Rewrite Your Story, Change Your Future

What if you don’t have to accept the story you’ve been handed — you can write a new one?

In this episode, we discuss Warwick’s latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com and explore one of the most empowering ideas in personal growth: that we are not locked into the narratives that shaped us. We can take the parts of our story we admire and want to carry forward, meld them with the new story we aspire to live, and chart a course toward something better. Rewriting your story isn’t about erasing the past. It’s about refusing to let the past have the final word on who you become.

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Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. We have this tendency to feel like, "Well, I grew up this way. That's who we are in my family. And so my story is set, so I don't really have any agency or determination. I just have to live the way I grew up." And it's common to think that, but it doesn't have to be true.

Gary Schneeberger:
Those six words, "It doesn't have to be true," can unlock not just an entirely new life, but an entirely new life of joy and significance. But how do you navigate your way there? In this week's episode based on Warwick's latest blog, we discuss the steps we can take to write our own unique stories, even rewrite them. We can take the good parts we admire and want to emulate, and meld them to the new stories we aspire to. The result, we get to chart a new course for ourselves.
Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible, and it's a good one. They're all good ones, but this is a particularly good one, I think, because it's based off of a blog that Warwick has written. As you may remember, for a couple of months, we had a summer film series. But this is kind of the cadence of what we do, once a month, Warwick writes a blog and we talk about that blog on the podcast. And this one, Warwick, dare I say, tells quite the story, doesn't it?

Warwick Fairfax:
It sure does.

Gary Schneeberger:
So, Warwick, what led you to write this blog, which you titled Your Past Doesn't Define Your Future: Nine Steps to Write a New Story? Folks, that's why I said this one has a story behind it. Warwick's going to tell us about what led him, what story, what thing in his story, what thing in his life led him to write a blog on this subject.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I've been thinking about this a bit. We're all made up of stories. We grew up in different backgrounds, different cultures, and our family histories are a mix of different strands. And these stories that we grow up with, parents, mom, dad, uncles, aunts, grandparents, the town we grew up in, the country we grew up in, they're all a big part of who we are and makes us the people that we are. And some of those strands might feel beneficial and positive, and others might be harmful and we wish we'd grown up in a different family or a different environment didn't have that history.
So we're made up of stories, both ones we perceive to be good and ones we perceive to be bad or not so good. And we have this tendency to feel that our past, that our stories determine our future, and that includes all these strands of stories that we grew up with. But that does not have to be the case. We can value and honor the stories that we admire, and we can take those with us. We can incorporate that into our lives. But at the same time, there might be stories that we feel that are harmful and we really don't admire, and we just like to chart a different course. And we can choose to leave those alone. We can choose to discard them, if you will, in the sense of not incorporating them.
So we get to determine the stories that we choose to keep, the new ones we choose to incorporate, and the story that we want to move ahead with. We can't determine our future, but we can determine the direction, the stories that we value and the stories that just maybe don't fit us. Some of them may not be bad, but just don't fit who we are. And we'll get into this more in a bit.
So just that whole notion of stories, we have this tendency to feel like, "Well, I grew up this way. That's who we are in my family. And so my story is set, so I don't really have any agency or determination. I just have to live the way I grew up." And it's common to think that, but it doesn't have to be true. We can chart a new course and write our own story.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Before you pivot and talk a little bit about your own story, just having you say that, what popped in my head is our stories that we grew up with, that we've lived thus far, those aren't written in ink, right? They're written in pencil, and we can erase the parts, as you said, that don't serve us well and we can bold those parts that do serve us well. But no story that's come before the moment that we're in right now is written in indelible ink, is it?

Warwick Fairfax:
No, it really is not. Just because your parents had certain values, lived in a certain location, had a certain job, doesn't mean that we have to have the same job, the same values, and live in the same place.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
It doesn't mean we disrespect them. Sometimes you might feel they were bad choices. Other times it's like, "Well, I respect my parents, but I want to chart a new course, live somewhere different, work somewhere different, be in a different environment." It's not always right or wrong, it just doesn't fit who I am. So it's okay to chart your own course. Sometimes your parents and family will understand. Other times, as we'll get into, they may not, but it's your life and you get to chart your own course.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And listeners and viewers who've been with us for a while know that you indeed have a robust family story that you grew up in, but you also have built a robust story about the way that you've charted your course. So talk a little bit about your story and maybe the way it's evolved from what it was to what it is today.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. For me, I grew up in a 150-year-old family media business, and there were some stories in that family, in my family that I greatly respected. My great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, was a person of great faith. And there was a tradition in my family of producing quality newspapers serving the community. Just to let listeners and viewers know, this company was very large. It had the equivalent in the US of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. It had magazines, TV stations, radio stations. It was huge. And so there were elements I respected. I'm a person of faith, so the faith of my great-great-grandfather has always been very inspiring. The sense of producing quality newspapers to serve the community, that's also something I greatly respected. But there were other stories that were more challenging.
In 1987, after I'd come back from Harvard Business School, and before that worked on Wall Street and graduated from Oxford in England, in 1987, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover to change management and to bring the values of the company back to the ideals of the founder. My dad had died earlier that year and in 1987. My parents and I felt like the company wasn't being run along the ideals of the founder. So there were some things that I thought were challenging, that I thought should change. And there'd also been infighting amongst the family for decades before I launched the takeover, so that obviously I didn't think was helpful.
So three years after I launched the takeover, we ended up having too much debt, family sold out and a variety of other things happened. And the company, we had to file for bankruptcy. So while I valued the heritage of the company, one of the things I've learned as I reflected on that crucible is that I'm not a take-charge CEO, and the intense pressure and scrutiny that went with it. There was a time, and this was from '87 to 1990, where I could walk in a mall in Sydney and people would go, "Isn't that Warwick Fairfax?" It's kind of like being Vanderbilt or a Kennedy or a Bush. And just being somewhat of a shy person, certainly back then, I just did not enjoy that. I'm just more of a reflective advisor, so it was really a very poor fit.
And so that's what we do here at Beyond the Crucible. I mean, I'm a reflective advisor. We get to tell other people's stories. I reflect on some thoughts that I or you, Gary, might have about how we bounce back from our crucibles, and we discuss them.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
So it's such a better fit. So I would say I've incorporated parts of my story that I value and are helpful. I'm so inspired by my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, who was the stronger business person for Christ that I've ever come across. I admired many aspects of my father who was a person of integrity and really tried to do the right thing, even when it meant forgiving other family members who threw him out as chairman in 1976. I value parts of him in which he would talk to people of different political opinions or even religious opinions, political leaders, religious leaders, and he wanted to know what they thought. Even though he might not agree, he wanted to understand differing opinions. Those are stories I greatly value and try to live that way myself.
So there are parts of that story that I respect. But the parts where power and money can, in some cases, not all, warp your values and what's important, and just the divisions within the family, there are some things I would really rather chart a new course in. So, in my case, my story and the way my kids have grown up in the US, where I live now, is very different than how I grew up. The name Fairfax, it doesn't mean as much here as it does in Australia, which is good. They're all grown, from 20s to 30s. Now just wonderful kids and wonderful adults. And they grew up differently and they'll chart their own stories that may be different than mine, and that's great. So, yeah, I've charted a different story, my kids will chart their own stories. And that's as it should be.

Gary Schneeberger:
And before we go any further with this, since this is Beyond the Crucible, since what we deal with is not letting your worst day define you, turning trial into triumph, talk a bit about how not taking steps to write a new story based on your passions and skills, can lead to a crucible. In other words, why is this a subject? Why is this idea of you don't have to live by the story you've always lived by, you can write your own new story, why is that a subject for Beyond the Crucible?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's a good question. If we blindly follow the stories of our heritage, continue to do that, that can well lead to crucibles. I'm reminded of the words of Henry David Thoreau, and he says that you may immediately feel that we're leading lives of quiet desperation, and nobody wants to live a life of quiet desperation. Our parents may be from generations of accountants, doctors or lawyers, and they'll say, "Look, I've got this great practice, legal practice. We're the biggest firm in town and I can get you in. And it's a good life and you earn a fair amount of money." And they might tell us to be practical and, "Come on, why not? You got an in here." But you may not want it. You might want to be an entrepreneur or an artist. You respect your parents' choices to be lawyers, but you might want to do something different.
But there's a tendency to go along with our parents' advice, thinking, "Well, that advice may not be terrible. I mean, it's a good living and I'd like a decent amount of money to have a house and help support a family and have nice vacations. And it's probably the safe choice. It's probably the smart choice." You sell yourself, you convince yourself. But as time goes by, as the decades go by, you might have this simmering discontent.
Now, for others, you might have grown up in an abusive family and the discontent may be a lot stronger. You might say, "Look, I don't want to continue this dysfunction. It will only hurt others." Now, sadly, some have grown up in abusive families that continue to abuse their own families. They're just so angry about what's happened, sadly, anger leaks, anger and bitterness leaks. And if you're angry and bitter, you tend to be angry and bitter towards those closest to you, but you can set a new path.
We might grow up in a family where we're told to play it safe. Maybe nobody in our family has gone to college, maybe the generations of steel workers or coal miners. And you might hear from parents and friends like, "People like us don't go to college. That's just not who we are. It's a good job, it's a hard job, but that's who we are and that's what we do." But that can also lead to simmering anger and frustration. And as I look at my own upbringing, you could say part of the crucible I went through was caused by me wanting to follow in the steps of my heritage. We've got to return the [inaudible 00:14:38] to the image of the founder. We want to make sure it's well led. And so let me just continue this story without asking myself the question, do I want to? Is it my role to fix this? These big existential questions I didn't really ask. And so I was almost trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. It just, in hindsight, didn't work.

Gary Schneeberger:
Well, as we always do with these blog discussion episodes, Warwick, you have extracted some insights and action steps for listeners and viewers. Listener and viewer, you may be expecting there's going to be seven action steps. There's not. There are not going to be seven, there are going to be nine this time. Warwick did a little extra credit on this one. No, seriously, the subject is so important to him that he came up with nine points that we're going to go through point by point so that you can find your way to enjoy true contentment as you craft your own story. So let's run through those points, Warwick. Point number one is this, examine your story. It all starts with examining your story. Why is that so important?

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, this is the first step. You want to look at your story and what are the elements that make it up. Where did we grow up? What parents did we have? Where did we live, in the country, in the town? What country? What culture? What were the expectations that we grew up with? What were the kind of professions that we were surrounded with? What you need to do is just examine your story and what are these different elements that make up who you are? Very often I find people tend not to be reflective and they don't analyze it. And before we even get to what do we like and not like, you've got to figure out, well, what are these elements? Just because you grew up in a culture with parents that had certain professions or grew up in a country, doesn't mean you have to follow that profession or live in the country rather than the city. But the first step is what are the elements of your background that make up your story? That's the first step.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. I mean, you really have to go to school on your story, right? You have to, like anything else, you got to study it before you can act on it. So it makes perfect sense that you say examine your stories, point one. Then comes point two. And points two and three are interesting to me because they're sort of the yin and the yang of everything. But point two is this, what parts of your story do you want to keep? What is critical about that?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It's easy when you're faced with a sense of quiet discontent to say, let's just chuck it all out and start anew. But I think the smart play is, after having examined your story, there may be elements that you want to keep. Maybe your family was artistic or musical. Maybe your mom or dad was a music teacher. Well, maybe you don't necessarily want to be a music teacher, but maybe you want to still play the piano or play the guitar or whatever it is. Maybe you do that in your spare time, on weekends. What are the things that you enjoy? Maybe they were entrepreneurs, always willing to try new things. Doesn't mean that you want to be in the same business as they were, but you admire the fact that they didn't play it safe. They were always willing to try things.
Maybe your family loved to hike in the wilderness, and it's like, "Gee, I love the outdoors. I want to continue to do that. That was helpful." Maybe they traveled and they exposed you to all kinds of different cultures. It's like, "I love learning about people who are different." Maybe they were very caring, always willing to help a neighbor. So there can be things about your family that you really admire and says, you know what? I love the way mom or dad did this, grandpa, grandma, and I'd like to keep those elements. So identify the ones that you admire and want to keep.
So really, I think the theme as we're going through this is you want to live your life intentionally, not just on default or on autopilot or as most of us have now, cruise control. Cruise control in a car doesn't always make sense. At some point you might want to take it off. You're in a lot of traffic and it's like, okay, don't live your life on cruise control.

Gary Schneeberger:
That was the yin. Here's the yang. Point three, what parts do you want to leave behind? Just as important as the parts you want to keep, right? And again, I love every time you do a blog, Warwick, because you build stair steps, right? You got to examine it, you got to study it. Now, what do you want to keep? What do you want to leave behind? Point three, what do you want to leave behind? Why is that both important and it can be difficult, I think too, can't it?

Warwick Fairfax:
It surely can. It's not easy to ask yourself the question, what do you want to leave behind? Because you might feel like, well, is that dishonoring my parents if I want to leave behind the whole family law business and go be a sculptor? Yeah, that's probably not going to go down too well. Or it may be admitting the fact that your family has some trauma that is painful, and just having to admit it. Sometimes that can be obvious. It can be obvious like generational trauma of abuse or alcoholism, and you want to break free from what can feel like a generational curse. Or maybe your family has this sense of being sarcastic and belittling each other and saying, "Oh, come on, that'll never work," or, "Here you go again. Come on, that's kind of stupid." Whatever idea you have, it's just so fun to tear them down with some sarcastic, snarky remark. And that might feel, "Well, that's just what we do." But it's not helpful.
You might say, "You know what? That whole sarcasm thing, I don't like when people do that to me. And you know what? I should stop doing it to others. Because why do I do it to others, my brother and sister? It's payback. They hit me with a zinger, I'm going to hit them with a zinger." Is that really who you want to be, you might decide? No, I don't want to do that. "Oh, it's all in fun." Really? Rarely those things are all in fun in the sense. It's usually there's some level of impact, especially if you keep doing it about a tender issue.
So your family might define success as corporate success with a stable job. You want to be an entrepreneur or an artist, and your family might say, "Look, a stable job with a big company, that's where it's at." In reality, how many jobs are stable these days? It's not the way it was in the '50s and '60s. But still, you might hear that from your parents. And even if you grew up in this relatively healthy and stable family, they might just say, "You need to play it safe, be cautious, careful where you travel," which in one sense is good advice, but you can overdo the be careful. "Don't take risks." And you might just want more adventure. You might want to take some level of risk. It doesn't mean like jumping off a cliff, but it might be just going to some exciting new place or just trying something different. Maybe going to a different restaurant, trying a new food. It's like, do we have to eat at the same place all the time? Can't we go somewhere different, try something different?
So you get to choose what parts you want to leave behind. Sometimes they're obviously objectively bad, like abuse, but other times it may not be bad, but it just may not fit you. You don't want that safe corporate job. You want to be an entrepreneur. You want to be a poet, an artist, whatever it is. It's not wrong, it's just not you.

Gary Schneeberger:
This is where sort of the fulcrum on which everything turns here. Point four is define your new story, right? This is where you get out the blank piece of paper, blank typewriter sheet, typewriter. Oh, my gosh, have I aged myself. A blank page on your computer, a blank screen on your computer, and you write your own story, you begin to do that. But point four is define your own story. Why is this so critical?

Warwick Fairfax:
I think one of the things you have to do is tell yourself, it's my life, I have the right to define my new story. It's okay. Because sometimes we feel like, "Look, my life is predetermined by my ancestors and my culture and surroundings and family, and I'm dishonoring them. And if I live a new story, do I even have the right? Gosh, maybe I don't feel like I have much self-worth. And so if I try to be different, I'll fail. And who am I to write my new story? Doesn't it feel arrogant?" You can play all these mind games and talk yourself out of writing a new story. But from my faith perspective, God created us with unique values, aspirations, and passions. And we have, in my view, the divine right to define and write our own story. So you want to write these elements down.
We've talked about the paths that you want to keep, the paths that you want to leave behind, and they're almost like colors that blend together to form a new painting, a new unique story. So maybe you grew up in a family of abuse, and we've had people like this on the podcast, and they want to be counselors. They want to help people who suffer trauma so that they can bounce back.
Maybe you want to define success differently than your parents, and you want to be an entrepreneur or have your own art studio. And just think about it, write some elements down, what is it that you want to do? And, yes, you may want to be successful, but success for you may not be having a large bank account. Success may not be the safe corporate job. It might involve taking more risk. But you want to be successful on your terms.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And when you wrote this in the blog, it really resonated with me. And this point of define your new story, I think it's important to point out you don't have to have every step of that new story worked out in order to begin it. And I'm going to use me as an example of that. Because I was in my mid to late 40s and I had a successful career, but we also say this often, is this all there is, right? There was this sense of there was something I was missing out on. And the thing that I was missing out on, for a variety of decisions both made by me and made by others, I had no children. And I was wrestling in my mid to late 40s with this idea that I was going to have absolutely no legacy. Have a good career, but that was about all that I was going to be.
And then I tell this story and I ask people not to judge me, and I'll ask you listeners and viewers not to judge me on the first sentence. So give me the first sentence and I'll explain more to you. My journey toward having a legacy began with a 16-year-old girl I met on Facebook. Give me that sentence. It's not a creepy story. Here's why that started a change in my life that led me to a true life of significance and a legacy.
And I was in public relations. Worked at Focus on the Family for a man named Dr. James Dobson, who was a very famous, very influential evangelical. One of my jobs as his head of public relations was to go find things that were out there that maybe were critical of him. So I went on Facebook, I found these groups. Some of them were very nasty about him. And there was one particular one that was very supportive, it was called James Dobson, Fighter for the Family. And I saw... But there was something about it. There was the picture that the administrator of the page used was one he didn't like. One that his people who didn't like him, used a lot.
So I reached out, contacted the person who ran this page, and I said, "Hey, I'm Dr. Dobson's PR guy. I'd love to give you his official biography from Focus on the Family." And the person who ran the page got back to me and said, "That sounds wonderful." And then told me she was a 16-year-old girl who lived in International Falls, Minnesota. And I immediately said, "Let me talk to your mom. That would be great." And I did do that.
And to take that story and to fast-forward it, her name was Heather Ducharme. Her name today is Heather Kirsheman. When she got married, she asked me, because she grew up in a family that you talked about, there was dysfunction. Her father was not part of the family. Heather grew up very isolated. She felt lonely. She had a father need. And for whatever reason, I stepped into that. She allowed me into that. When she got married to her husband, Jesse, she asked me to walk her down the aisle. When she had her second child, she and Jesse had their second son, Ben, his name is Benjamin Gary Kirsheman, that Gary is after me. And that idea of not having a legacy began to get chipped away. I wasn't completely gone.
But then I re-met my wife, Kelly, who I knew as a friend in college after 30 years, back in 2016. She and I found out we still liked each other. We were friends in college, but then we found out we were more than that, that we fell in love. And we got married in 2017. And the package with Kelly, as she calls it, the package came with two children, Hunter and Alyssa, who are my, they're my stepchildren. But I tell them, "It's your fault that I always fall down the steps," or I always fall down the stairs because I don't see the steps. They are my children. They are my kids in my heart.
And just recently, Warwick, to end this, and I'm sorry I'm taking a lot of time, but just recently, my nephew, Luke, who is the only child, the only son of my late sister, Dale, who passed away in 2012. Dale passed away in 2012. Luke is now a young man in his early 30s and Luke is married. Luke had one child a couple years ago, a boy named Thomas Allen. And he recently had his second son, he and his wife, Taylor, and they named their second son Theodore Lee Brewster. And Lee is my middle name. And that, again, was done out of respect and love for me.
So when I tell you, how did I define my story? I defined my story, I didn't know where it was going to go, but I wanted to lean into leaving a legacy, lean into helping people, lean into those things. And by doing that through Heather and through Alyssa and Hunter, through Kelly, and through my nephew, Luke, that is my life. When Luke and Taylor told us that they'd named Theodore, Theodore Lee Brewster, Kelly looked at me and said, "You're not allowed to ever, ever say you don't have a legacy again."
So that's just an example, and I'm sorry it's a long one, of what it can be if you start out defining your new story. You don't have to have all the parts worked out. If you just take one, we say it all the time, one step at a time, the next right step. I believe I did that, and I am richly blessed today because of it.

Warwick Fairfax:
That is such a wonderful story. As people of faith, we tend to pray to the Lord and express the longings of our heart.

Gary Schneeberger:
Amen.

Warwick Fairfax:
And I'm sure there were days in which you said, "Lord, for a variety of reasons, I don't have a family. I don't feel complete. I don't have kids. I would like to have a legacy with kids, and I don't quite know how that's going to happen." And bit by bit, the Lord unfolded a plan with Heather.

Gary Schneeberger:
Indeed.

Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, you wanted to know what was going to happen. I mean, to have Heather ask you to walk her down the aisle, that is a remarkable thing. That says, I do see you as a father figure. And then to re-meet Kelly and then her kids, Hunter and Alyssa. To have a couple different times, either your first name or your middle name used as a middle name, it's remarkable. This is just an element of your story, but you are charting a story. You had a desire, a legacy for family and kids, and the Lord unfolded it a certain way. And looking back, it's just remarkable, but you expressed the desires of your heart and it ended up happening.
But if you hadn't expressed those desires and say, look, I don't deserve a family, I don't deserve kids, maybe your choices might have been different. Maybe your connection with Heather and her family wouldn't have happened because you wouldn't have been open to it.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
Maybe with Kelly, it's like, "No, comes with a package. I don't know. I'm not worth it. I don't feel good about myself. I wouldn't be a good parent." Whatever it is, if you'd made different choices because of a different mindset, that story may never have happened. There was an alternate path. Does that kind of make sense?

Gary Schneeberger:
It does. And I'm very grateful that, again, I took one step at a time. It was interesting, one part of the... And Heather's going to love that I tell this story. Her mom called me at one point, because Heather, she was out of high school and she had some rough times going on. And her mom called me up and said, "I need you to take Heather for the summer." So Heather came out and stayed with me for the summer, and my then wife stayed with us. Interned at Focus on the Family. And it was just an opportunity to give back.
The other thing, how the relationship really was cemented. She was such a fan of Dr. Dobson and I was so close to Dr. Dobson, I just flew her and her mom out to meet Dr. Dobson. It seemed like an easy thing to do. There's not a lot I can do, right? I remember saying that, Warwick, "There's not much I can do. I don't know what it is to be a dad, I don't know what those things are, but I know what it is to help people out. And if she loves Dr. Dobson so much, let's bring them out here to meet him." And they did that. And she still talks about it to this day. Her mom still talks about it to this day.
So you're right, you just look forward and you do the thing that comes to your mind's eye, your heart's eye, act on that and you'll be amazed. I'm amazed at where my story is at, from that first blush of, I don't have a legacy and I'd like to try to build one. I've done that, and I'm grateful for that for sure.
All right. I've taken up enough of the middle of this show. Let's move on to your fifth point, Warwick. And your fifth point is this, explain your vision for a new unique story to the family you grew up with. This is critical, and it's critical based on some of the things you said earlier. Why is that so important to share that with the family that you grew up with?

Warwick Fairfax:
And this point is not easy. It's often challenging. So you have a conversation with your family and you honor the parts of your family's story that you admire, but you explain there are new parts you want to add on. So maybe you grew up in this corporate environment and you explain that you admire your family's hard work and they're striving for success, wanting to do well at what they did and grow the business, grow the number of employees. You admire that hard work and that ethic.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
You could say you too believe in hard work, but you want to define success in a different realm, in a different way. So maybe you don't want to work in a corporate environment, you want to be an entrepreneur or have a small business. Maybe you want to start a nonprofit. Maybe success for you is not money, it's how many people you can serve in your nonprofit. Maybe you measure success as the impact you have in people's lives.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
And so you're trying to explain this to your family that may come a very different environment, may just be more of a corporate environment. And you might have had a loving and supportive family, and you tell them that you admire that, but you want to have a bit more adventure. And maybe they're the kind of family that says, "Don't travel, don't take risks, be safe." And you say, "Well, I understand safety is important, but I want to travel to all sorts of places and have adventures and learn from different cultures." And they may not understand that. It's like, "Well, what's wrong with our town, our state, our country? Do you not like it?" "No, mom and dad, it's not that. I love where I grew up, but I want something different."

Gary Schneeberger:
Folks, the blog is called Your Past Doesn't Define Your Future: Nine Steps to Write a New Story. And what we're talking about, what we've been talking about is that blog and some of Warwick's points, some of those nine points about how to write your new story. Let's go through the first of them. One is examine your story. Two, what parts do you want to keep? That's important. So is three, what parts would you like to leave behind? Four, define your new story. And five, which we just talked about, is explain your vision for your new unique story to the family you grew up with. Warwick, that brings us to point six, which is to create your own supportive environment. How do you do that?

Warwick Fairfax:
So one of the things we talk a lot about at Beyond the Crucible is the importance of having fellow travelers, those who will encourage us and those who might have skills and abilities that we don't have. Sadly, you might find, and it can be all too common, is if you grow up in a family with a certain mindset, be it a corporate environment or family that were coal mine or steel workers, it might be hard to find family members who will understand what you want to do, still less support it or encourage you or find suggestions.
So if your family are coal miners, "Okay, I'm thinking of going to college. I'm wondering about a major. Maybe I want to be a teacher in high school or college. Do you have any advice for me?" It's like, well, they might say, "Hey, why are you rejecting who you are?" And, "No, it's not an environment I know anything about." So, for a variety of reasons, it might not create the environment of fellow travelers that you really need. And so maybe you can find people that grow up like you did, let's say if you're the son or daughter of a coal miner, and maybe they might have found a way to go to college, start their own business, maybe they became an academic. And it's like, "Okay, how did you do that? How did you talk to your parents? I feel like I'm rejecting them." And they might say, "No, you're not rejecting them. You're just pursuing your dream just like I did. I'm you, I just may be 20, 30 years down the track."
That's so helpful, I would say vital to have fellow travelers who will encourage you because initially it can be very scary to chart a new course that's very different than the one that you grew up with. And you need people that will encourage you to say, "It's okay to be you. It's okay to take a different path. You're not rejecting your family. You're doing your level best to keep up relations and see them and encourage them in their lives, but you have a right to pursue your own life. And here are some suggestions, here are some people maybe you could talk to. Maybe get an internship here." So having that supportive environment of fellow travelers is absolutely critical, especially in the initial stages as you're trying to live your own unique story.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right. The first six that we've talked about is the ideation stage, right? How do you research it? How do you figure out where you're going? Point seven is where the rubber meets the road really. And it could be a point in every one of the blogs you write on this stuff in all seriousness, and that is take the first step. So, Warwick, after we've gathered all the data and we've thought it through and we've hatched a plan, the plan's got to become action. What happens next for people who are following this order of what we're going through?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It's great to have a dream, but for a dream to become reality, you have to take the first step. And often that is the hardest step. We talk about this a lot, this concept of the flywheel. Getting that flywheel to move, that first push, that first step, it's not easy. Once it starts moving, you gain momentum, it's easy. That first step. So for you, maybe if you grew up in more of a blue-collar environment with mom or dad being a steel worker, just taking that first step of looking up colleges in your area and visiting them, you might feel like everybody's going to look at me and say, "What are you doing here?" They probably won't be, because people who go to colleges come from all kinds of different backgrounds. But you might tell yourself all these negative stories that may not be true, but it feels true to you. It feels real. And so you're reluctant to take that first step.
Maybe you grew up in a more of a corporate environment where be a banker, a lawyer, accountant, and you want to talk to some entrepreneurs. Maybe you have some friends of your family or maybe you have some friends at school whose parents might be entrepreneurs because they know people. Go talk to that person. If you've got some connection, like a friend of a friend or a friend of the family somewhere, a friend of a cousin, most people want to help younger people. They want to give them advice. Sit down with them and say, "Well, what did it look like for you?" Maybe ask them, "I'd like to go to college. And during college, you know anybody that has an internship?" And maybe they have something or maybe they know people. But take that first step.
And it feels intimidating. It feels like they won't want to listen to you. And you're afraid of telling your parents, "Yep, I talk with that entrepreneur and they said they've gone bankrupt three or four times, but they found a way to bounce back and they're good now." It could give your family a heart attack, it's like, "Going bankrupt? Oh, my gosh." Well, yeah, but that's actually fairly common with entrepreneurs. But they don't fear failure, they find a way to bounce back. So you've got to be willing to take that first step. Explore and the next step will be easier. But that first step is hard, but you've got to be willing to take it.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And this next one can be maybe deceivingly hard, right? This next one doesn't seem hard on its face, but it can be hard too. And the eighth point here is honor your past. How do we do that?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's an interesting question. Sometimes as you chart your new path, you want to say, "I'm done with the old," and you can ditch everything, which is really not what we're talking about. Honor your past, honor the paths that you value. Let your family know that just because you're charting a new course, let's say you want to be an entrepreneur and your family are in the corporate arena, or you want to go to college, maybe be an academic, and your family came from generations of steel workers, doesn't mean that you look down on, for instance, your dad that may have been a steel worker. You admire his hard work, his work ethic.
Maybe he tried to help other folks, younger folks in the steel mill and just tell them how to be safe and how to do a good job, and he was always looking out for people in his community. Your dad might be just this wonderful human being. You're not denigrating what he's doing at all. He may not in this case understand, but don't give up. Just say, "Look, dad, I admire who you are. I admire how you live your life. A huge part of me of just treating people with dignity, treating people fairly, working hard, I got that from you. I just want to live life a bit differently. I just am passionate about education. I want to teach high school and maybe teach in college. Some of those lessons you've given me, I want to pass on. It's just going to be in a different field." And so, hopefully, over time they will see a different story.
And maybe if you've grown up in a family where there was abuse, maybe that means forgiving them, which of course we always say doesn't mean condoning them. It's like, "Look, what you did to me, it was awful and painful, but I'm going to chart a new course. I'm going to live my life differently. And I hope and pray that you would live your life differently, because I do believe in redemption," you might say. "And it doesn't excuse what's happened, but I'd like you to chart a different course to live a bit differently yourself. But either way, I forgive what happened." And to the degree you can, "I don't want to break off relations." There might be times in which they're abusive and, for your own safety, you have to break off relations. And that does happen.
But the bigger picture here is you want to find a way to honor your parents, honor your family and not reject them as human beings as you chart your new course.

Gary Schneeberger:
And the ninth point, where it all comes to a close, is celebrate your new story. And I'm going to go first because I'm talking now, so why not? The story I told earlier in the middle of the show about, I don't say I have no kids anymore. I have three. I have my heart daughter, Heather, and I have my stepkids, Hunter and Alyssa. I have their birth stones on a necklace I wear around my neck every now and again to remind me of that, not that I would ever forget that.
Heather's children, both Benjamin, who's my namesake, but Matthew and Abby are my heart grandchildren. Hunter and Alyssa, as I said, stepchildren, but I always tell them, "It's your fault that I fall down the stairs because I don't see the steps." And then my nephew, Luke, is very much like a son to me. And the older he gets, the sweeter our relationship gets from... I have pictures of holding them when he was this big, and now he's like a bodybuilding 30-year-old, 30-something year old. But that's how I celebrate that story on holidays.
And, oh, I'll add one more. Kelly and I, because we reconnected later in our lives, got married, and we got married and we're not going to have quite as many years as people who get married earlier in life have. So we'd celebrate every year what we call our reconnectiversary, where we reconnected after 30 years apart on February 13th. So we have two anniversaries, May 20th, our wedding anniversary, and February 13th, our reconnectiversary. That's how we celebrate, how I celebrate my new story every year and as often as I possibly can. So, Warwick, why is it so important to celebrate your new story?

Warwick Fairfax:
Boy, that's awesome. It's really a great example that you're setting and the stories you're sharing because when you're on your journey, we should never forget the courage it took to begin a new story. We should always celebrate. So thinking at that time when you reached out to Heather, when you reconnected with Kelly, when you're talking to Luke and remembering obviously the sadness of losing your sister, but just celebrating the fact that you have been in his life for many years and that close relationship. If you'd made different choices, life could have been different you didn't make those choices. You chose to reconnect with Kelly, to stay close to Luke. You chose to be a part of Heather and a husband and a kid's life. You made those choices.
And I think it's important to celebrate because often we can feel bad about ourselves or what if this and what if that or, "Gee, I wish this had happened earlier." We can all go down the what-ifs, but we need to celebrate where we are and the new story we have, and be grateful. And try, to the degree you can, be thankful for the family you grew up with and some of the things that you learned from them. And you've discarded the things that weren't helpful. Try to still honor your family and be as close to them as you can.
I've had a while to look back on the failed takeover in 1987. And I used to be very harsh with myself and say it was all my fault. And I certainly made some big mistakes, but there was challenges in the family going back generations. So I look back and there's a lot I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for the faith of my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax. I'm grateful for my father and his ability to learn from people who had different opinions, be it political or religious. His love of history. I have a love of history. I greatly admire my mother's perseverance. I mean, she was somebody that never ever gave up. She was an incredibly creative lateral thinker. And I have pretty high levels of perseverance, I believe, but certainly her example of never giving up was pretty amazing.
So I've learned a lot, but yet I have a new story. I'm not involved in a family media business that ended on my watch. But through the course of time, I've done different things. But I'm a certified executive coach with the International Coach Federation. That was one season. And I wrote a book, Crucible Leadership, that came out in 2022. And now I have this podcast, Beyond the Crucible. We write blogs, active on social media. There's a number of things we do, and we're all about helping people bounce back from their worst day. Not letting their life be defined by crucibles. And helping folks live lives of significance, which we call living a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So I have my new story. My wife and I, Gail, we've been married, gosh, I guess it's like 37 years.

Gary Schneeberger:
Don't get it wrong.

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Well, it was '89. So if I do the math right, I'm pretty sure 37. But I have three wonderful kids. I have a lot to celebrate. I have a lot to be thankful for. I have a friend, whenever I call him, I says, "Hey, how you doing?" He says, "Oh, I have a lot to be thankful for." Every single time, every single conversation. We've known each other for a lot of years. And that's a good mindset to say, "Yep, I have a lot to be thankful for."
Yes, life isn't perfect. We have challenges, but we need to celebrate our story, our new story. And that gives us strength to keep on going and chart more stories that are part of our new story. So that's why it's just so important.

Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We have landed the plane on this conversation, but we can't get out of the plane. We can't, is it called disembarking the plane? Yes, maybe it is. I don't know. What do you want to leave them with on your blog, Your Past Doesn't Define Your Future: Nine Steps to Write a New Story? At beyondthecrucible.com now they can go read it. But what do you want to leave them with from our podcast discussion of that blog?

Warwick Fairfax:
It's so easy to believe that our lives are being predetermined, that we're destined to live lives like our past. "Our family come from generation of steel workers or coal miners. That's just what we do." "Nobody in my family has ever gone to college. That's who we are." "My family, they've been in the corporate world for quite a while, at least one or two generations. That's what we do. We have a safe, stable corporate job." May not feel that way today, but that's certainly what your parents might feel like. And maybe we grew up in this warm, supportive, safe family, but travel, adventure, oh, that's risky. Our family doesn't take risks, they just play it safe.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
Because that's the way you don't get hurt, just play it safe. And you might respect some of those stories. You might understand them. Not all stories are bad or wrong. We get to live our own lives. We are the author of our own stories. We get to determine the journey we want to travel on. Now, that doesn't mean that there won't be speed bumps along the way. That doesn't mean that we know exactly where our life will be headed. Certainly you, Gary, or I could not have forecast where life would take us, but we have a vision. When you had a vision to say, look, I would like a family in some sense, I would like to have that be part of my legacy, you had no clue where life would turn, but you had the vision. And from our faith perspective, the Lord helped unfold it, but you charted your course.
We get to chart our course, and from our faith perspective, the Lord helps guide us and determine those. So we can't know the future, but we can chart a different course. We can head in a different direction. We can be the captain of our ship. We can kind of lean into the tiller of our lives. And we want to just, as we do this, live life on our own terms with our own values, our own interests, our own passions. So no matter how much we may love our family, they should not be the ones determining our future. From my perspective, we have a God-given right to chart our own course and live our own lives. And we hope and pray that our loved ones understand and we should try to help them understand. But either way, we've got to live our lives and chart our course and lean into that.
We don't want to be decades into our lives, in our 50s, 60s, and 70s, and feel like we've lived a life of quiet discontent, a life of quiet desperation. It's never too early or too late to chart a new course and to begin a new story. Today's the day, if you haven't already, to begin to live a new story.

Gary Schneeberger:
Well said. I've never put this together until right now, Warwick. You'd think after more than 300 episodes of this show, I would've figured this out, since we've done a lot of episodes on your blog. You'll always end your blogs with reflection questions. You also frequently refer to yourself as a reflective advisor, right? Now that I'm looking back on what we've just done here for the last hour or so, you've advised folks on how to write new stories. You've advised them and now you're asking them to reflect. So here's the points of reflection from the blog.
Reflection point number one, make a decision today to create your own story and chart a new path. Question two, write down the elements of the story you grew up with that you want to keep melded with the new elements that you want to blend in. I'll say that again. Write down the elements of the story that you live that you want to keep melded with the new elements that you want to blend in. And then reflection point number three, take the first step to creating your new story, ensuring you have supportive fellow travelers who understand your path and can advise you and guide you well.
And that's it, folks. That will wrap another episode of Beyond the Crucible. We will be back next week to talk again about how we know your crucible experiences are difficult, we know that they can be challenging, they can knock the wind out of your sails. But we also know this, we know that they are not the ends of your stories, and we're talking about stories here today. They're not the end of your story. Your crucible's not the end of your story. If you learn the lessons from that story, if you write new chapters in that story, you can move beyond that crucible and it can lead you to the greatest destination you could ever want to get to, and that is a life of significance.
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