We reached a pretty amazing milestone at Beyond the Crucible this month. We published our 300th podcast episode on Feb. 24.
How rare is that number? Consider that studies show 90 percent of podcasts don’t make it past three episodes. Only 5.8 percent survive to see 100. And the number that match the milestone we’ve just marked? 1.79 percent.
How small is that? If you convert it to a baseball batting average, the player unfortunate enough to have it in his stat line would be batting just .018. That would mean he’s a bad ballplayer, but it means we’re a good podcast.
As astounding as the numbers are, though, one true measure of our podcast, begun Nov. 5, 2019, is the cupboard of key phrases we’ve collected over that time that help us turn our trials into triumphs as we craft a vision for a life of significance.
These insights have been birthed from my and Warwick’s discussions of the best practices to weather and overcome crucibles (including those culled from Warwick’s own life-rattling setback of losing his family’s 150-year-old media dynasty); and, of course, from the stories told by our diverse roster of 146 guests – among them an Oscar-nominated film producer, an Emmy-winning football sideline reporter for ESPN and a special assistant to a former U.S. president.
So, from those insights we’ve gleaned, here are the ten top dollops of wisdom that have helped to craft the day-to-day lexicon of Beyond the Crucible:
1. Your worst day doesn’t define you. It’s an all-too-common emotion after a crucible: my life is over, ruined, will never be the same again. The shame I’m feeling right now will stick to me for the rest of my life.
But that’s not true.
One of the many commonalities our guests and our host, Warwick, have is that they have escaped the suffocating clutches of their crucible’s sting. By reflecting on what happened and how it happened, by leaning into and applying the lessons the crucible taught them, they have gone on to not be defined by what went wrong, but what they’ve gone on to do right. By the life of significance they’ve found.
2. Your crucible can be a gift. We heard this expressed to us by our guest Stacey Copas. She suffered an injury that left her a quadriplegic when she dove into an above-ground pool as a girl – and the pain of that crucible led to her struggles with substance abuse and suicidal ideation.
But it also led to her developing mental and physical resilience that opened up a career as a speaker and life coach. And, as she told us, she doesn’t believe any of that would have been possible had she not endured her crucible. It was, she said, the catalyst for her growth and success.
3. No matter the size of our vision, it matters. There are no small visions born out of crucibles, we’ve learned from guest after guest. Anything we do to live our lives on purpose, dedicated to serving others, makes the world a better place and us more fulfilled people.
4. Faith is something outside yourself that serves as an immovable anchor for your soul. For some it may be a religious tradition. For others, a philosophical conviction. What matters, as you craft your vision for a life of significance post-crucible, is that you do so with your reason for pursuing it rooted in something greater than and different from yourself. Lives of significance aren’t about us; they are about something bigger than us.
5. You have to do the soul work. Warwick coined this phrase to speak to the deep self-reflection necessary to move beyond a crucible. It’s not sufficient to just change your surroundings; you often have to reorder your mindset, focus on tapping into who you truly are beneath the surface, to catapult beyond a crucible.
6. Your worst day is your worst day; it is not a competition. Warwick experienced this truth in one of the podcast’s first interviews in episode 5. The guests, father and son ex-Navy Seals Mike and David Charbonnet, were talking with us about David’s becoming paralyzed in a training accident.
Warwick started a question to David by saying that his own crucible of losing $2.25 billion in a failed takeover of his family’s 150-year-old media dynasty was “nothing” compared to what David had been through. David chimed in quickly to kindly stop Warwick from completing that thought. “Your worst pain is your worst pain,” he said. His point? There is no competition with crucibles. Warwick has held this truth close in the more than 290 episodes of the podcast that have followed.
7. Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning what was done to you. Forgiveness is always needed in the aftermath of a crucible. Sometimes we have to forgive ourselves, sometimes we have to forgive those who have hurt us. But that doesn’t mean in the latter case we are saying what was done to us was “OK.” It simply means we are choosing to let go of any pain or resentment we may still harbor. Why is that so important? Keep reading.
8. Lack of forgiveness is like drinking poison. The only person we really punish if we refuse to forgive is ourselves. The bitterness ginned up by not forgiving has corrosive effects on us. It is impossible to truly move past a crucible if we’re still holding on to resentment and unforgiveness. Let it go to get something better back: peace that helps fuel a vision that can lead to a life of significance.
9. We need fellow travelers. Warwick coined this phrase to identify the friends and allies with whom we surround ourselves as we’re navigating our way back from a crucible. These are people who we trust enough to allow them to speak into our vision and who have, in many cases, different skills and passions than we do, who can add fuel to get our vision ignited. Fellow travelers are indispensable to turning a vision into a reality that leads to a life of significance.
10. Character is your belief system in action. Our beliefs and values are the ingredients we pour into our vision. But that vision will be nothing more than a raw recipe if we don’t bake the mixture. Character is the stove in which our beliefs and values become a vision that can nourish us as we move forward to implement our new post-crucible life of significance.
We’re excited at Beyond the Crucible about the learnings we’ve culled from 300 episodes of the podcast that make up the lexicon we use to help you move from trial to triumph, from setback to significance.
But we’re even more excited to move on to episode 301 and start collecting even more helpful insights to help you move beyond your crucible.
Reflection
1. Do you see your crucible as a gift? Why or why not?
2. What does “doing the soul work” mean to you and how do you make sure you do it?
3. Name three fellow travelers. What makes each of them uniquely helpful to you as you craft your vision and pursue a life of significance?
We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.
Our episode today is a special one. It’s our 300th — and wait till you hear just how few podcasts reach that milestone. You’ll likely be shocked.
You’ll also be inspired by what we discuss — 10 phrases that help you turn your trials into triumphs that were birthed from those 300 episodes. They form the key phrases Beyond the Crucible uses to help you move past your worst day and into your greatest opportunity.
And you will not want to miss the surprise the entire podcast team has in store for Warwick to mark this occasion.
So, put on your party hats — here we go!
To see the episode featuring Ruza Markovic discussed in this episode: Watch here. To see the episode featuring Stacey Copas: Watch here.
To see the episode featuring Mike and David Charbonnet: Watch here.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Don’t forget to subscribe for more leadership and personal growth insights: https://www.youtube.com/@beyondthecrucible
👉 Follow Beyond the Crucible on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondthecrucible
👉 Follow Warwick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warwickfairfax/
👉 Follow Beyond the Crucible on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondthecrucible
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. It's been an incredible journey these last 300 episodes. I would say for me it's been a voyage of discovery and I think for both Gary and I. And I would hopefully say for the listeners and viewers as well.Gary Schneeberger:
Our episode today is a special one. It's our 300th and wait till you hear about how many podcasts actually reach that milestone. I think you'll be shocked. You'll also be inspired by what we discussed. 10 phrases that help you turn trials into trials that were birthed from those 300 episodes. They formed the key phrases Beyond the Crucible uses to help you move past your worst day and into your greatest opportunity. And you will not want to miss the surprise the entire podcast team has in store for Warwick to mark this special occasion. So put on your party hats. Here we go.
Welcome friends, and we do mean friends because you've been with us for a while if you've been with us since the beginning to this episode of Beyond the Crucible, and this is a special one. This may be from my perspective, one of the most special ones that we've done because today is, you know what, Scott? Throw us a drum roll right off the bat. Today is our 300th episode. Truly, and I just want to put it in perspective of how rare that number is in the podcasting world. Studies show that 90%, nine out of every 10 podcasts that starts, 90% of them don't make it past three episodes. Only 5.8% survive to get to the century mark, to a hundred episodes. And how many, just guess to yourselves as you're listening and viewing this, how many do you think get to 300 like we are at as we're having this conversation?
I bet it's lower than you thought. Only 1.79% get there. I'm a baseball guy, so I always, in fact, I'm a journalist. I'm a former journalist who couldn't do math. So the only way I could teach percentages to people was to do batting averages and if this were a batting average, it would be 18. Not 180, which is bad enough, it would be 0.018. That's how bad it would be. That doesn't say, that's not to say that our podcast is not good. We believe it is, but it just shows how rare the feat that we're celebrating here today is. So Warwick, this is a huge milestone for this show that I know was something that you thought about for a while before we were able to launch it. So as we begin this celebration, how are you feeling right now? How does this feel to you to be celebrating 300 episodes?Warwick Fairfax:
It's good to actually have a milestone to think about because for me, and I guess for a lot of people, you're not really thinking about milestones. When you start a podcast, you're thinking, okay, so what's it going to be about? We need to get guests, we need to think of things to talk about, and you're really focused on what you're doing, not how many it's going to be. It's like, I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out the next week and who are we going to get and what we're going to talk about.
Gary Schneeberger:
Keep having to feed the furnace, right? We've had to feed the furnace every week.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. But one of the things about reaching a milestone and just the numbers you mentioned, just 1.79% have reached 300 episodes. I mean, that's a small number, and so we feel very privileged. I certainly do to be in that company. And so having this 300th episode does make you reflect, and I think a lot of us don't always reflect. We're just in the midst of our busy lives and thinking about where we are and how grateful we are and all of that. So I think this is an opportunity to think back on all the guests we've spoken to, the incredible stories and hope and resilience, and I feel like I've learned from every guest that we've had. It's one of the things I most enjoy about the guests we've had is just how much we can learn. And you think of the amazing series. We've had a lot of summer movie series, which both you, Gary, and I love movies.
Gary Schneeberger:
Oh yeah, those are truly really fun. Watching a movie for work is a great thing.
Warwick Fairfax:
And who knew that you could watch superhero movies and actually learn a whole lot about how to bounce back from a crucible?
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
But you can. Now when you watch a movie you're not thinking about, let me take notes on those Beyond the Crucible points. It's, are we in the bounce back stage and in the crucible stage? And the life of significance. You're just thinking this is fun and I hope the good guy wins. I mean, it's that simple. So we've had a lot of great series and we've had a lot of great discussions that you and I write blogs throughout the year and then we'll have a discussion on that. We've had discussions from stories from my book, Crucible Leadership, and even when it's a story from the book that I wrote, insights will come out that I didn't really think about that wasn't precisely in the book, at least not fleshed out as much it is in an extended period of time of discussion.
So whether it's from guests or from our own discussions from movie series or discussions based on blogs or my book, I just feel like I've learned so much and I'm also very grateful for the many people that have watched and listened to our podcasts and we have a great marketing team, and it's just such a blessing to see the numbers on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts and as they go up and continue to go up, and it's just such a blessing.
I'm so grateful for our discussions between you and I, as well as from the insights from the guests and just being grateful for the impact. I believe it has, at least in some sense on the people who listen and watch our podcast, we're all about helping people not be defined by the pit of despair and just challenging circumstances and bouncing back, and so we're about redemption and giving people hope.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And as astounding as that number 300 is, the true measure of the podcast, and this November 5th, 2019 is when we started, six years ago, the true measure of the podcast are the key phrases we've collected over that time that help us turn our trials into triumphs as we cast a vision for a life of significance. These insights have been birthed, as you've said, from our discussions of the best practices of how to weather a crucible, how to overcome a crucible, and the stories told by our diverse roster of guests, 146 guests, I counted them all. We've had 146 guests in 300 episodes and they include just as an example, an Oscar-nominated film producer, an Emmy award-winning ESPN football sideline reporter, and a former special assistant to a former president of the United States. Those are the folks we've talked to from whom we've gleaned some of these things that we're going to be talking about today.
And what we're going to be talking about today, folks, is we've pulled together a top 10 list of the phrases that have been birthed from this show and thought it would be fun and informative to run through all of those phrases as we celebrate this accomplishment. And we're going to do it in a different way than we've ever done anything on this show. We're going to do it totally at random. So we've got 10 phrases that were birthed from Beyond the Crucible, and I have here a hat. Those of you who watched perhaps the first a hundred episodes or 150 episodes of the show, 200 episodes, I used to wear hats like this. Now they're just props. Here they are, but they're holding right here, inside here are the 10 phrases that we're going to talk about. I'm going to pluck them at random. And-
Warwick Fairfax:
And it's not just any hat, is it?
Gary Schneeberger:
No, this is my lifeblood. This is a fedora, which is... And can see right there the other lifeblood. There's a Batman and Robin [inaudible 00:08:58] if you're watching folks. So that's the wellspring from which we're going to pull. I'm going to pull these phrases and I'm going to bring it to Warwick to talk about it. So are you ready? Warwick, are you ready to-
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely.
Gary Schneeberger:
... roll the dice as it were?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yes.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right, here we go. I'm going to reach in here and I'm going to pull out phrase number one of the lexicon of Beyond the Crucible born of 300 episodes of the show. And it is this. No matter the size of our vision, it matters. Talk about that.
Warwick Fairfax:
So sometimes you can think that the vision I have, it's not going to change the world, it's not going to bring clean drinking water to kids in Africa. You just think this vision is so small, why does it matter? And I can relate to that in this sense, and as listeners and viewers would know, I grew up in 150-year-old newspaper business in Australia and in the late '80s when I was 26, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover. It was a few months after my dad died. And the whole point was to return the vision of the company to the founder, have it be well led. The company's founded by a very strong person of faith. Three years later when the takeover failed, I was somewhat despondent because I thought to myself, not only have I let down my family and the founder of the media company, my great-great grandfather, John Fairfax, but I was thinking, I will never have a vision that will have the potential impact that my involvement in the family newspaper company John Fairfax Limited could have.
And I was thinking I could have an impact, not just on the employees of the company, the 4,000 plus employees, the readers and viewers of the media that we had, but potentially on the nation of Australia. And I mean that was not unrealistic considering we had the equivalent of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal about country. So after that it's like, well, why not just give up? Because I will never have a kind of vision that will have that kind of impact. But one of the things I realize is you might think, oh, I'll never be CEO of Apple or Ford Motor Company. I won't head up some big non-profit, but the size of the impact and your vision isn't really what matters. You might be thinking, I just want to clean up my neighborhood park so that kids and families can enjoy it or a food bank in my local area or just in my small business, I just want to make people feel like they're loved and treasured and I want to really honor my customers.
I mean, whatever it is, it doesn't matter the size. It's really about the vision that's on your heart and the impact to people that you know and love. And the whole world may not have heard of you but your little world and it can feel that way to all of us. It may not feel that big, but your world have it big or small, you can have an enormous impact on that world. So for those people, you matter a lot. And so don't be overawed by the impact that some people you read about online or watch in the media. You might think I'll never have that kind of impact, but that's not the point. Are you having an impact with the people you know and where you live? Do you have a vision that matters to you and will somehow help others? That's really the point. So don't get into the comparison game to see who has the bigger business, the bigger non-profit. There'll always be somebody with a bigger non-profit, a bigger company. So don't compare yourself. It's not helpful.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And I am so glad for it. I'm so glad that this one came up first and I didn't rig it this way. I'm so glad this one came up first because in thinking about the impact of Beyond the Crucible, I want to tell a story that I told you a couple of... like a month and a half ago or so, our guest in episode 62, I believe it was, let me look it up here. Yep. Our guest on episode 62 is a friend of mine, Ruza Markovic, who I had known since 1989 when she interned at the newspaper I worked at in Racine, Wisconsin. And Ruza and I stayed friends over the course of the years and she came on and did the show because her crucible was as a native of what was then Yugoslavia, she went back to the country in the '90s as it was falling apart in a terrible civil war, and she recounted the traumatic things she went through that she overcame, and then the life that she built.
But Ruza over the last four or five years had been battling cancer. And we talked a lot either on the phone or via text. We had a close friendship and she died on the 26th of December. Hours before she passed away, she texted me something I didn't get until the next morning, and I wasn't planning on this coming up first, so I'm going to pull it up here on my phone really fast because I want to read this to folks to see just what it was that she wanted to talk about. She said this to me hours before she passed away. She said, "I was on your podcast. Please make sure that Eli," who was her 13-year-old son, the love of her life, "please make sure that Eli hears that. Please make sure that gets to him." That Warwick, that's enormous impact. A woman's dying wish was that the word spoken over her, about her on this show were heard by her only child, a 13-year-old boy who was the prize of her life. That says something about the impact you are having with Beyond the Crucible, I think.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's hard to even process what you just said because what you're saying is this poor woman is in the last hours of her life is implicitly saying this podcast captured the essence of who Ruza was, what she was about, and what she valued. And she wanted that her legacy as she described it in this podcast, to be passed on to her son, so her son would know this is what his mother believes in, this is her journey, and this was her mission. This is what she's about. The fact that she would say, "I want to make sure that Eli listens and watches this." I mean, that's as high a praise as you could possibly have. I mean, that's... It's beyond saying, "It's an honor." It's a privilege of unparalleled magnitude that anybody say that. That's just incredible.
Gary Schneeberger:
And Ruza, I did it. So he's seen it. All right, here we go. Number two, Warwick, what do we have next? This one's long. Let's see what this one is here. This one is faith is something outside yourself that serves as an immovable anchor for your soul.
Warwick Fairfax:
So this is an interesting one. In my book, Crucible Leadership, we talk about faith in a broad sense. That's how we define it. Now, faith can be a major religion, a philosophy, a spiritual way of thought. For me, in fact, for both of us it's our faith in Christ. But the point is this, whatever your belief system is for you, it's critical that those beliefs and values anchor your soul because as you journey back from your worst day, your crucible, it needs to be anchored by your beliefs and values. So it's not so much about what I or Gary believe or others believe. Every human being believes in something.
Now, some of us don't really reflect too much on what we believe because life is busy. We just carry on to the Mach 3 and kids and work and family. I mean, everything's just crazy busy. But be that as it may, we all believe in something. So in particular, when you're trying to claw your way out of the pit of despair and move beyond that worst day, you've got to ask yourself, well, what do I believe? What is the anchor that's going to help me keep grounded? What's the compass that's going to chart my course?
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
If you're trying to get beyond the pit of despair and move to a life-affirming vision that gives you joy and fulfillment, you've got to know what undergirds that journey. What beliefs and values will help you keep centered, will help you keep moving in the direction that your soul and you truly want to go. You cannot really move forward in a path that's going to be helpful to you or to others without having that path be anchored by your fundamental beliefs and values, and that's what we mean by faith. It's absolutely critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
And one of the things I love about our conversations with guests is you make it very clear. You say it a lot, your truth is your truth. You point out, you and I, as you said, you and I are Christians, but you don't have to be a Christian to be on Beyond the Crucible. You don't have to believe what we believe to talk about how you will overcome your crucible. And that is a... I mean, that's part of your desire to speak eternal truths to a larger audience than even just people who believe like us, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. I mean, in addition to my book, Crucible Leadership, and the host of this podcast, I'm a certified International Coach Federation executive coach. And by training and by values, I believe a bunch of things, including my faith in Christ, which is the anchor of my life, and I try to live that every day. I try to think, how am I living my life in line with the principles of Jesus? Am I living in light of that or am I ignoring it? Am I forgiving? Do I have compassion? Am I living my life in light of truth. From my own paradigm, that's how I look at it, and I think we all have to do that, but I believe passionately that everybody has a fundamental right to believe what they feel called to believe and to live their own lives.
But while there may be different paths, what I think is not helpful to say is, "Beliefs and values are irrelevant to me, I'm going to ignore them." Because that's not so much ignoring what other people think. That's ignoring yourself, that's ignoring your own soul. It's never helpful to ignore your own soul and your own fundamental beliefs. Good things don't happen if you won't even pay attention to yourself. That's why this is so important.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. All right, here we go. Third one, here's the hat again. I'm just going to show the fedora as often as I can. Here's the hat. I'm going to go in here. I've got another one. Let's see what we have in the lexicon of Beyond the Crucible birthed from this podcast celebrating its 300th episode as of this speaking. All right, here we go, Warwick. Forgiveness doesn't mean condoning what was done to you. There's a couple of things in here on forgiveness. This is the first one. Talk about that a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
This is interesting because for a lot of people, they feel like they cannot forgive because if they forgive, somehow it means that what that person did to them is okay. No, that is not what it means. If somebody, and we've had people on this podcast, people who've been abused by one or other parents, people who've just suffered lost businesses, maybe they're ripped off by somebody else. There's a lot of people that have anger towards people that have really hurt them. And so forgiveness does not mean condoning the horrendous behavior that was done to you. But one of the things we say is that to be able to move on, we need to let go of the past. And so if you have this attitude that, well, I'm not going to forgive because then I'm condoning. No, forgiveness and condoning, two separate things. But if you don't forgive, you keep looking at the past and you don't look at the present or still less the future.
So it's really a lie, a false narrative that if we're not thinking 24/7 about the person that hurt you and what they did, that somehow you're condoning them. No. I don't know that this is very easy, but when you get to a point that you truly forgive, you won't be thinking about what happened to you all the time. Will you forget it? No, but it won't be a 24/7 thing. Maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, maybe more will go past in which, huh, I really haven't been thinking about that because I've been busy with the present, I've been focused on how to help others, and it's just not something that consumes many more. So that's why we make it a very important point to say forgiveness doesn't mean condoning, but you've got to find a way to forgive in order to let go of the past and move on. And if you can't move on, how in the world are you going to help anybody? It's just so important.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right. I heard it described to church once, gosh, decades ago, that forgiveness is taking on the sins of another person to yourself. That's what forgiveness... And those can be heavy. That can be heavy. And the other aspect of this work is it's not just always other people we have to forgive. It is also ourselves we have to forgive. And I know from your story that that was one of the... You yourself were perhaps the person you had to forgive the most for your crucible of the failed takeover of the family media business, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Sometimes forgiving other people is one thing, but forgiving ourselves, that feels like the Mount of Olympus of forgiveness.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And that is tough. For me, again, I mentioned earlier in the failed $2.25 billion takeover for my family's 150-year-old family media business, I felt like I let down my father, my parents, 4,000 plus employees, other family members. I felt like I let down John Fairfax, incredible person of faith, my great-great grandfather. And so in the '90s, I would just continue to persecute myself. Before I launched the takeover, I had an undergrad degree at Oxford, worked in banking at Wall Street. I graduated from Harvard Business School in 1987, months before launching the takeover. We're not talking years, months.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, I graduated in what, like May, June? Takeover was launched in September. That's not a long timeframe, just a few months. So it's easy for me to say, "How could I have been so dumb, assuming family members wouldn't sell out into a takeover or company controlled by me because I wanted to make sure we could change management and change the direction of the company?" So it made sense at the time to me, but it just was ludicrous. But over time, I got better at forgiving myself. For me, my anchor is my faith in Christ and came to realize Christ doesn't need my stuff, doesn't need a huge family media business. He loves us unconditionally as children of God. It's not based on what we do.
But then I also had a more sane view that there was infighting amongst family members going back many decades. It was a very difficult situation that I grew up in. So was it all my fault? No. Did I make some incredibly poor decisions? I think I certainly made some decisions that weren't great. Yes, they were probably poor, but I was able to let go of it in part by saying, "Look, I was so young. I was in a very difficult situation. I honestly was trying to do the right thing. I was never trying to hurt anybody, but it didn't work out. I made some bad assumptions and I have to move on." And certainly since I do have a life affirming vision with Beyond the Crucible that seeks to help others, it's easy to move on when you've got something to move on with and to.
Gary Schneeberger:
What's the next thing that you're going to... I feel like a carnival barker or something. All right, what we got next? Coming up here, we got, what do we have? We have, you have to do, this is a phrase you used earlier a little bit, just as a tease, you have to do the soul work. We say this a lot here. You say this a lot here. And again, it's like you have to forgive. Doing the soul work is part of what it takes to get you moving on that treadmill that gets you through your crucible on toward a vision that can carry you to a life of significance. Talk a little bit about soul work and why it's important.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, we talk about soul work a lot. So we've talked previously about it's important to have an anchor for your soul and have belief and values, but when you are bouncing back from your worst day, which we sometimes call a pit of despair, it's easy to say, "You know what? Nothing to see here. This is awful. I just need to move and move as quickly as possible. Move anywhere, do anything. Just do something. Just move. Just do it. Right? Just keep moving forward."
And yes, it can be helpful to move forward, but move forward to where and why and what from? How is this going to be different? You've got to do the soul work to meaningfully move forward. And that is not easy. It can be excruciatingly painful. You've got to dig down deep and explore your beliefs and values. Now, exploring your worst day, you've got to say, "Okay, how much was it my fault? Maybe I was too naive, I trusted in the wrong people. Doesn't mean it was all my fault, but maybe I should have been smarter. Maybe I let the wrong people into my life." Again, doesn't condone other people's behavior, but it's almost like forewarned is forearmed.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, how am I going to do anything different if I keep repeating the mistakes of the past? Typically, history does repeat itself. Typically, we often don't learn from our mistakes.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
So to be able to move forward meaningfully in a healthy, fulfilling life-affirming way, you've got to do the soul work. And it's just, it is not easy. When I was writing my book, Crucible Leadership, which I started around 2008, as I mentioned before, after a talk in church when lead part of my church, an evangelical church in Annapolis, Maryland, he asked me to talk about my story and I thought, well, how much can my story help others? It's such a unique, big business kind of multifamily business story, but somehow it did. And so then I started writing my book. I thought, well, if this can help people... Well, in those early days from 2008 on, in part, as I was writing about my worst day and the mistakes I made, it was excruciatingly painful. I couldn't... After two or three hours, I was done. I just needed a break. It's a whole lot easier now, years later when I've talked about it a lot and have come to terms with mistakes I made and all that.
Gary Schneeberger:
And you forgive yourself as you mentioned in the earlier point.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it's hard to do things perfectly, but relatively speaking, I think that's a true statement. But soul work is not easy. Deep reflection, it is painful. We talk about pulling off the band-aid, well, think of a band-aid on there with cement. That's like some of the most excruciating pain you've ever felt. That's what it's like pulling off that kind of band-aid. It is not easy, I realize that. But to be able to move forward, you have to do that soul work, that very painful inner reflection. It's critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We are four through. We're about to go to the fifth one. Let's see what we have. Well, this one's fun because again, all these are fun and here's why. The fun for me is that these words or these phrases did not exist in my vocabulary before I started working with you at Beyond the Crucible. And I don't know that you thought about them in the same way. A lot of these things don't even show up in your book because the podcast came after the book. So here's the fifth point. We need fellow travelers. Again, that's a, it should say, "Copyright Warwick Fairfax," on it because we talk about it a lot, but explain why that is so critical to our journey from trial to triumph.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, that word, fellow travelers, it really didn't exist in the book. It's come out of our discussions and it's a phrase that we have coined, and basically the thought is this is often when we're bouncing back from our crucible, it's tempting to say, "We've got this. I don't need help. I know what I'm doing. Move out of my way. I got this." But rarely is it the case that we've got this. I don't care how capable you are, how self-confident. From my spiritual framework, God doesn't give us all the gifts. And why is that? Because I believe he wants us to be humble and wants us to work in community. And so since we don't have all the gifts needed, if we have a small business or a non-profit, whatever it is, we're going to need people with skills and experiences that we simply don't have.
And so a self-confident humble person says, "Look, I know I'm deficient in certain areas." For me, as I've talked about before, I feel like I'm a good reflective advisor. I think I'm a decent if not good writer, but I'm not a salesperson. I hate selling. Every time I try to, I feel like I'm a used car salesman trying to sell the worst lemon that's ever existed. Is that true of sales? No. But that's psychologically what I feel like, and it's just very ingrained and I'm a reserved person by nature, so it just doesn't fit. So there are other people on the team who are better at promoting and selling than I am. And so that's one side. The other side is that we need people who will come alongside us and encourage us, especially in those early days when you're in the pit of despair, you might be thinking, nobody could want to be around me. I feel like a leper in the Bible, unclean. Leave. Go away. Don't touch me. And nobody could respect me or like me.
But when you find a few, all you need is a few, one or two or more that says, "Look, I realize this is really tough, but I believe in you. You do have skills and abilities. You do have something within you that could be a future vision. You matter, your heart matters. You matter as a person." All it takes sometimes is people who believe in us to take one small, positive baby step. Maybe it's to talk to somebody that your friend knows that might have worked for you. Maybe you have a passion about a certain nonprofit or maybe it's talking to folks that do something similar.
In conversations, it gives you a spark of confidence. It helps you take that next step. So people who encourage us on the days when we feel like I'm going to give up, it's all too hard, is critical. So fellow travelers is critical. Without them, I think it's hard to see how you get beyond your worst day of pit of despair, how you get that vision off the ground with people with diverse skills, how you keep going and have perseverance without people encouraging you to say, "Hey, look. Look how far you've come. I know you can do it." It's absolutely critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
How important have fellow travelers been to your own journey from setback to significance?
Warwick Fairfax:
That's a great question. I mean, the list of people that have been our fellow travelers at Beyond the Crucible is huge. We've had so many, and those are people with different skills and experience, but there have been days when I've been a little discouraged, and we've got people, yourself and others who have encouraged me. Certainly more broadly than that, my wife, Gale, has been a huge source of encouragement. Even my kids, people at church. I'm an elder at my church and I'm in the Life Group community group and had all sorts of people.
When I was younger, I had people that were mentors of mine that spiritually just in those dark days of the takeover was able to encourage me. So I've had a lot of people that both encouraged me as well as had skills and experiences that I don't have. So yeah, I've always felt like why would I try to do it all myself? I like getting input from people. I'm an advisor, but I'm also somebody that likes to take input and reflect on what people say. It doesn't mean I agree with everything, but by the dialogues with other people, it actually helps refine my thinking. So fellow travelers is absolutely critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, I'm glad that you talked about that because we're going take a pause in our conversation and we're going to do something a little bit different.
Cheryl Farr:
Warwick, congratulations to you, to Gary, and to the entire Beyond the Crucible team for your 300th episode. Many may not realize, maybe just you and I, that this has actually been a ten-year journey to this extraordinary milestone.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow.
Cheryl Farr:
When we first met in 2016, you had a manuscript and the dream of publishing that manuscript as a book. You met me because you needed a brand. When you first told me the story of losing your 150-year-old family media business, I thought that was incredible. But when I read the manuscript, which of course became your number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, Crucible Leadership, something became really clear to me. The fact that your story wasn't about this devastating loss, but was really about your heroic journey back from it.
In your journey of self-reflection, of healing, recovery, it was clear that you had develop so much wisdom about how to bounce forward from the worst setbacks imaginable, how none of us are beyond redemption, and how we can all turn our worst trials into our greatest triumphs. Now here we are 10 years later, Beyond the Crucible has created a rich and important body of work of bounce forward stories from people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Beyond the Crucible has also become a beacon of hope for so many who need to understand and be encouraged by the truth that our worst days don't define us, and that there really is truly light and hope at the end of any tunnel. I'm so proud of what you've achieved and to be part of the Beyond the Crucible story.
Scott Karow:
Well, hey, Warwick. As the person who has perhaps heard your voice more than any human on the planet, it's my pleasure to just give you a short greeting here. I was looking back to see when I jumped in with the team on this podcast, and I was stunned to realize that I joined you on episode 66 in April of 2021. So I've been on board for, I think that's 234 episodes of the 300. So that's a pretty big deal even for me. I wanted to share the one thing that I've heard over and over and over again that resonates so deeply with me is it didn't happen to you, it happened for you. I can honestly say that my life is full of a lot of it didn't happen to you, it happened for you moments. In fact, the only reason I'm here editing your show and working with you for so long is because of some it didn't happen to you, it happened for you moments.
And so I just enjoy rethinking through that every time I hear that phrase is just, the Lord's been good to me through some really hard times, and I can look back honestly and say, "Those things didn't happen to me. They happened for me." And of course, you and I share faith and we can look to a much bigger purpose to those hard times. So I just wanted to thank you for all of those times that I've enjoyed personally, the moments they've spoken to me, and the times I think back of texting you and saying, "Hey, this was a great episode. I really appreciated it." So thanks for everything and congrats on number 300.
Margaret Hibbard:
Hey, Warwick. I just wanted to say congratulations on 300 episodes. This is definitely an accomplishment for any podcast, but it makes me really happy to know that your show is striving and we're just getting bigger and better each year. I love watching you and Gary have discussions every week, and it's been amazing to be a part of the guest-booking and curating the stories that we put out on this podcast. A little interesting bit. When I started working with the team, I was going through my own personal crucible and it was something that wasn't really on the surface for me, but working with Warwick and Gary throughout this experience has really helped me understand that your worst day doesn't define you and that there's a lot of wealth and resilience and enrichment that happens when you don't let your worst day define you. I have to say this is one of my favorite jobs I've ever done coming from the film industry and using our skills and our connections and our network to help people and make a difference.
I think back on, we've had some amazing guests join us. Some notable ones for me, Amy Shippy's episode really stuck out to me and how she let her faith give her a new direction in life. I really like Lauren Sisler. Her story is amazing and we're hoping to have her on again soon. But overall, I'm just really proud of you guys because vulnerability over a digital format is always hard, and I feel like you guys have captured a lot of authenticity and wisdom and you have a vessel and a program that's really helping people, and it's a joy for me to log on every day and to work with you guys. So I'm just really proud of you and I hope that 300 is just a start and we have 300 more ahead of us. So congratulations, guys.
Casey Helmick:
Warwick Fairfax, I am so excited for episode number 300. It has been a long journey to get here, but what a fulfilling one. Scott and I talked this morning, Scott, of course, our wonderful editor, and we started with you around episode 66 and what a partnership with you. We're so thankful to get to tell these wonderful stories. And honestly, I was thinking about which story is my favorite, and it feels like every week, every month I learn more of your story, and this is a good moment to remind yourself your story is such an inspiration for so many. We don't talk about your story all that often. 300 episodes in, we've been there, done that. But just such a beautiful reminder to me here at episode 300 that one life can inspire so many, can inspire 300 of these stories to come to the world and change lives, and we're thankful for that.
I mean, I remember personally going through a crucible just in the past year and thinking, man at the bottom of this barrel, what is left? And many of the things that you've shared through the years were right there waiting for me. So I hope, I pray that we can keep doing another 300. I hope that there's many good days ahead of us because I know each and every one of these stories that is told first is meaningful to you because it is a way to give back having faced your own crucible, it's meaningful to the whole team and to my team because we get to be inspired by these incredible people that we pulled together, and it's meaningful to the listeners and the viewers, and we know that we can feel the impact.
The last story I thought of just sitting here laughing about is when we recorded your audiobook work and there's helicopters flying over a forest in Austin, Texas, and we've got to pause every now and then because the helicopters go in to save somebody. And it's an honor to work with you. It's an honor to laugh with you. It's an honor to bring these stories to life and thank you for the hard work and the investment you're making into this world through Beyond the Crucible and cheers to 300 more.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, amazing. 300 episodes. I have been your co-host beside you for 297 of those if my math is right, and don't count on that because I'm an ex-journalist and I can't do math, but you did the first one by yourself, the 100th one I was your guest, and there was one after that in which somebody co-hosted for you. So I've been there for 297 of these 300 episodes, and one of the things I wanted to say to you is I have a unique vantage point being your co-host. I get to see your reaction to everything everybody says, some of the things that don't get into the final show, and one of the thing that amazes me what you say more often than, almost as often as crucible as this, "That's powerful." You say to the guests, "That's a powerful comment. That's powerful. That's so powerful."
And you're not just puffing them on. I know for a fact that you're moved by the things our guests say, and I think that comes through in what the show gives to listeners and viewers. I always tell people all the time, Warwick, that you are a true host because you don't have a list of 10 questions in front of you and you check them off. You listen, and then you pull the sweater strings of their story and you ask them questions based on that story. It's a true conversation. As an old ex-journalist, as I said, you're good. You're very good at what you do. So I always tell people before we have them on that you and I are like a sports commentating team. I wish I knew a cricket sports commentating team. I don't. But I'll tell you this, I'm proud to be the John Madden to your Pat Summerall.
Well, there you go. Any... I don't want to put you on the spot, but I mean anything to say about that. We pulled that off behind your back for the last couple of weeks, so we were very proud of how it all turned out.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, that's overwhelming. What a gift. I mean, thank you, Gary, for pulling that together. I mean, that's just, that's incredible. Yeah, as my family knows, one of the things that's a learning opportunity for me is I don't find it easy to hear praise. So when it's my birthday and listeners have heard this, we always do this thing where you go around the table and words of affirmation. So as I jokingly say, "I can dish it out, but I can't take it very well." I can dish out praise. I'm not so good at taking it. So when it's my birthday or Father's Day it's like buckle up.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
All that's to say is, yeah, I mean, I just feel so privileged. All of the people you had there. I mean, Cheryl, we started off 10 years ago, and a friend of mine in Australia said, "I know you have a book, but to have a book, you've got to have a brand and social media. You've got to have some folks that will want to, an audience will want to buy your book." So they put me in touch with Cheryl, and she helped create the whole brand that we have.
I mean, the brand we have wouldn't have happened without Cheryl taking the words from my manuscript and just a whole team, yourself, Margaret, Casey, Scott, I mean the whole team is... To have a team that believe in what we're doing, I mean, obviously everybody wants to be meaningfully and fairly compensated, but it feels like it's beyond that. The people really believe in the mission that we're doing that to help folks understand that your worth doesn't define you. And so to have co-laborers, fellow travelers like that, that have excellent expertise in the different areas, but truly believe in the vision, you can't get better fellow travelers than I have, and we have. So yeah, it's an honor to journey together and thank you for pulling that together. That's overwhelming. Well done.
Gary Schneeberger:
So shall we move on to the next point? We're at point 6.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yes.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yes. Please get me off the hook of this. All right, here we go folks. The sixth part of the lexicon that came out of Beyond the Crucible, and the podcast specifically Beyond the Crucible is this, your worst day is your worst day.
Warwick Fairfax:
This concept that your worst day doesn't define you. I mean, this certainly is something I've had to wrestle with. As I've mentioned before, growing up with this 150-year-old family media business, $2.25 billion takeover in my twenties, I wrestled with this concept, well, this worst day, this worst mistake is going to define me. This is my legacy. And so I had to find my way back saying, "Okay, yes, it was a mistake. Yes, ending 150-year-old business is not nothing. Again, it wasn't totally my fault, but it felt like a lot my fault, rightly or wrongly." So I had to find my way back to a new vision. And so at Beyond the Crucible, we do believe in second chances. We believe in redemption. We believe that if you learn the lessons of your crucible, that I've tried to learn those, that you can find a life giving vision, and very often it comes out of the ashes of your crucible, which it did for me. And that can lead to a life significance, life on purpose dedicated to serving others.
So this idea that your worst day doesn't define you, that has been life giving to me almost beyond description that, okay, I made mistakes, but I've reflected, I've done the soul work. I understand how much was my fault, how much wasn't, what my gifts are, what my gifts are not, what areas I'm passionate about. And now I feel like I'm so blessed.
I obviously love what I do at Beyond the Crucible. I'm an elder at my church in Annapolis, Maryland Bay Area Community Church. I help advise a friend who has a local ministry, Joey Tomassoni at Estuary. I'm on the campaign committee where my kids went at Taylor University in Indiana, very missional Christ-centered University. I'm so blessed to be doing all those things with people of faith and people who I passionately believe in their vision. So whether it's my vision of Beyond the Crucible or coming alongside as an elder at my church or other organizations, it helps me say that yes, my worst day doesn't define me. The fact that I've been married to my wife over 35 years, I've got three wonderful children, the oldest of which, Will, is getting married in May. I mean having three kids who work hard, strong faith, humble, I am blessed beyond description. So the fact that your worth day doesn't define you, I can honestly say amen. And I do believe that.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We're getting to the back half of our journey here, Warwick. We've got a few of these left. Let's see what we've got here. Character is your belief system in action. That's a good one. That's a big one. That came a lot out of the actionable truths of the brand, right? Talk about that a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
For me, my highest values are integrity and humility, but really character is your belief system in action. I think from my perspective, faith is important, but faith without actions is meaningless.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And one of my favorite Bible verses is James 2:17, and it says this. "In the same way faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." So to say, "Oh, I believe in love and kindness and compassion," but you have no kindness and compassion to anybody you know, I mean, what's the point? Or if you're like Enron, that company from a number of years ago that had all these wonderful values that they were about, love, compassion, whatever, and they didn't at all exhibit it, there was a lot of fraud and a lot of bad things going on, that's one of the worst things is to say you believe in a certain set of values and not live them.
People will rightly accuse you of being a hypocrite. Doesn't mean that you'll live out your beliefs and values all the time every day, but as a whole over the course of your life, is your life characterized by congruence, by more often than not living in light of your beliefs and values, or is it not? That's really the question. So your characters, your belief system in action is just so important. Beliefs without putting them into action, people may question, "Well, if you really believe that, wouldn't you live it at least to some degree?"
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
So character is so important of just living what you believe. And it's a journey. It's not easy. We're all going to make mistakes, which we have to confess, apologize, and then try to learn from and minimize them. But yeah, it's important to do the soul work. It's important to have beliefs and values, and it's important to try to your utmost to live them out every day with your family, with your co-workers, people that you know, organizations that you're involved in. It's critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And as I said, this is sort of a linchpin of our series that we did on the actionable truths of the brand, right? This idea that you can believe something, that's great, but if you're not doing it, right, actionable truth, it's a truth, but truth without action doesn't get you anywhere. So talk a little bit about, you don't have to go into all of them, but this idea, because it took us a while to land on something like actionable truth and we came up with it because it is so important. Yeah. You got to have truth, but you also got to have action behind it. That's what's going to propel you to your vision and then to a life of significance. Right?
Warwick Fairfax:
You might say, "I believe in fellow travelers, but I don't have any."
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Okay.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
Great, but you've got to have them. Or, "I think in theory it's good to have a vision, but I've taken no steps whatsoever to try and figure out a vision. I've not done the soul work, the reflection. I've not talked to others to get an idea of what kind of vision it could be. Okay, I have this vision, but I've taken no steps to make it a reality. I've not tried to get on board fellow travelers be they paid, unpaid, informal advisers." So the truths that you live your life by, they've got to be actionable. You've got to be moving the ball down the field in each of these areas. Self-reflection, that's important. Okay. But you've got to do it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's really, really painful. You've got to sit down and say, "What went wrong? How much was my fault? How much was others? Was I in like a square peg at a round hole? Was it not a good fit for my skills? Was it something that I could care less about? Was I in an organization, I don't know, maybe making cigarettes and I'm thinking, gosh, that maybe is killing people or it's not healthy? Yeah. So maybe there's more to life than just the almighty dollar. Maybe I need to be in organizations whose products and services I believe in. Maybe we're just killing my soul, going in every day to whatever that company was. It just treated people poorly. It sold products I didn't believe in." Well, you've got to do the self-reflection. So actionable truths is critical and doing the work on each of them.
Gary Schneeberger:
Absolutely. An actionable truth here is I've got to pull another phrase from the lexicon of Beyond the Crucible that was birthed into podcast right here. And here we've got one. This one has a bit of a long tail on it in that this one was from, and I looked it up, it was from our fifth episode. So this critical truth learned through this podcast in 300 episodes came, now, I got to do math, 295 episodes ago. And that's this. Your worst day is your worst day. It is not a competition. Talk about that, why that's important and where it came from.
Warwick Fairfax:
So as you say, this phrase came in our discussions with David Charbonnet. We had David and his dad, Mike, as you say, episode five. And David Charbonnet was a Navy SEAL who was paralyzed in a parachuting accident in Southern California. And I remember mentioning that my crucible of losing my family's 150-year-old family media business was nothing compared to what David had gone through. And as I remember it, David was so magnanimous, and he said, "Your worst day is your worst day. It's not a competition." And that was so kind and generous because to me, being paralyzed is a whole lot worse than losing some family business, even a couple billion dollar family business, it's not paralysis.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And so I think one of the temptations is to say, "Oh, what I went through, I feel almost embarrassed about complaining about what I went through." Because sadly, there's often people who have gone through worse. They suffered more loss, more heartache, more whatever it is. You might think, gosh, I thought my story is bad. But their story feels like light years worse, and it makes you feel embarrassed. But really the idea is your worst day is your worst day, and you can't compare yourself. I mean, your worst day and the excruciating pain that we suffer is indeed our worst day. For me, losing 150-year-old family media business, and again, it wasn't so much about the money, but letting down my family, my father, the 4,000 plus employees, ending the vision of my great-great-grandfather, a stronger business person for Christ as have ever come across, it wasn't maybe my vision as, at least as I've come to realize, but there were thousands of employees thinking that we felt safe in working for a company that was owned by the Fairfax family. Who's going to own us now? Was it going to mean?
I mean, that was not lost on me, but it felt excruciatingly painful at the time, just feeling like, probably the worst part of it was feeling like God had a vision, from my perspective, because I came to faith in Christ in an evangelical Anglican church at Oxford, I felt like God had a vision. I let God down. Now, if God had wanted to happen, it would have despite my mistakes, but that was so painful, letting my family, employees down, letting God down, it was excruciatingly painful. So that was my worst day. And I've learned with that very gracious thought by David Charbonnet that it's not a competition. It's just not helpful to say, "Well, I should be embarrassed." No, it's real to you.
Somebody that loses their job as a CEO, maybe the board fires them. You might say, "Well, loses a job as a CEO, you'll probably find somewhere else or something will happen. And gee, that's not paralysis. That's not being destitute." Okay. But for them, their whole identity or their whole sense of wellbeing, maybe it does mean a pay cut. Maybe they will have to sell their home. I mean, again, I'm not trying to minimize that, but it's like you can't compare what you've been through if it's incredibly painful to you. Who are we to judge others? Who are we to judge their pain and say, "Oh, that's nothing"? I mean, that's from my perspective, not right. We don't judge other people's pain. We don't criticize others. We don't make them feel less than. So this is an incredible gift from David Charbonnet.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right, we've got a couple more of these left, Warwick. Here we go. The next phrase out of the Beyond the Crucible lexicon, birthed from Beyond the Crucible podcast is this, lack of forgiveness is like drinking poison. It's our second exploration of the subject of forgiveness. First one was about forgiving yourself. This one's about not forgiving others. Why is a lack of forgiveness like drinking poison?
Warwick Fairfax:
This is a phrase that we've used a lot. It's related to forgiving but not condoning, but when you don't forgive because we can think to ourselves, if I forgive, that means it's okay what the person did. But what happens is when you don't forgive, it is like drinking poison. And what's so frustrating and galling is typically when we don't forgive, the other person could care less. But we're thinking about it 24/7. We're thinking about how bad it was. And it's just what happens is it corrodes our soul. It just eats away like acid just destroying us. It can damage our physical health, it can certainly damage our wellbeing.
And what happens is when we don't let go of what happened, the poison often manifests itself in anger and rage. And the sad thing, I think this is true, we tend to take out our anger and rage on those closest to us. Our wife, husband, kids, brothers, sisters, family, parents, cousins, friends. Do they deserve that? No. Of course they don't. And so if you love your family and your friends, coworkers, you have to forgive because that anger leaks and it will leak on the people closest towards you. So it is like poison. It can absolutely destroy your life. And as we said before, how can you move forward when your soul is just being eroded and corroded by acid?
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
There won't be any soul left to move forward with. So moving forward with a life-affirming vision, it won't happen. So if you value your family, if you value the people that will be helped by your vision, you've got to find a way to forgive and stop frankly drinking the poison. You just got to stop.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We're down to the last one. So I'm going to put the last one down here on my... And then you know what? I'm going to flash back to the early episodes of the show. I'm going to throw my hat on here for the last few minutes. Scott, give me a drum roll before I open this one up. Okay, let me hear it. Good, good. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Here we go. This has truly been at random folks and is a great one to end on because this may be the one, Warwick... No, I don't think maybe is right. I think this is the one that you struggle with the most of the things that we've talked about here, and that's your crucible can be a gift. Talk about why that's true and why that was perhaps a challenge for you to accept early on.
Warwick Fairfax:
So Gary, you're right. To say that my crucible can be a gift, that losing 150-year-old family media business, I didn't feel like a gift because as I've said earlier on in this podcast, I felt like I let my father down, my parents, family, 4,000 plus employees, my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, the incredible person of faith. And as I said, God, in some sense. I felt like God had a plan to resurrect the company and the image of the founder, and that was the plan and I blew it. So yes, how could that be a gift? But over time I came to see that there was a gift in this. One of the things I've learned is I prepared my whole life to work in the family media business. Undergrad degree at Oxford, working in banking at Wall Street, MBA from Harvard Business School. But I'm not this business tycoon. I'm not a CEO. I'm a reflective advisor. I don't like being in the limelight. I don't like having to manage.
I mean, since I have a Harvard MBA amongst other things, it's not like I don't understand the concept of management and what you have to do. I just don't like doing. It's like because I'm a strategic thinker, I understand the process of sales and the steps you need to go through to get there. I just don't like doing it. It doesn't mean I don't understand it. And so I was just not being who I was designed to be. And as I've said before, I wasn't living my own vision. In fact, I wasn't even living my father's vision. He was more of a philosopher at heart. He would've been a good university professor. He wasn't really, he was a good writer, but he wasn't really, I don't think fully living his vision.
But the vision we were living was the vision of my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax. It was his vision coming to Australia from England in the late 1830s with virtually nothing. It was his vision to start a great newspaper, which he did and that's wonderful. But I came to realize not only did I have not the right gift and abilities, this wasn't my vision. Well, the book, Crucible Leadership, this podcast Beyond the Crucible, helping people bounce back from their worst days to living a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. That is my vision. It's nobody else's vision. I didn't inherit it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's my vision and I feel very passionate about it. So one of the things I've realized more recently is that in a sense what I went through was a gift. It didn't feel like it. I don't mean that the ramifications on others is a gift, but for me personally, I never would've left voluntarily that family media business. I couldn't have. I would've felt like I'm letting down my father, parents, John Fairfax, God in some fashion. But I think somehow maybe God doesn't cause things to happen, maybe allows it to happen to impart my mistakes. I was able to find my own life. I was able to start over in America where my family and my name is not as well known. My kids were able to grow up in a relatively normal upbringing. This wouldn't have happened if I had lived in Australia in this family newspaper business.
So yes, it was a gift. All the things I do now from being a church elder and the other organizations and Beyond the Crucible, that is all a gift. So it's a painful gift. I don't think about the pain of what happened as much as I used to, but it is a gift. And what happened, I think one of the first times we heard about this was through an Australian Stacey Copas.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Became a diagnosed as a quadriplegic. She grew up in the suburbs of Sydney. She dove as a teenager into an above ground pool. Her parents obviously said, "Don't do that, Stacey." As a lot of kids do, they just do it anyway. So she had suicidal ideation, substance abuse, but she came back from that and became a speaker, consultant, coach. And she said that she's now grateful for who she is now. It doesn't mean that she is grateful for the injury, but her truth is that the person she is now wouldn't be possible without what she went through.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And we've heard a lot of guests on the podcast have said they feel some degree of gratitude for the crucible that they went through. One is an aberration, but many, several, it's not an aberration. There is real truth. If you can find the point where you can say to yourself, what I went, while I didn't enjoy it, it was horrendous, but there's some degree of gratitude that I can have for what I went through. I'm a different person because of what I went through.
Gary Schneeberger:
Well, that wraps up our discussion. The 10 sayings, the 10 phrases, the Beyond the Crucible lexicon burst from the Beyond the Crucible Podcast. I'm going to switch it up a little, Warwick. I have been, right, as I said in the video that we played in the middle of this episode, I've been your co-host for 297 of these and usually I get the last word. I ask you something and then I say the last word and say goodbye. Here's what I'm going to do this time though, because I know the ground that you're going to cover. I'm just going to ask you this question and I'm going to shut up and I'm going to let you have the last word. It's only fitting that on the 300th episode of Beyond the Crucible that the host and creator of Beyond the Crucible would have the last word. So here's the question. Any final thoughts about this whole robust conversation we've had? And it's been a delight to be here having this conversation with you. What are some final thoughts you have for our listeners and viewers here? And I'll just sit back and listen.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's been an incredible journey, these last 300 episodes. I would say for me it's been a voyage of discovery. And I think for both Gary and I, and I would hopefully say for the listeners and viewers as well. I'm somebody that loves learning. I'm a curious person by nature. I can't think of any podcast we've had, especially when we've had guests, even when it's just you and me talking about a movie or about something from the book or a blog that you and I have written, I feel like in the discussions we have and the discussions we have with guests, I learn something from every one of those discussions. Every one of the guests that we've had, there's something they've said, it's like, wow. David Charbonnet, "Your worst day is your worst day. It's not a competition." Stacey Copas, her sense in some sense of gratitude for who she is now after what happened.
There's so many people, I'd say everybody we've had on, there's something they've said I've learned. And that helps me grow as a human, helps me grow my knowledge and hopefully wisdom to a degree. It's borrowed wisdom, if you will.
Gary Schneeberger:
And I'm going to butt in. I'm going to butt in right there-
Warwick Fairfax:
Please.
Gary Schneeberger:
... because this is... You've often talked about you want to get it... That you are. I mean, you are a thought leader. But you know what else you are, Warwick? You're a listen leader. The way that you conduct this podcast, the things that you listen for, the things that you hear, the questions you ask, that is a... Anybody can talk. Good grief, right? I mean, it's easier to talk than it is to listen, and you do both extremely well.
Warwick Fairfax:
Thank you, Gary. I mean, I want to learn. I want to grow.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's why listen. And I want to probe the story of our guest so that it helps other people learn. So often I will ask guests, which not everybody does. I'll say, "Tell me the backstory. Was there something in your backstory that was the kernel of the dream and the vision that you are now? What was life like before the crucible?" Typically people don't ask that, they just go to the highlight. So I like to learn and I want to create a space where our listeners and viewers can learn. And beyond discovery, beyond the crucible, we're about giving people hope. We want people to feel like their worst day doesn't define them. And we're hoping that when our listeners and viewers hear from others or hear your and my discussions, people will think, if that person can get through that crucible, well maybe I can. Maybe I don't have to be defined by my worst mistake or the worst thing that was done to me. Maybe I can indeed bounce back from my crucible. Have a life-affirming vision that leads to a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.
I and I think Gary would affirm this, we're both looking forward to the episodes that are to come, the new guests, the new summer movie series, the new podcasts that come from blogs. I'm looking forward to more learning, more of a voyage of discovery. I'm looking forward to having an impact on people that watch and listen to our podcast. And it's just a wonderful voyage of discovery. Just as we close, this podcast wouldn't be possible without you, Gary. You're my co-host. I'm reserved. You're less reserved, which it'd be a bit dull if we were both reserved people. People would fall asleep.
Gary Schneeberger:
That's very Australian to say less reserved. It's an understatement.
Warwick Fairfax:
If you wanted to be truly Aussie, you'd say, "Well, Warwick, you're not wrong."
Gary Schneeberger:
Amen to that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Which means it's really true.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
So yeah, no, you are more outgoing than me, but you just create a perfect space for myself and guests to really get to the heart of some of these issues. This podcast wouldn't exist and it wouldn't be possible without Gary Schneeberger. It just wouldn't be. You're just a perfect companion and co-laborer, fellow traveler to me. Without Gary, that wouldn't be Beyond the Crucible. It wouldn't be. So that again, I think is a God thing. I feel truly blessed. We didn't bring you on board to do this. It was more your expertise in public relations. But as we were beginning it, it's like I thought to myself, I think I'd rather do this with somebody else, and who should I do it with? Well, you. You've done in your public relations, you've done radio interviews, you've had a lot of experience at dialogues and discussions, especially on radio, but now on podcasting.
So I think I feel blessed. I think you would agree. I think we are both blessed and we're just so looking forward to the next episodes of learning and providing a space where more and more people could be impacted and really believe the truth that your worst day doesn't have to define you, and you can live a life-affirming vision, a vision that does lead to a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So the voyage will continue, and we're just looking forward to the next chapters of learning and discovery, and we're looking forward to bringing them to you.
Gary Schneeberger:
Welcome to a journey of transformation with 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.
Our guest this week, J.S. Park, has devoted his life to helping people not turn away from grief, but lean into it — not to move on from it, but to move with it. In his more than a decade as a hospital chaplain who has attended hundreds of deaths, he works closely with the friends and family they leave behind to give them permission to grieve. “It feels funny to say I permit you to,” he explains, “but it’s my job to let them know we can do this together, and it is possible to make it through.” To learn more about J.S. Park, visit www.jspark3000.com
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.
J.S. Park:
Loss is so scary that people don't know what to do with the discomfort, so they whistle past the graveyard or they put a one-liner into the silence or they try to smooth it over or they pull theological future hope over present suffering in order to self-soothe. Because when we see that abyss of mortality creeping in, we do everything that we can not to look it in the face.
Gary Schneeberger:
Our guest this week, J.S. Park, has devoted his life to helping people not turn away from grief, but lean into it. Not to move on from it, but to move with it. In his more than a decade as a hospital chaplain who has attended hundreds of deaths, he works closely with the friends and family they leave behind to give them permission to grieve. It feels funny to say, "I permit you to," he explains, "but it's my job to let them know we can do this together and it's possible to make it through."
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, June, it's great to have you here. June is J.S. Park. And June is a hospital chaplain, a former atheist agnostic, six-degree black belt, suicide survivor, Korean American, and follows Christ. That's quite a mouthful. He has a fascinating story.
So June currently serves at 1,000-plus-bed hospital, one of the top-ranked in the nation, and was also chaplain for three years at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the homeless on the East Coast. June has been interviewed by multiple different folks, CNN, NBR, CBS, Good Morning America. He's the author of a number of books. The most recent one is As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve. He's also wrote a book, The Life of King David, The Voices We Carry, How Hard It Really Is. So a number of different books. And he's also a board-certified chaplain and has an MDiv and a BA in psychology. June currently lives in Tampa with his wife, a nurse practitioner, and their daughter and son.
So, very much looking forward to our chat, as I mentioned off-air. I have a small window into what you do just because I have a daughter that's a child life specialist at a hospital in New York that works in the PICU. What's that, pediatric intensive care, something like that. So comes alongside kids and explains procedures to their parents and all.
So June, so tell me a bit of the backstory of how you became a hospital chaplain. I'm guessing you grew up in the Tampa area, did you, or in Florida?
J.S. Park:
Yes, born and raised in Florida and became a chaplain I guess by accident a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
So tell me, what was life like for you growing up? And hopes, dreams, parental influences. How do you connect the dots of how you grew up and becoming a chaplain?
J.S. Park:
If I could extrapolate backwards, I think if someone sat me down and said, "In five years, you're going to have seen hundreds of deaths and tended to those who are ill and injured and dying and working level one trauma, gunshots, fire, fall, stabbing, car accident, stroke," I may have walked out of that job interview thinking nobody could do anything like that. You were talking about child life specialists, they see so much too.
And so how did I fall into a job like this? And when I think back to childhood and how I grew up, I guess I could almost trace a straight line through it because I grew up in a very turbulent, violent household. I know that my parents loved me, but similar to many stories, especially with parents who are more traditional, they had a lot of unresolved, unmetabolized trauma ancestrally from coming from a country that was colonized and war-torn and didn't have the resources to work through that. And so when they had children, my brother and myself, on one hand, I know that they loved me, but on the other hand, it had a limit to how much they could show that and provide that within the traumatic bodies in which they lived.
And so I grew up in an almost like a dual role in that on one hand, I was a target for a lot of their abuse, but I also became their translator. And in some sense, when people would try to rip them off or see that they couldn't speak English very well, they would try to scam them, I'd see that all the time. I'd actually wait by the mailbox and sometimes intercept the mail because my parents assumed all junk mail was stuff they had to fill out. So they'd be putting their bank account numbers in there and things that I'd have to tear them up before they got them.
So on one hand, I was defending my parents, on the other hand, being abused by my parents, and what a conflicted dual role that that is that I'm sure many immigrant families, many poor families, just any family would experience with parents who have that trauma that's living in their body. So I grew up wanting to be the voice that somebody needed. I grew up wanting to be the voice and the peace and the presence that I didn't get to have. Everything was so unpredictable growing up. And again, I say this with all love in my heart for my parents. I know that they couldn't be the unburdened versions of themselves. And as they get older, I'm seeing that they are becoming more healed and liberated.
But I get to be hopefully some presence of healing and liberation for the people that I see. And so I've always believed the experiences that we have in our lives can become a lighthouse for other people so that, as they're navigating the roiling ocean, that they at least have people ahead of them that have maybe gone through what they're going through to be a light for them. And I'm glad and grateful to be that.
Warwick Fairfax:
From what I understand, you've been a chaplain for a number of years and you deal with, gosh, death, dying, illness. Just every day is a challenge. You see people in their darkest hour, patients dying, family members grieving, grieving, anger, the whole gamut of emotions that you write about. Grieving a parent who was a wonderful human being, grieving a parent that maybe they feel wasn't as wonderful from their truest perspective.
But from what I understand, pretty early on, I think it was month 13, you had your own almost crisis of faith. Talk about that because I don't know if it's like going into battle, which I've never served in the military, but you can hear about what it's like to be in battle. You can hear about what it's like to be a chaplain, but you can't fully know until you've actually been there, if you will. So what was it like? Just at month 13, what happened? I don't know if... Why did it happen? But just talk about that because that was a very challenging time.
J.S. Park:
I think most people enter into spaces or new endeavors with a very particular expectation often romanticized about what will happen. Whether that's a new parent, people who are just getting married, people who are starting the job that they work so hard for, we enter into these seasons with such wide eyes. And for me, I entered into chaplaincy with such wide eyes about I just want to help people and get to that montage, the Hollywood high-fives, and everybody just saying, "Yeah, thanks for the prayer. It was so moving." And if I preach a sermon, I get the slow clap, that sort of thing. I just imagined all of that sitting with the chaplains. "Crosses and communion wafers, up on three. Here we go." I just had this idea of what it would look like.
But when I got into the internship and then the residency, so month 13 of my chaplaincy, by that point, I had seen so much dying. And it wasn't just dying. I could understand that people suffer. I could deal with the fact that people were dying, but it was the extent and the extremity and the unfairness of the suffering that I saw. I thought this person can't suffer any more than they are, and then they would suffer even more. And it started to look haphazard and chaotic and random, unjust. And my idea of the cosmos or the universe or of God holding things together and having a plan, that became Swiss cheese. It just started falling apart.
And I remember watching this code blue, a code blue is a resuscitation to bring a patient back to life if their heart rate drops to zero, I was just praying and praying because by month 13, I had seen so many code blues and I had not seen a single successful resuscitation. In the movies and TV shows, there's a study that I believe about 75% show a successful resuscitation, but in real life, I think the number is less than 5%. And even those who are resuscitated, they have irreversible damage because of hypoxia, because of ribs being crushed from the compressions. So I'm watching and I'm praying and I'm saying, "God, just this one time, just please show us a miracle. Can you just blink in our direction? Do you see us?"
And so my ideas, my very shallow, wafer-thin ideas of God and theology and is the universe bent towards goodness, that started falling apart. And I did lose my faith. I talk about that in great detail in my book, and I think in chapter two. And I have lost my faith several times since and I've come back around each time, but if my faith was a box and it gets blown up, it came back looking different every time. We each still have a box, but now my box is a very misshapen trapezoid. Maybe at this point, a rhombus. It just looks different every time. And every time it comes back together, I think it becomes expanded and holds more than I have been able to previously. Even the ways that people grieve, even the ways that I speak grief language with other people, the situations and the pain that I see, I'm able to hold more.
There's this study about, I believe, earthquake disaster survivors in Pakistan. I could be quoting that wrong, but it is about disaster survivors. They tried to study how did they experience post-traumatic growth, and the ones who had their worldview shaken but experienced post-traumatic growth, they found that in their worldview, they were able to hold two opposite truths at the same time. So for example, the world can be terrible, but God is still good. Or bad things can happen for no reason, but good things can still happen too.
And so my faith, my worldview has been able to hold these opposing thoughts. Here is evil. Here is something unjust. Here is this patient who went through this injustice, or here's cancer randomly popping up and suddenly replicating in their body. Completely unfair. But at the same time, love can stretch over all of this. Love is still real. God's love is still real. I can still tend to these people. We can still find autonomy and choices and make decisions in this horrific situation that bring dignity.
Warwick Fairfax:
Just before we move on here, one of the things we didn't get into detail is I just want people to understand how bad it was when you talked about that crisis of faith. You were seeing dying people who were in situations where it was just unfair, stabbings, gunshot, car accident, strokes. You actually had mentioned you began to almost see people, it was... The level of trauma, if you will, that you were going through, it wasn't just some intellectual crisis of faith. How could a good God allow suffering? That would be huge, but it was beyond just a mere intellectual, I don't want to say mere, but it's beyond an intellectual crisis of faith. This was getting you at your very core. When you start seeing visions, a psychologist would say, "That's probably not good. There's something going on here." Right?
J.S. Park:
Yeah. I did develop over time from my work death anxiety. It's an existential panic. I knew it was happening because I would look at clocks and see seconds pass, and I would get obsessed with time. And every second that passed, I would say, "Oh, man, that's one more that's gone." I would ruminate on it over and over. It was an intrusive thought.
And then I would be, for example, in traffic, and I would look at a car full of people, and then I would picture suddenly, I could almost see it as clear as day, the car flipped over and all four or five of them injured, or I'd see them in the morgue. And then I would wake up 2:00, 3:00 in the morning in a panic and lean over my wife to check if she was still breathing. And I had dreams of all my patients all the time, mostly those who have died. And some would talk to me, some wouldn't. And in the dreams, they would just get closer and closer until I would wake up.
And it got to the point where I started hearing, I've talked about this before publicly, started hearing my patients who have died in my car or at night in my house. I work a late shift, I'd come home 2:00, 3:00 in the morning and I would hear them before I slept or as I turned the corner. And on one hand, I have to say how overwhelming it is to deal with something like death anxiety. They constantly just see it up close, not just death anxiety, but seeing the degree of suffering that people go through and seeing death over and over.
I was working during the pandemic and the front lines. I was there for 2021, the Delta variant. I think at one point, we were probably seeing 50 patients die a week. I was diagnosed with PTSD specifically from that time. So I have to say, as maybe much of a, quote unquote, downer as this is, that is what happened.
But I can say this, inversely, having been confronted with death face to face where I cannot look away, when I sit with someone like my wife or my kids, my friends, I have this thought that's prominently front and center. This could be the last time. This could be the last time I sit with them, laugh with them, because anything can happen. I've seen all the ways that anything can happen. I've seen the ways that youth does not guarantee a long life. I've seen the ways that trauma can suddenly slip through the window and here's the abyss of mortality, just like a sudden sinkhole clapping right open.
So when I sit with my wife or my kids, there is a richness and a texture with them. There is a presentness that I don't think I could have experienced unless I was faced with death all the time. And things like my obsession with time or things like hearing the dead, maybe those can be overwhelming, but those are also signals or indicators or maybe signposts to me that it is all precious and it is all going, and time is going fast. And all the dead who have died, I'm remembering them because it's my body's way of grieving them and honoring them, of keeping their story. And it's okay if they visit. I don't mind that they visit.
And so all these little things that I felt like were anxiety, it's still tough, it's not easy, but at the same time, they've all been teachers, they've all been educators about how I can live. And so the thing I can say is that I've learned as best as I possibly can to not wait. Just don't wait because you just don't know. If there's the thing that you need to say, if you see injustice and you feel scared to speak, if there are people in your life like, "Oh, I want to just see what they're up to," it's okay to send that text message and just say hello and that's it. So there are some things where I'll send a text or something to somebody and they're like, "Oh, did you see another patient die recently?" They know now. And I shouldn't make that joke. I know that's morbid.
Warwick Fairfax:
No, I get it.
J.S. Park:
But they know that I'm just... I'm constantly actively in this work and I'm always just so appreciative. Hey, I'm here another day. What a miracle that is.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow. So let's probably move on from this. One of the things you've mentioned is, as tough as it was seeing people that you didn't know die and go through suffering, you mentioned that one of your good friends, John, showed up and was in a terrible accident. It's one thing when it's some random person, you can grieve for people you don't know and care for them, but when it's somebody you do know, that just takes probably the pain to a whole other level. So just talk about that because that must have been one of the worst moments in your life, just seeing John and having to be with somebody you knew so well.
J.S. Park:
Yeah. If I can tell you about John, he was one of my best friends. Tall, blonde, good-looking guy, so full of energy. And you always knew when he was coming. He had just this lumbering larger-than-life footsteps, such a loud laugh. The hardest I've ever laughed in my life was with John, because he was such an interesting... And funny without trying. Just the way about him, he was so funny. And he had a very young daughter and was always so curious.
And I remember one time he sent me a text message, it was a video, and I couldn't see it too well because it was so dark. And it was just him holding something over his head. And so I texted him back, "What am I looking at, John?" And he said, "Oh, I found some bricks outside, so I'm working out with them." He was just that kind of funny person. And gosh, that made me laugh so hard, but he was also so serious about it.
And I remember one time John saw me give this presentation, and this was back maybe in 2018, he saw me give a presentation and he was enraptured the whole time. And then at the end, he came up to me and he was like, "Hey, why aren't you famous? You're so good at this." And I laughed because me maybe just feeling sheepish about that as, "Oh, you're so funny." But he was so serious. It's like he looked at me and he just saw a star or something. But that's how John was. He just saw stars all day long.
And then I remember getting the call from my supervisor saying, "Hey, are you somewhere where you can be seated?" And you know when anybody tells you that over the phone, it's not because they're telling you they got a promotion. So sat down, and I was at work and she said, "Look, John's been in a very serious accident and he's at the hospital. I don't know what his status is, but if you could visit him and his family." And this is going to be true of anyone, you can be in a role that is functional, but as soon as it's proximal, as soon as it hits close to home, of course it's going to be too real and too raw.
But I saw him, and when I saw him, I had been working long enough to the point where I knew he wasn't coming back from what he had endured. He was intubated, on life support. And for the five days that he was at the hospital on my assigned floor, Room 51-16K, a room that I still visit sometimes, I attended to his family for those five days. And that fifth day, his parents made a horrific, the hardest decision that any parent could ever make to say goodbye to their son.
And I still speak to John sometimes just out loud. I have a voicemail from him that I've kept. I play it once in a while. And can I tell you, he has a brother named Mark. To this day, it's been about seven years later, Mark and I still meet for lunch. We didn't know each other before that, but I met him at the hospital and I told Mark, I said, "John and I had plans to go get Korean barbecue together and we never got to go." And Mark said, "Why don't we go?" I said, "Let's do it." Seven years later, I just saw him actually last week, we're still getting Korean barbecue together. What a beautiful thing that emerged out of that.
And so I don't know if I'm answering a question, but I feel so happy to talk about John and just... We learn so much about grief, but that grief is you got to let go and turn the page and forget the past. And how do you move on without them? But for me, grief is not about letting go. It's about letting in. We don't move on, we move with. And so with John, I've kept his memory front and center. In all the ways that he lives, I want to honor his life, and his life has become a part of me. So rather than letting him go, I've expanded more because of the memory of John and the way that his memory is a blessing.
Warwick Fairfax:
What you're saying is so profound, and you write about obviously grief quite a lot in your most recent book, As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve. You talk about being a grief catcher, a catcher of stories. What you just said, it's not about letting go, but letting in, this idea that we need to man up, buckle up, let go, don't cry. Especially in our culture for men, you're not meant to show tears or sadness. You meant to be tough, whatever that means, which is not helpful. But I feel like that's profound as just it's okay to grieve. And I think you write somewhere that you never really stop grieving.
In my own small case, I remember, I was a child of my father's third marriage, so he was a lot older. So he died in early 1987 when I was 26, but he was in his 80s. At that point, obviously there's more chance of passing away. And so we had a good, close relationship. I think about him often. It's decades later. Is there still grieving? Sure. I'm proud of so many of the things he did well. There's a couple things maybe, "Oh, Dad, I wish you'd..." There's a whole series of emotions that are there, but overall, I just feel blessed to have him as a father. And I think about him and my kids never got to meet him and my wife missed meeting him by one year. She's American and came to Australia.
We all have our stories, but you don't stop thinking about the person or grieving the fact they're not around. This is decades later. And it wasn't a complex relationship. He was not perfect, but a good guy. It wasn't some horrific tragedy. It was prostate cancer, but at that point in life, it's a fairly, I won't say normal, but nothing momentous about how he passed away. Very common way to pass away, but yet there's still grief.
Does that make sense? That grief isn't just shutting off emotions-
J.S. Park:
Absolutely.
Warwick Fairfax:
... it's just there's nothing wrong with grieving somebody decades later. And it could be a more complex sea of emotions than I just described, but it took a bit about really some of the essential tenets in your writing about grief, because it seems like it turns conventional wisdom on its head.
J.S. Park:
Yeah. I've noticed that, you could call it the Westernization or modernization of grief and that grief is rushed, and you see it not just in church culture, but you see it in pop culture. In church culture, it may be, "You need to let them go," or, "Everything happens for a reason," or, "It was their time," or, "This is going to refine you in the fire," that sort of thing. But then in pop culture, you also see, "Don't cry. It'll be all right. You need a stronger spine, not a lighter load." We say these things about grief and about pain, about trauma, but grief is so hurried and bypassed. And I read some time ago that the average workplace manual in America allows for four days of bereavement if your spouse or children die, which means if your closest family members die on Sunday, you better be back to work by Friday. And institutionally, religiously, we just rush past grief.
And it used to enrage me when I would see this sort of thing, but I'm starting to have more compassion for it now because I understand loss is so scary that people don't know what to do with the discomfort, so they whistle past the graveyard or they put a one-liner into the silence or they try to smooth it over or they pull theological future hope over present suffering in order to self-soothe. Because when we see that abyss of mortality creeping in, we do everything that we can not to look it in the face. We haven't been given the education or resources or the comfort or consolation that we need in order to confront, even embrace what is happening.
When you look at all the ancient cultures throughout history, there have been so many, what Caitlin Doughty in her book, From Here to Eternity, fascinating book, she calls it death engagements. Every culture has a way of death engagement. I believe the people of the Toraja tribe, they exhume their dead ancestors every summer and set them up. They're mummies, and they have tea with them and they eat breakfast with them. If you look at Mexico Día de los Muertos, they have the shrines with their pictures where they honor and celebrate, commemorate their dead. In Korean culture, we have Jesa. Every year, we talk about our patriarchs and matriarchs, their accomplishments. We read a timeline and have almost like a worship or a church service where we talk about them and remember them.
In Western culture, when you look at death, you have horror movies that treat dead bodies like they're some sort of thing to be horrified of and scared of and to run from. We put bodies six feet underground in a segregated lot, fill the body with chemicals, and sell all their belongings in a garage sale. And we're told, there's that Swedish death cleaning thing, "Just get rid of all their stuff." And maybe these things can be helpful for some people, but I would say that that all contributes to a culture of looking away when it comes to loss and the death.
But when you look at how did ancient cultures do it, they kept their dead close and they honored them. And in that way, as hard as grief is, grief was something that was not meant to be removed like poison, but rather carried as a gift or an honoring that we're living in memoriam. And so I think there's such a shame around grief because it seems like, "Oh, you can't let this grief make you fall apart. You're getting emotional," that sort of thing. But now when I cry over my friend John, or when I cry with my patient, that for me, my tears are a way of honoring them, the one person who is uniquely them who is now gone. For someone to tell me, "You got to let them go," there's no way. I'm carrying them with me, and they're going to make me larger.
And to your point, Warwick, just a real quick thing, you're talking about your father and I want to lift him up and honor him. And I've learned so much that grief is missing the past, but it's also missing a future that we didn't get to have. All the moments that you wish you could have shared with them. And I think Michelle's honor in her book, Welcome to H Mart, about the death of her mother, she writes about grief as much as missing the past as it is, missing the future that you wanted with them. The inside jokes, the moments of celebration and sorrow, their advice, those kinds of things. And so I think keeping that person with us is a way of almost continually living with them and living with their ghosts. And it's their ghosts that can make us more fully alive.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's important, I think, for folks who are listening and watching because at Beyond the Crucible, we've talked a lot about people who've passed away and the grief that comes with that, but really, you and I talked before we did this interview, June, so that we could ask intelligent questions, and one of the things you said to me I thought was interesting, and it applies to everybody who's listening to this, and that is, you said this, "Even losing a dream, losing something intangible, moving to a city, even good change involves grief." So those steps that you just talked about work for any kind of grief that we're feeling, not just the intense loss of a loved one, right?
J.S. Park:
Yeah, because I think one of the things that maybe people dismiss are non-death losses or intangible losses. The grief of a dream, for example. I had this whole plan for the future, but then this illness or this injury or this rejection, I wasn't able to do it, this career, this goal that I had. And some people may say, "Well, you didn't even get it," or, "You didn't even really lose anything." But that is a type of grief called intrapsychic grief. It's the pain of losing what can never be.
For some folks who have experienced a miscarriage, my wife and I suffered a miscarriage three years ago, there's disenfranchised grief in that, there's ambiguous grief in that, but also intrapsychic grief, losing what will never be. We had a dream about our baby. For some people who had these big dreams and then 2020 came around, the pandemic, they had to put everything on hold and some people never recovered.
And so that intrapsychic grief, the non-death losses, even Gary, like you were saying, quoting back to me, even people who have good change, who move towards the city for a big job, you're basically saying no to everything else. Even good change involves loss. Maybe some of us have been in this situation where you were working on the floor and suddenly, "Hey, we want you to be a manager. You're promoted to a manager." And suddenly all the other floor workers look at you like, "You're not one of us anymore." You're making more money, you're being a manager, you got the plaque on your desk, but now the floor workers look at you funny. Any kind of good change involves grief because it involves loss, any kind of change.
And so I noticed on a calendar that there's a National Grief Day or National Day of Mourning, and I tend to think... I chuckled at that because I thought that should be on the calendar every day because we're constantly grieving. We're always losing something, even if it's just time on the clock. And so there's constant grief. And I think we do need to acknowledge that and grieve that together because part of that grieving, there's growth in that. There's coming together to be able to say, "Hey, here's this dream that I lost and it meant something to me. What can I do now or what can I do to honor that dream?"
One thing that I have the privilege of doing in rooms is when someone is debilitated by illness and injury and it's now a before and after in their life, sometimes people in the room will say things like, "Well, you just need to reorganize and readjust and we're going to change our plans and do this and do that and make something new out of this and do everything you can do." But one thing I'll pause to do is I'll say, "Can you tell me about all the things that you wanted to do?" And I'll ask them to share that dream with me. And as painful as it is, they share that dream with me both smiling and crying because at least in some way by speaking that dream that's now gone out loud, I get to honor it. And in some way by speaking it, at least it becomes true. At least someone gets to witness what I wanted. And so even that grief ritual, that honoring, is important for us and the things that we lose that may not be real to someone else but are certainly real to us.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It's so profound, June. Sometimes there can be a both, and. There's a need to move on, but there's also a need to sit with. And somehow I think what you're talking about by sitting with, you both honor it but, maybe move on is not the right word, but you're able to be functional. Because most of us have wives, husbands, kids, grandparents, coworkers, there are people that depend on us that we have to find a way to show up to care for them. And so it's a both, and. You've got to feel your feelings and grieve, but you've also got to find a way to both hold that grief, but at the same time be present for others who are counting on you. So again, two opposing concepts, if you will.
And so I think the rituals you're talking about maybe help you, as I'm listening to it, feel those feelings, grieve the grief, but also find a way to have it in a place where the pain is still there, but it's still hurting, but you're also able to care for others and do the things you feel, at least from my perspective, God is calling you to.
And so just back to the intangible grief, which is a great point you brought up, Gary. I know for me, I think of, again, listeners would know this, growing up in this family media business, 150 years old in Australia, founded by a stronger business person for Christ as I've ever come across. It's like, gosh, there was this great vision that he had. I had this vision of restoring when I became a follower of Christ at an evangelical Anglican church at Oxford. Gosh, I know God's plan. It must be to [inaudible 00:36:46]. The company image of the founder was so obvious to me. It's dangerous when you feel like you know what God's plans are.
And so there's the grieving of, oh, I made some mistakes and that vision is lost, but it's like, it's lost, but now I have a different life, a different vision. And so I feel like nothing happens by accident. So if you believe that, from my perspective, then maybe God had His reasons. But yes, there's a grieving at the loss of that. And I don't live in Australia anymore where I grew up, and it's hard to see family and friends there every week. It's so far. So there's the grieving of that. But it is, you feel your feelings, it is what it is, but yet I don't let it demobilize me.
Does any of that... I guess I cover a couple of different points. Does that make sense at all of...
J.S. Park:
Yeah. If I could succinctly put it, I think for me, I got a lot of Megan Divine's book, It's OK That You're Not OK. And she writes, "Rather than moving on, we move with." How do we move with what we have? And there's a difference. It sounds like such a small difference, but it makes a world of difference. How do we move into a world now with the loss that we have, but move into it hopefully holding hope and holding vision for something different?
Warwick Fairfax:
See, that's so good because we talk a lot at Beyond the Crucible about not being in the pit of despair for your whole life, hiding under the cover, saying, "I'm so angry. I'm never doing anything productive with my life," which, to me, is not helpful psychologically or any other way. You've got to find a way, "Okay, this is awful, but I've got to find a way to move forward. Maybe this taught me some things. How can I use this for good?" Not that suffering is ever good, but how can I use this to help others? I've had so many people on our podcast that have done that, people who've been through substance abuse, coming alongside others who have been through substance abuse, saying, "Hey, I know what you're going through. It's not just a bumper sticker. I really do." And just sit with them.
I think in your words, moving with means you're not abandoning your grief, but neither are you sitting there purely grieving without doing anything productive with the rest of your life. You could have been demobilized by what happened to John and say, "You know what? I'm going to stop being a chaplain. I'm going to stop it. I'm not going to sit with any more patients. I'm in too much pain." But you made a choice not to do that. You made a choice, "I'm going to grieve, but I'm going to move with and still be available to be with others."
Does that make sense at all?
J.S. Park:
Yeah. Absolutely. And my heart does go out to people who take the time that they need in order to recuperate, recover, or my heart goes out to people who don't have the community and resources that can step in for them and who feel paralyzed because they were never given the right consolation.
But what you're saying reminds me of, I had this very young patient and she lost her baby, her dog, and one of her grandparents in one week. And she couldn't sleep. And so I was seeing her, I think, on the fourth or fifth day that she had been admitted. I'm changing some details, altering them for her privacy, but she told me essentially, "I lost these three very, very dear loved ones in my life. I can't sleep." And then she said, "I started thinking, could I maybe open a nonprofit and start helping the poor and start a fundraiser? When I grow up, I want to be a social worker, and then I want to raise money for dog shelters and for single women who are raising their..."
And she had all these big dreams and she goes, "Is it too much? Do you think it's too much?" And part of me as a chaplain, I'm supposed to help facilitate and process with her, "Oh, what does that mean for you to have these big dreams?" Or, "What does it mean for you that you're saying it's too much?" Just to be more open-ended. But I could see in her face that out of her grief, she wanted the sapling to emerge. She wanted beauty in the midst of her desolation. And I see that with patients who suffered violent injustice, violent loss especially. We're seeing that now in our country and all over the world, the out of grief emerges a need for justice and solidarity and collective transformation. And so what I told my patient, I just told her, "It's not too much. I think it's great." And she looked at me and she said, "Thank you." And she went right to sleep.
Warwick Fairfax:
One last thing I want to talk about is you have so many profound things in your writing. And one of the things you say is that we're called to each other's wounds to tend to each other's loss. That's just... Talk about that because this is... We've been talking a lot about our own grief, and obviously you're a chaplain in which you do this, but for people who aren't chaplains, just people listening, what does that mean being called to each other's wounds? Because there's something profound in that insight that you talk about.
J.S. Park:
Yeah. Earlier, I said that there's something about loss that is incredibly scary and causes us to self-soothe and to look away, but I can also say that in credit to our humanity, to our innate compassion, to our need to connect, when we see suffering in our most natural and you could say divine and human state, we are called to one another. I actually think that when we look away, we're forcing ourselves to do that. When we self-soothe, we've been trained and indoctrinated to do that. But in our most natural state, the most natural God-designed human condition, when we see someone suffering, we can't help but be called to them. We can't help but to feel heartsick and stomach-sick.
There's a homesickness and then there's almost a, quote unquote, human sickness. We see someone hurting, we're called that way. And it takes a lot of narratives and forces of division and bigotry to get us to dehumanize one another. But without all that, if we strip all that narrative away, we see suffering, we are compelled to step in and support, to speak into and act, to alleviate and to liberate.
And so I think sometimes I'll see at deathbeds, I'll see people get into fistfights over the dead. I'll see people arguing about the will. I'll see someone who's died, the wife shows up, and then the three mistresses show up. Sometimes I'll see someone begging for their children to come to bedside, and the children refuse to come because of a history of abuse. So I've seen how bad it can get. And in all of these stories, the people who don't forgive or the people who are angry, I want to validate where they're at. I want to validate their anger. I want to say that there's abuse involved, you don't owe forgiveness, you don't owe a relationship. I want to understand all these things, and I have so much compassion for all these things.
And I can also say that even in those situations where I see animosity, I see violence, I see grudges, the reason why people are so hurt about this, the reason why that mother says, "Please call my children. Even if they don't want to see me, just call them," the reason why I see even people fighting over a will is because in some small way, even beyond their capacity to do it, they want to connect and to be heard and to say, "This hurts." Or, "I messed up and they need to know that I'm sorry about this." Even in all of that, that need for the deathbed reconciliation.
So Warwick, I hope I'm answering your question, but that's what I've seen. And as a chaplain, it's been my honor to support people in it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick indicated that that was a turning point toward the last question. This is the time in the show, June, where I would be remiss if I did not give you the opportunity to tell our listeners and viewers how they can find out more about you, your books, your ministry, all of that.
J.S. Park:
Yeah. I'm on all the things, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Substack. I probably have a Twitter out there somewhere that I haven't seen in a while. But my book is called As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve. And then I have an upcoming book coming out in November, and the title hasn't been released yet, but it's on family dynamics, intergenerational trauma, and reclaiming our motherland. And so a lot of that is on family stuff. And that book was actually harder to write than the book on grief because I got really personal, really dug into my family tree and lineage and all of that. And when they say family's complicated, I just have to ask, "Oh, you mean a family?" That's every family. These family dynamics are complicated. I'm like, "Oh, so they're a family then." Yeah, so that book's coming out in November.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, as always, the last question here is your prerogative, so take it away.
Warwick Fairfax:
So June, there might be somebody listening today and they might feel like today is their worst day. They might have lost a loved one. It could be feelings of joy, but very often there could be feelings of anger, and it could be either because they feel it was so unjust this person was taken from them or maybe they're angry at that, but they're angry at that person who they had a poor relationship with in life. Anger can be very complicated. So today might be somebody's worst day. They're grieving and their emotions are a flood of emotions, some conflicting, like waves hitting against each other. They may not be waves going in one direction. They might be going in 10 directions at once of all sorts of anger wrapped up in grief. What would be a word of hope or at least a word of comfort for somebody in that situation?
J.S. Park:
I can think of several things, but I think the main thing I want to say is you are not lesser for feeling how you feel. Everything that you're feeling, whether you want to scream at the sky, roll around on the ground, whether you want to shake fists, throw a chair, or you're sitting in a corner and you're completely shut down and it's cognitive fog and you can't do anything but scroll your phone or you haven't cried a tear, that amplitude of emotions, however you're feeling, I hope you're never ashamed for that. Your emergent response, that immediate response is what your body needs to go through and it is your way of honoring that loss. And I hope no one makes you feel lesser for it.
I have seen all kinds of response to loss. And every time I think I've seen them all, I see one more, whether that's singing or dancing, rocking back and forth, rolling around on the ground, burying their face in their loved one's hair for two hours, all of it. And so I hope no one tells you anything like, "You shouldn't do that." I hope you don't believe that. That is what you need. Just as everyone grieves differently, we need differently.
And I would say the other thing too is, as hard as this may be, if you're like me, you may find it hard to ask for help. And I hope that you would be willing to lean on your supports, even if it's just that one person. And just I hope you know that the people who love you, they will never tell you that you are too much or that you're being too little. And I really do hope you lean on your supports. I know that that's a tough thing to reach out to people, and you may feel guilty or you feel bad or, "I just lost someone. I don't know if I want to burden them with all my stuff, all my sadness. I don't want to slobber all over them," but you have people in your life who love you and who have that godly type of love that says, "I love even your slobber. That's okay." If you need a shoulder to weep all over, that person's shoulder is open and ready and willing.
There are so many times in my life where I was ashamed to reach out. Even as having been a patient in the hospital, I was worried about how people would see me being so vulnerable and being in this gown, and I haven't showered in a day and I'm unkempt and I don't have my toothbrush and all my stuff. But when I let that door open and I let my family in fully and I let my friends in to see me, I knew I can't get through this without people. I can't do this alone, and I wouldn't want to.
So even if it's just the one person in your life or it's a pastor or even if you need to pay for a therapist, it doesn't make it any lesser even if you pay for that. If there's support in your life, I hope you lean on them and not feel any shame for it and fully embrace them.
Gary Schneeberger:
Friends, I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word has been spoken on a subject, and that word spoken by our guest, J.S. Park, was the last word on our conversation today.
Warwick, we've just finished our conversation with author J.S. Park, whose actual name, non-book name, is June Park. And boy, it's good stuff in there. It's going to be hard for you, but I'm going to challenge you with it anyway. What is one takeaway you'd love for our listeners and viewers to have from this episode?
Warwick Fairfax:
Oh my gosh, it was so wonderful talking to June. I think one of the things we're often taught about grief is just to suppress it. Move on, buckle up, deal with it, don't show any tears, which is profoundly unhelpful. I think any psychologist would tell you, "You can't stop your emotions." And so one of the things that June says is, "You've got to grieve." You've got to sit with those emotions. You've got to feel those feelings, and rather than ignore them, you've got to find a way to move with that grief to grieve and come alongside other people's wounds.
And so grief doesn't necessarily go away. As I was saying in the podcast, I lost my dad in early 1987. Because I was a child of his third marriage, he was in his 80s when he died and I was 26 at the time. So I often think about him, and often very good thoughts. And yes, occasionally there are some things that maybe he could have done differently. I don't know. We all have a mix of emotions. But I think just allowing ourselves to grieve and to just sit with it.
And one of the things he also talked about in a lot of different cultures, they will have rituals in which people will come together on maybe their birthday or each year and just share memories of that person. And those memories could be good, they may not be good, but just giving yourself the permission to feel those disparate feelings that may be of joy, of anger, or sadness, and just not stuffing those feelings in the basement, as one of our guests said.
I think one of the things that here at Beyond the Crucible, you often talk about both, and. And so what that means in this context is you want to feel those feelings. You want to grieve the loss of a loved one, which could be old age or could be a car accident. It could be all sorts of different feelings that you have. You might have this loving feeling towards them. Maybe they were a parent that was abusive. Maybe those feelings of grief are complex, but you've got to feel those feelings, but at the same time, you've got to find a way to, I wouldn't say move on, but to use J.S. Park, June's words, find a way to move with so that those feelings of grief and anger don't prevent you from being a loving husband, wife, child, coworker. You might have people that work for you. So you've got to find a way to both grieve, but yet be in a place where it doesn't stop you moving forward.
We say at Beyond the Crucible a lot that your work, it doesn't define you, but you can't live in the pit of despair your whole life. You can't sit under the covers your whole life. You've got to find a way to move forward. And for us at Beyond the Crucible, and for many of our guests, those who've been abused, for instance, have found a way in some cases to comfort others who've been abused. Those who have lost loved ones, maybe you've found a way to comfort others who've lost loved ones. So make some meaning, some purpose out of tragedy. It's not always the case, but for many of our guests, it's often the case.
So I think it's important to grieve and not stuff those feelings, but it's also important to find a way to, maybe it's not move on, but it's move with. There has to be a beyond the crucible. So you've got to find a way to move beyond as you're moving with. Not an easy thing to do, but it's important to grieve, but you don't want that grief to basically control your whole life that you ignore all the people that depend on you and all the people that love you. It's a both, and. Not a simple thing, but you want to grieve and find a way to move with in getting beyond your crucible, but that grieving doesn't necessarily go away. And that's okay. It's a both, and.
Gary Schneeberger:
Until we're together the next time, please remember that we know your crucible experiences do indeed cause grief. As June said during the conversation, "Hey, there's a National Grief Day on the calendar. Shouldn't it be on every day on the calendar?" We know that the crucibles that you go through in all seriousness are sources of grief. But we also know this, that when you dig in, when you learn the lessons of the crucibles that you've experienced, when you give yourself the chance to reflect on those things, we know that it can tee you up to go on another great new adventure. And that new adventure takes you to the greatest destination you can ever get to, and that is 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.
How do we craft a vision that can lead to a life of significance? Harnessing humility is the first step, we discuss this week. And we do so by examining the life of Moses, one of the most important figures in the Bible.
It’s all part of this latest episode of our series within in the show, More Stories From the Book Crucible Leadership. Pay special attention to our discussion of what the Bible says about Moses’ humility.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. When leading a vision, you don't want it to be all about you. If it's all about you, how can it lead to a life of significance? A life of significance by definition is meant to be about others. If the vision is all about you, I don't see how it can lead to a life of significance.
Gary Schneeberger:
So how do we craft a vision that can lead to a life of significance? Harnessing humility is the first step we discuss this week, and we do so by examining the life of Moses, one of the most important figures in the Bible. It's all part of this latest episode of our Series within the Show, More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership, and pays special attention to our discussion of the humility of Moses. Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have dropped in on another of what we call the Series within the Show. And what that is this year in 2026 is we are taking a look, it's called More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership. Why is it called More Stories? Because we did this last year. We did Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership, and now we're doing More Stories from the Book. And here's the fun part about that, some of these stories actually made it into Warwick's Wall Street Journal bestseller from 2022, some of them were on the cutting room floor. Last week, we talked about William Wallace and the lessons we can learn from him. He was cut from the book, he was the cutting room floor. This week, we're going to talk about someone who actually made it into the book, and that is Moses, and we're going to talk about specifically Moses and his humility. But just to let you know, again, what this is, once a month, throughout the year, except for in the summertime when we do our summer series and we'll skip that, we'll feature one story from the book that Warwick wrote, spotlighting one key learning that helped the subject of the story overcome a crucible, and help you do the same when you apply the principles that we're going to discuss. And this week, as I said, we're discussing something that was in the book. Indeed, it's Moses on the subject of humility. It's a very small topic, right, Warwick, Moses on humility? I mean, come on, that's the bestselling book ever, and one of the biggest characters in that book. So let's get started, Warwick. Tell us a little bit, because not everybody's going to know, not everybody's seen the Ten Commandments, not everyone's going to know who Moses is, so talk a little bit about Moses' backstory, as we like to do when we have guests on the show. What is the backstory that will inform what we're going to discuss today?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's funny you mentioned that, Gary. I was just thinking about that with Charlton Heston and the Ten Commandments. Gosh, I don't know if it was in the late '50s, early '60s. It was a long time ago.
Gary Schneeberger:
1956. 1956.
Warwick Fairfax:
1956, well done. So some people might have grown up seeing it, or maybe they're familiar with Moses from the Bible and Bible stories. But just to level set us, Moses was born in Egypt to Jewish parents. Moses' mother set him afloat on a basket in the Nile River to save him from an edict from the Pharaoh, who made this edict that all newborn Jewish males would be killed. Now, it so happened that that basket was found by Pharaoh's daughter and he was raised in the Egyptian courts. So Moses' life changed radically, from growing up in just a pretty normal Jewish family, I don't think they really had any money to speak of, not that we know of, and so now he is somebody that's raised in the Egyptian court, amidst luxury, power, influence, just a radically different upbringing. But I think it's clear from the story that he still knew his heritage. And so, at one point, he saw this Egyptian taskmaster really just being brutal towards Jewish people, and he had this righteous indignation, if you will, and he ended up killing the brutal Egyptian taskmaster. Now, once that happened, he then fled from Egypt to Midian, someplace in the desert outside of Egypt, and he was there for years, for many years. And so then, the next bit of the story is, and I'm sure listeners will probably be familiar with this, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush, and he commissions Moses to go down to Egypt and bring the Israelites out of bondage. And he must have probably been thinking, "Who, me? I tried to escape from all that. You want me to do what?" It's just a pretty amazing thing that the Lord asked him. And so, at first, Moses was unwilling to take this on, and eventually, Moses did lead his people from captivity in Egypt into the wilderness, where eventually they would reach the Promised Land. Again, it took many, many years, and the Promised Land would be the future home of the Israelites. So that, in brief, is a bit of the backstory of Moses.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And what we're talking about is what appeared in your book, Crucible Leadership, and it begs the question, why did you pull Moses into a book on leadership and crucibles and how to bounce back from crucibles? What is it that led you to think Moses was a good subject to bring up in your book?
Warwick Fairfax:
I talk about Moses in a chapter from my book, Crucible Leadership, and this particular chapter is called Faith in God's Leadership. In the book, and certainly on the podcast, we talk a lot about the fact that to come back from a crucible, you need an anchor for your soul, and we call this anchor faith. Now, by that, it could be a religious faith, it could be a spiritual, a philosophical perspective, and how we live out our faith make up the aspects of our character. So in this particular chapter, I talk about a number of key principles of character, and I would say indeed leadership, humility, integrity, servant leadership, soft sacrifice. So we're going to focus here, when we talk about Moses, on humility. So when we think about humility, nobody wants to be around somebody that think that they're better than others and they know everything. Arrogance divides while humility unites. And there are a number of passages in the Bible that talk about humility. Here's a couple. Philippians 2:3, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves." James 3:13, "Who is wise in understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deed done in the humility that comes from wisdom." So the basic premise is that wise people are humble, and that kind of makes sense. Arrogance, as we'll see, doesn't lead to anything good. The wise way is to be a person of humility. And what's interesting, the Bible, in Numbers 12: 3, says this about Moses, it says, "Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the Earth." So if we're going to talk about humility and what's a good example of humility, it's not a bad place to start with the person the Bible calls the most humble person on the face of the Earth. You could almost say, if you wanted to be contradictory, that Moses maybe was the GOAT of humility. Is it possible to be the greatest of all time about humility? Certainly not if you're saying it, right?
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, for sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
By definition, you're disqualified. But anyway, so according to the Bible, Moses is an extremely humble person. So what's interesting about Moses' story is, as we've seen, he was raised amidst luxury and power by Pharaoh's daughter. Now, he could have lived in luxury and just said, "Look, okay, yes, I'm Jewish, but why should I bother about my people? They're basically in slavery to the Egyptians, but not my problem. I'm living this wonderful life, this good life," so to speak, at least from a wealth and a power point of view. But yet, it's clear that he never really forgot where he came from. There's that old adage, you leave the neighborhood, and it's like, yep, he or she has forgotten his heritage and the people he grew up with and reinvents their whole background, but not Moses. And so, Moses chose to defend his people, initially against that Egyptian taskmaster that was being brutal towards the Jewish people and ended up killing him, he ended up having to flee for his life. And it's clear that Moses was not looking for greatness. Here he is leading this quiet life in the desert in Midian, he's not really seeking to accomplish anything great, be it God has a different plan for him. He wants Moses to lead his people out of captivity. And I'm sure he probably wonders, "Who, me?" And in fact, pretty much exactly what Moses says in Exodus 3:11, Moses said, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt again? Who me? You've got to be kidding." And really, another example of Moses' humility is that he was not looking to be the key spokesperson for the Israelites. So God, in fact, allowed Aaron, Moses' brother, to be that spokesperson, really quite remarkable.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And I have to raise my hand and butt in here, because I am a public relations executive by training. And I wrote a book a few years ago, Bite The Dog: Build a PR Strategy To Make News That Matters. And one of the things that I introduce into evidence in my book is the idea... Well, I'll read from it and you'll see what the idea is. I'm picking up on page 11. "Moses, for all the leadership qualities that got him chosen by God to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, knew there was one thing he could not do by himself. He didn't trust his ability to speak to the people. He was called to lead in a way that would marshal them to action. By the biblical account, Moses is commissioned by the Almighty in Exodus chapter four. He immediately begins to muse aloud about whether he's up for the task, prompting God to show him a couple of miracles sure to get the people's attention, turning his shepherd's staff into a snake and then back again, and giving him leprosy of the hand that he cures by having Moses slip it under his cloak and pull it back out. God even promises a third miracle if the first two don't cut it with the masses. If Moses pours water from the Nile on the ground before them, it will turn into blood. But Moses still waffles. 'All the signs and wonders in the world,' he sheepishly tells God will not help him overcome his ineloquence, a condition he describes in verse 10 as being 'slow of speech and tongue.' He goes so far as to try to beg off the assignment altogether. He asks God to select someone else for what was, at that time, at least equal to Noah's building of the arc as literally the most important task in history. That's how certain Moses was that the communication skills, his communication skills, weren't up to snuff, and that communication skills were going to be a major part of the uprooting and transplantation of more than a million men, women and children out of Egypt and into Canaan." Here's the point of all of that and why I said I'm a public relations guy by training. "It's at this precise moment that the creator of the universe became the creator of public relations." This is God. "'What about your brother, Aaron? I know he can speak well,' God says in 4:14. 'You shall speak to him and put words into his mouth,'" which is what we PR people do. People speak to us and we put those things into the press' mouth. Talk a little bit about what all that brings up for you.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I think it's easy, in one sense, to say, "Well, if God said that he could do it, maybe he would've supernaturally done something." But Moses is like, "Despite all these miracles, no. As you said, I'm slow, speech is not me." And so, God says, "Okay, fine. I guess we need to bring in the PR guy, because this guy knows how to speak well." So what would've happened, obviously God's in control, but looking at it a little bit more broadly, if Moses hadn't been able to speak eloquently, would the Israelites have followed him? How would Pharaoh have reacted? We don't know. But I think you could say that it was certainly an important piece of the puzzle of freeing the Israelites from Egypt, to have a good, eloquent spokesperson that they did in Aaron. So without public relations, maybe the Israelites would've been stuck in Egypt. We will never know. But Aaron was critical in communicating the message well to the people, so there you go.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And that's going to be... Well, it is on my website for my PR business, that's one of the things that I say on there. I interrupted you as we were going through this, you were going to talk next about... Actually, what I interrupted to say indicates that Moses was being humble, and you make the point, Moses tried humbly to serve God his whole life. Talk about that a little bit more.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, yeah. So Moses' leadership had an incredible impact on the Jewish nation and history, and it's interesting that Moses, while he's remembered for his great leadership ability, the Bible chooses to focus on humility. It's fascinating. The Bible focuses on character. I think very often, we'll look at people in history, in current leadership, in the arts, and we'll look at how well they performed in their craft, we'll look at their leadership. But the Bible seeks to focus on character, what was their character like? And I've talked about this a bit before, about my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, who founded the 150-year-old family media business I grew up in in Australia. And yes, I could focus on him coming out to Australia with almost nothing in the late 1830s and founding what was to be a huge media dynasty. But as I read more about his story, what I focus more on is his character. He was a wonderful husband, a wonderful father. When he died, his employees said, "We've lost a kind and valued friend." He was an elder at his church. It was the strength of his character that made him such a great person, his humility, his focus on others. So I don't think about his bank account or the huge media empire, that's not my focus. And I think that's really what we should be focusing on, is the character of people, not so much how many zeros are in their bank account or whether they're the GOAT of their sport or their industry.
Gary Schneeberger:
Isn't it true, and I'll use your great-great-grandfather as an example, when you've amassed success and you've amassed money, it's even harder to display the character traits that really matter, because you can lean into that, "Look at all I'm doing over here." You can start to believe your own press a little bit, to use the PR perspective there. So it's even harder when it's someone like your great-great-grandfather, it's even harder when you're someone like Moses who's been given this great calling, to start to feel less and act less than humble, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It is. The more power, fame and money you have, you tend to believe your own press, and to be humble is not easy. You're flattered by hangers-on that want something from you, "You're amazing, you're wonderful," and you just start to believe that. So it's why I think, certainly from a faith perspective, just grounding yourself for me in my Christian faith and humility, that it's all God, it's not me, whatever that equivalent philosophy is for you, you want to ground yourself in humility every day so that you don't get warped by success or by failure. If today's the greatest day, doesn't mean that you're any better than yesterday. If today is your worst day, it doesn't mean that you're worse than yesterday either. I think in the poem by Rudyard Kipling, If, I think it talks about "treat those two impostors just the same" or something like that. So what's interesting is despite Moses' humility, he had a huge impact, not just on his world, but on the Bible. Tradition holds that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. That's amazing. This person that fled Egypt and was in a sense hiding out in the desert of Midian wasn't looking to have a big impact in history, let alone biblical history, but yet he did. So maybe there's hope for all of us in that God or whoever's up there can use the humble, and who's to say who he will use, or whoever you think is up there. And the fact that God used Moses so powerfully, both in history and in the Bible, is staggering, since he was not looking to lead anything. He was trying to live a quiet life. It took quite a lot of miracles to get him off the dime to do anything, and even then, he wouldn't speak, but just to actually lead a thing. He was not an easy sell to say, "Oh, you want me to lead something? Oh, great. I'm your man." It was like, "No, can I just run? Can I avoid all this? Because I really don't want to do this" So yeah, certainly there wasn't a lot of arrogance there, that's for sure.
Gary Schneeberger:
No, and to your point earlier, he grew up in the home of Pharaoh. He was, as an animated version of the Ten Commandments, is called the Prince of Egypt. He was a prince of Egypt. And if anybody can be arrogant, you can be arrogant coming from that kind of environment, and he didn't do that. In fact, when he was in Midian... This always has struck me. When he was in Midian, he didn't even have his own flock to shepherd, it was his father-in-law's flock. He didn't even have his own animals, he had to shepherd his father-in-law's flock. That is not a guy who's living high off the hog. That's not a guy who's still a prince of Egypt. And yet, he leaned into that humility, and that made all the difference in the world in the way that he led the Israelites. And that can make all the difference for us if we don't believe our own press and don't act arrogantly, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. I think when you're humble, it enables you to listen to your soul or to God, depending on your perspective. When you're arrogant, it's just like bright lights that erase anything else. All you can see is the bright light of your own arrogance and self, and you can't really think about anybody else. Moses wasn't perfect, he certainly maybe didn't handle the situation with the Egyptian taskmaster as well as he could have, but it showed his heart, saying, "Persecuting Jewish people is wrong." He had sort of a moral code. So he wasn't just thinking, "I'm just going to ignore this, because it's not my problem. I'm fortunate that I'm living in the lap of luxury. Why upset the apple cart? Keep my head down and enjoy this, and hopefully they'll leave me alone and I'll do well." But that wasn't really Moses. And even though he was reluctant to take up the mantle from God, he took that up. And again, as people may know, it wasn't easy. And when he went back to Egypt, it was not an easy sell to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. There were all these plagues that God brought to bear, from locusts to blood in the water, there was a lot. And Moses could have said, "Hey, this is too much. This Pharaoh character is not budging. Can I leave now? Because this feels like mission impossible" So I think in a sense, the humility that Moses had led him eventually to obey the Lord throughout each part of his life, through all the plagues, to when God told him that he would part the Red Sea so that the Israelites could cross the water to the other side from Egypt. And Moses was like, "Okay," he just humbly obeyed the Lord throughout. So yeah, I think you just see his obedience and his humility growing as time went on. He constantly tried to do what was right, obey the Lord and lead his people to freedom. So in one sense, you could say Moses is the least likely person to be this humble leader. Think of him as a leader? No, you just think of him as somebody that wants to hide in the deserts of Midian, not to lead anything. But he had the humility and obedience, not easily, but to obey the Lord and lead his people to freedom.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. When you were describing what you were just describing about Moses' life and the plagues and all that, it reminds me of, since I turned 50 years old, every year on my birthday, I publish a note on social media that says, "Here are the number of my birthdays, here's some things that God's taught me about life." And one of the things I put in there for, gosh, since the beginning, I guess, is that I'm more than my mistakes and I'm less than my accomplishments. Somewhere in the middle, somewhere between those ping pong paddles is where I live. And I think that's a little bit about what you were describing about Moses. Yeah, he made some missteps, as you said, but he was more than that, he realized he was more than that. But he was also less than all these great things that happened to him that were successful. He lived in the middle, in the margins there, and I think that helped him be the leader that we all remember, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I think there are two pitfalls that you eloquently described. One is, "I can't believe those mistakes I made. I'm an idiot. I'm an awful person." That tends to be more me, as listeners and viewers would know. Growing up in this 150-year-old family media business, fresh out of Harvard Business School, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover in 1987. Other family members sold out. The October '87 stock market crash hit our asset sales program, and three years later, Australia went into big recession. So it's easy for me to say, "It was all my fault. I'm an idiot. How could I have made some of the terrible assumptions that I did having a Harvard NBA?" And I certainly made my mistakes, quite a few of them. But a humbler approach would be, "Okay, I made mistakes, but it was a very difficult situation, with my father having died earlier in 1987, there was friction with different elements of the family." So a humble attitude is, "Okay, my life isn't summed up by all of my mistakes, nor was it all my fault objectively. I've certainly made my share." That's a humble attitude. On the other hand, you can say, "Well, I'm the greatest person that's ever lived and I didn't make any mistakes, and I should be defined by my bank account and my fame." You've got to have a humble attitude, both to failure or to success, and realize you're not summed up by your worst day or by your best day, and you're not really summed up by achievements or failures anyway, it's something deeper, which really we've been talking about a bit here, is in character, that's more the issue. Just like Moses, you could look at his life and say, "Okay, sure, he was humble, but he was disobedient to God on multiple occasions during that burning bush when he just wouldn't... It took him a while to say yes." But eventually, he did. Was it the right thing to kill that Egyptian taskmaster? I'm not sure that that was the best way to handle that situation. And it wasn't done with a calm sense of, "This is what I need to do," it was done in rage and anger. When you do things in rage and anger, rarely is it the right thing to do. So he was not perfect at all, certainly like all of us we're imperfect. But yet, he had this humility to put the greater cause of the freedom of the Israelites above his own agenda, which was to hide in anonymity in the deserts of Midian, as you rightly point out, without his own flock or land to his name. So yeah, being a person of humility means you're also a person who is willing to obey either those above you or a higher power, and you know it's not about you, it's about a higher purpose. And certainly Moses, his life was all about a higher purpose and a higher cause. He, as we know, went up to Mount Sinai and brought down the Ten Commandments, a foundational biblical principle, and in some sense, foundational principles in Western civilization. So God tells him, "Go up to the mountain," he does and he brings back these 10 Commandments. So the amount of things that God did through him is really quite remarkable, this least likely to succeed, this humble man. If God can use Moses, if some higher power can use Moses, then maybe there's hope for the rest of us.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, let's pick Moses up, put him back in the Old Testament now, and let's apply what we've been talking about from the lessons from his life to those folks who are our listeners and viewers, and let me ask you this question. How is humility, as applied to all of us, the rest of us, those of us who are living today, how is that so critical? How is humility so critical to both overcoming a crucible and living out a vision toward a life of significance?
Warwick Fairfax:
We talk a lot about bouncing back from your worst day, our crucible, and when you're trying to bounce back from your worst day, from your crucible, it's critical to have humility. We often say the first step when you're in the pit of despair is to have a bit of self-reflection. In fact, have a lot of self-reflection. And you cannot self-reflect without doing it with humility. So let's say that your crucible was largely your fault, and so that will require a lot of humility to look back at what happened and to look at our mistakes in the areas where we could have done better. Because what will tend to happen is we'll say the actual reverse. "Was it my fault? I did nothing. Everybody does it. I just didn't get away with it." And you can't learn anything unless you have the ability and the willingness to choose to have humble self-reflection. And on the other hand, even if the crucible was not your fault, we still have to look at what happened with a calm sense of humility rather than anger. Now, maybe you were persecuted incredibly unfairly and you might understandably have anger, but anger will make it almost impossible for us to look at what happened with any sense of calm dispassion. And we can learn a lot from what happened with having a calm sense of humility. You might say, "Well, this is what happened. I want to learn these things." Because very often, people who have suffered sometimes carry that on. Statistically, those who've been abused often abuse their own family and kids. It's hard to understand that, but that is what the research says. And so, how is that? Well, what happens, I think, is you get so angry about what happened that anger leaks, and who do you take your anger out on? Typically, those who are closest to us. So you have to have a sense of humility to look at what happened and say, "Okay, this is what happened. Let me make sure that I don't follow in those same footsteps." And that's important. So whether the crucible was your fault or not your fault, to be able to move forward out of the pit of despair to lead a purpose-filled life, which we call a life of significance, it's critical to have a sense of humility. And as we're moving beyond that crucible, a vision forms, often that vision will come out of the ashes of that crucible. You might say, "I never want anybody to go through what I went through," so that vision might come out of that, it's often the case, many of the guests we've had on this podcast. And as you move towards a life of significance, humility is critical. If we have this sense that this vision has got to be all ours, we don't want to share the credit, the chances of that vision being a good one and coming to fruition are greatly diminished. If we have this attitude, and I talk about this in the book, I want to talk about vision, if we have this attitude that our vision is a bit like the Michelangelo statue of David that's in Florence, in Italy, we might say, "This vision is so perfect, I'm not going to share the credit." But what you have to do, even with nervous hands, is to give the hammer and chisel to those team members around you and say, "Okay, I want your input. Go ahead and hammer away and have a little bit of a chisel into this statue." You've got to be willing to give others input. And not only do you have to give others input into the vision, but you've got to be willing to have others help you bring that vision to fruition. We call those other people that can help you fellow travelers. And rather than saying, "I've got it, I don't need help," which so many people say, nobody has all the gifts. From my perspective, God doesn't make it that way, because he wants us to be humble and he wants us to trust him. And so, part of that means you need a team. So in the case of Moses, maybe he knew how to lead in some sense, but he was not articulate. Certainly he felt that way, and he needed Aaron to be by his side to help articulate the vision. Now, could Aaron have been the leader that Moses was? We'll never know, but let's assume maybe he didn't have all the gifts either, maybe that wasn't his gift either. To have a vision come to fruition, to get beyond your crucible, humility is absolutely critical. And as you have more success, which you might, as the vision becomes reality, there'll be people will say all sorts of nice things to carry favor with you, and you might want them on your team. A humble person says, "You know what? I don't need the hangers-on, the people that say things to flatter me. I see through that, I see through them. They don't care about the vision, it's all about their own personal success." You'll have the humility and wisdom to say, "Yeah, thanks, but no, thanks. I want people that really believe in this vision and aren't just trying to flatter me." But you can't make that decision and have that discernment unless you have the humility that I think also gives you wisdom to know who you want on your team, who you don't want on your team, and as I've said, just the humility to have people help you craft the vision. So humility is critical to getting beyond your crucible and critical to having that vision be the best it can be and to come to fruition.
Gary Schneeberger:
C. S. Lewis said, "Humility is not thinking the less of yourself, it's thinking about yourself less." What do you think? That is a pretty spot on moving statement, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's so well said. A humble person isn't really focused on themselves, humility is not really focused on the self, whether it's on your feeling that you're the worst person or the best person. It's really focused on others and it's focused on the mission. How can we get this mission accomplished? I went through this terrible crucible and here's a vision that will really help people, so how do we get this to happen? How do we get the best vision? How do we get the best team? How do we get the best partners? Maybe you can help fund this vision if it's a nonprofit, or even if it's a for-profit business, you still might want investors. How do we do this? Humility focuses on others and the mission, not yourself. And so, humility can be almost like this secret weapon. I think of Abraham Lincoln, who is often thought of by historians as the greatest president in US history. Whenever they vote, they always vote for Lincoln. Nothing against Washington or some of the other great presidents, Franklin Roosevelt being some good ones. Well, why Lincoln? And I think, and I write about this in the book, and obviously there's been a lot of books written on Lincoln, is that he had this incredible sense of humility. His whole objective was to preserve the union in the Civil War and free the slaves so that all people would be free in the United States, and he was willing to admit his mistakes. It took quite a long time for him to find the right commander of the Union Army in Ulysses S. Grant. First few picks didn't fare as well. And there was a time in which somebody came up to him and said, "Mr. Lincoln, your Secretary of War said that you're not a very smart man or you have some deficiency." And rather than saying, "Well, this is his last day in office," Lincoln's response was very wise and humble, "Well, tell me what he said and tell me in which particular area that my leadership is deficient." Now, that's a humble and a wise response, rather than saying, "He's an idiot," or, "He's right." "We'll tell me where." And so, his humility was sort of bulletproof. So he was surrounded by a cabinet... Again, a lot of this is from Doris Kearns Goodwin's great book, Team of Rivals. His cabinet was composed of people who were his rivals for the Republican nomination in the election of 1860, and they all thought the wrong guy won. Here's this country bumpkin from the wads of Illinois, which then was considered out West, but it didn't worry him. He felt like these people, this team, have characteristics and abilities that he needed. The fact that they thought he was an idiot and didn't respect him, it didn't worry him, because he wasn't focused on himself, back to the C. S. Lewis quote. He was focused on the mission of saving the union. So why was he such a great president? It was because of his character, in particular, his humility. That's a relatively more recent example of just the power of humility. Without humility, who knows what would happen in US history? With humility, Lincoln was able to accomplish what he accomplished.
Gary Schneeberger:
So all this talk about humility, and there's been a lot, we've gone from Moses to Lincoln to your great-great-grandfather, we've talked about a lot of different things, of those myriad things that we've discussed about this important topic, what's one takeaway or two takeaways or three takeaways, as many takeaways as you want, what are the takeaways that you see that our listeners and viewers can apply to their own lives as they try to... I don't know if master humility is the right phrase. Lean into humility, I guess, is the right phrase. What's some takeaways that people can get from our discussion today?
Warwick Fairfax:
So Moses was not looking to lead a movement. He was not looking to be this incredible force in the history of Israel as the greatest figure in the history of that country. He was, as you know, he was raised in a fairly poor background. But after, he ended up being raised by Pharaoh's daughter. He could have led a life of luxury, power, influence, but he didn't. He just couldn't stand the fact that his people, the Jewish people, were being persecuted. Now, maybe he didn't handle it in the exact right way, out of anger, killing that Egyptian taskmaster that was persecuting the Jewish people, but it shows his heart, he believed in righteousness. And while his growth as a person happened over time, which it does for all of us, and yes, he fled to Midian, to the desert, but eventually he did end up obeying God's call to lead his people from bondage into freedom. That was no easy thing to say yes to. It's like, "Who, me? Why me?" Which he said. But he was obedient to God. Another example of his humility was he knew that he was not a good spokesperson, he was not eloquent, and yes, he might've had some anxiety. But yet, I think you could also look at it on the other side, that having somebody like Aaron, his brother, speak up was wise, it was a good move. And I think more broadly, when leading a vision, you don't want it to be all about you. If it's all about you, how can it lead to a life of significance? A life of significance by definition is meant to be about others. If the vision is all about you, I don't see how it can lead to a life of significance. It cannot. You have self-determined that it won't. And we've said the only way to join fulfillment in life is to lead a life of significance, because humans are wired, from my perspective, by God, to be [inaudible 00:42:19] focus, to want to help people. And the way that joining fulfillment comes is not through power and money, it's by accomplishing some higher purpose that helps others in some way. For Moses, it was not about him, it was about leading his people to freedom. So we just need to have the humility to think that this vision is not about me, it's about others, and we also need to have the humility to know that we need help. There are so many entrepreneurs that start a business, and where many, if not most, fall aground is they won't release control, they won't bring in good managers. Typically, entrepreneurs have that entrepreneurial vision, but they're not always good managers. They typically are not. And so, they don't know how to take the business to the next level. And so, the humble leaders, the humble managers, whether you're a leader of a nonprofit or of a business, however big or small, they realize, "Look, I have this vision. I want to share this vision with my team, maybe they have ideas that I don't have." But they will also realize," I need people who are better than me in certain areas, and I won't be insecure about that. If they're better than me in speech or in managing or engineering or sales, getting donations, whatever it is, I'll be okay about it, because after all, it's not about me, it's about helping others. So if somebody else can come in and help me help more people, why would that be wrong? Now, that's all very logical, but logic goes out the window if you don't have humility. So I'd say not only is humility an absolutely critical part of character, it's critical to get beyond your crucible, to have accurate self-reflection about what you did wrong, what you didn't do wrong, what was done to you, what's a humble way of looking at that, what can you learn from that. It's also critical to bringing your vision to fruition, both in crafting the vision and in getting the right people on board. So you want to get out of the pit of despair, you want to have a vision that makes a difference in the world, humility is indispensable.
Gary Schneeberger:
That sounds like the plane is on the ground, Warwick. That sounds like you've brought this in for a perfect landing. Folks, that is the end of this second Series within the Show episode on More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership. We will turn the page again next month to another story to help you turn the page and move beyond your crucible to a life of significance, and we'll see you then. 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.
Our guest this week, brain surgeon Dr. Lee Warren, discuses the breakthrough he discovered in medical understanding he’s dubbed “self brain surgery.”
This neuroscience-backed prescription boosts performance, connects science to faith and rewires your brain to overcome anything and flourish.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible.
Dr. Lee Warren:
I was doubly-wounded from the war and the loss of the first marriage and then the sudden loss of my son without any answers. I was really wrecked and didn't know what the future would hold for me.
Gary Schneeberger:
What the future would hold for this week's guest, brain surgeon, Dr. Lee Warren, was a breakthrough medical understanding that he's dubbed self-brain surgery. The neuroscience-backed prescription he discusses with us this week boosts performance, connects science and faith and rewires your brain to overcome anything and flourish.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Lee, it's so great to have you. Lee is Dr. Warren. Dr. Warren is an award-winning author, a neurosurgeon, Iraq war veteran, and he also writes and teaches and serves prescriptions for connecting neuroscience to faith for radical life transformation. He teaches the Art and Science of Human Flourishing on his podcast, the Dr. Lee Warren podcast, which is heard in 150 countries around the world. He's got a number of books, including the one we will cover here, The Life Changing Art of Brain Surgery. He's got some prior books, Hope is the First Dose. I've seen The End of You and No Place To Hide. This will be a fascinating discussion with Dr. Warren and just everything that he has got through and the wisdom that he has.
Gary Schneeberger:
And I just have to say at the outset work and Lee, I'm experiencing a crucible right now because I'm the least accomplished person in this room. It's good. A little humility is always good for me.
Warwick Fairfax:
Not at all. Not at all. Lee, before we get to your book, you've had your share of crucibles and that has really, I think, informed everything you write about, everything you practice. Nobody wants to get learning this way, you'd like to read in a book or observe others practicing. It's no fun to get learning this way, but in a way, you've got learning that is probably invaluable, not just to yourself, but to your patients and friends and family, hard run wisdom. Just talk about some of the crucibles with being in Iraq, as well as with your son. I have a feeling there's an origin story behind the book that we're going to discuss today.
Dr. Lee Warren:
Yeah, thank you. It's an honor to be with you both today. I grew up in Oklahoma and always wanted to be a doctor. I was raised in a Christian family and had this, I would call it fundamentalist, legalist sort of theology, where control and good behavior were supposed to equate to a good life. And so if you did everything right and worked hard, God was supposed to take care of you and I believe that. And then, I went to medical school on scholarship from the United States Air Force and married very young at 19 and went off to med school and then residency. Long story short, my marriage didn't survive all those years of training and education and hard work and all the things. By the time I deployed to the Iraq war, I was basically at the end of a 16-year marriage that was going very badly. I was at war when I found out I was getting a divorce. And then, I got home from the war after having done 200 brain surgeries in a tent hospital and surviving 120-some odd mortar and rocket attacks and found myself six weeks later out of the Air Force and divorced and moving from Texas to Alabama to try to reconnect with my children. And basically, didn't have time to deal with the trauma that I experienced in the war, because I needed to go and start a practice and figure out how I was going to earn a living and take care of my kids. I really just stuffed all that trauma from the war down and put it in the trunk in my garage with all my uniforms and all of that and never dealt with it. And then fast forward a couple of years, I managed to reconnect with my children and had a good relationship with them and started a practice that was successful and ended up meeting and marrying Lisa, who I've now been married to for 20 years, and we blended our families, and it felt like things were going to be okay. Kind of got back on my feet and felt like God loved me again and all the theology that I had that was kind of skewed towards behavior that had taken such a big hit. I was finally figuring out who God was and how my family was going to be able to be all right and managed to navigate through the PTSD that came out of all of that and the war coming back. In 2013, on August 20th, my son, Mitchell, who was 19 at the time, was stabbed to death. It was just at the moment when I thought I was going to be okay that the worst thing that I could ever imagine as a parent happened. To make that worse, he and his best friend were both killed in the same house that night and the police never figured out what really happened. They sort of decided what they thought happened, but they never really solved it. We, basically, were given this devastating loss without any answers as to what happened. And so, I was sort of talking about a crucible, losing a child is hard enough, but to not really understand what happened or have any ability to say, "Okay, this guy did that, and now at least I understand sort of the answers." We just weren't ever going to get any because the police told us that the crime scene had been cleaned, there was no more answers coming. This was the end of it. There would never be any ... unless somebody came and confessed, they weren't going to figure out what happened. We were given this situation that me, as a control freak neurosurgeon, who wants to be in control of everything, literally couldn't do anything about the fact that my son was dead and I would never know what happened. And so that sort of blew me up. It made me question God. It made me question whether I thought he was real or whether he loved me or ... I just didn't know what my life was about anymore for a little while. I was doubly-wounded from the war and the loss of the first marriage and then the sudden loss of my son without any answers. I was really wrecked and didn't know what the future would hold for me. As it turns out, that began the process of me starting to understand how science and faith worked together, because I had a long history of scientific training that your brain was stuck and fixed the way it was made. I think most of us think that, that you are the product of how your brain works and that if you go through something really hard and it messes your brain up, that that's just how you're going to be, that there's not a lot of hope beyond that. And then, I had this faith that you were supposed to be able to get stronger through hardship and find hope through all of it and all of that. And I didn't know how to put those two things together, so for a while after that, I was searching for how to put it together. I think that's where this story really starts.
Warwick Fairfax:
Losing a son has got to be up there with the worst possible thing that can happen. But the fact that there was uncertainty about what happened, I think you've written elsewhere that your son was somebody that was very sensitive, and he was with a buddy of his and somehow they were both stabbed and the police said, "Oh, nothing to see here. It's just a mutual murder suicide or whatever." And you're thinking, "That's not Mitch, that's not possible." So you've got to deal with the twin tragedies of losing a son and the sense that there's something that we don't know and that we'll never know. How in the world did you get over the fact of not just losing your son, but sensing, "There's something that's not right here, there's something unexplained that makes no sense, but yet there's nothing I can do?"
Dr. Lee Warren:
Yeah. We had this moment, Lisa and I had, I had a friend who was a police chief in California and I called him and told him the whole story and laid everything out. And he said, "Lee, if that happened in California, we would've had the FBI there. We would've had the State Bureau of Investigation. We would've kept that crime scene active until we followed every lead." They didn't even dust for fingerprints. They just cleaned this place up. There were three bloody knives and both boys had multiple stab wounds and it was just a crazy thing. They just walked in and they looked at the scene and said, "Oh, this guy must have killed that guy and then killed himself and that's it," and they took the bodies out, cleaned the crime scene, it was over. My friend said, "You need to subpoena the police report and the records and you need to file a police malpractice or give me all this stuff." Lisa and I talked about all that and we realized that this is going to go one of two ways. We're going to go down this path in this small town in Alabama of demonizing the police work that was done and demanding answers and we're not going to get any because we already know that unless somebody confesses to this crime, nobody's ever going to know the truth, like those two boys are gone. We're going to become these people that stand outside with picket signs and yelling and protesting and demanding answers, and it's not going to bring Mitch back and it is not going to help us heal and it's going to destroy our family. We could just see that really clearly. Or we had to trust that God's plan included enough power and grace to satisfy our inability to know more than that. And we just had to step out in faith that that was the path we were going to take as a family, that we were going to decide we couldn't know more than we know, and we were going to decide that we were going to have to be okay with that. Those two decisions, I think, really put us on the path of then searching for how we could heal in spite of not knowing what happened.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's interesting, Lee, that in the two stories that you've told, one, you had to open the locker that you had put away to fight healing. And in this one, you had to not open the case, if you will, that was going on. I imagine they were both difficult to go through. What was perhaps the most difficult or what did you learn from those experiences? Has it taught you anything about sometimes you have to be quiet and just let it be what it is and sometimes you have to fight?
Dr. Lee Warren:
Yeah, I think so. I think, in the first case, it was wounds that had not been examined and explored. And because of that, they never had an opportunity to heal. And so, until I was willing to say, "Hey, I had been wounded." Because I was the hard charging neurosurgeon control freak and it wasn't in my worldview that having gone there and undergone all that and taken care of all those people could have been an emotional wound to me. I didn't ever say, "Oh, I'm damaged in some way. I'm hurt in some way." I just stuck the stuff in the corner and got back to work, and so I never really processed any of it. I think there was this necessity of, and now we understand from trauma literature really well, that it is important to name the thing, you can't really know it if you can't name it, name the thing that hurt you, and then explore it and be willing to share it and bring it into the light with other people before it can become able to be disinfected and healed. I think that was a release of control and of my own sort of idol of self-sufficiency that I had to say, "I'm going to allow other people into this wound with me." And then the other case, it was this sort of letting go of the control of being able to get to the bottom of something, because as a surgeon, if something's wrong with you, I'm going to get to the bottom of it. It's my purview to know everything I can know and take command of it and master it and fix it, and that's just how I work. That's what I'm supposed to do. And you want your neurosurgeon to be that guy. You don't want me to go, "Oh, that's good enough. Close enough. We got your brain almost all the way back in there." But you don't want that from your neurosurgeon. But in this case, it was crystal clear. There was no possibility that I was going to be able to engineer that situation in a way that would resolve it. And so therefore, I was either going to be spending the rest of my life on a pursuit that was already impossible and that would have destroyed my marriage. It would have hurt my children. It would have continued to wreck my reliance on God and it was going to be about me trying to find something I wasn't going to be able to find. I think they're both the same in the sense that they required a laying down of control and they're different in the sense that one required openness and one required a willingness to close the future on a situation and just be okay with it.
Warwick Fairfax:
I want to get to some of the themes in the book because it's so fascinating. Again, the book is The Life Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery: Connecting Neuroscience and Faith to Radically Transform Your Life. It's sort of this idea that we have a lot more control over our circumstances than we think. One of the things that starts with, you talk about modern brain imaging and neuroscience and how, depending on how your thoughts work, you can actually see changes in the structure of your brain. That seems to me a game-changer and elsewhere you talk about, again, I'm not a scientist or a neurosurgeon, so you'll have to help us with this, you talk about the concept of epigenetics. There was a school decades ago in which, "Okay, your genes are determinative. You are what your genes are. I can't help it, because my mom or dad or my grandpa or whatever," whereas you write here that that's a factor, but a vastly smaller factor then, so we have a lot more agency. Talk about some of those early concepts about imaging and what we now understand about the brain that's so different than accepted science from decades ago.
Dr. Lee Warren:
That's right. Most of us have believed this idea really since 1953, when Watson and Crick gave us DNA, like you just referenced, gave us the understanding of what DNA is, that it's become really popular in culture of this thing called genetic determinism, which basically is how the genes you inherit and the parents you have determine most of the things that are true about you and your capabilities and your possibilities for you and all those things. And also, simultaneously, since Isaac Newton was alive 300 years ago, the idea that you could understand something by breaking it down to the parts from which it is made and then putting them back together, you could reverse engineer what something's capable of. And then they applied that same idea of this materialism, we called it, of if you understand the parts, you can understand the whole, they applied that to people. Basically, your genes and your family and the stuff you go through create who you are and the cells in your brain make you feel and think and believe and do the things that you do. And so, you are pretty much just your brain, and if you happen to be born with a good brain, then good for you. If you happen to be born with one that's autistic or has ADHD or has a weird enneagram or you go through the wrong kinds of traumas, then you're just host and you can't be different than you are because that's who you are. It's your brain. Most of us believe that to one extent or another. And I would say, I would challenge the listeners who are Christians, even Christians believe this to some degree. But if you stop and think about it for a second, you already believe that you're not just your brain because you believe that when you die, some part of you still lives, that there's some soul or something about you that is going to be eternal. And so, that means that the things that you think about as yourself, your personality, your memories, all those things, if you believe that those things are going to be permanent in heaven, then they're not coming from your brain, so there is a difference in your theology between your mind and your brain. What's interesting is, although science has taught us that since 1953 and since Isaac Newton in two different ways, that we are the parts from which were made pretty much. In 2001 or so, they invented a technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging. MRI, everybody knows what an MRI is, if you hurt your knee, we go put your knee in a scanner, we take a picture of your knee and we can see what it looks like. We can see what the thing looks like. But functional imaging is where we can put a brain or a heart in an MRI scanner and we can see what the thing is doing. We can actually see the electrical and chemical activity that's happening inside an organ, and that's why they call it functional. It's what is this thing's function and how does it work? We can put you in an MRI scanner in the early 2000s, and for the very first time, when you move or think, we can see what your brain is doing in response to that. That started to make some people question, maybe the brain and the mind are not the same thing, which again, Christians, if you really ever thought about it, you would have already thought that, right? What happened with us, I think it's a grace of God too. I think God puts all of us in situations, where the way he has built us with our interests and our proclivities are sometimes the way he approaches us when he wants to teach us something or give us a gift in some way. Thinking about that, we lost our son and my wife, Lisa and I worked together, she ran our practice at the time. We were practicing in Auburn, Alabama on the third floor of a building on the university campus at Auburn University and that building was dedicated to functional MRI research. They had, at the time, this most powerful functional MRI scanner in the world. There were only three of them and one of them was there in that building. We lost Mitch and we didn't go to work for about a month and we're trying to grieve and recover, and the last thing I wanted to do was operate on somebody and take care of somebody. But at some point, reality hits and you've got to go back to work, you got to pay your employees and you got to keep your business going and all that. We went back to work, and in the same week that we went back to work, we were invited to go down to the research facility and watch some of these functional scans happen in a research environment. What they did was they put this woman in the scanner, she had some earbuds in so they could communicate with her. They turned the machine on and you could see what her brain was doing when she wasn't thinking about anything in particular. They would say like, "Okay, move your right hand." And she would move her right hand and you would see the brain light up and the hand move and you would see what happened. When she decided to do something, her brain would do something and then her body would respond and do something. And then they said, "Okay, Mrs. Johnson, think about the worst thing you've ever been through. Just picture in your mind the worst thing you've ever felt." You would see her furrow her brow and think about something. Her brain wasn't doing anything. She was thinking about something. And then the parts of her brain related to memory and fear and anxiety and pain began to light up on the screen, which meant that genes were being transcribed and neurotransmitters were being released and neuronal networks were getting activated. Shortly after that, we saw her vital signs, which were being monitored start to change. Her blood pressure would go up, her heart rate would go up and her vitals and her respiratory rate would go up. We saw her think about something that led to her brain doing something that led to her body responding in a negative way. And then they said, "Okay, stop thinking about that hard moment and think about the best day of your life, the happiest you've ever felt. Think about that." Pretty quickly, the amygdala part of the fear part of her brain started to calm down and the frontal lobes came online, the bigger parts of her brain that are involved in thinking and processing reason and rational decision making and all those things. And then her blood pressure started to drop and her heart rate came down and her physiology improved in response to her changed thinking. We were watching that happen and my wife said, "That reminds me of Philippians 4, where it says, "Don't be anxious, be grateful, and the peace of God will guard your heart." These people are changing what they think about and it's affecting their bodies in a positive way. I had this ... I'm not a charismatic guy at work, Gary. I'm not the guy that goes around saying, "God spoke to me and told me this stuff." I know he does that, but he doesn't ever talk to me in an audible voice. But in that moment, something became crystal clear to me that I know was from God and it was, "Lee, when you go to surgery and you intentionally cut into somebody's brain, what you're doing is you're on purpose, you're making structural changes in their brain for the purpose of improving their life in some way." That's surgery. And when somebody thinks one thought and not another thought, when they intentionally change what they think about, what's happening is they are changing the structure of their brain on purpose for the purpose of improving their life in some way, and that is also surgery. Just in that moment where we were standing in the scanner, I saw that when you think better thoughts, as the Bible said, you structurally change your brain under your own command of your mind, and that means you are choosing to perform surgery. You're performing self-brain surgery, I'll call it. That's the day I was born, was this idea that I didn't have to necessarily feel everything I was feeling about Mitch for the rest of my life, that I could learn how to harness the power of this ability to change what my brain was doing and learn how to navigate grief in a more empowered way. That began this now 12-year long process of trying to understand how science and faith work together to help us navigate these things in an empowered way rather than thinking our brains get to tell us what we're going to feel and think all the time.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's incredible. I want to get here in a moment to the 10 commandments of self-brain surgery, because that is amazing stuff. But before there, you've got these four approaches to life, and you start with the bottom in a sense, nothing can help me. Basically, give up, there is no hope, doom and gloom, that's an approach. And as you said, even not making decision decision, then you go up to, I can be somewhat happy, maybe 10% happy, maybe science can help me, maybe God can help me. Just briefly, just talk about those four approaches to life and what you were getting at in saying you've got four different approaches.
Dr. Lee Warren:
Yeah. The first piece of that is that most of us feel that we are the way we are and that there's not much we can do about it. So going back to that idea that you just are the product of your brain, that we're just, this is how I am. And in today's culture, that's especially prominent because people are claiming identity out of diagnoses and labels that they've received, sometimes not even from professionals. You hear people say things like, "I'm ADHD or I'm neurodivergent or I'm enneagram six or whatever." And they put that in their Instagram profile and that's to tell other people how they expect to be treated so as not to be harmed or triggered in some way, because you're not honoring their identity. We were grabbing onto these things that we think identifies as who we are. But what the science is showing is that your brain is constantly changing and it changes mostly in response to what you think about. If you are thinking constantly about being anxious, you're going to become more anxious. Your brain is going to become more that way. When I wrote that, what I was trying to get at is as a surgeon, we use what we call approaches, which is a combination of philosophical and technical things that we look at how a particular operation or a particular problem, like a brain tumor, for example, how are the different ways that I could approach that, how would I need to position this patient on the table and where would I need to make the incision and what types of techniques would I need to use to get that job done? What happens to some surgeons is we get trained in a certain place by a really strong-willed professor and we get taught that there's only one way to do a certain thing. And if we get in the middle of that operation and it's not working, then we have two choices. We can either quit or we can press on and hurt the patient even though it's not working. We can keep doing what we've been doing and try to make it work when it doesn't work. But a wise surgeon learns four or five or six different ways to get every particular thing done. And if you're in the middle of an operation and it's not working, then you change the position of the patient or you switch to a different angle or you change approaches so that you can accomplish the goal of getting your patient through the operation safely. It seems like a lot of surgeons stick there because it's almost an admission of not being wise or smart if they have to change the approach that they chose, like "I made the wrong decision and I'm using the wrong approach and I don't want to admit that." But it's actually the best surgeons who are willing to pivot from one approach to another to get the job done for their patient. What I wrote in the book was that most people go through their lives just doing what they've always been doing and then wondering why nothing ever changes when we know that the science says that when you think a different thing, you get a different result, but we keep doing the same stuff in our lives and then feeling stuck and not knowing what to do about it. That first approach is just that people say, "Nothing can help me. I am the way that I am. This is just how things are for me. I'm just this guy. This is the way my dad was. It's the way I am." If you feel that, if you think nothing can help you, then guess what? Nothing can help you. That's what's going to turn out to be true for you. The second approach is that maybe something can help me. This came out of a ... there's a guy named Dan Harris, who was an ABC Nightline host, nightly news guy, and he had a panic attack on air in front of three million people one night on the ABC News and just went crazy. He treated that anxiety with drug use, which didn't work very well, and he almost wrecked his whole life. And then, he found out about meditation, Eastern meditation. He wasn't a believer, he's an agnostic or atheist guy, but he decided that he looked at the research and saw that people who did this Eastern meditation got a little bit happier and seemed to be able to manage their lives a little bit better. He just took that and stripped all the spiritual stuff out of it and developed a meditation practice that produced what he called being about 10% happier in this life. He wrote a book that became a runaway New York Times bestseller called 10% happier. His idea was all you need is to just calm your brain down a little bit and you can be a little happier, and for most people, that's enough. And for him, that was enough. But I tried to make the approach, the point in the book that if you have anxiety, then 10% happier might be enough. But if your son is stabbed to death or your wife has an aneurysm and dies in her sleep while you're next to her, 10% happier is probably not enough because you're going to be more than 10% sadder than you were before that. This idea that maybe something can help me if you're a little hopeful and you press in, you're going to find that there are some things that can help you and you'll find some traction and for a lot of situations in life, that might be enough for you. But then, there's other people that it's not enough and they need more, and so they turn to science and they say, "Well, by learning how the brain works and by understanding the way we think and that our thoughts improve our lives, I can actually get significantly better in my life and I can develop a sense of purpose again after I've gone through something hard." That's all true. The research really shows it, that if you understand how the brain works and how the mind works, you can really make your life better, even if you don't believe in God and even if you don't ever take it to the next level. But I think, if you follow that approach, that maybe science can help me approach, I think you're going to get to a place where you'll find that there are some questions and some issues in your life that science doesn't have an answer for. Certainly, for me, that was the case. I couldn't science my way out of losing my son or understanding how to live again after I lost him. At some point, I got to a place where the answers I needed were not available to me using science. That's where I said, "If you follow the scientific method, it's not supposed to have ever been that we decide what we believe and then we reject any evidence that contradicts that. And that's what happens to a lot of people, evolutionary biologists, a lot of materialists, neuroscientists, they decide upfront what they believe. There's no God or this is how this works. And then, even if evidence seems to suggest something else, they just ignore that evidence and pivot and say, "We'll figure it out later. This is still what we know to be true." But if in your life you start bumping into things over and over that aren't working and you do all the things and you learn all the science and you practice all this stuff and you just aren't getting there, then it starts to be reasonable to say, "Maybe science can't actually fix this and maybe I need something past the limit of what science can answer," and that's when it's reasonable to start looking at another approach where maybe philosophy, maybe theology, maybe God, maybe something else can help me. What I believe with all my heart is if you're a smart person, work and you're willing to let the scientific method lead you, the scientific method is actually that you're supposed to develop a hypothesis and test it, and when it doesn't test out, you change your hypothesis until you find something that is verifiable. I believe if you follow that kind of rational frontal lobe approach to your life, you get to a place where science can't solve it and you just let God tell you some things that he says are true and you test those things out and they turn out to work, that maybe they work because they're true. And then, it becomes reasonable for a smart person to say, "Maybe this is true and maybe I should investigate it further." And that's what I wrote about in the maybe God can help me approach. I don't think it's a whimsical or a moronic approach to say that maybe God is a reasonable thing, a place to turn when I'm hurting. It's actually a valid, rational, scientifically grounded approach, where I just let the evidence lead me and let the process of how to answer questions appropriately take me to this place where I understand that science hasn't gotten me there and maybe God is actually real.
Warwick Fairfax:
I want to move to the 10 commandments of brain surgery are really fascinating. I'm going to read them briefly and then just give us a high-level overview of these, because this is probably the core of the book. I love this first one. This is profound. The first commandment is, I must relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. Sometimes we wonder who the enemy is. We look at the mirror and the enemy is us. Sometimes that's the case. Second one, I must believe that feelings are not facts, they're chemical events in my brain. How often do we ... You write a lot about this. We have these feelings, but they're not necessarily facts. The world is against me. Well, sometimes they are, but maybe sometimes they're not to some people. Number three, I must believe that most of my automatic thoughts are untrue. You can easily go into autopilot with unhelpful thoughts. Number four, I must believe that my mind is in charge of my brain. Number five, I must believe that self-brain surgery is not a metaphor. It's the mechanism of transforming my life. Number six, I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now. Number seven, I must stop making an operation out of everything. You're talking about operations versus procedures, which if a doctor ever says to me, "I've got a big operation," I'll be worried versus a procedure, but anyway. Number eight, I must not perpetuate to start half a generational thought or behavioral issues in my family. Number nine, I must believe I'm getting better at what I'm doing. And number 10, I must understand that thoughts become things. This is profound stuff. What's the best way to approach these 10 commandments? Because these are, obviously, very well thought out. What's your overview of these commandments?
Dr. Lee Warren:
These came from, as I said, Lisa and I and our family trying to navigate the 12 years since we lost Mitch and me understanding that God had given me this insight to see this process of self-brain surgery as something that was already happening, and if you don't take command of it happens in a default way that generally leads to more chaos in your life or staying stuck. And then, realizing that neuroscience and scripture have said a lot of things about how humans are best to flourish.
