Applying the Actionable Truths 5: Character

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. To move beyond your crucible, it’s not enough to know what your beliefs and values are. You have to live them. And this is where character comes in and it’s so important. One way of putting it, as we’ve discussed is character is your belief system in action. So, think about back to that pit analogy. You might say you have beliefs and values, but if that’s not making a difference in how you live, I guess I still have this image in my mind that you’re still stuck in the pit.

Gary Schneeberger:
Still stuck in the pit, knowing what you believe, the values you hold most dear, but not living them out loud. The antidote to that, we discussed this week in our ongoing look at how our actionable truths accelerate your journey from trial to triumph, is character. Putting into practice what you say is most important to you, walking the walk that you talk, is the key to a life of character that will fuel your life of significance.
Warwick, we have landed on another of our episodes of what we call The Series Within the Show, and this is on our Beyond the Crucible Roadmap. And this is, folks, just to refresh your memories. This is not an entirely new way, but a more laser-focused way of helping you get from your worst day to your greatest opportunity. And we’ve named it, as I said, the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap.
We describe it this way and I’m going to read it directly off my notes so I get it right, and that is this, how we help people turn their worst day into their greatest opportunity. We provide the essential actionable truths that inspire people to inspire, hope, enable, and equip them to write their own life-affirming story. The roadmap has been built from our proprietary statistically valid research into how people experience crucibles and what we’ve learned from our experience and the experience of our podcast guests on what it takes to turn trial into triumph.
And the most revolutionary news for us in all of what I’ve just said, folks, is in analyzing this roadmap, we identified what we’re calling the actionable truths of the brand. To pass these life-affirming truths along to you, our listeners and viewers, we are going to do what I said at the outset, our series within a show. Once a month, we’re going to unpack some more actionable truth for you to apply to your crucible experience and your bounce back from your crucible experience. So Warwick, as I always do when we have these kinds of episodes, I’m going to ask you why actionable truths? What do we mean by that term?

Warwick Fairfax:
So at Beyond the Crucible, our focus is always how do you get beyond your worst day to lead a life of significance? That’s what we’re about. That’s what our mission is. And we have what we call Beyond the Crucible Roadmap that helped you go from trial, in other words, your crucible, to triumph or what we call a life of significance. A life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So the question is, well, how do you get there from worst day to triumph, from crucible to a life of significance? And we’ve found that there are 10 actionable truths that we view as catalysts that help propel you forward on your journey to get from your worst day to a life-affirming vision. A time when you’re actually triumphing and you’re living a life of significance. So these actionable truths have always been implicit in our thinking. You can find them in my book, Crucible Leadership. But now, we’re really drawing them out to making them explicit and really helping folks understand how do you go from your worst day to a life of significance? And the key is really following these 10 actionable truths.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it’s interesting, and we talk about this sometimes here, is it wasn’t the first phrase that popped into our heads, hey, I know what these are, are actionable truths. We really had to explore them. And I think it comes out when we have these episodes of just why we called them that. And I want to ask you this question and maybe you can touch on that. How do these actionable truths we have identified, how do they help us move beyond setback to significance?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it’s a good question. And really, just to touch on what you’re asking, Gary, these are indeed truths, but truths that aren’t lived out are not actionable. And interestingly enough, this whole thought about a truth being lived out will come up a bit or a lot in our discussion.

Gary Schneeberger:
Good foreshadowing work. Good foreshadowing.

Warwick Fairfax:
So, this particular actionable truth, it’s absolutely true that it doesn’t have a lot of meaning without it being actionable. So these actionable truths we view as accelerators or enablers, they’re almost like rocket fuel for your engine. It’s great to have an engine, but without fuel, your car’s going nowhere. So they really help accelerate you on the journey to get from your worst day to a life of significance, from trial to triumph. And I think you can make a good case that without these actionable truths, you are not escaping the pit of despair. You are not escaping your worst day, you were just stuck there, potentially permanently. So they’re absolutely critical to getting out of the pit, getting beyond your worst day and living that life-affirming vision, that life of significance that we all want to lead.

Gary Schneeberger:
I love the fact that you used the word accelerant because it really is. It really is. And that wasn’t something that came out of the initial research on this, it’s something that you just developed as we were talking about it, but it really is, folks, if you’ve seen a Fast and Furious movie, I’ve seen all 10 of them, they do accelerants in their engines pretty much all the time. They put some nitrous oxide stuff in there and it makes the engines go faster. That’s what we’re talking about here is an accelerant that will help you propel you along your journey, right? That’s the sum and substance of it. It’s an accelerant that propels you along this journey.

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. Maybe we should have just called them nitrous oxide.

Gary Schneeberger:
There you go.

Warwick Fairfax:
[inaudible 00:06:47] need some nitrous oxide. But if you’re not a fan of Fast and Furious, you might be like nitrous oxide? What’s?

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, it’s an additive. You can pump into your engine to make it go faster, basically.

Warwick Fairfax:
But without advocating that your average car user put that in their engine at home.

Gary Schneeberger:
Correct. Yes, yes. This is not, take your Toyota Corolla and put nitrous oxide in it. This is something that Vin Diesel wants to drive really fast and really furiously, but that’s just an example of how that can work. This is our fifth episode Warwick, on unpacking these truths. And I’m going to read because I think it’s important to talk about where we’ve been so far. So you guys who are listening and watching, you can go back if you’ve missed one, you can revisit one because these are all interconnected. They all hook together. So, I’m going to start at the beginning. We began to stroll through the roadmap talking about where the trial begins, and that’s the crucible. And then where it begins to move toward the beyond, step two, actionable truth two is self-reflection.
Then we turned to what we determined as the critical turning point to begin the forward motion to changing circumstances we find ourselves in after a crucible. It’s the second step in which we move into truly processing what we’ve been through, and that’s where we are now. There’s three steps in the processing phase. The first step in that which we discussed a couple of months ago, is authenticity. That’s the first step of processing, authenticity. The second step, which we did last month was faith. Now, we’re going to do a conversation, we’re going to unpack what this fifth point is, the last point in the processing phase, and that is indeed, character. So let me pose this question to you, Warwick. Why is character so critical as the fifth step after a crucible in the journey of recovering from a crucible? What’s the importance of character?

Warwick Fairfax:
So, if I had to define character, it’s really living out your beliefs and values, your faith, in your everyday life. Beliefs and values are not very meaningful unless they lived out. Having them as a bumper sticker in your car or putting them on the wall of your conference room or read about a whole bunch of values, that’s great. But if beliefs and values aren’t lived out, they’re almost useless. They’re not really very helpful. So, we believe that people of character, they don’t just talk about their beliefs and values, they live them. In fact, sometimes, it’s better to actually not talk about them so much and live them.
So, we’ve spoken about the need to self-reflect after a crucible, the need to be authentic to your true self and the need to ground your journey as you’re getting out of the pit in your beliefs and values. In other words, faith. But to move beyond your crucible, it’s not enough to know what your beliefs and values are. You have to live them. And this is where character comes in and is so important. One way of putting it as we’ve discussed is character is your belief system in action.
So think about back to that pit analogy. You might say you have beliefs and values, but if that’s not making a difference in how you live, I guess I still have this image in my mind that you’re still stuck in the pit. These truths, these, in this case, the actionable truth of faith, it has to be lived out, which is character. It has to be lived out on the journey. So, that’s really what character is. It’s living out your most cherished, deepest [inaudible 00:11:07], belief and values is your faith. That is the definition of character as we look at it.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And speaking of definitions of character, every episode in this series within the show, folks, I have pulled something from what I call Webster’s 1848, right? Is that right? 1828. I haven’t been in it so long, I forgot. Every month I have to get into it more often. Webster’s 1828, Noah Webster’s first dictionary, the American Dictionary of the English language. And I pull, here’s the definition of the word that we’re talking about today. And this one’s particularly fascinating. It says, by way of eminence, distinguished or good qualities, those which are esteemed and respected, that’s character, and those which are ascribed to a person in common estimation. “We inquire,” it says here, “Whether a stranger is a man of character.” And it occurs to me, Warwick, as I read that definition, and as I heard you talk about it, that character might be the first totally outward-facing calling card that we have in the actionable truths, right?
If we’re going through the other ones, a crucible… I’ve been through crucibles, I haven’t talked about. People don’t know that about me necessarily even if I interact with them quite a bit. They don’t know about my self-reflection habits, they may not know much about my authenticity if they’re not around me much and they may not know a lot about my faith. But your character tends to, as this definition from Webster says, your character tends to follow you around. People know about your character, people talk about your character or lack thereof. And this seems a little bit like the first calling card of our actionable truths. Character is something people I think, know about us, even if we don’t know them very well. Is that anywhere near the bullseye of what might be true?

Warwick Fairfax:
It is. No, it’s an exceptionally good point. When you say somebody is a person of character, you mean good character, you don’t mean bad character. And typically, I’d like to think most people’s beliefs and values tend to be altruistic. Yes, I guess you could have a belief and value system in which I’m going to rip people off, crush everybody that I can. It’s all about greed and money. But typically, the issue for most of us, it’s not that we have bad beliefs and values, it’s just we don’t live them. That’s for most people. So if you live your beliefs and values, assuming that they’re good ones, by definition you’ll be a person of character, a person of good character. And the way we judge people typically is not so much what they say about how their belief systems are, it’s more are they living them out. That’s how we assess people.
We’re not saying, I just gave you this test on your belief and values, depending on your faith or spiritual background, and you aced that test, that’s great. Most people could care less. If you know everything about your religion, faith system, whether it’s Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, whatever it is, your average person says, “Well, that’s great. I’m glad you have a belief system and that’s fine.” But they’re more interested, are you living that out? How does that manifest itself in the way you treat other people? That’s what people are interested in. And to the degree that you don’t, they might say, “Well, I’ll probably spend a bit less time with you because it’s not an enjoyable experience because you’re living out something is very different than what you say you are. And I don’t know this whole antagonism and crushing people and I don’t know, I don’t really want to be around people like that.” So people will distance themselves from you. So, yes, being people of character, good character, it has a huge influence and impact in your life and others.

Gary Schneeberger:
And it has, right… As we’ve said, as we’ve been talking about here, it goes before you, right? People will know before you meet them in many cases whether your character is good or bad or known or unknown. And I just think that’s why the Webster’s Dictionary is so helpful and why this conversation is so helpful.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. And just to your point, people who are people of character, of good character, word will travel. That person, we’ve heard about Gary, he’s a person of character. He’s a person of good character. We’ve heard about him, we know people that know him. Certainly, bad news travels fast. I don’t know if good news travels quite as fast, but it will travel and you get a reputation. And so, your character does matter. It’s nice to be with people when they say to you, “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you, great to meet you.” As opposed to, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard all about you.” Which typically means something very different.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, for sure. So, let’s move on now, Warwick. There are two stages of our research, qualitative and quantitative, I said at the beginning, and they’ve shown us that people experience, in this still early section of the roadmap, this idea of again, needing to process what’s going on. The first thing that they have to process is overcoming fear. How does character help us overcome fear?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It’s a good question. It’s one thing to have beliefs and values, and as we’ve said, it’s another thing to live them out. That’s character. It’s a strange thing, having beliefs and values inside where nobody gets to see them, that’s fairly safe. But we can often be afraid that if we start living out our beliefs and values, and let’s assume maybe we didn’t so much before, that maybe they weren’t like us. You were the fun-loving guy or woman that was sarcastic, put people down, hey, it was all in jest. It was all fun. Of course the person you’re putting down didn’t feel it was so fun, but all your buddies thought it was just hilarious and maybe you, I don’t know, drank too much. Or maybe you cut some corners at work and hey, everybody does it. And you’re showing your buddies how to cut corners and wow, that’s pretty nifty. And boy, I’m learning a lot from this person.
And then you start changing. Maybe you are not as sarcastic, you don’t drink as much, you don’t cut corners at work. And it’s like, well, hang on, you’re going soft. You’re getting all boring. Where’s the color? You’re some black and white boring person if you’ve got religion, I mean, what’s the deal here? And we fear that, that our friends will reject us or we might have a different fear. We might feel that these beliefs and values, our faith, that it’s impossible to meet the mark. We’re going to fall short. And we might think that maybe we’ll feel like we’re a hypocrite. We have these beliefs and values, we can’t possibly live them. And maybe others that we know well hear about, gee, we have this set of beliefs and values and say, aha, got you. You didn’t live it out that time. Maybe you were short with that person, you yelled at them or impatient, so much for your faith, your belief and values. You didn’t exhibit it there.
So we have this fear that either other people will mock us because we’ve changed or that we’re not meeting the mark of what we say that we’ll do or we feel like internally, within us, that we’re hypocrites. We’re just not living up to what we believe. So it might make us almost like a turtle. We just go into a shell and it’s like, it’s scary being outside. Let’s just keep those beliefs and values inside us because if we stick our heads out, we’ll get mocked by others or by ourselves. So, it can be pretty scary if not very scary, living out your beliefs and values, your faith. It sounds good in theory, living them out and being a person of character. But in the real world, it can be scary and we don’t want to be mocked and we don’t want to feel like, oh, we’re going to fail because we’re not going to be that good every day. So, there’s a lot of fear involved with living out your beliefs and values and being a person of character.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. I think sometimes, that character and faith right behind that, character, faith, authenticity, those things are often in this section about fear, are often at war maybe, with being liked, being applauded, being someone everybody wants to hang out with. Generally speaking, and I’ve gone through this, we’ve talked about my experiences in the years I was an alcoholic. I was the life of the party, I was all those things. I stuck my turtle’s head inside my turtle shell a little bit after I got sober because I wasn’t sure people were going to like the new not imbibing version of Gary. So, I know exactly what that feels like and it was hard.
It’s hard to build character after you’ve had an experience where you’ve lived a certain way that you weren’t exactly manifesting character. It wasn’t actually something that was even in you, but then when you develop it to live it out in front of other people, that can be really scary because the fear is exactly what you just described. The fear is, oh my gosh, they’re not going to like me anymore. They only like me because of X, Y, and Z, that didn’t show a lot of character. That seems to be what’s at odds here as we’re coming back from a crucible, is these three in a row that we’ve talked about, authenticity, faith, and now character, seem sometimes they can be in opposition to living a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. The goal of moving beyond a crucible.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, that’s really true. Especially if you’ve lived one way and you’re making a change that’s discernible if not significant. You have to ask yourself, well, do I still want to be with these friends? Maybe they’re living a lifestyle that I didn’t really respect, but hey, we’re all in the same boat together, so, who am I to judge? And again, it’s not about judging people, but we’re all doing this together. But when you start making a change and they’re mocking you, I think in general, if you have some degree of self-respect, you don’t want to be around people that mock you or put you down.
Most people of character will say that a person of character doesn’t mock, tease in a mean way. So that’s tough. And we will talk about this here in a moment, but it really requires a lot of inner soul work. We say a lot at Beyond the Crucible that the inner work precedes the outer work. Doing that inner soul work saying, what are my beliefs and values? Do I believe in them or is it just some bumper sticker? If I believe in them, shouldn’t I try to live them out. And okay, I may not be perfect, but who is? And this is probably a different subject, but related, you have to give yourself grace. We’re all human. We’re not going to be our best selves every day. We’re going to be short, cranky, maybe 90% of the time we do a great job. Maybe a lot was going on and that job you did that day wasn’t your best work. Maybe there were reasons, maybe you had a family emergency.
There’s all sorts of things that can happen in which you don’t live up to your highest standards. It’s inevitable that we’ll fall short. Well, you’ve got to give yourself grace. It doesn’t mean you’re bad in your beliefs and values just because you can’t live them every day. It’s more from my perspective, the way God assesses us. Obviously from a Christian perspective, we’re saved by grace through Christ’s death and resurrection. But it’s more, as you evaluate your life over the course of the decades, as a whole, did you live your beliefs and values? Yes, you fell short, but if you did some sort of balance sheet of your life, would people say this person has a legacy of love and grace and forgiveness, humility, integrity? Or is it no, this person really has a legacy of yelling at people, ripping people off and fragile ego. What would people say at your funeral?
And really, that’s really what it’s about. It’s not falling short on any given day, it’s over the totality of your life, are you living at your beliefs and values? Are you a person of character? So that’s really how you got to measure it. But yeah, it’s not easy when you have obviously some decisions to make.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And here’s the good news, folks, because we all do it. Like Warwick said, we all will fall short of the character and the goals we have for our character. Here’s the good news, we talk a lot about forgiveness here at Beyond the Crucible. There can be a precursor to that on the other side of that equation, and that’s apology. So when you do fall short of the character that you want to live out, it’s most people, and trust me, you can’t have an alcoholic background as I have without knowing the power of apology and then without knowing just how many people, an overwhelming majority of people will extend that forgiveness to you when you muster the courage to offer that apology. So it’s not a dead end, right? Feeling like you haven’t done everything right. No, no. What am I going to do? Apology can make a lot of headway for you in that regard.

Warwick Fairfax:
And what’s interesting is often, the last person to offer grace to ourselves is us. It’s very often that other people will forgive us, give us some slack, especially if we’re contrite and apologize and say, “Yeah, that wasn’t so smart. Yeah, I’m sorry.” But yeah, I think we have to learn to be better at giving ourselves grace. It doesn’t mean you just keep doing dumb and bad stuff and hurting people. That’s not true grace. But when you try to change, you’re making progress, you fall short. If other people are willing to cut you some slack and give you some grace, we should. That’s an area that I think many of us need to grow in.
And why is all this important? What does this have to do with character? Well, if you make one mistake and you are not living out your beliefs and values, we don’t want people to just abandon the whole mission and say, “Oh, forget that. I failed two weeks ago.” That was two weeks ago. Keep going. Don’t abandon the journey to live out your beliefs and values. It’s not like one strike and you’re out. That’s not the way to look at it. So cut yourself some slack, give yourself some grace that will actually help you be a person of character.

Gary Schneeberger:
Absolutely. Let’s move on now to the second step in the process of processing how to come back from your crucible. And that’s this, committing to change, right? That’s the next step. You’ve got to commit to change. That can be a difficult thing. How does leaning into your character help us accomplish that?

Warwick Fairfax:
This is where you really have to make a choice. Are our beliefs and values, our faith, our most cherished things that we believe in? Is that going to be a bumper sticker? Is that going to be a plaque on a wall? Is that going to be like Enron, the company that all these wonderful mottos about how to treat people and did the exact opposite? Is it’s going to be like a number of corporations that don’t live their values? Certainly, some do, but some don’t. Are they going to just be something that is inside us but never lived out or is it going to be real? And that’s where, especially when you’re coming back from your crucible, we need to live what we believe. If we say we have certain belief systems and values, a certain faith, we need to live that out. And that’s absolutely critical to get from your worst day, from your crucible, to get beyond and to lead a life of significance.
And as I think about accomplishing goals and our vision, and obviously, it’s our hope at Beyond the Crucible that these will be laudable goals and visions that lead to a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. And that’s great to have a lofty goal and a lofty vision, especially if it’s tied to a life of significance. But I think it’s, a life is as much about the journey as a destination. How do we treat people? Even if we’re accomplishing these lofty goals, and maybe it’s cleaning up a park in a downtown neighborhood or providing water in certain countries in Africa or Asia. It could be all sorts of things. Having a company with sustainable products, there could be many laudable goals.
But if in the process of trying to achieve these worthwhile goals, we’re snapping at people, we’re firing them, it’s like, look, this is important, we’re trying to help people. You’re not cutting it. You need to go and just firing people without giving them a chance. Really, what does it matter what the goal is if you don’t have character along the journey?
So for me, character, which is how we live out our beliefs and values, our faith, is as important if not more important than our goals and our vision, irrespective of how worthwhile those goals and vision are, it’s absolutely critical. So we need to make a commitment to change, to be people of character that truly lives out our beliefs and values. Yes, we might get flack from our old buddies, we might get flack from ourselves saying, “Gosh, this is so hard and I failed yesterday.” But really, the key step is, okay, maybe I’ll fail. Maybe some of my friends won’t like it. Okay, well maybe lose some of those friends, get new ones that like to new you and respect who you are and cut yourself some slack, give yourself some grace, but you’ve just got to make that commitment to change.
It won’t be easy. Not everybody’s going to like it, but if these beliefs and values are going to mean anything, I need to live them. I need to be a person of character. Otherwise, what’s the point? So you’ve got to make that line in the sand decision. I’m going to be a person of character, a person of good character, and I’m going to live out my beliefs and values and that’s going to be one of the most important things in my life. Being a person of character. That is not some hypocrite, that never lives out their beliefs and values. Who wants to be that person? How can you look at yourself in the mirror? It’s one thing to give yourself some grace from occasional mistake. It’s another thing to say, yes, your character is basically a barren desert with the odd oasis of drop of water in there, but by and large, your character is just this wasteland.
Is that who you want to be? Is that how you want to be perceived? Your legacy? Eulogies at your funeral? You want to make life easier for your family so that they find it easy to think of good things to say rather than, gosh, I’ve got to give a 20-minute eulogy and I got nothing. I can’t think of one good thing to say. It’s so sad. Don’t do that to your family and friends. Make it easy for them.

Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, we’ve reached my favorite part of these episodes work. It’s my favorite part of these episodes because we get to examine how, who I call Patient Zero. And that is you, the host, Warwick Fairfax, how these actionable truths have helped you move from trial to triumph in your own life. And I’ll ask you straight up and very succinctly, how did character help you begin to move beyond your crucible, which you’ve talked about many times on this show?

Warwick Fairfax:
When you go through a crucible as I have, and I think many of us and many listening and watching will have gone through, it’s a huge test of your beliefs and values, your faith, and it’s also a huge test of your character. I would say, one of my most cherished values, if you will, is being authentic and living out my beliefs and values. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I realize I’ll fall short. But living out what I believe has always been of paramount importance to me, from my earliest memory, I’ve always wanted to be a good person, a person of character, if you will. For me, my beliefs and values is centered in my faith in Christ. And my faith became really, the anchor for my soul, the anchor for my life at an evangelical Anglican church at Oxford.
And that church at Oxford University, really, it changed my life. And that faith was certainly tested after my failed $2.25 billion Takeover of my family’s 150-year-old media company. That takeover, I launched a 1987 after my father died. He was in his 80s at the time, I was from his third marriage. And three years later in 1990, the company ultimately went into bankruptcy. It had too much debt it was part of the takeover. And that whole episode was a massive crucible. Not so much because of the money I’d lost, but it was more that the company was founded by my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax. And he bought the small paper, the Sydney Herald, which became the Sydney Morning Herald when he bought it in 1841. And he was a person of great faith. And over the generations, his company became a very large company with newspapers, magazines, TV, newsprint mills, radio stations. But it was my belief, rightly or wrongly, that the company had strayed from the values of the founder who was a person of great faith.
And so, when takeover failed, it was devastating because I felt that God had a plan to resurrect the company and the image of the founder, and I blew it. It was beyond excruciating. It was absolutely devastating. So, I had to do something of soul work, and I came to believe that if God had wanted the takeover to work out that it would have. And despite my mistakes, which were many, I came to believe that God had a different plan for my life. So, this is really where character comes in. I committed my life to Christ in late March 1982 when I was at Oxford. And would I abandon my faith? Would I just go into my shell? Would I live out my beliefs and values or would I abandon them? Would I be angry at God somehow saying, “Hey, how come I grow up in this sort of challenging family with lots of infighting?” And it was a very difficult situation that I grew up in.
Would I be angry at God? The universe? Other family members? Some of them had thrown my father out as chairman in 1970. So, there was a lot of things that I could be angry about if I’d wanted to and just be a person of anger and bitterness and resentment and wallow in what might have been, what could have been, but what will never be? Yes, there could have been a dark pit that I would’ve lived in and wallowed in forever, for decades. The company went under in 1990, that’s a lot of decades to wallow in, if I’d taken that path, made that choice. But fortunately, and I think through the grace of God, I made a different choice.
I never blamed anybody else other than myself. It wasn’t quite as simple as all my fault, although that tended to be what I thought at the time in the early ’90s. But I never blamed God. It was my mistakes. So I never drifted from my beliefs and values. If anything, I doubled down and clung to it even more. So in that sense, I really did try to live my beliefs and values. The way it really works out for me in day to day and I talk about this, I guess, a fair amount in my book, Crucible Leadership, if you ask me in terms of character, what are your highest values in terms of how do you want to live that out day to day? I would say integrity and humility. Those are my highest values that I’d like to think form my character, at least how I want my character to be.
And so, integrity is, I think, I would look at it, is doing what you say you’re going to do. Being an honest person, being a person that doesn’t shade the truth, cut corners at work. The person of integrity is somebody that you can trust. They do what they say. They don’t lie. Obfuscate, tell half-truths. They do what they say they’re going to do. And humility to me means that they’re humble, they don’t think of themselves more highly than they should. And given that I grew up with a lot of parent money, at least perceived parent money and a very large family business in Sydney, Australia, people don’t tend to think of people like that as humble. And so, it was really important to me to be a humble person, to not think of myself as any better than the next person.
We’re all different. We all have different upbringings. Just because you grew up poor or wealthy or whatever background, that’s really not the issue. It’s more the character of your heart that matters. So integrity and humility were absolutely crucial. And obviously, when you grow up in a wealthy background, humility tends to be somewhat uncommon. You don’t see it every day, unfortunately. Parent money tend to make people arrogant, also insecure, but certainly, arrogant. So it’s always been of utmost important to me to be a person of character that lives out their beliefs and values.
For me, I’m certainly not perfect. I can be short, I can be impatient. That’s certainly true. But to me, it matters how I treat people. I try to listen to people. I try to treat people as I would like to be treated, often called the Golden Rule in the Bible, and I try to be a person of integrity and humility. So to me, I’ll make mistakes, I’ll fall short, but it’s important to me to try to be a person of integrity and humility, a person of faith that lives it out, a person of character, every day. I would say it’s more important to me to be a person of character who lives out their believes and values and their faith than accomplishing any vision or goal. We have visions and goals at Beyond the Crucible and that’s important, but living out my beliefs and values and being a person of character, that’s absolutely critical.

Gary Schneeberger:
That question you just answered, Warwick, and that I asked you, I’ll phrase it up again. I asked you, how did character help you to move beyond your crucible? Now, I’m going to ask you, how does character help you to lead Beyond the Crucible? How does character, the actionable truth of character, living out your faith in character, how does that help you in what you do with Beyond the Crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s an interesting question. I do try and live what I believe. I try to surround myself with like-minded people. They don’t necessarily have the same faith as I do, but they have to have a common vision. They have to believe that life is not about us. It’s about other people. It’s about a higher purpose. It’s about how you treat people along the journey. I want fellow travelers, as we call them, with those sets of beliefs. And at Beyond the Crucible to the best of my ability, which again, I certainly fall short, but it’s important to me how I treat my team members, how we treat the guests we have at Beyond the Crucible. We have a variety of guests with a lot of different backgrounds, belief systems. I try to respect everybody that’s on the podcast, irrespective of whether I believe in all of their belief systems or not. That’s irrelevant.
They have, from my perspective, the God-given right to believe what they believe, to follow their path. That’s a part of being a person of character, is respecting them, giving them space to tell their story, listening to them, asking deeper questions so that the innermost truth comes out. That’s important to me. Not believing that I’m better than anybody else. So, it’s important to me that I try to live these values out at Beyond the Crucible every day in everything I’m involved in. Whether it’s Beyond the Crucible or being an elder at my church or… There’s a variety of things that I’m involved in, that being a person of character that listens to people, is curious about their story, is not judging them or not mocking them. I hate mocking and teasing. I try never to do it to other people. It’s just something that you might think it’s funny, but typically, other people, they might laugh, but they don’t typically think it’s funny, especially if you’ve got a good one that hits the mark, that there’s some truth to it.
Some families feel that’s really fun and maybe it works for them, and if it does, without dragging them down, okay. But for me, no. I always try to listen to people and just build them up to offer words of encouragement. So yes, it’s really, really critically important to me at Beyond the Crucible and with my family and elder at church and everywhere that I try to my utmost ability, live out my beliefs and values and be a person of character. I’d say that’s, I probably shouldn’t say this, but likely is more important to me, than achieving whatever visions and goals we have at Beyond the Crucible.
Not that that’s not important, but it’s never enough. With goals and vision, there’ll always be another level and you can just drive yourself crazy because it’s hard to achieve all of them. But being a person of character, we’ll have our bad days, but everybody can be a person of character. This doesn’t depend on background, wealth, where you live, who you’re married to, how many kids you have, none of that is relevant. Everybody has the ability today to be a person of character, live out their beliefs and values. It’s a choice. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a decision. You just have to say, yes, I’m going to fail, but I will be a person of character. I will be somebody who people respect and the right kind of people want to be around.
That’s completely possible. You can do it today. It doesn’t take a six-month or a five-year training program. You don’t need a PhD. How do you do this again? And what is this like? And I get it. I need a lot more instruction. I need a lot more coaching. It’s a decision. It’s an action of the will to be a person of character. Everybody can do it. It’s just saying, I’m going to live what I believe. I’m not going to be hypocrite. I’m not going to pull people down. I’m going to be a person of character. Everybody can do that today.

Gary Schneeberger:
Well, I don’t say this to you often on the show, but I’m going to say it now. You were wrong when you said you probably shouldn’t have said that because you not only made a very important point for folks who were listening and watching to know, but you also… It doubled as the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating that we’ve begun our descent to end our conversation. Before we do end the conversation, now, Warwick, I’m going to ask you what I always ask you to do at the end of one of these episodes, and that is, hey, we’ve covered a lot of ground here. What’s one takeaway you’d like our friends to come away from this episode with?

Warwick Fairfax:
Having beliefs and values and faith is important. I do not denigrate it. I have my beliefs and values, my faith in Christ. It’s the anchor. It’s the driving force of my life. I pray. I read scripture. I’m in a live group. I go to church. I’m very passionate about my faith in my own understated way. I believe that thrusting it on other people, it’s just not my way. So yes, having belief and values and having faith is important, but faith that is not lived out, that’s character, is not very helpful. I would say it’s almost a waste. It’s pointless. Faith that is not lived out makes us look like hypocrites. It might make us feel like a hypocrite and faith that is not lived out, as I said before, it makes people say, “Well, if that’s what a person of faith is, who needs it? Clearly it’s something that I don’t want.”
Why would you want people to say who needs that faith? It’s meaningless. If you really believe to your core in those belief in values and your faith, you don’t want people to think it’s pointless and it’s worthless. That will be devastating to most of us. So having character is really, really important. And I think as we’ve said, to come back from your worst day, your crucible, it’s critical to live out our beliefs and values day to day, which is character. The end goal that we have here at Beyond the Crucible is to lead a life of significance, a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others. Is it really possible to lead a life of significance without character? Without living out your beliefs and values? I would say it really is not. Your vision, your goal, however noble it is, it will be pointless.
Most people will see, well, yeah, it was a great vision, but my gosh, they walked on so many people. They mistreated so many. It was really pointless. You will get no respect. It definitely, if not greatly, will adversely affect your ability to accomplish that vision. So, a life without character, a life without living out your beliefs and values, it’s a pointless life. That’s a life that nobody wants to live. That’s a legacy and a funeral service and a eulogy that wherever we are in the next life, if you look at it, if for some reason, you can look down or maybe heaven forbid, it’s look up and listen to that eulogy, it won’t be pleasant. We want to be people of character. We want to live out our beliefs and values every day. There are a few more important things in life than living out your beliefs and values and being a person of character.

Gary Schneeberger:
Well, folks, gather up your peanut bags and your empty bottles of water because we have landed the plane. Our host, Warwick Fairfax got us on the ground. And remember, as we depart, this is just the fifth actionable truth that we’ll be discussing in depth this year, in 2025. Each month, except for our summer series, which is coming up. So each month for another month at least, we will take a look at a new one and how it’s connected to the previous one to build out the Roadmap. And the next time, the one we will be discussing, and I’m calling on you, Scott, get ready. Get your best Ringo ready, because right now we need a drum roll because the next actionable truth we’re talking about is vision. So until the next time we’re together, folks, 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. We will see you next week.
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