Selflessness. Duty. Integrity. Honesty. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the allied forces in World War II, leaned into all those character traits — and more — enroute to defeating Nazi Germany. He also listened well and cared more about his mission than his image, as we discuss this week in the third episode of our series within the show, MORE STORIES FROM THE BOOK CRUCIBLE LEADERSHIP. And he did it all while having to manage relationships with military men and political leaders who possessed big egos to match their prodigious professional skills.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. What's interesting about Eisenhower is selflessness and duty were hallmarks of his character as were integrity and honesty. When subordinates or superiors described Eisenhower, one word stood out, trust. Eisenhower exuded sincerity.
Gary Schneeberger:
Selflessness, duty, integrity, honesty. General Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Forces in World War II, leaned into all those character traits and more en route to defeating Nazi Germany. He also listened well and cared more about his mission than his image, we discussed this week in the third episode of our series within the show, More Stories from the Book, Crucible Leadership. And he did it while having to manage relationships with military men and political leaders who possessed big egos to match their prodigious professional skills.
Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have tuned in to another episode in what we call our series within the show. And that series within the show is based on Warwick's book, Crucible Leadership, which came out in 2022. And the series within the show is called More Stories from the Book, Crucible Leadership. Very creative on our part, Warwick, because we did a previous series called Stories from the Book, Crucible Leadership, and this year, we're calling it More Stores from the Book, Crucible Leadership. So, that's a pretty creative way to talk about.
No, seriously, folks, there's just so many good stories in the book, that we wanted to revisit some more of them. And here's something else we're doing here that's different about this series within the show. And that is some of the stories that we talk about will be stories that you'll find in Warwick's book, Crucible Leadership. And some of the stories are those that just because of reasons that there were so many good stories in the original manuscript that some of them had to be ended up on the cutting room floor.
That happens to be the story that we're talking about this week. And that story this week is Eisenhower, that would be Dwight Eisenhower, on character and getting great egos to work together. So, this is the third episode that we've done, Warwick, of 10 of these that we're going to do this year. It's going to go the whole year, but we have a summer series that we do that will put it on hiatus for a bit. But I'm intrigued. Of all the people that you have picked, and I know the kinds of historical figures you gravitate towards, I can tell that you feel a great respect for our subject this week, Dwight Eisenhower. Talk a little bit about why Eisenhower, why he wanted him in your book. And it probably broke your heart a little bit that he didn't make it in your book, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's always sad when you talk with editors and you just can't have a chapter that goes, I don't know, 50 pages or whatever. You've got to cut something. So, it made sense, but yeah, this was a tough one to cut. In the original manuscript, I talk to you about Eisenhower in the chapter I had on listening. And so, I introduced that chapter by saying that to form your vision and to make it become reality, not only do you have to listen, you've got to listen well. And unfortunately, many leaders don't listen well. In fact, I'd almost say most of them don't. And typically, leaders, they want to act, they want to act now, and they don't always care about what their team thinks, because after all, they feel like they're the fount of all wisdom. What does my team know? They're lesser people. I am the sun. They are the lesser planets and moons that circle around me. And they're a necessary evil, but really, it's all about me and my brilliance.
And so, that's common, unfortunately, for leaders to think that. And so, what happens is they tend not to listen because of their egos, but also because of their lack of curiosity about the team or indeed about what's going on in the world around them. And such leaders often lacked empathy. So, if you had to summarize, why do leaders typically not listen? It's typically because they don't want to, and they don't want to because they don't really care. They really don't care about the people that work around them, and that's normal. And so, what's not normal is Dwight Eisenhower. He was not like many leaders. He genuinely cared about what his team thought. He did not have a big ego. It was all about the success of the mission. It was not about him.
Eisenhower is an example of a leader who listened well amidst very challenging circumstances. So, just a bit of the backstory about Dwight Eisenhower. He was born in 1890 and grew up in Kansas. He was a graduate of West Point and was the captain in the Army during World War I. Now, one of the pivotal moments in his career that I think changed the arc of his life was in the 1920s when he served in Panama under General Fox Conner. And General Conner became a mentor for him and a huge influence. So, one example of this is that he did okay at West Point, but he really didn't do great. He wasn't like the top student. But then, after this period in Panama with General Conner, he got orders to attend the highly-competitive command of General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth.
Now, at this point, he applied himself, and he did fantastically well. So, something about Conner, which was interesting, changed the arc of his career. And so, huge moment in his life. So, when war broke out in December 1941, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, appointed then Brigadier General Eisenhower to the Army's War Plans Division in Washington. Eisenhower was promoted rapidly after that. In March 1942, he became Major General. In June 1942, he was selected over 366 senior officers to be commander of U.S. troops in Europe. By July 1942, Eisenhower was promoted to Lieutenant General in charge of the allied invasion of North Africa. And in December 1943, Eisenhower became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force that would conduct the Normandy invasion. So, he rose rapidly. And in the book, and what we're going to talk about in the podcast really focused on Eisenhower's war years, and in particular, the D-Day invasion. Later on, Eisenhower become President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
Gary Schneeberger:
And it's interesting that he would become president because he was the first president, and for a very long time, the only president, to ever rise to the presidency without having held elective office. And I think as we talk through his character here, as we talk through all of the things that made him a good leader, I think you'll see why folks, why that did indeed happen, why the country trusted him to lead the nation as president back at the end of the '50s into the '60s. Another thing to mention is that you may notice, folks, I'm wearing a U.S. pin here because we are going to talk mostly about Eisenhower's military career and how that can inform your own journey beyond your crucible and into a life of significance. But this pin was my father's who served in the military during World War II, and I inherited that. And I just thought I was going to gussy up for this episode in the only military finery I have, just so it's on point with what we're talking about.
So, as we talk about his leadership qualities work, interesting for this series within the show, you came up with two that you wanted to talk about, about Eisenhower. There were two aspects of his leadership. The first one of those was his character. That's a big topic, character. How did that help him lead? Because you've got some great insights on exactly how that helped him lead.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. One of the keys to Eisenhower's greatness was his character. In fact, when we talk about great leaders in history, some of my favorite leaders are leaders of character. We've talked before in the book and on this podcast about Abraham Lincoln, who was president during the U.S. Civil War in the 1860s. And it was said by historians, and there's a great book, Team of Rivals, written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, when she talks about how Lincoln was able to get on with other powerful leaders with great egos in his cabinet. Basically, they were the people who thought that the wrong man had won the Republican nomination in 1860. And he won them over by the greatness of his character. The fact that they had no respect for him as this country bumpkin from the then wilds of Illinois, which was considered the West back then, it didn't really worry him.
And so, Eisenhower, in one sense, in a similar fashion, his character was really one of the keys to his greatness. And you can see one example of this is when in 1942, Eisenhower was working for Army Chief of Staff Marshall in Washington. And Marshall told Eisenhower that despite others recommending Eisenhower for higher field commands, that Eisenhower was going to be stay put in his current staff position. Basically, many generals would have liked to be on the field, on the thick of battle and setting strategy for key theaters of the battle, whether in Europe or in the Pacific. But to say that you're going to be stuck in Washington behind a desk, most generals would be like, "Get me out of here. Get me on the field." And so, Marshall said that, "This may be difficult to hear." And his response was remarkable. It really just showed that for Eisenhower, the cause and the mission mattered above all. It wasn't about him.
So, Eisenhower impulsively and definitely passionately said this in response to his boss, Army Chief of Staff Marshall, he said to Marshall, "General, I'm interested in what you say, but I want you to know that I don't give a damn about your promotion plans as far as I'm concerned. I came to this office from the field, and I try to do my duty. I expect to do so as long as you want me here. If that locks me to a desk for the rest of the war, so be it." He was indignant. I'm here to serve my country. If that means behind a desk, that's where I'm going to be. It's all about the war effort. It's all about the cause. It has nothing to do with my ego. He was just indignant that Marshall would kind of dare to say, "This might be difficult for you to hear." It's like, "What do you mean difficult? It's about duty. It's about my country. It's not about what I want."
Gary Schneeberger:
Me. It's not about me.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. And for most leaders, most generals, admirals, there's a little bit of the me in there. The fact that Eisenhower was concerned about doing his duty and not promotions must have impressed Marshall. In fact, sometimes when somebody under you says, "Look, I don't really care about promotions. I just want to do my job or my duty," it makes you think, huh, maybe I should promote a person like that who doesn't have ego.
Gary Schneeberger:
Exactly. Exactly.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's not your intention, but it could be the result, and that was the result here. So, later on, Eisenhower drafted a paper for Marshall on the requirements of a commander of U.S. forces in Europe. And so, Marshall told Eisenhower on receiving the paper that he, Eisenhower, was going to be the man to execute the plan. And that's not at all what Eisenhower was trying to do. He was just trying to draft what are the key qualities that such a commander needs. Ironically, when Eisenhower outlined the qualities for this job, it turns out Eisenhower had exactly those qualities. This paper said that the commander of U.S. forces in Europe would need to have the full confidence of Army Chief of Staff Marshall. Well, check that one. He'd worked for Marshall for a while, and Marshall had utmost confidence in Eisenhower. He must be in full agreement with Marshall's ideas. Well, Marshall probably had a pretty good idea if that was true. This commander would need to be able to play several different roles and would need to be patient in dealing with other allies.
How? How can you be patient? If you don't have an ego, and it's all about the mission. So, check, check, check, I'm sure when it came to Marshall looking at Eisenhower. And so, what's interesting about Eisenhower is selflessness and duty were hallmarks of his character as were integrity and honesty. When subordinates or superiors described Eisenhower, one word stood out, trust. Eisenhower exuded sincerity. There's an interesting quote from British Admiral Andrew Cunningham. Cunningham said of Eisenhower, "I liked him at once. He struck me as completely sincere, straightforward, and very modest." Montgomery, who we'll talk about later, British General Bernard Montgomery, he said of Eisenhower that, "His real strength lies in his human qualities. He has the power of drawing the hearts of men towards him as a magnet attracts the bits of metal. He merely has to smile at you, and you trust him at once. He is a very incarnation of sincerity." Think about this comment as we talk more about some of the key people around Eisenhower.
Gary Schneeberger:
And that, interestingly enough, is a perfect segue into what we're going to talk about next because all of the characteristics that you talked about, about Eisenhower and what other people thought about Eisenhower inform the next leadership trait that Eisenhower had that you want to talk about here. And that is this. You singled out the fact that he was skillful in managing men with large egos. Pretty much everybody we're about to talk to from this point or about to talk about from this point on had some slice, or two, or three, or four, or a battalion of large ego in them. There was a lot of that that Eisenhower had to deal with. So, how was he able to wrangle all of the very powerful men who had perhaps, not perhaps, had a different disposition than him as well?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. When you think about leaders dealing with people with large egos, Dwight Eisenhower dealt with the Mount Olympus, the goat, if you would say, the greatest of all time of egos. It wasn't just he was dealing with large egos. His mission was to lead the allied invasion of Europe to free Europe from the Nazis. This wasn't a small mission. So, the mission was of utmost importance when you think of human history. This is one of the larger missions is to free Europe from tyranny, from the Nazis who killed millions of Jewish people and subjugated millions. It was a huge deal.
And so, think of Dwight Eisenhower in those days and months leading up to the allied invasion of D-Day, which was June 6th, 1944, and the kind of people Eisenhower had to deal with. So, above him, he had President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States. He had Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the Great Britain, two powerful leaders with big egos, and definitely many, many pages have been written about both men, Roosevelt and Church. They were giants in history, certainly in the 20th century. Then, he also had to deal with General Charles de Gaulle, who was the leader of the free French, and would later on become the president of France and had a massive influence in the modern French history. So, these three people in their respective countries of the United States, Britain, and France, had enormous influence in their countries, giants of their respective countries. And then, below him, it didn't get any better in that sense.
Gary Schneeberger:
No.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's like, wait, there's more. So, he had to deal with British General Bernard Montgomery and American General George Patton, two commanders with very large egos, but they were also military geniuses. I don't get into this in this part of that manuscript, but we think of General Patton in the Battle of the Bulge when the American and Allied forces were trapped in the Ardennes, which I think is maybe somewhere near Belgium. It was like in 1944, I believe. And the allies were almost surrounded in sort of a bulge. And nobody knew, well, how can we get reinforcements in time? And so, Patton said, "I got it. I can do this." And he marched his third army across large areas of land at incredible speed with a very cold weather, and it was incredible. When we think of General Montgomery, he is the hero of the battle of El Alamein in North Africa, and he was up against no lesser German general than Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox.
So, it's almost like in Civil War terms, General Grout being the leader of the Union Army against the leader of the Confederate forces, Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee was a tactical genius. Or Wellington against Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars. For Montgomery to be up against Rommel and beat him or he beat his army in El Alamein was no small feat. So, both of these generals, Montgomery and Patton may have had large egos, but they were some of the greater generals in military history. So, large egos, but they were incredibly good at what they did. So, just think about that.
Gary Schneeberger:
Sorry. It makes me think that Doris Kearns Goodwin should write a book called Team of Egos. Team of Rivals.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly.
Gary Schneeberger:
About what Eisenhower had to deal with because the only bullet he seemed to dodge was that he was in charge of the European theater and MacArthur, who had an enormous ego, was in charge of the Pacific Theater, and they didn't have to really work together much. That was all the presidents having to deal with it. So, it's remarkable to me just what you're going to go on and talk about what Eisenhower was able to accomplish with the kind of people he had to lead. And then, stay tuned, folks, because you'll see what these people thought of Eisenhower as their work with him and underneath him went on. So, continue.
Warwick Fairfax:
Very well said. He had team of egos. I think that would be a great, great book. Eisenhower had to conduct the Normandy invasion successfully and free Europe from Nazi control all while keeping his powerful leaders in check and pulling in the same direction. And this was a massive challenge. Some would say it was as big, if not bigger than the Normandy invasion itself. If you don't keep all these people on board, people above him and people below him, things were not going to go well. And so, this task would require a lot of patience, persuasion, and above all, listening.
So, time and again, Eisenhower's commanders would come to him with their plans and ideas, be it Montgomery, Patton or U.S. General Omar Bradley, who was over Patton. And their plans would often conflict with Montgomery combining British-led forces and Bradley's U.S.-led forces. So, they'd often want to head in different directions and he'd have to referee. And then, you'd have complications by people above him. You'd have British Chief of Staff Alan Brooke and U.S. Chief of Staff George Marshall, not to mention Churchill or I would assume Roosevelt who might want to know, hey, what's going on, Eisenhower?
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, just maybe a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
Are you sure you want to do this? For Churchill, it's like this is freeing them from the threat of the Nazis over the other side of the English Channel, and for Roosevelt, obviously, a huge deal. So, this was not easy to keep these folks in check and just referee. One of the things I think it's worth mentioning is there's some great movies that really talk about some of the characters that we're chatting about in this episode. You've got the 1970 film Patton with George C. Scott, and you have Karl Malden, the great character act who also started I think a show in the '70s, the Streets of San Francisco that I watched growing up.
Gary Schneeberger:
Good pull. That's good. Yep.
Warwick Fairfax:
Which was fun. And I think it starred a young Michael Douglas as his kind of number two.
Gary Schneeberger:
It did. Ding, ding, ding. Trivia win.
Warwick Fairfax:
Anyway, Karl Malden starred as Omar Bradley, who was Patton's boss in a pretty tough challenge. And then, for the D-Day, The Longest Day came out in 1962, and you've got people like every famous actor of the day was in this. John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum. I was just looking this up before we started, and there's some obscure person called Henry Grace that was a set director, and he was tagged to be Eisenhower because he looked a lot like Eisenhower. Was he an actor? Nobody looked like him. So, hey, you over there. I know you're setting the sets, but we think you'd be a wonderful person to play Eisenhower.
Gary Schneeberger:
There's an interesting point in what you just described. Based on what we've been talking about, about Eisenhower's character and the way he conducted himself, his sincerity and his humility, right? Patton gets a movie named after him starring at the time, one of the most in-demand actors, George C. Scott, who won an Oscar for that role. You just mentioned the other movie on D-Day, which all these Hollywood stars were in, and the set designer played Eisenhower, right? Doesn't what you've just described speak to his character and his humility, that he doesn't have a movie called Ike that's out there somewhere that is bombastic and won Oscars, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's so true. I'm sure you remember at the beginning of Patton, they had some scene with a giant U.S. flag and Patton is walking up these stairs and it's like all hail Caesar, right?
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
All hail. Let's bow down and admire Patton. Patton had a massive ego, but the reason that Bradley and Eisenhower kept him on, despite his ego and he made some mistakes, was he was just a brilliant general. And if you're trying to win the war against the Nazis, you want people that can do the job that are brilliant. And so, you maybe put up with their egos, and that was the genius of Eisenhower. So, leading up to D-Day, June 6th, 1944, Eisenhower's challenges were daunting. And just to give you an idea of the logistics, and one of the things that's said of Eisenhower is he was brilliant at logistics. That was certainly something the stories look at him and military experts. And he really had to be on his game when it came to that because to launch D-Day, the D-Day invasion of Normandy, he had a force of over 170,000 troops, 20,000 vehicles, 4,124 landing ships and craft, and 1,203 warships.
And during the first few months of 1944, the South of England was transformed into a giant military base with over three million soldiers, sailors, and airmen. That's a lot of people. And so, here we are on the evening of June 4th, 1944, two days before D-Day, and Eisenhower gathered his key staff members to discuss D-Day. And that's obviously one of the scenes in the movie, The Longest Day. And so, they had to make a decision, should they proceed with D-Day on June 6. One of the challenges was there was adverse weather. And so, you've got to have at least some degree of decent weather to launch this invasion.
And so, he was going around the table asking for people's opinions. And the weather guy said, "Well, there's a narrow window on June 6, and if we don't make June 6, just because of the weather and the tides and all of that, we might have to wait for weeks after." And then, having to wait for weeks was going to be tough because you have a whole bunch of people who were waiting and ready to go. So, this was not going to be easy. So, he went around the table and asked people what do they think, go or no go? It was a simple, in that sense, binary decision, complicated decision, but it was one or the other. And so, they went round, and people like Montgomery and others all said, "Yep, let's go. Let's do it." And so, this was not easy at all. It was a tough decision, but Eisenhower realized we've got a narrow window on June 6, and if we just keep waiting, then there's going to be a chance that word might get out. There's going to be a security risk, maybe a significant security risk.
Massive amount of forces. The Germans had spies everywhere. Waiting weeks, because at the time, the Germans thought that the allies were going to attack Calais, not Normandy. So, that's where they had most of their defenses. So, this was somewhat of a master stroke in keeping this all under wraps. And in fact, one of the things they did, which was really brilliant to fool the Germans, is they had this shadow army in the South of England that supposedly were getting ready to invade Calais. And who was going to lead the shadow force, it was going to be General Patton. And so, the Germans thought, well, of course they're going to have their best general leading this, right? Naturally. They're not thinking about ego and some of the challenges that Patton presented. And so, there was Patton riding around in his Jeep with this fake army. I think they had like fake tanks, and it looked real from above, but it was probably wood, cardboard, whatever. And they're pretty good at making fakes that from the air, looked very real.
So, the allies and Eisenhower were going to great lengths to keep this all under wraps, but that can only go so long. So, with all of this in mind, Eisenhower listened, he weighed the evidence, he decided, and took responsibility. He said, "We're going to go. It's going to be June 6." Just to give you an idea of how much Eisenhower took responsibility, Eisenhower drafted two press releases. One, obviously, was the invasion was a success, but there was a second press release. And in that press release, that was to be released if the Normandy invasion failed. At the end of that press release, Eisenhower says this, "If any blame or fault attached to the attempt, it is mine and mine alone." So, Eisenhower may have listened well and taken input, but he always took responsibility. He was not going to blame anybody else.
Now, how many leaders, if things go wrong, don't say, "Well, it wasn't my fault." My gosh, I've got to deal with Patton and Montgomery, and I'm being second guessed by Churchill and Roosevelt. And even if he didn't say it then, maybe he'd write it in his war papers or in his book afterwards saying, "Hey, wasn't my fault. My hands were tied." The weather was bad, et cetera, et cetera, but not Eisenhower. If this mission failed, he would take full responsibility.
Gary Schneeberger:
And there's something in it, Warwick, there's something in it that he wrote the press release himself. As a PR guy myself, I've written a lot of stuff, good and bad for the people I work for. I get it's a different time, but that speaks to me about his integrity as well, that he sat down and put his own thoughts into that press release. He didn't farm it out to somebody else, to a flack in the army to create this. He went so far as to stand behind the words he created. That, to me, is Mount Olympus level, as you say many times, of taking responsibility for something, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
That's so well-said. And just think about that discussion. Here, you have his public relations representative, could well be somebody in the military because they had PR people in the military. And he might have said, "Well, General, I hear what you're saying and that's admirable, but are you sure you want to say that? Because it's not really just your fault." You might have pushed back a bit saying, "I admire this, but the reality, is it's the weather. You've got a lot of moving paths. You've got the British, and the French, and the Americans. Are you sure you really want to go all the way out there?" I may be wrong, but you would've thought if you were in that position, [inaudible 00:31:20] general, "I admire this, but you sure you want to say that?" Who knows? But you would've thought they might push back slightly because you're trying to protect your client in a sense.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right, for sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
And so, maybe that what happened or maybe the person knew Eisenhower so well is like, "If I do that, I'll get my head handed to me." So, maybe not. Because they'll say, "What are you talking about?" But yes, it would've been interesting to be a fly on the wall in that discussion between the-
Gary Schneeberger:
For sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
... rep and him. One of the keys to Eisenhower's success at D-Day, as well as in World War II was his capacity to manage leaders above him and below him who had large egos. So, let's take British General Montgomery. That is a real case in point because he absolutely made them feel heard. And at one point, Montgomery said to his superior, British Chief of Staff Alan Brooke, that he thought that Eisenhower had no strategic vision and was incapable of making a plan or running operations when it started. Now, this was something Brooke had said to Montgomery before, and Montgomery agreed.
And in a light of history, I think military experts and writers would say that there is some point about what Montgomery and Brooke were talking about. Eisenhower's genius was in managing large egos, and managing logistics, and getting complex operations to happen. But was he a military commander with the skill of a Montgomery or Patton? I think historians would say, "No, that wasn't his genius." As we say often at Beyond the Crucible, you want a team of fellow travelers that have skills and gifts that you don't have. Well, obviously, Montgomery and Patton were some of the greatest military tacticians and geniuses of all time. So, yes, it would be a tall order for Eisenhower to have that level of genius in that realm, but that wasn't his role. He wasn't an on-field commander. So, I think there was some truth in what Montgomery and Brooke were saying to each other.
Now, contrast this with what Montgomery said later. In 1945, he wrote a letter to Eisenhower after the Germans had surrendered. So, at this point, this is what Montgomery said to Eisenhower, really in a moment of transparency, and honesty, and self-awareness, really. He said this, "Dear Ike." As I'm sure folks know, Eisenhower's nickname was Ike. "Dear Ike, I suppose we shall soon begin to run our own affairs." Before the Allied Expeditionary Force split up, he wanted to say, "What a privilege and an honor it has been to serve under you. I owe much to your wise guidance and kindly forbearance."
Now, Montgomery said that he knew his own faults very well, and he said, "And I do not suppose I'm an easy subordinate. I like to go my own way, but you have kept me on the rails in difficult and stormy times and have taught me much." Montgomery thanked Eisenhower for all he had done for him and signed off, "Your very devoted friend, Marty." Montgomery's nickname was Marty. And that's really the understatement of the century, right? I do not suppose I'm an easy subordinate.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yes. That's the Australian way of saying it, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It's well worth watching those two movies. You mentioned Patton and The Longest Day. In Patton, as I recall, there's a scene when the Allied forces invade Sicily, which is a large island off of Italy, from North Africa. And Montgomery made it clear that he wanted to be the one to liberate the capital of Sicily Palermo. At least as I recall, Patton said, "Yeah, we're not doing that." And he entered Palermo first with the American forces before the British, which obviously would've ticked Montgomery off. But yeah, these are people with large egos and it's like, just because the other one wanted to go first, if I can go first and take X town or region, I will. And if Montgomery doesn't like it, oh, well, who cares? That's sort of Patton's attitude. I'm sure it would've been vice versa.
Gary Schneeberger:
For sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
I thought they didn't respect each other, but again, large egos. You don't just sit around and wait for the other person and say, "Oh, excuse me, after you." No, that wasn't the credo of Montgomery or Patton.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. We're about to pivot to pulling back out of World War II and going into the World War you, the things that people are going through now, right? They're crucibles and how you apply these lessons. I'm going to give you an on-ramp to that conversation because we just talked about how Eisenhower heard people, right? He heard them. But my perspective in leadership has always been, I hear, I will hear everybody who has things to say that I can take into account before I make a decision, but there's a difference between being heard and being heeded, being followed, right? The buck has to stop somewhere. Let's go to Truman. The buck has to stop somewhere, and it surely did with Eisenhower. So, as you talk about... These two traits that we've been talking about here for Eisenhower, how do they play out for average everyday folks who are listening and watching this podcast today? How can they take some of the stuff that we've been talking about and apply it to their own lives?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. What you're saying is really such a good point about being heard, not necessarily heeded. There's no question when you think of Eisenhower on June 4th, 1944, two days before D-Day, he's getting all these reports about the weather, it's looking iffy, there's a narrow window. I think many were probably thinking, let's do it. There might have been some that weren't sure, but ultimately, he was going to make the decision. And in his mind, the logical decision was to go. There's a narrow window for weather. You can't keep a secret for weeks. If you don't go on June 6 because of the tides and various other reasons, it could be weeks. So, he was hearing people, he was listening to them, but at the end of the day, he knew the right decision was go on June 6th. That was a logical, right decision.
And even if Montgomery and Patton were unsure, I don't know it would have influenced his decision. Would it have dissuaded him? He might have said, "Look, I hear what you're saying." Obviously, Montgomery and Patton, now, let's wait around and twiddle our thumbs. So, you could bank on what they were going to say. But even if they were a little wary, which they wouldn't be, he would still do the right thing. He would certainly hear them, but he would make his own decision and take responsibility.
So, when we think about just these traits we've been talking about, which is his ability to deal with large egos and his character, his ability to listen, often, our vision will come out of the ashes of our crucible. And to form this vision for it to become reality, we say all the time that we need a team of fellow travelers. Some will encourage us, but some will be our fellow team members, and we need to make sure those team of fellow travelers have skills and abilities that we don't have because nobody has all the gifts.
And so, it's absolutely critical when you gather your team is they have to be on the same page with the vision, and you've got to get them to work together and to trust and respect you. And that's not easy. They may not necessarily have full confidence in you. As you've mentioned earlier, when Abraham Lincoln became president, his cabinet, they did not feel like the right man had become president. They thought he was this uneducated person from the wild of Illinois. And so, we had to win them over. So, their confidence in him as a leader, probably not too high, might be wait and see. And how could this guy with this lack of education, he's going to lead us into the Civil War? How's that going to work out? They probably had questions.
So, for all of us, whether we're leading a nonprofit, a small company, large company, it could be a neighborhood, homeowners association, could be all sorts of things. We've got to build trust amongst the folks on our team, and we've got to build a sense of respect. Well, how do you do that? Well, you've got to listen to folks, but you've also got to have them realize that you have integrity. You will shoot straight with them. You won't sugarcoat it. That builds respect when they feel they can trust you. And when you have people on your team who have greater abilities than you do in certain areas, that's like, oh, this person wants to get the job done, wants to get the mission done. Even if maybe we know more than in this case, he does, that will breed trust because this person is about the mission, not about ego. Maybe I want to work with somebody like that.
So, you've got to be the person that people want to work with. You want to be the person the people are attracted to being around. And Eisenhower was that kind of person. Lincoln was that person. So, when you think of Eisenhower, his challenge couldn't be greater. With powerful leads above him, Roosevelt, Churchill, and de Gaulle, powerfully below him, Patton and Montgomery. We may not have to deal with leaders with these kind of egos, but we might find it's somewhere on the spectrum. So, let's say we have a vision that we're off-the-charts passionate about, and we've assembled a team who are also off the chats passionate about it because don't we want people on our team that really love the vision?
Gary Schneeberger:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
Why would you pick people of like, "Eh, it's a paycheck, whatever. Can I come in at 10:00 and clock out at 3:00 because it's all about the paycheck. I could care less about what I'm doing." No, you want people off the chart's passionate. Well, there's a problem with having people who are off-the-charts passionate. They might be disagreement. Maybe they agree on the vision. Maybe they want to tweak the vision a bit, but they may certainly have disagreement about how to implement the vision. And because they're so passionate about it, they might get even into heated debate.
Well, that might happen and strong egos might dig their heels in. And that's where we can learn so much from Eisenhower. He was all about the mission and not about his own ego. He had outstanding character, honesty, and integrity, and he listened well. So, think of yourself being like an Eisenhower in this sense. You're having a heated argument about your nonprofit and people are vehemently disagreeing about the approach, and you've got to show them that you listen to them, that they're heard.
At the end of the day, you got to say, "Look, I hear what you're saying, John, Mary, Frank, great points." And you might, as they say in executive coaching, which I am, you mirror back. "Well, Mary, I heard you say A, B and C. Frank, I heard you say this. John, I heard you say this." Okay. You've just proven you've heard them, right? One of the key aspects of listening is a mirroring. "I hear what you're saying, but here's the direction we're going to go." It might be in the direction of one of those three I just mentioned. It might be a combination or it might be something that neither of those three people mentioned. That's not so much the issue. As long as they felt heard and you're taking responsibility and things don't go well, you don't say, "Oh, it was your fault." Even if there's collective agreement and you don't say, "Well, it's your guy's fault. If I hadn't agreed with you, then maybe things would have gone better."
No. You say, "No. It was my decision. I might have acted on your input, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with me," as you said, to quote Truman, "And it's my fault." That's what great leaders do. And you can be a great leader of an organization of any size. It doesn't have to be the supreme Allied commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. It could be, again, your a local nonprofit, local business you start. You've got to be able to listen well and you've got to say to yourself, "It's not about ego. It's about getting a team of incredible fellow travelers and just being honest, transparent, and listening well, and just getting the job done and taking responsibility." So, there's a lot we can learn from Eisenhower.
Gary Schneeberger:
Feels like we've gone through sort of a military campaign here just in terms of the details that we've covered. And we've reached the end of our conversation, but I want to get your thoughts on what are the big takeaways that listeners and viewers can have from the man who oversaw D-Day and how can they apply it, our listeners and viewers apply it to their VR day, which is make their vision a reality day? How can what Eisenhower teaches us help us make our vision a reality?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Dwight Eisenhower was all about the mission. It was not about ego or about promotions he might receive. You think about that conversation with Chief of Staff Marshall in Washington DC in which Marshall says, "Eisenhower, look, I need you here in Washington. I need you here on my staff. I'm not planning on giving you a field promotion. Know this is going to be tough." And Eisenhower was indignant. "Basically, What do you mean? I'm all about the mission. If I'm here throughout the war, so be it. It's all about the cause." He just was indignant that this was a conversation that Marshall would even have with him. The fact that he was so indignant just shows that... It's almost like he was wondering if his character was being questioned, which is clearly not Marshall's intent. He was trying to be empathetic with General Eisenhower, and pretty much every general wants to be in the thick of battle and not just stuck behind a desk in Washington.
But that shows you his character. He was a man of immense character, integrity, and he listened well to leaders with powerful egos. To deal with Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Churchill, Patton, Montgomery, to use that phrase I used before, that is the Mount Olympus of egos. No egos in history had greater egos in that collective bunch. And yet, he was able to work with them and have D-Day be successful and ultimately lead to the liberation of Europe from the Nazis. So, I think what we can learn from this is for us to bring our vision to reality, we need to be people of high character and integrity whose focus is purely on the vision and not how much credit we're going to get or even what our role is in the vision.
I think of Stephanie Woolard. She is an Australian who led a nonprofit in Nepal. I think it was called Seven Women and really to empower women there who often face very challenging circumstances. And there was a moment when she felt that she needed to hand off the leadership of that organization to other people. And I remember asking, "Was that hard to hand off something you founded?" "No." She's a person of great faith, but she said, "No, it was the right thing to do. It's about the mission. And I felt like it was time to step back." Now, that takes a very special leader to step back from something you founded. Well, Stephanie Woolard was showing it's all about the mission. And in that sense, she has a common character trait with Eisenhower. It's all about the mission. So, we can learn a lot from that, from his character, integrity, from wanting the best people around us.
Sometimes you want people that we get on with, not people we'll have a drink with or have a coffee with. You don't have to want to have your team over for dinner every night. You don't even have to gel with them. Maybe you have nothing in common. They're interested in the arts, you're interested in sports or vice versa or whatever. They like building things. You like reading philosophy books. I don't know. Pick the differences, but they might have nothing in common with you, but can they get the job done? They might have big egos. That's a factor, but can they get the job done? You have to decide, can I manage these egos? Okay. They're different than me. They have a big ego, but they're really, really good at what they do. This vision is so important. You make a decision. Can you manage them? And if you feel at the end of the day, yep, I can manage the egos. They've got brilliant skills and abilities I don't have. Then, you go with it.
And again, ultimately you make the decision, you make the call as a leader, and you don't pass the buck. So, we can learn so much from Eisenhower. Again, not all of us will lead the Allied Expeditionary Force to free Europe. I realize that. Not all of us will lead countries. Most of us will not be at that level, but be it a small nonprofit, a local business, homeowners association. We can learn so much from his character, his integrity, his honesty, his taking responsibility, and his willingness to have people with skills and abilities that I'm sure he realized that these people, as in Patton and Montgomery, had a level of strategic and tactical genius that he didn't have.
I'm sure if you asked him, "Do you feel you have the on-field tactical skills Montgomery and Patton had?" I'm sure Eisenhower would say, "No, probably not even close, but that's okay. That's why I have them there." So, we can learn a lot from his integrity and his willingness to have people with massive egos and skills and abilities that he didn't have and make it work to get the job done. And there are so many lessons we can learn from Dwight Eisenhower.
Gary Schneeberger:
And now is the time to start learning them, folks, because that will wrap our third series within the show episode on More Stores from the Book, Crucible Leadership. We will turn the page next month to another story to help you turn the page and move beyond your crucible to a life of significance. We will see you next week.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
Our guest this week, Joy Johnson, describes her first steps as a girl into the life of significance she would pursue after the death of her mother, who took her own life on Christmas night when Joy was 6 years old. Losing her mom was just the first devastating crucible she’d face. She has moved past her crucibles by leaning into her faith and dedicating herself to building a community of women she helps step out of constant self-sabotage, gain control of their lives and give themselves permission to live out the vision God has for them.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible.
Joy Johnson:
What I felt was a freedom, a level of freedom, and being able to share the goodness of God coming out of my testimony. And that is when I began to really like my heart for others began to develop when I was in my junior high years. And so I would call, I would make a list of my friends and I would write down what they were going through and I would call.
Gary Schneeberger:
That's our guest this week, joy Johnson, describing her first steps toward the life of significance she would pursue decades after the death of her mother, who took her own life on Christmas night when Joy was only six years old. Losing her mom was just the first devastating crucible she'd face. She has moved past those trials and traumas by leaning into her faith and dedicating herself to building a community of women she helps step out of constant self-sabotage, gain control of their lives, and give themselves permission to live out the vision God has for their lives.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Joy, it's wonderful to have you here on our podcast, and a little bit of an introduction to Joy. Joy is Joy Johnson. She's a coach, speaker, and host of the Top 1.5% Globally Ranked Podcast, The Journey to Becoming. Love that title, which we'll talk a lot about, and the founder of The Joyful Fit Life community. She lives in California with her husband and two wonderful children. And she says today her life is better than she ever could imagine, but it wasn't always that way.
That's a great way to have a buyer because that's a perfect intro to really, as we begin the discussion, what we often talk about at Beyond the Crucible is tell us what life was like before the crucible. But you were so young when you had your first crucible. Can you even remember? I think you were six years old. Can you even remember what life was like pre-crucible for a very young joy?
Joy Johnson:
Yeah, I think it is, first, I just want to say thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor, and I think it is hard. It is hard when you've experienced such deep trauma at a young age and our mind or our subconscious can... Our body wants to keep us in... wants to protect us. And so I want to say that I remember, and at the same time it's like, "Is it my memory? Is it because I've seen pictures? Is it because I've been told?" So yes, the memories are a little fuzzy.
Warwick Fairfax:
I can imagine.
Joy Johnson:
Yeah, definitely.
Warwick Fairfax:
So just talk about that Christmas night when you were six years old, and you've had a few crucibles, but that was, I guess, one of the-
Joy Johnson:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
... most traumatic, horrendous that anybody could possibly imagine or go through. So tell us what happened that Christmas night.
Joy Johnson:
Yeah, yeah. So let's see, Christmas evening, Christmas is a time in a child's life where you just look forward. You're looking forward to the day, and it's like the presents. What else besides the presence? And yes, no, we're celebrating Jesus and Jesus' birthday. And we were at my grandmother's house on my Dad's side and we had gone to see our grandparents on my Mom's side prior. They both lived in the same city and she said, "We forgot our jackets." And she said, "Joy, do you want to come with me?" But this was also at the exact moment when we were about to open our Christmas presents. And so I was like, "No, I don't want to go. I'm so sorry Mom, I don't want to go." And so she did. She went by herself and we proceeded to open presents, and she had just had... She was four months postpartum with my youngest brother.
And looking back at pictures, she was dealing with depression. She was dealing with postpartum depression, and the pictures that we had of that day, you could just see, you could just see that something was wrong. And so she left. We opened presents. I'm in the restroom, and this is a vivid memory I have. My grandmother's house and there was... It was the bathroom was all peach. And I hear my Dad saying, "Joy, Joy," and I'm like, "Oh, man, we're probably leaving. We probably have to leave now." And I walk out into the living room, and there was just blanks stares. Like my whole family was in that living room, and my Dad told me in that moment, "Your mom is not coming back."
And I think it just like was fuzzy. I think that's the best way I could describe it. And I'm like, "Well, what do you mean she's not coming back?" And so it was at that time that when she left to go retrieve our jackets, that is also the period of time where she took her life. And, of course, as a six-year-old, you're trying to process these things, and the sudden thought in my mind, too, was like, "I should have gone with her. If I went with my Mom, then maybe she would still be here." And I remember sharing that with my Dad, and even my Dad, she was 32 when she took her life. And my Dad, too, immediately he's like, "Joy you cannot."
Thank you Jesus for my Dad, who just covered me in so much love, so much affirmation and really... not... yes, encouraging me, but reassuring me it was not my fault because it's so easy, and I think this is a sensitive topic to talk about, suicide, suicidal ideation, depression, mental illness, all of these things. And so as I was six years old, growing up, and as I learned about my Mom, it was always painted in the light that she was sick. And I did not harbor any anger. I'm so grateful for the way that it was presented to me because, yes, of course I'm so sad. I lost my Mom and it's the most traumatic thing for a child, and at the same time, I had such grace for her in knowing that it wasn't because she didn't love me.
There was something that was wrong. It was a chemical imbalance. That's how my Dad... Those are the words that I remember that echoed in my mind. She was not okay. And I came to learn also that it was not just her that had took her life, my grandmother. So it was a generational stronghold. If you're not familiar with that term or that phrase, a generational stronghold is something that has... it's in the name, a strong hold on your family. And it can be like, "Oh, this is the way at it's always been and it always has to be this way. And as believers, we know or we understand that with the power of Jesus that we can break. It is a decision. We can break these strongholds. And so that's a little picture into little Joy at six years old on Christmas night.
Warwick Fairfax:
How did you sort of manage that? Because I know your dad was reassuring, was it faith? Because there would've been many kids no matter what their dad had said, that would have said to themselves, "I know my Dad is being nice, but it was my fault. I know the whole chemical imbalance thing, although gee, at six, I don't really understand what that means. Sick." But yeah, even if she was sick, from a spiritual perspective, that's almost like the voices of the enemy, so to speak. You could have easily gone down the track of, "No matter what my dad says, it was my fault. If I'd been in that car, she wouldn't have." How did you avoid going down that dark trail, which you could have-
Joy Johnson:
Mm-hmm.
Warwick Fairfax:
... in spite of your dad?
Joy Johnson:
Yeah, I think there's so much of my faith attached to that. I'm not sure when in the year, so this happened Christmas night, and I know that when I was six years old, I did ask Jesus to come into my heart. I can't recall if it was before or after, but I did grow up in a Christian household. And when I came back to school, the whole school knew. The whole school knew what was taking place, and kids say some silly things when it comes to death, and especially when it comes to suicide. And I remember somebody told me, "You know what? If your dad dies, you're going to have to go to an orphanage and they have gross food there."
Warwick Fairfax:
Ugh.
Joy Johnson:
Like that is forever-
Warwick Fairfax:
[inaudible 00:09:22].
Joy Johnson:
... etched in my mind. But I know that I did go into counseling. My Dad did put me into counseling, and I can't say anything else, but it was the grace of God. And this is something that at a six-year-old, my brain was not fully formed and all of these things. There is a term and it's called transgenerational trauma, and I'm so grateful that I did not experience and have not experienced depression, suicidal ideation. I have not experienced those dark mental areas. But what had taken place, and this followed me into years and decades, and I had to do some deep healing, was the transgenerational trauma that took place in my life was more in terms of emotional health.
And so while I did not live in the shame and in the guilt of that, what did come up, and I really think that this is something that isn't talked about so openly or that we can receive healing from, like you mentioned, evening knowing about postpartum depression, all of it, this was 1991, so this was a long time ago. We have made strides in the mental health area, but emotional health is so different because it looks and disguises itself as people pleasing. IT disguises itself as creating false narratives. It disguises itself in lying and saying like, "Oh, I am okay." Like, "Maybe if I just do more."
So the way that it showed up in my life was like, "I have to be the best, I have to be perfect," because it was almost like works-based and striving, which is the opposite of what we know in the Bible. But that is something that really it contributed to my lack mentality, my poor or poverty thinking because I grew up and I felt like I am less than because I do not have. "I don't have my Mom and everybody knows it. I don't get to experience these things and everybody knows it." And there was a level of shame that was brought, and we'll probably get to this in a little bit, especially in my older years and the shame in what it was around, because again, in the '90s growing up, it's like, "Oh my gosh. What do you mean? That's how your mom died?"
So much shame and like, "There must be something wrong with my family. So let me cover it up by how I can perform. Let me cover it up by trying to be perfect." That's exhausting. Another thing that I felt as well growing up was I have had experienced such deep loss, yet my name is Joy. And at a young age I was like, "I don't like my name. I don't like it." Everyone's like, "Oh, happy, happy, joy, joy. You're so happy. You must be happy all the time." And yet, on the inside it's like, "But do you know what I lost? Do you know what I experienced?" And so I was also wrestling with that and having that shame even in what I was named, not knowing that it was prophetic, that it was who I get to be, but I did have to go through this healing in those emotionally unhealthy patterns.
Warwick Fairfax:
Now, one of the things you said here, which is incredible that you used this verse, you used this verse of Genesis 50:20, the story of Joseph. And as people know, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. He was in Egypt, eventually became Pharaoh's right-hand man and ends up meeting his brothers later, which were a little anxious about. But this verse says, actually talking to his brothers, Joseph says, "You meant to harm me, but God turned it around for good for the saving of many lives." Talk about how that verse, what that meant for you. How could God use what you've been through with your mother and grandmother and later on, unfortunately, your younger brother. I mean, how in the world could God use any of that for good? Because a lot of listeners will be thinking, "That's not possible, is it?"
Joy Johnson:
Yeah, I think when it comes to that verse, a lot of the times we stop before it ends. "Okay, you meant to harm, but God turned it around for good." We know that we serve a good God. And if as believers understanding that we get to believe the Bible in its entirety, we cannot pick and choose. And so if we're going to believe that God will turn it around for good, and the last part of that verse is for the saving of many lives, I think that there has to be a confidence in knowing that it is out of our control. And I think a popular verse that many people like to cling on to, too, is Jeremiah 29:11, and it says, "For I know the plans I have for you." I remember hearing that verse growing up. "Plans for good, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."
And in the midst of what I had experienced, it's like how in the world can... And I think a lot of people when they're going through their crucible moments, they're like, "How can a good God allow this to happen? If He's so good, then why would He allow my Mom to pass? Why would he allow this to continue?" And it's not so much that it's like He caused it, but yeah, it does happen. Why? Because we live in a sin-filled world. Well, this is our sin nature. When sin entered the world, this is how God redeems. And so going back to that, "And He will use it for the saving of many lives," I don't know the exact moment that I realized that my testimony was so much more for others than it was for me. I can't tell you that exact moment. I think it was more of a gradual realization over the years.
But I remember in junior high, I started to share. I remember we were in a chapel. I went to a private school up until about eighth grade, and I remember sharing about my Mom and looking in the audience and everybody was like... it was like crickets. People in junior high, they're like, "What's going on?" But what I felt was a freedom, a level of freedom and being able to share the goodness of God coming out of my testimony. And that is when I began to really... like my heart for others began to develop when I was in my junior high years. And so I would call, I make a list of my friends and I would write down what they were going through and I would call. And I wasn't as bold in my faith as I am now. I wouldn't necessarily be praying for them, but I would check up on them, and I became that friend that was on the phone encouraging people.
And it's like a gift. We have our natural abilities and then we have our spiritual gift. And the gift of encouragement is something that I know that I have, and that's when it began to bubble up. And I would be filled up by encouraging others. And so again, it's like a gradual revelation, if you will, in knowing what I had gone through was not just for myself. And then as I got older, too, it was like, "Oh, I'm feeling this way," or, "I lost my Mom," and people would be like, "You need to go talk to Joy. Let me connect you with her." "Oh, your son is going through this? I know somebody that has gone through it." And how did they know? Because I began to talk about. And so sometimes we can also have this false humility in the idea that, "Well, God, go use somebody else. Go use somebody more qualified. Go use somebody that's already doing this, that's already advocating, that's already been sharing their story."
Because, yes, there are so many people and we all have different stories, but nobody has the testimony that you have. And we can have this false humility and really what it can be disguised as is it can be disguised as selfishness. And the reason why I use that word, selfishness, is because it's a little bit like it would be more comfortable for me to stay in my little corner and not sharing what God is doing, but because I get to step out and because I have that boldness, there's the saving of many lives. There's the breakthrough, there's the freedom.
Gary Schneeberger:
And I would add, based on what we talked about at the outset, what you talked about at the outset, there's the joy, right? I mean, that's-
Joy Johnson:
Mm-hmm.
Gary Schneeberger:
... when you truly embraced and lived out and transferred the meaning of your name to those people to whom you're speaking, right?
Joy Johnson:
Yeah, and in the Bible, when God will rename people, although he didn't rename, He restored. He restored the joy. Joel 2:25 says, "I will restore to you the years. I will restore to you the years." Right? Job 42:12, "And God blessed Job in the second half of his life, greater in the second than in the first half."
Warwick Fairfax:
You talk about a number of steps of faith as you've bounced back. You've lost your brother. Before your wedding, you were thinking, "Gosh, am I going to have suicidal ideation? Am I going to have postpartum depression?" And those things didn't happen, but the fear was probably very real. So how did you get through those fears of, "I'm going to be another in the long line of people, suicidal ideation, I'm going to get postpartum depression? That's a given, but how am I going to deal with it?" How did you deal with that and not let it control you, all those fears?
Joy Johnson:
I think, honestly, having the right people around me, the right voices, when you are vulnerable, you have to have the right voices around you and you have to... The Bible says that we need to guard our heart because out of the heart flows the issues of life. And when my wedding day, three days before my wedding day as I was going to pick up my wedding dress, my Dad called me, and that just... Dealing with trauma from at the age of six and then almost like the same thing at 26, so 20 years later, and it was that felt like a horrific dream. I remember waking up the next day being like, "Please, God, let this not be real." And it was I wanted to hide. That was such a different type of shame and embarrassment because we're about to go have a wedding with all of our friends and our family and they know.
And a lot of... I had thoughts of like... I remember asking my Dad, "Should we even get married?" And this is my husband. So my husband and I were high school sweethearts. We had dated for 10 years. We met when we were 15. We had dated for 10 years. That's a long time. Engaged for a year and a half. This was a long time coming. This was a highly anticipated day. And I remember, "Should we even go through with this?" And my Dad was like, "Yes, absolutely." I did not cry one tear. I want to share this one story because this was like this is only God. So we got married in September. In the summer, I had picked a song that I was going to walk down the aisle to. I had a very eclectic playlist that I was very specific. I had a lot of time to think about this.
And so on my way to work, on my drive, I would be playing this song that I was walking down the aisle to, and every single time bawling my eyes out crying. I was practicing walking down the aisle with a smile, and I was just crying my eyes out in anticipation. And I believe this was God preparing me. I believe that God shows up in the smallest details. The fact that I got to walk down the aisle, not shedding one tear, my family probably thought I was crazy. They probably thought, "Does Joy not have a heart? She just lost her brother." Some family members, I could see the way that they were greeting me and looking at me.
Of course, they were heartbroken and so devastated. And here I am in a white dress ready to celebrate. That is something that only God can do. He reminds us that He brings us a peace that surpasses all understanding. And so I believe He shows up in those details, even in... And then two years later when I became pregnant, so I had lost my baby brother three days before the wedding. And when it came time, when my husband were like, "Okay, we want to start trying for kids," I told God, I'm like, 'You're going to give me a son."
Warwick Fairfax:
Ha-
Joy Johnson:
"You're going to give me a son."
Warwick Fairfax:
... you told him, yeah.
Joy Johnson:
"Remember what happened? Remember everything that I lost? I need a baby boy, okay?" So when we went to the ultrasound for my firstborn and they're like, "It's a girl," and I am, "Please check again." Because this is my restoration moment. God, remember? I need a boy. And I had my beautiful baby girl. She has brought so many layers of restoration. I've had the opportunity to everything that I wanted when I was a little girl, I've gotten to experience like the mommy in me and dressing up and doing the tea parties and her calling me her best friend. And she's just such a sweet girl, and God is in the details, in the details.
And then I got pregnant with my son two years later. And again, driving, the voice of the Holy Spirit. I remember I was getting off an exit and He said, "Do you know why you couldn't have a son first? Because if I would have given you a son first, you would have put your healing and attached your healing to him instead of Me." And that hit me so heavy because how many times do we say, "Oh, my children, they saved my life. If it wasn't for my child." And we thank you God for the gifts that you give us in children, and he is our one true healer. And so he had to heal me first before I could have my son.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's often easier to see God's plan in hindsight, you know?
Joy Johnson:
Of course.
Warwick Fairfax:
Like for me, I've lived in the U.S. in Maryland since the early '90s, and yeah, I just feel obviously blessed to have the wife I do and three adult kids now, like 30s to 20s. And they have strong faith, they work hard. They have good values. I mean, everything I could want and more. And I find that just deeply moving. I'm just so thankful to God for that. It's hard to put it into words and just to have kids that love you and a wife, if one of the kids calls and they're out of town and things are going on, she will listen to them an hour, two hours. No time is too much, and it's like, I mean, what kind of a mother is that? I mean, that's unbelievable.
So I just feel, I guess, when you go through things that are different, it makes you appreciate to a degree that's hard to describe what you have, a loving husband, loving children, and it's like they're going to grow up differently. And I'm not perfect, but I'm going to do my level best to be there and love them unconditionally and all that. So I want to shift a bit here because there's another bead to your story of which births what you do in which you help so many women. So talk about I think you mentioned back in 2019 you were doing a lot of leadership things in church. You had a wonderful husband and, I think, wonderful kids, but you felt like there was something missing. So talk about what that is because I'm sure that many people, certainly many women, can relate to what you were going through. So what was it? Because it wasn't like life was terrible, you know, but yet-
Joy Johnson:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Warwick Fairfax:
... there was something that was missing. What was that?
Joy Johnson:
Yeah, it was lack of vision, honestly. The Bible says that, "My people will perish for a lack of vision." And vision begins in the Heart of God, and as you are going about your life, and 2019, my children were younger and motherhood was mothering. And it's you can get lost in the identities. And I like to refer to them as hats, as hats you wear, I'm a mom. "What do you do?" "Oh, I'm a mom. Oh, I'm a wife. Oh, I'm a business owner. Oh, I do this. Oh, I do this." And we wear all these hats and we wear them all at the same time. There's a lot of burnout and overwhelm that can take place if we are not careful. And so I was feeling the repercussions of also these unhealthy emotional patterns and not being able to put myself first in a way to take care of those emotions.
And so instead of taking care of them and getting to the root of them I was putting band-aids on them. And how was I putting band-aids? "Oh, I'll do more. Oh yeah, I can do that." I was the people pleaser to the max. Why would I... I had to say yes because if I said no, that meant that I couldn't do it and I wasn't strong enough. And so in 2019, going into 2020, my husband began to talk a lot about vision. "Joy, where do you see your business? Where do you see this? Where do you see this?" And for somebody, if you do not have vision, and if you can't see forward, that question is triggering.
Warwick Fairfax:
Hmm.
Joy Johnson:
It is because you don't think about it. And it's like, "Can you stop? I don't want to talk about... I don't even know what I'm going to eat tomorrow. Why do I want to plan for the future? I don't want to see five years ahead." But we began, that we began to take some steps and say, "No, we are going to write the vision. Habakkuk 2:2 in the Bible also says, "Write the vision, make it plain." Write the vision and make it plain, so we began to write plans for our finances. We began to decide like, "Who do we want to be as parents? What do we want our marriage to look like?" And this happened so organically and it has really shifted into who I am today, but I had to get to the root of healing.
And one of the books that has changed my life, it is called The Emotionally Healthy Woman. I love a good resource, and you know what? Men should read it, too, honestly. It is by her name is Geri Scazzero, and her and her husband, they have a whole ministry, actually. Pete is her husband, and they've created an entire ministry on emotionally healthy discipleship, spirituality, relationships. And it comes from confronting all the hardest things that we don't want to confront ourselves. He says often, he says, "Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones." And so we have to go back, and it has to go just beyond us.
And that's where I began to... I discovered that term "transgenerational trauma" because I had to go back. Okay, although this stops here with me, the generational stronghold stops here. It will not continue into my family. If I want to be the one to break the cycle, then I have to go back. I have to go back and I have to heal so that I can have vision forward. And so even though I have outlived my Mom, I've outparented my Mom, she was 32, I just turned 40 this year. My kids are 10 and 12. I was six, so outparented all of these things. I choose that I will honor her and my brother by living with vision, and that is what I get to help women do now.
And so it's like maybe you've heard that phrase is like, "The best person you're qualified to help is the past version of you." And so I am on a mission to link arms with the women that God brings in my path through the community to say, "You're not going to stay here. With a heart full of grace, I may not understand what you're going through, but I do know that we cannot stay here, so we're going together. We're going to create a vision for your life with God at the center. We're going to get to the root issues. We're going to get outside of our comfort zone."
Warwick Fairfax:
That's so important because in order to move forward, we have to understand where we are and what's going on and why, and oh, I get that. I mean, I'm fortunately a very self-reflective person and I'm a certified executive coach, so I tend to want to know why. But so for you, what was the why behind the people pleasing? "Hey, I can do it all. It's all about my husband, about the kids. My needs don't matter because I'm here to help everybody else because they need me. I can't think of myself. That's selfish." I mean, so as you began to dig beneath the surface, what did you find? What was the origin story of some of those, in a sense, unhealthy manifestations?
Joy Johnson:
Mm-hmm. I think it honestly was years of just ignoring them. It was, it was years of suppressing them. And one of the things that I used to say was like, "I feel bad. I feel bad." And honestly, there was a period of time where I think advocating for myself, I advocate for mental health and advocate for so many things, but advocating for my own feelings and understanding that feelings are not the best leaders. And even though I felt this way, I did owe it to myself to express it and then to keep going. And even though it was like I'm not appeasing my feelings and I'm not making allowances for them and sitting in them, I don't want to continue to feel that way.
I was at the point where this was affecting my nervous system. I was at the point where this would wake me up in the middle of the night. I was at the point where it was affecting how I showed up, if that makes sense. And so I don't think it was an exact like one thing, but it was like, "Oh, am I going to admit that I am and that I have perfectionistic tendencies? Am I going to admit that I want to be a people pleaser?" So even like confessing those things, when you can expose it, when you can expose it, then you can begin to take steps and saying like,' Hey, I don't identify." I like to say it's like shedding past versions of ourselves when we know we cannot stay here. I'm going to be committed to my healing.
So yes, I know that's who I used to be, but that's no longer who I am. And that came with, again, we talked about surrounding ourself and who we surrounded ourself with. I had to change who I surrounded myself with and the way that I spoke. We have to like... As our identity shifts or as we come to that God-given identity, it's like, "I'm going to fully step into it. I'm not going to be scared." I think another thing that really paralyzed me was a fear of failure. If I fail, then everyone's going to think I'm a failure. Then, if I fail the first time, then what's going to happen? Well, yeah, Joy, what is going to happen? Are you going to be labeled by your failures? Or are you going to allow those to help you and find what maybe didn't work and keep going?
Gary Schneeberger:
One of the things that we say all the time, Joy, and I was looking through some things that you've written, your marriage felt like it was on autopilot. Every day, you were doing a lot, but not moving any further ahead. One of the things that we say a lot at Beyond the Crucible is that, and it sounds like it's sort of what you described, and we call them is-this-all-there-is moments. You're living your life and it's going okay, but we're made for something so much more than okay, and I think that's what you described here. So is that fair that both what you went through and some of the women that you're helping, they arrived at this place of, "Is this all there is? There's got to be more." And you helped show them that. Is that fair?
Joy Johnson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. We know that we were made for more. And I think, again, if we are used to staying comfortable and this is all there is, it's easier to think that. And it does take a moment or it does take somebody to be like, "Oh no, I see something in you. I see something in you." And for me, that's my husband. I'm so grateful for my husband. He's like... I remember a time even like during, so before getting into the coaching, I was in the health and fitness space for 15 years prior. And I remember during when I was making the switch to online, my insecurities were at an all-time high, and he was encouraging me like, "Hey, what do we need to do to get you mobile, to get you online?" And I was like, "Why do you hate me?" I say it so like... It sounds so nice right now.
I was like ugly crying, probably like snot dripping down my nose. I'm like, "You hate me." And he's probably like, "Who is this chick? Where's my wife? This is not her." But he said, "Joy, I do not hate you. I love you." And I am so grateful for my husband because he loves me enough to tell me the truth, that he does not... He sees the gifts inside of me and he pulls it, he pulls it and he pushes me forward. And because I have him, because I have that support, then I get to do it for other women as well.
Warwick Fairfax:
So talk about this community that you've built and you've got this incredible podcast, and I love the phrase "The Journey to Becoming" because we're all on a journey. One of the things, I'm sure you do, too, but I love about this podcast is I learned from people that we have on/ Early on we had this guy, David Charbonnet, who was a Navy SEAL in Southern California, and he was injured in a parachuting accident, became a paraplegic. And I remember saying to him, "Look what I went through losing this family business, it wasn't about the business, it was losing the heritage of this business that my father loved and my great-grandfather started. I believe it was more. I just lost the whole thing and I was embarrassed. So what I went through is nothing compared what you went through."
And he said, "You know, Warwick, your worst day is your worst day. It's not a competition." That was so gracious and such a gift. I've never forgotten that. It's like there's always somebody you can think of that's gone through worse than you have, and you feel embarrassed that you complained about your own tragedy, at least not that you should, but you feel that. So to me, that's part of the coming, and I'm sure you've probably learned a lot from your community, from the women that you advocate for. So talk about, to use the V word your husband used, your vision for Journey to Becoming Podcast, for you've got The Roadmap Method and Becoming a Woman of Value Challenge, and your community. So talk about what your vision is and what you love about what you do and the women that you're coming alongside to support.
Joy Johnson:
Yeah, this is my absolute passion. This gets me up in the morning, and I'm so grateful that this is what I get to do every single day. I'll start with the community. So the Joyful Fit Life Community is it is a vision-building community. It is discipleship and it's accountability. I think when I need this community as much as anybody else does, and it's because of how we get to influence each other. And this is showing up not in... We're not faking it. This is who we're becoming. So I loved this kind of tagline, which is held the podcast's birth after is like, "Hey, I'm a woman who is on her journey to becoming all that God has created her to be." So going back to Gary's like, "Gosh, you're saying we're created for so much more." There has to be something more. So I'm going to lean into not all the doing.
We will create to-do lists that will flood our mind, that overwhelm us, that burn us out, and we get stuck in striving, comparing, doing all these things. But the difference is in becoming, there's a level of surrender. You have to lean into the tension of where you are now and who you are going to be in the future. And you get to lean, you can oppose it and dig your heels in and stay stuck and say, "I'm not moving." Or you can release it. You can relax your jaw. You can lean into the tension. And seriously you can lean into the tension. Give your nervous system a little break because you're not stuck in survival mode anymore. And you can say, "I want to become this version."
And I like to speak to the Jeremiah 1:5 version. I say Jeremiah 1:5. It says that, "Before you were formed, before you were formed, I knew you. Before I put you in your mother's womb. I called you. I set you apart to be a prophet to the nations." So this is speaking to the deepest form of who we are, our identity. And when we can receive that and say, "I'm going to take these steps in who I am becoming," this is how the Roadmap was birthed, in focusing on. So I help women. We're planning in quarters. We plan in 90-day increments. So we create our vision, and I like to say the vision is our why and it anchors us, and then we create our goals.
Our goals are our what. We know, especially in the beginning of the year, goals are at an all-time high, and we can create audacious goals and all of these things, but we want to create realistic goals. So our goals are our what, and then it's like, "How? How did you do that?" And how becomes our systems. We don't rise. James Clear, for all those Atomic Habit fans, James Clear says, "We do not rise to the level of our goals, but we fall to the level of our systems." And so it's breaking these things down and how we can wake up with vision. We can wake up with clarity for our days, and we're doing it on the inside together. We have a private app. We are checking in daily for accountability. We have community calls and you can see all the stats about accountability and actually getting stuff done.
It jumps up to 90% when you have a set time with a set person. It's like I want to say 94% or something, I could be wrong, but it's in the 90s when you have a plan and then you have that accountability. So that's the accountability portion. And then The Journey to Becoming is the podcast is we're talking all things on our Roadmap, our faith, the four pillars, faith, relationships, our wellness, overall wellness, and then contribution. And then contribution is really all about becoming a Woman of Value. You can be a Woman of Value in your home, in the workplace, in how you serve, an entrepreneur. You can start the business, you can make an impact. You can make an impact in the home that you've been called to steward, in your finances, and really understanding I want to see myself as a Woman of Value.
And so I've also created a free five-day challenge. So it's a private podcast. It's separate from The Journey to Becoming, but this is where we speak to your identity. We're understanding and uncovering what do you truly value? That's something we got to be intentional and think about. What do you value? How are you going to become this person? What version do you have to shed in order to become her? And you got to love yourself enough today to become her tomorrow. Speaking of the ladies, I know I'm saying her, but you got to love yourself enough. You got to love yourself today, period. You cannot hate yourself into transformation. You can't. You have to love yourself enough today and say, "I'm going to love myself today to take that step forward into who I'm becoming."
Warwick Fairfax:
What I love about what you're talking about, Joy, is the whole notion of becoming, and you give them tools for how to have systems, come up with a vision, accountability. But I love the thing of identity because so often we think, "Well, my identity is wrapped up in what I do," and I've really tried to make sure in my case, that's not me. I remember when my book came out, I was literally on my knees saying, "Lord, whether it sells one, a thousand, 10,000, my identity is not going to be in a number." We have a great social media team. We track numbers on YouTube, Instagram or whatever. We're putting mechanisms in place, content to increase and everything that we should be doing. We've got good systems in that way, but yet my identity is not an anomaly.
It doesn't mean that we're not doing what we should be doing and being faithful stewards, but yet we get to live our own lives. We get to make choices. In my case, I spoke a fair amount when my book came out, but I don't really enjoy running around speaking. I feel like I've got to the point where I'm competent and it seems like they go over well. But I enjoy podcasts. Well, I get to choose. In my case, I don't have to run around speaking. I love what I do here, but I'm also an elder at my church, which I love. I want to do that. My kids all went to Taylor University, a great Christ-centered university, Indiana. I help out on a campaign committee.
There's a number of... a couple of nonprofits I'm not that involved in, but a little bit. I like all those rhythms. I feel called to all those things. So I said to my team one time, "I'm not going to speak. There are certain things I'm not going to do because I feel called to these other things like elder at my church and obviously my family and my kids." So we get to design our own life the way we feel God is calling us to. And it's great to have businesses, but your identity is not wrapped up in numbers. It's for people of faith it's wrapped up in being a child of God and nothing else really matters. I'm sure that's probably part of what you do with the women. Does that make any kind of sense?
Joy Johnson:
Absolutely, and I think what I hear you saying, too, is it's about obedience in a world, in a culture that is so obsessed with overnight success, virality, self-made man like, "I did this on my own," chasing numbers, striving as believers. I've heard this definition of success and it just is so good. He said, "Success is obedience at God's pace."
Warwick Fairfax:
Hmm. Wow.
Joy Johnson:
Isn't that so good? And it's like, doesn't that take all the pressure off? And I love that you use the word "rhythm" right now, Warwick, because it's like there's a Scripture, Matthew 11:28-30, and I believe it's The Message version. And it is a popular Scripture, and usually it says, "Are you weary? Come to me." Oh, it says, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Right? That's what it says in maybe the NIV version, but in Matthew 11, I'm going pull it up because it's too good not to share. This is from The Message version, and it says, "Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life. Walk, or I'll show you how to take real rest, walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it."
That's discipleship, right? "Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." And that is so attached to our emotional health. Rhythms is something that you welcome. It it is not a list of rules that is all or nothing. Rhythms allow, the rhythms of grace. And so when we can obey God, when we can be attuned to His ear and we can find success in being obedient to Him, guess what? He brings the increase because He is the Source. He is the One who brings it all. And so the pressure to perform, it just is released in that moment when you can adopt that perspective.
Warwick Fairfax:
So well said.
Gary Schneeberger:
I'm sitting here and I'm realizing that I failed in my co-host duties because you just finished, Joy, talking about for eight minutes all the great things that you do through your community, and my job is to make sure that you get to tell our listeners and viewers how they can find it online, so please do so.
Joy Johnson:
Yes, yes. Everything is at thejoyfulfitlife.com. So you can head there and you can find the challenge. You can find the community. You can find the podcasts and listen, and yeah, everything is right there, thejoyfulfitlife.com.
Gary Schneeberger:
Awesome. Warwick, as always, the last question or question are yours. And I'll just say this as I set you up, clearly we have a guest whose name fits exactly how she talks about what she does. So...
Warwick Fairfax:
Well said. Yeah, you no longer need to think, "Gosh, I don't know that I'm very joyful."
Gary Schneeberger:
Yes.
Warwick Fairfax:
I think with God's help and inspiration, I think you are, so no need to be like, "Can I change my name?" Hopefully you don't really think about that anymore. But yeah, I mean, what you do is so inspiring. The women that you help is incredible. And there may be somebody, some woman today that maybe she feels like she's broken, damaged. Either things were done to her or she's made mistakes that she feels like, how could you love somebody like here given the mistake she's made or what was being done to her? It may feel like today's the worst day. For a woman like that, what would be a word of hope? Because she might be feeling pretty hopeless and, frankly, worthless, what would a word of hope be to a woman like that?
Joy Johnson:
Mm-hmm. I would say to that person that it's never too late. It's never too late. I think as women, we think, "I let too much time pass me by. I should have made that decision." We can go into shoulds and, "I should have, I would have," all these things. You're never too late. You are not too old. That's another one, especially for women. "Oh, my time has passed." Absolutely not. We serve a God that is outside of time and space and He can do anything. We serve the God of the impossible, and when it comes to our worth and feeling hopeless, I want to remind you that there is nothing that you can do to separate yourself from the love of God. There is absolutely nothing. It says in Romans 8:30, I believe 38 and 39, that, "There is nothing that cab be done to separate you."
So although you may feel that way, I want to remind you that your feelings are not the best leaders. And I say that with all the love in my heart, and I pray that this episode would encourage you and it would also awaken some dormant things that have been taking place in your life. And so I want to speak to those dormant things, those dreams that have been maybe, "Oh, it's too late." Mm-mm. We will call them back to life. In Ezekiel, it says, "Can these dry bones live?" They absolutely can, and so it's like thank you Jesus that you were in the business of restoring. You're restoring the years. You bring everything back to life. He literally resurrected. He came back to life, and so if He can do that, that is also what lives inside of as believers, His resurrection power. So there is nothing too great or too far gone that He cannot resurrect.
That's what He wants to do. He wants you to live with vision. And even if it's just the smallest step, sometimes we can overestimate all the things that we have to do, but the smallest step, these are seeds. The Kingdom of God is likened to a seed. There are so many parallels between seed time and harvest. And the day that you plant the seed is not the day that you eat the fruit. And guess what? Back to Genesis 50:20, the fruit isn't even for you. Do you ever see an apple tree consuming an apple? The fruit that gets to be produced from your life is always for the Glory of God. So take that small step. I pray that you're encouraged today to keep going.
Gary Schneeberger:
Friends, I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word has been spoken on a subject, and you just heard it from our guest, Joy Johnson. Warwick, we just finished our conversation with Joy Johnson, and it was a, this is a word that people don't use anymore, but it was a humdinger. It was an excellent episode. Of all the guests we've had, I think she epitomizes her name Joy in what she talked about and what she gives to the folks that she helps. So what is the top takeaway that you can think of all that we covered with Joy today?
Warwick Fairfax:
You know, Joy Johnson is a remarkable person. She has just incredible things she does. She is the host of The Journey to Becoming Podcast, which is a Top 1.5% Globally Ranked Podcast that focuses on helping women become, I think from her perspective, who God would have them be. She's the founder of The Joyful Fit Life Community. I mean, she's contributing a lot, but what's amazing is given that where she's coming from, it's just remarkable. She lost her mom on Christmas night to suicide when Joy was just six years old, and it would have been easy for her to blame herself because her mom wanted her to come with her to do an errand. And Joy was like, "No, I want to stay here," because she was six and it's Christmas. She wants to open presents. But her dad handled it very well and said, "Joy, it's not your fault." But still, she's had to deal with her grandmother took her life. Also, she had a brother that took his life just shortly before Joy's wedding day.
So she's been through a lot, but she's not let her crucibles define her. I mean, it has not been easy, but she has faced her fears. Like her mother had postpartum depression, so she's thinking, "Gee, when I become a mother, I'm going to have postpartum depression," or, "What will happen then?" She is naturally afraid of that, but yet, fortunately it didn't happen for her. So she had a number of fears, and almost shame is like when she would tell people, "Oh, my mother took her own life." It's like, "Oh, you're that family." That's the thought that she had, and people will think, "Oh, that's sort of this broken family." All these fears, which aren't always what people are thinking, but that's the fear.
She was able to face those fears and not be defined by them, which is the key to coming back from your worst day is reflect on them. And she's very good about really getting in touch. It took her a while to get in touch with what those fears are, what those hurts are, and talk about that because then she lived sort of another crucible, which was the sense of she is going through the motions as a wife and mother and a business owner. But yet life because a sort of a, "What's it all for? What does it all mean?" That we had a serious 2 Acts significance when people bounce forward from a place where they're feeling like life is just moving along. "I'm not depressed, but it's like not a vibrant life." It's sort of like a black-and-white life, not full color.
And so she was able to face that with the incredible help of her husband who just said, "You know, I think you could be a podcaster." And she says, "I don't know." Even bought her some equipment. I mean, he was really advocating for it because from what he knew that she wanted to do. And now she helps a whole bunch of other women and advocate for them to find their own vision, to be honest with what they're feeling, to have other women come alongside them, and have systems and accountability to help make these dreams and these visions become reality. So she's a person of very great faith. I think for all of us, no matter what your faith perspective, you've got to be honest with what you're feeling, with what you've been through. You've got to cling to some higher purpose, which is what Joy has done. For her, it's her faith in Christ.
Whatever that is for you, that was the key to pulling her away from negative thoughts to the light and having people that you can be, she used this word, not just safe with, but secure. Whether it's your husband, wife, parents, brother, sister, partner, friends, find people that know you that you can be vulnerable with. We talk about fellow travelers. I mean, this is fellow travelers to the nth degree. People who know you and will advocate for you, who will support you, who won't judge you. That is so helpful as you try to get beyond your worst day to live a vision that maybe it's come out of your worst day and it will lead a life of significance.
We can learn so much from Joy Johnson, her honesty, her compassion, and her courage in advocating for other women, to help them have visions. They're not just settling for. She's really just a remarkable person with a lot of courage, a huge amount of faith, and every day she tries to live in light of her beliefs and values. That's what we believe at Beyond the Crucible, whatever your beliefs and values are, cling to them. Nurture them. Have people that support you in them and live your life in light of them. Be honest and vulnerable. Yes, we all can feel a bit broken or a few scars. That's okay. It's remarkable when you find people who you can be safe and secure with, who will say, "We know who you are. We know that you have those scars, but we love and support you anyway." That gives you incredible freedom, so we can learn so much from Joy Johnson.
Gary Schneeberger:
So until the next time we're together, please remember this. We do know that your crucible experiences are hard. Goodness. You heard Joy talk about the crucible she went through, both as a young girl and then as a young woman. These were hard, difficult crucibles. Warwick talked here a lot about his crucibles as well. They're hard, but here's what we've learned. They're not the end of your story, your crucible isn't. In fact, if you learn the lessons from them, if you apply those lessons to your life moving forward, where that journey can lead you is to the best destination you could possibly visit, and that is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like The Helper or The Individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment, it's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
Our episode today is a special one. It’s our 300th — and wait till you hear just how few podcasts reach that milestone. You’ll likely be shocked.
You’ll also be inspired by what we discuss — 10 phrases that help you turn your trials into triumphs that were birthed from those 300 episodes. They form the key phrases Beyond the Crucible uses to help you move past your worst day and into your greatest opportunity.
And you will not want to miss the surprise the entire podcast team has in store for Warwick to mark this occasion.
So, put on your party hats — here we go!
To see the episode featuring Ruza Markovic discussed in this episode: Watch here. To see the episode featuring Stacey Copas: Watch here.
To see the episode featuring Mike and David Charbonnet: Watch here.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. It's been an incredible journey these last 300 episodes. I would say for me it's been a voyage of discovery and I think for both Gary and I. And I would hopefully say for the listeners and viewers as well.Gary Schneeberger:
Our episode today is a special one. It's our 300th and wait till you hear about how many podcasts actually reach that milestone. I think you'll be shocked. You'll also be inspired by what we discussed. 10 phrases that help you turn trials into trials that were birthed from those 300 episodes. They formed the key phrases Beyond the Crucible uses to help you move past your worst day and into your greatest opportunity. And you will not want to miss the surprise the entire podcast team has in store for Warwick to mark this special occasion. So put on your party hats. Here we go.
Welcome friends, and we do mean friends because you've been with us for a while if you've been with us since the beginning to this episode of Beyond the Crucible, and this is a special one. This may be from my perspective, one of the most special ones that we've done because today is, you know what, Scott? Throw us a drum roll right off the bat. Today is our 300th episode. Truly, and I just want to put it in perspective of how rare that number is in the podcasting world. Studies show that 90%, nine out of every 10 podcasts that starts, 90% of them don't make it past three episodes. Only 5.8% survive to get to the century mark, to a hundred episodes. And how many, just guess to yourselves as you're listening and viewing this, how many do you think get to 300 like we are at as we're having this conversation?
I bet it's lower than you thought. Only 1.79% get there. I'm a baseball guy, so I always, in fact, I'm a journalist. I'm a former journalist who couldn't do math. So the only way I could teach percentages to people was to do batting averages and if this were a batting average, it would be 18. Not 180, which is bad enough, it would be 0.018. That's how bad it would be. That doesn't say, that's not to say that our podcast is not good. We believe it is, but it just shows how rare the feat that we're celebrating here today is. So Warwick, this is a huge milestone for this show that I know was something that you thought about for a while before we were able to launch it. So as we begin this celebration, how are you feeling right now? How does this feel to you to be celebrating 300 episodes?Warwick Fairfax:
It's good to actually have a milestone to think about because for me, and I guess for a lot of people, you're not really thinking about milestones. When you start a podcast, you're thinking, okay, so what's it going to be about? We need to get guests, we need to think of things to talk about, and you're really focused on what you're doing, not how many it's going to be. It's like, I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out the next week and who are we going to get and what we're going to talk about.
Gary Schneeberger:
Keep having to feed the furnace, right? We've had to feed the furnace every week.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. But one of the things about reaching a milestone and just the numbers you mentioned, just 1.79% have reached 300 episodes. I mean, that's a small number, and so we feel very privileged. I certainly do to be in that company. And so having this 300th episode does make you reflect, and I think a lot of us don't always reflect. We're just in the midst of our busy lives and thinking about where we are and how grateful we are and all of that. So I think this is an opportunity to think back on all the guests we've spoken to, the incredible stories and hope and resilience, and I feel like I've learned from every guest that we've had. It's one of the things I most enjoy about the guests we've had is just how much we can learn. And you think of the amazing series. We've had a lot of summer movie series, which both you, Gary, and I love movies.
Gary Schneeberger:
Oh yeah, those are truly really fun. Watching a movie for work is a great thing.
Warwick Fairfax:
And who knew that you could watch superhero movies and actually learn a whole lot about how to bounce back from a crucible?
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
But you can. Now when you watch a movie you're not thinking about, let me take notes on those Beyond the Crucible points. It's, are we in the bounce back stage and in the crucible stage? And the life of significance. You're just thinking this is fun and I hope the good guy wins. I mean, it's that simple. So we've had a lot of great series and we've had a lot of great discussions that you and I write blogs throughout the year and then we'll have a discussion on that. We've had discussions from stories from my book, Crucible Leadership, and even when it's a story from the book that I wrote, insights will come out that I didn't really think about that wasn't precisely in the book, at least not fleshed out as much it is in an extended period of time of discussion.
So whether it's from guests or from our own discussions from movie series or discussions based on blogs or my book, I just feel like I've learned so much and I'm also very grateful for the many people that have watched and listened to our podcasts and we have a great marketing team, and it's just such a blessing to see the numbers on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts and as they go up and continue to go up, and it's just such a blessing.
I'm so grateful for our discussions between you and I, as well as from the insights from the guests and just being grateful for the impact. I believe it has, at least in some sense on the people who listen and watch our podcast, we're all about helping people not be defined by the pit of despair and just challenging circumstances and bouncing back, and so we're about redemption and giving people hope.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And as astounding as that number 300 is, the true measure of the podcast, and this November 5th, 2019 is when we started, six years ago, the true measure of the podcast are the key phrases we've collected over that time that help us turn our trials into triumphs as we cast a vision for a life of significance. These insights have been birthed, as you've said, from our discussions of the best practices of how to weather a crucible, how to overcome a crucible, and the stories told by our diverse roster of guests, 146 guests, I counted them all. We've had 146 guests in 300 episodes and they include just as an example, an Oscar-nominated film producer, an Emmy award-winning ESPN football sideline reporter, and a former special assistant to a former president of the United States. Those are the folks we've talked to from whom we've gleaned some of these things that we're going to be talking about today.
And what we're going to be talking about today, folks, is we've pulled together a top 10 list of the phrases that have been birthed from this show and thought it would be fun and informative to run through all of those phrases as we celebrate this accomplishment. And we're going to do it in a different way than we've ever done anything on this show. We're going to do it totally at random. So we've got 10 phrases that were birthed from Beyond the Crucible, and I have here a hat. Those of you who watched perhaps the first a hundred episodes or 150 episodes of the show, 200 episodes, I used to wear hats like this. Now they're just props. Here they are, but they're holding right here, inside here are the 10 phrases that we're going to talk about. I'm going to pluck them at random. And-
Warwick Fairfax:
And it's not just any hat, is it?
Gary Schneeberger:
No, this is my lifeblood. This is a fedora, which is... And can see right there the other lifeblood. There's a Batman and Robin [inaudible 00:08:58] if you're watching folks. So that's the wellspring from which we're going to pull. I'm going to pull these phrases and I'm going to bring it to Warwick to talk about it. So are you ready? Warwick, are you ready to-
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely.
Gary Schneeberger:
... roll the dice as it were?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yes.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right, here we go. I'm going to reach in here and I'm going to pull out phrase number one of the lexicon of Beyond the Crucible born of 300 episodes of the show. And it is this. No matter the size of our vision, it matters. Talk about that.
Warwick Fairfax:
So sometimes you can think that the vision I have, it's not going to change the world, it's not going to bring clean drinking water to kids in Africa. You just think this vision is so small, why does it matter? And I can relate to that in this sense, and as listeners and viewers would know, I grew up in 150-year-old newspaper business in Australia and in the late '80s when I was 26, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover. It was a few months after my dad died. And the whole point was to return the vision of the company to the founder, have it be well led. The company's founded by a very strong person of faith. Three years later when the takeover failed, I was somewhat despondent because I thought to myself, not only have I let down my family and the founder of the media company, my great-great grandfather, John Fairfax, but I was thinking, I will never have a vision that will have the potential impact that my involvement in the family newspaper company John Fairfax Limited could have.
And I was thinking I could have an impact, not just on the employees of the company, the 4,000 plus employees, the readers and viewers of the media that we had, but potentially on the nation of Australia. And I mean that was not unrealistic considering we had the equivalent of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal about country. So after that it's like, well, why not just give up? Because I will never have a kind of vision that will have that kind of impact. But one of the things I realize is you might think, oh, I'll never be CEO of Apple or Ford Motor Company. I won't head up some big non-profit, but the size of the impact and your vision isn't really what matters. You might be thinking, I just want to clean up my neighborhood park so that kids and families can enjoy it or a food bank in my local area or just in my small business, I just want to make people feel like they're loved and treasured and I want to really honor my customers.
I mean, whatever it is, it doesn't matter the size. It's really about the vision that's on your heart and the impact to people that you know and love. And the whole world may not have heard of you but your little world and it can feel that way to all of us. It may not feel that big, but your world have it big or small, you can have an enormous impact on that world. So for those people, you matter a lot. And so don't be overawed by the impact that some people you read about online or watch in the media. You might think I'll never have that kind of impact, but that's not the point. Are you having an impact with the people you know and where you live? Do you have a vision that matters to you and will somehow help others? That's really the point. So don't get into the comparison game to see who has the bigger business, the bigger non-profit. There'll always be somebody with a bigger non-profit, a bigger company. So don't compare yourself. It's not helpful.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And I am so glad for it. I'm so glad that this one came up first and I didn't rig it this way. I'm so glad this one came up first because in thinking about the impact of Beyond the Crucible, I want to tell a story that I told you a couple of... like a month and a half ago or so, our guest in episode 62, I believe it was, let me look it up here. Yep. Our guest on episode 62 is a friend of mine, Ruza Markovic, who I had known since 1989 when she interned at the newspaper I worked at in Racine, Wisconsin. And Ruza and I stayed friends over the course of the years and she came on and did the show because her crucible was as a native of what was then Yugoslavia, she went back to the country in the '90s as it was falling apart in a terrible civil war, and she recounted the traumatic things she went through that she overcame, and then the life that she built.
But Ruza over the last four or five years had been battling cancer. And we talked a lot either on the phone or via text. We had a close friendship and she died on the 26th of December. Hours before she passed away, she texted me something I didn't get until the next morning, and I wasn't planning on this coming up first, so I'm going to pull it up here on my phone really fast because I want to read this to folks to see just what it was that she wanted to talk about. She said this to me hours before she passed away. She said, "I was on your podcast. Please make sure that Eli," who was her 13-year-old son, the love of her life, "please make sure that Eli hears that. Please make sure that gets to him." That Warwick, that's enormous impact. A woman's dying wish was that the word spoken over her, about her on this show were heard by her only child, a 13-year-old boy who was the prize of her life. That says something about the impact you are having with Beyond the Crucible, I think.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's hard to even process what you just said because what you're saying is this poor woman is in the last hours of her life is implicitly saying this podcast captured the essence of who Ruza was, what she was about, and what she valued. And she wanted that her legacy as she described it in this podcast, to be passed on to her son, so her son would know this is what his mother believes in, this is her journey, and this was her mission. This is what she's about. The fact that she would say, "I want to make sure that Eli listens and watches this." I mean, that's as high a praise as you could possibly have. I mean, that's... It's beyond saying, "It's an honor." It's a privilege of unparalleled magnitude that anybody say that. That's just incredible.
Gary Schneeberger:
And Ruza, I did it. So he's seen it. All right, here we go. Number two, Warwick, what do we have next? This one's long. Let's see what this one is here. This one is faith is something outside yourself that serves as an immovable anchor for your soul.
Warwick Fairfax:
So this is an interesting one. In my book, Crucible Leadership, we talk about faith in a broad sense. That's how we define it. Now, faith can be a major religion, a philosophy, a spiritual way of thought. For me, in fact, for both of us it's our faith in Christ. But the point is this, whatever your belief system is for you, it's critical that those beliefs and values anchor your soul because as you journey back from your worst day, your crucible, it needs to be anchored by your beliefs and values. So it's not so much about what I or Gary believe or others believe. Every human being believes in something.
Now, some of us don't really reflect too much on what we believe because life is busy. We just carry on to the Mach 3 and kids and work and family. I mean, everything's just crazy busy. But be that as it may, we all believe in something. So in particular, when you're trying to claw your way out of the pit of despair and move beyond that worst day, you've got to ask yourself, well, what do I believe? What is the anchor that's going to help me keep grounded? What's the compass that's going to chart my course?
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
If you're trying to get beyond the pit of despair and move to a life-affirming vision that gives you joy and fulfillment, you've got to know what undergirds that journey. What beliefs and values will help you keep centered, will help you keep moving in the direction that your soul and you truly want to go. You cannot really move forward in a path that's going to be helpful to you or to others without having that path be anchored by your fundamental beliefs and values, and that's what we mean by faith. It's absolutely critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
And one of the things I love about our conversations with guests is you make it very clear. You say it a lot, your truth is your truth. You point out, you and I, as you said, you and I are Christians, but you don't have to be a Christian to be on Beyond the Crucible. You don't have to believe what we believe to talk about how you will overcome your crucible. And that is a... I mean, that's part of your desire to speak eternal truths to a larger audience than even just people who believe like us, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. I mean, in addition to my book, Crucible Leadership, and the host of this podcast, I'm a certified International Coach Federation executive coach. And by training and by values, I believe a bunch of things, including my faith in Christ, which is the anchor of my life, and I try to live that every day. I try to think, how am I living my life in line with the principles of Jesus? Am I living in light of that or am I ignoring it? Am I forgiving? Do I have compassion? Am I living my life in light of truth. From my own paradigm, that's how I look at it, and I think we all have to do that, but I believe passionately that everybody has a fundamental right to believe what they feel called to believe and to live their own lives.
But while there may be different paths, what I think is not helpful to say is, "Beliefs and values are irrelevant to me, I'm going to ignore them." Because that's not so much ignoring what other people think. That's ignoring yourself, that's ignoring your own soul. It's never helpful to ignore your own soul and your own fundamental beliefs. Good things don't happen if you won't even pay attention to yourself. That's why this is so important.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. All right, here we go. Third one, here's the hat again. I'm just going to show the fedora as often as I can. Here's the hat. I'm going to go in here. I've got another one. Let's see what we have in the lexicon of Beyond the Crucible birthed from this podcast celebrating its 300th episode as of this speaking. All right, here we go, Warwick. Forgiveness doesn't mean condoning what was done to you. There's a couple of things in here on forgiveness. This is the first one. Talk about that a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
This is interesting because for a lot of people, they feel like they cannot forgive because if they forgive, somehow it means that what that person did to them is okay. No, that is not what it means. If somebody, and we've had people on this podcast, people who've been abused by one or other parents, people who've just suffered lost businesses, maybe they're ripped off by somebody else. There's a lot of people that have anger towards people that have really hurt them. And so forgiveness does not mean condoning the horrendous behavior that was done to you. But one of the things we say is that to be able to move on, we need to let go of the past. And so if you have this attitude that, well, I'm not going to forgive because then I'm condoning. No, forgiveness and condoning, two separate things. But if you don't forgive, you keep looking at the past and you don't look at the present or still less the future.
So it's really a lie, a false narrative that if we're not thinking 24/7 about the person that hurt you and what they did, that somehow you're condoning them. No. I don't know that this is very easy, but when you get to a point that you truly forgive, you won't be thinking about what happened to you all the time. Will you forget it? No, but it won't be a 24/7 thing. Maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, maybe more will go past in which, huh, I really haven't been thinking about that because I've been busy with the present, I've been focused on how to help others, and it's just not something that consumes many more. So that's why we make it a very important point to say forgiveness doesn't mean condoning, but you've got to find a way to forgive in order to let go of the past and move on. And if you can't move on, how in the world are you going to help anybody? It's just so important.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right. I heard it described to church once, gosh, decades ago, that forgiveness is taking on the sins of another person to yourself. That's what forgiveness... And those can be heavy. That can be heavy. And the other aspect of this work is it's not just always other people we have to forgive. It is also ourselves we have to forgive. And I know from your story that that was one of the... You yourself were perhaps the person you had to forgive the most for your crucible of the failed takeover of the family media business, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Sometimes forgiving other people is one thing, but forgiving ourselves, that feels like the Mount of Olympus of forgiveness.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And that is tough. For me, again, I mentioned earlier in the failed $2.25 billion takeover for my family's 150-year-old family media business, I felt like I let down my father, my parents, 4,000 plus employees, other family members. I felt like I let down John Fairfax, incredible person of faith, my great-great grandfather. And so in the '90s, I would just continue to persecute myself. Before I launched the takeover, I had an undergrad degree at Oxford, worked in banking at Wall Street. I graduated from Harvard Business School in 1987, months before launching the takeover. We're not talking years, months.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, I graduated in what, like May, June? Takeover was launched in September. That's not a long timeframe, just a few months. So it's easy for me to say, "How could I have been so dumb, assuming family members wouldn't sell out into a takeover or company controlled by me because I wanted to make sure we could change management and change the direction of the company?" So it made sense at the time to me, but it just was ludicrous. But over time, I got better at forgiving myself. For me, my anchor is my faith in Christ and came to realize Christ doesn't need my stuff, doesn't need a huge family media business. He loves us unconditionally as children of God. It's not based on what we do.
But then I also had a more sane view that there was infighting amongst family members going back many decades. It was a very difficult situation that I grew up in. So was it all my fault? No. Did I make some incredibly poor decisions? I think I certainly made some decisions that weren't great. Yes, they were probably poor, but I was able to let go of it in part by saying, "Look, I was so young. I was in a very difficult situation. I honestly was trying to do the right thing. I was never trying to hurt anybody, but it didn't work out. I made some bad assumptions and I have to move on." And certainly since I do have a life affirming vision with Beyond the Crucible that seeks to help others, it's easy to move on when you've got something to move on with and to.
Gary Schneeberger:
What's the next thing that you're going to... I feel like a carnival barker or something. All right, what we got next? Coming up here, we got, what do we have? We have, you have to do, this is a phrase you used earlier a little bit, just as a tease, you have to do the soul work. We say this a lot here. You say this a lot here. And again, it's like you have to forgive. Doing the soul work is part of what it takes to get you moving on that treadmill that gets you through your crucible on toward a vision that can carry you to a life of significance. Talk a little bit about soul work and why it's important.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, we talk about soul work a lot. So we've talked previously about it's important to have an anchor for your soul and have belief and values, but when you are bouncing back from your worst day, which we sometimes call a pit of despair, it's easy to say, "You know what? Nothing to see here. This is awful. I just need to move and move as quickly as possible. Move anywhere, do anything. Just do something. Just move. Just do it. Right? Just keep moving forward."
And yes, it can be helpful to move forward, but move forward to where and why and what from? How is this going to be different? You've got to do the soul work to meaningfully move forward. And that is not easy. It can be excruciatingly painful. You've got to dig down deep and explore your beliefs and values. Now, exploring your worst day, you've got to say, "Okay, how much was it my fault? Maybe I was too naive, I trusted in the wrong people. Doesn't mean it was all my fault, but maybe I should have been smarter. Maybe I let the wrong people into my life." Again, doesn't condone other people's behavior, but it's almost like forewarned is forearmed.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, how am I going to do anything different if I keep repeating the mistakes of the past? Typically, history does repeat itself. Typically, we often don't learn from our mistakes.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
So to be able to move forward meaningfully in a healthy, fulfilling life-affirming way, you've got to do the soul work. And it's just, it is not easy. When I was writing my book, Crucible Leadership, which I started around 2008, as I mentioned before, after a talk in church when lead part of my church, an evangelical church in Annapolis, Maryland, he asked me to talk about my story and I thought, well, how much can my story help others? It's such a unique, big business kind of multifamily business story, but somehow it did. And so then I started writing my book. I thought, well, if this can help people... Well, in those early days from 2008 on, in part, as I was writing about my worst day and the mistakes I made, it was excruciatingly painful. I couldn't... After two or three hours, I was done. I just needed a break. It's a whole lot easier now, years later when I've talked about it a lot and have come to terms with mistakes I made and all that.
Gary Schneeberger:
And you forgive yourself as you mentioned in the earlier point.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it's hard to do things perfectly, but relatively speaking, I think that's a true statement. But soul work is not easy. Deep reflection, it is painful. We talk about pulling off the band-aid, well, think of a band-aid on there with cement. That's like some of the most excruciating pain you've ever felt. That's what it's like pulling off that kind of band-aid. It is not easy, I realize that. But to be able to move forward, you have to do that soul work, that very painful inner reflection. It's critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We are four through. We're about to go to the fifth one. Let's see what we have. Well, this one's fun because again, all these are fun and here's why. The fun for me is that these words or these phrases did not exist in my vocabulary before I started working with you at Beyond the Crucible. And I don't know that you thought about them in the same way. A lot of these things don't even show up in your book because the podcast came after the book. So here's the fifth point. We need fellow travelers. Again, that's a, it should say, "Copyright Warwick Fairfax," on it because we talk about it a lot, but explain why that is so critical to our journey from trial to triumph.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, that word, fellow travelers, it really didn't exist in the book. It's come out of our discussions and it's a phrase that we have coined, and basically the thought is this is often when we're bouncing back from our crucible, it's tempting to say, "We've got this. I don't need help. I know what I'm doing. Move out of my way. I got this." But rarely is it the case that we've got this. I don't care how capable you are, how self-confident. From my spiritual framework, God doesn't give us all the gifts. And why is that? Because I believe he wants us to be humble and wants us to work in community. And so since we don't have all the gifts needed, if we have a small business or a non-profit, whatever it is, we're going to need people with skills and experiences that we simply don't have.
And so a self-confident humble person says, "Look, I know I'm deficient in certain areas." For me, as I've talked about before, I feel like I'm a good reflective advisor. I think I'm a decent if not good writer, but I'm not a salesperson. I hate selling. Every time I try to, I feel like I'm a used car salesman trying to sell the worst lemon that's ever existed. Is that true of sales? No. But that's psychologically what I feel like, and it's just very ingrained and I'm a reserved person by nature, so it just doesn't fit. So there are other people on the team who are better at promoting and selling than I am. And so that's one side. The other side is that we need people who will come alongside us and encourage us, especially in those early days when you're in the pit of despair, you might be thinking, nobody could want to be around me. I feel like a leper in the Bible, unclean. Leave. Go away. Don't touch me. And nobody could respect me or like me.
But when you find a few, all you need is a few, one or two or more that says, "Look, I realize this is really tough, but I believe in you. You do have skills and abilities. You do have something within you that could be a future vision. You matter, your heart matters. You matter as a person." All it takes sometimes is people who believe in us to take one small, positive baby step. Maybe it's to talk to somebody that your friend knows that might have worked for you. Maybe you have a passion about a certain nonprofit or maybe it's talking to folks that do something similar.
In conversations, it gives you a spark of confidence. It helps you take that next step. So people who encourage us on the days when we feel like I'm going to give up, it's all too hard, is critical. So fellow travelers is critical. Without them, I think it's hard to see how you get beyond your worst day of pit of despair, how you get that vision off the ground with people with diverse skills, how you keep going and have perseverance without people encouraging you to say, "Hey, look. Look how far you've come. I know you can do it." It's absolutely critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
How important have fellow travelers been to your own journey from setback to significance?
Warwick Fairfax:
That's a great question. I mean, the list of people that have been our fellow travelers at Beyond the Crucible is huge. We've had so many, and those are people with different skills and experience, but there have been days when I've been a little discouraged, and we've got people, yourself and others who have encouraged me. Certainly more broadly than that, my wife, Gale, has been a huge source of encouragement. Even my kids, people at church. I'm an elder at my church and I'm in the Life Group community group and had all sorts of people.
When I was younger, I had people that were mentors of mine that spiritually just in those dark days of the takeover was able to encourage me. So I've had a lot of people that both encouraged me as well as had skills and experiences that I don't have. So yeah, I've always felt like why would I try to do it all myself? I like getting input from people. I'm an advisor, but I'm also somebody that likes to take input and reflect on what people say. It doesn't mean I agree with everything, but by the dialogues with other people, it actually helps refine my thinking. So fellow travelers is absolutely critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, I'm glad that you talked about that because we're going take a pause in our conversation and we're going to do something a little bit different.
Cheryl Farr:
Warwick, congratulations to you, to Gary, and to the entire Beyond the Crucible team for your 300th episode. Many may not realize, maybe just you and I, that this has actually been a ten-year journey to this extraordinary milestone.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow.
Cheryl Farr:
When we first met in 2016, you had a manuscript and the dream of publishing that manuscript as a book. You met me because you needed a brand. When you first told me the story of losing your 150-year-old family media business, I thought that was incredible. But when I read the manuscript, which of course became your number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, Crucible Leadership, something became really clear to me. The fact that your story wasn't about this devastating loss, but was really about your heroic journey back from it.
In your journey of self-reflection, of healing, recovery, it was clear that you had develop so much wisdom about how to bounce forward from the worst setbacks imaginable, how none of us are beyond redemption, and how we can all turn our worst trials into our greatest triumphs. Now here we are 10 years later, Beyond the Crucible has created a rich and important body of work of bounce forward stories from people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Beyond the Crucible has also become a beacon of hope for so many who need to understand and be encouraged by the truth that our worst days don't define us, and that there really is truly light and hope at the end of any tunnel. I'm so proud of what you've achieved and to be part of the Beyond the Crucible story.
Scott Karow:
Well, hey, Warwick. As the person who has perhaps heard your voice more than any human on the planet, it's my pleasure to just give you a short greeting here. I was looking back to see when I jumped in with the team on this podcast, and I was stunned to realize that I joined you on episode 66 in April of 2021. So I've been on board for, I think that's 234 episodes of the 300. So that's a pretty big deal even for me. I wanted to share the one thing that I've heard over and over and over again that resonates so deeply with me is it didn't happen to you, it happened for you. I can honestly say that my life is full of a lot of it didn't happen to you, it happened for you moments. In fact, the only reason I'm here editing your show and working with you for so long is because of some it didn't happen to you, it happened for you moments.
And so I just enjoy rethinking through that every time I hear that phrase is just, the Lord's been good to me through some really hard times, and I can look back honestly and say, "Those things didn't happen to me. They happened for me." And of course, you and I share faith and we can look to a much bigger purpose to those hard times. So I just wanted to thank you for all of those times that I've enjoyed personally, the moments they've spoken to me, and the times I think back of texting you and saying, "Hey, this was a great episode. I really appreciated it." So thanks for everything and congrats on number 300.
Margaret Hibbard:
Hey, Warwick. I just wanted to say congratulations on 300 episodes. This is definitely an accomplishment for any podcast, but it makes me really happy to know that your show is striving and we're just getting bigger and better each year. I love watching you and Gary have discussions every week, and it's been amazing to be a part of the guest-booking and curating the stories that we put out on this podcast. A little interesting bit. When I started working with the team, I was going through my own personal crucible and it was something that wasn't really on the surface for me, but working with Warwick and Gary throughout this experience has really helped me understand that your worst day doesn't define you and that there's a lot of wealth and resilience and enrichment that happens when you don't let your worst day define you. I have to say this is one of my favorite jobs I've ever done coming from the film industry and using our skills and our connections and our network to help people and make a difference.
I think back on, we've had some amazing guests join us. Some notable ones for me, Amy Shippy's episode really stuck out to me and how she let her faith give her a new direction in life. I really like Lauren Sisler. Her story is amazing and we're hoping to have her on again soon. But overall, I'm just really proud of you guys because vulnerability over a digital format is always hard, and I feel like you guys have captured a lot of authenticity and wisdom and you have a vessel and a program that's really helping people, and it's a joy for me to log on every day and to work with you guys. So I'm just really proud of you and I hope that 300 is just a start and we have 300 more ahead of us. So congratulations, guys.
Casey Helmick:
Warwick Fairfax, I am so excited for episode number 300. It has been a long journey to get here, but what a fulfilling one. Scott and I talked this morning, Scott, of course, our wonderful editor, and we started with you around episode 66 and what a partnership with you. We're so thankful to get to tell these wonderful stories. And honestly, I was thinking about which story is my favorite, and it feels like every week, every month I learn more of your story, and this is a good moment to remind yourself your story is such an inspiration for so many. We don't talk about your story all that often. 300 episodes in, we've been there, done that. But just such a beautiful reminder to me here at episode 300 that one life can inspire so many, can inspire 300 of these stories to come to the world and change lives, and we're thankful for that.
I mean, I remember personally going through a crucible just in the past year and thinking, man at the bottom of this barrel, what is left? And many of the things that you've shared through the years were right there waiting for me. So I hope, I pray that we can keep doing another 300. I hope that there's many good days ahead of us because I know each and every one of these stories that is told first is meaningful to you because it is a way to give back having faced your own crucible, it's meaningful to the whole team and to my team because we get to be inspired by these incredible people that we pulled together, and it's meaningful to the listeners and the viewers, and we know that we can feel the impact.
The last story I thought of just sitting here laughing about is when we recorded your audiobook work and there's helicopters flying over a forest in Austin, Texas, and we've got to pause every now and then because the helicopters go in to save somebody. And it's an honor to work with you. It's an honor to laugh with you. It's an honor to bring these stories to life and thank you for the hard work and the investment you're making into this world through Beyond the Crucible and cheers to 300 more.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, amazing. 300 episodes. I have been your co-host beside you for 297 of those if my math is right, and don't count on that because I'm an ex-journalist and I can't do math, but you did the first one by yourself, the 100th one I was your guest, and there was one after that in which somebody co-hosted for you. So I've been there for 297 of these 300 episodes, and one of the things I wanted to say to you is I have a unique vantage point being your co-host. I get to see your reaction to everything everybody says, some of the things that don't get into the final show, and one of the thing that amazes me what you say more often than, almost as often as crucible as this, "That's powerful." You say to the guests, "That's a powerful comment. That's powerful. That's so powerful."
And you're not just puffing them on. I know for a fact that you're moved by the things our guests say, and I think that comes through in what the show gives to listeners and viewers. I always tell people all the time, Warwick, that you are a true host because you don't have a list of 10 questions in front of you and you check them off. You listen, and then you pull the sweater strings of their story and you ask them questions based on that story. It's a true conversation. As an old ex-journalist, as I said, you're good. You're very good at what you do. So I always tell people before we have them on that you and I are like a sports commentating team. I wish I knew a cricket sports commentating team. I don't. But I'll tell you this, I'm proud to be the John Madden to your Pat Summerall.
Well, there you go. Any... I don't want to put you on the spot, but I mean anything to say about that. We pulled that off behind your back for the last couple of weeks, so we were very proud of how it all turned out.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, that's overwhelming. What a gift. I mean, thank you, Gary, for pulling that together. I mean, that's just, that's incredible. Yeah, as my family knows, one of the things that's a learning opportunity for me is I don't find it easy to hear praise. So when it's my birthday and listeners have heard this, we always do this thing where you go around the table and words of affirmation. So as I jokingly say, "I can dish it out, but I can't take it very well." I can dish out praise. I'm not so good at taking it. So when it's my birthday or Father's Day it's like buckle up.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
All that's to say is, yeah, I mean, I just feel so privileged. All of the people you had there. I mean, Cheryl, we started off 10 years ago, and a friend of mine in Australia said, "I know you have a book, but to have a book, you've got to have a brand and social media. You've got to have some folks that will want to, an audience will want to buy your book." So they put me in touch with Cheryl, and she helped create the whole brand that we have.
I mean, the brand we have wouldn't have happened without Cheryl taking the words from my manuscript and just a whole team, yourself, Margaret, Casey, Scott, I mean the whole team is... To have a team that believe in what we're doing, I mean, obviously everybody wants to be meaningfully and fairly compensated, but it feels like it's beyond that. The people really believe in the mission that we're doing that to help folks understand that your worth doesn't define you. And so to have co-laborers, fellow travelers like that, that have excellent expertise in the different areas, but truly believe in the vision, you can't get better fellow travelers than I have, and we have. So yeah, it's an honor to journey together and thank you for pulling that together. That's overwhelming. Well done.
Gary Schneeberger:
So shall we move on to the next point? We're at point 6.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yes.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yes. Please get me off the hook of this. All right, here we go folks. The sixth part of the lexicon that came out of Beyond the Crucible, and the podcast specifically Beyond the Crucible is this, your worst day is your worst day.
Warwick Fairfax:
This concept that your worst day doesn't define you. I mean, this certainly is something I've had to wrestle with. As I've mentioned before, growing up with this 150-year-old family media business, $2.25 billion takeover in my twenties, I wrestled with this concept, well, this worst day, this worst mistake is going to define me. This is my legacy. And so I had to find my way back saying, "Okay, yes, it was a mistake. Yes, ending 150-year-old business is not nothing. Again, it wasn't totally my fault, but it felt like a lot my fault, rightly or wrongly." So I had to find my way back to a new vision. And so at Beyond the Crucible, we do believe in second chances. We believe in redemption. We believe that if you learn the lessons of your crucible, that I've tried to learn those, that you can find a life giving vision, and very often it comes out of the ashes of your crucible, which it did for me. And that can lead to a life significance, life on purpose dedicated to serving others.
So this idea that your worst day doesn't define you, that has been life giving to me almost beyond description that, okay, I made mistakes, but I've reflected, I've done the soul work. I understand how much was my fault, how much wasn't, what my gifts are, what my gifts are not, what areas I'm passionate about. And now I feel like I'm so blessed.
I obviously love what I do at Beyond the Crucible. I'm an elder at my church in Annapolis, Maryland Bay Area Community Church. I help advise a friend who has a local ministry, Joey Tomassoni at Estuary. I'm on the campaign committee where my kids went at Taylor University in Indiana, very missional Christ-centered University. I'm so blessed to be doing all those things with people of faith and people who I passionately believe in their vision. So whether it's my vision of Beyond the Crucible or coming alongside as an elder at my church or other organizations, it helps me say that yes, my worst day doesn't define me. The fact that I've been married to my wife over 35 years, I've got three wonderful children, the oldest of which, Will, is getting married in May. I mean having three kids who work hard, strong faith, humble, I am blessed beyond description. So the fact that your worth day doesn't define you, I can honestly say amen. And I do believe that.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We're getting to the back half of our journey here, Warwick. We've got a few of these left. Let's see what we've got here. Character is your belief system in action. That's a good one. That's a big one. That came a lot out of the actionable truths of the brand, right? Talk about that a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
For me, my highest values are integrity and humility, but really character is your belief system in action. I think from my perspective, faith is important, but faith without actions is meaningless.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And one of my favorite Bible verses is James 2:17, and it says this. "In the same way faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." So to say, "Oh, I believe in love and kindness and compassion," but you have no kindness and compassion to anybody you know, I mean, what's the point? Or if you're like Enron, that company from a number of years ago that had all these wonderful values that they were about, love, compassion, whatever, and they didn't at all exhibit it, there was a lot of fraud and a lot of bad things going on, that's one of the worst things is to say you believe in a certain set of values and not live them.
People will rightly accuse you of being a hypocrite. Doesn't mean that you'll live out your beliefs and values all the time every day, but as a whole over the course of your life, is your life characterized by congruence, by more often than not living in light of your beliefs and values, or is it not? That's really the question. So your characters, your belief system in action is just so important. Beliefs without putting them into action, people may question, "Well, if you really believe that, wouldn't you live it at least to some degree?"
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
So character is so important of just living what you believe. And it's a journey. It's not easy. We're all going to make mistakes, which we have to confess, apologize, and then try to learn from and minimize them. But yeah, it's important to do the soul work. It's important to have beliefs and values, and it's important to try to your utmost to live them out every day with your family, with your co-workers, people that you know, organizations that you're involved in. It's critical.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And as I said, this is sort of a linchpin of our series that we did on the actionable truths of the brand, right? This idea that you can believe something, that's great, but if you're not doing it, right, actionable truth, it's a truth, but truth without action doesn't get you anywhere. So talk a little bit about, you don't have to go into all of them, but this idea, because it took us a while to land on something like actionable truth and we came up with it because it is so important. Yeah. You got to have truth, but you also got to have action behind it. That's what's going to propel you to your vision and then to a life of significance. Right?
Warwick Fairfax:
You might say, "I believe in fellow travelers, but I don't have any."
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Okay.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
Great, but you've got to have them. Or, "I think in theory it's good to have a vision, but I've taken no steps whatsoever to try and figure out a vision. I've not done the soul work, the reflection. I've not talked to others to get an idea of what kind of vision it could be. Okay, I have this vision, but I've taken no steps to make it a reality. I've not tried to get on board fellow travelers be they paid, unpaid, informal advisers." So the truths that you live your life by, they've got to be actionable. You've got to be moving the ball down the field in each of these areas. Self-reflection, that's important. Okay. But you've got to do it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's really, really painful. You've got to sit down and say, "What went wrong? How much was my fault? How much was others? Was I in like a square peg at a round hole? Was it not a good fit for my skills? Was it something that I could care less about? Was I in an organization, I don't know, maybe making cigarettes and I'm thinking, gosh, that maybe is killing people or it's not healthy? Yeah. So maybe there's more to life than just the almighty dollar. Maybe I need to be in organizations whose products and services I believe in. Maybe we're just killing my soul, going in every day to whatever that company was. It just treated people poorly. It sold products I didn't believe in." Well, you've got to do the self-reflection. So actionable truths is critical and doing the work on each of them.
Gary Schneeberger:
Absolutely. An actionable truth here is I've got to pull another phrase from the lexicon of Beyond the Crucible that was birthed into podcast right here. And here we've got one. This one has a bit of a long tail on it in that this one was from, and I looked it up, it was from our fifth episode. So this critical truth learned through this podcast in 300 episodes came, now, I got to do math, 295 episodes ago. And that's this. Your worst day is your worst day. It is not a competition. Talk about that, why that's important and where it came from.
Warwick Fairfax:
So as you say, this phrase came in our discussions with David Charbonnet. We had David and his dad, Mike, as you say, episode five. And David Charbonnet was a Navy SEAL who was paralyzed in a parachuting accident in Southern California. And I remember mentioning that my crucible of losing my family's 150-year-old family media business was nothing compared to what David had gone through. And as I remember it, David was so magnanimous, and he said, "Your worst day is your worst day. It's not a competition." And that was so kind and generous because to me, being paralyzed is a whole lot worse than losing some family business, even a couple billion dollar family business, it's not paralysis.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And so I think one of the temptations is to say, "Oh, what I went through, I feel almost embarrassed about complaining about what I went through." Because sadly, there's often people who have gone through worse. They suffered more loss, more heartache, more whatever it is. You might think, gosh, I thought my story is bad. But their story feels like light years worse, and it makes you feel embarrassed. But really the idea is your worst day is your worst day, and you can't compare yourself. I mean, your worst day and the excruciating pain that we suffer is indeed our worst day. For me, losing 150-year-old family media business, and again, it wasn't so much about the money, but letting down my family, my father, the 4,000 plus employees, ending the vision of my great-great-grandfather, a stronger business person for Christ as have ever come across, it wasn't maybe my vision as, at least as I've come to realize, but there were thousands of employees thinking that we felt safe in working for a company that was owned by the Fairfax family. Who's going to own us now? Was it going to mean?
I mean, that was not lost on me, but it felt excruciatingly painful at the time, just feeling like, probably the worst part of it was feeling like God had a vision, from my perspective, because I came to faith in Christ in an evangelical Anglican church at Oxford, I felt like God had a vision. I let God down. Now, if God had wanted to happen, it would have despite my mistakes, but that was so painful, letting my family, employees down, letting God down, it was excruciatingly painful. So that was my worst day. And I've learned with that very gracious thought by David Charbonnet that it's not a competition. It's just not helpful to say, "Well, I should be embarrassed." No, it's real to you.
Somebody that loses their job as a CEO, maybe the board fires them. You might say, "Well, loses a job as a CEO, you'll probably find somewhere else or something will happen. And gee, that's not paralysis. That's not being destitute." Okay. But for them, their whole identity or their whole sense of wellbeing, maybe it does mean a pay cut. Maybe they will have to sell their home. I mean, again, I'm not trying to minimize that, but it's like you can't compare what you've been through if it's incredibly painful to you. Who are we to judge others? Who are we to judge their pain and say, "Oh, that's nothing"? I mean, that's from my perspective, not right. We don't judge other people's pain. We don't criticize others. We don't make them feel less than. So this is an incredible gift from David Charbonnet.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right, we've got a couple more of these left, Warwick. Here we go. The next phrase out of the Beyond the Crucible lexicon, birthed from Beyond the Crucible podcast is this, lack of forgiveness is like drinking poison. It's our second exploration of the subject of forgiveness. First one was about forgiving yourself. This one's about not forgiving others. Why is a lack of forgiveness like drinking poison?
Warwick Fairfax:
This is a phrase that we've used a lot. It's related to forgiving but not condoning, but when you don't forgive because we can think to ourselves, if I forgive, that means it's okay what the person did. But what happens is when you don't forgive, it is like drinking poison. And what's so frustrating and galling is typically when we don't forgive, the other person could care less. But we're thinking about it 24/7. We're thinking about how bad it was. And it's just what happens is it corrodes our soul. It just eats away like acid just destroying us. It can damage our physical health, it can certainly damage our wellbeing.
And what happens is when we don't let go of what happened, the poison often manifests itself in anger and rage. And the sad thing, I think this is true, we tend to take out our anger and rage on those closest to us. Our wife, husband, kids, brothers, sisters, family, parents, cousins, friends. Do they deserve that? No. Of course they don't. And so if you love your family and your friends, coworkers, you have to forgive because that anger leaks and it will leak on the people closest towards you. So it is like poison. It can absolutely destroy your life. And as we said before, how can you move forward when your soul is just being eroded and corroded by acid?
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
There won't be any soul left to move forward with. So moving forward with a life-affirming vision, it won't happen. So if you value your family, if you value the people that will be helped by your vision, you've got to find a way to forgive and stop frankly drinking the poison. You just got to stop.
Gary Schneeberger:
All right. We're down to the last one. So I'm going to put the last one down here on my... And then you know what? I'm going to flash back to the early episodes of the show. I'm going to throw my hat on here for the last few minutes. Scott, give me a drum roll before I open this one up. Okay, let me hear it. Good, good. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Here we go. This has truly been at random folks and is a great one to end on because this may be the one, Warwick... No, I don't think maybe is right. I think this is the one that you struggle with the most of the things that we've talked about here, and that's your crucible can be a gift. Talk about why that's true and why that was perhaps a challenge for you to accept early on.
Warwick Fairfax:
So Gary, you're right. To say that my crucible can be a gift, that losing 150-year-old family media business, I didn't feel like a gift because as I've said earlier on in this podcast, I felt like I let my father down, my parents, family, 4,000 plus employees, my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, the incredible person of faith. And as I said, God, in some sense. I felt like God had a plan to resurrect the company and the image of the founder, and that was the plan and I blew it. So yes, how could that be a gift? But over time I came to see that there was a gift in this. One of the things I've learned is I prepared my whole life to work in the family media business. Undergrad degree at Oxford, working in banking at Wall Street, MBA from Harvard Business School. But I'm not this business tycoon. I'm not a CEO. I'm a reflective advisor. I don't like being in the limelight. I don't like having to manage.
I mean, since I have a Harvard MBA amongst other things, it's not like I don't understand the concept of management and what you have to do. I just don't like doing. It's like because I'm a strategic thinker, I understand the process of sales and the steps you need to go through to get there. I just don't like doing it. It doesn't mean I don't understand it. And so I was just not being who I was designed to be. And as I've said before, I wasn't living my own vision. In fact, I wasn't even living my father's vision. He was more of a philosopher at heart. He would've been a good university professor. He wasn't really, he was a good writer, but he wasn't really, I don't think fully living his vision.
But the vision we were living was the vision of my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax. It was his vision coming to Australia from England in the late 1830s with virtually nothing. It was his vision to start a great newspaper, which he did and that's wonderful. But I came to realize not only did I have not the right gift and abilities, this wasn't my vision. Well, the book, Crucible Leadership, this podcast Beyond the Crucible, helping people bounce back from their worst days to living a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. That is my vision. It's nobody else's vision. I didn't inherit it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's my vision and I feel very passionate about it. So one of the things I've realized more recently is that in a sense what I went through was a gift. It didn't feel like it. I don't mean that the ramifications on others is a gift, but for me personally, I never would've left voluntarily that family media business. I couldn't have. I would've felt like I'm letting down my father, parents, John Fairfax, God in some fashion. But I think somehow maybe God doesn't cause things to happen, maybe allows it to happen to impart my mistakes. I was able to find my own life. I was able to start over in America where my family and my name is not as well known. My kids were able to grow up in a relatively normal upbringing. This wouldn't have happened if I had lived in Australia in this family newspaper business.
So yes, it was a gift. All the things I do now from being a church elder and the other organizations and Beyond the Crucible, that is all a gift. So it's a painful gift. I don't think about the pain of what happened as much as I used to, but it is a gift. And what happened, I think one of the first times we heard about this was through an Australian Stacey Copas.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Became a diagnosed as a quadriplegic. She grew up in the suburbs of Sydney. She dove as a teenager into an above ground pool. Her parents obviously said, "Don't do that, Stacey." As a lot of kids do, they just do it anyway. So she had suicidal ideation, substance abuse, but she came back from that and became a speaker, consultant, coach. And she said that she's now grateful for who she is now. It doesn't mean that she is grateful for the injury, but her truth is that the person she is now wouldn't be possible without what she went through.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And we've heard a lot of guests on the podcast have said they feel some degree of gratitude for the crucible that they went through. One is an aberration, but many, several, it's not an aberration. There is real truth. If you can find the point where you can say to yourself, what I went, while I didn't enjoy it, it was horrendous, but there's some degree of gratitude that I can have for what I went through. I'm a different person because of what I went through.
Gary Schneeberger:
Well, that wraps up our discussion. The 10 sayings, the 10 phrases, the Beyond the Crucible lexicon burst from the Beyond the Crucible Podcast. I'm going to switch it up a little, Warwick. I have been, right, as I said in the video that we played in the middle of this episode, I've been your co-host for 297 of these and usually I get the last word. I ask you something and then I say the last word and say goodbye. Here's what I'm going to do this time though, because I know the ground that you're going to cover. I'm just going to ask you this question and I'm going to shut up and I'm going to let you have the last word. It's only fitting that on the 300th episode of Beyond the Crucible that the host and creator of Beyond the Crucible would have the last word. So here's the question. Any final thoughts about this whole robust conversation we've had? And it's been a delight to be here having this conversation with you. What are some final thoughts you have for our listeners and viewers here? And I'll just sit back and listen.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's been an incredible journey, these last 300 episodes. I would say for me it's been a voyage of discovery. And I think for both Gary and I, and I would hopefully say for the listeners and viewers as well. I'm somebody that loves learning. I'm a curious person by nature. I can't think of any podcast we've had, especially when we've had guests, even when it's just you and me talking about a movie or about something from the book or a blog that you and I have written, I feel like in the discussions we have and the discussions we have with guests, I learn something from every one of those discussions. Every one of the guests that we've had, there's something they've said, it's like, wow. David Charbonnet, "Your worst day is your worst day. It's not a competition." Stacey Copas, her sense in some sense of gratitude for who she is now after what happened.
There's so many people, I'd say everybody we've had on, there's something they've said I've learned. And that helps me grow as a human, helps me grow my knowledge and hopefully wisdom to a degree. It's borrowed wisdom, if you will.
Gary Schneeberger:
And I'm going to butt in. I'm going to butt in right there-
Warwick Fairfax:
Please.
Gary Schneeberger:
... because this is... You've often talked about you want to get it... That you are. I mean, you are a thought leader. But you know what else you are, Warwick? You're a listen leader. The way that you conduct this podcast, the things that you listen for, the things that you hear, the questions you ask, that is a... Anybody can talk. Good grief, right? I mean, it's easier to talk than it is to listen, and you do both extremely well.
Warwick Fairfax:
Thank you, Gary. I mean, I want to learn. I want to grow.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's why listen. And I want to probe the story of our guest so that it helps other people learn. So often I will ask guests, which not everybody does. I'll say, "Tell me the backstory. Was there something in your backstory that was the kernel of the dream and the vision that you are now? What was life like before the crucible?" Typically people don't ask that, they just go to the highlight. So I like to learn and I want to create a space where our listeners and viewers can learn. And beyond discovery, beyond the crucible, we're about giving people hope. We want people to feel like their worst day doesn't define them. And we're hoping that when our listeners and viewers hear from others or hear your and my discussions, people will think, if that person can get through that crucible, well maybe I can. Maybe I don't have to be defined by my worst mistake or the worst thing that was done to me. Maybe I can indeed bounce back from my crucible. Have a life-affirming vision that leads to a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.
I and I think Gary would affirm this, we're both looking forward to the episodes that are to come, the new guests, the new summer movie series, the new podcasts that come from blogs. I'm looking forward to more learning, more of a voyage of discovery. I'm looking forward to having an impact on people that watch and listen to our podcast. And it's just a wonderful voyage of discovery. Just as we close, this podcast wouldn't be possible without you, Gary. You're my co-host. I'm reserved. You're less reserved, which it'd be a bit dull if we were both reserved people. People would fall asleep.
Gary Schneeberger:
That's very Australian to say less reserved. It's an understatement.
Warwick Fairfax:
If you wanted to be truly Aussie, you'd say, "Well, Warwick, you're not wrong."
Gary Schneeberger:
Amen to that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Which means it's really true.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
So yeah, no, you are more outgoing than me, but you just create a perfect space for myself and guests to really get to the heart of some of these issues. This podcast wouldn't exist and it wouldn't be possible without Gary Schneeberger. It just wouldn't be. You're just a perfect companion and co-laborer, fellow traveler to me. Without Gary, that wouldn't be Beyond the Crucible. It wouldn't be. So that again, I think is a God thing. I feel truly blessed. We didn't bring you on board to do this. It was more your expertise in public relations. But as we were beginning it, it's like I thought to myself, I think I'd rather do this with somebody else, and who should I do it with? Well, you. You've done in your public relations, you've done radio interviews, you've had a lot of experience at dialogues and discussions, especially on radio, but now on podcasting.
So I think I feel blessed. I think you would agree. I think we are both blessed and we're just so looking forward to the next episodes of learning and providing a space where more and more people could be impacted and really believe the truth that your worst day doesn't have to define you, and you can live a life-affirming vision, a vision that does lead to a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So the voyage will continue, and we're just looking forward to the next chapters of learning and discovery, and we're looking forward to bringing them to you.
Gary Schneeberger:
Welcome to a journey of transformation with Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like The Helper or The Individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment, it's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit Beyondthecrucible.com, take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
Our guest this week, J.S. Park, has devoted his life to helping people not turn away from grief, but lean into it — not to move on from it, but to move with it. In his more than a decade as a hospital chaplain who has attended hundreds of deaths, he works closely with the friends and family they leave behind to give them permission to grieve. “It feels funny to say I permit you to,” he explains, “but it’s my job to let them know we can do this together, and it is possible to make it through.” To learn more about J.S. Park, visit www.jspark3000.com
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.
J.S. Park:
Loss is so scary that people don't know what to do with the discomfort, so they whistle past the graveyard or they put a one-liner into the silence or they try to smooth it over or they pull theological future hope over present suffering in order to self-soothe. Because when we see that abyss of mortality creeping in, we do everything that we can not to look it in the face.
Gary Schneeberger:
Our guest this week, J.S. Park, has devoted his life to helping people not turn away from grief, but lean into it. Not to move on from it, but to move with it. In his more than a decade as a hospital chaplain who has attended hundreds of deaths, he works closely with the friends and family they leave behind to give them permission to grieve. It feels funny to say, "I permit you to," he explains, "but it's my job to let them know we can do this together and it's possible to make it through."
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, June, it's great to have you here. June is J.S. Park. And June is a hospital chaplain, a former atheist agnostic, six-degree black belt, suicide survivor, Korean American, and follows Christ. That's quite a mouthful. He has a fascinating story.
So June currently serves at 1,000-plus-bed hospital, one of the top-ranked in the nation, and was also chaplain for three years at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the homeless on the East Coast. June has been interviewed by multiple different folks, CNN, NBR, CBS, Good Morning America. He's the author of a number of books. The most recent one is As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve. He's also wrote a book, The Life of King David, The Voices We Carry, How Hard It Really Is. So a number of different books. And he's also a board-certified chaplain and has an MDiv and a BA in psychology. June currently lives in Tampa with his wife, a nurse practitioner, and their daughter and son.
So, very much looking forward to our chat, as I mentioned off-air. I have a small window into what you do just because I have a daughter that's a child life specialist at a hospital in New York that works in the PICU. What's that, pediatric intensive care, something like that. So comes alongside kids and explains procedures to their parents and all.
So June, so tell me a bit of the backstory of how you became a hospital chaplain. I'm guessing you grew up in the Tampa area, did you, or in Florida?
J.S. Park:
Yes, born and raised in Florida and became a chaplain I guess by accident a little bit.
Warwick Fairfax:
So tell me, what was life like for you growing up? And hopes, dreams, parental influences. How do you connect the dots of how you grew up and becoming a chaplain?
J.S. Park:
If I could extrapolate backwards, I think if someone sat me down and said, "In five years, you're going to have seen hundreds of deaths and tended to those who are ill and injured and dying and working level one trauma, gunshots, fire, fall, stabbing, car accident, stroke," I may have walked out of that job interview thinking nobody could do anything like that. You were talking about child life specialists, they see so much too.
And so how did I fall into a job like this? And when I think back to childhood and how I grew up, I guess I could almost trace a straight line through it because I grew up in a very turbulent, violent household. I know that my parents loved me, but similar to many stories, especially with parents who are more traditional, they had a lot of unresolved, unmetabolized trauma ancestrally from coming from a country that was colonized and war-torn and didn't have the resources to work through that. And so when they had children, my brother and myself, on one hand, I know that they loved me, but on the other hand, it had a limit to how much they could show that and provide that within the traumatic bodies in which they lived.
And so I grew up in an almost like a dual role in that on one hand, I was a target for a lot of their abuse, but I also became their translator. And in some sense, when people would try to rip them off or see that they couldn't speak English very well, they would try to scam them, I'd see that all the time. I'd actually wait by the mailbox and sometimes intercept the mail because my parents assumed all junk mail was stuff they had to fill out. So they'd be putting their bank account numbers in there and things that I'd have to tear them up before they got them.
So on one hand, I was defending my parents, on the other hand, being abused by my parents, and what a conflicted dual role that that is that I'm sure many immigrant families, many poor families, just any family would experience with parents who have that trauma that's living in their body. So I grew up wanting to be the voice that somebody needed. I grew up wanting to be the voice and the peace and the presence that I didn't get to have. Everything was so unpredictable growing up. And again, I say this with all love in my heart for my parents. I know that they couldn't be the unburdened versions of themselves. And as they get older, I'm seeing that they are becoming more healed and liberated.
But I get to be hopefully some presence of healing and liberation for the people that I see. And so I've always believed the experiences that we have in our lives can become a lighthouse for other people so that, as they're navigating the roiling ocean, that they at least have people ahead of them that have maybe gone through what they're going through to be a light for them. And I'm glad and grateful to be that.
Warwick Fairfax:
From what I understand, you've been a chaplain for a number of years and you deal with, gosh, death, dying, illness. Just every day is a challenge. You see people in their darkest hour, patients dying, family members grieving, grieving, anger, the whole gamut of emotions that you write about. Grieving a parent who was a wonderful human being, grieving a parent that maybe they feel wasn't as wonderful from their truest perspective.
But from what I understand, pretty early on, I think it was month 13, you had your own almost crisis of faith. Talk about that because I don't know if it's like going into battle, which I've never served in the military, but you can hear about what it's like to be in battle. You can hear about what it's like to be a chaplain, but you can't fully know until you've actually been there, if you will. So what was it like? Just at month 13, what happened? I don't know if... Why did it happen? But just talk about that because that was a very challenging time.
J.S. Park:
I think most people enter into spaces or new endeavors with a very particular expectation often romanticized about what will happen. Whether that's a new parent, people who are just getting married, people who are starting the job that they work so hard for, we enter into these seasons with such wide eyes. And for me, I entered into chaplaincy with such wide eyes about I just want to help people and get to that montage, the Hollywood high-fives, and everybody just saying, "Yeah, thanks for the prayer. It was so moving." And if I preach a sermon, I get the slow clap, that sort of thing. I just imagined all of that sitting with the chaplains. "Crosses and communion wafers, up on three. Here we go." I just had this idea of what it would look like.
But when I got into the internship and then the residency, so month 13 of my chaplaincy, by that point, I had seen so much dying. And it wasn't just dying. I could understand that people suffer. I could deal with the fact that people were dying, but it was the extent and the extremity and the unfairness of the suffering that I saw. I thought this person can't suffer any more than they are, and then they would suffer even more. And it started to look haphazard and chaotic and random, unjust. And my idea of the cosmos or the universe or of God holding things together and having a plan, that became Swiss cheese. It just started falling apart.
And I remember watching this code blue, a code blue is a resuscitation to bring a patient back to life if their heart rate drops to zero, I was just praying and praying because by month 13, I had seen so many code blues and I had not seen a single successful resuscitation. In the movies and TV shows, there's a study that I believe about 75% show a successful resuscitation, but in real life, I think the number is less than 5%. And even those who are resuscitated, they have irreversible damage because of hypoxia, because of ribs being crushed from the compressions. So I'm watching and I'm praying and I'm saying, "God, just this one time, just please show us a miracle. Can you just blink in our direction? Do you see us?"
And so my ideas, my very shallow, wafer-thin ideas of God and theology and is the universe bent towards goodness, that started falling apart. And I did lose my faith. I talk about that in great detail in my book, and I think in chapter two. And I have lost my faith several times since and I've come back around each time, but if my faith was a box and it gets blown up, it came back looking different every time. We each still have a box, but now my box is a very misshapen trapezoid. Maybe at this point, a rhombus. It just looks different every time. And every time it comes back together, I think it becomes expanded and holds more than I have been able to previously. Even the ways that people grieve, even the ways that I speak grief language with other people, the situations and the pain that I see, I'm able to hold more.
There's this study about, I believe, earthquake disaster survivors in Pakistan. I could be quoting that wrong, but it is about disaster survivors. They tried to study how did they experience post-traumatic growth, and the ones who had their worldview shaken but experienced post-traumatic growth, they found that in their worldview, they were able to hold two opposite truths at the same time. So for example, the world can be terrible, but God is still good. Or bad things can happen for no reason, but good things can still happen too.
And so my faith, my worldview has been able to hold these opposing thoughts. Here is evil. Here is something unjust. Here is this patient who went through this injustice, or here's cancer randomly popping up and suddenly replicating in their body. Completely unfair. But at the same time, love can stretch over all of this. Love is still real. God's love is still real. I can still tend to these people. We can still find autonomy and choices and make decisions in this horrific situation that bring dignity.
Warwick Fairfax:
Just before we move on here, one of the things we didn't get into detail is I just want people to understand how bad it was when you talked about that crisis of faith. You were seeing dying people who were in situations where it was just unfair, stabbings, gunshot, car accident, strokes. You actually had mentioned you began to almost see people, it was... The level of trauma, if you will, that you were going through, it wasn't just some intellectual crisis of faith. How could a good God allow suffering? That would be huge, but it was beyond just a mere intellectual, I don't want to say mere, but it's beyond an intellectual crisis of faith. This was getting you at your very core. When you start seeing visions, a psychologist would say, "That's probably not good. There's something going on here." Right?
J.S. Park:
Yeah. I did develop over time from my work death anxiety. It's an existential panic. I knew it was happening because I would look at clocks and see seconds pass, and I would get obsessed with time. And every second that passed, I would say, "Oh, man, that's one more that's gone." I would ruminate on it over and over. It was an intrusive thought.
And then I would be, for example, in traffic, and I would look at a car full of people, and then I would picture suddenly, I could almost see it as clear as day, the car flipped over and all four or five of them injured, or I'd see them in the morgue. And then I would wake up 2:00, 3:00 in the morning in a panic and lean over my wife to check if she was still breathing. And I had dreams of all my patients all the time, mostly those who have died. And some would talk to me, some wouldn't. And in the dreams, they would just get closer and closer until I would wake up.
And it got to the point where I started hearing, I've talked about this before publicly, started hearing my patients who have died in my car or at night in my house. I work a late shift, I'd come home 2:00, 3:00 in the morning and I would hear them before I slept or as I turned the corner. And on one hand, I have to say how overwhelming it is to deal with something like death anxiety. They constantly just see it up close, not just death anxiety, but seeing the degree of suffering that people go through and seeing death over and over.
I was working during the pandemic and the front lines. I was there for 2021, the Delta variant. I think at one point, we were probably seeing 50 patients die a week. I was diagnosed with PTSD specifically from that time. So I have to say, as maybe much of a, quote unquote, downer as this is, that is what happened.
But I can say this, inversely, having been confronted with death face to face where I cannot look away, when I sit with someone like my wife or my kids, my friends, I have this thought that's prominently front and center. This could be the last time. This could be the last time I sit with them, laugh with them, because anything can happen. I've seen all the ways that anything can happen. I've seen the ways that youth does not guarantee a long life. I've seen the ways that trauma can suddenly slip through the window and here's the abyss of mortality, just like a sudden sinkhole clapping right open.
So when I sit with my wife or my kids, there is a richness and a texture with them. There is a presentness that I don't think I could have experienced unless I was faced with death all the time. And things like my obsession with time or things like hearing the dead, maybe those can be overwhelming, but those are also signals or indicators or maybe signposts to me that it is all precious and it is all going, and time is going fast. And all the dead who have died, I'm remembering them because it's my body's way of grieving them and honoring them, of keeping their story. And it's okay if they visit. I don't mind that they visit.
And so all these little things that I felt like were anxiety, it's still tough, it's not easy, but at the same time, they've all been teachers, they've all been educators about how I can live. And so the thing I can say is that I've learned as best as I possibly can to not wait. Just don't wait because you just don't know. If there's the thing that you need to say, if you see injustice and you feel scared to speak, if there are people in your life like, "Oh, I want to just see what they're up to," it's okay to send that text message and just say hello and that's it. So there are some things where I'll send a text or something to somebody and they're like, "Oh, did you see another patient die recently?" They know now. And I shouldn't make that joke. I know that's morbid.
Warwick Fairfax:
No, I get it.
J.S. Park:
But they know that I'm just... I'm constantly actively in this work and I'm always just so appreciative. Hey, I'm here another day. What a miracle that is.
Warwick Fairfax:
Wow. So let's probably move on from this. One of the things you've mentioned is, as tough as it was seeing people that you didn't know die and go through suffering, you mentioned that one of your good friends, John, showed up and was in a terrible accident. It's one thing when it's some random person, you can grieve for people you don't know and care for them, but when it's somebody you do know, that just takes probably the pain to a whole other level. So just talk about that because that must have been one of the worst moments in your life, just seeing John and having to be with somebody you knew so well.
J.S. Park:
Yeah. If I can tell you about John, he was one of my best friends. Tall, blonde, good-looking guy, so full of energy. And you always knew when he was coming. He had just this lumbering larger-than-life footsteps, such a loud laugh. The hardest I've ever laughed in my life was with John, because he was such an interesting... And funny without trying. Just the way about him, he was so funny. And he had a very young daughter and was always so curious.
And I remember one time he sent me a text message, it was a video, and I couldn't see it too well because it was so dark. And it was just him holding something over his head. And so I texted him back, "What am I looking at, John?" And he said, "Oh, I found some bricks outside, so I'm working out with them." He was just that kind of funny person. And gosh, that made me laugh so hard, but he was also so serious about it.
And I remember one time John saw me give this presentation, and this was back maybe in 2018, he saw me give a presentation and he was enraptured the whole time. And then at the end, he came up to me and he was like, "Hey, why aren't you famous? You're so good at this." And I laughed because me maybe just feeling sheepish about that as, "Oh, you're so funny." But he was so serious. It's like he looked at me and he just saw a star or something. But that's how John was. He just saw stars all day long.
And then I remember getting the call from my supervisor saying, "Hey, are you somewhere where you can be seated?" And you know when anybody tells you that over the phone, it's not because they're telling you they got a promotion. So sat down, and I was at work and she said, "Look, John's been in a very serious accident and he's at the hospital. I don't know what his status is, but if you could visit him and his family." And this is going to be true of anyone, you can be in a role that is functional, but as soon as it's proximal, as soon as it hits close to home, of course it's going to be too real and too raw.
But I saw him, and when I saw him, I had been working long enough to the point where I knew he wasn't coming back from what he had endured. He was intubated, on life support. And for the five days that he was at the hospital on my assigned floor, Room 51-16K, a room that I still visit sometimes, I attended to his family for those five days. And that fifth day, his parents made a horrific, the hardest decision that any parent could ever make to say goodbye to their son.
And I still speak to John sometimes just out loud. I have a voicemail from him that I've kept. I play it once in a while. And can I tell you, he has a brother named Mark. To this day, it's been about seven years later, Mark and I still meet for lunch. We didn't know each other before that, but I met him at the hospital and I told Mark, I said, "John and I had plans to go get Korean barbecue together and we never got to go." And Mark said, "Why don't we go?" I said, "Let's do it." Seven years later, I just saw him actually last week, we're still getting Korean barbecue together. What a beautiful thing that emerged out of that.
And so I don't know if I'm answering a question, but I feel so happy to talk about John and just... We learn so much about grief, but that grief is you got to let go and turn the page and forget the past. And how do you move on without them? But for me, grief is not about letting go. It's about letting in. We don't move on, we move with. And so with John, I've kept his memory front and center. In all the ways that he lives, I want to honor his life, and his life has become a part of me. So rather than letting him go, I've expanded more because of the memory of John and the way that his memory is a blessing.
Warwick Fairfax:
What you're saying is so profound, and you write about obviously grief quite a lot in your most recent book, As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve. You talk about being a grief catcher, a catcher of stories. What you just said, it's not about letting go, but letting in, this idea that we need to man up, buckle up, let go, don't cry. Especially in our culture for men, you're not meant to show tears or sadness. You meant to be tough, whatever that means, which is not helpful. But I feel like that's profound as just it's okay to grieve. And I think you write somewhere that you never really stop grieving.
In my own small case, I remember, I was a child of my father's third marriage, so he was a lot older. So he died in early 1987 when I was 26, but he was in his 80s. At that point, obviously there's more chance of passing away. And so we had a good, close relationship. I think about him often. It's decades later. Is there still grieving? Sure. I'm proud of so many of the things he did well. There's a couple things maybe, "Oh, Dad, I wish you'd..." There's a whole series of emotions that are there, but overall, I just feel blessed to have him as a father. And I think about him and my kids never got to meet him and my wife missed meeting him by one year. She's American and came to Australia.
We all have our stories, but you don't stop thinking about the person or grieving the fact they're not around. This is decades later. And it wasn't a complex relationship. He was not perfect, but a good guy. It wasn't some horrific tragedy. It was prostate cancer, but at that point in life, it's a fairly, I won't say normal, but nothing momentous about how he passed away. Very common way to pass away, but yet there's still grief.
Does that make sense? That grief isn't just shutting off emotions-
J.S. Park:
Absolutely.
Warwick Fairfax:
... it's just there's nothing wrong with grieving somebody decades later. And it could be a more complex sea of emotions than I just described, but it took a bit about really some of the essential tenets in your writing about grief, because it seems like it turns conventional wisdom on its head.
J.S. Park:
Yeah. I've noticed that, you could call it the Westernization or modernization of grief and that grief is rushed, and you see it not just in church culture, but you see it in pop culture. In church culture, it may be, "You need to let them go," or, "Everything happens for a reason," or, "It was their time," or, "This is going to refine you in the fire," that sort of thing. But then in pop culture, you also see, "Don't cry. It'll be all right. You need a stronger spine, not a lighter load." We say these things about grief and about pain, about trauma, but grief is so hurried and bypassed. And I read some time ago that the average workplace manual in America allows for four days of bereavement if your spouse or children die, which means if your closest family members die on Sunday, you better be back to work by Friday. And institutionally, religiously, we just rush past grief.
And it used to enrage me when I would see this sort of thing, but I'm starting to have more compassion for it now because I understand loss is so scary that people don't know what to do with the discomfort, so they whistle past the graveyard or they put a one-liner into the silence or they try to smooth it over or they pull theological future hope over present suffering in order to self-soothe. Because when we see that abyss of mortality creeping in, we do everything that we can not to look it in the face. We haven't been given the education or resources or the comfort or consolation that we need in order to confront, even embrace what is happening.
When you look at all the ancient cultures throughout history, there have been so many, what Caitlin Doughty in her book, From Here to Eternity, fascinating book, she calls it death engagements. Every culture has a way of death engagement. I believe the people of the Toraja tribe, they exhume their dead ancestors every summer and set them up. They're mummies, and they have tea with them and they eat breakfast with them. If you look at Mexico Día de los Muertos, they have the shrines with their pictures where they honor and celebrate, commemorate their dead. In Korean culture, we have Jesa. Every year, we talk about our patriarchs and matriarchs, their accomplishments. We read a timeline and have almost like a worship or a church service where we talk about them and remember them.
In Western culture, when you look at death, you have horror movies that treat dead bodies like they're some sort of thing to be horrified of and scared of and to run from. We put bodies six feet underground in a segregated lot, fill the body with chemicals, and sell all their belongings in a garage sale. And we're told, there's that Swedish death cleaning thing, "Just get rid of all their stuff." And maybe these things can be helpful for some people, but I would say that that all contributes to a culture of looking away when it comes to loss and the death.
But when you look at how did ancient cultures do it, they kept their dead close and they honored them. And in that way, as hard as grief is, grief was something that was not meant to be removed like poison, but rather carried as a gift or an honoring that we're living in memoriam. And so I think there's such a shame around grief because it seems like, "Oh, you can't let this grief make you fall apart. You're getting emotional," that sort of thing. But now when I cry over my friend John, or when I cry with my patient, that for me, my tears are a way of honoring them, the one person who is uniquely them who is now gone. For someone to tell me, "You got to let them go," there's no way. I'm carrying them with me, and they're going to make me larger.
And to your point, Warwick, just a real quick thing, you're talking about your father and I want to lift him up and honor him. And I've learned so much that grief is missing the past, but it's also missing a future that we didn't get to have. All the moments that you wish you could have shared with them. And I think Michelle's honor in her book, Welcome to H Mart, about the death of her mother, she writes about grief as much as missing the past as it is, missing the future that you wanted with them. The inside jokes, the moments of celebration and sorrow, their advice, those kinds of things. And so I think keeping that person with us is a way of almost continually living with them and living with their ghosts. And it's their ghosts that can make us more fully alive.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's important, I think, for folks who are listening and watching because at Beyond the Crucible, we've talked a lot about people who've passed away and the grief that comes with that, but really, you and I talked before we did this interview, June, so that we could ask intelligent questions, and one of the things you said to me I thought was interesting, and it applies to everybody who's listening to this, and that is, you said this, "Even losing a dream, losing something intangible, moving to a city, even good change involves grief." So those steps that you just talked about work for any kind of grief that we're feeling, not just the intense loss of a loved one, right?
J.S. Park:
Yeah, because I think one of the things that maybe people dismiss are non-death losses or intangible losses. The grief of a dream, for example. I had this whole plan for the future, but then this illness or this injury or this rejection, I wasn't able to do it, this career, this goal that I had. And some people may say, "Well, you didn't even get it," or, "You didn't even really lose anything." But that is a type of grief called intrapsychic grief. It's the pain of losing what can never be.
For some folks who have experienced a miscarriage, my wife and I suffered a miscarriage three years ago, there's disenfranchised grief in that, there's ambiguous grief in that, but also intrapsychic grief, losing what will never be. We had a dream about our baby. For some people who had these big dreams and then 2020 came around, the pandemic, they had to put everything on hold and some people never recovered.
And so that intrapsychic grief, the non-death losses, even Gary, like you were saying, quoting back to me, even people who have good change, who move towards the city for a big job, you're basically saying no to everything else. Even good change involves loss. Maybe some of us have been in this situation where you were working on the floor and suddenly, "Hey, we want you to be a manager. You're promoted to a manager." And suddenly all the other floor workers look at you like, "You're not one of us anymore." You're making more money, you're being a manager, you got the plaque on your desk, but now the floor workers look at you funny. Any kind of good change involves grief because it involves loss, any kind of change.
And so I noticed on a calendar that there's a National Grief Day or National Day of Mourning, and I tend to think... I chuckled at that because I thought that should be on the calendar every day because we're constantly grieving. We're always losing something, even if it's just time on the clock. And so there's constant grief. And I think we do need to acknowledge that and grieve that together because part of that grieving, there's growth in that. There's coming together to be able to say, "Hey, here's this dream that I lost and it meant something to me. What can I do now or what can I do to honor that dream?"
One thing that I have the privilege of doing in rooms is when someone is debilitated by illness and injury and it's now a before and after in their life, sometimes people in the room will say things like, "Well, you just need to reorganize and readjust and we're going to change our plans and do this and do that and make something new out of this and do everything you can do." But one thing I'll pause to do is I'll say, "Can you tell me about all the things that you wanted to do?" And I'll ask them to share that dream with me. And as painful as it is, they share that dream with me both smiling and crying because at least in some way by speaking that dream that's now gone out loud, I get to honor it. And in some way by speaking it, at least it becomes true. At least someone gets to witness what I wanted. And so even that grief ritual, that honoring, is important for us and the things that we lose that may not be real to someone else but are certainly real to us.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It's so profound, June. Sometimes there can be a both, and. There's a need to move on, but there's also a need to sit with. And somehow I think what you're talking about by sitting with, you both honor it but, maybe move on is not the right word, but you're able to be functional. Because most of us have wives, husbands, kids, grandparents, coworkers, there are people that depend on us that we have to find a way to show up to care for them. And so it's a both, and. You've got to feel your feelings and grieve, but you've also got to find a way to both hold that grief, but at the same time be present for others who are counting on you. So again, two opposing concepts, if you will.
And so I think the rituals you're talking about maybe help you, as I'm listening to it, feel those feelings, grieve the grief, but also find a way to have it in a place where the pain is still there, but it's still hurting, but you're also able to care for others and do the things you feel, at least from my perspective, God is calling you to.
And so just back to the intangible grief, which is a great point you brought up, Gary. I know for me, I think of, again, listeners would know this, growing up in this family media business, 150 years old in Australia, founded by a stronger business person for Christ as I've ever come across. It's like, gosh, there was this great vision that he had. I had this vision of restoring when I became a follower of Christ at an evangelical Anglican church at Oxford. Gosh, I know God's plan. It must be to [inaudible 00:36:46]. The company image of the founder was so obvious to me. It's dangerous when you feel like you know what God's plans are.
And so there's the grieving of, oh, I made some mistakes and that vision is lost, but it's like, it's lost, but now I have a different life, a different vision. And so I feel like nothing happens by accident. So if you believe that, from my perspective, then maybe God had His reasons. But yes, there's a grieving at the loss of that. And I don't live in Australia anymore where I grew up, and it's hard to see family and friends there every week. It's so far. So there's the grieving of that. But it is, you feel your feelings, it is what it is, but yet I don't let it demobilize me.
Does any of that... I guess I cover a couple of different points. Does that make sense at all of...
J.S. Park:
Yeah. If I could succinctly put it, I think for me, I got a lot of Megan Divine's book, It's OK That You're Not OK. And she writes, "Rather than moving on, we move with." How do we move with what we have? And there's a difference. It sounds like such a small difference, but it makes a world of difference. How do we move into a world now with the loss that we have, but move into it hopefully holding hope and holding vision for something different?
Warwick Fairfax:
See, that's so good because we talk a lot at Beyond the Crucible about not being in the pit of despair for your whole life, hiding under the cover, saying, "I'm so angry. I'm never doing anything productive with my life," which, to me, is not helpful psychologically or any other way. You've got to find a way, "Okay, this is awful, but I've got to find a way to move forward. Maybe this taught me some things. How can I use this for good?" Not that suffering is ever good, but how can I use this to help others? I've had so many people on our podcast that have done that, people who've been through substance abuse, coming alongside others who have been through substance abuse, saying, "Hey, I know what you're going through. It's not just a bumper sticker. I really do." And just sit with them.
I think in your words, moving with means you're not abandoning your grief, but neither are you sitting there purely grieving without doing anything productive with the rest of your life. You could have been demobilized by what happened to John and say, "You know what? I'm going to stop being a chaplain. I'm going to stop it. I'm not going to sit with any more patients. I'm in too much pain." But you made a choice not to do that. You made a choice, "I'm going to grieve, but I'm going to move with and still be available to be with others."
Does that make sense at all?
J.S. Park:
Yeah. Absolutely. And my heart does go out to people who take the time that they need in order to recuperate, recover, or my heart goes out to people who don't have the community and resources that can step in for them and who feel paralyzed because they were never given the right consolation.
But what you're saying reminds me of, I had this very young patient and she lost her baby, her dog, and one of her grandparents in one week. And she couldn't sleep. And so I was seeing her, I think, on the fourth or fifth day that she had been admitted. I'm changing some details, altering them for her privacy, but she told me essentially, "I lost these three very, very dear loved ones in my life. I can't sleep." And then she said, "I started thinking, could I maybe open a nonprofit and start helping the poor and start a fundraiser? When I grow up, I want to be a social worker, and then I want to raise money for dog shelters and for single women who are raising their..."
And she had all these big dreams and she goes, "Is it too much? Do you think it's too much?" And part of me as a chaplain, I'm supposed to help facilitate and process with her, "Oh, what does that mean for you to have these big dreams?" Or, "What does it mean for you that you're saying it's too much?" Just to be more open-ended. But I could see in her face that out of her grief, she wanted the sapling to emerge. She wanted beauty in the midst of her desolation. And I see that with patients who suffered violent injustice, violent loss especially. We're seeing that now in our country and all over the world, the out of grief emerges a need for justice and solidarity and collective transformation. And so what I told my patient, I just told her, "It's not too much. I think it's great." And she looked at me and she said, "Thank you." And she went right to sleep.
Warwick Fairfax:
One last thing I want to talk about is you have so many profound things in your writing. And one of the things you say is that we're called to each other's wounds to tend to each other's loss. That's just... Talk about that because this is... We've been talking a lot about our own grief, and obviously you're a chaplain in which you do this, but for people who aren't chaplains, just people listening, what does that mean being called to each other's wounds? Because there's something profound in that insight that you talk about.
J.S. Park:
Yeah. Earlier, I said that there's something about loss that is incredibly scary and causes us to self-soothe and to look away, but I can also say that in credit to our humanity, to our innate compassion, to our need to connect, when we see suffering in our most natural and you could say divine and human state, we are called to one another. I actually think that when we look away, we're forcing ourselves to do that. When we self-soothe, we've been trained and indoctrinated to do that. But in our most natural state, the most natural God-designed human condition, when we see someone suffering, we can't help but be called to them. We can't help but to feel heartsick and stomach-sick.
There's a homesickness and then there's almost a, quote unquote, human sickness. We see someone hurting, we're called that way. And it takes a lot of narratives and forces of division and bigotry to get us to dehumanize one another. But without all that, if we strip all that narrative away, we see suffering, we are compelled to step in and support, to speak into and act, to alleviate and to liberate.
And so I think sometimes I'll see at deathbeds, I'll see people get into fistfights over the dead. I'll see people arguing about the will. I'll see someone who's died, the wife shows up, and then the three mistresses show up. Sometimes I'll see someone begging for their children to come to bedside, and the children refuse to come because of a history of abuse. So I've seen how bad it can get. And in all of these stories, the people who don't forgive or the people who are angry, I want to validate where they're at. I want to validate their anger. I want to say that there's abuse involved, you don't owe forgiveness, you don't owe a relationship. I want to understand all these things, and I have so much compassion for all these things.
And I can also say that even in those situations where I see animosity, I see violence, I see grudges, the reason why people are so hurt about this, the reason why that mother says, "Please call my children. Even if they don't want to see me, just call them," the reason why I see even people fighting over a will is because in some small way, even beyond their capacity to do it, they want to connect and to be heard and to say, "This hurts." Or, "I messed up and they need to know that I'm sorry about this." Even in all of that, that need for the deathbed reconciliation.
So Warwick, I hope I'm answering your question, but that's what I've seen. And as a chaplain, it's been my honor to support people in it.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick indicated that that was a turning point toward the last question. This is the time in the show, June, where I would be remiss if I did not give you the opportunity to tell our listeners and viewers how they can find out more about you, your books, your ministry, all of that.
J.S. Park:
Yeah. I'm on all the things, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Substack. I probably have a Twitter out there somewhere that I haven't seen in a while. But my book is called As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve. And then I have an upcoming book coming out in November, and the title hasn't been released yet, but it's on family dynamics, intergenerational trauma, and reclaiming our motherland. And so a lot of that is on family stuff. And that book was actually harder to write than the book on grief because I got really personal, really dug into my family tree and lineage and all of that. And when they say family's complicated, I just have to ask, "Oh, you mean a family?" That's every family. These family dynamics are complicated. I'm like, "Oh, so they're a family then." Yeah, so that book's coming out in November.
Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick, as always, the last question here is your prerogative, so take it away.
Warwick Fairfax:
So June, there might be somebody listening today and they might feel like today is their worst day. They might have lost a loved one. It could be feelings of joy, but very often there could be feelings of anger, and it could be either because they feel it was so unjust this person was taken from them or maybe they're angry at that, but they're angry at that person who they had a poor relationship with in life. Anger can be very complicated. So today might be somebody's worst day. They're grieving and their emotions are a flood of emotions, some conflicting, like waves hitting against each other. They may not be waves going in one direction. They might be going in 10 directions at once of all sorts of anger wrapped up in grief. What would be a word of hope or at least a word of comfort for somebody in that situation?
J.S. Park:
I can think of several things, but I think the main thing I want to say is you are not lesser for feeling how you feel. Everything that you're feeling, whether you want to scream at the sky, roll around on the ground, whether you want to shake fists, throw a chair, or you're sitting in a corner and you're completely shut down and it's cognitive fog and you can't do anything but scroll your phone or you haven't cried a tear, that amplitude of emotions, however you're feeling, I hope you're never ashamed for that. Your emergent response, that immediate response is what your body needs to go through and it is your way of honoring that loss. And I hope no one makes you feel lesser for it.
I have seen all kinds of response to loss. And every time I think I've seen them all, I see one more, whether that's singing or dancing, rocking back and forth, rolling around on the ground, burying their face in their loved one's hair for two hours, all of it. And so I hope no one tells you anything like, "You shouldn't do that." I hope you don't believe that. That is what you need. Just as everyone grieves differently, we need differently.
And I would say the other thing too is, as hard as this may be, if you're like me, you may find it hard to ask for help. And I hope that you would be willing to lean on your supports, even if it's just that one person. And just I hope you know that the people who love you, they will never tell you that you are too much or that you're being too little. And I really do hope you lean on your supports. I know that that's a tough thing to reach out to people, and you may feel guilty or you feel bad or, "I just lost someone. I don't know if I want to burden them with all my stuff, all my sadness. I don't want to slobber all over them," but you have people in your life who love you and who have that godly type of love that says, "I love even your slobber. That's okay." If you need a shoulder to weep all over, that person's shoulder is open and ready and willing.
There are so many times in my life where I was ashamed to reach out. Even as having been a patient in the hospital, I was worried about how people would see me being so vulnerable and being in this gown, and I haven't showered in a day and I'm unkempt and I don't have my toothbrush and all my stuff. But when I let that door open and I let my family in fully and I let my friends in to see me, I knew I can't get through this without people. I can't do this alone, and I wouldn't want to.
So even if it's just the one person in your life or it's a pastor or even if you need to pay for a therapist, it doesn't make it any lesser even if you pay for that. If there's support in your life, I hope you lean on them and not feel any shame for it and fully embrace them.
Gary Schneeberger:
Friends, I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word has been spoken on a subject, and that word spoken by our guest, J.S. Park, was the last word on our conversation today.
Warwick, we've just finished our conversation with author J.S. Park, whose actual name, non-book name, is June Park. And boy, it's good stuff in there. It's going to be hard for you, but I'm going to challenge you with it anyway. What is one takeaway you'd love for our listeners and viewers to have from this episode?
Warwick Fairfax:
Oh my gosh, it was so wonderful talking to June. I think one of the things we're often taught about grief is just to suppress it. Move on, buckle up, deal with it, don't show any tears, which is profoundly unhelpful. I think any psychologist would tell you, "You can't stop your emotions." And so one of the things that June says is, "You've got to grieve." You've got to sit with those emotions. You've got to feel those feelings, and rather than ignore them, you've got to find a way to move with that grief to grieve and come alongside other people's wounds.
And so grief doesn't necessarily go away. As I was saying in the podcast, I lost my dad in early 1987. Because I was a child of his third marriage, he was in his 80s when he died and I was 26 at the time. So I often think about him, and often very good thoughts. And yes, occasionally there are some things that maybe he could have done differently. I don't know. We all have a mix of emotions. But I think just allowing ourselves to grieve and to just sit with it.
And one of the things he also talked about in a lot of different cultures, they will have rituals in which people will come together on maybe their birthday or each year and just share memories of that person. And those memories could be good, they may not be good, but just giving yourself the permission to feel those disparate feelings that may be of joy, of anger, or sadness, and just not stuffing those feelings in the basement, as one of our guests said.
I think one of the things that here at Beyond the Crucible, you often talk about both, and. And so what that means in this context is you want to feel those feelings. You want to grieve the loss of a loved one, which could be old age or could be a car accident. It could be all sorts of different feelings that you have. You might have this loving feeling towards them. Maybe they were a parent that was abusive. Maybe those feelings of grief are complex, but you've got to feel those feelings, but at the same time, you've got to find a way to, I wouldn't say move on, but to use J.S. Park, June's words, find a way to move with so that those feelings of grief and anger don't prevent you from being a loving husband, wife, child, coworker. You might have people that work for you. So you've got to find a way to both grieve, but yet be in a place where it doesn't stop you moving forward.
We say at Beyond the Crucible a lot that your work, it doesn't define you, but you can't live in the pit of despair your whole life. You can't sit under the covers your whole life. You've got to find a way to move forward. And for us at Beyond the Crucible, and for many of our guests, those who've been abused, for instance, have found a way in some cases to comfort others who've been abused. Those who have lost loved ones, maybe you've found a way to comfort others who've lost loved ones. So make some meaning, some purpose out of tragedy. It's not always the case, but for many of our guests, it's often the case.
So I think it's important to grieve and not stuff those feelings, but it's also important to find a way to, maybe it's not move on, but it's move with. There has to be a beyond the crucible. So you've got to find a way to move beyond as you're moving with. Not an easy thing to do, but it's important to grieve, but you don't want that grief to basically control your whole life that you ignore all the people that depend on you and all the people that love you. It's a both, and. Not a simple thing, but you want to grieve and find a way to move with in getting beyond your crucible, but that grieving doesn't necessarily go away. And that's okay. It's a both, and.
Gary Schneeberger:
Until we're together the next time, please remember that we know your crucible experiences do indeed cause grief. As June said during the conversation, "Hey, there's a National Grief Day on the calendar. Shouldn't it be on every day on the calendar?" We know that the crucibles that you go through in all seriousness are sources of grief. But we also know this, that when you dig in, when you learn the lessons of the crucibles that you've experienced, when you give yourself the chance to reflect on those things, we know that it can tee you up to go on another great new adventure. And that new adventure takes you to the greatest destination you can ever get to, and that is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like The Helper or The Individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially, the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance.
Ready? Visit BeyondTheCrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
How do we craft a vision that can lead to a life of significance? Harnessing humility is the first step, we discuss this week. And we do so by examining the life of Moses, one of the most important figures in the Bible.
It’s all part of this latest episode of our series within in the show, More Stories From the Book Crucible Leadership. Pay special attention to our discussion of what the Bible says about Moses’ humility.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. When leading a vision, you don't want it to be all about you. If it's all about you, how can it lead to a life of significance? A life of significance by definition is meant to be about others. If the vision is all about you, I don't see how it can lead to a life of significance.
Gary Schneeberger:
So how do we craft a vision that can lead to a life of significance? Harnessing humility is the first step we discuss this week, and we do so by examining the life of Moses, one of the most important figures in the Bible. It's all part of this latest episode of our Series within the Show, More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership, and pays special attention to our discussion of the humility of Moses. Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have dropped in on another of what we call the Series within the Show. And what that is this year in 2026 is we are taking a look, it's called More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership. Why is it called More Stories? Because we did this last year. We did Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership, and now we're doing More Stories from the Book. And here's the fun part about that, some of these stories actually made it into Warwick's Wall Street Journal bestseller from 2022, some of them were on the cutting room floor. Last week, we talked about William Wallace and the lessons we can learn from him. He was cut from the book, he was the cutting room floor. This week, we're going to talk about someone who actually made it into the book, and that is Moses, and we're going to talk about specifically Moses and his humility. But just to let you know, again, what this is, once a month, throughout the year, except for in the summertime when we do our summer series and we'll skip that, we'll feature one story from the book that Warwick wrote, spotlighting one key learning that helped the subject of the story overcome a crucible, and help you do the same when you apply the principles that we're going to discuss. And this week, as I said, we're discussing something that was in the book. Indeed, it's Moses on the subject of humility. It's a very small topic, right, Warwick, Moses on humility? I mean, come on, that's the bestselling book ever, and one of the biggest characters in that book. So let's get started, Warwick. Tell us a little bit, because not everybody's going to know, not everybody's seen the Ten Commandments, not everyone's going to know who Moses is, so talk a little bit about Moses' backstory, as we like to do when we have guests on the show. What is the backstory that will inform what we're going to discuss today?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's funny you mentioned that, Gary. I was just thinking about that with Charlton Heston and the Ten Commandments. Gosh, I don't know if it was in the late '50s, early '60s. It was a long time ago.
Gary Schneeberger:
1956. 1956.
Warwick Fairfax:
1956, well done. So some people might have grown up seeing it, or maybe they're familiar with Moses from the Bible and Bible stories. But just to level set us, Moses was born in Egypt to Jewish parents. Moses' mother set him afloat on a basket in the Nile River to save him from an edict from the Pharaoh, who made this edict that all newborn Jewish males would be killed. Now, it so happened that that basket was found by Pharaoh's daughter and he was raised in the Egyptian courts. So Moses' life changed radically, from growing up in just a pretty normal Jewish family, I don't think they really had any money to speak of, not that we know of, and so now he is somebody that's raised in the Egyptian court, amidst luxury, power, influence, just a radically different upbringing. But I think it's clear from the story that he still knew his heritage. And so, at one point, he saw this Egyptian taskmaster really just being brutal towards Jewish people, and he had this righteous indignation, if you will, and he ended up killing the brutal Egyptian taskmaster. Now, once that happened, he then fled from Egypt to Midian, someplace in the desert outside of Egypt, and he was there for years, for many years. And so then, the next bit of the story is, and I'm sure listeners will probably be familiar with this, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush, and he commissions Moses to go down to Egypt and bring the Israelites out of bondage. And he must have probably been thinking, "Who, me? I tried to escape from all that. You want me to do what?" It's just a pretty amazing thing that the Lord asked him. And so, at first, Moses was unwilling to take this on, and eventually, Moses did lead his people from captivity in Egypt into the wilderness, where eventually they would reach the Promised Land. Again, it took many, many years, and the Promised Land would be the future home of the Israelites. So that, in brief, is a bit of the backstory of Moses.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And what we're talking about is what appeared in your book, Crucible Leadership, and it begs the question, why did you pull Moses into a book on leadership and crucibles and how to bounce back from crucibles? What is it that led you to think Moses was a good subject to bring up in your book?
Warwick Fairfax:
I talk about Moses in a chapter from my book, Crucible Leadership, and this particular chapter is called Faith in God's Leadership. In the book, and certainly on the podcast, we talk a lot about the fact that to come back from a crucible, you need an anchor for your soul, and we call this anchor faith. Now, by that, it could be a religious faith, it could be a spiritual, a philosophical perspective, and how we live out our faith make up the aspects of our character. So in this particular chapter, I talk about a number of key principles of character, and I would say indeed leadership, humility, integrity, servant leadership, soft sacrifice. So we're going to focus here, when we talk about Moses, on humility. So when we think about humility, nobody wants to be around somebody that think that they're better than others and they know everything. Arrogance divides while humility unites. And there are a number of passages in the Bible that talk about humility. Here's a couple. Philippians 2:3, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves." James 3:13, "Who is wise in understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deed done in the humility that comes from wisdom." So the basic premise is that wise people are humble, and that kind of makes sense. Arrogance, as we'll see, doesn't lead to anything good. The wise way is to be a person of humility. And what's interesting, the Bible, in Numbers 12: 3, says this about Moses, it says, "Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the Earth." So if we're going to talk about humility and what's a good example of humility, it's not a bad place to start with the person the Bible calls the most humble person on the face of the Earth. You could almost say, if you wanted to be contradictory, that Moses maybe was the GOAT of humility. Is it possible to be the greatest of all time about humility? Certainly not if you're saying it, right?
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, for sure.
Warwick Fairfax:
By definition, you're disqualified. But anyway, so according to the Bible, Moses is an extremely humble person. So what's interesting about Moses' story is, as we've seen, he was raised amidst luxury and power by Pharaoh's daughter. Now, he could have lived in luxury and just said, "Look, okay, yes, I'm Jewish, but why should I bother about my people? They're basically in slavery to the Egyptians, but not my problem. I'm living this wonderful life, this good life," so to speak, at least from a wealth and a power point of view. But yet, it's clear that he never really forgot where he came from. There's that old adage, you leave the neighborhood, and it's like, yep, he or she has forgotten his heritage and the people he grew up with and reinvents their whole background, but not Moses. And so, Moses chose to defend his people, initially against that Egyptian taskmaster that was being brutal towards the Jewish people and ended up killing him, he ended up having to flee for his life. And it's clear that Moses was not looking for greatness. Here he is leading this quiet life in the desert in Midian, he's not really seeking to accomplish anything great, be it God has a different plan for him. He wants Moses to lead his people out of captivity. And I'm sure he probably wonders, "Who, me?" And in fact, pretty much exactly what Moses says in Exodus 3:11, Moses said, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt again? Who me? You've got to be kidding." And really, another example of Moses' humility is that he was not looking to be the key spokesperson for the Israelites. So God, in fact, allowed Aaron, Moses' brother, to be that spokesperson, really quite remarkable.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And I have to raise my hand and butt in here, because I am a public relations executive by training. And I wrote a book a few years ago, Bite The Dog: Build a PR Strategy To Make News That Matters. And one of the things that I introduce into evidence in my book is the idea... Well, I'll read from it and you'll see what the idea is. I'm picking up on page 11. "Moses, for all the leadership qualities that got him chosen by God to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, knew there was one thing he could not do by himself. He didn't trust his ability to speak to the people. He was called to lead in a way that would marshal them to action. By the biblical account, Moses is commissioned by the Almighty in Exodus chapter four. He immediately begins to muse aloud about whether he's up for the task, prompting God to show him a couple of miracles sure to get the people's attention, turning his shepherd's staff into a snake and then back again, and giving him leprosy of the hand that he cures by having Moses slip it under his cloak and pull it back out. God even promises a third miracle if the first two don't cut it with the masses. If Moses pours water from the Nile on the ground before them, it will turn into blood. But Moses still waffles. 'All the signs and wonders in the world,' he sheepishly tells God will not help him overcome his ineloquence, a condition he describes in verse 10 as being 'slow of speech and tongue.' He goes so far as to try to beg off the assignment altogether. He asks God to select someone else for what was, at that time, at least equal to Noah's building of the arc as literally the most important task in history. That's how certain Moses was that the communication skills, his communication skills, weren't up to snuff, and that communication skills were going to be a major part of the uprooting and transplantation of more than a million men, women and children out of Egypt and into Canaan." Here's the point of all of that and why I said I'm a public relations guy by training. "It's at this precise moment that the creator of the universe became the creator of public relations." This is God. "'What about your brother, Aaron? I know he can speak well,' God says in 4:14. 'You shall speak to him and put words into his mouth,'" which is what we PR people do. People speak to us and we put those things into the press' mouth. Talk a little bit about what all that brings up for you.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I think it's easy, in one sense, to say, "Well, if God said that he could do it, maybe he would've supernaturally done something." But Moses is like, "Despite all these miracles, no. As you said, I'm slow, speech is not me." And so, God says, "Okay, fine. I guess we need to bring in the PR guy, because this guy knows how to speak well." So what would've happened, obviously God's in control, but looking at it a little bit more broadly, if Moses hadn't been able to speak eloquently, would the Israelites have followed him? How would Pharaoh have reacted? We don't know. But I think you could say that it was certainly an important piece of the puzzle of freeing the Israelites from Egypt, to have a good, eloquent spokesperson that they did in Aaron. So without public relations, maybe the Israelites would've been stuck in Egypt. We will never know. But Aaron was critical in communicating the message well to the people, so there you go.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And that's going to be... Well, it is on my website for my PR business, that's one of the things that I say on there. I interrupted you as we were going through this, you were going to talk next about... Actually, what I interrupted to say indicates that Moses was being humble, and you make the point, Moses tried humbly to serve God his whole life. Talk about that a little bit more.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, yeah. So Moses' leadership had an incredible impact on the Jewish nation and history, and it's interesting that Moses, while he's remembered for his great leadership ability, the Bible chooses to focus on humility. It's fascinating. The Bible focuses on character. I think very often, we'll look at people in history, in current leadership, in the arts, and we'll look at how well they performed in their craft, we'll look at their leadership. But the Bible seeks to focus on character, what was their character like? And I've talked about this a bit before, about my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, who founded the 150-year-old family media business I grew up in in Australia. And yes, I could focus on him coming out to Australia with almost nothing in the late 1830s and founding what was to be a huge media dynasty. But as I read more about his story, what I focus more on is his character. He was a wonderful husband, a wonderful father. When he died, his employees said, "We've lost a kind and valued friend." He was an elder at his church. It was the strength of his character that made him such a great person, his humility, his focus on others. So I don't think about his bank account or the huge media empire, that's not my focus. And I think that's really what we should be focusing on, is the character of people, not so much how many zeros are in their bank account or whether they're the GOAT of their sport or their industry.
Gary Schneeberger:
Isn't it true, and I'll use your great-great-grandfather as an example, when you've amassed success and you've amassed money, it's even harder to display the character traits that really matter, because you can lean into that, "Look at all I'm doing over here." You can start to believe your own press a little bit, to use the PR perspective there. So it's even harder when it's someone like your great-great-grandfather, it's even harder when you're someone like Moses who's been given this great calling, to start to feel less and act less than humble, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It is. The more power, fame and money you have, you tend to believe your own press, and to be humble is not easy. You're flattered by hangers-on that want something from you, "You're amazing, you're wonderful," and you just start to believe that. So it's why I think, certainly from a faith perspective, just grounding yourself for me in my Christian faith and humility, that it's all God, it's not me, whatever that equivalent philosophy is for you, you want to ground yourself in humility every day so that you don't get warped by success or by failure. If today's the greatest day, doesn't mean that you're any better than yesterday. If today is your worst day, it doesn't mean that you're worse than yesterday either. I think in the poem by Rudyard Kipling, If, I think it talks about "treat those two impostors just the same" or something like that. So what's interesting is despite Moses' humility, he had a huge impact, not just on his world, but on the Bible. Tradition holds that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. That's amazing. This person that fled Egypt and was in a sense hiding out in the desert of Midian wasn't looking to have a big impact in history, let alone biblical history, but yet he did. So maybe there's hope for all of us in that God or whoever's up there can use the humble, and who's to say who he will use, or whoever you think is up there. And the fact that God used Moses so powerfully, both in history and in the Bible, is staggering, since he was not looking to lead anything. He was trying to live a quiet life. It took quite a lot of miracles to get him off the dime to do anything, and even then, he wouldn't speak, but just to actually lead a thing. He was not an easy sell to say, "Oh, you want me to lead something? Oh, great. I'm your man." It was like, "No, can I just run? Can I avoid all this? Because I really don't want to do this" So yeah, certainly there wasn't a lot of arrogance there, that's for sure.
Gary Schneeberger:
No, and to your point earlier, he grew up in the home of Pharaoh. He was, as an animated version of the Ten Commandments, is called the Prince of Egypt. He was a prince of Egypt. And if anybody can be arrogant, you can be arrogant coming from that kind of environment, and he didn't do that. In fact, when he was in Midian... This always has struck me. When he was in Midian, he didn't even have his own flock to shepherd, it was his father-in-law's flock. He didn't even have his own animals, he had to shepherd his father-in-law's flock. That is not a guy who's living high off the hog. That's not a guy who's still a prince of Egypt. And yet, he leaned into that humility, and that made all the difference in the world in the way that he led the Israelites. And that can make all the difference for us if we don't believe our own press and don't act arrogantly, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. I think when you're humble, it enables you to listen to your soul or to God, depending on your perspective. When you're arrogant, it's just like bright lights that erase anything else. All you can see is the bright light of your own arrogance and self, and you can't really think about anybody else. Moses wasn't perfect, he certainly maybe didn't handle the situation with the Egyptian taskmaster as well as he could have, but it showed his heart, saying, "Persecuting Jewish people is wrong." He had sort of a moral code. So he wasn't just thinking, "I'm just going to ignore this, because it's not my problem. I'm fortunate that I'm living in the lap of luxury. Why upset the apple cart? Keep my head down and enjoy this, and hopefully they'll leave me alone and I'll do well." But that wasn't really Moses. And even though he was reluctant to take up the mantle from God, he took that up. And again, as people may know, it wasn't easy. And when he went back to Egypt, it was not an easy sell to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. There were all these plagues that God brought to bear, from locusts to blood in the water, there was a lot. And Moses could have said, "Hey, this is too much. This Pharaoh character is not budging. Can I leave now? Because this feels like mission impossible" So I think in a sense, the humility that Moses had led him eventually to obey the Lord throughout each part of his life, through all the plagues, to when God told him that he would part the Red Sea so that the Israelites could cross the water to the other side from Egypt. And Moses was like, "Okay," he just humbly obeyed the Lord throughout. So yeah, I think you just see his obedience and his humility growing as time went on. He constantly tried to do what was right, obey the Lord and lead his people to freedom. So in one sense, you could say Moses is the least likely person to be this humble leader. Think of him as a leader? No, you just think of him as somebody that wants to hide in the deserts of Midian, not to lead anything. But he had the humility and obedience, not easily, but to obey the Lord and lead his people to freedom.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. When you were describing what you were just describing about Moses' life and the plagues and all that, it reminds me of, since I turned 50 years old, every year on my birthday, I publish a note on social media that says, "Here are the number of my birthdays, here's some things that God's taught me about life." And one of the things I put in there for, gosh, since the beginning, I guess, is that I'm more than my mistakes and I'm less than my accomplishments. Somewhere in the middle, somewhere between those ping pong paddles is where I live. And I think that's a little bit about what you were describing about Moses. Yeah, he made some missteps, as you said, but he was more than that, he realized he was more than that. But he was also less than all these great things that happened to him that were successful. He lived in the middle, in the margins there, and I think that helped him be the leader that we all remember, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I think there are two pitfalls that you eloquently described. One is, "I can't believe those mistakes I made. I'm an idiot. I'm an awful person." That tends to be more me, as listeners and viewers would know. Growing up in this 150-year-old family media business, fresh out of Harvard Business School, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover in 1987. Other family members sold out. The October '87 stock market crash hit our asset sales program, and three years later, Australia went into big recession. So it's easy for me to say, "It was all my fault. I'm an idiot. How could I have made some of the terrible assumptions that I did having a Harvard NBA?" And I certainly made my mistakes, quite a few of them. But a humbler approach would be, "Okay, I made mistakes, but it was a very difficult situation, with my father having died earlier in 1987, there was friction with different elements of the family." So a humble attitude is, "Okay, my life isn't summed up by all of my mistakes, nor was it all my fault objectively. I've certainly made my share." That's a humble attitude. On the other hand, you can say, "Well, I'm the greatest person that's ever lived and I didn't make any mistakes, and I should be defined by my bank account and my fame." You've got to have a humble attitude, both to failure or to success, and realize you're not summed up by your worst day or by your best day, and you're not really summed up by achievements or failures anyway, it's something deeper, which really we've been talking about a bit here, is in character, that's more the issue. Just like Moses, you could look at his life and say, "Okay, sure, he was humble, but he was disobedient to God on multiple occasions during that burning bush when he just wouldn't... It took him a while to say yes." But eventually, he did. Was it the right thing to kill that Egyptian taskmaster? I'm not sure that that was the best way to handle that situation. And it wasn't done with a calm sense of, "This is what I need to do," it was done in rage and anger. When you do things in rage and anger, rarely is it the right thing to do. So he was not perfect at all, certainly like all of us we're imperfect. But yet, he had this humility to put the greater cause of the freedom of the Israelites above his own agenda, which was to hide in anonymity in the deserts of Midian, as you rightly point out, without his own flock or land to his name. So yeah, being a person of humility means you're also a person who is willing to obey either those above you or a higher power, and you know it's not about you, it's about a higher purpose. And certainly Moses, his life was all about a higher purpose and a higher cause. He, as we know, went up to Mount Sinai and brought down the Ten Commandments, a foundational biblical principle, and in some sense, foundational principles in Western civilization. So God tells him, "Go up to the mountain," he does and he brings back these 10 Commandments. So the amount of things that God did through him is really quite remarkable, this least likely to succeed, this humble man. If God can use Moses, if some higher power can use Moses, then maybe there's hope for the rest of us.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, let's pick Moses up, put him back in the Old Testament now, and let's apply what we've been talking about from the lessons from his life to those folks who are our listeners and viewers, and let me ask you this question. How is humility, as applied to all of us, the rest of us, those of us who are living today, how is that so critical? How is humility so critical to both overcoming a crucible and living out a vision toward a life of significance?
Warwick Fairfax:
We talk a lot about bouncing back from your worst day, our crucible, and when you're trying to bounce back from your worst day, from your crucible, it's critical to have humility. We often say the first step when you're in the pit of despair is to have a bit of self-reflection. In fact, have a lot of self-reflection. And you cannot self-reflect without doing it with humility. So let's say that your crucible was largely your fault, and so that will require a lot of humility to look back at what happened and to look at our mistakes in the areas where we could have done better. Because what will tend to happen is we'll say the actual reverse. "Was it my fault? I did nothing. Everybody does it. I just didn't get away with it." And you can't learn anything unless you have the ability and the willingness to choose to have humble self-reflection. And on the other hand, even if the crucible was not your fault, we still have to look at what happened with a calm sense of humility rather than anger. Now, maybe you were persecuted incredibly unfairly and you might understandably have anger, but anger will make it almost impossible for us to look at what happened with any sense of calm dispassion. And we can learn a lot from what happened with having a calm sense of humility. You might say, "Well, this is what happened. I want to learn these things." Because very often, people who have suffered sometimes carry that on. Statistically, those who've been abused often abuse their own family and kids. It's hard to understand that, but that is what the research says. And so, how is that? Well, what happens, I think, is you get so angry about what happened that anger leaks, and who do you take your anger out on? Typically, those who are closest to us. So you have to have a sense of humility to look at what happened and say, "Okay, this is what happened. Let me make sure that I don't follow in those same footsteps." And that's important. So whether the crucible was your fault or not your fault, to be able to move forward out of the pit of despair to lead a purpose-filled life, which we call a life of significance, it's critical to have a sense of humility. And as we're moving beyond that crucible, a vision forms, often that vision will come out of the ashes of that crucible. You might say, "I never want anybody to go through what I went through," so that vision might come out of that, it's often the case, many of the guests we've had on this podcast. And as you move towards a life of significance, humility is critical. If we have this sense that this vision has got to be all ours, we don't want to share the credit, the chances of that vision being a good one and coming to fruition are greatly diminished. If we have this attitude, and I talk about this in the book, I want to talk about vision, if we have this attitude that our vision is a bit like the Michelangelo statue of David that's in Florence, in Italy, we might say, "This vision is so perfect, I'm not going to share the credit." But what you have to do, even with nervous hands, is to give the hammer and chisel to those team members around you and say, "Okay, I want your input. Go ahead and hammer away and have a little bit of a chisel into this statue." You've got to be willing to give others input. And not only do you have to give others input into the vision, but you've got to be willing to have others help you bring that vision to fruition. We call those other people that can help you fellow travelers. And rather than saying, "I've got it, I don't need help," which so many people say, nobody has all the gifts. From my perspective, God doesn't make it that way, because he wants us to be humble and he wants us to trust him. And so, part of that means you need a team. So in the case of Moses, maybe he knew how to lead in some sense, but he was not articulate. Certainly he felt that way, and he needed Aaron to be by his side to help articulate the vision. Now, could Aaron have been the leader that Moses was? We'll never know, but let's assume maybe he didn't have all the gifts either, maybe that wasn't his gift either. To have a vision come to fruition, to get beyond your crucible, humility is absolutely critical. And as you have more success, which you might, as the vision becomes reality, there'll be people will say all sorts of nice things to carry favor with you, and you might want them on your team. A humble person says, "You know what? I don't need the hangers-on, the people that say things to flatter me. I see through that, I see through them. They don't care about the vision, it's all about their own personal success." You'll have the humility and wisdom to say, "Yeah, thanks, but no, thanks. I want people that really believe in this vision and aren't just trying to flatter me." But you can't make that decision and have that discernment unless you have the humility that I think also gives you wisdom to know who you want on your team, who you don't want on your team, and as I've said, just the humility to have people help you craft the vision. So humility is critical to getting beyond your crucible and critical to having that vision be the best it can be and to come to fruition.
Gary Schneeberger:
C. S. Lewis said, "Humility is not thinking the less of yourself, it's thinking about yourself less." What do you think? That is a pretty spot on moving statement, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's so well said. A humble person isn't really focused on themselves, humility is not really focused on the self, whether it's on your feeling that you're the worst person or the best person. It's really focused on others and it's focused on the mission. How can we get this mission accomplished? I went through this terrible crucible and here's a vision that will really help people, so how do we get this to happen? How do we get the best vision? How do we get the best team? How do we get the best partners? Maybe you can help fund this vision if it's a nonprofit, or even if it's a for-profit business, you still might want investors. How do we do this? Humility focuses on others and the mission, not yourself. And so, humility can be almost like this secret weapon. I think of Abraham Lincoln, who is often thought of by historians as the greatest president in US history. Whenever they vote, they always vote for Lincoln. Nothing against Washington or some of the other great presidents, Franklin Roosevelt being some good ones. Well, why Lincoln? And I think, and I write about this in the book, and obviously there's been a lot of books written on Lincoln, is that he had this incredible sense of humility. His whole objective was to preserve the union in the Civil War and free the slaves so that all people would be free in the United States, and he was willing to admit his mistakes. It took quite a long time for him to find the right commander of the Union Army in Ulysses S. Grant. First few picks didn't fare as well. And there was a time in which somebody came up to him and said, "Mr. Lincoln, your Secretary of War said that you're not a very smart man or you have some deficiency." And rather than saying, "Well, this is his last day in office," Lincoln's response was very wise and humble, "Well, tell me what he said and tell me in which particular area that my leadership is deficient." Now, that's a humble and a wise response, rather than saying, "He's an idiot," or, "He's right." "We'll tell me where." And so, his humility was sort of bulletproof. So he was surrounded by a cabinet... Again, a lot of this is from Doris Kearns Goodwin's great book, Team of Rivals. His cabinet was composed of people who were his rivals for the Republican nomination in the election of 1860, and they all thought the wrong guy won. Here's this country bumpkin from the wads of Illinois, which then was considered out West, but it didn't worry him. He felt like these people, this team, have characteristics and abilities that he needed. The fact that they thought he was an idiot and didn't respect him, it didn't worry him, because he wasn't focused on himself, back to the C. S. Lewis quote. He was focused on the mission of saving the union. So why was he such a great president? It was because of his character, in particular, his humility. That's a relatively more recent example of just the power of humility. Without humility, who knows what would happen in US history? With humility, Lincoln was able to accomplish what he accomplished.
Gary Schneeberger:
So all this talk about humility, and there's been a lot, we've gone from Moses to Lincoln to your great-great-grandfather, we've talked about a lot of different things, of those myriad things that we've discussed about this important topic, what's one takeaway or two takeaways or three takeaways, as many takeaways as you want, what are the takeaways that you see that our listeners and viewers can apply to their own lives as they try to... I don't know if master humility is the right phrase. Lean into humility, I guess, is the right phrase. What's some takeaways that people can get from our discussion today?
Warwick Fairfax:
So Moses was not looking to lead a movement. He was not looking to be this incredible force in the history of Israel as the greatest figure in the history of that country. He was, as you know, he was raised in a fairly poor background. But after, he ended up being raised by Pharaoh's daughter. He could have led a life of luxury, power, influence, but he didn't. He just couldn't stand the fact that his people, the Jewish people, were being persecuted. Now, maybe he didn't handle it in the exact right way, out of anger, killing that Egyptian taskmaster that was persecuting the Jewish people, but it shows his heart, he believed in righteousness. And while his growth as a person happened over time, which it does for all of us, and yes, he fled to Midian, to the desert, but eventually he did end up obeying God's call to lead his people from bondage into freedom. That was no easy thing to say yes to. It's like, "Who, me? Why me?" Which he said. But he was obedient to God. Another example of his humility was he knew that he was not a good spokesperson, he was not eloquent, and yes, he might've had some anxiety. But yet, I think you could also look at it on the other side, that having somebody like Aaron, his brother, speak up was wise, it was a good move. And I think more broadly, when leading a vision, you don't want it to be all about you. If it's all about you, how can it lead to a life of significance? A life of significance by definition is meant to be about others. If the vision is all about you, I don't see how it can lead to a life of significance. It cannot. You have self-determined that it won't. And we've said the only way to join fulfillment in life is to lead a life of significance, because humans are wired, from my perspective, by God, to be [inaudible 00:42:19] focus, to want to help people. And the way that joining fulfillment comes is not through power and money, it's by accomplishing some higher purpose that helps others in some way. For Moses, it was not about him, it was about leading his people to freedom. So we just need to have the humility to think that this vision is not about me, it's about others, and we also need to have the humility to know that we need help. There are so many entrepreneurs that start a business, and where many, if not most, fall aground is they won't release control, they won't bring in good managers. Typically, entrepreneurs have that entrepreneurial vision, but they're not always good managers. They typically are not. And so, they don't know how to take the business to the next level. And so, the humble leaders, the humble managers, whether you're a leader of a nonprofit or of a business, however big or small, they realize, "Look, I have this vision. I want to share this vision with my team, maybe they have ideas that I don't have." But they will also realize," I need people who are better than me in certain areas, and I won't be insecure about that. If they're better than me in speech or in managing or engineering or sales, getting donations, whatever it is, I'll be okay about it, because after all, it's not about me, it's about helping others. So if somebody else can come in and help me help more people, why would that be wrong? Now, that's all very logical, but logic goes out the window if you don't have humility. So I'd say not only is humility an absolutely critical part of character, it's critical to get beyond your crucible, to have accurate self-reflection about what you did wrong, what you didn't do wrong, what was done to you, what's a humble way of looking at that, what can you learn from that. It's also critical to bringing your vision to fruition, both in crafting the vision and in getting the right people on board. So you want to get out of the pit of despair, you want to have a vision that makes a difference in the world, humility is indispensable.
Gary Schneeberger:
That sounds like the plane is on the ground, Warwick. That sounds like you've brought this in for a perfect landing. Folks, that is the end of this second Series within the Show episode on More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership. We will turn the page again next month to another story to help you turn the page and move beyond your crucible to a life of significance, and we'll see you then. Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially, the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment, it's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment, and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
Our guest this week, brain surgeon Dr. Lee Warren, discuses the breakthrough he discovered in medical understanding he’s dubbed “self brain surgery.”
This neuroscience-backed prescription boosts performance, connects science to faith and rewires your brain to overcome anything and flourish.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible.
Dr. Lee Warren:
I was doubly-wounded from the war and the loss of the first marriage and then the sudden loss of my son without any answers. I was really wrecked and didn't know what the future would hold for me.
Gary Schneeberger:
What the future would hold for this week's guest, brain surgeon, Dr. Lee Warren, was a breakthrough medical understanding that he's dubbed self-brain surgery. The neuroscience-backed prescription he discusses with us this week boosts performance, connects science and faith and rewires your brain to overcome anything and flourish.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Lee, it's so great to have you. Lee is Dr. Warren. Dr. Warren is an award-winning author, a neurosurgeon, Iraq war veteran, and he also writes and teaches and serves prescriptions for connecting neuroscience to faith for radical life transformation. He teaches the Art and Science of Human Flourishing on his podcast, the Dr. Lee Warren podcast, which is heard in 150 countries around the world. He's got a number of books, including the one we will cover here, The Life Changing Art of Brain Surgery. He's got some prior books, Hope is the First Dose. I've seen The End of You and No Place To Hide. This will be a fascinating discussion with Dr. Warren and just everything that he has got through and the wisdom that he has.
Gary Schneeberger:
And I just have to say at the outset work and Lee, I'm experiencing a crucible right now because I'm the least accomplished person in this room. It's good. A little humility is always good for me.
Warwick Fairfax:
Not at all. Not at all. Lee, before we get to your book, you've had your share of crucibles and that has really, I think, informed everything you write about, everything you practice. Nobody wants to get learning this way, you'd like to read in a book or observe others practicing. It's no fun to get learning this way, but in a way, you've got learning that is probably invaluable, not just to yourself, but to your patients and friends and family, hard run wisdom. Just talk about some of the crucibles with being in Iraq, as well as with your son. I have a feeling there's an origin story behind the book that we're going to discuss today.
Dr. Lee Warren:
Yeah, thank you. It's an honor to be with you both today. I grew up in Oklahoma and always wanted to be a doctor. I was raised in a Christian family and had this, I would call it fundamentalist, legalist sort of theology, where control and good behavior were supposed to equate to a good life. And so if you did everything right and worked hard, God was supposed to take care of you and I believe that. And then, I went to medical school on scholarship from the United States Air Force and married very young at 19 and went off to med school and then residency. Long story short, my marriage didn't survive all those years of training and education and hard work and all the things. By the time I deployed to the Iraq war, I was basically at the end of a 16-year marriage that was going very badly. I was at war when I found out I was getting a divorce. And then, I got home from the war after having done 200 brain surgeries in a tent hospital and surviving 120-some odd mortar and rocket attacks and found myself six weeks later out of the Air Force and divorced and moving from Texas to Alabama to try to reconnect with my children. And basically, didn't have time to deal with the trauma that I experienced in the war, because I needed to go and start a practice and figure out how I was going to earn a living and take care of my kids. I really just stuffed all that trauma from the war down and put it in the trunk in my garage with all my uniforms and all of that and never dealt with it. And then fast forward a couple of years, I managed to reconnect with my children and had a good relationship with them and started a practice that was successful and ended up meeting and marrying Lisa, who I've now been married to for 20 years, and we blended our families, and it felt like things were going to be okay. Kind of got back on my feet and felt like God loved me again and all the theology that I had that was kind of skewed towards behavior that had taken such a big hit. I was finally figuring out who God was and how my family was going to be able to be all right and managed to navigate through the PTSD that came out of all of that and the war coming back. In 2013, on August 20th, my son, Mitchell, who was 19 at the time, was stabbed to death. It was just at the moment when I thought I was going to be okay that the worst thing that I could ever imagine as a parent happened. To make that worse, he and his best friend were both killed in the same house that night and the police never figured out what really happened. They sort of decided what they thought happened, but they never really solved it. We, basically, were given this devastating loss without any answers as to what happened. And so, I was sort of talking about a crucible, losing a child is hard enough, but to not really understand what happened or have any ability to say, "Okay, this guy did that, and now at least I understand sort of the answers." We just weren't ever going to get any because the police told us that the crime scene had been cleaned, there was no more answers coming. This was the end of it. There would never be any ... unless somebody came and confessed, they weren't going to figure out what happened. We were given this situation that me, as a control freak neurosurgeon, who wants to be in control of everything, literally couldn't do anything about the fact that my son was dead and I would never know what happened. And so that sort of blew me up. It made me question God. It made me question whether I thought he was real or whether he loved me or ... I just didn't know what my life was about anymore for a little while. I was doubly-wounded from the war and the loss of the first marriage and then the sudden loss of my son without any answers. I was really wrecked and didn't know what the future would hold for me. As it turns out, that began the process of me starting to understand how science and faith worked together, because I had a long history of scientific training that your brain was stuck and fixed the way it was made. I think most of us think that, that you are the product of how your brain works and that if you go through something really hard and it messes your brain up, that that's just how you're going to be, that there's not a lot of hope beyond that. And then, I had this faith that you were supposed to be able to get stronger through hardship and find hope through all of it and all of that. And I didn't know how to put those two things together, so for a while after that, I was searching for how to put it together. I think that's where this story really starts.
Warwick Fairfax:
Losing a son has got to be up there with the worst possible thing that can happen. But the fact that there was uncertainty about what happened, I think you've written elsewhere that your son was somebody that was very sensitive, and he was with a buddy of his and somehow they were both stabbed and the police said, "Oh, nothing to see here. It's just a mutual murder suicide or whatever." And you're thinking, "That's not Mitch, that's not possible." So you've got to deal with the twin tragedies of losing a son and the sense that there's something that we don't know and that we'll never know. How in the world did you get over the fact of not just losing your son, but sensing, "There's something that's not right here, there's something unexplained that makes no sense, but yet there's nothing I can do?"
Dr. Lee Warren:
Yeah. We had this moment, Lisa and I had, I had a friend who was a police chief in California and I called him and told him the whole story and laid everything out. And he said, "Lee, if that happened in California, we would've had the FBI there. We would've had the State Bureau of Investigation. We would've kept that crime scene active until we followed every lead." They didn't even dust for fingerprints. They just cleaned this place up. There were three bloody knives and both boys had multiple stab wounds and it was just a crazy thing. They just walked in and they looked at the scene and said, "Oh, this guy must have killed that guy and then killed himself and that's it," and they took the bodies out, cleaned the crime scene, it was over. My friend said, "You need to subpoena the police report and the records and you need to file a police malpractice or give me all this stuff." Lisa and I talked about all that and we realized that this is going to go one of two ways. We're going to go down this path in this small town in Alabama of demonizing the police work that was done and demanding answers and we're not going to get any because we already know that unless somebody confesses to this crime, nobody's ever going to know the truth, like those two boys are gone. We're going to become these people that stand outside with picket signs and yelling and protesting and demanding answers, and it's not going to bring Mitch back and it is not going to help us heal and it's going to destroy our family. We could just see that really clearly. Or we had to trust that God's plan included enough power and grace to satisfy our inability to know more than that. And we just had to step out in faith that that was the path we were going to take as a family, that we were going to decide we couldn't know more than we know, and we were going to decide that we were going to have to be okay with that. Those two decisions, I think, really put us on the path of then searching for how we could heal in spite of not knowing what happened.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's interesting, Lee, that in the two stories that you've told, one, you had to open the locker that you had put away to fight healing. And in this one, you had to not open the case, if you will, that was going on. I imagine they were both difficult to go through. What was perhaps the most difficult or what did you learn from those experiences? Has it taught you anything about sometimes you have to be quiet and just let it be what it is and sometimes you have to fight?
Dr. Lee Warren:
Yeah, I think so. I think, in the first case, it was wounds that had not been examined and explored. And because of that, they never had an opportunity to heal. And so, until I was willing to say, "Hey, I had been wounded." Because I was the hard charging neurosurgeon control freak and it wasn't in my worldview that having gone there and undergone all that and taken care of all those people could have been an emotional wound to me. I didn't ever say, "Oh, I'm damaged in some way. I'm hurt in some way." I just stuck the stuff in the corner and got back to work, and so I never really processed any of it. I think there was this necessity of, and now we understand from trauma literature really well, that it is important to name the thing, you can't really know it if you can't name it, name the thing that hurt you, and then explore it and be willing to share it and bring it into the light with other people before it can become able to be disinfected and healed. I think that was a release of control and of my own sort of idol of self-sufficiency that I had to say, "I'm going to allow other people into this wound with me." And then the other case, it was this sort of letting go of the control of being able to get to the bottom of something, because as a surgeon, if something's wrong with you, I'm going to get to the bottom of it. It's my purview to know everything I can know and take command of it and master it and fix it, and that's just how I work. That's what I'm supposed to do. And you want your neurosurgeon to be that guy. You don't want me to go, "Oh, that's good enough. Close enough. We got your brain almost all the way back in there." But you don't want that from your neurosurgeon. But in this case, it was crystal clear. There was no possibility that I was going to be able to engineer that situation in a way that would resolve it. And so therefore, I was either going to be spending the rest of my life on a pursuit that was already impossible and that would have destroyed my marriage. It would have hurt my children. It would have continued to wreck my reliance on God and it was going to be about me trying to find something I wasn't going to be able to find. I think they're both the same in the sense that they required a laying down of control and they're different in the sense that one required openness and one required a willingness to close the future on a situation and just be okay with it.
Warwick Fairfax:
I want to get to some of the themes in the book because it's so fascinating. Again, the book is The Life Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery: Connecting Neuroscience and Faith to Radically Transform Your Life. It's sort of this idea that we have a lot more control over our circumstances than we think. One of the things that starts with, you talk about modern brain imaging and neuroscience and how, depending on how your thoughts work, you can actually see changes in the structure of your brain. That seems to me a game-changer and elsewhere you talk about, again, I'm not a scientist or a neurosurgeon, so you'll have to help us with this, you talk about the concept of epigenetics. There was a school decades ago in which, "Okay, your genes are determinative. You are what your genes are. I can't help it, because my mom or dad or my grandpa or whatever," whereas you write here that that's a factor, but a vastly smaller factor then, so we have a lot more agency. Talk about some of those early concepts about imaging and what we now understand about the brain that's so different than accepted science from decades ago.
Dr. Lee Warren:
That's right. Most of us have believed this idea really since 1953, when Watson and Crick gave us DNA, like you just referenced, gave us the understanding of what DNA is, that it's become really popular in culture of this thing called genetic determinism, which basically is how the genes you inherit and the parents you have determine most of the things that are true about you and your capabilities and your possibilities for you and all those things. And also, simultaneously, since Isaac Newton was alive 300 years ago, the idea that you could understand something by breaking it down to the parts from which it is made and then putting them back together, you could reverse engineer what something's capable of. And then they applied that same idea of this materialism, we called it, of if you understand the parts, you can understand the whole, they applied that to people. Basically, your genes and your family and the stuff you go through create who you are and the cells in your brain make you feel and think and believe and do the things that you do. And so, you are pretty much just your brain, and if you happen to be born with a good brain, then good for you. If you happen to be born with one that's autistic or has ADHD or has a weird enneagram or you go through the wrong kinds of traumas, then you're just host and you can't be different than you are because that's who you are. It's your brain. Most of us believe that to one extent or another. And I would say, I would challenge the listeners who are Christians, even Christians believe this to some degree. But if you stop and think about it for a second, you already believe that you're not just your brain because you believe that when you die, some part of you still lives, that there's some soul or something about you that is going to be eternal. And so, that means that the things that you think about as yourself, your personality, your memories, all those things, if you believe that those things are going to be permanent in heaven, then they're not coming from your brain, so there is a difference in your theology between your mind and your brain. What's interesting is, although science has taught us that since 1953 and since Isaac Newton in two different ways, that we are the parts from which were made pretty much. In 2001 or so, they invented a technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging. MRI, everybody knows what an MRI is, if you hurt your knee, we go put your knee in a scanner, we take a picture of your knee and we can see what it looks like. We can see what the thing looks like. But functional imaging is where we can put a brain or a heart in an MRI scanner and we can see what the thing is doing. We can actually see the electrical and chemical activity that's happening inside an organ, and that's why they call it functional. It's what is this thing's function and how does it work? We can put you in an MRI scanner in the early 2000s, and for the very first time, when you move or think, we can see what your brain is doing in response to that. That started to make some people question, maybe the brain and the mind are not the same thing, which again, Christians, if you really ever thought about it, you would have already thought that, right? What happened with us, I think it's a grace of God too. I think God puts all of us in situations, where the way he has built us with our interests and our proclivities are sometimes the way he approaches us when he wants to teach us something or give us a gift in some way. Thinking about that, we lost our son and my wife, Lisa and I worked together, she ran our practice at the time. We were practicing in Auburn, Alabama on the third floor of a building on the university campus at Auburn University and that building was dedicated to functional MRI research. They had, at the time, this most powerful functional MRI scanner in the world. There were only three of them and one of them was there in that building. We lost Mitch and we didn't go to work for about a month and we're trying to grieve and recover, and the last thing I wanted to do was operate on somebody and take care of somebody. But at some point, reality hits and you've got to go back to work, you got to pay your employees and you got to keep your business going and all that. We went back to work, and in the same week that we went back to work, we were invited to go down to the research facility and watch some of these functional scans happen in a research environment. What they did was they put this woman in the scanner, she had some earbuds in so they could communicate with her. They turned the machine on and you could see what her brain was doing when she wasn't thinking about anything in particular. They would say like, "Okay, move your right hand." And she would move her right hand and you would see the brain light up and the hand move and you would see what happened. When she decided to do something, her brain would do something and then her body would respond and do something. And then they said, "Okay, Mrs. Johnson, think about the worst thing you've ever been through. Just picture in your mind the worst thing you've ever felt." You would see her furrow her brow and think about something. Her brain wasn't doing anything. She was thinking about something. And then the parts of her brain related to memory and fear and anxiety and pain began to light up on the screen, which meant that genes were being transcribed and neurotransmitters were being released and neuronal networks were getting activated. Shortly after that, we saw her vital signs, which were being monitored start to change. Her blood pressure would go up, her heart rate would go up and her vitals and her respiratory rate would go up. We saw her think about something that led to her brain doing something that led to her body responding in a negative way. And then they said, "Okay, stop thinking about that hard moment and think about the best day of your life, the happiest you've ever felt. Think about that." Pretty quickly, the amygdala part of the fear part of her brain started to calm down and the frontal lobes came online, the bigger parts of her brain that are involved in thinking and processing reason and rational decision making and all those things. And then her blood pressure started to drop and her heart rate came down and her physiology improved in response to her changed thinking. We were watching that happen and my wife said, "That reminds me of Philippians 4, where it says, "Don't be anxious, be grateful, and the peace of God will guard your heart." These people are changing what they think about and it's affecting their bodies in a positive way. I had this ... I'm not a charismatic guy at work, Gary. I'm not the guy that goes around saying, "God spoke to me and told me this stuff." I know he does that, but he doesn't ever talk to me in an audible voice. But in that moment, something became crystal clear to me that I know was from God and it was, "Lee, when you go to surgery and you intentionally cut into somebody's brain, what you're doing is you're on purpose, you're making structural changes in their brain for the purpose of improving their life in some way." That's surgery. And when somebody thinks one thought and not another thought, when they intentionally change what they think about, what's happening is they are changing the structure of their brain on purpose for the purpose of improving their life in some way, and that is also surgery. Just in that moment where we were standing in the scanner, I saw that when you think better thoughts, as the Bible said, you structurally change your brain under your own command of your mind, and that means you are choosing to perform surgery. You're performing self-brain surgery, I'll call it. That's the day I was born, was this idea that I didn't have to necessarily feel everything I was feeling about Mitch for the rest of my life, that I could learn how to harness the power of this ability to change what my brain was doing and learn how to navigate grief in a more empowered way. That began this now 12-year long process of trying to understand how science and faith work together to help us navigate these things in an empowered way rather than thinking our brains get to tell us what we're going to feel and think all the time.
Warwick Fairfax:
That's incredible. I want to get here in a moment to the 10 commandments of self-brain surgery, because that is amazing stuff. But before there, you've got these four approaches to life, and you start with the bottom in a sense, nothing can help me. Basically, give up, there is no hope, doom and gloom, that's an approach. And as you said, even not making decision decision, then you go up to, I can be somewhat happy, maybe 10% happy, maybe science can help me, maybe God can help me. Just briefly, just talk about those four approaches to life and what you were getting at in saying you've got four different approaches.
Dr. Lee Warren:
Yeah. The first piece of that is that most of us feel that we are the way we are and that there's not much we can do about it. So going back to that idea that you just are the product of your brain, that we're just, this is how I am. And in today's culture, that's especially prominent because people are claiming identity out of diagnoses and labels that they've received, sometimes not even from professionals. You hear people say things like, "I'm ADHD or I'm neurodivergent or I'm enneagram six or whatever." And they put that in their Instagram profile and that's to tell other people how they expect to be treated so as not to be harmed or triggered in some way, because you're not honoring their identity. We were grabbing onto these things that we think identifies as who we are. But what the science is showing is that your brain is constantly changing and it changes mostly in response to what you think about. If you are thinking constantly about being anxious, you're going to become more anxious. Your brain is going to become more that way. When I wrote that, what I was trying to get at is as a surgeon, we use what we call approaches, which is a combination of philosophical and technical things that we look at how a particular operation or a particular problem, like a brain tumor, for example, how are the different ways that I could approach that, how would I need to position this patient on the table and where would I need to make the incision and what types of techniques would I need to use to get that job done? What happens to some surgeons is we get trained in a certain place by a really strong-willed professor and we get taught that there's only one way to do a certain thing. And if we get in the middle of that operation and it's not working, then we have two choices. We can either quit or we can press on and hurt the patient even though it's not working. We can keep doing what we've been doing and try to make it work when it doesn't work. But a wise surgeon learns four or five or six different ways to get every particular thing done. And if you're in the middle of an operation and it's not working, then you change the position of the patient or you switch to a different angle or you change approaches so that you can accomplish the goal of getting your patient through the operation safely. It seems like a lot of surgeons stick there because it's almost an admission of not being wise or smart if they have to change the approach that they chose, like "I made the wrong decision and I'm using the wrong approach and I don't want to admit that." But it's actually the best surgeons who are willing to pivot from one approach to another to get the job done for their patient. What I wrote in the book was that most people go through their lives just doing what they've always been doing and then wondering why nothing ever changes when we know that the science says that when you think a different thing, you get a different result, but we keep doing the same stuff in our lives and then feeling stuck and not knowing what to do about it. That first approach is just that people say, "Nothing can help me. I am the way that I am. This is just how things are for me. I'm just this guy. This is the way my dad was. It's the way I am." If you feel that, if you think nothing can help you, then guess what? Nothing can help you. That's what's going to turn out to be true for you. The second approach is that maybe something can help me. This came out of a ... there's a guy named Dan Harris, who was an ABC Nightline host, nightly news guy, and he had a panic attack on air in front of three million people one night on the ABC News and just went crazy. He treated that anxiety with drug use, which didn't work very well, and he almost wrecked his whole life. And then, he found out about meditation, Eastern meditation. He wasn't a believer, he's an agnostic or atheist guy, but he decided that he looked at the research and saw that people who did this Eastern meditation got a little bit happier and seemed to be able to manage their lives a little bit better. He just took that and stripped all the spiritual stuff out of it and developed a meditation practice that produced what he called being about 10% happier in this life. He wrote a book that became a runaway New York Times bestseller called 10% happier. His idea was all you need is to just calm your brain down a little bit and you can be a little happier, and for most people, that's enough. And for him, that was enough. But I tried to make the approach, the point in the book that if you have anxiety, then 10% happier might be enough. But if your son is stabbed to death or your wife has an aneurysm and dies in her sleep while you're next to her, 10% happier is probably not enough because you're going to be more than 10% sadder than you were before that. This idea that maybe something can help me if you're a little hopeful and you press in, you're going to find that there are some things that can help you and you'll find some traction and for a lot of situations in life, that might be enough for you. But then, there's other people that it's not enough and they need more, and so they turn to science and they say, "Well, by learning how the brain works and by understanding the way we think and that our thoughts improve our lives, I can actually get significantly better in my life and I can develop a sense of purpose again after I've gone through something hard." That's all true. The research really shows it, that if you understand how the brain works and how the mind works, you can really make your life better, even if you don't believe in God and even if you don't ever take it to the next level. But I think, if you follow that approach, that maybe science can help me approach, I think you're going to get to a place where you'll find that there are some questions and some issues in your life that science doesn't have an answer for. Certainly, for me, that was the case. I couldn't science my way out of losing my son or understanding how to live again after I lost him. At some point, I got to a place where the answers I needed were not available to me using science. That's where I said, "If you follow the scientific method, it's not supposed to have ever been that we decide what we believe and then we reject any evidence that contradicts that. And that's what happens to a lot of people, evolutionary biologists, a lot of materialists, neuroscientists, they decide upfront what they believe. There's no God or this is how this works. And then, even if evidence seems to suggest something else, they just ignore that evidence and pivot and say, "We'll figure it out later. This is still what we know to be true." But if in your life you start bumping into things over and over that aren't working and you do all the things and you learn all the science and you practice all this stuff and you just aren't getting there, then it starts to be reasonable to say, "Maybe science can't actually fix this and maybe I need something past the limit of what science can answer," and that's when it's reasonable to start looking at another approach where maybe philosophy, maybe theology, maybe God, maybe something else can help me. What I believe with all my heart is if you're a smart person, work and you're willing to let the scientific method lead you, the scientific method is actually that you're supposed to develop a hypothesis and test it, and when it doesn't test out, you change your hypothesis until you find something that is verifiable. I believe if you follow that kind of rational frontal lobe approach to your life, you get to a place where science can't solve it and you just let God tell you some things that he says are true and you test those things out and they turn out to work, that maybe they work because they're true. And then, it becomes reasonable for a smart person to say, "Maybe this is true and maybe I should investigate it further." And that's what I wrote about in the maybe God can help me approach. I don't think it's a whimsical or a moronic approach to say that maybe God is a reasonable thing, a place to turn when I'm hurting. It's actually a valid, rational, scientifically grounded approach, where I just let the evidence lead me and let the process of how to answer questions appropriately take me to this place where I understand that science hasn't gotten me there and maybe God is actually real.
Warwick Fairfax:
I want to move to the 10 commandments of brain surgery are really fascinating. I'm going to read them briefly and then just give us a high-level overview of these, because this is probably the core of the book. I love this first one. This is profound. The first commandment is, I must relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. Sometimes we wonder who the enemy is. We look at the mirror and the enemy is us. Sometimes that's the case. Second one, I must believe that feelings are not facts, they're chemical events in my brain. How often do we ... You write a lot about this. We have these feelings, but they're not necessarily facts. The world is against me. Well, sometimes they are, but maybe sometimes they're not to some people. Number three, I must believe that most of my automatic thoughts are untrue. You can easily go into autopilot with unhelpful thoughts. Number four, I must believe that my mind is in charge of my brain. Number five, I must believe that self-brain surgery is not a metaphor. It's the mechanism of transforming my life. Number six, I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now. Number seven, I must stop making an operation out of everything. You're talking about operations versus procedures, which if a doctor ever says to me, "I've got a big operation," I'll be worried versus a procedure, but anyway. Number eight, I must not perpetuate to start half a generational thought or behavioral issues in my family. Number nine, I must believe I'm getting better at what I'm doing. And number 10, I must understand that thoughts become things. This is profound stuff. What's the best way to approach these 10 commandments? Because these are, obviously, very well thought out. What's your overview of these commandments?
Dr. Lee Warren:
These came from, as I said, Lisa and I and our family trying to navigate the 12 years since we lost Mitch and me understanding that God had given me this insight to see this process of self-brain surgery as something that was already happening, and if you don't take command of it happens in a default way that generally leads to more chaos in your life or staying stuck. And then, realizing that neuroscience and scripture have said a lot of things about how humans are best to flourish.
Renewal and restoration. Those are the things to focus on, not resolutions, as a new year begins. That’s what we discuss this week as we dive into Warwick’s latest blog at beyondthecrusible.com
The key to arriving at this more helpful destination to recharge our lives in 2026 involves such strategic actions as asking yourself if anything is holding you back, considering your beliefs and values and then — and only then — setting specific goals and objectives.
That’s what will fuel your journey to a life of significance.
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Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible, I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. When we talk about the new year, we talk about renewal and restoration, it's so important. Goals and objectives are fine but start with who do I authentically want to be, how do I want to show up in the world, how do I want to make a difference at home or at work.
Gary Schneeberger:
Renewal and restoration, those are the things to focus on not resolutions as a new year begins. That's what we discuss this week as we take a deep dive into Warwick's latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com The key to arriving at this more helpful destination to recharge our lives in 2026 involves such strategic actions as asking yourself if anything is holding you back, considering your beliefs and values and then, and only then, adding specific goals and objectives, that's what will fuel your journey to a life of significance. Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. This is, I'm going to add this in here, it begins the wind down, the kickdown, the clock's ticking, the ball's dropping to our 300th episode, we're not there yet but it's coming soon and you're going to like it. I think you're going to like it, that milestone 300th episode. But this episode is another one of those that we do where Warwick and I discuss his most recent blog at https://www.google.com/search?q=beyondecrucible.com. And this blog, you might say, allowed you to really dial into renewal as we begin 2026, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely, Gary. And the reason I focused on renewal and restoration as opposed to resolutions—and they're fine, there's nothing wrong with them—but often we start with the "what" and the "how." "I'm going to run five miles a day," "I'm going to eat less sugar," "I'm going to work harder to get that promotion." All fine, but they're often external. What I find is that if we don't start with the "who"—who are we, what do we value, what is our purpose—then those resolutions often fail because they're not grounded in anything substantive. Renewal is about looking at the foundation. Is the foundation cracked? Does it need some work? Restoration is bringing back what was intended to be there in the first place. It's a much more profound way to start a year than just a checklist of things to do.
Gary Schneeberger:
And you talk in the blog about three strategic actions, three reflection points. The first one you mentioned is asking yourself if anything is holding you back. This isn't just about physical habits; it's about the internal landscape, isn't it? It's about those crucibles that might still be casting a shadow or those limiting beliefs we carry around.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. We all carry baggage. Some of it is from recent crucibles, some of it is from childhood. If you don't acknowledge what's holding you back—be it fear, a lack of forgiveness, or a belief that you're not "enough"—then no amount of goal-setting is going to fix that. You have to clear the ground before you can build something new. That's the first step of renewal: what do I need to let go of? What weights am I carrying that are preventing me from running the race I'm meant to run?
Gary Schneeberger:
The second point you make is considering your beliefs and values. This is the "who" you were talking about. In the blog, you emphasize that these aren't just words on a page; they're the compass for your life. If your goals aren't aligned with your values, you'll feel a sense of friction even if you're "successful" by the world's standards.
Warwick Fairfax:
That friction is a clear sign of a lack of alignment. If I value family but my goals are all about working 80 hours a week to get a title, I'm going to be miserable. Part of renewal is checking that compass. Are my values still what I think they are? Have I drifted? To live a life of significance, your actions must be an extension of your core beliefs. When they are, you have a natural energy and peace because you're living authentically.
Gary Schneeberger:
And then the third point, which you summarized as "just do it," but with a twist. It's not just blind action; it's action focused on who you want to become. You mentioned celebrating small wins. Why is that small-win mentality so important in this journey of restoration?
Warwick Fairfax:
Because restoration is a process, not an event. If you're restoring an old house or a classic car, you don't do it in an afternoon. You celebrate when the engine starts, or when the first room is painted. It's the same with our lives. If you want to become a more patient person, or a more present leader, celebrate the one conversation where you actually listened instead of interrupting. Those small wins build momentum. They prove to you that change is possible and that you are becoming more of who you were always intended to be. That's a great place to put a bow on the package that is this episode of Beyond the Crucible.
Gary Schneeberger:
Folks, we will be back with you next week with more stories of folks who have gone through crucibles, bounced back from crucibles and are now living that great destination we love talking about and that is a life of significance.
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist, instead you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for and, crucially, the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment, it's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com, take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
At the beginning of a new year, we often think of goals and objectives we want to accomplish in the 12 months ahead. They could be work objectives, health or relationship objectives. Goals and objectives can be helpful. But just focusing on specific targets or things we want to accomplish may lead us to overlook deeper questions. Who do we want to become? How do we want to show up?
As the year begins, we have the opportunity to ask ourselves some thought-provoking questions. Who do we want to be? What is important to us? What do we want to let go of? What do we want to do more of? What beliefs and values do we want to embrace more and live out more?
This is what renewal is. Shedding what does not serve us and holds us back and embracing that which helps us move forward and become more of who we were intended to be.
So let’s talk about how we become more authentically who we want to be, and in that sense experience renewal.
1. Put aside for now defining specific goals and objectives for the year. That may come later. Let’s first look at the deeper issues before getting into metrics, focusing more on who you want to become. Without doing some soul work first, there will be a tendency to have goals and objectives that continue the path you are on.
2. Ask yourself whether anything is holding you back. It could be resentment and anger over past relationships. It could be about failure or things that were done to you. You might have a hard time moving forward, because you find yourself often dwelling on the pain, anger and resentments of the past.
3. Forgive and move on. As has been said, that which does not serve you, you should consider letting go. Forgive past hurts, either forgiving yourself or forgiving others (which does not mean condoning). The past is in the rear-view mirror. Focus forward, and stop ruminating and regretting past mistakes and failures.
4. Consider your beliefs and values. What would your life look like if you were fully living in light of them? How would that affect your career and vocational path? How would that affect your relationships and family? How would that affect how you show up in the world?
5. Evaluate how far away you are from living a life that is fully in line with your beliefs and values. Be honest. Ask friends and family what they think. Ask them to be honest.
6. Do something about it. We have one life to live, one legacy to leave. Let’s make our life count and leave a legacy that our family and friends will be proud of. Maybe that means changing your career path. Maybe that means staying in your current career, but showing up very differently, treating those you work with and for differently than before. Maybe that means paying more attention to your family and friends and your close relationships. This might mean prioritizing your family, which could have career- limiting consequences. So be it, if that’s what is important to you. To do otherwise is not living a life in line with your beliefs and values.
7. Now you are ready to set goals and objectives. But these may well be different than before. They will focus on measuring how you are becoming more of who you feel called to be. So, for instance, if you want to prioritize family more, start measuring how many sports games and other activities you were present at in a given week or month. What is the pattern? Were you present for your family, or were you traveling for work most of the month, just like you did the month before?
Life is more about becoming than about doing. Joy and fulfillment come from fully living a life in light of your beliefs and values, and becoming the person you were always intended to be and were called to be. Achieving specific career and monetary objectives may give you pleasure for a time, but it does not last. That kind of joy fades and we fall into the illusion that the next promotion or the next monetary level will make us happy. It never does, not in the lasting sense.
Joy and fulfillment come more from living in light of your values and beliefs. At Beyond The Crucible we believe joy and fulfillment come from living a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. It comes from seeing someone you work with grow and achieve their dreams. It comes from loving and supporting our family members. It comes from making an impact for good in the world, no matter how large or small. It comes from laying your head down at night and saying to yourself that today was a good day. I helped someone. I encouraged someone. I made a difference.
That is where true joy and fulfillment comes from. It comes from immense gratitude for the journey of helping others and fully living who you want to be. Some days will be easier than others. Some days we will feel like we really made a difference. Some days we will think we did not do much to help anyone or have an impact. But overall we will feel that we are doing our utmost to live in light of our values and beliefs and in some way to make the world a better place. That is enough. We can be immensely grateful for the journey we are on, and for those who are spiritual or look to a higher power, we feel grateful to God or however we see eternity for the journey we are on.
This is what a life of significance is all about.
Reflection
1. Ask yourself who you want to become. If you were fully living in light of your values and beliefs, what would that look like?
2. What do you need to do less of, and be less of; and what do you need to do more of and be more like to live a legacy that your friends and family would be proud of?
3. Just do it! Set some goals and targets that focus more on who you want to become in your career and vocation and in your family and relationships. Celebrate each small win as you become more of who you were always intended to be.
We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.
From coaching CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to transforming the mindsets of sports teams, David Nurse specializes in helping high achievers break through barriers, unlock their flow state and discover the untapped potential that’s already within them.
What sets Nurse apart is his ability to make mindset transformation relatable and actionable. He delivers real tools that companies and individuals can immediately apply to maximize performance, culture, and creativity, unlocking the mystery of mindset optimization.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible.
David Nurse:
I believe life is this long hallway, right? So, if you're listening, imagine a long hallway. You're at the start of the hallway, you look down that hallway, and there's doors on each side. And everything that we do is learning, teaching us, preparing us for the next thing along the path.
Gary Schneeberger:
That's our guest this week, David Nurse, explaining just one of the mindset practices that will help us get from setback to significance. He's a former NBA assistant coach, listened closely to learn what he helped the Brooklyn Nets accomplish, whose insights have helped thousands across the globe take action and live with alignment.
Warwick Fairfax:
Well, it's so great to have you here, David, and loved reading your book, Pivot & Go: The 29-Day Mindset Blueprint to Redefine and Achieve YOUR Success. I know that's your first book. You've got a couple other books since. And just a little bit about David. So, David, for the past 15 years, has been blessed to help the world's top performers unlock the zone and actually stay there. So, that's Fortune 500 CEOs, NBA All Stars, elite military units, Hollywood A-listers. And growing up as well here, David chased his own dream to be a professional basketball player. And that led him to have two Guinness World Records, which we'll have to find out about. The stint with the Brooklyn Nets in 2016, and he helped take their three point shooting from 28th and the league to second, which is very impressive. He's worked with over 150 NBA players, three books, Pivot & Go, Breakthrough and Do It, and has also been rated as one of the top 50 keynote speakers in the world. And he is married to his wife, an actress Taylor Kalupa. And very briefly on Taylor, she's been in a number of programs such as The Fix, Modern Family and Chosen. And I'm one of these people, not that many of us, but at least guys that like both Hallmark and Great American Family, she wrote a Christmas movie called Christmas Less Travel that I really enjoyed.
David Nurse:
Oh, nice.
Warwick Fairfax:
About Old Red, the Red Pickup. Great movie. So, well done, Taylor. Not only she's a-
David Nurse:
Oh, nice.
Warwick Fairfax:
... wonderful actress, she's a great script writer. So, well done.
David Nurse:
I mean, yeah, she's awesome.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, there you go. You can tell Taylor... When I think of Taylor, I think of Big Red and Christmas Less Travel. So, there you go. So, David, tell us a bit about growing up. I know you grew up in Iowa in a small town and your dream very early on was to be an NBA player. A lot of kids think that and their parents are thinking, sure. But just tell us about what life was like in Iowa and that dream that just animated your young life and yeah.
David Nurse:
Yeah. I mean, I think sometimes it's a blessing to have incompetent confidence to an extent. And my parents were so encouraging and I told them I wanted to play in the NBA from as early as I could remember. So, every waking hour was centered around basketball, shooting in my driveway when it was snowing in Iowa, going to any camp that I could. They probably should have said play tennis or golf, something that a 6-foot 2 guy with a vertical leap about two inches would have had a better chance at. But I just loved it. And I think there's something really important from a young age of chasing your dreams and something you're passionate about. It led me to play college basketball and led me to play professionally overseas. Now, I always thought I was still going to play in the NBA when I was playing professionally overseas in more of a Will Ferrell semi-pro type of league, as you know, work in Australia where I was at, but...
Warwick Fairfax:
And what was the name of the team in Australia in Adelaide?
David Nurse:
Yeah, Adelaide. The Adelaide Bearcats. Yeah.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Great night.
David Nurse:
It was such a fun experience. I mean, I think the life experiences I got to be able to see the world through basketball was probably more of a blessing than I ever had imagined. Now, I wanted to play in the NBA and still had those dreams, but when the doors shut in my third year of playing professional basketball in Northern Spain in the Basque region where they don't even speak Spanish actually, it's a wake-up call. It was a moment that I had that I got cut from the team and I go back home and I'm living on my parents' recliner chair. They're living outside of Kansas City in the time in a small town of Missouri. And I'm a big believer in these moments in our lives. I call them snapshot moments where you can remember vividly exactly where you were, what was said. And they're moments, they're pivotal moments that give you this opportunity to take one of two paths. I was feeling bad for myself. I was sleeping on my parents' recliner chair for about six months. I didn't have any backup plans. I probably should have had some backup plans in college of like, "Hey, what if the NBA doesn't work out?" But I didn't. So, my mom was doing dishes and I remember this vividly and I was kicked back in the recliner chair and she said, "David, when one door closes, four open and an entire beachfront patio overlooking the ocean." I was like, "Mom, what? Come again. I thought it was one door, one door. What's this beachfront patio and these four doors thing?" What she was telling me is that everything that I'd done to that point to play in the NBA was learning these transferable skills that I could use for something else. My path that God had planned for me was not to play in the NBA, but it was to coach, to help players who had more God-given ability and athleticism and height than I did. So, I made my pivot moment, hence the name pivot and go, these snapshot moments where you get the chance to either keep running into this wall that's ahead of you or pivot to the next thing. I believe life is this long hallway, right? So, if you're listening, imagine a long hallway. You're at the start of the hallway, you look down that hallway and there's doors on each side. And everything that we do is learning, teaching us, preparing us for the next thing along the path, along the hallway. We go into one door. My door was professional basketball with air quotes, and I learned from that. The next door is, I want to coach in the NBA. So, I went all in. I hand wrote a letter to every NBA GM because I had no NBA connections at the time. I did it old school style. I put it in the mailbox and I sent it out. I didn't get anything back. Month and a half goes by, I get a phone call, 310 area code number. It was the GM of the LA Clippers. His name was Gary Sachs. And it was the nicest guy. I think he did it just because he just has such a good soul. It was a quick conversation. At the end of it, he said, "Look, if you're ever in LA, look me up, we'll grab coffee." Basically, "Good luck with the rest of your life, kid." But that door was opened, right? He gave that opportunity. So, I took that opportunity. I spent all my money, I stole some of my parents' money to be able to book a ticket, to go out to LA that following week, acting like I was going to do a basketball camp so I didn't look desperate. But I prepared for that meeting and Gary and I, we hit it off. That was the entry point to every connection that led to throughout the NBA, which is now friends with almost every team, eventually led to coaching with the Brooklyn Nets. So, the story is, it's much longer and we'll get to that crucible moment with the Nets when I thought That I'd made it and when I was thinking I was a little bit too big for my britches there. But the point of it is like everybody has these moments, everybody, when you think what you wanted was taken away. Nothing just happens easily. God doesn't do it that way. We have to learn, we have to grow. And that was my moment where I was like, "Hey, feel bad for yourself for getting cut from your dreams that didn't work out or pivoted to something even better and reaching out, taking that chance, even though I didn't know, like Gary could have never got back to me." Nobody could have got back to me, but I would have been at the same spot, you know what I mean? I think life is about taking those chances, taking those shots and knowing that what's the worst that can happen, that somebody says no, and then you're at the same spot that you are. So, to be able to get to that spot, the NBA connections, it happened through other people and Gary was that one for me.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's really a remarkable story. And you write a lot in your book about resilience. I mean, talk about that earlier crucible when your whole dream was to be an NBA player. I mean, 6'2" doesn't sound that short, but obviously in basketball, it's a different average high. And I remember you write something funny. I think the pediatrician promised your mom or parents you're going to be 6'7". And it's like, seriously, how could you be five inches wrong? Because that could have made a difference. And you played in Spain, Australia. I think your dad was a coach for a... To be honest, I didn't grow up with the NBA, but an NBA D level, one level below the NBA. And even he said, basically, "Sorry kid, I got to cut you." It's like you're an uncle...
David Nurse:
As an uncle, yeah. I hope my dad wouldn't do that to me, but my uncle did.
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, it's like, are you serious? So, when you realized that you were playing countries all over the world and you were not going to have a career playing basketball, how did you deal with that? Because that original dream ended then. A lot of people would just get very angry, very bitter, and not even think of pivoting to coaching. How did you decide not to just be angry and bitter and say, "This is so unfair. 6'2" is not that short. Come on, I can shoot, which obviously we'll get to later"? I mean, what's the problem here? How did you not get bitter and angry about the whole thing?
David Nurse:
Yeah. I mean, I think at the end of the day, my hope and trust is in Jesus. That's the choice that I made when I was 22 years old, that his plan is better than my plans. Sure, I'm going to go for it and have my dreams and stuff. But even if I feel bad for myself, which I totally did, it wasn't a quick bounce back like, "Hey, okay, that didn't work. I'm onto the next." I felt the feelings and everything, but I also knew that if this door was meant to open, it would have opened. So, I need to look for other doors and there's other ways to get in the NBA and my gifts that God gave me are better set for leading, for motivating, for coaching. And so, that's what led to coaching in the NBA. Now, hey, when I was there, you learn everything from every situation that you're at. I'm a big believer in it. It's not really about wins and losses. It's about learning and growth from that learning. And when I was with Brooklyn, I was 28 years old. So, I was young, a young NBA coach. And we had, right when I came on, we had this super hot streak, went from 28th, which is almost last in the NBA and three point shooting percentage, all the way to second. So, I was getting all this media and New York media, NBA media, like this new development coach and he's doing such a great job. So, of course I was drinking my own Kool-Aid of like, "Eh, I got this. I'm in this league for the long haul." And at the end of the year, the head coach got fired, which if you have a bad record, that happens in sports. And when that happens in sports, 99% of the time, the entire staff is gone as well. So, as quick as I thought that I made it to my mountaintop moment, I was going down the other way and the crucible moment happened again where I poured five years into getting into this NBA coaching job. So, I said I met Gary Sachs, but I didn't just wait for him to make calls. I went and ran my own basketball camps and I had these custom-made basketballs, terrible leather, this line down the middle where you could see the rotation on it. I had them ordered from China, which it was back. They sent these a few basketballs to the Oakland Seaport. I drove from small town Missouri 29 hours out to Oakland, put them in the trunk of my car. I spent the next five years of my life traveling around the country, doing basketball camps for anybody that would take me in, sleeping on friends' couches who probably didn't consider me a friend, random people, and crashing in my car in well-lit Walmart parking lots throughout the country. So, it was a journey to get there. So, to have that moment where once again it was taken away, it was like, "Huh, gosh, here we go again." But once again, it's this path of which choice, which road am I going to take? And I'm a really big believer on the choices we make determine who we are going to be. Now there's different levels of choices. There's tier one, which are the most important, which is your faith, the person you marry and kids or not kids. I think those are the three irreversible to an extent, choices. And there's tier two and tier three and on down the line. And that choice for me to make after I got cut from the nets was another big determiner of where's my life going to go because we always get the chance to feel bad for ourselves and lick our own wounds, right? And you'll have these people, and I've seen it many times of like, "Oh, you got a raw deal. Oh, you shouldn't have been fired. You were a good coach. They're terrible for doing that." And you can agree with that crowd who's going to say that, but what good does it do? Like, you don't get anywhere from it. So, part of that, getting cut from the basketball team in Spain, getting fired by the Nets, it's just this moment in refinement in the fire that makes you even stronger for the next thing to come, even though those moments suck, even though any pain that anybody goes through does suck, totally. But if you embrace it and you know that on the other side of it, there's something great in it, and you get the ability to teach other people that are going to go through that very similar thing and help them along their path, then that's when you find the fruit of it and the growth from it.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. It's so well said, David. I mean, one of the things we say here Beyond The Crucible, which is really we've learned from a lot of our guests, that phrase that didn't happen to you, it happened for you. I mean, we've had so many guests, some with just horrendous crucibles. We had a woman, Stacey Copas from the suburbs of Sydney, and she was an athlete in high school, and she dove into an above ground pool like kids do and was diagnosed as a quadriplegic. So, she went through what you would expect-
David Nurse:
Wow.
Warwick Fairfax:
... suicidal ideation and drug abuse. But later on, she's now a speaker and consultant, and she's actually grateful for what she went through, which doesn't mean that she's happy about what happened, but the person she is now wouldn't have been possible without that. Now, we've heard so many stories like that. You can't just dismiss them all as just like delusional, crazy people and what does this mean? But yet, and you did that in that you said, "Okay, this is awful. Not only do I not get to play in the NBA, I don't even get to coach in the NBA." It's like, what's next? It's not quite a job experience, but it probably felt like that at the time. It's like boils and hail. And I mean, fine. I mean, what's next? I mean, So, you probably went through a bit of that, but I'm sensing you didn't languish there for years when that happened. You probably were angry. "Hey, this is unfair. Look at my record. I understand that a coach brings in his team. I get the NBA logic, but come on. If there's one person he should have kept, it's me. So, come on, look at the record. I mean, don't you want to be second in shooting? Isn't that important in the NBA? Maybe not. What do I know? And you could have gone through those angry internal dialogue. So, talk a bit about that, because my guess is you didn't dwell on that anger almost sulking mode for too long, right?
David Nurse:
Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, we all have that self-bias, right? We're the coolest people in our own minds and that part of that is that the incompetent confidence that I had. And I think you need to have a little bit of that, a little bit of that type of self-belief, self-swagger to it, but it's also about life moves very fast. And at the end of the day, where you're at right now in your life is probably not where you're going to be at five years, 10 years from now. And it's so hard for myself at the time, and I think just for people to paint a picture of the future that they want, and then also be able to be flexible, nimble, be able to pivot along the road that will eventually lead to that path or a path there of very similar. And yeah, so life is choices. It's like, like I said, it's perspectives and choices. You get either one road or the other road. You get the road of, "I'll feel bad about for myself, and this will be my narrative that I tell myself that I was wronged." Or you get the path of, "Okay, what can I learn from this? What can I extract from this to be able to take to the next thing?" It's like the analogy of you squeezing a lemon, you're making lemonade from it. I mean, obviously the whole life gives you lemons things, but that's where it comes from of what is the extraction you can take from that situation to be able then to apply to a much better situation that will come. And I think the hardest thing for myself at the time, and for most people is, you can't actually feel what the tangible thing that is going to come, right? The old adage, again, I'm using all these cliches of chopping down the tree, one swing of the ax at a time, you might take a thousand swings of the ax and you don't see that tree fall down, but then there's that one swing that does it. And then you look back, you're like, "Oh yeah, I knew that was coming." You didn't at the time. Had you, you might have had more foresight to be able to be calm in the moment. I think it's just the belief though, right? And that's where my faith in Jesus and God comes into play where I know he's going to work it out. I know he's going to work it out and he does it time and time again where it's better than I could imagine. I wouldn't ever have even imagined I'd be doing the things that I'm doing now, speaking to companies and different countries and coaching CEOs and starting a protein gummies company of all things, like all these different opportunities that have come along the way of just being open to the next door that will potentially be an opportunity that I can go down that path.
Gary Schneeberger:
And that will have a Lakeside Villa and a bunch of other rooms around like...
David Nurse:
Oceanside, I'm not selling for the last year.
Gary Schneeberger:
Oceanside. Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry. Sorry, my bad. My bad.
Warwick Fairfax:
My bad. So, I want to talk a bit about the first book, Pivot and Go. And you talk about, it's built around 29 days saying that's what it takes these habits to have a whole lifestyle change. We'll get into in a bit just these concepts you have here of success, faded, joy, passion and confidence, but to find in a bit of a different way than most of us would do, but you have a lot of really just profound insights like you have a chapter on the rich life when you were doing these camps all over the world. Yeah, you probably weren't saving as much money as maybe you could have, but yet what you saved in a sense, more important than money was life lessons. So, talk a bit about that because one of the things you say, which I love is the only treasures that you will, without a doubt, never have taken from you are your own personal life experiences, your own lessons learned, your own faith developed, your own memories created. That's not a normal way of thinking, to think about experiences when you're actually trying to build a business, but yet in the end, you learn something much greater than that.
David Nurse:
Yeah. Isn't 2020 hindsight so bad? I wish I could say I had that in the moment too, but yeah, I mean, you always remember those type of memories and those type of moments. And my whole thing with what you're speaking about there is, I set this goal of I wanted to make $100,000, which seemed like a lot to me at the time doing basketball camps. And every spot that I was in, I looked as a transactional dollar amount from a basketball camp. And what I didn't realize at the time was I was going into these unbelievable countries. I tapped into this market of international schools, which spoke English, so there you go. And to be quite honest, they didn't have very good basketball programs. So, anything that I was doing was a value add. I was able to do these camps in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Japan, and throughout Europe. I was just looking at them as like, "Okay, the mission is 100K. I've got to get there." Instead of thinking, "Wow, I could immerse myself in this unbelievable culture in Singapore that hardly anybody from America gets to go check out and be part of and stay with families there and get to know the people." So, it is the hindsight thing of everybody's looking at like, "What's the next thing? Let me just get through this moment instead of actually sit in the moment and be present in the moment." And I've done this whole study recently on Flow State, which is essentially being in the zone where time dissipates, it's effortless effort. The thing that defines it the most is these top performers or athletes that I've interviewed and is being able to be actually present in the moment without ruminating on the past and without having anxiety of the future. And I truly do believe that the most joyful people in life are able to spend more time presently present than in the other two slots of past and future. So, the learning lesson for me, which I still struggle with for sure, I think a lot of people would resonate with this of, you're looking for the security in, whether it's financial bottom line, whether it's in identity based, whether it's in people looking to you for social media likes or whatnot, when you look in your security in something other than one, Jesus and two, also the being present in the moment, you're going to tend to be stressed, anxious, worried, and everybody wants to be in that present moment. So, it's that dichotomy and that paradoxical tension of how do we get there and how do you feel secure in that moment? And to me, what that taught me was God's got the plan. I honestly believe he just keeps beating it over my head. Whether I'm ever going to listen or not, that's the question, but I know it's there.
Warwick Fairfax:
You've talked about identity a bit and you do have a chapter in there where you talk about coming to faith in Christ. I think it's like Western Illinois University and a group called Fuel that I actually hadn't heard of, although I go to an evangelical church and all of a lot of different ministries. So, I have a sense that that grounding of faith in Christ changed your whole perspective about identity and it's a process. It's not like it's one and done. I've got all the answers. So, next time I make a mistake or bad things happen, I'll just say, "Boy, thank you, Lord. This is wonderful. What can I learn?" I realize, as they say, sanctification's a process, but my sense is that, although you probably didn't realize that that choice you made at grad school changed your life and enabled you to have some of these perspectives you have about choice and identity and the journey. So, talk about how that happened and how your faith has really influenced, I would guess everything you do and write about.
David Nurse:
Yeah. And it is that, right? It is everything that I do and write about. And it was, I think the biggest thing is, I keep coming back to just the plan and the vision and the future is, I get a lot of excitement out of waking up every day, knowing that I've got goals that I want to hit, I've got a big mission that I'm on, but also knowing that at the end of the day, none of it really matters, which sounds like, "Hey, then why are you doing it?" But it's for a much bigger purpose, but I know the pressure isn't on me. Does that make sense? It's like a basketball player who can just go out there and just like, "Hey, if you miss a shot, it's cool. Keep shooting. Just keep shooting." That's how I look at the life perspective because the best athletes that I've ever been around, basketball players will talk about the Shai Alexander who I trained who's the best player in the world right now, or being around Steph Currys and all these guys, they don't worry about missed shots because they know that that doesn't define them. They know who they are and they're like, "I'm just going to keep shooting because I've got a big purpose. I got a big mission." So, it changed my life and my senior year of college, like you mentioned, I went to this thing, fuel with a teammate of mine and I knew God, but I didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus and the people there were just, they were so joyful. They were like praising and high-fiving and like encouraging each other. I was like, "What drug are these people taking?" And I wasn't doing drugs or anything like that. I'm not sure I drink my fair share of alcohol here and there in college, but I was intrigued. I was like, "Well, how are these people so joyful?" So, I kept coming back and I kept coming back and then I realized like, wow, okay, they have the love of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit with them, like I want this. And that honestly was where it changed my life. And I said that earlier, the tier one choices we make, that was the best decision that I ever made. It changed the trajectory on anything that I do professionally, the way I live my life, the way that I don't feel pressure with having to perform. And the second-biggest decision I made was marrying my wife, asking my wife Taylor to marry me and I cannot even imagine what life would be like without her. She is everything as in is makes me better, encourages me, just that was another best decision that I ever made. So, to me, I'm hitting home runs in the two most important areas of life and I wish that for everybody because if you're missing those, it's going to be a rocky road. I really believe if you miss those two, you're probably in for some strife in life.
Warwick Fairfax:
Talk about those two because obviously there's a link you write in the chapter about your wife when you tried to find a future partner in life, a future wife, and it didn't happen. And you wrote... I'm just going to sounds trite, but a lot of truth is trite in terms of the sayings. I'm going to let go and let God and just... I think within three months, you were having coffee with her in Los Angeles. So, I mean, it seemed there was a mindset shift, a choice that directly, at least as you write it, led you to meeting Taylor, maybe not just meeting, but maybe being in the right place to meet her. Does that make sense? Is that what you wrote or that sense?
David Nurse:
For sure. Yeah. And I think the biggest one there is people's decision, do you settle or do you pursue what you know is great? Do you settle for good or do you go for great? And I think that's a choice we make in a lot of different areas in life. And one of the biggest detriments to people is settling. And I truly believe people will Settle for the comfortable when they know the comfortable is not the great. I had this in a relationship before I met Taylor. I was like, "It's good sometimes and it's really bad sometimes, but is this what it's supposed to be?" And I had a friend tell me, he's like, "Hey, look, the struggles that you have now in that relationship, they're only going to 10X when you're married or if you have kids." And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm like, "Whoa, all right." So, there is better out there. And I made a non-negotiable list of the things that I wanted in a wife. I mean, it was spot on to what Taylor is and she's even more than that. Come to find out she had 52 different things that she'd been praying about since she was seven years old that she gave to me on our wedding day and I hit all of those, which I tooed my own horn here. I've got some good qualities here, but it was basically like spot onto that. So, it showed me don't ever settle because you'll just be miserable and actively pray for the things that you want in a spouse and actively ask God to open your eyes to find that person. And you can be very, very picky. And I don't think a lot of people tell you that. I think a lot of people will say, "Well, you make the most of it. You just married somebody you made." No, absolutely not.
Gary Schneeberger:
I have an interesting, to me anyway, about not settling. And it's funny because it came from a place of absolutely the worst motives ever. So, I'm in my late 20s and I meet this woman at a journalism conference. I was a reporter and she was engaged to somebody, but I liked her. So, I said to her, this is the phrase I came up with, "Never settle, strive." And it was purely selfish on my part. But guess what? 35 years later, that has become a motto of mine, and it has been for 35 years, this idea of not settling, striving, moving beyond, don't settle for the thing that's here, right? Don't settle for the grass, right? Pull up by the weeds. I mean, clear things out, do those kind of things. Don't settle for what looks like it might be good. Go after the thing that you know is good. So, I love hearing you say that. And I hope our listeners and viewers grasp that idea that you're not going to find the great movements of your life in settling, right? When I'm ready to go, I'm going to list the hundred things that I have done in my life. And I guarantee you of the top 100 things I've done, it's not going to be any time I spent watching Netflix. I can guarantee that's not going to be one of them. It's taking action and doing something towards the goals that you want to achieve.
David Nurse:
Man, I love that. I was telling somebody this the other day, and isn't it funny? I honestly, I can't remember series that Taylor and I watched like two weeks ago. We watched it in the evening, it's just like a little nighttime routine. We'll watch a show and stuff, and we'll be so into it. Two weeks ago, I can't remember the name of it. I can't remember what happened. What does that show you? Was that really important? Probably not.
Warwick Fairfax:
No, that's so good. One of the other things that's really interesting here is obviously the story you shared about sending handwritten notes to the 30 GMs and the NBA. I mean, that takes, I don't know if an insane level of confidence, persistence, it's remarkable. But one of the other things you say, which is very counterintuitive, everybody thinks networking is great. Find the people that can do stuff for you. And it's all about what they can do for you. But yet your mindset, you talk about having, was it like the Golden 15, you had this incredible instance in which here you were coaching on the coaching staff of the Brooklyn Nets, you're in Dallas, Dallas Mavericks, and Mark Cuban is there. He's on the court just practicing his shot. And you did something that I don't think anybody would actually do. It's like Mark Cuban, billionaire, goodness does. So, talk about what you did and what you didn't do, because it's incredibly counterintuitive, that whole instance. It's really a window into your philosophy that's not what many people would have.
David Nurse:
Yeah. I gave him shooting lessons. I gave him shooting lessons on the court before that game. And it wasn't out of a way of like, "Hey, I hope Mark can help me start a business or invest in something that I do someday." It was genuinely out of a... I had a passion for teaching people how to shoot a basketball. As weird as that might sound, I loved when people would become better shooters, more for the point of they become excited about what they were passionate in. To me, that vehicle was shooting a basketball, which I later realized is inspiring people for what they love to do and helping them uncover roadblocks to be able to get there. For Mark, he loved basketball. He loves it. And he was a really bad shooter and he's better now and not all thanks to me obviously, but gave him a few little pointers. And I told him I'd send him more drills because the real players had to start coming to warm up before the game. We were in Dallas before a Brooklyn Nets and Mavericks game. And he's like, "Yeah, he was really excited about it." So, I sent him over more drills in an email and just sent him an email the next day thanking him, right? Just didn't expect anything to come back from it. And I got an email five minutes later just thanking me for the time and everything. And we stayed in touch, are still in touch to this day. And if I ever have a business question, I can send Mark an email and ask him a question. And it's like, what better person in the business world to be able to have pick their brain or tap into than Mark Cuban? But that was all because I was helping him with something he was passionate about. I wasn't going up to Mark and saying, "Hey Mark, I've got this business question. Can you help me with the business?" So, there's different angles to be able to help people. And I think there's two types of people. There's givers and there's takers. And whether you get burnt by somebody you pour into, and I've been burnt many, many times and spend a lot of time, I'll serve people, I'll serve people, but I'll just keep doing it because it's all going to come back in the end. I don't know how it's going to come back. And there's been crazy ways where I did not expect something at all of a seed that I planted by serving somebody years ago and then they come around full circle. Like even this protein gummies company that I started, when I started raising money from it, I reached out to people who I'd served or knew years ago and they're like, "Yeah, I'm an investor. I would love to invest in this." I'm like, "My goodness." So, it just goes to show you is don't transactionally use somebody in a relationship, do it for the betterment of what you have gifted in you to be able to help them get excited, be passionate about what they're doing and then let it sit. Stay in touch with them, cultivate the relationship and maybe something will come back to you in the end. And in my own life, I can only speak from my own experiences and what I've seen in friends too, is it does come back to you. And it comes back to you from the right people as well. So, yeah, that's the crazy Mark Cuban story.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I mean, that's just remarkable that you, and you talk about the golden 15 of having 15 relationships that you pour into. And again, your philosophy is not what you can get out of them, it's what you can give to them and how they can help you be a better person, but not about what they can necessarily do for you in your career. That is so counterintuitive. That is not traditional networking. It's anything but...
David Nurse:
Traditional networking just seems... I hated it when I was in a room and I'd be having a conversation with somebody and I could see their eyes darting around me, like looking up at who else is... I was like, "All right." And then you just make those decisions, right? You're like, "This is not a person that I want to be. I'm going to make these life decisions that reflect the better side of it and the human relationship side of it, instead of the transactional networking side of it."
Warwick Fairfax:
No, it's so well said. So, really at the end of the book, you summarize, you talk about relentless consistency, which obviously is in part being consistent in how you live out your faith every day. We'll have good days and bad days, but from my perspective, what's the trajectory? What's the arc of your life? If it's a graph, is it like down or is it up in terms of how you live out your faith and you redefine a series of terms, success, failure, joy, passion, confidence. So, talk about how, because your definitions are very different than the world's definitions. I mean, they're radically different. So, talk about those because none of them is what people would expect.
David Nurse:
Well, it all started for me in basketball players talking about going through shooting slumps. And every time somebody would talk about a shooting slump is where you're missing a lot of shots, their whole body language would just change. And what I realized is like, well, what if we changed the word slump to hippopotamus? Would it change it? And they would laugh and look at me crazy like, shoot, shooting hippopotamus, but like, look at that. It's just a word that you're letting dictate how you feel. And that's what got me onto this of like, whoa, why do we have to let these words that were taught be able to define how we feel of it? Like what if failure meant something different than what the world teaches us? What if wealth, what if confidence, what if they all meant something of a different fashion? And I'm a big believer in defining your own words, especially using failure, for example, like the two greatest basketball players of all time, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and their mental coach is a good friend of mine, George Mumford, and he said they would look at games, they would look at wins and losses, not as wins and losses. They didn't care about that. They looked at things as momentum and learning. So, if they had a great game, they're like, "That's momentum. I built some momentum on this. I'm going to keep doubling down on this." So, if they had a bad game, they're like, "All right, how can I learn from it?" And it just changes the whole trajectory because you're not defining yourself as a winner or a loser, but you just love, like they did, the joy of the competition, but it's the competition with self, not that necessarily the competition with your neighbor or somebody else on social media. How do you continue to strive to be the best version of yourself? And I think, and it's also once again, it's not in a, "Hey, the pressure's on you." This is the joy. The joy of the constant growth and relentlessly pouring into yourself so that you can better others. And I think a lot of that we have to start with, a good spot for people to start with is redefine your own words. What does rich mean to you? What does it truly mean? Is it money or is it time with your spouse, your kids doing incredible experiences and adventures? What does failure look like? What does confidence look like? What does consistency look like? Define your own main important words, and that's where that concept came from. It's served me very well in life.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I mean, you've talked about failure and that's really good. It's not a loss, it's a lesson. True success isn't tied to anything the world has to offer. It's living at each stage to come more fully who you are made to be, knowing you are doing so for a much bigger purpose than yourself. That truly is a great definition. Joy is understanding that extreme struggles and drastic changes you go through, all part of the adventure, shaping you into who you were made to be, passion, speaking into existence, what is it you want to be and taking their daily steps on the path to reach that goal. I love this one about confidence, being comfortable in your own skin, no matter how quirky it might look to you. And it's the knowledge you have a gift from God, specifically craft and creative for you. We're all quirky. We all have our things that our spouses know. Some they love, some they find annoying, but that's okay. We are who we are and being comfortable with yourself what's in all. I mean, this is really game changing all of these concepts. They're not normal concepts. I mean, do you find people look at you like you have two heads when you talk about these terms and say, "Say what?" Because you're talking at a foreign language for each of these words.
David Nurse:
Yeah, sometimes. I mean, the comfortable on your own skin is a fun one for me because I'll say things and do things in public that my wife's like, "What are you doing? What are you doing?" But it's just to see how people react and see how people feel and just show that be yourself. That's the most attractive quality somebody can have is just truly being who you are, not trying to put on a mask or trying to act like somebody that you're not, but just truly be comfortable with who God has created you to be and comfortable in your own skin. So, yeah, it's a different way to look at things, but I think when people hear it, they're like, "Yeah, I want that." That's very freeing for me.
Gary Schneeberger:
And I will display that I do that myself with all the bracelets that I'm wearing. I'm a devotee to that.
David Nurse:
I love it. I love it.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, I like how you end your book talking about choice and we all get to choose how we want to live. I know in my case at Beyond The Crucible, I love what I do with the podcast, helping people realize that they're not defined by their worst day because I, as listeners know very well, I was in that space, gosh, back in my 20s and early 30s when I did a 2.25 billion dollar takeover from my family's 150-year-old media business, which ended up after three years not working. So, am I going to be defined by a 2.25 billion dollar failure? I'd like to think not. And I think what's important to me, and fortunately for me, I found the Lord during my undergrad days at Oxford, but I really try and live that. So, for instance, I wrote a book Crucible Leadership a few years ago and I went around speaking and I'm not a natural speaker, but I got with some training got to, I think competent to the point where at least judging by the audience, I was effective even though I'm not a natural speaker, but I came to realize I don't enjoy that and I blessed financially in that I don't have to do that. And so, I do write blogs, podcasts, we're very active on social media, but I don't like traveling all over the place. And so, it's like, well, if I don't have to, I'm not passionate about it, even if I'm effective, then why do it? I get to choose to create my own life. I'm an elder at my evangelical church. I'm on a few other nonprofit faith-based organizations that I contribute to with some strategic advice and I love all that. That's part of what I love to do. So, everybody gets to choose their own adventures, choose their own life, but so often we're living the lives of others. And you have so many stories in your book about people living, certainly in sports, living their parents' dreams, which many athletes do. So, talk a bit about, I know it sounds simple, but you have a choice how you want to live your life. Don't live what you think people want you to live. And it seems like you've lived that to the max, is right? You constantly try to live in light of what you feel called to by the Lord, not because of what anybody else is telling you to do, right?
David Nurse:
Yeah, totally. And thanks for that. I mean, it is one thing that I do really make sure that I stay away from what the media is saying or what the world is saying, like this is what you need to pursue. Because I feel like they try to funnel you in a way that do this, do this, do this, don't take chances, don't take risks, just go with the flow. And that never turns out to be the right way. And it's, my dad was, and it's funny saying the masses are fill in the blank with that, so don't follow them, run the other way, run the other way fast if everybody's going one way. So, I think that's really stuck with me. And it's just been, whether it's very uncertain times when you go your own path, because it is uncertain, but you're doing your own path, your own thing. And the best way to summarize the whole podcast itself is God does have the plan. He's not going to leave you hanging. Go and just take action on your dreams and your goals and what God's called you to do, but know it's probably not going to be exactly what you foresee it to be, but it will be better because God has the ultimate plan.
Gary Schneeberger:
We promised David to get you out for your next meeting that you have. I also promised that before we did that, I would give you the opportunity to let listeners and viewers know how they can find out more about you on the worldwide web. How can they find more about David Nurse?
David Nurse:
Yeah. Website is davidnurse.com, social media, David Nurse NBA. Books are all out there in Amazon. Company is called More or Less Protein. It's Protein Gummies. It's a whole nother story in itself about relationships lead to incredible things. But yeah, I'm very easy to get ahold of. And I just want to thank you guys for this opportunity and thank you guys for what you are doing. You are using your skills, your gifts, abilities, and a platform to be able to show people the true light. And that's so needed, especially in today's day and age.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, David, let's say, there might be somebody here listening and it might be their worst day. They might think there is no hope. They're defined by that faded, by getting fired from that job. What would a word of hope be for that person?
David Nurse:
Just keep going. Don't give upness is the greatest skill that you can have. What if there's a word called don't give upness. Just don't give up. Keep looking at different opportunities of what are the skills you've developed through that thing that you just got fired or the door slammed in your face? Who are people, truth tellers around you that you can seek wisdom from who have been there before? Ask them, have them guide you. Somebody has gone through the exact thing that you're going through. Know that God has the overall plan. So, I know that wasn't just one thing, it was about three, but I think those in combination make a nice sandwich together.
Gary Schneeberger:
Well, I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on the subject has been spoken and our guest today, David Nurse, has just spoken it. So, Warwick, we have just mere minutes ago finished our interview with David Nurse. Lots of great things. I know you were really excited about this going into it because you read his book and we're really moved by a lot of what he had to say. So, let our listeners and viewers know what's like one big takeaway you'd like them to take with them after they see this episode.
Warwick Fairfax:
Life is about choice. We use that word often up Beyond The Crucible and certainly the way David Nurse has led his life. He's made a lot of very good choices and it's really mindset shifts, which he talks a lot about in the book that we focused on. That was the one that he said us. It was actually his first book. It's called Pivot & Go: The 29-Day Mindset Blueprint to Redefine and Achieve YOUR Success. What's remarkable about David's story is here he is, is somebody that's very successful. He had a stint as part of the coaching team with the Brooklyn Nets. He has worked with over 1150 NBA players, helping them become better players and just coaching them in all aspects of their life. His achieved remarkable success, three books speaks all over the place, was voted I think one of the top 50 keynote speakers in the world. He's had a lot of success, but yet as he puts it, he comes from a small town in Iowa, not from any particular background of wealth or influence. And yet he had this dream of being an NBA player. Now he's not short his six two, but as any basketball fan will know, six two is still on the shorter side if you want to play in the NBA. A few more inches would have been helpful, but yet he didn't give up and he had all sorts of roadblocks. He ended up playing in Spain and Australia and just different leagues to try and make it to the NBA and it never worked out. So, in his 20s, he had to give up that dream. So, then he had this dream of being a coach and he achieved that. He was on the Brooklyn Nets coaching staff and helped them go from like 28th and shooting to second, which is pretty good, like outstanding. That was his expertise amongst other things is shooting. And yet a new coach comes in and as often happens, a new coach wants his own stuff. Well, that's common, but I'm sure David felt at the time, "Are you kidding me? Look what I've done. From 28th to second in shooting, you got to fire me?" And it's like, I'm sure they probably said things like it's not personal, but we're going in a different direction, all those wonderful phrases that we hate to hear. And so, he was out of a job. But yet, both of those crucibles, both not making it into the NBA and then getting fired as a coach in the NBA, yes, I'm sure there were periods of being angry and frustrated, yet he didn't let get him down. And I think one of the keys was his faith in Christ, which happened during his college years, gave him a different perspective that were not defined by each individual failure. Life's a journey. What can you learn from it? So, his capacity to learn and think differently is crazy. He's done bold things that I've rarely heard anybody do. One of the reasons he got into the NBA as a coach is he wrote handwritten letters to the 30 general managers of the NBA. After a month and a half, one got back and he talked about himself and maybe a few things about the team and that one relationship led to others that then led him to being a coaching staff in the NBA. Well, his philosophy about networking, which is not networking. The story he shared where he meets Mark Cuban, the then owner of the Dallas Mavericks when the Brooklyn Nets were playing the Mavericks and is out there before the game shooting and David Nurse being an expert on shooting gave him a couple tips and said, "Would you want me to give you some more tips?" "Sure." So, he gave him his email and he gave him a bunch of tips on how to shoot better and it really helped. Not once did he ask Mark Cuban, who's a billionaire, for help with anything. Now, who does that? I've never heard of anybody you think," Mark Cuban, he can take me to the next level in basketball or anything else." I remember at the time he's on the coaching style for the Nets. So, his focus on giving to others and just almost this ministry mindset of so many stories in his book of how he's tried to help others. He's been successful, but not because he's put his own agenda first. He's really in a sense tried to put the Lord's agenda first, be it in his marriage or in his career and he's constantly saying, "Okay, so this didn't work out. So, Lord, what's the plan here? What am I meant to learn?" He has this almost superhuman, I'd say, God-given mindset about not letting failure get him down and saying, "Okay." He has massive persistence, massive courage of trying things, no lack of courage here, but yet he is not defined by his worst day or his worst getting fired. His mindset and the way he chooses to look at life, we can learn a huge amount from us as we all go through the challenges we have in life.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, folks, until the next time we're together, please remember this. We know that your crucible experiences are difficult. David talked about several crucible experiences that he went through that were very difficult. Warwick, you know, has talked about his before. I've talked about mine before, but here's the other thing we know. We know that if we learn the lessons of our crucibles and we apply those lessons moving forward, it's not the end of our story. In fact, it can be the beginning of a profoundly new story that leads to the best destination you can possibly be led to, and that is to a life of significance. Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond The Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
William Wallace: Lessons in Building a Shared Vision
The historical figure we talk about this week, William Wallace, faces high stakes, and a high risk, in the 1995 Oscar-winning movie, Braveheart.
The story of his effort to build a shared vision among his Scottish countrymen to fight for their freedom is the focus of this first episode of our 2026 series within the show, More Stories from The Book Crucible Leadership.
Wallace may have lived in the 13th century, but the lessons we can learn from him on this critical aspect of leading a life of significance remain helpful to us in the 21st century.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. A key part of inspiring a shared vision is to help people look beyond their own self-interest to a vision of a greater purpose. And as we'll see, Wallace sees something in Robert the Bruce. "In the other nobles, what chance of success does he have?" He's probably thinking, "Slim to none, but I've got to try." With Robert the Bruce, he's thinking, "It's going to be a tough sell, but it just may be possible. It just may be."
Gary Schneeberger:
Those are high stakes and a high risk that the historical figure we talk about this week, William Wallace, faces in the 1995 Oscar-winning film Braveheart. The story of his effort to build a vision among his Scottish countrymen to fight for their freedom is the focus of this first episode of our 2026 Series Within the Show, more stories from the book Crucible Leadership. Wallace may have lived in the 13th century, but the lessons we can learn from him on this critical aspect of leading a life of significance are extremely relevant to all of us in the 21st century.
Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. It's that time of year again. The year is the calendar's flipped over to 2026. And we're recording our first show in what we're calling, as we have called before, the Series Within the Show once a month for the next year, except for our Summer Series part. But the Series Within the Show this year is a callback a little bit to two years ago when we did stories from the book Crucible Leadership, that's Warwick's book. Now we very creatively have come up with more stories from the book Crucible Leadership, just so everybody knows exactly what we're drilling into.
But we have something that we're doing that's a little bit different than what we've done before, and we'll tell you more about that in a bit. But just to level-set us on what Crucible Leadership is, it's The Wall Street Journal bestseller that was released in 2022, written by Warwick. And it's an important book because without that book, folks, without that book, there wouldn't be a Beyond the Crucible. There wouldn't be this podcast. There wouldn't be this brand. There wouldn't be this business if it weren't for that book that Warwick wrote.
But the angle that we've added to what we're doing here in the Series Within the Show is that some of the things that we're going to talk about from the book weren't in the printed copy of the book that I'm sure all of you ordered and have read. These are things that, as they say in the business, wound up on the cutting-room floor. Please understand, when I say that, it does not mean that they weren't good enough, that they're bad bits. It just means that there was such a multitude of good things to go in that book, these things just didn't make the cut.
These things were good stuff, but the great stuff that got in the book didn't quite allow for this to go in. So we want to make sure that you get to know those things that Warwick did write about back when he wrote his book. And so, that's why we're doing this Series Within the Show on more stories from the book Crucible Leadership. And we're beginning with William Wallace and the power and the importance of shared vision. You've heard us talk about shared vision a lot, but we're going to talk about it today in the context of the story of William Wallace, who, historical figure, but he's also a filmic figure in that he was the protagonist. He was the main character on which the story was based in the movie Braveheart.
So, all of that, that's a lot of me blabbing, Warwick. Let me ask you a question. And this is an important one. Why William Wallace? And why do you think that he's an example of the importance of shared vision as we begin this new dive into stories from the book Crucible Leadership?
Warwick Fairfax:
So, sometimes when we think of stories of visionaries motivating the troops or a nation, we think of presidents, kings, prime ministers, generals. But William Wallace is different. He's a great example of an ordinary person having the powerful ability to get so many people on board with his vision. He was not somebody that anybody had ever heard of. He was just a regular guy. But he was able to unite his fellow Scots and have a powerful influence on the leading figure to be the future king of Scotland, Robert the Bruce.
So, there are key elements in inspiring a team with shared vision. And one of the most important aspects of that is completely living that vision to your core and inspiring a team with a vision that they would have found hard to believe was possible before. And one of the keys of that is to help people look beyond their own self-interest, look beyond just a few feet in front of them, and to look for a vision that is bigger than they could have imagined, that fulfills some higher purpose. That is not normal for most people.
And so, the other aspect that this movie and story talks about is not just inspiring those around you, those that work for you and with you, but inspiring people at all levels, including those above us. Many of us work in organizations in which we have people two, three, four levels above us. And so, this story of William Wallace shows not just how you can inspire people around you and who work for you but those who are several levels above you, which often is necessary to have a vision become reality. It's really an inspiring story from which we can learn a lot.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And as Warwick has intimated there, what we're going to be talking about here isn't perhaps scholarly book studies of William Wallace. It is indeed the movie Braveheart, because the key elements that we want to talk about about shared vision come through very starkly, very clearly in the film. So that's the ground that we're going to cover here.
And it's important to note, just for those of you who've been with us before when we've done a summer series on movies, we're not going to do from the opening credits to the closing credits on Braveheart. We're going to focus on those things that really speak into the shared-vision aspect of what he does. So this is a little bit of a different approach to going after looking at the details of the movie. That's a fair assessment, isn't it, Warwick?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. Yeah. We're really going to focus on the key aspects of the story of how to live a vision, how to share that vision at all levels. So we'll be talking about aspects of the story that really fit into William Wallace's ability to inspire the whole of the Scottish people with the vision that he has.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And that happens all the time. We prepared for this for... For a fair bit of time, we prepared for this episode. And then you just built a perfect bridge into the first question I'm going to ask you. So, that's fabulous. Or the second question I'm going to ask you.
And the first hint of William Wallace doing this in the film Braveheart is he loses his father early in the movie in a battle against the British, and the young man who returns, right? So he's a boy when he loses his father. The young man who returns to Scotland after living with his Uncle Argyle has a much different vision than William Wallace ended up having. So, talk about that a little bit, Warwick, because the William Wallace who comes back from Uncle Argyle's place to live again in Scotland among his clansman, not the guy we're going to see as this movie carries on, right? He's got a different kind of vision early, early, early on.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, it's very true. When we see William Wallace as a young boy, I mean, he's got to be, like, 5, 6. He's certainly less than 10. I mean, we don't quite know how old he is, but he's young. And we see his father and older brother go off to war. And he obviously wants to come with, as all kids want to go with parents, but he's obviously too young. And sadly, both his father and older brother are killed. Now, I don't know that we see his mother. So, at that point, it would seem like he's an orphan. And so he ends up going to live with his Uncle Argyle.
And this changes the trajectory of his life completely, not just because he's not with his parents, but his uncle, his Uncle Argyle, is a well-educated man. And the life he would live in just a very primitive... we wouldn't even call a house. It's almost like sort of grass thatching on it and wood, maybe stone. It's a very primitive existence. And his uncle is very educated. And so, when Wallace returns as a young man, he can read and write, which many people in his village would not have been able to, necessarily. Not only can he read and write, but he can speak French and Latin and has been to Rome, a very radically different existence than he would have had without growing up with his uncle.
Early on when William Wallace is a young boy, Argyle says, his uncle says to him, "William, you must use your mind. You must first use your mind, and then I will teach you how to use a sword." And this was a powerful life lesson, because as we'll see later in the movie, William Wallace's greatest weapon wasn't just his ability to wield the sword, which he was very proficient at. It was his intellect and cunning, that his mind was very finely honed, very adept, and that was arguably a greater weapon than his sword.
So, when he returns to the village, he's off somewhere else in Scotland, the townspeople ask if he wants to fight. They're tired of the English oppression. And so, Wallace says he wants to live in peace and raise a family. He doesn't want to go to war. That's not his mission. He just wants to live in peace, get married and have a family. That's the vision for his life at that point.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it's interesting that you mentioned what his uncle says to him, because before that, even, his father says, as you indicated, when William runs out as a boy to his dad and says, "I can fight," and his dad says, I have to find the exact phrase, "It's our wits that make a man a hero," his dad tells him. So, dad and uncle both have the same approach to... It's not just about brawn. It's not just about battle readiness. It's also about, it starts with what happens in the mind and in the vision, if you will, right? Having a vision for something. And I think that's what we see develop for William Wallace, for sure.
But Wallace's perspective on whether he's going to fight changes when he marries his childhood friend, Murron. She is killed for fighting to get away from an attack by British soldiers. And that changes Wallace's perspective completely from saying, "I just want a peaceful life." He was on his path to have that peaceful life, to have those children that he talked about. And then this tragedy happened with his wife being killed. That gives William Wallace a different vision in the aftermath of that work, but it's a narrow one. And it's still not the vision that certainly his life will be known for, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. Well said, Gary. I mean, the death of his childhood friend, Murron, is transformative. So, when William Wallace returns, he's a young man, he sees this young woman, Murron. And she's somebody that he's known his whole life. I mean, when he was small, living back in the village, they knew each other. And he's immediately drawn to her, and they start courting, and they get married in secret.
Now, the reason they do this is that the English nobility, the English king, want to really make sure that the Scottish people are under thumb and exert their tyrannical rule. And they enforce this horrific thing called prima nocta. And what that means is that if a couple are about to get married, the very first night after the wedding, the local English noble has the right of first night, as in to be with, to lay with the bride. And so, this is obviously a horrific thing. And so, both William Wallace and Murron are aware of this. And so, they do indeed get, as I mentioned, caught and get married in secret.
But one time when Wallace is somewhere else outside the village, a group of English soldiers see Murron, and they're just common soldiers, and they proceed to try to rape her. And she fights back and maybe causes some degree of injury to one of the soldiers. And because she fights back, the local leader of the English troops, he might be a local noble, we don't quite know, he comes back and he wants to make an example of it. Basically, don't fight back, even against rape. I mean, it's a horrific thing that's going on here.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
And so, what this local English leader does is he ties Murron to a stake and he slits her throat with a dagger and kills her. So, Wallace later returns and sees that the English troops have killed the love of his life, and he is transformed. His vision of, "Hey, I just want to live in peace and raise a family," that is gone. The love of his life has been killed. And so, he is just filled with rage and bent on vengeance.
So, he, along with other Scots, go to the local garrison of the English troops where this local noble of that area is. And he kills many of those troops and captures the English leader, the local noble who's killed his wife, and he exacts his vengeance. He ties that leader to a stake. And in the same way that leader killed his wife, he also slits the throat of that leader. So, at this point, his vision is his vengeance and payback. He's filled with rage. That is the extent of his vision at this point.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. But that, again, as the movie goes on, as we learn more about him, as he encounters more of what's going on between England and his homeland of Scotland, there's really a critical scene, one of the film's most renowned, actually, that you unpack in detail in the piece of the book that ended up on the cutting-room floor. Talk about that scene and how it offers us guidance on crafting a shared vision, because it really is a masterclass in doing so.
Warwick Fairfax:
It surely is. So, as you've mentioned, initially, Wallace's vision after his wife is killed is narrow. He just wants to avenge the murder of his wife. But then it grows to abolishing this apparent practice of prima nocta first night of just the English troops, on nobility being able to sleep with the bride on her first night. And then it grows from there to being one of freeing Scotland from the English tyranny.
So, what's interesting is, William Wallace had no desire to be a hero or the leader of his people. He initially, again, was all about revenge. But Wallace's fame spreads because they hear about how he took on that English garrison and got payback for what they did to his wife. So people keep coming to him and they look to him to be their leader. Initially, he's a bit nonplussed. It's like, "I'm just a regular guy. I mean, what do you want from me?" kind of thing.
Gary Schneeberger:
And he actually, Warwick, he actually tells them, because I took a note when I watched it again yesterday, he actually tells them to go home. He tells them at first to go home. He doesn't want them to be part of what he knows is going to be a difficult vision. So he's trying to spare his kinsmen.
Warwick Fairfax:
Right. He doesn't necessarily want to lead this whole big vision. But he's a commoner, not of noble birth. And I don't think he necessarily wants to be this hero with this cause. But I think the Scottish people, they see him as one of them. He's not some noble. He's just a regular guy.
So, one of the key battle scenes in the movie is a Battle of Stirling Bridge, which was in 1297. And so we see the Scots, and they're arrayed in the battlefield. And on the other side of the field, we see the might of the English army. This isn't just some small garrison. This is the English army. And some Scots are getting nervous and saying, "Whoa, I don't know that I signed up for this. I mean, look at these. That's an organized army. We're just a bunch of regular people. We're not like trained soldiers. These people are."
And so then William Wallace gives this rousing speech, and he says the following. He says, "I'm William Wallace, and I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You've come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What would you do without freedom? Will you fight?" And so then one of the folks in his army, one of these fellow Scots, says, "Fight against that?" pointing to this massive English army raid against them. "No, we will run, and we will live."
And then Wallace says this, and it's an incredible speech he gives. He says, "Aye," very Scottish, right? Means yes, as we all know. "Aye-"
Gary Schneeberger:
Very well done, by the way. Like, "Aye."
Warwick Fairfax:
"... fight and you may die. Run and you will live, at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now. Would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell your enemies that they may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom."
So, this is an incredible example of William Wallace inspiring a shared vision. He's trying to help his fellow Scots have a vision that the seemingly impossible task of taking on the might of the English army, that they may have hope, that they might win. And even if they don't, at least they will have died fighting for freedom. I mean, this is not an easy sell. They're just regular people against the might of a trained army. And he says that they're fighting to be free men and ask them what will they do without freedom. Do they want to look back years from now and say what might have been? "I could have fought for freedom, but I didn't." You've got to live with the what-if. "Maybe we could have won, maybe not, but we'll never know."
So, Wallace is a common man like them. He's not wealthy. He has shown that he's willing to oppose tyranny and is living his vision and inspires Scots to live that vision, too, a vision more than just tending to their fields and their flocks, but a higher purpose vision, a vision of freedom against tyranny. It's just a remarkable speech. And he's somebody that... You can't really ignore William Wallace. He lives his vision, as we'll talk more about later. He's somebody that... When William Wallace gives a speech, he's one of them. He's been through incredible hardship. They respect him. It's tough to ignore William Wallace when he's giving this impassioned speech in front of the army, railed against the whole might of the English army. It's an incredible speech, incredible moment.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. So, let's move from 1297 to 2026, and folks who are listening, folks who aren't on the battlefield in Scotland, folks who are listening to us talk right now. There's something in what William Wallace does by just being so sold out to his mission that he encourages... He brings aboard, he captures with his rhetoric, with his inspirational notes, a team of fellow travelers. That's an important thing for us to know now, I mean, to just kind of take that and put that in our pockets as we look to build shared visions ourselves for the things that we have on our lists.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. And we'll unpack this more as the movie goes on. But it starts with really being completely sold out for the vision. Well, he started off by taking on that English garrison and exacting revenge for the death of his wife. Here he is fighting for freedom for all of Scotland against the whole of the might of the English army. So, he's living his vision and is trying to inspire people to think beyond themselves, to inspire them beyond their fears and maybe narrow vision. And so, that's something that we can all learn from is inspiring people.
You've got to model the vision, but you want to inspire them to a vision beyond just their own immediate needs. You inspire them a vision that helps other people. We talk about a life of significance, a vision of a life of significance, of helping others making some impact in the world that we live in. And so, that's really what shared vision should be all about. You should be inspiring people to do what they think is almost impossible and to think of something that's beyond their own immediate interest, to help those around them and their neighborhood, their community, their country, maybe the world. That's what an ideal shared vision is, and that's what William Wallace is doing.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And he continues to have his vision grow as the film goes on. He continues to strengthen his vision and motivate others to join him in an important scene that follows what we just talked about, that battle where he gives that rousing speech. Talk about that scene of, again, the next thing that happens in this film that really solidifies his vision and gets more people to climb aboard it.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, Wallace is a very smart man. He realizes it's not enough to inspire his fellow Scots, regular folks, the common people, as they would be called back then. He realized that's critical. But what is also critical is he has to get the powerful Scottish nobles. They have influence, troops, money. He knows they're not going to win without the support of the Scottish nobles. And he realizes that this is not easy because the English king Longshanks, who we see in the movie, who's a very ruthless man, but also a cunning, a smart man. He's no idiot, Longshanks.
And so, what is customary back then is you try to buy off those who might oppose you. So, he gives the Scottish nobles position and land, some even in Northern England. He gives some of the English nobles some land and position in Scotland. He's trying to make sure that people have a vested interest in opposing the Scots and standing up for the English crown. So, this is not an easy sell.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. I mean, even him bringing back prima nocta, right? There's that scene where, "Hey, if we want to get the nobles on our sides, let's just do this thing."
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, he's very good at that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. It's such a good point. So, it's, why should the English nobles go there? Well, they have this whole, the young women on the night that they'll be married, being able to lay with them, kind of take advantage of them. For some, that's an attractive proposition, very sadly.
So, really, what Wallace does is he tries to appeal to the hearts of these nobles and tries to help them think beyond their own self-interest, which is not easy. I mean, these are people with castles, position. In today's age, it's like, "Don't just think about you're CEO of X company and you have this $10 million home and all this money. Think beyond that." It's like, "Okay, why is that? Because life is pretty good. I'm enjoying everything I have. Why should I think beyond the wealth and power and position that I have?" Whether it's 1297 or 2026, it's not an easy sell.
And so, Wallace starts to leave a meeting of the Scottish nobles and he's stopped by one of the nobles, because he's sort of disgusted with what he sees, really. They're just all about their own self-interest. And so, one of the nobles says... Oh, I should add, because of Wallace's triumph at the Battle of Stirling, he's made a knight, which he's a-
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. He becomes a noble.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. He becomes Sir William Wallace. He still thinks of himself as a commoner. Just because he's got a title, I don't think he instantly gets a castle and money. We don't really see any evidence of that. You've got a title. Well, great.
Anyway. So, one of the nobles says to him, "Sir William, where are you going?" And Wallace says, "We have beaten the English, but they'll come back because you won't stand together." In other words, the English nobles. This nobleman says, "Well, what will you do?" So Wallace says, "I will invade England and defeat the English on their own ground." This noble says, "Invade? That's impossible." I mean, it's one thing to try to stop the English in Scotland, but he's thinking, "Go to England and invade." That's, like, insanity.
And Wallace says, "Why? Why is that impossible? You were so concerned with squabbling for the scraps of Longshanks' table..." In other words, the king of England. "You're so concerned with squabbling for the scraps of Longshanks' table that you've missed your God-given right to something better. There is a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think position exists to provide those people with freedom, and I go to make sure that they have it."
I mean, he is really appealing to the better angels, the better motivation of these Scottish nobles. And when you look at that scene, it's like, what is there to appeal to? Are there any better angels within them? They're all about their own self-interest. You're thinking, talk about mission impossible. I mean, he's giving a speech to people that there's no way they're going to listen. I mean, why would they? To fight against the might of the English army with this sort of ragtag group of Scottish people. But he says, "Don't just think of your position, but realize you've been given this position," I'm assuming maybe by God or however he looks at it, "to fight for people."
Gary Schneeberger:
And then there comes not the introduction of, but really the most vivid scene with the rightful heir to the Scottish throne, Robert the Bruce, which, side note, when this movie came out in 1995, I worked with a guy named Bruce and he got very sick of us calling him Robert the Bruce.
Warwick Fairfax:
You should have told him, "Bruce, you should be honored. What a noble name, Robert the Bruce." You know?
Gary Schneeberger:
I know, I know. Right. But Robert the Bruce starts playing a bigger role in the film at this point. And Robert the Bruce is pivotal to Wallace's shared vision becoming reality. There's a scene that really unpacks that. Talk about that scene where how important Robert the Bruce is to the vision that William Wallace has and which he wants to have others share with him.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, right after the scene with the nobles, the Scottish nobles, in which doesn't really seem like they're on board with Wallace's vision of freedom, he's leaving, and Robert the Bruce goes after him. And it's clear that he's really struck by what Wallace has said. So they get in a discussion about balancing the desire for freedom and keeping the nobles happy, because Robert the Bruce is a smart guy. He said, "It's not easy to get these nobles to think beyond their self-interest and power and position."
And so, Robert the Bruce says this. "I'm not a coward. I want what you want, but we need the nobles." So Wallace says, "We need them? Nobles? Now tell me, what does that mean to be noble? Your title gives you claim to the throne of our country, but men don't follow titles, they follow courage. Now, our people know you. Noble and common, they respect you. And if you would just lead them to freedom, they would follow you. And so would I."
Wallace is appealing to Robert the Bruce, the most important Scottish noble, the most influential, and the leading figure to be the future king of Scotland. He tells Bruce that men don't follow titles, they follow courage. He says that if Robert the Bruce would just lead them to freedom, the Scottish people, the regular folks, they would follow Robert the Bruce. So, Wallace is trying to get him to think more than about his self-interest and money. And he has, obviously, a lot of it as a leading Scottish noble and to think about the Scottish people.
A key part of inspiring a shared vision is to help people look beyond their own self-interest to a vision of a greater purpose. And as we'll see, Wallace sees something in Robert the Bruce. "In the other nobles, what chance of success does he have?" He's probably thinking, "Slim to none, but I've got to try." With Robert the Bruce, he's thinking, "It's going to be a tough sell, but it just may be possible. It just may be."
Again, we cannot underestimate how intelligent and discerning William Wallace is. He knows how to understand what's in the heart of a person. He has this sixth sense of where they are and what he can do to appeal to them to accomplish his vision. And he sees something in Wallace. And we'll see through the course of the movie, he's really trying to fight for Robert the Bruce.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And that brings us on the precipice of another thing we talk about a lot at Beyond the Crucible, and that is this idea of having fellow travelers. You have to be wise about the way you pick fellow travelers. And really, in our terms in 2026, what William Wallace sees in Robert the Bruce is someone who would make an ideal fellow traveler, not having the same skills necessarily that he does. He's got higher rank. He's got more money. He's got all those things. He's not exactly like him, but he's someone who can help him carry out his vision. And that really is a fellow traveler that he's eyeing when he's talking to Robert the Bruce, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It surely is. He sees somebody that he thinks he can win over, and he's a critical fellow traveler. It's helpful to have fellow travelers of all different kinds. But if you've got a vision that you are passionate about, if you can find a fellow traveler that has a fair amount of position and influence and the ability to make your vision become reality, that's a pretty key fellow traveler.
You could be working in a large organization. You've got this idea for a new product line, new vision, something that will take the company to the next level. If you're able to get somebody in senior management on board with that vision, that is absolutely critical fellow travelers. It's great to have all your buddies that you work with say, "I think this is a great idea, but I have zero influence or ability to make it happen, but I'm with you. Let me know if you get the green light from corporate and I'm on your team. But until then, just let me know."
So, having fellow travelers who have influence and position and the ability to help you. Who you pick as fellow travelers is important. And certainly, this is arguably the most important fellow traveler that William Wallace needs to get on board to get freedom for Scotland.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And yet William Wallace, I think, at this point in the film, sees more character in Robert the Bruce than Robert the Bruce manifests in his own life, and certainly, than he's... that he's brave enough to share, to show. He's fearful. And we'll see why his dad plays a major role in that. There's another interaction between Wallace and Robert the Bruce that follows immediately after the scene that we've been talking about. Unpack that scene a little bit to, again, show folks how this is on a continuum and it keeps moving forward. William Wallace is almost unrelenting in his wooing of Robert the Bruce to be someone who shares his vision with him.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, absolutely. So, there's this other interaction where Wallace again appeals to Robert the Bruce. So, there's a dialogue that goes like this. Robert the Bruce says this. "Now you," as in Wallace, "Now you have achieved more than anyone dreamed, but fighting these odds, it looks like rage, not courage."
So Wallace says this. "It is well beyond rage. Help me. In the name of Christ, help yourself. Now is our chance, now. If we join, we can win. If we win, then we will have what none of us have ever had before, a country of our own. You're the rightful leader, and there is strength in you. I see it. Unite us. Unite us. Unite the clans."
Wallace appeals to the strength of character that he sees inside Robert the Bruce. He says that if Bruce will join them, they will win. He sees the inner strength within Robert the Bruce, his character. He says, "Unite us. Unite the clans. Unite the Scottish people." So, basically, what we see in these scenes is that Wallace is fighting for the soul of Robert the Bruce. If he wins this battle for Bruce's soul, then Scotland may be free. If he doesn't, then the Scots unlikely to win their freedom.
Sometimes when you're trying to get people on board, that's what happens. It's funny, one of the things before we aired, we've also talked about William Wilberforce, William Wallace, William Wilberforce.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. It was me always saying Wilberforce by mistake, yes. Thank you for not calling me out on that work. I raise my hand and take the flower.
Warwick Fairfax:
But the reason I mention that is because later on in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Wilberforce is in a similar situation in that he is striving to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. And here's a conservative member of parliament, and he's trying to appeal to the better angels of other members of parliament who have a huge amount of economic interest in the slave trade.
And he's saying to them, "I realize this pours in millions," or the equivalent of billions of dollars or pounds, "into the coffers of the country," and I'm sure probably helps them in their own self-interest. "But think about morality. The slave trade is morally wrong. We're meant to be religious people here. It's against God's plan. It's morally wrong." So, again, a tough sell. It's similar in the sense that both Wilberforce and Wallace are appealing to the better angels of those in power against their own self-interest. Ultimately, Wilberforce succeeds. And it took decades. But ultimately, the slave trade is abolished. And we'll see how things unfold for William Wallace. So, there are some similar beats to those stories.
Gary Schneeberger:
To the Williams. Now I'm going to say Wilberforce, but I don't mean to. I'm turning my brain the other way so that doesn't happen. Talk a little bit now, Warwick, about the Battle of Falkirk and its aftermath. And it causes a change in the same way that we saw a change caused in William Wallace earlier in the film when his vision went from peace, then to vengeance, and then it went to freedom for his people. Robert the Bruce has a change happen to him that's tied to the battle of Falkirk. Talk about that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. This is one of the saddest moments in the movie, maybe the saddest. I mean, there are some other sad moments, but this is a real low point. So, in the Battle of Falkirk, the English army, they beat the Scots. Now, the Scots won before, but the key difference is this. The Scottish nobles, you see them on horseback and cavalry on the side of the battlefield, and they leave the battle. Right in the middle of the battle, there's arrows, there's swords blazing, and they leave the battlefield.
Throughout this battle, we see a noble on horseback amidst the English army. He has a helmet on. You can't see his face. It's a closed helmet. Later, we learn that that nobleman who's on the side of the English is none other than Robert the Bruce. And so, later on, after the battle is over, Wallace and Robert the Bruce encounter each other and Robert the Bruce takes off his helmet. And Wallace is absolutely crushed and devastated to see that Wallace has betrayed him. He was fighting on the side of the English army. There's almost a tear in his eye. You can see he's just absolutely broken. And that look of brokenness and betrayal on Wallace's face, that will sear deep into the soul of Robert the Bruce. It's a look that Robert the Bruce I don't know that will ever be able to get out of his soul and his consciousness.
And so, there's a powerful scene after that between Robert the Bruce and his father. Now, his father is more pragmatic. He's a realist. He wants to preserve position and power.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. That's a very charitable term. His father's perhaps more... I mean, yeah, he is pragmatic. I mean, what does he say to his son? He says, "You're the 17th Robert the Bruce." That means that 16 people before you have built up all of this wealth and all these lands and all this stuff. So, he's very much about what he can gain from the position. So, yes, he's pragmatic.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. It's all about power and money. And freeing the Scottish people, not so much, not high on his agenda. It's not even anywhere on his agenda.
So, there's this ensuing dialogue. So, the father says, "Son, we must have alliance with England to prevail here. You achieved that. You saved your family, increased your lands. In time, you will have all the power in Scotland." So Robert the Bruce says, "Lands, title, men, power, nothing." The father says, "Nothing?"
And so then the son, Robert the Bruce, says this. "Men fight for me, because if they do not, I throw them off my land. I starve their wives and their children. Those men who bled the ground red at Falkirk, they fought for William Wallace, and he fights for something that I've never had. And I took it from him when I betrayed him, and I saw it in his face on the battlefield, and it's tearing me apart."
The father says, "All men betray. All lose heart." And Robert the Bruce says this. "I don't want to lose heart. I want to believe as he does. I will never be on the wrong side again." That is a powerful statement.
Robert the Bruce's father is fighting to ensure that his son stays on the side of pragmatism, wealth, money, position, make sure you're going to be the future leader of Scotland. We've seen this moment that this battle for Robert the Bruce's soul is being won by William Wallace and his vision.
So, I think there's a powerful lesson here. Sometimes people will disappoint us. Maybe people have influenced the position, our bosses, parents, maybe mentors. They might let us down and they just follow their own self-interest. They won't help us. They won't follow a vision of higher purpose. And it can be crushing.
But what William Wallace shows us is don't give up. Keep appealing to the better angels of those people. Keep appealing to the goodness within their soul that somewhere in there maybe does want to believe that a higher purpose, a life of significance, a life beyond their own self-interest matters. So, if at first you don't succeed, don't give up. Keep appealing to the better angels of those often powerful people we try to influence. It could be people in your company, in your family, in your county, state. Just don't give up appealing to the better angels of those you might perceive as having more power and influence than you do. It's a powerful example that William Wallace gives us.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. And it's interesting to hear you talk about Wallace doing battle for Robert the Bruce's soul. Because at Beyond the Crucible, we talk a lot, you talk a lot about doing the soul work. And what happens here, really, is Robert the Bruce isn't able, because of his dad's influence or whatever, he's not really able to do a lot of soul work on his own. But William Wallace does soul work on his behalf and for him and he sees it reflected in Wallace. And that's what ultimately changes him, right? I think what you're talking about is someone helping someone do the soul work. I mean, when he says, "I want to be this," to his father, the soul work's been completed. He's done some soul work. But that's another aspect of what we do at Beyond the Crucible that we encourage people to get to. And I think it's important to see that Wallace helps Robert the Bruce get there.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's such an important point you're raising, Gary. When we think about inspiring a shared vision, a critical part of it is the soul work. We're fighting for the souls of men and women, in our families, that we work with, that are in our counties, states, countries. We're trying to fight to help people think beyond their own self-interest, think of the interest of their family, their company, their state, their nation, their planet. You want them to think of just more than just their own self-interest.
And ultimately, when people are living a life of significance, living a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others, that gives more joy and fulfillment than any amount of money and position can ever give you. I mean, a while back, we did a podcast on Citizen Kane. Was it Charles Foster Kane?
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. Charles Foster Kane, yep.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. And he spent his whole life getting money and power and newspapers, and he dies alone in abject poverty of the soul. None of his money will he be able to take with him. He'll be left with nothing after he dies in that sense, from an eternal perspective. And so, yes, he was very wealthy with this massive estate, but he was poverty-stricken in the soul. You don't want to be Charles Foster Kane.
So, that's really what Wallace is fighting for. And really, more broadly, fighting for the souls of people, it's a noble cause. You're trying to help free them from the tyranny of self-interest and narrow sectarianism and all that. You're trying to help, to appeal to the better angels to fight for a noble cause, a life of significance, a life that helps other people and maybe even the world in some sense. So, really, the core of getting people on a shared vision, at least one that's a noble vision of a higher purpose, is you're fighting for the souls of people. It's a great point.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. Well, we're at that point in the film and the story of Wallace's life where Robert the Bruce has gotten his soul activated, alive. So, talk a little bit about what happens next and the legacy of William Wallace, certainly as displayed in this film, but in real life as well.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, unbeknownst to Robert the Bruce, the Scottish nobles lay a trap for Wallace. Clearly, they're focused on self-interest. "We're going to carry favor with the English King Longshanks." And so they lure him into a trap, and Wallace is captured by the English troops. He's sent to London to face torture and execution. And so, the executioner basically says, "I can give you mercy," which means a quick death. That's what mercy means in this sense. But you will have to swear allegiance to the King of England.
And before he dies, Wallace is, I think, praying in a sense and saying, "God, just basically, give me strength to die well. I want to die well," because he wants to continue to inspire the Scottish people. He doesn't want to just whimper, which would be pretty understandable under torture. He doesn't want to take anything away from the cause of freedom. He knows he may die, but I don't think he's given up on the whole notion of freedom for the Scottish people.
And so, he refuses to show allegiance to the King of England. And he is executed. But what's amazing is, he's in London. This is just English people. They're not Scots. But at first, they abuse him and boo at him. But as they see his strength and his courage, and the last words he shouts with his almost last breath is freedom. And they shout to the executioner mercy, as in, "Please, let's get this over with." You can even see the executioner, who does this for a living, is moved, which is unbelievable, because executioners typically are not moved by these things. So, even then, you can see his vision. He's inspiring people even outside of Scotland.
After this, after Wallace is executed, we shift to the Battle of Bannockburn. And here we see Robert the Bruce, he's leading the Scots in victory against the British troops, and they actually do win freedom for the Scottish people. Now, it's not going to be lasting freedom in the sense of, yes, there will be a Britain and United Kingdom, but at least for a time, there is freedom for the Scottish people.
And here we have Robert the Bruce in front of his Scottish troops as Wallace was before. And he said that they have bled with Wallace, now bleed with him. So he is inspiring the Scots to have a shared vision of freedom the way that Wallace did before. He is really now in Wallace's shoes. It's truly remarkable. And even though he's a noble, he's not a commoner like pretty much everybody fighting there, he inspired the Scots. They believe now in Robert the Bruce. They believe that Robert the Bruce really does believe in the vision of freedom. He's now standing in the place, taking up the mantle of Wallace's legacy.
So, what's interesting is, fast-forward many hundreds of years, it's remarkable the final testimony to the power of this movie Braveheart and the story of William Wallace. So, in 1997, two years after the movie came out, there is a vote for a new Scottish Parliament. It's not complete independence, but it's certainly more autonomy for the Scottish people. So it's been said by some commentators that this new Scottish Parliament was powerfully influenced by the movie Braveheart and William Wallace's story.
In some sense, Wallace's battle for freedom for the Scottish people, it lived on hundreds of years later. And certainly, some measure of freedom was achieved by the legacy of William Wallace in 1997 when they voted to have a Scottish Parliament, which they have to this day. His legacy is just remarkable.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, Warwick, what are the big takeaways of William Wallace's story that we've discussed today that can help our listeners and viewers make their vision a reality, make their shared vision a shared reality? What are some of the takeaways that we've talked about today?
Warwick Fairfax:
So, inspiring a shared vision, it starts with completely living that vision. William Wallace may have begun his vision as one of vengeance to want a payback for the death of his wife and just the rape and just the murder of his wife. But his vision grew to be a vision of freedom for all of the Scottish people. His life is so inspiring in that he was just a regular man, just a common man. And ordinary people came up to him, and they wanted to fight for freedom by his side. He didn't look to lead a movement. The movement found him. It's just quite remarkable. He wasn't trying to be a leader, but people saw themselves in him. Somebody who had courage and would fight for freedom.
Not only is it important to wholly live that vision, but we have to inspire people by word and deed to not just look to their own self-interest but to a higher purpose. Wallace did that at the Battle of Stirling Bridge when some Scots were getting a little nervous, a little weak in the knees because they were just regular folks, farmers, herders, tradesmen, against the might of the English army. It's understandable they'll be anxious. And so he appealed to look beyond their own self-interest to a higher purpose, to fighting for freedom from themselves and their families.
But he also appealed to the better angels of the Scottish nobles, which was a tough sell, but especially Robert the Bruce. Wallace knew that Bruce was the leading candidate to be the future king of Scotland. And so, Wallace just saw something in Robert the Bruce, some small ember of character, of love of country, somebody that would fight for freedom. And so, Wallace was a smart guy. He knew that without Bruce, without Robert the Bruce, victory would be impossible. He might have all of the common people on his side, but without the nobles, especially Robert the Bruce, victory was impossible.
Sometimes there are critical people that we have to have on board for our vision to succeed, maybe people of power and wealth or position in our organization or our neighborhood or our country. People are naturally going to gravitate to their self-interest. Certainly, the power and wealthy will absolutely do that. We need to appeal to their better angels and their power of a higher purpose to get them on board with our vision.
We said before, William Wilberforce did in the battle to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire in the late 1700s and early 1800s. In a similar way, in a sense, in an earlier time, in the late 1200s, we've got William Wallace appealing to not just the regular people, the common men and women. He's appealing to the Scottish nobility, especially Robert the Bruce, the potential future king of Scotland.
It's just a remarkable story about the strength of modeling a vision and somebody that was doing whatever it takes to accomplish that vision using cunning, guile, intelligence, because this was a noble vision, a vision for freedom, to help people think beyond themselves for a higher purpose. It's a great role model.
And we might think that our battle to achieve our vision is not easy and our battle to get people on board with our shared vision is not easy. Think of William Wallace. He's up against the might of the English army, of the English King Longshanks. I mean, that's, like, a million-to-one odds. That's not an easy call. And he's trying to convince these Scottish nobles to back him when they're getting bribed by the English king with position and wealth and land. Why in the world would they listen to this common man? The chance of success feels like a million to one. So, if William Wallace can do it, I think there's hope for the rest of us.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's a great place to land the plane here, Warwick. And that does, indeed, friends, wrap up our first Series Within the Show episode on more stories from the book Crucible Leadership. We'll turn the page next month to another story to help you turn the page and move beyond your crucible to a life of significance.
