Applying the Actionable Truths 9: Redemption

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. Let’s say that you are truly living your new purpose. You might not be in the beginning stages. You might feel like, “Yep. I know what my vision is. I feel like I know what my purpose is.” You’re actually living in light of the fact that you have been redeemed. It’s not just a theory. It’s a fact. You’re living there.

But life is not easy, and there will always be temptations and challenges. There’ll be a time in which you feel, “Maybe my life is not worthy of redemption.” Maybe you’ll feel like your mistakes were just too big, or what happened to you is just too powerful to overcome. It’s possible to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Gary Schneeberger:
Redemption. It’s what we all want, what we all need after a crucible. But how do we get there, and how do we stay there, when in walking out our vision for a life of significance, we get a little bit wobbly? That’s what we talk about this week, and you’ll want to pay special attention when Warwick and I talk about the value of a Purple File.
Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible, and you’ve joined us for one of our fun episodes here in 2025, which we call the Actionable Truths of the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap. What that is is a fresh way of looking at how you can go from your worst day to your greatest opportunity. It’s not new, but it’s refreshed. It’s, as we like to say, it’s laser focused on how you can do it. We describe it as this, and I’m going to read it as I have done every episode of what we’re calling the series within the show.
This is now the ninth episode that we’ve done in 2025, but here’s how we describe these episodes. It’s how we help people turn their worst day into their greatest opportunity. We provide the essential actionable truths to inspire hope, enable and equip them to write their own life-affirming story. That’s what this episode is about, and the roadmap, just so you know, has been built from our proprietary statistically-valid research into how people experience crucibles and what we’ve learned from our experience and the experiences of our guests as to what it takes to turn trial into triumph.
And so this revolutionary road, as I’ve said, takes us to this place where we’re analyzing the roadmap that we’ve identified what we’re calling the actionable truths of the brand. To pass these life-changing truths on to you, our listeners and viewers this year, we’re doing, as I said, a series within the show, and this is the ninth episode of that series within the show, similar to what we’ve done before when we’ve done stories from Warwick’s book, Crucible Leadership.
So we’ve been spending 2025 going through each of the 10 actionable truths, one per month, and exploring the ways they can help you make your way along the roadmap. So Warwick, I ask you this question. I’ve asked you this question, this is the ninth time now, every time we do one of these episodes to help people, help listeners and viewers really know, drill down into what we’re talking about. Level set us for our discussion on the ninth of these truths, and explain a little bit about, why actionable truths? What do we mean by that phrase?

Warwick Fairfax:
At Beyond the Crucible, our focus is all about how you get beyond your worst day to lead a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. What we have now is what we’re calling the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap, how you go from trial, in other words, crucible, to triumph, life of significance. So we’ve found that there are 10 actionable truths that are catalysts in helping you move along your journey from your worst day to when you’re living a life-affirming version. So in other words, you’re triumphing and living a life of significance. So what’s interesting is these actionable truths have always been part of our thinking and were actually chapters in the book, Crucible Leadership.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and it’s interesting. I like revisiting this, because landing on the phrase actionable truth wasn’t something that just happened like that. We really had to think about that, because you don’t really think all the time that truths need to be actionable. But they absolutely have to be. If you’re going to move from setback to significance, you’ve got to act on these truths. Right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. A truth can’t be a theory. It’s got to be lived in fact, in reality. So truths that are just on some plaque on your wall, that’s nice, but if they had nothing to do with how you lead your life, it’s just not very helpful. A philosophy is great, but you’ve got to live your belief system and philosophy. So that’s why we came up with these phrase, actionable truths. They’re truths, but we believe they’re absolutely actionable.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right, and that goes into the next question I’m going to ask you that I ask you every time we do one of these episodes. That’s this. How do these actionable truths help us move from setback to significance? How do they work? How does this … I almost stole the words you’re going to use. How does this help us move from setback to significance?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I mean, these actionable truths, we view as accelerators, enablers to help us move from crucible, to trial, to triumph of life of significance. You could actually make the case without these actionable truths, that you’d be stuck, you’d be stuck in despair, stuck in the pit, that you wouldn’t be able to go from trial to triumph. So these actionable truths, these accelerators or enablers, they’re absolutely critical to help us all move along the journey from despair and our crucible to triumph, to our life as significance.

Gary Schneeberger:
I just thought of a phrase. You said despair, and what clicked in my head was from despair to repair.

Warwick Fairfax:
There you go.

Gary Schneeberger:
That’s what you can look at at how this works.

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely.

Gary Schneeberger:
I just love when that happens, when things pop in my head like that. It shows that we’re onto something here, Warwick. So here’s what we’re going to do this episode. Folks. We’re going to unpack truth number nine, and that truth is in a section of the roadmap. Remember we talked about the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap? That is in a new section of the roadmap than the last few episodes have been, about where we bring our post-crucible vision to reality.
So that’s what this section of the roadmap is about. You’ve created the vision, a couple of steps. Now, we’re moving into how you make that vision a reality, and the first step in doing that is experiencing redemption. That’s the actionable truth today. Actionable truth nine is redemption. So Warwick, how would you define redemption, and why is it the critical ninth step after a crucible to launch us into fully recovering from a crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
We talk a lot at Beyond the Crucible about not being defined by our worst day, our crucible. In a sense, redemption means living a new and fulfilling life, where you have truly put the past behind you. It’s for a reason that we call our podcast Beyond the Crucible. It means you’re truly living beyond your crucible. Your worst time is, indeed, being redeemed. Your life, indeed, has been redeemed. Now, as a person of faith, when I think of the word redemption, it has a biblical construct. Biblically, redemption means being bought back or rescued from bondage, in particular, sin. More broadly, redemption means being rescued from our past, being freed from our worst day and our life having new meaning.

Gary Schneeberger:
And as I have done every episode … This is the ninth time I’ve done this, folks. I just love reaching for this big dictionary. This is Noah Webster’s first dictionary from 1828. It’s the American Dictionary of the English Language, and here’s how Webster defines, one of the ways he defines redemption in this dictionary. It’s right along the lines of what you just said, Warwick. It’s deliverance from bondage, distress, or from liability of any evil or forfeiture, either by money, labor, or other means. Right?
So I think what we’re talking about here, right, is the other means part of that. There are other things, the mistakes, the setbacks, the traumas, the tragedies of your life. One point that we haven’t talked about beforehand, but as I was going through this, I think is interesting to discuss, is I’m going to go back to the truths that we’ve discussed so far. So here’s some other truths that we’ve discussed. We’ve discussed self-reflection, faith, vision, perseverance, and those are all things, really, Warwick, that we do, that we manifest. Right?
Redemption isn’t something we can manifest. It’s something that we accept. In other words, all the ones that we’ve talked about so far, the first eight actionable truths that we’ve talked about, link together, and they lead you to redemption. Right? Is that fair? It strikes me as that’s what we’re talking about, and one of the reasons why maybe redemption, when we started to sort of talk about how we were going to address this episode, seemed like a little bit of a different kind of actionable truth than the other ones.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It’s very true, Gary. Yeah. Leads me back, which is sort of the foundation of how I look at redemption, is biblically, it means you both accept that we’re being redeemed and, again, from a Christian worldview, by Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection. So he redeems us from our sin. He pays the price. Then, we have to both accept that we’ve been redeemed, and then we have to live in light of that. If you say, “Sure. I believe in the biblical construct of redemption, but I’m living a life where I feel depressed, down, I’m angry at myself, I’m not moving forward,” a pastor or another person of faith might say, “Well, you say you believe in redemption, but your life seems to indicate that you don’t believe in it.”

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
I think more broadly, maybe we believe redemption is possible. Maybe we don’t, but let’s assume that we do, that we can move on from our past mistakes or past hurts that were done to us. Redemption, more broadly, means living in light of that, that we’re not going to be defined by that worst day. Somehow, we’ll use that pain for a purpose. We’ll find something positive that came out of the hurt and the damage. So we both have to accept that our life can be redeemed in the broadest sense, meaning we don’t have to stay in the pit of despair and bondage for the rest of our lives.
We have to accept that we’re worthy of being redeemed, of our lives being redeemed. You’ve got to accept that philosophically, if you will, or from a belief system. But then, you have to live a life in light of that that says, “I don’t just believe it in theory. I’m living a life of redemption.” It starts with accepting it, but then, to experience it, you have to actually believe in it on a day-to-day basis.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. If you-

Warwick Fairfax:
You’ll believe, proven by your actions.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. An interesting way that I just thought of it is we say all the time here at Beyond the Crucible, “Your crucible didn’t happen to you. It happened for you.” As we look at redemption, right, this happened both to you and for you. Right? Redemption happens to you and for you. Right? That’s unique among the things that we talk about here.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. That’s very well-said. So redemption happening to you means you’ve got to accept it. Redemption happening for you means you’ve got to live it and experience it. So that’s well-said.

Gary Schneeberger:
So as I mentioned before, folks, we are now in a new section of the road map, and this section, we have called reality. That’s where redemption fits in. As we begin to bring our vision to reality, we have to embrace that redemption that we’ve experienced that’s happened to us and for us. There’s three stages that our research, both qualitative and quantitative, have shown us people experience in this section, in this reality section of the road map. The first one is this, consequences of attempt, new life and new role. Warwick, how does redemption play a role at this juncture of the road map?

Warwick Fairfax:
Redemption is a challenging concept, certainly a challenging concept to live. Sometimes, especially in the early days after our crucible, we may think that we are unworthy of being redeemed. The mistakes we made, the people we hurt were so horrendous, so severe that if anybody does not deserve to be redeemed, it’s us, or we might think that what was done to us was so horrific that we just don’t want to be seen. Nobody could love us. Nobody could want us anymore. From a different perspective, we might also think that our life cannot be redeemed. It is over. We are defined by what was done to us.
So living in light of redemption means believing that our life does have value and purpose, irrespective of what happened to us or the mistakes we made. It means truly believing that our worst day does not define us. You have to really believe this, and it means, as we’ve been saying, that our crucible didn’t happen to us. It happened for us. It also means believing that what we have learned and experienced in our crucible can be used for a higher purpose and to help others. We have to believe that our life does have value and purpose.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and it goes into, right, the next, the second stage of this part of the road map, is this. It’s new challenge of temptation and rededication. What does that look like when we’re in, at the redemption stage?

Warwick Fairfax:
So we might believe that redemption is possible, and we might be beginning to live in light of that. But it’s always easy to backslide. We spoke recently about the concept of wounds. We did a podcast and a blog, and we talk about crucibles having aftershocks. You’re, quote-unquote, “over it,” but something triggers you to remind you of something that happened before. So we might be living in light of redemption, but we can be triggered. There can be aftershocks.
So we can begin to think about our worst days and our worst mistakes, the terrible things that were done to us, and there might be seeds within us that begin to say, “You know what? Maybe we’re not really worthy of redemption after all.” Those dark thoughts, like dark clouds, begin flooding into our consciousness. So this is where I think it’s very important to anchor our lives in some belief or faith system. We have to believe that our lives have purpose, and value, and meaning, and that our lives are worthy of redemption. So that’s where we talk all the time in bouncing back from your crucible, getting beyond it, you have to anchor your journey in some belief and faith system.
So when you feel like the winds and the hurricanes are attacking you and saying you’re not worthy, you have to say, “No. I believe that every person has value. I have value. I have worth. I’m not going to listen to the lies.” So we believe that when we begin to feel that we’re not worthy of redemption, let’s say it’s, on a one to 10 scale, it’s a two out of 10 kind of thought. It’s not like a hurricane, but it’s a niggling, nagging dull pain, if you will.
That’s where we need to nip that thought in the bud and say, “I’m not going to listen to the lies. It’s not true. I have value. Sure, I made mistakes, but I’ve moved beyond that. Beginning to live a life of purpose and value, and I’m not going to listen to the lies that I’m worthless, that my life cannot be redeemed.” So we’ve got to not listen to the lies. We’ve got to move forward, not look back. Again, yeah, we need to live in light of the truth and not the lies.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and here’s the interesting part, folks. Our experience, both individually, me and Warwick, and from the many guests that we’ve had, that’s not the easiest thing to do, what Warwick just talked about. That’s why the third step of this part of the roadmap is here, and that third step is this, final attempts, right, your final attempts to live your vision in reality, and last-minute dangers. Right? The last-minute dangers, those things that, as we say, can lead you to want to get in bed and pull the covers up over your head.
Those things can come. Those aftershocks that Warwick was mentioning can hit the Richter scale pretty hard at this point. So Warwick, talk about, what’s the role of redemption in this last stage of reality on the roadmap? Because it plays a huge one. We really have to make sure we’re hanging onto it here. Right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. Let’s say that you’re truly living your new purpose. You might not be in the beginning stages. You might feel like, “Yep. I know what my vision is. I feel like I know what my purpose is.” You’re actually living in light of the fact that you have been redeemed. It’s not just a theory. It’s a fact. You’re living there. But life is not easy, and there will always be temptations and challenges. There’ll be a time in which you feel, “Maybe my life is not worthy of redemption.” Maybe, you’ll feel like your mistakes were just too big or what happened to you was just too powerful to overcome.
It’s possible to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, even when everybody would say, “Warwick, Gary, you’re having an incredible impact. Your life is a testimony to the power of redemption.” Everybody you know, or at least all the good people you know, let’s say friends and family, may be saying that, but you may not be feeling that on any given day. That’s where it’s critical to have a system and a plan for ensuring that we live in light of redemption and that we live in light of that fact every day, that our worst day doesn’t define us, and our crucible didn’t happen to us, but for us.
Some of the things that we can do when we might feel like we’re about to backslide is anchor our faith in our belief and faith system, which we’ve talked about. But also, it’s really important to have fellow travelers. So you, or I, or listeners and viewers might be thinking, “I thought I was living a life of redemption, but I’m not making much impact. I don’t know. Am I really worthy of redemption? After all, I made such big mistakes, and what was done to me was just so awful.” We can begin to get in a bit of a negative doom loop.
That’s where talking to our friends, family, colleagues, what we call fellow travelers can be helpful, because they said, “Look, I think you underestimate,” they might say to you or me, Gary, or others, “You underestimate the impact you’ve had on others, your family, your friends, your colleagues. I don’t think you understand the impact you’ve made. You just continue to undersell yourself, underrate yourself. You’re having a massive impact. You are a person of worth and value. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect, but you’re making a difference.” Listening to that, it can be helpful. I remember in another context, one of our guests talked about in a Purple File, and they-

Gary Schneeberger:
I was just thinking of that. I’m not kidding you, Warwick. I was just thinking of that. That’s amazing. Please, go on. That’s awesome.

Warwick Fairfax:
No. So you talk about, what is a Purple File, and why can it be so helpful?

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. So the guest … That’s absolutely amazing. The Purple File that you’re talking about, Warwick, is something that our guest, Dennis Gillan, several episodes ago … Dennis Gillan is a suicide prevention speaker who lost two brothers to suicide, and that’s a very difficult job for him to be and to revisit those tragedies in his life. He can feel very exposed on stage when he’s speaking. And so he created this Purple File in which he sticks letters of encouragement that he’s received from his speeches and from other areas of his life so that when he is feeling, like it says here in the last stage of what happens in the reality section, that last-minute dangers, right, that, “Oh. I’m not doing so well. I’m not really redeemed. I’m not …” right, the Purple File, he goes to. He’s got all of these letters of encouragement that reinforce in him that he has indeed been redeemed, that he is indeed living a life of significance.
I created one, I mean, the moment we did the episode. In fact, before we did the episode, I saw his article in Inc. Magazine. That’s what led us to ask him on the show. I actually held up very proudly, like a kid who did well, “Look. Look. I’ve got a Purple File.” But I’ve done nothing But add to that over the time since we’ve been there. I put something in that file last week that I got from another former guest that we had. Lauren Sisler sent me a very nice card about just what my friendship and counsel have meant to her. That’s in the Purple File.
So what that does is when you feel like there’s this last-minute danger of you’re going to let go, “I’m not redeemed. I’m not making the difference,” a Purple File, you can keep it close at hand. You can read that, pull through it throughout all over a year. I have things from my grandmother who’s been gone for 30 years, things that she said to me. You can put those things in the file, and it helps you weather those storms that make you question your redemption and your impact.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It’s such a good example. Very worthwhile doing that. One of the things I think of in my life, in our family, I’ve been blessed to be married to my wife, Gale, for over 35 years. I have three adult kids. Ever since our kids we’re young, one of the things we do at birthdays and other special times, such as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, we will go around the table from youngest to oldest, and we will offer words of affirmation. Now, encouragement is one of my highest values, so I have no trouble offering words of encouragement. As I’ve said before, when you’re encouraging, if you see something, say something, and be specific about exactly what was the thing that the other person did that you feel was just so wonderful and you respect.
I find it more difficult, to be honest, when the shoe is under the other foot, and it’s like my birthday or Father’s Day, and everybody’s offering words of affirmation to me. Still to this day, I don’t find that easy, which obviously means like all of us, I’m a work in process. But when I hear my kids say, for instance … It was very important to me to be a present dad, and they said, well, they say, “You were at a sports games or dance recitals. You helped us with homework. When we’re trying to seek jobs and figure out where to go in life, you’re always there to encourage, and coach, and counsel.”
They remind me of just, not just Beyond the Crucible, but I’ve … very involved with my church and kids’ school, which we’ll get into later, and different things that I’ve done. It reminds me, well, I’m not perfect, but I guess I am having an impact. My kids and my wife love and respect me, so that must mean something. The people I work with, I’d like to think, at Beyond The Crucible, I think value what we do and hopefully respect me, and I think they do, and the organizations I work with. So those are touch points to remind me, when the negative voices enter in, which they can, and they do from time to time with me, that my life does have value, and I am living in light of redemption both biblically and more broadly.

Gary Schneeberger:
Now, we’re at the point in the show which is my favorite point of these series within the show on the roadmap, but I’m sad about this one, Warwick. Because it’s the second-to-last one. Next week will be the last of the ten-part series. So this is the second-to-last time I get to turn our to patient zero, as I like to call him, and that’s you, the host of our show and the founder of Beyond the Crucible, and to ask you. Because you’ve experienced all these actionable truths. You’ve acted on all these actionable truths that we’ve talked about. So talk about your experience even in more depth than you have so far. You’ve said it on a couple of occasions. We’re going to get back to that, and we’re going to revisit that in a bit. Run us through your experience with redemption.

Warwick Fairfax:
So I grew up in a 150-year-old family media business in Australia founded by my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, a person of great faith. By the time I grew up, it was a massive media company with newspapers, TV, radio stations, magazines. It had in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age in Melbourne, and the Australian Financial Review, equivalent to the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. So it had a massive perceived impact in the nation of Australia, a very respected company.
So I prepared my whole life to go into the family media business, to take a leading role one day. That was certainly my parents’ and my father’s hope. So I did my undergraduate degree at Oxford University, worked on Wall Street, graduated from Harvard Business School. So my father died in 1987. He was in his eighties. I was a child of his third marriage, and that was as I was finishing graduate school. In August 1987, I launched a $2.25 billion takeover, because I believed, as, indeed, my parents believed, that the company was straying from the vision of the founder, and the company was not being well managed.
So despite all my efforts bringing in new management, which increased operating profits 80%, there was so much debt we had to file for bankruptcy in 1990. In part, this is because other family members sold out. They didn’t, frankly, believe in my vision and didn’t really believe the takeover was necessary. At the October ’87 stock market crash, had our asset sale program. In the 1990s, we moved to America, where my wife is from.
Those were challenging years. I wasn’t clinically depressed, but I was certainly in a bad way. I felt terrible about myself. I certainly did not feel very worthy of redemption. In hindsight, I looked back and realized it wasn’t all my fault. There was conflict within the family going back decades before the takeover, but it was challenging. In the 1990s, what made it so challenging is I felt like, from my faith perspective, God put me on this earth to redeem the company in the image of the founder, a person of great faith.
When faith became important to me through an Evangelical Anglican church at Oxford, I felt like in my naivety, “Oh. I know what God’s purpose is for my life. It’s just to redeem the company and the image of the founder.” So when the company went under on my watch, I felt like not only did I let my father down, my parents, the 4,000-plus employees, caused rifts within the family, I felt like God had an image or a vision for the company of its redemption, and I destroyed it. How could somebody that was a destroyer of redemption be redeemed? That’s not possible.
Not only that is, not just how could my life be redeemed, but how could I possibly have the kind of impact that I might’ve had at John Fairfax Limited? I mean, my vision was to have an impact on the nation of Australia by having quality newspapers that wouldn’t be sensational, that would treat people well, and really restore the company to the image of the founder. How could I have that kind of massive impact? To me, the answer was, well, you never will, and maybe that doesn’t matter.
But I didn’t look at it that way in the nineties. In the nineties, it was like I could have had a big impact, and I blew it. How could somebody that’s caused so much damage on a national scale, how could that person’s life be redeemed or be worthy of redemption? I don’t know that I articulated fully that way, but I think that’s what I was feeling. And so I had to dig down deep into my faith. What’s interesting is when you go through a crucible, it either turns you away from your faith or pulls you towards it. Fr me, I just dug down deeper.
So there were several scriptures that I really meditated on a lot. One was Psalm 139, that as children of God, our lives have inherent value. Then, in Philippians 3 it says, in part, forgetting what is behind is training toward what is ahead. I came to realize that God loves us unconditionally, because we’re all going to make mistakes. From a faith’s perspective, we’re all sinners. More broadly, that means we’re all broken. We all have life-defining challenges, or they might feel life-defining, and that the mistakes we’ve made doesn’t impact God’s unconditional love for us, and that his love for us does not depend on our perception of our worth or the size of our vision or impact.
This was a game changer for me, because I came to realize I can have an impact in my life. But it’s not about trying to match the impact that John Fairfax had, which feels like impossible. He was such a wonderful employer, husband, father, and elder at his church. I mean, he just … As a businessperson for Christ, from my perspective, how could you even approach that? It’s just give up. I mean, it just … A friend has written a book about him that will come out soon, and the more I read about him, it’s just my sense of intimidation just really grows.
This historian, who was a person of faith, said , “If there was dirt and bad things about John Fairfax, I would write about it. I haven’t found anything.” He spent years and years researching this guy. Nothing. You know? So I had to realize that for me, I had to begin to live in light of my own unique skills and abilities and to pursue a vision that was authentic to me. Growing up in the family and media business, I was pursuing a vision that was authentic to my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, but not to me. I never thought, “Gee. This is a vision I want to live with and pursue.”
It’s like, “Well, how could I be against helping the nation of Australia and be the leading figure in a quality media company?” That’s not wrong. It just wasn’t my vision, and the skills and abilities that were needed was more of a chief executive, general manager, somebody that could make tough decisions. While I can make tough decisions, I don’t like living in the limelight, and certainly, I don’t see myself as a chief executive, general manager type, and the stresses, and the conflict within the family. It was always going to be a very, very challenging role, but it didn’t fit my skills and abilities and certainly wasn’t my vision.
So my journey of redemption, it took many years. It began by finding work in the 1990s in the US in the Aviation Services company. I then became an international coach, Federation-certified executive coach. I was on two nonprofit boards, my kid’s Christian school in Annapolis, Maryland, where we live, and being an elder of a evangelical church here, Bay Area Community Church. So my journey with Beyond the Crucible, that started in 2008 when the pastor of my church asked me to give a sermon illustration of a message he was giving. I didn’t think of myself back then as a great public speaker. I wasn’t sure how my message could be helpful, but I shared my story. What’s amazing is even though, as I say fairly often, there weren’t any former media moguls in the audience …

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s, as I say, also, it’s a self-help group of one, “Hey. My name’s Warwick. I’m a former media mogul, and I lost 2.25 billion.” You know?

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, who’s going to say, “Yeah. Me too”? You know?

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
Nobody. So yeah. I mean, what was interesting is weeks and months after, people said, “Your story and your message really helped us.” So that made me think, “Well, maybe there’s something here.” So I began a journey of writing my book, Crucible Leadership, that took years to write, because imagine writing about your worst day for many, many pages. It was unbelievably painful. There are other elements in the book, my family, and historical, and faith leaders, and leadership lessons. There are other elements, but the elements about my story was painful.
So from that book, we now have a podcast. I’ve done some speaking. I write blogs, post on social media. So what I love about Beyond The Crucible is the vision for Beyond the Crucible is anchored both in my belief system and in my journey. When we say that your worst day doesn’t have to define you, and your crucible didn’t happen to you, it happened for you, those are very personal concepts. I absolutely believe that my crucible does not have to define me. I make sure and attempt through prayer and counsel to live in light of that every day, to not look back, not look in the rearview mirror and go, “Oh my gosh. I can’t believe what I did.”
It happens at times, but I try to make sure that I don’t dwell on that, that it’s a brief stop on the way, not a place I’m living in for days, or months, or let alone years. So every day I try to live in light of these concepts that redemption is possible, that I’m not defined by my worst. I am not defined by losing a $2.25 billion, 150-year-old family media business, that I’m not defined by my worst mistakes.

Gary Schneeberger:
One of the phrases, and we haven’t brought it up yet, one of the things that was written in the roadmap to explain all of its aspects, in this section about redemption, this … I don’t know who wrote it. I can’t remember who wrote it, but this was written. We haven’t mentioned it yet, but it’s exactly what you just said. “Your worst day can be redeemed. We are all worthy and capable of turning failure, loss, and trauma into a catalyst for transformation, growth, and a renewed sense of purpose.” That’s what you’ve just described you’ve been through. That’s why it’s always good to revisit patient zero in these discussions.

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, that’s well-said. When I talk a lot about Beyond the Crucible, why did we have this? Why did we start this? Because not only do I want to get beyond my crucible, I want to help everybody that’s been through a crucible, which, from our research, means pretty much everybody on the planet has been through a crucible at some point. That is to say-

Gary Schneeberger:
Who’s telling the truth? Who’s telling the truth in the research? Yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Exactly. Those that say, “Nope. I haven’t been through anything,” they’re in denial, is kind of what our researchers have told us.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
So we’ve all been through crucibles, and so it’s my mission, it’s our mission to help people realize they’re not defined by their worst day, that there are seeds of redemption, seeds of a life-affirming vision in that crucible, maybe as many of our guests have been through. They don’t want anybody else to suffer what they’ve experienced. They don’t want anybody else to make the mistakes they’ve made. And so I’d say pretty much everybody on our podcast, their life-affirming vision grew out of their crucible. They’re living lives of redemption, and they’re feeling gratitude and joy as they seek to help others.
And so we believe redemption is possible. I’d say every guest we’ve had on our podcast believes redemption is possible, so yeah. I mean, it’s a very personal thing to me. It’s our mission, a mission of redemption, and obviously, there’s a faith-based definition of that. But certainly, in a broader sense, every life is worthy of a second chance. Every life can be redeemed so that something positive can happen from the pain that we’ve all experienced.

Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed. So Warwick, we’ve covered a lot of ground here, as we always do on every episode of the show, but particularly on this series within the show on the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap. I’ll ask you what I ask you at the end of every one of these episodes, and that’s this, what is the one big takeaway you’d like folks who are listening and watching to take with them from this episode on redemption?

Warwick Fairfax:
In the aftermath of a crucible, it’s always easy to believe that we are not worthy of redemption, that we do not deserve a second chance. Through certainly a good part of the nineties, I was just ripping myself apart. There’s this image of flagellation in which, in time’s gone by, some people, from my perspective, mistakenly try to purify themselves by getting a whip and literally cutting their back to pieces. That’s literally what self-flagellation means.
Metaphorically, I was doing that. I was just saying, “How could I have been so dumb? I had a Harvard MBA. How could I believe that family members wouldn’t sell out to a company run by a 26-year-old? What sane person would want to be trapped in a company run by such a young person? It made no sense. How could I have used the wrong advisors and not listened to the right advisors?” I mean, there was an endless list, it seemed, of how I was sort of crucifying myself.
But we have to believe that we’re not defined by our worst day. We have to believe in the concept of redemption. We have to forgive ourselves. Doesn’t mean that we, as we often think, condone all our mistakes or condone the things that were done to us, but we have to forgive both ourselves and others. We have to believe that we’re worthy of redemption. We have to believe that we’re not broken beyond repair, that our life can have purpose and meaning, and we have to believe that we can, indeed, move beyond our crucible. So when we see our vision become reality, and we see purpose in our lives, and that we’re helping people begin to have joy, we begin to see tangible evidence of redemption in our lives.
We’ve got other people, fellow travelers that will say to us, “Your life has been redeemed. You do have purpose. You are making a tangible impact on others. You are growing. You’re evolving. You are becoming a new person,” maybe, from my perspective, a person we’re always intended to be. We’re at a point where we can begin to even be grateful for where we are and what happened to us, even though the journey might’ve been painful.
So many guests on our podcasts have said, “What I went through, I wish I’d never gone through, but I’m grateful for it in some sense. Because the person I am now with the capacity to help people and a message, it wouldn’t have happened without that crucible.” They truly do believe that the crucible happened for them and not to them. So this is living in light of redemption, when we’ve moved beyond the past and are living in light of who we truly are, focused on our purpose and helping others.
That is redemption, and that’s what living in light of redemption is. It’s a glorious thing. It’s a fulfilling thing, and it gives us great joy. I would say living in light of redemption helps bring joy to others, helps get them out of their own pain and worst day. It’s sort of paying it forward, if you will. We’ve been redeemed in order to be a person of redemption that helps redeem others.

Gary Schneeberger:
What you’ve just done there, Warwick, you’ve landed the plane. We have finished this latest episode of the series within the show on the Beyond the Crucible Roadmap, this one on redemption. This is the ninth, folks, just so you remember, the ninth actionable truth we’re discussing in depth this year. Next month, we’ll take a look at the 10th one, the final one, and how it’s a goal we aim for and hope for after a crucible. At this point, Warwick, I’m going to call right now. Scott, get ready, because I would like to see, or hear, sorry, I would like to hear a USC Marching Band kind of drum roll for this. So let’s go, because the next one is what we talk about all the time, and that is … The next actionable truth is significance.
So, friends, until we’re together next time, please remember this. We want you to understand what we talk about, what we mean when we talk about actionable truths, but more important than understanding them, to Warwick’s point way in the beginning of the episode, you can hang them on a wall, the truths. That’s great, but you have to apply them. You have to hang them in your heart. You have to hang them in your feet. You have to walk it out, because when you do that, that’s when true transformation happens in your life. We’ll see you next week.
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