Five Lessons for Getting Back to a Better Future

What does it actually take to move from your worst day to your greatest opportunity?

In this episode, we step back and take a big-picture look at the five key truths for overcoming setback and failure that emerged from our recently completed summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. From moving forward with conviction even when success isn’t guaranteed, to the deeper patterns of resilience, purpose, and transformation we saw play out across eight films, these lessons form a succinct and practical roadmap for anyone navigating a crucible right now. Grab a pen and some paper — you’ll want to write these down, because taken together they map the critical steps from your hardest moment to your greatest opportunity.

To watch any of the eight episodes that made up the series, visit:    • Back To a Better Future: The Crucibles of …  

Want to explore our three prior summer series about the lessons we can learn about overcoming crucibles from film?
Check out these playlists featuring every episode of each one:

LIGHTS, CAMERA, CRUCIBLES (2022):    • Beyond the Crucible: Lights, Camera, Cruci…  
CLASSIC FILMS, CLASSIC CRUCIBLE LESSONS (2024):    • Classic Films, Classic Crucible Lessons: A…  
BIG SCREEN, BIG CRUCIBLES (2025):    • Back To A Better Future 2026  

Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

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Transcript

[00:01] [Warwick Fairfax] Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible. You do not know, in the case of Sarah Connor, whether she'll be able to avoid Judgment Day where Skynet takes control. Captain Jean-Luc Picard doesn't know if he's going to succeed in battling the Borg and saving humanity. Ripley doesn't know if she will find a way to defeat this alien creature. You know, in no way do they know if they're going to succeed. But they let go of the past, and they find a way to move forward.

[00:39] [Gary Schneeberger] Moving forward after a crucible with conviction, even when you're uncertain you'll be successful. That's one of the 5 key truths for overcoming setback and failure we discuss today in our big-picture look at the lessons we learned from our recently completed summer series, Back to a Better Future. The crucibles of sci-fi cinema. Before you go any further, we suggest you grab a pen and some paper so you can jot down each of the points we unpack, because when taken together, they form a succinct roadmap for the critical steps necessary to move from your worst day to your greatest opportunity. Friends, welcome to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. And we've— Warwick and I have maybe pulled a fast one on you because you listened last week where we talked about— it was the end of our summer movie series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. But we thought more about it and decided we wanted to do not a wrap-up episode so much, but an episode that really spotlighted from a higher vantage point the lessons that we learned in that movie series. So, we're calling this Back to a Better Future: The 5 biggest lessons from crucibles, from the crucibles of sci-fi cinema. Because, right, we spent 8 weeks taking deep dives, exploring some of science fiction's most memorable characters and crucibles. And we decided we wanted to ask this question: what did these movies collectively teach us about navigating crucibles, bouncing back from them, and building a life of significance afterward? Because that's what we're all about here at Beyond the Crucible. So over the Of Back to a Better Future: The Crucible of Sci-Fi Cinema. This is interesting, folks. We've traveled through time, through alien worlds, dystopian futures, and even a dinosaur-infested theme park. So we've been a little bit of everywhere this summer. But beneath all of that science fiction, and this is important, these are very human stories about people facing moments when life did not go according to plan and deciding what they were going to do next. So what we're going to do next is take a 30,000-foot level look at the series, not to talk about each individual lesson in each individual movie, but to talk about what big lessons come out of all the movies grouped together as one. That sound like a plan, Warwick?

[03:20] [Warwick Fairfax] Absolutely.

[03:22] [Gary Schneeberger] Well, let's just really quickly touch on the movies we covered so you know the ground from which we're Talking as we go through this, uh, this episode, folks. First one, Planet of the Apes. I'll give you a quick description. Planet of the Apes: Taylor discovers that the strange world he has landed on contains a devastating truth about humanity. I love this, Warwick, because if folks haven't watched the episodes, they can go back and, and this serves as a tease to those episodes too. So you can find them all on our YouTube channel. You can find them all where you get podcasts. But that's the first episode that we did, Planet of the Apes. Second episode was Alien. Ripley and the Nostromo crew face a terrifying threat compounded by disastrous decisions and misplaced trust. That's the second movie. Third movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Sarah and John Connor confront a supposedly inevitable future and fight to change it. Okay, third movie. Fourth movie, Back to the Future, the movie from which we got the name for our series. Marty McFly finds himself stranded in 1955 and must repair the past to preserve his future. Sounds— I'm all excited about this. It's bringing back all the warm and fuzzies we had from doing the series. The next one, Jurassic Park. Brilliant people discover what happens when technological ability races ahead of wisdom. Ooh, we'll talk about that for sure in this episode. Star Wars. Luke Skywalker loses the life he knew and has to decide whether to answer the call to something larger. Then there's probably Warwick's favorite, if I'm daring to hazard a guess, of the movies in this summer series, Star Trek: First Contact, where Jean-Luc Picard faces the Borg again and discovers that his determination to defeat them has been— has become something much darker. And then our last episode, which aired last week, was The Martian, where astronaut Mark Watney is stranded alone on Mars and survives by repeatedly solving the next Problem in front of him. Okay, those are the 8 movies that we did, and from these 8 movies in this episode, we're going to extract 5 big lessons that you can pull from, that you can lean into, that are shared by pretty much every one of the movies. So, Warwick, we've spent the series that we're talking about looking at all these movies individually, but today— We're going to pull them all together. When you look across all of these stories, 5 lessons keep appearing, and they sound remarkably similar to the principles we talk about every week on Beyond the Crucible, don't they? These are not new concepts that we're introducing people to in this episode.

[06:20] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, absolutely. As I've mentioned throughout the series, I've always been a big fan of science fiction. Beginning with 2001: A Space Odyssey that I think came out in 1968. I've read widely in science fiction, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke. And these 8 movies are emblematic of why I like science fiction. We've got characters in these movies, protagonists, who face—

[06:49] [Gary Schneeberger] I love that word. I'm glad I get to hear that word one more time before next summer.

[06:53] [Warwick Fairfax] Exactly. Word of the day, protagonist. And they face massive challenges, crucibles that test who they are, what they believe in. And in some cases in these movies, the challenge that the protagonist faces is literally the fate of the human race.

[07:12] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[07:13] [Warwick Fairfax] So the stakes are very high. There is a recurring theme of would these characters be defined by their worst day or not? Could they overcome their fears, their inner demons, if you will, to focus on others and make decisions that would uplift their team and the world in general to create a brighter future. Now, most of us aren't faced with crucibles that, you know, our actions will determine the fate of the human race, fortunately, because that would be a pretty massive weight on us.

[07:43] [Gary Schneeberger] Yes, it would last more than the 2 and a half hours of your typical science fiction film.

[07:49] [Warwick Fairfax] So it would, it truly would. But our crucibles are very real, and the decisions we make as we try to get beyond them affect not just us, but those we love and the people around us. So these movies that we covered this summer, they provide powerful lessons of how to overcome your darkest day, which frankly often starts with the battle of the soul and then expands to helping those around us. So yes, we might feel like, well, I don't live in space and I'm not fighting the Borg or the Empire.

[08:23] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[08:24] [Warwick Fairfax] But yet, It might feel that the crucibles and challenges we face, they might feel like Mount Everest. They might feel like massive challenges that we wonder, how can we get beyond them? How can we not be defined by our worst day? And so in these 8 movies, there are some powerful lessons that we can apply to our lives.

[08:42] [Gary Schneeberger] Right. And folks, I can't emphasize this enough, that the things that we're going to be talking about are not things necessarily that we discussed in detail during the series. We really are taking, as I said at the outset, a 30,000-foot level, an overhead look level at all of these movies and the things they have in common. And we see these 5 lessons, and I'm about to tell you what the first one is. We see these 5 lessons play out in the vast majority of those 8 films. So, the first example, the first lesson is this: every comeback begins with a decision. Warwick, before someone can actually begin moving forward beyond a crucible, right? There's usually a moment when they have to decide internally, this isn't where my story's going to end. How did that truth, so important to our listeners and viewers, how did that truth show up in the movies we covered this summer?

[09:42] [Warwick Fairfax] When we go through a crucible, which according to our research, we found that pretty much everybody has, and those that say they haven't, our data analysts say, you know, they have. We have. We face a simple but yet profound question. Will we be defined by this, our worst day? Will we give up? There may be aspects of the crucible that we can't change, certainly with physical crucibles. And we've had people on our podcast that have had, you know, crucibles that have become quadriplegics or paraplegics. So at a certain point, there may be things we can't change. But we do need to decide, are we going to be bitter and angry at ourselves or others? Right. Are we going to hide under the covers and give up on life? Or are we going to say that what we went through is awful and painful, but how do we move on? That's a decision we have to make. Yes, you know, we have to learn from the challenges that we went through, but we've got to decide, you know, how do we learn What we've been through and how do we learn how to use that to help others? And ultimately, we believe that beyond the crucible, how do we, you know, lead a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others? So that all starts with a decision. Am I going to be defined by my worst day? Am I going to find a way to move on and let go of bitterness and anger? And in a number of the movies that we covered, you know, we can learn so many lessons. So for instance, in the movie The Martian, which was the last movie we actually covered in the series, we've got this astronaut, Mark Watney, and he's stranded on Mars after his crew mistakenly thought that he died. There was this massive dust storm and there were no life signs on the readings, so they had every right to believe that he had died. So he ends up being stranded there. And he realizes best-case scenario, even if they figure out that he's dead, it's going to take over a year to be rescued. Now, Watney could have been bitter and wondered how could his crewmates have left him. And he could have said, look, you know, surely they should have come back. They should have found a way to make sure they didn't leave him behind. And he could have been despondent and said, look, There is no way I can survive for more than a year. Food on Mars? I mean, how is that possible? How can I get enough food or water to live? It's clearly mission impossible. I should just give up. But from the beginning, Watney finds a way to get water and food inside his habitat on Mars. Now, fortunately, Watney is a botanist, and one of the recurring lines that will come up in the movie is his sort of in-your-face humor. And he says in a video log at one point, Mars will come to fear my botany powers.

[12:45] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[12:46] [Warwick Fairfax] And in a sense, Mars will. I mean, that's the key to him surviving. But really, the point about The Martian is his attitude that he will not be defined by his worst day. He never actually is bitter or angry even for a nanosecond, which is incredible. It's like, okay, I'm here. This is bad. What do I do next? He makes that decision. In the case of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, we have Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this time, unlike the first movie, he comes back as a cyborg, which is as a good guy, if you will.

[13:20] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[13:21] [Warwick Fairfax] And his mission is to try to save Sarah Connor and her 10-year-old son, John, from a future where It's truly dystopian with cyborgs and Skynet, which is this supercomputer that sure seems malevolent. And basically, it enslaves all of humanity and it's completely in control. So we have Sarah Connor who's been in a psychiatric ward since after the first movie because she keeps saying Judgment Day is coming.

[13:53] [Gary Schneeberger] Right, right.

[13:53] [Warwick Fairfax] And Skynet's going to be in control. And for some reason, people don't believe her and think she's Got serious mental problems, which is understandable. Why would you believe that? And so she's been in the psychiatric ward. And Sarah could have been bitter and angry at nobody believing her about Judgment Day. And certainly when she's in that mental hospital, she is certainly not a happy camper. She's not doing well. But after she's rescued, she might have thought avoiding Judgment Day is impossible. How can we possibly do this? It's my son and this one cyborg. Played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it's like, okay, for the sake of my son and the future of the human race, it's going to be very challenging, but we've got to find a way to prevent Judgment Day, which is when Skynet is in control. She's got to believe it's possible. She's going to try or frankly die trying. In another movie, Alien, we've got the main character Ripley who's on a cargo ship In space, and they end up having this terrifying parasitic alien roaming around the ship.

[15:03] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[15:04] [Warwick Fairfax] Now, she's faced with a crew that don't always see the danger, and the ship is part of a commercial entity that really values profit more than the safety of the crew. She's being led by a poor leader that makes some poor decisions that frankly leads to this alien creature getting on board the ship. And she could say, look, I'm with this crew that really is not making good decisions, certainly being led by a poor leader, and it's all controlled by this company that really doesn't care about us. What is the point? But she realizes that this alien creature cannot be allowed to make it onto other ships and frankly be in contact with the rest of humanity. So she will do whatever it takes to fight and defeat this creature. And stop it infesting other ships. And in Star Wars, now called Episode IV: A New Hope, we've got Luke Skywalker living on a desolate planet called Tatooine. Now, his aunt and uncle are killed by the forces of the Empire, and he could be angry and bitter and feel hopeless. And at first, he's feeling just pretty overwhelmed by— What he has to— what he's seen. And he could feel like, gee, I grew up in a farming community. What could I possibly do to help the Rebel Alliance against the Empire? But in part inspired by Obi-Wan Kenobi, he decides to join the Rebel Alliance and fight for freedom against the Empire. Now, he doesn't know what the future will hold. And he doesn't know how in the world he could play any part As it turns out, a big part in defeating the Empire. But he knows he's got to do something. He's got an uncle dead. The Empire wants to enslave all of the races of the galaxy. And he doesn't know what the future is going to hold, but he will play his part. So in each of these films, you have a key protagonist making the decision that they will not wallow in anger or bitterness or be defeated, and they'll fight to survive And in many cases, ensure the safety of not just themselves, but the well-being of others, of humanity, of other races. This provides a powerful lesson that we will not be defined by our worst day. We will not be consumed by anger and bitterness, and we'll find a way to move forward to not just help ourselves, but help others.

[17:31] [Gary Schneeberger] Right. And that— right, that's the lesson, folks. As you listen to what Warwick was just describing, he wasn't running through the synopses of the films that we covered in the series. Every one of those— go back and play it again and listen to it— every one of those involves exactly what we're talking about here. The character made a decision to say, nope, I'm gonna move forward. I'm not gonna sit back and let the crucible sort of knock me out. I'm gonna move forward. And it's interesting, Warwick, the next question that I have for you is, what happens to us Again, the movies show us this, the series showed us this, but our guests show this— show us this too. What happens psychologically when someone stops asking, why did this happen, and starts asking, what am I going to do about it? Sort of like we say all the time, it didn't happen to you, it happened for you, right? What happens at that moment when we come to that realization?

[18:30] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, so there is some utility in asking Why did this happen?

[18:36] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[18:36] [Warwick Fairfax] Yes, we need to focus on understanding the lessons of our crucible, the mistakes that we made. Did we trust the wrong people? Maybe, you know, we don't— maybe we're in a situation that we didn't have the gifts and strengths that we needed. And yes, there are lessons to be learned from our crucibles. But endless reflection, endless rumination is never helpful. At some point, you've got to say, okay, I've learned, at least for the moment, everything I can from the crucibles I went through. I've got to move on. And that's really what we're talking about here in this lesson. We've got to decide, okay, well, what's next? How am I going to find my way forward through this crucible? And really, Mark Watney in The Martian is such a good example of this. He's not angry at others for a moment. He's not even despondent hardly.

[19:29] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[19:30] [Warwick Fairfax] It's like, okay, this sucks basically. This is awful. But what am I going to do? What is the next step I need to take today to survive?

[19:38] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[19:39] [Warwick Fairfax] From the very beginning, he puts the solar panels back in place, he gets the habitat back, he begins to think, okay, how do I make water here? He's a botanist and a scientist. I need to combine hydrogen and oxygen. How can I make food? Okay, I've got potatoes. Let me figure out a way to make boiled potatoes. I mean, he just, from the very beginning, it's like, okay, what's the next step I need to take? And he knows he's gonna be there for a while. He doesn't know yet how he can communicate with NASA to tell them he's alive. But it's like, okay, what step can I do today to move forward? It's such a great example of not dwelling in the past and just figuring out what's the next right step I can take today.

[20:28] [Gary Schneeberger] And what that spotlights, I think, Warwick, is that this is a place where resilience— this is where resilience really begins. It's not with a plan, not with resources, or even hope that everything's going to work out. It begins simply with the decision to move forward. One of the notes I took on this was that the first victory in every crucible happens between the ears. And I wrote on my piece of paper here, you might be able to see it, we refer to being Beyond The Crucible, colloquially around the office, is BTC, Beyond The Crucible. And this is really BTE, between the ears, right? That's where it begins. Resilience begins BTE for, right, BTC. I think that's a fair statement. So talk a little bit about that beginning, that birth of resilience and it coming from our minds and then extends to what we do with our body. Yeah.

[21:28] [Warwick Fairfax] Such a great point. Before you can move forward from your crucible, there is the battle of the soul. And that is the key battle in living a life of resilience. You've got to make a decision, yes, after you learn the lessons from your crucible, the mistakes you made, maybe things that people did to you, people that maybe aren't helpful to be around. If you're in a relationship, you've got to make a decision.

[21:51] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah.

[21:52] [Warwick Fairfax] They hurt you. Certainly not repeating the mistake of being around those sorts of people. But you've got to let go of the past and endless recriminations and say, okay, this is awful, this was painful, but I've got to move on. And life is going to be uncertain. We're not going to know how it's all going to end, but what's the next step I can take? And that's where some of these movies provide such great examples. Mark Watney in The Martian. Okay, I'm stranded on Mars. I'm going to be here more than a year. What's the next step I can take to survive? He didn't really focus at all on being bitter about being stranded there. Sarah Connor. Yes, she had periods of anger, but ultimately she said, okay, how do we avoid Judgment Day? How do I protect my son? How do we save the human race? What do we do? She focused on the future. What's the next step that we need to take to try to ensure that Skynet doesn't take control and there will be no Judgment Day? So in these movies, we learn powerful lessons of resilience, which, as you say, starts with making a decision to not dwell on the past and endless recriminations on yourself or others.

[23:09] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah. All right, folks, that was Point number 1, lesson number 1: every comeback begins with a decision. Moving on to lesson number 2, and that's this: courage means acting on conviction, not certainty. See how those 2 things fit together, right? Every comeback begins with a decision, and courage means acting on conviction. You're convicted, right? You have a conviction about this decision that you've made, and you act on that, not on certainty. Again and again in these movies, the characters are act without knowing how things will turn out. They don't have any idea how things are going to turn out. The lesson isn't that courageous people know that they'll succeed. It's that they take the next right step, which Warwick says all the time, take the next right step. They take the next right step anyway. So, Warwick, we sometimes think courage means being confident that everything is going to work out just hunky-dory, right? But these films suggest almost the opposite, don't they?

[24:12] [Warwick Fairfax] They really do. You know, This is one case where these films are exactly like the life that we face.

[24:20] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah.

[24:21] [Warwick Fairfax] 'Cause none of us know how our life is gonna turn out. If you look back, depending on your age, 5, 10, 20, 30 years, you'll probably say to yourself, I had no clue that life was gonna turn out the way that it did. I could not possibly have foreseen the adventures I faced, the people I'd meet, The challenges I went through, the mistakes I made, the lessons I learned, the blessings I had. How could we possibly have known? And so when you're moving beyond your crucible, we're not going to know how things are going to turn out. We're not going to know how successful we're going to be in overcoming any particular challenge. But, you know, that should not stop us from moving forward. Maybe life will turn out in a radically different way than we envisage. And so when you go through a crucible and you're trying to get beyond it, we're faced with a choice. Do we give up against the challenges we're going to face and say the odds are against us, this is impossible? Or do we move forward and say, look, I don't know how life is going to turn out. Maybe it'll turn out very differently than I think, but I've got to move forward. This mission is important. And I'm going to try. I'm going to keep at it. I'm not going to give up. And so courage does indeed mean acting on our innermost beliefs of what is important, even when we have no idea if we'll be successful. There are no guarantees in life, but it's the fight. It's the living in light of your beliefs every day and doing your level best—

[25:56] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[25:56] [Warwick Fairfax] To get beyond what you went through and to live a life of significance where you're focused on others. And that's where these movies really provide so many powerful lessons. We've got Ripley in Alien refusing to give up when she's battling this alien creature, when at one point she is the last person on that ship. Everybody else has been killed. She could say, well, what chance do I have? You know?

[26:21] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[26:22] [Warwick Fairfax] You could say not much, but she refuses to look at that problem that way. Victory is by no means certain. But she is going to find a way to defeat this creature and stop it attacking other people in the human race. In Star Trek: First Contact, we find Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and he chooses to battle the Borg, which is this very scary, malevolent, cybernetic species that desires to enslave all other beings. Now, Picard has history with the Borg. And he could well have said, look, I want to avoid them. I was captured by them and enslaved by them, and it's been incredibly traumatic. It's too much. But he chooses to go in and engage the Borg because he wants to save humanity and other races in the galaxy. He doesn't know whether he'll succeed.

[27:18] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[27:18] [Warwick Fairfax] The Borg are about as malevolent a foe as you'll ever find in science fiction. And he, yes, I'm sure he's scared and intimidated, but he chooses to be governed by the past and at least in a way that he would give up and not even try. He is going to try. In Jurassic Park, we find paleontologist Alan Grant. He's taken to an island where billionaire industrialist John Hammond has found a way to create dinosaurs, to recreate them. Now, Hammond sees a Disney-like park that will make him lots of money. It'll be something no one has ever seen. Grant and the other scientists challenge Hammond and tell him that what he's doing is dangerous. You cannot control the unknowns. Trying to control nature is a formidable challenge and you probably will not succeed. Grant doesn't sit idly by. He challenges Hammond's assumptions, which is basically that everything's gonna work out. And every time Hammond sees a mountain, as you said in the podcast, he sees a molehill. It's just like—

[28:29] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[28:29] [Warwick Fairfax] It's great to have confidence, but you've gotta be aware of the challenges. He just doesn't even recognize speed bumps hardly. It's crazy. In Planet of the Apes, George Taylor is an astronaut, who is stranded on a planet where highly intelligent apes enslave humans who are mute. And Taylor throughout this movie, he does not give up. I mean, he's in a very difficult situation and he fights for survival and importantly, the truth about how did this planet turn out the way it did where humans are mute and enslaved. He will not give up. trying to find the truth and fight for survival. Yes, he may be angry and feel alone and he's a bit cynical, but he doesn't just sit there.

[29:17] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah.

[29:17] [Warwick Fairfax] Exactly. Yes, that's an Australian understatement.

[29:21] [Gary Schneeberger] Yes.

[29:22] [Warwick Fairfax] But yeah, he's a lot cynical. But yet he could just give up, but never does Taylor give up. I'm going to find a way to survive, fight my way out of it. I'm going to find the truth. Of how humans ended up the way that they did. So in each of these cases, the protagonist makes a decision not to be defined by their worst day, by their crucible, and to courageously face that crisis they're in, speak truth, search for truth. And yet they do not know whether their efforts will be successful. They do not know, in the case of Sarah Connor, Whether she'll be able to avoid Judgment Day where Skynet takes control. Captain Jean-Luc Picard doesn't know if he's going to succeed in battling the Borg and saving humanity. Ripley doesn't know if she will find a way to defeat this alien creature. In no way do they know if they're going to succeed, but they let go of the past and they find a way to move forward and They will do whatever they can to try to succeed and in a lot of cases save humanity.

[30:34] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah. Now, here's a question we can address right to listeners and viewers here because we've been talking about, right, these lessons from movies. But this idea of acting on conviction, not certainty, I can guarantee you— well, I know at least one person who has difficulty with that. Me, right? I mean, it's easy to know how it's all going to end. It's not easy to let your conviction carry you, but that's what, what this lesson talks about. So how important is it to learn to tolerate uncertainty when you're trying to move beyond the crucible? Because there's really no way to do it, I don't think, if you don't learn to tolerate a little bit, at least a little bit of uncertainty, right?

[31:22] [Warwick Fairfax] So well said. You know, back to what you said earlier, that the battle is between the ears. It's very true. And another way of saying it is, as we've said often, the battle is for the soul. And so you've got to make a decision. Okay, I don't know what's going to happen. Nobody wants to feel like they're jumping off a proverbial cliff where you have no idea what's below. But you've got to make a decision that, okay, there's going to be uncertainty. I have no idea what's going to happen. The Martian is probably one of the best cases when Mark Watney is like, He may be a scientist and a botanist. He has no idea day one how he will let NASA know that he's alive because the whole communications array has been destroyed. He has no idea of how he'll figure that out, let alone how to get food and water that will help him survive over a year. He figures it out eventually. On day one, he could say, well, my chance of survival is zero. Let's just give up. My chance of contacting NASA, zero. The communications array is all damaged beyond repair. So what do I do? But he doesn't give up. And so you've got to make a decision. Okay, I don't know that anybody can truly be comfortable with uncertainty, but say, yes, life is uncertain. I don't have it all planned out, but I'm going to make a decision not to worry about tomorrow, not to dwell on the past, and to focus purely on on today. It's really— it's— you got to have this sort of mindset shift. And you got to make a decision not to hide under the covers, but find a way to move forward and not worry about tomorrow.

[33:07] [Gary Schneeberger] Let's land the plane on this part of the conversation with this question. Somebody who's listening right now, I guarantee you, feels overwhelmed by the size of their crucible. So How powerful can it be for him or her to stop trying to solve everything and identify just the right next step? Not trying to build the map, not trying to build the house, not trying to pave the road, just taking the next right step. How powerful can that be in moving beyond your crucible?

[33:41] [Warwick Fairfax] It really is. And I think, as we have mentioned, Mark Watney in The Martian is such a great example that rather than getting overwhelmed by his crucible, which is about as bad as it could be— nobody knows he's alive, and it'll be at least a year before he can be rescued, and he doesn't have enough food or water to survive. I mean, that would seem like, let's just give up, it's just impossible. But he doesn't dwell on the past. He says, okay, what's the next step? He begins getting the solar panels set up again so that he has power. He knows he needs to find food and water. Okay, he's a scientist. He knows water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. How can I use the equipment I have to literally make water? It takes him a bit with the odd explosion as some of his experiments don't work out too well initially. But he figures out a way. How can I grow food? Well, you can't grow food on Mars. But in his habitat, he finds he has some potatoes. Okay, he's a botanist. How can I use the seeds from these potatoes? And after I figure out how to make water, how can I make more potatoes, more food? Now, he doesn't figure all this out day one, but he figures out a plan step by step by step. So the key lesson here is don't fixate about how tough the challenge is. Even when it feels impossible, but figure out, okay, this decision, this cause is important. In the case of Mark Watney, survival is an important goal. He wants to get back to his friends and family. And so what's the next right step in solving this problem? How can I get water? How can I get food? Am I going to have enough to survive over a year? I don't know. But let's figure out a way to make it. food and, you know, make water, and then we'll figure out how to make enough to survive every year, and then eventually we'll figure out how to communicate with NASA. But you made a decision from the very first day is what's the next right step. And one of the things we've said on the podcast a lot, we talked about the power of the flywheel. Once you make a few right steps, it's like, huh. Those steps have given me some progress. It may feel like baby steps. It may feel like I've covered one step in a 100-mile journey, but it's one step. And one step plus another step, you begin to have confidence saying, okay, mission impossible feels like mission really challenging, but it maybe, just maybe possible. So that's the value of making the first right step and then a next right step and the next right step. It gives you greater confidence and greater perseverance to keep moving forward.

[36:30] [Gary Schneeberger] Right. This lesson, lesson 2, courage means acting on conviction, not certainty. Confidence falls in the middle of those things, right? Right. You act on conviction and the end result, you would hope you want to get to certainty, but you can get to confidence and that can be the engine that drives you through to the next step. The next step, folks, the next lesson here, the first 2 were about ways to encourage you along the path, right? This one, the 3rd lesson, is our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities unless they're steeped in humility and wisdom. So here's where the caution comes in, right? Encouragement important, but also warning and caution is important as you're making your way back from a crucible. And this, this really— Warwick, this, this lesson 3 may be the most cautionary lesson. Running through the series, strength without humility and wisdom can actually create crucibles. So this one fascinates me, fascinates me because several of these characters aren't undone by their weaknesses, right? Several of the folks that we've been talking about and that we talked about for the last 8 weeks on the series, they're undone by what their strength— when their strengths go unchecked. How did that happen to the characters in the films we covered, and how does that happen to us in real life?

[38:01] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, this is such a great point. You know, you often think, oh, it's good to have strengths, and it is, right? But in certain situations, it is so true our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities. And, you know, one of the things we have to realize is In any given scenario, strength can be helpful or not. Our greatest strengths aren't always helpful. So for instance, for somebody who has a lot of perseverance, it may be tough to stop moving in a direction that's not bearing fruit. You know, we can have other strengths that aren't helpful. We can be very reflective, which is good to examine all angles, but at a certain point, you've got to make a decision and move forward. You can't just reflect your life away. So yes, having strengths is good, but you've got to know the flat side. So it requires both humility, but it requires the wisdom to know when in a particular situation is that strength a liability. Sometimes it'll be a strength, sometimes it won't be. That requires the humility to ask the question and the wisdom to know which situation is it helpful or not helpful. In the case of Jurassic Park, we've got Hammond, this brilliant entrepreneur who has this incredible vision to create a theme park, Jurassic Park, with living dinosaurs. But Hammond's brilliance and ambition, they blind him to the dangers despite scientists telling him that you cannot control nature. He just blows right past that. He's got some eminent scientists saying, you can try to control nature at your peril. You won't be able to. He ignores their advice right from the beginning. And certainly he has a huge lack of humility that leads him to make very unwise choices. He's a brilliant guy, but his ambition and lack of humility leads him to making incredibly poor choices. In Star Trek: First Contact, we have Captain Jean-Luc Picard, He has tremendous courage and determination to fight the Borg. But what he doesn't fully realize is that courage and determination, they're mixed with obsession. At one point, the Borg have taken over half of his ship, and the crew advise him to destroy the ship, because that way the Borg will be destroyed. Well, Picard is not willing to do this, because he feels emotionally that destroying the ship means losing. He won't be able to save his ship. And eventually, he does listen to somebody that talks sense into him and helps him realize how obsessed he was with the Borg and he's not thinking correctly. And so, he does indeed decide to put the ship on auto-destruct sequence. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a brilliant inventor, Miles Dyson, invents a computer chip That will lead to Skynet and the cyborgs that in the future will control Earth and enslave humanity. Dyson, a bit like Hammond, is not humble enough to realize what could go wrong in creating this chip that will create basically a sentient Skynet and cyborgs. It takes Sarah Connor telling Dyson about the future to make him realize how blinded he was to the danger Mhm. Of his research. And he feels terrible. It's like, how could I have been so stupid? You know, he gets to see the future. Most of us don't get to see the future. We might say, oh, that won't happen. He gets to realize it will happen. It does happen. So we all have our strengths, and they can be very helpful to us and to others. But we need humility and wisdom to realize that our strengths aren't always strengths in every situation. To realize that with those strengths come blind spots, the humility to realize that there can be blind spots, and the wisdom to know in what situation are those strengths a liability, and the wisdom to make sure that, you know, to realize that other people can help us.

[42:09] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah. And this seems to be the moment where it's easier said than done, right? Because, I mean, how do we Recognize when something that has made us successful— our confidence, our determination, our intelligence, our ambition, right? All of those things, or any of those things— is beginning to work against us. How do we grasp hold of that?

[42:39] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, it's not easy. It can be difficult, almost impossible at times, to see one of our greatest strengths It can be a liability because often we've been successful with those strengths. So it can be easy to think, how can intelligence be a problem? Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an interesting movie because if Miles Dyson had survived, he would hopefully have been a lot more humble and wise about the dangers of cybernetic research.

[43:13] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[43:13] [Warwick Fairfax] He might not have abandoned it. He said, boy, I've got protocols in place. I've got to think really seriously hard about the dangers of creating a computer that's sentient. And people talk today about the dangers of AI, what will happen if AI is sentient. And we might think that, oh, we could never be in a Terminator 2 situation. Well, hopefully not. But people who follow these things are actively worried about what happens if computers get sentient and too sentient. In the case of John Hammond in Jurassic Park, you would hope he would have the humility and wisdom to learn the lessons of his crucible. But I do wonder because his whole vision was creating dinosaurs.

[43:58] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[43:59] [Warwick Fairfax] And that whole plan seems fraught with danger as in don't do it. He would have to give up on the whole dream and somehow channel his entrepreneurial vision and intelligence in a completely different direction. I'm not sure that John Hammond could really do that. But that's the lessons we can learn from both Miles Dyson, who I think was willing to make that decision or would have been, and John Hammond, who arguably wouldn't have been, that we just have to realize that our greatest strengths don't always help us. They can be our greatest liability.

[44:36] [Gary Schneeberger] This next question will lead into the next lesson, and that's, that's this: Is one mark of humility having people in our lives who we allow to tell us something we don't want to hear? Right. In other words, if we surround ourselves with people who only tell us what we want to hear, this is going to reinforce the things that we may be doing that we think are strengths, but maybe indeed weaknesses, limitations. Is one mark of humility having people around you who will speak truth to power, as it were?

[45:12] [Warwick Fairfax] It really is. You know, we've spoken about how we can learn from our crucibles, how our greatest strength can be a liability. And often, you know, crucibles provide that cauldron, if you will, where we can learn some powerful lessons. But ultimately, one key mark of wisdom is realizing That in certain situations that we won't be able to see reality. And you can have intelligent people making foolish decisions. Certainly John Hammond was an incredibly bright guy. Because of his obsession with recreating dinosaurs, he couldn't see the dangers. What he needed was people around him to be able to tell him the truth. Miles Dyson needed somebody like Sarah Connor telling him that what would happen with Skynet, the cyborgs, and the danger of his research. Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: First Contact, he needed somebody to tell him that having been captured by the Borg, he was obsessed with them. And it's interesting, this person Lily, who he met When they went back to fight the Borg, this person Lily says to Picard that he is like Captain Ahab.

[46:34] [Gary Schneeberger] Right, right, right.

[46:36] [Warwick Fairfax] In the book Moby Dick and indeed the movie. And Captain Ahab was obsessed with killing this whale that had haunted him and menaced him before. And so once this fellow traveler Lily used this example, I mean, Picard is a very widely read person. He sees it. He sees how he was Captain Ahab. And he realizes, okay, I can see it. I can see it now. And so he begins to listen to Lilly. He begins to realize, I've got to find a way to, yes, defeat the Borg, but realize maybe the next right decision is to set the auto-destruct sequence on his ship, the Enterprise. Now, he ends up not having to do that, but he made the decision to, you know, basically hit the auto-destruct button and make the next right decision. So we need people in our lives who will speak truth to power and tell us things that we don't want to hear, and we need the humility to listen to their wisdom.

[47:50] [Gary Schneeberger] Hmm. That was the 3rd lesson that we learned from our summer series, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. I will go through the first 3 lessons. Lesson 1: Every comeback begins with a decision. Lesson 2: Courage means acting on conviction, not certainty. And number 3, which we just finished talking about, is our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities unless they're steeped in humility and wisdom. Brings us to lesson 4, Warwick, which is this: nobody moves beyond a crucible alone. You were just talking about that a little bit. Now we get a chance to talk about it a little more. Despite science fiction's larger-than-life heroes, our series repeatedly shows that resilience is rarely a solo achievement. And one of the myths of resilience, Warwick, is the rugged individual who pulls himself up and conquers adversity alone. And these movies don't really support that, do they, when you get right down to it and you really study them?

[48:58] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, it's such a great point. You know, in some cultures, we admire the rugged individualist who can do it all, the person who says, I've got it all. I'm smart, intelligent, I have perseverance. I have all that I need. I'm powerful. I just need to channel my inner brilliance and resilience, and I'll get it done. But that idea is a myth and dangerous. None of us have all the gifts required to see our vision become reality. And we all need fellow travelers both to encourage us When the situation becomes difficult and we're feeling down, and also strengths that we don't have. That requires humility and wisdom. And it's just so dangerous when we feel like, I've got it all, I can do it. You know, building on prior lessons, we've got to realize that our strengths can be liabilities in certain situations. And we need help with people who have strengths we don't have, and we need help from people That will tell us, hey, it's great to have perseverance, but this one you need to give it up. You need to move on to another plan, another project, another vision. This one's not going to pan out. It's okay to say that. That's a setback. And in these movies, they really provide powerful lessons of this point. So in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Luke definitely needs Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan becomes his mentor. He helps him learn the ways of the Force and channel his innate abilities in a positive way. He would never become the Jedi Knight he becomes without Obi-Wan helping him, training him, and channel the ways of the Force.

[50:45] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[50:45] [Warwick Fairfax] In Back to the Future, we've got Marty McFly as a 17-year-old kid, this high school student who goes back 30 years in time to 1955. And Marty absolutely needs the help of this maverick scientist, Doc Brown, to help him get back to his time of 1985. No way could he do it by himself. In The Martian, Mark Watney may be alone, but he shows an incredible ability to think outside the box to be able to survive. But even Mark Watney, who is a brilliant botanist, and as he says, Mars will fear my botany powers, Good stuff. That's great. But even he needs help. He'll end up needing to get help from NASA and JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, and his crew on the ship that unknowingly left him to figure out how to survive and how to be rescued.

[51:41] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[51:42] [Warwick Fairfax] He can't lift off. He has no ship. He'll be stranded there and eventually he will die. He'll run out of food, water. I mean, eventually, You know, I don't know that he can survive forever there, but he wants to be rescued nonetheless, and he needs help. You know, the bottom line is, no matter how capable we think we are, we all need help. We need to be humble and wise enough to say, I don't have it all the time. My greatest strength could be a liability. I don't have all the strengths. I need people to help me with strengths I don't have and to help tell me when— I'm going off the rails down a track that's not helpful. We need other people. It's absolutely vital, especially to get beyond our crucibles. You know, we can't do it alone.

[52:25] [Gary Schneeberger] Right. And we've been talking about this in the context of these 8 films that we talked about in our summer series. Many of those, as we mentioned in each episode, were like the top film of the year that they came out. Right. So these are, these are well-known movies, well-loved movies, very Which led to a lot of sequels and reboots and those kinds of things as well. So people know the stories here. That being true, why do people going through crucibles then sometimes resist the very relationships that we can see in these movies help the protagonist get through what they're going through? Why, why in real life, R-E-A-L, do we not follow the examples that we see here in real life? R-E-A-L.

[53:11] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, I think it comes down to a few things. One is certainly ego. It's very common that entrepreneurs who start businesses in their garage, they become successful, they get a certain amount of employees and revenue in, but the skills it takes to be an entrepreneur is often not the skills it takes to be a general manager and grow to the next level. Those skills are very different. But the entrepreneur typically says, I got it. Hey, I founded this business myself. I don't need help.

[53:42] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[53:42] [Warwick Fairfax] Look how far I've come. That's ego talking. That's a lack of humility and a lack of wisdom. That is more the rule than the exception, sadly. And so why is that? Well, we just tend to feel like, I'm brilliant. Look how successful I am and look at everything I've achieved. You know, I can figure it out. And ironically, in our darkest hours, that's the time in which we most need help, but we often least want to accept it. We might say, hey, this is bad, but, you know, I'll figure out a way, or I don't know. Or it could be, this is bad and I don't deserve help. I'm a terrible person. I made terrible mistakes. Or what was done to me makes me feel worthless and I don't deserve help. I'm in purgatory. Just leave me alone. Go away. You're in such a negative mindset. You just want to be left alone, hide under the covers, and, you know, please don't free me from my prison cell.

[54:47] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[54:48] [Warwick Fairfax] Just leave me alone. Let me fade away. You know, please don't help me. It's this almost self-loathing or just this Incredible despondency that's so unhelpful. So in Star Trek: First Contact, Picard absolutely needs a fellow traveler. And as you've mentioned, he finds one in Lily, a woman he comes across in this part of the journey. But it's not easy. He doesn't listen to her initially. He fights her in the sense that he won't accept her advice. And Picard wants to keep fighting the Borg, his way rather than destroying the ship, which makes the most sense. It takes a lot for Lily to get through to him. I mean, Lily doesn't give up. And Picard almost shouts at her and says, you don't know what it's like and what the Borg have done to me. And he just won't think straight. And Lily just doesn't give up and almost mocks him in a way with, oh, Captain Ahab, there you go.

[55:49] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[55:49] [Warwick Fairfax] As I've said before, that's what begins to penetrate, and he realizes he is Captain Ahab. We all need people like Lily in our lives who won't give up on us. And not all of us have that. We need people like that in our lives, and we need to let them in. We shouldn't make it quite as hard as Captain Picard makes it. We need to realize, okay, we may not like what they're telling us, but is there a point? Maybe what they're saying is true. And obviously you want to pick the trusted advisors, trusted fellow travelers, ones who are for you, not ones who are there just to enjoy pulling you down. It just— it's like a sport. So you got to pick the right people. But let's assume you picked the right people. You've got to let them in and listen to them because they just may be right.

[56:36] [Gary Schneeberger] Yeah. All right. So let's get down to brass tacks with this one. Let me ask you this. Is part of moving beyond a crucible Recognizing the limits of our own perspective and allowing other people into the story. Is that a definitive statement that we can make? That's part of bouncing back from a crucible. And if you don't do that, chances are you're not going to bounce back very well.

[56:58] [Warwick Fairfax] Absolutely. We have to realize that our perspective is colored by our history, our upbringing, our experiences. We don't have all knowledge or all truth. We look through life Through a lens of our experiences, our gifting. We might feel like, oh, perseverance, that's all I need. Or, hey, I don't really reflect. I just move and act, and I'll just trust I'll figure it out later. We all have certain mental mindsets that can be helpful or not helpful depending on the situation. And other people may have different strengths and perspectives and experiences that can be so helpful to us. In the case of Picard, he was captured by the Borg and he was assimilated by them, meaning he was turned into this half-human, half-machine cyborg where he was enslaved by them. And what they did is they used his experience and intelligence to harm other races, including humanity. Picard was seriously emotionally scarred by that. Even when he was freed, there was no way he could make objective decisions about the Borg. After all, they had enslaved him and then used his experience and intelligence to kill many people. How could he forgive himself for that? Even though it wasn't his fault emotionally, how do you get beyond that? I mean, this is trauma of a massive proportion.

[58:21] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[58:21] [Warwick Fairfax] Picard is a very sensible, highly intelligent person, but he needed to realize when it comes to the Borg, Making rational decisions in all cases are going to be a very difficult task. And that's why Picard absolutely needed people like Lily to speak truth to power. No way could he have solved that problem or been objective with the Borg. How could anybody?

[58:46] [Gary Schneeberger] Now we have arrived at what will be sort of the last lesson from our summer series. But this is the the, the cherry on top lesson, uh, in— from Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. And that's this, lesson 5 from all the movies, again taken when you look at them from 30,000 feet. Lesson 5 is this: the future is built by the choices we make today. Um, this really, Warwick, is perhaps the perfect closing lesson for a series that we've called Back to a Better Future. Nearly every film Explores the connection between today's choices and tomorrow's reality. So let me ask you this question. Science fiction loves asking what the future will look like, right? That's one of the reasons that you like it so much, that you love it so much. But these movies seem to be saying that the more important question is, what are we doing today to create that future? How did you see that play out in these movies, this idea of, right, we build the future today in many, many ways?

[59:59] [Warwick Fairfax] You know, in science fiction, it's really a great example of this challenge almost to the extreme because so often the battles between a preferred future and a dangerous dystopian one, certainly true In Terminator, the Terminator 2 movies. So for us, after our worst day or crucible, one path leads to endless recrimination and anger that will lead to a darker future. That's certainly one path. The other one leads to a brighter future where you learn the lessons of your crucible, you let go of any anger and bitterness, and you move forward on a better life-enhancing future focused on others, a life of significance. It's really a choice you make. Do I want to hide under the covers and be angry and bitter against myself or others? That will be your own personal dystopian future, your own dystopian night of the soul, if you will.

[01:00:58] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[01:00:58] [Warwick Fairfax] You don't need to live that way, or you can make decisions that will lead to a brighter future. It doesn't mean that there won't be any pain from what you've been through, but you can think to yourself, how can I Figure out, is there a way to use what I've been through, the lessons I've gone through, to help others? What's a brighter future? That's a key decision that you have to make. Which path are you going to go down, the dystopian one or one that leads to a brighter future? Speaking of future, in Back to the Future, Marty McFly grows up in a family that's essentially given up unless other people mistreat them. Where others may feel that McFlys will never amount to much, Marty begins to go on a different direction. Marty's life is greatly influenced by Doc, who tells him that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything. This affirmation, when Marty goes back to 1955, leads him to change the complete direction of his family. Marty's dad George He pursues his dream to be a science fiction writer. He dances with the girl he would end up marrying at the high school dance. The direction of his life and indeed his whole family changes. In The Martian, Mark Watney has to figure out how to get food and water and communicate with NASA. Now, he could have just given up and his dystopian future would be trapped on Mars and Eventually die. Well, he wants a preferred future of survival. And he does not give up. He finds a way to communicate with NASA. He finds a way to get food and water. And indeed, at the end of the movie, we see Mark Watney passing on his wisdom to future generations of astronauts and scientists. What has he learned about science and indeed about perseverance. So these lessons end up helping not just himself but other people.

[01:03:02] [Gary Schneeberger] So how do we, after a crucible, shift from thinking of ourselves as victims of what happened yesterday to becoming architects of what happens tomorrow? Dare I say, to living out what we called this series Getting back to a better future. How do we go about doing that in our own lives?

[01:03:27] [Warwick Fairfax] You know, after we've learned the lessons of our crucible, which we need to do as quickly as possible, we need to forgive others, forgive ourselves, and let go of bitterness. Only then can we move forward to create a better future. Again, we keep talking about Mark Watney, but in The Martian, it's such a powerful lesson in which He seems to move on from his crucible instantaneously. He doesn't seem to harbor bitterness towards his crew for leaving him. He realizes, look, there was a dust storm. There are no life signs on my spacesuit because those wires maybe were damaged. There's no way they could know. So he does not Hold any bitterness towards them. He's not angry towards them. He's not even angry at God or the Creator, whoever he feels like is up there. He's not really angry at anybody for his situation. It's like, okay, this is awful, but let's figure out a way forward. He goes into problem-solving mode immediately. In Star Wars, yes, Luke is uncertain about moving forward after losing his aunt and uncle, But he realizes with Obi-Wan's help, there is an important mission to fulfill. He doesn't know what his role is gonna be in that completely, but he focuses on the future and how he can be part of the Rebel Alliance to defeat the Empire. How do I move forward? What's the next right step? All he knows is to leave the planet of Tatooine with Obi-Wan, learn the ways of the Force, learn what it is to become a Jedi Knight, at least learn their skills. He doesn't know what's all going to happen, but he decides he's not going to wallow in bitterness and anger. He's going to find a way to move forward and be part of the solution, not the problem.

[01:05:19] [Gary Schneeberger] So as we approach the end here, Warwick, let me ask you this question. How do we make sure the future we're building— right, we've talked a lot about building a better future— how do we ensure that the future we're building after our crucible isn't simply a reaction to the pain of our past? How do we know that we've really moved beyond our crucible and we're moving toward a life of significance? What does that look like?

[01:05:46] [Warwick Fairfax] Yeah, I think probably the key way is to make sure we have let go of bitterness and anger about our crucibles, that we have forgiven ourselves and forgiven others. If we continually ruminate and reflect on what's happened and how angry we are, we just can't let go of those awful people who hurt us. The dumb decisions we made. If we keep on and on and on about that, we know we've not moved on.

[01:06:12] [Gary Schneeberger] Right.

[01:06:13] [Warwick Fairfax] And we know it's going to damage our ability to move forward and create a better future. It will also indeed damage others. We've said a lot on this podcast that anger and bitterness leak. If you're angry and bitter, you'll undoubtedly take it out on your family, your friends, coworkers. It's inevitable. So to move forward, we have to find a way to let go of that anger and bitterness. In Star Trek: First Contact, Picard probably has not really moved on from the pain of being assimilated by the Borg. It's pretty clear. His obsession with them, he may know them well and their weaknesses, but he doesn't realize that his obsession is stopping him making the next right choice at the time, which was—

[01:07:01] [Gary Schneeberger] To surrender.

[01:07:01] [Warwick Fairfax] To blow his ship up, to destroy the Borg. In this case, he needs help from a fellow traveler, Lily, to realize his blind spot and that his lack of objectivity concerning the Borg. So we've got to let go of the past, and we can only do that by letting go of anger and bitterness. But we also need help from others who can come alongside us. And we might say, I'm good. Nothing to see here. I'm not angry. And they'll say, yeah, not buying it. Why do you keep talking about that person who did what they did to you? And why do you keep being so angry at yourself? We need help from people saying, you know, I really don't think you've let go.

[01:07:44] [Gary Schneeberger] We've reached the point in the show where I have said traditionally over 300 and some episodes, You've just landed the plane on the conversation. But I'd be completely off-brand if I didn't say you just landed the spaceship on this conversation. Absolutely.

[01:08:07] [Warwick Fairfax] And which spaceship is it?

[01:08:09] [Gary Schneeberger] That would be the Starship Enterprise.

[01:08:12] [Warwick Fairfax] Absolutely.

[01:08:14] [Gary Schneeberger] I've learned a little something sitting next to you for these— for all these 8 episodes. We'll have to do more episodes for sure. Um, the— so let's go over the, the lessons again, folks. Uh, the 5 lessons from our series, uh, Back to a Better Future: The Crucibles of Sci-Fi Cinema. Lesson 1 is every comeback begins with a decision. Lesson 2, courage means acting on conviction, not on certainty. Number 3, lesson 3, our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities unless they're steeped in humility and wisdom. Lesson 4, Nobody moves beyond a crucible alone. Not a solo proposition. And the 5th lesson that we just finished talking about, the future is built by the choices we make today. And Warwick, as we wrap up, when I put all 5 of those together, they almost form a roadmap. And I'm going to read it off my notes because I want to make sure I get it exactly right for our listeners and viewers. Step 1 is to decide that the crucible doesn't get the final word. Step 2 is act even when you don't know exactly how things will turn out. Step 3, stay humble enough to recognize when your strengths may not be working for you. Point 4, don't go alone. Let others help you. Seek others out to help you. And then finally, build the future through the choices you make in the present. So, Warwick, if someone's listening to us right now and still in the middle of their crucible, still roiling around with that, that the wind knocked out of their sails by the crucible that hit them, they're nowhere near the happy ending yet. Which of these 5 lessons would you encourage them to grab hold of first? And what should they do with it, not in the future, but today?

[01:10:20] [Warwick Fairfax] You know, the starting point is lesson 1: every comeback begins with a decision. We've got to make a decision to not be defined by our worst day. We've got to let go of anger and bitterness towards ourselves and others. If you don't do that, then you don't move forward. That's the first key step. And we need to be like Mark Watney. He's such a great example in The Martian. He wasn't bitter towards others for leaving him there, for his crew. He realized they made the best decision they could based on the data they had, which is, sure, it seemed like he was dead based on the The monitoring of his suit seemed to show that he was not alive because it had failed. How could anybody survive that dust storm? He decided that he was not going to be angry towards them. He wasn't going to be angry towards a higher power, the universe, whoever he thought was up there, NASA. Goodness knows, there could have been a long list. He said, okay, this is awful, but how do I move forward? He made a decision. But I'm going to let go of the past. I'm going to find a way to survive. It's not going to be easy, but what's the next right step I need to decide today? So once you make a decision that I'm going to let go of the past, I'm going to move forward, everything else flows from that. All the other lessons we just talked about— courage means acting on conviction, not certainty. Our greatest strengths can become our greatest liabilities. Unless they're steeped in humility and wisdom. Nobody moves beyond a crucible alone. The future is built by the choices we make today. But it all starts with making a decision that we will not be defined by our worst day and that we are going to work to create a better future. Yes, a bit like weeding. When you go back and, oh boy, how could I have been so dumb? Why'd I do that? You've got to say, okay, I'm not going there, whether it's prayer or whatever you use. Let it go. Have people on your corner. It could be a spouse, partner, loved one. It could be teammates, people at work, friends. We all need fellow travelers, but just let it go. And if you're tempted to pick it up again, let it go again. Keep letting it go. And over time, we can get better at letting it go. And you might kind of obsess for a season, A few minutes, a few hours. I'm reminded in the movie Star Trek, one character we haven't talked about is Data, who's this robot. And he was tempted by the evil Borg Queen at one point to go over to her side and give up the computer codes so she could control the ship. And Picard says to Data, how long were you tempted? And he said like, I don't know what, 0.36 seconds. Right, right, right. And he says, well, that's not long. Well, yes, but for an android, that's forever. So, okay. He was pretty tough on himself, I guess. But whether it's 0.36 seconds, a day, a month, a week, whatever it is, find a way to let it go and move on. So that's really— it all starts with making a decision. I will not be defined by my worst day. I will not be defined by what people did to me or bad choices I made. I'm going to move on. I'm going to lead a life of significance. I'm going to take the better path that leads to a better future.

[01:13:50] [Gary Schneeberger] Well, I'm at that place, Warwick. I have to let it go and move on because this is the last time that we will talk about this movie series this year. So folks, until the next time we're together, do remember— and the next time we're together, just so you know, is going to be the traditional— we're going to have guests, we're going to have dialogues, we're going to do all of that stuff. Coming back next week, but until that happens, please remember this: We know that your crucible experiences are difficult. We know they're hard. We know that they're they're not easy to get beyond. That's why we're here trying to help you with insights and action steps that you can take to get beyond them. And we also know this: that when you learn the lessons of your crucibles and you apply those lessons moving forward, they can lead you to the most. rewarding destination of your life. And that destination is, as always, 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 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.