pondering trying to sell cars, because I just, I’m not a car guy. I’m not a salesman in that sense, selling you a thing as opposed to an experience or as opposed to a skill. I’m good at selling in a public relations sense, but I’m not good at selling here. Buy this Cordoba, which was a car back when this was up, when this came up in the ’80s.
So this one really strikes home to me, this idea of skills and abilities. I think that for me would’ve been the most, oh gosh, please let me out of here. And I was fortunate enough that a newspaper job opened up and I became a reporter and never had to sell cars ever. So that worked out pretty well. We will move on now to point five in the blog and this is an interesting one, Warwick, and this is one of the ones that I talked earlier about how you can see some of these in an earlier blog that you wrote about saying, “No, this was not a point from that earlier blog.” And this point is, how do we want the rhythms of our life to look? Explain what you mean by that and how it applies to this situation.

Warwick Fairfax:
In my particular case, there are a number of things I want to do in life. I love Beyond the Crucible, but I love the church we go to, which is having such an impact. I’ve been an elder there for many years, and we meet twice a month. And just to give you an idea, one of those meetings, we have different staff people. It might be the woman that leads our children’s ministry or maybe it’s community groups or global missions. And it doesn’t matter who it is. Every time I hear somebody talk, it’s like, I can’t believe, it feels like God’s doing miracles in that ministry. People are being helped. We partner with churches and ministries all throughout the globe. So it’s incredibly fulfilling just to be there and hear what’s going on. And I could use that example of any of the other organizations I’m involved in, and they’re all faith-based organizations, where I feel like from my faith paradigm, God has really shown up mightily.
So we get to design the rhythms of our life, the things we want to do in life. So for me, and I said this to my kids when they were young, they’re all adults now, because I was involved with my kids’ school a few years ago. It was a Christian school, and I would tell them my work as an elder at my church and on the board of the Christian school, and what I do back then, I guess I was writing my book for a lot of years. That’s all part of my calling. I explained it. This is all part of what I do to me professionally, if you will. Maybe that’s not the right word, but probably what I used back then. And the other thing is, I’m from Australia and the Australian ethos is a little different in that you work hard, but we like to have a life. So for Australians, it might be surfing or playing golf on the weekend, and even the professions where in this country people might work 24 hours a day, like being a lawyer, investment banker or something.
Those people might go home at seven or eight, which here in New York where I worked in banking, that’s like half a day, leaving then. And of course, you work weekends. I mean, you have no life. I mean, I’m extrapolating a bit, but it’s true to a large degree. Well, and I’d like to think it’s changing as people get a bit more common sense. So for me, whatever I do, I work out at a hundred percent. That’s just my nature. But I wanted to spend time with my kids when they’re growing up, with friends. I want to be able to spend time with my wife, have a walk at the end of the day, which I often do. I mean, there are things I like to do in life. I don’t like to work all weekend. Sometimes there are things I have to do, but I believe it’s okay to have a weekend. So it’s not that I don’t work hard, I do, but I believe in a balanced life that’s sort of a part of my wiring and also my belief system.

Gary:
Indeed, that is fifth Point in the blog, Want to Build a Life That You Don’t Want to Escape From. The sixth point is this, which gets to where the rubber meets the road for Beyond the Crucible, and that is how do you see this all adding up to a life of significance? I will ask you why that’s important. I think folks know why that’s important, but specifically in the context of this blog that we’re talking about, why is that so important?

Warwick Fairfax:
So getting back to what is your true calling, a true calling that gives us joy and fulfillment from our belief and our construct of Beyond the Crucible has to lead to a life of significance. It’s our belief that for life to be fulfilling, it has to add up to a life of significance. It’s our belief at Beyond the Crucible, that only a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others will give you true joy and fulfillment. For some people, they might think that it’s all about power and money, but power and money are really not fulfilling. You could really consult almost any major religion or spiritual way of thinking. Having an other-filled, purpose-driven life, it’s only there that happiness is found. And so, as you’re thinking about what should your true calling be, it has to lead to a life of significance.

Gary:
Yeah. And when you have that moment when a life lived on purpose dedicated to serving others. So just think of a time in your life, folks, when you have served others, when you’ve done something nice for someone, you’ve helped someone along the path. Think about how that felt. And then ask yourself this question, do you want to escape from that feeling? I don’t think you do, right? I mean, I think that point six really hits this subject, because when you do that, there’s no way on earth you want to escape from that, right? I don’t think anybody would want to escape from that.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s so true when maybe you connect somebody with somebody that could help them. I did that the other day with somebody at Taylor, and it doesn’t matter the circumstances, but I didn’t think it was that big a deal, but it’s like, thank you so much, boy, I’m so excited. And sometimes these, they’re not random acts of kindness, they’re purpose-filled acts of kindness. It might not take a big sacrifice. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it just takes a minute to write an email. How hard is that? Often not really hard. And you might think, “It’s not that big a deal. I don’t really deserve a gold medal or a Nobel Prize. It’s just whatever. I just did a nice thing. It’s not a big deal.” But often other people feel it’s a far bigger deal than we might think. So what does that mean? Those intentional acts of kindness, they add up to a life of significance.
And often we don’t often understand the impact that we’re having on others. Often we have a bigger impact on people than we think. We kind of dismiss it when we get a compliment, because for most of us, certainly for me, it’s very hard to hear compliments. They just say, “Whatever,” and just change the subject.
But whether we are willing to realize it or whether we’re willing to own it, or accept it, those small acts of kindness, purpose-filled decisions, purpose-filled acts that we take, decisions to connect others to help somebody, they can make an enormous difference in people’s lives, far more than often we’ll ever know. But sometimes we help people and we never know how much we help them, and that’s fine. But sometimes from my perspective, there’s grace and we get to see a little bit of what we’ve done. As somebody says thank you, we see the evidence of our work, if you will, and that is incredibly fulfilling. It reminds me of the guest we had on, I forget the person’s name, but the purple file, because I know that really resonated with you.

Gary:
Dennis Gillan. Yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. So just talk a bit about that, because I think it’s on point of where you’re assembling basically a life of significance file. I don’t think he calls it that.

Gary:
No.

Warwick Fairfax:
But talk about why that’s so helpful and why that was helpful to you.

Gary:
Yeah. Dennis Gillan, the guest, you can go searching at beyondthecrucible.com to find that podcast that we did with Dennis. Dennis is a suicide prevention speaker. Two of his brothers committed suicide, and he now speaks, goes all over the country and speaks, talking about how you cope with that, how you see signs of that, how you prevent that if you can’t prevent that. But one of the things he did when he was first stepping out speaking, and he had this article published in Entrepreneur Magazine in the beginning, the first little article at the start, it was about something he called the purple file. And the purple file is a file where he takes any correspondence, email, notes that people have sent him, cards people have given him, in which they affirm him in some way or another. And he puts them in the file. And it’s not a brag book. He doesn’t go, “Hey, look at my purple file,” to people.
It’s for those moments, because given what his job is as a speaker, not every speech is going to be received well. He is not going to get the standing ovation every time. There can be a lot of feelings of, “Oops, I missed that one,” sometimes. And he created the file to look at, to remind him, to give him a shot in the arm when he needed it. And I was so moved by that. A, I saw him out to be a guest on the show, and he agreed, and it was a great episode, but I created my own purple file and I have stuff in there from cards I got from my grandmother, who has been gone now for like 35 years. Things that people have said to me, how I’ve helped them, how I’ve blessed them, how their life is different, what they appreciate about me, all those things. And it’s a great place to go when I’ve had not a great day, and I keep it right at my desk within an arm’s reach that I can pull from if I need it while I’m working during the day.
And I know where it is if I come home and I’ve been out, and something happened, and I need to be reminded of that. So we encourage folks when we did the episode with Dennis to start their own purple file, and I would encourage you folks to look at the episode, Dennis Gillan, and in fact, we can put it in the show notes. I’ll put a link in the show notes, where people can find that episode. But that is one way, great memory, Warwick. That’s one way to measure what we’re talking about here, about adding up to a life of significance. Everybody who sends something, everybody who gives you something that you can put in a purple file, is living life on purpose. And they’re dedicated to serving others, because they’ve done something to lift you up. And I mean, you’re right. It could be called a life of significance folder if you wanted it to be.

Warwick Fairfax:
And one reason why that’s so helpful, I think you’ve indicated is life is tough. You might feel like, “Am I living my true calling? Am I really helping anybody? Because maybe I’m not. Maybe my life is a waste and I’m just really not impacting people.” But you pull out that file, it’s like, “You know what? This says that a lot of people feel like I’ve impacted them to some degree.” If they feel like you’ve impacted them, then you have. That’s their perception. That’s their reality. And so, I think in that sense, it’s true. If they feel it’s true, it’s true.

Gary:
The blog that we’re talking about is called Want to Build a Life You Don’t Want to Escape From. And here are the points, the first six points that we’ve talked about, about how you build that life. One, ask yourself this question, what is your true calling? Two, what are you really passionate about? Three, what are your beliefs and values? Four, how do your abilities and skills fit in? Five, how do we want the rhythms of our life to look? Six, how do we see this adding up to a life of significance? Which brings us, Warwick, as we build the steps up the staircase to the top, and that is this. Number seven, how big do we want this vision to be for the life that we don’t want to escape from? How big do we want it to be?

Warwick Fairfax:
So I think, how big do you want this vision to be? You’ve got to ask yourself, “What does my calling look like? What does my life, the significance look like? What do I want the rhythms of my life to look like?” And it’s okay to say, “You know what? I love what I do, but there are limits.”
And I’ve tried to do that here. I love what I do Beyond the Crucible. Yes, there are other things that I do, these other non-profits I’m involved in. But absent that, these other three non-profits and what I do Beyond the Crucible, my kids are older, but we spend time on a ski vacation typically once a year. We see each other a fair amount. And fortunately, our kids love coming back and seeing us. Two of them don’t live in Maryland where we live. So that’s important to me. So I’m not going to say, “Okay, well, I’m going to launch all these new initiatives at Beyond the Crucible, and it means I’ll have no time for my family or friends.” It’s like, I’m not doing that. Bigger is not always better.

Gary:
Now, folks, that was point seven. And this is the time, if you’ve listened to episodes, any episodes really, when we get to the last point of something, that’s the time I will say something about the captain’s turning on the fasten seatbelt sign. But guess what? We’re circling the airport. Just one more circle or two around the airport, because there’s a very, very interesting question I want to ask Warwick here at the end, now that we’ve been through all the points, and that is simply this. There’s another reason, isn’t there, Warwick, why this topic is so resonant with you, this idea of having a life you don’t want to escape from, and it’s very personal, why this is so important to you. Tell folks about that.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I grew up in 150 year old family media business in Australia. And I’ve talked about this a bit, obviously in podcasts, but this was a life that was designed for me from birth, the idea of living a life I wanted to escape from. It’s just, well, it’s about my duty, it’s about serving the nation of Australia. It’s like my desires and wants are irrelevant. What I feel like the personal calling of my life is completely irrelevant. So design a life you love and you don’t want to escape from, irrelevant topic, irrelevant question, meaningless.
Because for me, I was seen by my parents as the heir apparent of this 150 year old family company. It was a very large diversified company having newspapers, TV, magazines, radio. And my whole life, I sought to ensure that I’d be prepared to one day go into this family business. That was the expectations certainly of my parents. I worked hard at school, got good grades, did my undergrad at Oxford like my dad and some other relatives, worked in Wall Street, got my MBA from Harvard Business School. It was all about getting the skills and abilities that I thought was needed at John Fairfax Limited, the family business. It wasn’t all about doing what I thought I had aptitude in that was irrelevant too. Get the skills you need to do the job you’re called to do.
It was sort of my mindset. And so, I felt like was all about duty to honor the family legacy of my father, of my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax. It was about designing a life to preserve the legacy of the family and the family of business. That was the life I was designing. Design the life that was needed and I was going to fit myself into that come what may. If I was a round peg in a square hole, doesn’t matter. Push harder, fit yourself into that mold, whatever it takes. That’s where you’re going. That’s where you’re called to. And if you love your family, you love your country, you will do this. This is your calling.

Gary:
Right, so let’s try this. Let me do this with you. Let me go through the seven points and ask you each of the seven points. Let me be like a game show host, asking you the seven points and get your answers to the seven points of how, who was known as young Warwick in Australia back in the day, how young Warwick would have responded to these questions when they were posed. So we’ll start with the first one. What is your true calling?

Warwick Fairfax:
I believe my true calling was to preserve the legacy of John Fairfax and my family. That was my calling. That was my calling before I was even born. It was designed before birth.

Gary:
What are you truly passionate about? Again, this is you answering the question back in the day.

Warwick Fairfax:
Same answer, preserving the legacy of John Fairfax and making my parents proud of me, and I was passionate about that. I even wrote a letter to a relative of mine during the takeover that said what I was doing, try to preserve the company in the image of the founder, that there was a vision that was burning a hole in my heart. Sounds like off the charts passionate, doesn’t it?

Gary:
Right. It does.

Warwick Fairfax:
And in a sense I was, but again, not my vision. It was frankly not even my dad’s vision. It was the legacy and vision of my great-great-grandfather, the founder of the founding business, John Fairfax.

Gary:
What are your beliefs and values, Mr. Fairfax?

Warwick Fairfax:
And not surprisingly, similar answer. Ask me any question you want to, and I’ll give you the same answer. I mean, it’s not quite that way, but it’s sort of comical. It’s definitely on that wavelength. So faith became important to me through an evangelical church while I was at Oxford University, and since the founder of John Fairfax of the family business was a man of very strong faith. Then I thought, “Well, clearly I’ve been put on this earth to preserve the beliefs and values of John Fairfax,” and not so much to make it a religious paper, but more in terms of how people were treated, to report fairly, even-handedly. So my beliefs and values after I came to faith in Christ at Oxford, it’s like, well, clearly I want people to be treated and the values of the organization to be in tune with the values of the founder. So yes, my beliefs and values are completely in harmony with what I feel my calling is.

Gary:
How do your skills and abilities fit in?

Warwick Fairfax:
Somewhat irrelevant question, but I would use all the skills and abilities that I had to preserve the legacy of John Fairfax. So it’s like I’m a reflective advisor. I like to think I write reasonably well, but what I felt like in the family business, my dad was a writer and wrote articles in his younger days, but he really wasn’t a business guy, a finance guy. So I thought we need more family members to know something about business and finance, hence Wall Street, Harvard Business School. But it wasn’t like I had this abiding interest in finance. I still don’t.

Gary:
Well, let’s try the next one. Point five. Round peg, square hole. Point five is how do you want the rhythms of your life to look?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, completely irrelevant question. You do whatever it takes to preserve the legacy of John Fairfax. If that means burning the candle at both ends and working 24 hours a day, you do that. During the takeover years, we visited some investment bankers in New York, we came back Australia, something came up and within five or six hours, we’re on the plane again to go back to New York. That’s like a 21-hour plus plane ride, five or six hours break. But sometimes there are reasons you go to do that. I get it. But in this case, it was like rhythms of life. You just, 24/7, you do whatever you can, because it’s a noble cause. It’s John Fairfax’s image, preserving the image of the founder. Don’t you care about your country? So yeah, in that sense, rhythms are irrelevant. You do whatever it takes. 24/7.

Gary:
I feel a bit like a lawyer who’s cross-examining you here. So Mr. Fairfax, point six, how do you see this all adding up to a life of significance?

Warwick Fairfax:
That’s an easy question. Clearly, by preserving the amazing legacy of John Fairfax and how this would impact the nation of Australia. I mean, don’t you care about your country? I mean, we had the main quality newspapers in our country, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age in Melbourne, and the Australian Financial Review, kind of like the Wall Street Journal. What’s my life of significance? To impact the nation of Australia through quality journalism and preserving the legacy and values of John Fairfax. That’s about as epic a life of significance as you could imagine. So absolutely, fits to me.

Gary:
And lastly, number seven, that question is how big did you want that vision to be?

Warwick Fairfax:
As big as possible. The sky’s the limit. You want to impact as much of the nation of Australia as you possibly can, as many people, especially work for John Fairfax Limited. All the people would read the newspapers, watch the TV stations, listen to radio. So absolutely no limits. You want the vision to be expand and be as big as possible.

Gary:
So you’ve just answered those seven questions, Warwick, that you proposed to blog readers first. Now we’re proposing to podcast listeners and viewers. What does it all add up to the younger you in the earlier situation? How does that all leave you feeling now that you’ve done it?

Warwick Fairfax:
I was in this sort of gilded prison in a way. It was a life I didn’t even know that I wanted to escape from. I did want to escape from that, but I didn’t do that. Some people might say subconsciously that when I did this $2.25 billion takeover in 1987, subconsciously maybe I wanted it to metaphorically blow up, so I’d have to leave. Absolutely consciously, I did not do that. Three years later, the takeover ended up failing, the company went into bankruptcy. But I don’t know, obviously you can’t psychoanalyze yourself, but…

Gary:
Oh, sure you can. It’s probably not healthy, but sure you can.

Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. But basically I was living, I wasn’t even living my dad’s life. I mean, my dad [inaudible 00:50:45] that happy, he was a good journalist and a gifted writer, and he wrote sort of philosophy books. Would’ve been a great philosophy professor. But he loved the country. And we had a property outside of Sydney where he had… Paul Hereford [inaudible 00:51:00], I think as they’re called here. And you see his expression with his straw hat out on the land and seeing the cattle. There’s this big smile on his face. Then you see a photograph of him at the office. There’s this dour photo. It’s not like he didn’t feel loyal or committed to it. But yes, he loved writing, but yet there’s a part of that feels like certainly some parts of this journey he didn’t enjoy. John Fairfax was an entrepreneur, a business guy. That was clearly his vision, but it wasn’t my vision and it was this sort of gilded prison that I was born into that I could not have escaped.
And so, as I’ve thought about this whole podcast and the blog that I wrote, you could have sat down with me at the time as you kind of did in a way. And it runs through the seven questions. And I would’ve thought not very helpful, kind of irrelevant. I know my destiny, I know my life of significance. I know my journey and what I want to do in life is irrelevant. It’s self-centered to ask yourself what do you want out of life? Choose your own adventure. It’s a very self-centered thing. Shouldn’t life be about other people? So I would’ve found a way to dismiss the whole thing. So really, I think one key thing for this is, one key point is you’ve got to ask yourself or you’ve got to say to yourself, “It’s okay to live a life that I love.”
It’s not okay to live a life that you want to escape from. You want to live a life that you feel called to, that you feel passionate about. It’s not about making other people happy in terms of friends and family. It’s about living a life that you believe in, not somebody else’s life. We only have one and only life. And so for me, that’s why the subject is so important, because for many years of my life, it was all about living a life to make others happy, ultimately to make my parents or my great-great-grandfather happy. So when I had that conversation several weeks ago with Beyond the Crucible team, starting out with what does Warwick want? That is completely antithetical to the way I tend to think. But I wanted to do that, because I like every other human on this planet has a God-given right to live the life that they want to live, that they feel called to.
And so, like everybody else, I force myself to say, okay, there’s a number of things I’m involved in that I love, these other nonprofits I mentioned, I want to spend time with my family. I love what I do, Beyond the Crucible, but there’s balance. I’m not going to be defined by numbers. We track podcast downloads, viewership on YouTube. We track all sorts of things, but my identity is not going to be wrapped up in a number, as good as, as important as they are. So you really got to ask yourself, “Is it okay for me to design a life that I love, a life that I don’t want to escape from?” You got to say, “Well, yes, we’re designed a certain way by God. It’s okay to live a life that you love and you don’t have to apologize to anybody for it.”

Gary:
So one more question. The $64,000, well, okay, the $2.25 billion question, I guess, not the $64,000 question. And that is this, when you answered all of those, as you ran through all those seven points, was the life that you were heading toward, would that have been a life that you would’ve wanted to escape from, do you think?

Warwick Fairfax:
I think now, absolutely. Then if you hypnotize me or if you psychoanalyze me, it was clear I wanted to escape from that life. It was clear that I felt imprisoned. I spent years away from Australia, three years at Oxford. It was a three-year degree. I spent three years in Wall Street, in New York. I spent two years at Harvard Business School. So that’s like eight years. I went back and visited. That’s eight years out of Australia. If I could have stayed away forever, I would. I love my family, but being away from Australia, it was freedom.
Yeah, but ultimately I felt like I had to come back. And as I was ending my time at Harvard Business School, my dad was filled with cancer. He died in early ’87, January ’87. That was my last semester at Harvard Business School. So clearly I had to come back. Family business was getting in turmoil. I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t get some job in America, which like other Harvard Business School graduates did. I had to come home. But no, clearly I wanted to escape, but I felt like escape is impossible, because I got to do my duty. Unfortunately, in one sense, duty is a very big thing for me. So yeah, it was a gilded prison, but the only way I could have left is the way it ended.

Gary:
So we’re going to end this episode like we always do episodes about the blog that you’ve written, by running through three questions for reflection that folks can ask themselves and sort of process through. But what you just said there at the end about the younger you, you really didn’t see any way that you could have escaped that life, that would have been something that you didn’t want to be part of. It was a life you wanted to escape from. We say often at Beyond the Crucible that we’re dealers in hope. And that’s where we hope, we hope that this podcast and the blog on which it’s based will help you get to a place of hope, where you’re going to find yourself in the same kind of position where you feel you have no way out. And here’s reflection questions that will help you as you navigate your way, if you find yourself even in the same zip code as a life you want to escape.
First one is this, what is your true calling that you want to invest your one and only life in? Reflection question one. Number two, how does this calling line up with your beliefs and values, and your skills and abilities? And finally, point number three of reflection. How do you want the rhythms of your life to look? You get to design not just your calling, but the pace of life you want to lead. You don’t need to apologize to anyone for this. Period, exclamation point. Since we both have backgrounds in newspapers, I’ll put a 30 at the end. We have wrapped this episode of Beyond the Crucible Warwick, folks. Warwick and I have a couple of favors to ask you. One, if you’re listening to this on your favorite podcast app, ask that you would like the show.
That would be great. Help other people get to see it, learn about it, and hear these kinds of discussions. And if you’re watching us on YouTube, please also leave us a comment there. Subscribe to the show there, but also leave us a comment. Tell us what you liked about this discussion. And in any discussion you may have watched there. And until the next time we’re together, please remember, we know your crucible experiences are hard work. And I’ve talked about our crucible experiences quite a bit on this show, not this particular episode maybe, but in the course of more than 250 episodes of this show, lots of crucibles have been shared. We know they’re difficult, but we also know they’re not the end of your story. They can be the beginning, in fact, of a new story if you learn the lessons of them. And where that new story can carry you is to a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won’t just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you’ll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It’s more than an assessment. It’s a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.

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