As we reflect on the Trials to Triumphs Assessment and the related podcast series, we might wonder what the key takeaways are and how do we indeed go from Trials to Triumphs. Just to recap, the assessment was based on surveys of more than 11,000 people. Additionally our thinking has been influenced by the more than 120 interviews on our podcast with men and women who have not only bounced back from their crucible moments but have bounced forward to lead lives of significance, lives on purpose dedicated to serving others.

One of the important insights we have observed is that for most of us, our journeys from trials to triumphs are not easy, in fact they can be a bit bumpy. We might move forward and make some progress only to hit a speed bump or another crucible. We recover from that and move forward to at times face other challenges. The key is are we moving forward, are we learning lessons from each speed bump and crucible? Do we have the mindset that the crucibles and challenges happened for us, not to us. Perhaps we even see gifts in the crucibles, as many of our guests on the podcast have. Do we have a resilient mindset, choosing to move forward and not dwelling in the past?

Another insight we learned from the podcast series in particular is not only is the journey from trials to triumphs not easy, but we can actually hit more than one waypoint on our journey. For instance, it is quite possible to go from Stuck at the Starting Line (someone who has not processed their crucible, and is stuck; they are living in the past with anger and hurt) to being Afraid to Trip (someone who while they may have accepted and processed their crucible at one level, and has a vision for the future, but they feel cautious about moving forward; something is still holding them back). So a person can move forward from one waypoint, in this case Stuck at the Starting Line, but then find themselves with challenges at another waypoint, Afraid to Trip.

As we discussed each of the six profiles on our podcast series, I shared my personal reflections for the profiles that I had experienced. Remarkably, I found myself having gone through each of the six profiles. I moved forward, I tried to learn the lessons of my crucible and the lessons of the challenges along the way. The path forward was not easy, and it was painful at times. But I kept moving forward, and tried my best to not wallow in bitterness and anger, forgiving myself and others as necessary.

It was eye opening for me, charting my path and my growth over the years, since in my case I spent time at each of the waypoints that the profiles of the assessment identify. To be clear, you don’t have to go through each profile as I have done to go from trials to triumphs. But you may go through more than one waypoint, more than one profile and the road may get bumpy at times. You may have times of rapid forward movement and times where you feel like you are hardly moving forward at all.

So long as you have your eyes looking ahead, and you are finding ways to not let the past hold you back – which might mean there are seasons of some processing and reflecting on the past in order to move forward – then you will find a way to move forward. You will find a way to triumph, which we believe is living a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.

To let you know my journey, I will share with you the waypoints, the profiles, I experienced in my journey to Hitting my Stride, to leading a life of significance.

– I started out On a Different Track. I grew up in my family’s 150-year-old family media business in Australia. My life was one of duty and obligation. I was living someone else’s vision, the vision of my great-great grandfather, John Fairfax. I was not on my own track with my own vision. I was living someone else’s life.

– Then I went to On a Mad Dash. I launched my $2.25B takeover in 1987 to change management and bring the vision for the company back to the ideals of the founder. In the months leading up to the announcement of the takeover and the years until the company had to file for bankruptcy in 1990 because of all the debt we had and the deep recession in Australia, I was certainly in a Mad Dash. There were numerous refinancings and lots of activities to try to keep the company afloat.

– From there I was Stuck at the Starting Line. After my takeover bid ultimately failed in 1990, I was certainly not moving forward. My whole life I had prepared myself to fulfill my duty to go into the family business. Now that life was over. What was I going to do now? I had quite a few years of feeling stuck, reflecting on the pain I had caused others, family members and employees of the company, and the pain I was feeling.

– Then I had a Running in Place time in my life. We moved to the U.S. and I got a job in the late 1990s for a few years in an aviation-services business in Maryland, where we now live. While I did fine, I felt that I was not using all of my skills and abilities. I was surviving and not thriving.

– I had an Afraid to Trip period, too. In 2008 I gave a talk in my church about what I had been through in the family business and the failed takeover. I spoke about the lessons I had learned from this. Somehow the people in the congregation seemed to be able to relate to my story. So the idea was birthed within me to write a book about my journey, Crucible Leadership, and about what I had learned about bouncing back from crucibles. But progress was slow. It took me years to write the book and years to get it published. It was painful to write about what I had been through. There was progress, but at times it felt glacial.

– Finally, I feel like I am now in a period of Hitting My Stride. As mentioned I have my book Crucible Leadership, I have a podcast Beyond The Crucible; along with speaking and writing. I am focused on leading a life of significance, a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others.

The key point is that I kept moving forward. I tried to learn the lessons of my crucible and not wallow in bitterness and anger. I tried to live a life on my terms in line with my gifting, abilities and passions, not those of my ancestors in the family business. I tried to live a life in line with my beliefs and values. I kept thinking and praying about what is the next right step. For instance, in 2003 I felt like I was not using all the gifts and abilities that from my perspective God had given me. So I went to an executive coach who did mid-career assessments, who said I had a good profile to be an executive coach myself. And so I pursued coaching.

The important point is that when I felt led to take a step I did. I kept moving forward. When I started writing my book, it was slow because it was so painful to reflect on my past experiences and hard won lessons. But I kept moving forward, writing one chapter at a time. Challenges would come up. I felt the best shot I had of getting my book published was to pursue Australian book publishers. While they were intrigued, for a variety of reasons they said no. But I kept moving forward. One publisher suggested that I needed to have a brand, so that there would be a community that would be interested in my book. So I focused on building my brand, which ultimately led to our podcast, writing and speaking.

Moving from Trials to Triumphs is usually not easy, and almost inevitably there will be challenges and perhaps more crucibles along the way. You have to have resilience. You have to process and understand the lessons of your crucibles. You have to forgive yourself and others. You have to learn and grow and live your life, not someone else’s. You have to pursue a vision that you are indeed off-the-charts passionate about — a vision that is about others, a vision of purpose that leads to a life of significance.

That is the way forward. The journey is not always easy, but it is a journey of hope and service to others.

Reflection

  1. After taking the Assessment, reflect on what waypoint, what profile you are in.
  2. What lessons do you need to learn based on where you are? Perhaps you need to further process your crucible, forgiving yourself and others.
  3. How can you take steps to move forward so that you can Hit Your Stride and live a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others?

Are you ready to move from trials to triumphs? Then join us on the journey today.  Take our free Beyond the Crucible Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment.

We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.

Listen to our Beyond the Crucible Podcast here.

Over the last five years, Beyond the Crucible has conducted a two-phase quantitative study to develop a valid, projectable understanding of how people experience life’s crucible moments. We wanted to understand how some people turn trials into triumphs — and why others get stuck in the aftermath, sometimes spinning their wheels for months, years or even decades without being able to truly move on.

On our podcast, Beyond the Crucible, we have recorded more than 120 interviews (and counting) with people who have not only bounced back from their own crucible moments, but successfully bounced forward to build new lives of significance. In listening to these stories, we noticed something: No matter how different the crucible stories and their bounce-back journeys were, they all shared certain beats along the path to recovery and significance. Every person’s story was so very different — yet they had remarkably similar touchstones.

What if we could actually identify a predictable path for bouncing forward from a crucible moment to a life of significance? We theorized that if we could do so, we could help people accelerate their journey forward. And we might even be able to help people who were stuck on the path from trial to triumph get unstuck and start moving again.

The Big Aha Moments: Mapping the Journey from Trials to Triumphs

After surveying more than 11,000 people from all walks of life across the United States, six important learnings emerged.

1. Most of us admit to having experienced at least one devastating loss or setback in life that changed us for good. Nearly three of every four people (72 percent) report that they have experienced at least one crucible moment so traumatic or painful that it fundamentally altered the course of their lives.

2. What about the 28 percent of people who say they haven’t had a crucible moment? In short, they’re in denial. No one gets to sail through life without having their trajectory altered by some loss, failure, or setback. About 1 in every 4 people have experienced what we call “veiled crucibles” — crucible moments that remain unacknowledged by their bearers, but still have a measurable and discernible effect on their lives.

3. There is a predictable map for moving from crucible to triumphs in life. This bounce-forward map is comprised of five progressive stages:

4. Your starting point on your personal path from crucible moment to a life of significance is not a product of your age, gender, personality, ZIP code, marital status, religious affiliation, or any other label or reason. It is 100 percent a product of how you see yourself, your crucible, and your place in the world at a particular moment in time. It is a “you are here” indicator on your own personal path from trial to triumph.

5. One of the things that surprised us most in the research: As part of our hypothesis, we posited that people who understood how they were wired would be better at bouncing forward from their crucible or following their own path. (At Beyond the Crucible, we refer to this as understanding how you were “designed.”) In fact? No. Knowing how you are inherently designed — what you’re good at and what you’re bad at, what you like doing and what you don’t — does not give you a statistical leg up or a shortcut on your Trials-to-Triumphs journey. While understanding your design may accelerate certain stages of your personal journey across the map (such as how fast you can turn your vision into reality, for instance), it does not fundamentally change your path. Moving from trial to triumph is all about moving through your crucible, learning to let go of the pain associated with it, casting a significant new vision for your life, and charting a course to transform that vision from an idea into your reality.

6. While there is one map, everyone’s journey from crucible to triumph is not the same. There are six different types of journeys, or paths across the map, that people can take to bounce forward. Take our free Beyond the Crucible Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to find your own unique “you are here” mark on the map” as you being your journey. Then listen to our podcast series unpacking each of the profiles to learn more about how you can triumph a reality in your life.

Reflection

  1.  Have you found yourself stuck in trying to move beyond your crucible? If so what can you do to start moving forward?
  2. Which of the five stages of moving beyond your crucible has presented you the most challenges? Why do you think that is?
  3. When you think about “triumphs” in the aftermath of your crucible, what does that destination look like for you? Write down as many thoughts as come to mind, so you can refer to them after you take the assessment as you chart your course to a life of significance.

Are you ready to move from trials to triumphs? Then join us on the journey today.  Take our free Beyond the Crucible Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment.

We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.

Listen to our Beyond the Crucible Podcast here.

Many leaders want to grow, to advance in their careers, and some want to grow as human beings as well. One of the tools we can use to grow in every sense of that word is by having mentors. Mentors can be one way we accelerate our learning and potentially accelerate the process of becoming who we want to be. It is not a cure all for solving all our career or life challenges. But it can certainly be helpful.

I have had some experience with mentors. Some were quite helpful and others were not as helpful.

We may be wondering what we should be looking for in a mentor. Here are some tips to finding the right mentor.

1. We have to be ready. We have to be at a point in our life and our careers where we want to learn. We want to grow. And we are open to help from others to get us there. This is critical. If we feel we know everything, asking for advice from a mentor will be pointless. We will be wasting their time and ours.

2. Do a readiness check. To ensure we are ready for a mentor, we need to do an internal check, a soul check if you will. We need to start from a place of humility. There is much we don’t know and much we need to know. We want to minimize our mistakes and accelerate our growth in our careers and lives. We must make the commitment to listen, even if the advice we hear is not always pleasant. Growth can be painful. It typically is. So count the cost ahead of time.

3.The right mentor matters. We need to define what we are looking for in a mentor and why we feel we need one. Perhaps we want to get further in our careers; it could be many different kinds of jobs. Perhaps we are a new mother or father and want to get advice from those parents who we admire and want to learn from.

4. A good mentor knows more than we do. If we feel a prospective mentor does not know much more in their field than we do, it may not be a great fit. A good mentor will be someone we admire. Not only do they know more than we do in our field, but they are doing it the right way. How they do their job is as important as the job they are actually doing. We might want to do our job and grow in our career the right way. Treating people well, not cutting legal or ethical corners. We want to grow in our vision and impact in our profession and we want to be around people with similar values to us and who have vision and want to impact the world in a positive way.

5. A great mentor is a great listener and asks great questions. They will not tell us what we should do. They will not give us a roadmap. They will not tell us how they grew in their career and then tell us we should use exactly the same approach. A great mentor will ask us great questions. They will want to know what our goals are, what our values are and what vision we have for our career and our life. They will ask us about legacy and what we want to leave behind. They will ask us if our lives and careers are all about us or about serving others and some higher purpose.

6. A great mentor will make us do the work. They will not do it all for us and write a big report with all the career steps laid out. They are there to guide and advise and ask us great questions. But ultimately, the responsibility for growing in our careers and lives is up to us. It is our responsibility not theirs

7. A good mentor will share our values. They will also have a balance with being encouraging and affirming while also seeking to push us forward in a gentle way to achieve the goals we say we care so deeply about. Values matter. If we say we want to be humble servant leaders who strive to be about the team and not so much about our own agenda, and that we want to make a positive difference in the world; we need to find mentors who share those values and objectives. This is critical. Mentors who have values and goals different than us could well lead us down a path to becoming exactly what we don’t want to become.

Growth in our lives and careers is not easy. We definitely need all the help we can get. Having a mentor can be helpful. But is not a cure all. Ultimately, we need to take ownership of our lives, our decisions and our mistakes. To make our vision for our lives become reality, we have to take positive steps forward, one day at a time, one month at a time, one year at a time. It will take humility, perseverance and forgiving ourselves and others. It is a long journey. If we believe our mission is important enough, we will keep going. This is our journey and our lives. Mentors are there to assist us, to help us get there faster but also become the person we want to be. A great mentor can be invaluable, an important tool in our careers and our lives. But it is only a tool. We are responsible for our lives and the growth in our lives. No one else is responsible for this.

Reflection

You are more than your failures and setbacks.

We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.

Listen to our Beyond the Crucible Podcast here.

Many of us live our lives to please others, to make them happy. We are often told that if we think of ourselves, our needs, our dreams, we are being selfish. We need to be practical. We need to be selfless and think of our obligation to our family, to our friends, to those at work who depend on us. After all, don’t we care about our coworkers and their families? We should want to serve those who work with us and for us. Isn’t that what servant leadership is all about?

I know this message and this story only too well. As the great-great grandson of John Fairfax, the founder of a large media company in Australia, my obligation was clear. I was the fifth generation in my family and was expected by my parents to go into the family business in a leading role. So I did my undergraduate degree at Oxford University like my dad and some other family members before me, worked on Wall Street and got my MBA at Harvard Business School. Ultimately, that sense of duty and obligation led to my being the one who launched a $2.25B billion takeover of the family business in 1987 — a bid that ultimately failed due to a combination of Australia’s recession, the company’s debt load, and, yes, my youthful inexperience and naivete.

I never once felt I had a choice to pursue my dreams. My duty to keep the family legacy of producing quality newspapers and media in Australia was clear. Didn’t I care about my family, about my country?

It is easy to paint a picture where we feel our duty, our obligation, is clear. It might be a family business. It might be the pressure from family and our community to get a high-paying, prestigious job such as being a doctor or a lawyer. But what if we want to be a sculptor, a musician or an elementary school teacher, when those around us are telling us that we could do more? We need to be practical and not so self-centered, we are told.

Here are some thoughts for counteracting this idea that living our lives to fulfill our dreams is self-centered (and not practical, for that matter).

 1. First, it is our life!
We have the God-given right to pursue our dreams, our calling. We were meant to live in light of how we were designed and lean into what we are most passionate about. It is right and appropriate. We should live in light of who we were meant to be. How is that wrong? How is that selfish?

 2. Examine why we feel obligated to please others, be it our family, friends or our coworkers.
Perhaps other people are telling us that it is our job, or our duty. Why is that? Sometimes those in our family have unfulfilled dreams that they hope we can fulfill for them. Sometimes our family or others feel that their legacy depends on us stepping into their shoes and carrying their dreams forward. But that is not our job. Our family, friends and coworkers have the right to pursue their hopes and dreams. And so do we!

 3. Us playing small by carrying on the legacy of others does no one any good.
Over time we may well begin to feel bitter, to feel used. How can you do a good job under a sense of obligation and duty? You really can’t. It is not sustainable.

 4. So shift to thinking about what you are really good at, what you are passionate about.
As you lay awake at night, what problem that the world needs help with do you feel called to fulfill? A true vision that lasts, a calling, needs to have as part of it a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. That makes it clear to you and to others that this may be your dream, your vision, but it is anchored in serving others. That kind of a dream and vision is absolutely not selfish or self-centered

 5. Think about small steps, small probes.
You might think you don’t know what you are really off-the-charts passionate about, in areas you are great at, which the world really needs. But try something; I would almost say anything. What’s the next right baby step that you feel will take you in a direction you want to explore? It might not be the ultimate destination, but if you link enough baby steps together and progress in finding your calling, the vision you are off-the-charts excited about will happen. Trust yourself and trust the process.

 6. Gather your team.
Making a shift from a life of people pleasing, a life of obligation, is not easy. There will be plenty of people who will tell you to be practical, to stop being selfish and to keep on the track of obligation of living someone else’s dream and vision. You need a team to counteract this, a team that is for you, that will help to encourage you to pursue your dream and your vision. Perhaps that team will include people who will help you bring your vision to reality.

 7. Do something!
You have to make a decision today that your days of obligation and people pleasing are over. You will live today and from now on a life that is in line with your calling, I would almost say your divine calling. Making a step, however small, is a huge step, especially the first step. And for those who say you have to be practical, remember it is your life. If you would rather teach elementary school kids than train corporate executives, for instance, that is your choice. Clearly the salary and income will be quite different. But it is your life. You get to choose your path, even if that path has a lower income level.

We all want to live a joyful and fulfilled life, to leave a legacy that others can be proud of, to feel we lived a life that mattered. Living a life of obligation and people pleasing is not the way to do this. We will feel we missed out. We made everyone happy, except us. We took the easy way out. That may well lead to a life of regret, even bitterness. We don’t want to be that person or take that road. A life that truly does serve others, that in some way makes an impact for good, is anchored in our calling, our dreams, our vision. Such a vision will animate us, propel us forward and will give us a sense of deep satisfaction. A life we lived, that we chose, that makes the impact we feel called to make. That is the kind of life that we can be proud of.

Reflection

You are more than your failures and setbacks.

We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.

Listen to our Beyond the Crucible Podcast here.

Thanksgiving is a uniquely North American tradition, celebrated in November in the U.S. and October in Canada. In the U.S, Thanksgiving commemorates a feast between the Pilgrims and Native Americans in the Fall of 1621. It had been a harsh winter, with the Pilgrims celebrating a successful harvest and giving thanks to God. Nowadays it is a time for family and friends to gather to give thanks amid turkey, pumpkin pie and other holiday food.

Thanksgiving can be a wonderful time with family and friends. But Thanksgiving can also be a somber time where we mourn those no longer with us, and perhaps mourn relationships that are not what they once were. Thanksgiving can also be a lonely time where we don’t have family and friends that we feel comfortable being with.

How do we navigate Thanksgiving with these mixed emotions, some good and some not so good?

1. Start by giving thanks.

This might seem obvious, but the key point of Thanksgiving, whether it is giving thanks to God or thanks more generally, is to be thankful.  Even when life is not easy, there are usually some things we can be thankful for.  Perhaps, despite the unavoidable strains that befall any relationship, we are actually thankful for our spouse, partner and kids and our parents.  Perhaps we are blessed to have a job, one which we hopefully like.  Or it could be as simple as being thankful for this day, a walk in the woods or the park; being thankful for an encouraging friend.  If we think about it enough, we can usually think of something or someone we are thankful for.

2. Allow yourself to reflect.

Reflect on how things have been over the last year or so, both the good and the bad. We are as humans, emotional beings, so just pretending that everything is great and not allowing yourself to reflect is not good. So think about what has gone well, what has not gone as well and even areas you feel conflicted about. You can’t deal with and process what you don’t allow yourself to feel and consider.

3. Learn the lessons.

Think about what has happened over this last year in particular. Or you could go further back and consider what you can learn from things that have gone well and things that have not gone well. Pondering why some things have gone well can be very valuable. Perhaps you are grateful for supportive parents who encouraged you in your dreams, or the opportunity to have a good education or a good job. You might remember that you got to where you are by working hard or taking a risk. Qualities that served you well in the past and will serve you well in the future.

There are also lessons in the areas that have not gone well. Perhaps in high school you made some poor choices, hung out with the wrong friends, and did not work as hard as you could have. You can’t change the past, but the past can provide lessons about areas you want to change in the present and the future. Every day we can make a choice how we want to live today: which decisions will take us forward and which ones will take us backward. Some areas in our life are painful, through no fault of ours. Perhaps you have been mistreated growing up or in your job. We can consider how we want to move forward, forgiving what has happened in order to move forward, which does not mean condoning what happened. We may decide to chart a different course and not let what happened to us control us or define us.

4. Share with others.

Consider how what you have been through, both the good and the bad, can help others. Perhaps you had a supportive family that was always at your games in school and supported your dreams. Share that story with others and think of how you can be supportive to your friends and family and co-workers as well. We may have been blessed, so we should think of how we can use those blessings to bless others.

In areas, where life has not gone as well, use it as a springboard to think of others. You can help others avoid your mistakes and perhaps help them avoid the pain that was inflicted on you. And for those who have suffered, you can encourage them and help them realize that they are not alone. You know how they feel and you will be with them.

5. Craft a mission from thankfulness.

As you reflect on the areas you are grateful for and the areas that are more painful, think of how both the good and the bad can be the foundation of a mission. This could lead to a nonprofit or a different way of thinking about your work or family. It could lead to an intentional personal mission to live differently and give back as part of who you are as you are looking to bless others: the foundation of what we call a life of significance.

6. Be present.

As you are reflecting on what has gone well and what has not gone well, what you are grateful for and how you can use what you have been through, be present. As you are around friends and family at Thanksgiving, listen to their stories, ask them questions about their lives. Laugh with them, grieve with them, have fun with them. And importantly, if you have any ill feelings toward them, forgive them. They may push your buttons, irritate you, remind you of things you wished you had not done or said years ago. But it is Thanksgiving. Have a spirit of grace.

7. Celebrate Thanksgiving!

With all the good and the bad, the poor decisions you have made, the bad things that have happened to you, the sometimes challenging relationships you may have with family and friends; celebrate! Life is complex, a mix of good times and hard times. Amidst the different and conflicting steams of life, celebrate what you have and who you are. Having a positive attitude, a glass half-full mentality, is better than the alternative.

Thanksgiving is not always an easy time. It is a time for being thankful, for reflecting, for sharing, for giving to others, for trying to move on and let go of past bitterness, and a time for celebration. Don’t let Thanksgiving overwhelm you.  Channel your thoughts, emotions and reflections in a positive manner so that Thanksgiving can indeed be a time of celebration.

Reflection:

You are more than your failures and setbacks.

We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.

Listen to our Beyond the Crucible Podcast here.

Sometimes after a crucible — a devastating setback or failure that fundamentally alters the course of our lives — we struggle to find a way forward. We find it challenging to find a vision worthwhile to devote our lives to. Even if we do find such a vision, there is often a tendency to think that our vision is pretty small. How much difference can our vision make in the world? There are so many problems that exist, and what we are planning on doing we might think may not make a lot of difference to those problems. Besides, we know people or we have heard of people making huge differences in the world. We are so not them. So why bother? What difference is it all going to make?

I know the feeling well of thinking that my vision was not big enough and the thought that it would not make that much difference in the world.

I grew up in a large 150-year-old family media business in Australia. John Fairfax Ltd., my family’s company, owned newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and radio stations. It owned some of the major newspapers of our country; The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age in Melbourne and the Australian Financial Review. After my failed $2.25B takeover finally ended in 1990, the company went into bankruptcy and passed from family hands. My vision was to restore the company to the image of the founder, my great-great grandfather John Fairfax, and to see the company was being well managed. What I thought was a noble vision at the time, ended in 1990. How could I ever have a vision that I could live out that would remotely be on the same level as that? After all, I felt the vision I had for the family media company was something that could affect the nation of Australia. It did not feel like a small vision.

So how do we move forward in finding our vision and living it out, when we feel it is so small and perhaps, we are thinking to ourselves, “Why bother?”. Here are some thoughts on how to combat the feeling that our vision is not big enough:

1. It is not a competition.

It is not about how big someone else’s vision is. It might be a vision from someone you have read about, or what is almost worse, a vision of a friend of yours that makes you and your vision seem so small. We need to be satisfied with the vision that we have. Not that it matters, but most people with worthwhile visions who seek to uplift people and have some higher purpose — and that we might view as incredibly successful — would not look at our vision and think how small it is. They would celebrate what we are doing.

2. The key is what is on our heart.

The size of the vision should not be the focus. Our focus should be what we felt led to accomplish, the vision that is on our hearts. From my faith perspective, I look at the vision that I feel led to move forward with, the vision that I believe God has put on my heart. If you feel that your vision is your calling, that it comes from deep within you or from some higher purpose, that is not wrong. I would almost say it can’t be wrong.

3. One life changed is enough.

I would go so far as saying, even if only one person, one life was touched by our vision, that is enough. If all of us, would strive to have life affirming visions that seek to make a difference in the lives of others — one vision, one life at a time — the world would be powerfully impacted. One life changed is enough.  That is not to limit our visions, but to free us from this sense of obligation, and the sense of “why bother?” that is it is all too easy to have.

4. Link your vision to what you feel is important.

Part of avoiding the sense that we are playing small and that our vision is not big enough, is to link our vision to something we feel is important. For many of our guests on our podcast, Beyond The Crucible, they have found their visions coming out of the ashes of their crucible. They want to help others avoid what they have been through, or to help them come back from the devastating setbacks they have experienced. Their crucible has meaning. Some even see their crucible as a blessing, as it has given their life purpose. That kind of purpose driven vision, in this case, linked to your crucible, is not small.

5. Connect your vision to who you fundamentally are.

Connecting your vision to how you are fundamentally wired, to your gifts and talents, will help you feel you were made to carry out this vision. This vision is why you were put on this earth.

6. Free yourself from the sense of obligation.

Obligation is not a motivator, it is a demotivator. Don’t think in terms of what we feel we should do or what we ought to do. Think in terms of what we feel called to do, what we want to do in the depths of our soul.

7. Motivation is everything.

At Beyond The Crucible, we talk about how joy and fulfillment come from living a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. We need to make sure our vision is grounded in a purpose that will help others, a higher purpose; something that will make the world a better place. An altruistic, life affirming vision is never a small vision.  If our vision is focused on others, not on ourselves, that is always a big vision.

Back to my story. After my failed $2.25B takeover bid, I did struggle with the sense that any vision I could pursue, would inevitably pale into insignificance compared to the vision I had in Australia for the family media business. But gradually over time, my attitude changed.  I also let my vision evolve, and gradually freed myself from a sense of obligation.  I became a certified International Coach Federation (ICF) executive coach. I wrote a book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, in part about my story, lessons learned and my journey back. I launched Beyond The Crucible, with its podcast Beyond The Crucible, blogs, social media posts and speaking events.

On some level, I may not be as prominent as I once was, and some might say my impact is less. But from my faith perspective, if I am living a vision in line with a higher purpose, a God given purpose from my perspective, that is not and cannot be a small vision.

I try to stay disciplined to the notion that if I am pursuing a vision I feel called to that seeks to serve others and fulfills in some way a higher purpose, it can’t be a small vision. I have friends, family and colleagues who support me in this, if ever I am tempted to go down the road of what the impact might have been with the family business or that my vision is not big enough.

Ultimately, if we are living a vision that we feel called to, that helps others and in some way fulfills a higher purpose, that we are passionate about and uses everything that we are, that is not a small vision. It is a big vision and it is enough. 

Reflection:

You are more than your failures and setbacks.

We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.

Listen to our Beyond the Crucible Podcast here.

We spoke in January about making a life resolution rather than a New Year’s resolution. That we should make a resolution to live in light of our true purpose. In that blog, we gave some steps to help you find your true purpose and calling.

Now, we are six months through the year which is a great time to think about recalibrating our mission and vision. How do we know if we are drifting off course, if we are suffering mission drift? Perhaps our mission and vision are evolving, becoming more refined. Which is it? It can get confusing. 

For me, my mission and vision have evolved over the years. 

Growing up, I thought my mission was to be the leading figure in my family’s 150-year-old media business in Australia. After my undergraduate degree at Oxford, a stint on Wall Street, and then with my MBA from Harvard Business School, I launched my $2.25B takeover of my family’s media company. 

When that failed, rather spectacularly, I needed a new mission and vison. This time my own mission and vision, not my family’s. It took a while, a long while. I eventually got a job in an aviation services business doing financial and marketing analysis. My first real shift to truly finding my own mission and vision was in 2003 when I became an executive coach, eventually becoming trained and certified by the International Coach Federation. I joined the boards of two nonprofit organizations, including my local church. Then in 2008, after a talk in church, I started writing my book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. This led to me founding Beyond the Crucible, which has a podcast of the same name, blogs, social media posts and speaking. 

The point of this story is that my mission and vision have evolved. That started more recently with executive coaching, then writing my book, then evolved to my podcast, blogs, social media and speaking. It will undoubtedly continue to evolve. 

But at its core, the mission of Beyond The Crucible is to help people not be defined by their worst day; to help people bounce back from the pit of despair after a terrible crucible experience to lead lives of significance, lives on purpose dedicated to serving others. That is my purpose at Beyond the Crucible. If I start drifting from that to work on other areas such as corporate succession or nonprofit governance issues, that is not my true purpose. 

I also need to avoid drifting from my core skill set and passion; that is to be a reflective adviser. I love working in the thought leader space, learning from others, and trying to share some thoughts so that people will not feel they are defined by their worst day. 

So how can you avoid mission drift and realign with your true purpose? Here are seven key principles: 

1. Know Your Purpose.

You have to know your purpose, the true reason you are doing what you are doing. Mine, as mentioned, is to help people bounce back from their worst day to lead lives of significance. What is your purpose and mission? Write it down, ideally in one sentence. 

2. Evaluate Whether You Have Drifted.

Look at where you are and what you are doing. Are your mission and vision truly in line with your true purpose, or have they drifted? 

3. If You Have Drifted, Move Back To Your Purpose.

Life is about choices. Over time we can make small or big choices that we might feel are good opportunities, but they can incrementally take us off course. Resolve today to go back to what you felt called to do. The good can be the enemy of the great, the enemy of your true purpose, the reason you were put on this earth. 

4. If Your Vision Has Grown or Shifted, But Your Core Purpose Is The Same, Good News.

It means your mission and vision have evolved, but you have not drifted from your true purpose. If you can still say who you are and what you do is in line with your true purpose, mentioned in point number 1, then that is mission and vision evolution not mission and vision drift. 

5. If You Have Drifted, It May Be Time For Tough Choices.

Life is indeed about choices. If you feel that some of what you are doing is out of line with your true purpose, stop doing it. Yes, just stop! Say no! Stop doing activities that are not fully in line with who you are and what you feel you were meant to do in life. 

6. Fellow Travelers Can Really Help.

Having friends and family outside of what you do, or even colleagues who are part of what you do can be really helpful. Ask them whether you are drifting from your true purpose. If you really want to know, those who know you the best and really care about you will tell you. It might take a bit of prompting, but such feedback can be invaluable, even life saving or perhaps more accurately purpose saving. 

7. Give Yourself Some Grace.

Mission drift tends to happen naturally. No one drifts on purpose. Most of us have so much going on that one activity or initiative leads to another, and before we know it, we have drifted from our true purpose. Evolution of our mission and vision, so long as it is line with our true purpose, is fine. It is a natural part of life. Don’t fear the evolution of your mission and vision, embrace it. Growth is a good thing. 

Life is short. We should spend our time on this earth living in light of what we were made to do, living in light of our true purpose. The world is blessed when we are living in light of our true purpose and sharing that with the world. 

Resolve today that you will be exactly who you were meant to be, and sharing your true purpose with the world. 

Reflection:

Ready to create a life you love?

We’ve heard some remarkable stories on this podcast, but Alice Tsang’s is one of the most remarkable… and triumphant. That’s because from the crucible of abject poverty that saw her sharing a tiny apartment with more than a dozen others, needing the quarter a day her uncle could spare that allowed her to eat lunch at high school, she gained an unlikely education that she’s put two use in a pair of successful careers – first as a successful fixed-income analyst on Wall Street and now as a college finance professor.

Warwick talks with Tsang this week about what her hardscrabble upbringing in Hong Kong taught her about what’s truly important in life… lessons she now aims to teach her students so they understand how to cope with and overcome the challenges they will inevitably face.

“We do not have the ability to be perfect,” she says. “But we can control how much effort we put into a better future for ourselves.”

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.


Alice Tsang:

My uncle was generous enough to promise me that he would give me the equivalent of a US quarter every day so that I can use it to pay for public transportation and lunch money during my high school years.


Alice Tsang:

I remember growing up in the tiny little apartment with 15 people squeezed in and at the time I had to go to bed very early after dinner, 8:30 or so because it was too noisy. So I would just get up at midnight when everybody's asleep and I would do my homework and probably spend a couple hours finishing my homework. By the time I was done, it would be 3:30ish and then I would catch a few hours of sleep and then get up at 6 something and then took the public transportation. It was a long distance to travel to go to high school.


Gary Schneeberger:

We've heard some remarkable stories on this podcast, but Alice Tsang's might be the most remarkable and triumphant because from the crucible of that abject poverty she just described, she gained an unlikely education that she's put to use in a pair of successful careers. First as a successful fixed-income analyst on Wall Street and now as a college finance professor.




Gary Schneeberger:

Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger. Co-host of the show. Warwick talks with saying this week about what her hard scrabble upbringing in Hong Kong taught her about what's truly important in life. Lessons she now aims to teach her students so they understand how to cope with, and overcome the challenges they will inevitably face. "We do not have the ability to be perfect," she says, "but we can control how much effort we put into a better future for ourselves."




Warwick Fairfax:

Well Alice, thank you so much for being here. It really is an honor to have you. We first met a few months ago at a Taylor event, so Taylor University in Indiana. As listeners probably know by now, I had three kids, all of whom went there. So I was inspired when I heard Alice's story at that Taylor event. I thought, we've got to have her on the podcast because she has a message, and a message and a life that really can teach us a lot.




Warwick Fairfax:

So Alice, again, thank you for coming and being here. I want to start with your backstory, it's different than a lot of folks we've had. I mean, you grew up in Hong Kong as, I don't know if the word is abject poverty. It was pretty poor. But talk about that upbringing. 'Cause I understand your parents were somewhat affluent but then they had some challenges. Just talk about what life was growing up in Hong Kong and your parents, and just your growing up.




Alice Tsang:

Okay, Warwick and Gary, thank you for having me. It is a privilege to be able to talk to you both.




Alice Tsang:

Yeah, I grew up in a family that had experienced a lot of changes, probably turn of fortune, you could say, my grandparents were actually quite affluent, but by the time my dad and my uncle, they were twin brothers, inherited their assets, most of that was squandered away. And my mom ended up having to raise three young children after the death of my father when I was five. So in those days, not having the support of a man and just a woman with very little education, she had to resort to doing menial jobs and it was constantly being interrupted by loss of employment because it's not steady work that she was able to find. So it ended up challenging for my mom to put food on the table and I grew up helping her and in her way somehow and she was able to find resources to at least not have a starve.




Alice Tsang:

And I learned how to manage things by working very hard and having a purpose. So the purpose that drove me for a long time was to be able to get a good education so that I could get a decent job to support her and I grew up. So that was the driving force for a lot of the things that I was doing. It motivated me to work very hard in my studies in spite of the fact that I was not supposed to even go to college or probably not even finish a high school, let alone going to college. If not for the fact that my uncle was generous enough to promise me that he would give me the equivalent of a US quarter every day so that I can use it to pay for public transportation and lunch money during my high school years.




Alice Tsang:

I remember growing up in the tiny little apartment with 15 people squeezed in and at the time I had to go to bed very early after dinner, 8:30 or so because it was too noisy. So I would just get up at midnight when everybody's asleep and I would do my homework probably spend a couple hours finishing my homework. By the time I was done it would be 3:30ish and then I would catch a few hours of sleep and then get up at 6 something and then took the public transportation. It was a long distance to travel to go to high school.




Alice Tsang:

I did that for seven years just because I had to go to prep school in order to go to university. So that was how I grew up and there was no childhood, but I did learn a lot of things because I had to help my aunt and my grandmother to cook for the family. We have extended family living in the same apartment. And so as a result I learned some cooking skills, learned how to take care of others. And so to me, serving others is just, it is nothing, right? So I'm used to it and I get joy out of it. If I was able to cook a good meal, everybody kind of liked it, it actually gave me joy. And so that was how I grew up and I never had imagined where I am today. But I did have opportunities one way or the other, whether it was not because I chose it or it was required of me, somehow it turned out to be beneficial in the future.




Warwick Fairfax:

So as you look at your childhood, I mean you grew up extremely poor. It's growing up in poverty is one thing, it's tough when you have family or grandparents that were wealthy and then became poor. It's like sometimes you don't know any different, but when you do know different, it makes it worse. Your dad dying when you were five and I think you mentioned to us, wasn't the greatest role model in the world, and it's not like you had this great role model of ethics, and faith, and hard work maybe, but you didn't grow up with this role model of this is how I should be. Maybe you grew up in some sense with this is how you shouldn't be. So talk about some of that because that just feels just a bit different.




Alice Tsang:

Yeah, absolutely. No, I think the interesting thing is that, well, I mean in Chinese culture, especially during my years, women were definitely second class citizens and the dependency of women to men for a living, I mean that kind of put them in their places. And so that was that, and me being a girl was not expected to be able to contribute much.




Alice Tsang:

So looking back, the fact that I was able to get so much education, I mean that was not expected and that was not too easy. Particularly now when I see my friends, and colleagues and so on and students, sometimes I almost felt envious that they had an intact family with good parents. And I also realized growing up without a father figure that is a good role model is it hurts a lot. Culturally I already felt that I was kind of somewhat inferior. Without a father figure to kind of guide me, give me advice, protect me. It's particularly challenging. I thank God that I didn't deviate and end up doing things that could have destroyed my future.




Alice Tsang:

So this somehow is a motivator for me to end up teaching now in college, because not only will I be able to encourage my female students, "No, you could be professionals and don't be afraid of this or that. We can talk about it later." And for the male students, I also encourage them to definitely see their responsibility of being a good sort responsible citizen as well as a father, a great husband in preparation. And if they can do that, the world will be much better.




Warwick Fairfax:

You're looking for a world in which kids grow up in families that are different than yours, with a loving father who can guide, support wonderful mother, a good marriage, a sense of partnership. Totally makes sense. I mean, your story is remarkable because as you said culturally, for girls growing up in maybe Asian culture, certainly where you were in Hong Kong, the expectations were low. That's probably, maybe they were lower than low, but it wasn't high.




Alice Tsang:

It wasn't high, I mean unless you grow up in a more traditional family, your parents are caring just because having parents doesn't mean that the kids are being well taken care of, right? So there are different things that we see both in Western and Eastern culture, Chinese culture. But I did grow up in a somewhat broken family, you know you could say that because that's only a single parent. And my mom was like, she needed to work all the time. And one thing that I was also worried was, while she's constantly concerned about potential unemployment, she also had epilepsy-




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh my gosh.




Alice Tsang:

...When I was growing up, I, because we were squeezed in a tiny little apartment, my youngest brother, myself and my mom, we occupied the same bed and I was like eight, nine years old and sometimes she would have seizures and I would be terrified because we didn't know what to do with her and it was pretty serious. And so we had to get others to revive her. And I constantly worry about when she would be experiencing seizures, at night particularly. So that kind of adds another dimension to the traumatic experience I would say at some point.




Warwick Fairfax:

Amidst all that, what's remarkable, just to unpack the next part of your story, is the level of education. I mean, you now will get to where you worked on Wall Street and now teach at a university level. For some, that's not remarkable, but for you, it's unbelievably remarkable. I mean, you mentioned to us that you know you squeezed by graduating from primary school, and it wasn't like it was so easy. And then you mentioned you went to public school. This was in Hong Kong back when it was I think still a British protector. So they had O levels and A levels and was in British education. And yes, you mentioned your uncle giving you lunch money, but it's funny, high school wasn't easy. I think you mentioned you flunked high school math and I believe graduated. I think you majored in, I don't know, what was it, pottery and something else. If you looked at Alice Tsang in high school and says, "She's going to be a finance wiz, and a finance professor." The teachers would be like, "Really? I don't know."




Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about high school and it wasn't like you were on this fast track from first grade. Even graduating high school was probably unexpected from where you grew up. So just talk about flunking high school math, and I think you majored in pottery and shorthand and I think your goal was to be a personal secretary. So that for some people that might not seem a high goal. For where you grew up, that might have been a fairly high goal. So people need to understand the context of how you grew up. So talk about just those high school years.




Alice Tsang:

Yeah, sure. So the kind of some hurdles to overcome. So financially I now got some support from my uncle. So I was able to attend high school. Teaching was switched to, I mean that was pretty common then from Chinese to English. And of course in my immediate family, I was the first to go to secondary school. My cousin, I think she was a year younger than me, we live in the same apartment. I would have done the same thing as she had. I was destined to be a factory worker after graduating from primary school, but somehow I was able to pass the secondary school entrance exam, that's a public test, public exam, screening students so that those who did fairly well could go to a public school. The British system in the old days, public schools actually were government funded. They tend to be better quality schools.




Alice Tsang:

So somehow I was able to get into one of them. My school was a vocational school, so people looking at me going to... They would be dismissive of that because that's not a traditional school. People graduating from those, we just learned some work skills and then they wouldn't be expected to go to college. But for me it's fine. That's exactly what I wanted to do because I wanted to find a job after graduation to support my mother. Lo and behold, it was not as easy. The first two years, first two grades were not easy for me because while I did well in other subjects, I was not too good in math. And in fact, like I said to you, it would've pulled me down. I wouldn't have finished high school. Well if not for the fact that in that particular school they have three different streams.




Alice Tsang:

So the girl is a girl school. So the girls that were doing well will be going to the math/accounting stream, and other two streams. One would be domestic science and embroidery, and the third one is pottery and stenography. I don't know why pottery, but in any case, they did have an expert in making pottery and somehow she was an important teacher in the school. So I ended up doing that. But as I related to people later on, now that I'm more familiar with the Bible, see God is the potter and the clay. So I know the process and in a way the shaping, the molding, and the cutting, it resonates with me.




Alice Tsang:

When I was streamed into that class I started to thrive and we had to take a lot of dictation, and do typing, and whatnot. So that actually helped my English ability because listening to correspondence, business correspondence that I have to take shorthand and transcribe, that definitely helped me in written English and in some way kind of know grammar better.




Alice Tsang:

That ended up being very helpful when later on in life I became a financial analyst. You need to write a lot and very quickly. So like I said, things that we might not think anything of, maybe even find it tedious or useless, irrelevant, no time is wasted if you put your heart to learning it well, because somehow God will use your skills later and maybe for a higher purpose. So that's how I see it. So as a result of being quite good in English, I was able to do well in my exams later on the public exam and eventually being able to get into college and major in English.




Warwick Fairfax:

How did you go to college and what did your family think? Because that seems like a notion hard to comprehend from your family. So talk about that was a massive shift.




Alice Tsang:

Yeah, well I mean all along the plan was I feel like we do one thing, one step at a time. Don't think too far. We couldn't afford to, so let's finish high school, you get a job. And I was looking at the possibility, okay, there's an exam to take for me to see if I can get to the next step. If I could, then let's think about it. So this is why I think you said my experience had been remarkable. The remarkable thing is, things that are so unlikely to happen actually did because now looking back, there's a guiding hand there to open the doors for me, in spite of my kind of short vision, really nearsightedness in a way by necessity we couldn't think too far down the road. The fact that I was able to get into University of Hong Kong, which was not easy in those days.




Alice Tsang:

Most of the students going in came from upper middle class families, especially the discipline that I went into. I was having classmates that graduated from schools that where they attended, they were taught by foreigners, many nuns, and reverends, and so on, westerners. I had to compete with them, and the fact that I almost fail sometimes, that's kind of a, not so much a scarlet letter you know something like a P on my forehead. When people see me, I mean they already know that I'm from a very poor family, I don't belong.




Alice Tsang:

So this sense of not belonging to the university and then later on when I entered the various firms that I worked in persists and persisted until more recent years. And so this is what I want to encourage others that, yeah, okay so you need to be able to have someone that you can always trust and you believe that He's the almighty and He's guiding you and He will help you overcome. Now whatever background you are coming from, whether it is likely or not likely that you get into those institutions, if you are there, you belong, right? You have the ability to contribute to the success of those organizations as long as you do well. And don't worry about whether you came from the circles that do not mingle with those who are already populating those organizations and do not waste time.




Gary Schneeberger:

This is a perfect time for me to jump in because we're not too far past your childhood and we're about to transition into your professional career. But there was something you said when we talked before the recorders were turned on, a quote you said that I want listeners to hear because it applies to their own crucible experiences. You said this about your childhood. "My childhood ended up not being a bad thing." You told us, "Perspective is very important. I learned a one day at a time mentality." You've just described what that is, how that worked for you as you were going through your education. And that is something that Warwick stresses all the time. This do the next right thing, take one small step at a time. That's how you get beyond the crucible. And your crucible certainly was difficult, you've just described it.




Gary Schneeberger:

But now we're moving into that transition period where things, I don't know if they get easier, that's the wrong word. Things begin to, you begin to achieve some things that put you on the path to your life of significance. And that's what we talk about here all the time. So I just wanted listeners to hear that idea, that Alice, you heard her talk about her childhood and she says, "It ended up not being a bad thing." That's not far off. Guests who have said to us on this very show, "My crucible was a gift." Right? Alice is saying sort of the same thing. It wasn't that bad of a situation. It taught her how to take a one day at a time approach to things. That's what we try to do here too. So I just wanted to drop that in Warwick, before we get too far through her story. It seems like we're right in the middle of Alice's story here. So I wanted to get that in.




Warwick Fairfax:

I mean that's such a good point, Gary, that Alice has such a great perspective on how she grew up and didn't let those experiences define her. She just kept one, right? What's the next right step each time? Just not being limited by other people's limiting expectations, be it a family or the middle class, upper middle class. In all cultures, unfortunately on the planet, there's tends to be class structure and I don't know, just the nature of human beings I guess. But again, graduating from university is remarkable. But then the remarkable with Alice saying doesn't stop. There's another, there's always one more step of remarkable, one more step. What's the next, right, remarkable step. So you ended up moving to the US getting an MBA in finance at New York University, NYU, and working on Wall Street. I mean for somebody that said I flunked math and it was at one point majoring in English, how in the world did you get to NYU and finance, and Wall Street? That seemed like a remarkable transition. How'd that happen?




Alice Tsang:

Okay, so this is the thing about doing things one thing at a time, not being able to think too far ahead. At some point, I ended up teaching high school English in Hong Kong for a few years before thinking about getting a higher education so that I can progress in my career. The goal was to get a degree in education, but at the time I had a mentor, he advised me that, "Well, maybe you should consider getting an MBA." And I say, "Are you kidding me? I can't even 1 and 1, add to 3." I know that's probably what I could do. And so he said, "Yeah, why don't you give it a try? And you can take some classes and so on." So I did and I went to some community college and later on enrolled in a state university to take the business classes and I found out that I actually was able to learn and I was able to do fairly well.




Alice Tsang:

So eventually, I took the GMAT and then applied to NYU and got in, Hey, why not, right? It was good. NYU was pretty strong in finance, so I ended up majoring in finance and got a degree there and did pretty well. The transition, right? You know from being a student to working on Wall Street. Now that was a lot more difficult. I would consider that almost a fairly short period, not too long, probably the wilderness years because I was not able to find something that will recognize my MBA degree in finance, making very little money in the beginning. And so it was tough, but eventually, because I still try to excel in whatever I did and learned from what I was doing, I ended up being introduced to my boss's friend who was the director of research at EF Hutton at the time, EF Hutton was a pretty reputable firm.




Alice Tsang:

I think it was second only to Merrill Lynch in those days. So I was able to get in as a junior analyst, and before long I made a name for myself. Even though at the time I went in to the firm, I barely know the abbreviation of the 50 states of America. But by the time I left, I was already quite known to my clients and eventually I actually got some awards for what I did later on.




Alice Tsang:

So it's not any big deal, but looking back at where I came from, totally not even expecting going to high school, finishing high school or college and then now having a job on Wall Street. And that was a dream come true. And eventually I have to say that my family and I were able to live the American dream. So that is something that I just want to point out why I feel very grateful for what I had been given and I want to be able to give back in many ways.




Warwick Fairfax:

Talk a bit about those years because this was, I think back in the eighties and life wasn't easy, and you faced setbacks, frankly, discrimination, if not racism. Being a woman from Asia, you have a very interesting perspective. You acknowledge it, you don't sugarcoat it, but yet you found a way to push back and overcome. So just talk about those years because that was a crucible of its own, just the blatant discrimination, sexism you faced. So talk about what happened and how you dealt with it, pushback and overcame it.




Alice Tsang:

Sure, yes. Yeah, I think discrimination in those years in the eighties, definitely... First I told you already, right? Because I grew up somewhere else. I spoke English with an accent. I'm still speaking with an accent and I was not well-connected. I don't, and I didn't play golf. I had no clue about sports. In those days, and then that's all the traders and promoting managers, and most people I work with, they would be bending, using their own language.




Alice Tsang:

So I don't really feel I belong in the way that you would expect when you work in some place, you know you become part of the community. So I always feel like somewhat of an outsider, but instead of feeling upset about not being included, I learned how to focus my time. So one thing that I found out is just spend your time well, be productive, concentrate on the positive because the learning opportunities were precious and I did learn a lot of things during my time working wherever I work, there are so many things that I could learn. And what I learned make me a better person because then I can share my knowledge with others. So that's how I see myself being a better person. Not so much I'm superior to anybody else, but I do have something to share with others. So that is what I consider improvement or being better. So by being able to focus on what I could do better, I could do more. I ended up making a name for myself and I didn't set out doing so, but that was the outcome.




Alice Tsang:

So that was positive and as a result I was able to move to other places as well. Very interesting, different experiences also. That's what I found, not just being pigeonholed into one particular sector. I was able to learn different sectors. Even though I was a fixed income analyst, the things I learned, I picked up over time, helped me a lot. And especially looking back, I become a better investor. And that is something that God was preparing me for down the road because we ended up having a few dollars to invest. And the skills that I picked up while I was working in the financial sector was very helpful. And this is something that I also was able to share with my students, with people that I encounter who are having financial challenges to encourage them.




Warwick Fairfax:

One of the things you mentioned to us before, which I thought was really fascinating is because of, it's the eighties discrimination, you may not have got paid as much as you should given the work you were doing, but you mentioned you found a way around that because you were just a good investor and so maybe you made more than some. So it's like, okay fine, they don't want to pay me as much as they should. I'll find a way around this, I'll just be a smart investor. And you knew fixed income and other things. So I just found that fascinating. You found a way around that obstacle, it didn't hold you back, you found a way to make money somewhere else. So talk about the attitude that's behind that, because that's a really intriguing attitude you have to life. That's just one example. That's sort of an Alice Tsang way of doing things, right? There's an obstacle? Great, I'll find a way around it.




Alice Tsang:

Yes, yes. So thank you for bringing this up. So one thing that I am quite sure, usually you don't know, but I'm not the kind that would file lawsuit against people because I'm kind of mistreated or unfairly treated. Even though I believe, I strongly believe if there is something to discover how the pay scale works and whatnot in the organizations where I have served, that could potentially be the truth. But that doesn't bother me at all. For one thing, remember where I came from. So having a job in those organizations to me is already such a blessing. I was not paid poorly. I mean I made good money, did I get pay as well as my colleagues? Maybe not, but doesn't matter. You know you focus your time in doing constructive things and somehow if you don't get the money in here, there are opportunities for you to get your compensation somewhere else.




Alice Tsang:

So there were opportunities for me to invest and I just save good money, and invest, and to me is even better because my investment is under my control. The pay is not so much under my control, if you get my drift? So by recognizing that I actually feel more empowered and that's what I would share with folks who are feeling bitter or just upset. Okay, so look through what you are experiencing, but there are ways you create opportunities for yourselves. And this is what I really want to come across over the years I probably could have, if I were not Asian, woman, no connections and so on, I probably would have had a lot more opportunities if I had been another race and so on. But it doesn't matter. The important thing is somehow you are empowered and you create opportunities for yourself and you can do it.




Alice Tsang:

And I find it doable and we have done that. And so right now, while I never had imagined, so we may be getting to this later, being a college professor, when I should be long retired. Somehow this is an opportunity that God prepared for me and I feel like the calling is something that I should accept and just go through that door. And also, as a result of the ability to invest, we have started a small business which again, was not anticipated. And so we are doing pretty well, having a recurring source of income that help me be able to teach as a volunteer.




Alice Tsang:

So I think that is something to celebrate. And I want to emphasize the fact that I had nothing growing up and now we do have quite a bit and I feel so grateful. There's no bitterness that I feel, no matter what experience I had, could that have been better? It does not matter, because what matters is I have so much more than what I was growing up with and I feel extremely grateful and that actually gives me peace of mind because now I can be encouraging others and helping others in a substantive way.




Warwick Fairfax:

So let's talk about that transition because you were doing well on Wall Street. I think as you mentioned, fixed income analyst, you could have stayed there and probably continued to, well hopefully despite the barriers rise up, do well, well even better than you did, which you did very well. But you made a decision to teach first at Gordon College, a Christian College in Massachusetts for a number of years and now and Taylor University in Indiana another Christian college. What made you feel led that the next right step and your remarkable journey if you will, what led you to shift from Wall Street to teaching?




Alice Tsang:

One thing that was health, I retired from Fidelity in 2008, and that all hell broke loose right now because of my work. The company is a huge investor in the market. So we were, all of us working there had witnessed a lot of developments and I was one of the analysts analyzing the firms that were experiencing huge problems. And truth be told, we were analyzing the unanalyzable. If you look at the actions or the lack of solutions, even at the Fed level, Federal Reserve level, know who will we right to be able to analyze and predict what's going to happen? So the stress of the work and just a lot of pressure and so on. And there's also this people who work for retirement, right? Early retirement. And there was this thought about, "Okay, so how much is enough for you to retire comfortably?"




Alice Tsang:

And at the time when I retired, we had more than, so the health issue was something that was bothering me and the need to stay at work for till very late every evening. So eventually, I think that was the right thing to do. And after I retired, I was trying to find something to share my experience that can enable me to share my experience with others. This teaching opportunity came up also very unexpectedly when I was visiting a former colleague of Fidelity who was teaching at Gordon. And so he invited me to one of his classes as a speaker and we started talking and then later on the department chair of Gordon, like economics and business invited me to apply for an adjunct professorship and I started teaching as an adjunct professor and then the following year they made me full-time.




Warwick Fairfax:

You have a passion for financial literacy in particular to financial literacy for underserved communities. Talk a bit about what that is and why it's your passion?




Alice Tsang:

So coming back to my own background, one thing that is somehow to me is a misconception is, a lot of minority groups that in a low income families, they don't see the need for financial literacy or knowing about finance. Several things. One is, well I don't have money so I don't need to know about financial planning. There's nothing to plan. So since I don't have money, why do I need to know about financial planning? Now that cannot be further from the truth. The less you have, the more important it's to plan well, right? Because you know you want to get from nothing to having a little, a little bit more, and then more, and more, and more so that you can achieve financial security. So that's very important.




Alice Tsang:

So if I'm in this group, then I would spend $4 or $5 on the coffee every day. Why not? I don't have too much money, but this is a treat for me. And then even if I save it doesn't amount to much. Like yes, listen to me. Small things when you accumulate, it can grow, and then you would end up having a decent amount to start investing. So that is something very important to share with people in that group.




Alice Tsang:

Underserved communities tend to get scammed if they don't have financial literacy because they don't have much. And someone usually would come along and say, "Hey, you know what? I can help you get rich quickly." "I'm in." So whatever little that they would kind of flock over and then they end up losing whatever little they have. And so knowing more about finance, how to avoid fraud, scam, learning to do things patiently, doing real investing instead of succumbing to all the get rich quick schemes, that would end up serving them much better than having them be convinced that they can actually cut corners. The only people that will get rich quick from the whole transaction is the people who scam them.




Alice Tsang:

The other thing is, we want to have more harmony in society. So the income inequality and so forth. You have the underserved constantly having nothing or very little, while the other people who knows better more about finance, financial planning. Then you have the gap widen. So we really need to do something constructive to bring the two groups together, not necessarily through income distribution, but by sharing the knowledge, like promoting financial literacy among the underserved, you empower them so they learn how to create opportunities for themselves, and they feel a lot more fulfilled. And that's what I think your website is trying to advocate, right? To espouse, to give people the ability, the power to look beyond their current challenges and see better things ahead. And they can do it because they already have the ability endowed in them. They just need the vision to pursue that.




Gary Schneeberger:

That sound you just heard, listener, was the captain of our plane here turning down the fastened seatbelt sign indicating it's about time to begin our descent to end this episode of Beyond the Crucible, but we're not there yet. So you can hang out of your peanut bags for a little while longer. And Warwick, I'll flip it back to you to ask the last question or two to Alice. Alice, one of the things I want to do for you in the show notes, I noticed that you're very active on LinkedIn, so I'm going to put your LinkedIn address in there for people who can engage with some of the wisdom that you've been sharing here. So we'll make sure people can find you there.




Warwick Fairfax:

So Alice, thank you so much for being here. We asked this kind of question a reasonable amount. So I think in this case I'm thinking there could be maybe a young person, maybe they're from an immigrant, maybe different background, maybe they've grown up without the advantages of stable family life, maybe they've suffered even as a young kid, maybe racism, sexism, discrimination, maybe their sights are pretty low. What would a word of hope be to that young person who thinks, "People like me never amount to much because life is not fair and kind of why bother? Because the deck is stacked against me. It's just nobody I know has succeeded. Nobody I know has got any degree of financial, not even wealth, just financial stability." What would a word of hope be? Maybe to that young person that doesn't see too much hope or future, or positive future in their lives?




Alice Tsang:

Okay, so allow me to provide a few points here. Okay, so you are growing up in a poor family, never amount to much or it is not possible to do anything. I see you being able to be the leader that can be the one who break through the barriers for your family, for your community, so you can inspire people in your community. So this is one thing that I really strongly encourage. We do not have the ability to be perfect, but we can control how much effort we put into a better future for ourselves. And if you already have the abilities but you don't see the possibility of realizing your dreams, that might be because you haven't started doing something using your ability. So a dream is a dream and you will never become reality unless you take action using your ability to do more, and more, and more.




Alice Tsang:

And as you see the results, you'll be encouraged and you will dare to do more and aspire higher. So that's what I hope will be an encouragement to someone who grew up like myself, never even in my wildest dream. And it is not just something that I say this, my mom also said to me before she passed away, she would never have dreamt. And that's like where we would have become what we would have become.




Alice Tsang:

The other thing is, we are not doing it alone. I am a believer, so God has been helping me. We also want to look around. There are people around us. If we associate with the right people who are supportive, who are encouraging, we encourage one another and support one another so that we can all move forward. And rather than saying, "Why bother?" My question is, why not give it a try?




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communication business long enough to know when the last words have been spoken at a subject and Alice Tsang just spoke it. Why not try? Indeed. So listener until the next time that we are together. Remember this, we do know that your crucible experiences are difficult.




Gary Schneeberger:

My goodness, you heard Alice talk about her growing up years and some of the challenges that she faced, but she did it with a positivity that speaks to the way that she's navigated beyond that, as she said, perspective is very important. And she learned much perspective from what she went through, the challenges that she went through. And that's what we hope, not just this episode, certainly this episode, but every episode of Beyond the Crucible helps you to do. So, we do know that your crucibles are difficult, but we also know that on the other side of those crucibles, as you learn the lessons of them, and apply them, and begin to walk out your journey, that journey can be the most rewarding one of your life, the most exciting one of your life, because where it leads is to a life of significance.




Gary Schneeberger:

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond The Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what's been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.

Janine Shepherd was on track to represent her home nation of Australia in the Olympics as a cross-country skier – but then her dream, quite literally, crashed when she was hit by a utility truck while on a bicycle training exercise with her teammates. She came out the other side of that horrific accident and the 6 months of arduous recovery that followed to discover she was a paraplegic.

But as she explains to Warwick, her identity as “Janine the Machine,” the elite athlete, was not to be her destiny. She had another calling, learning to fly and training others to be pilots, and inspiring multitudes who have suffered tragedies and trials to embrace loss as their lives’ greatest teacher. 

An in-demand speaker whose Ted talk has been viewed more than 2 million times, Shepherd calls herself “a mirror to help people see their own defiant spirits.”

Her guiding philosophy? “Nothing comes easy, and if it did, it wouldn’t be worth having.”

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible.




Janine Shepherd:

Wasn't really till I got home from hospital, almost six months later, that I really realized, "Wow, this is pretty bad." I was in a wheelchair, plaster body cast, I'd lost so much weight, there was nothing left of me, I was attached to a catheter bottle, I had to learn to use a catheter. They basically told me, "You're a paraplegic, and this is the rest of your life." And I got very depressed, and I wanted to give up.

And I remember, there was this moment where I was in my room, in my bed at night, and I just thought, "No, I want to get out of here." And I can remember crawling onto the floor in my room and sobbing. And I can remember calling out into the darkness. And I always, I'm very careful with these words, "God," "universe," whatever it is that resonates with you. But I remember my prayer was, "God, just show me a way through this or show me a way out of this." And that was this moment of sort of almost brings me to tears now when I think about, but this moment of choice, where I let go. I knew that holding on to the life that I had was causing me to suffer. And it was like I had a clean slate now. And that was a gift.




Gary Schneeberger:

Emerging from the other side of a horrific traffic accident in the six months of arduous recovery that followed, to discover she's a paraplegic. That's exactly the experience our guest this week, Janine Shepherd had in 1986. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Shepherd was on track to represent her home nation of Australia in the Olympics as a cross country skier. But then, her dream quite literally crashed, when she was hit by a utility truck, while on a bicycle training exercise with her teammates. But as she explains to Warwick, her identity as Janine, the machine, the elite athlete, was not to be her destiny. She had another calling, learning to fly and to train others to be pilots and inspiring multitudes who have suffered tragedies and trials to embrace loss as their life's greatest teacher. An in-demand speaker whose TED Talk has been viewed more than 2 million times, Shepherd calls herself a mirror to help people see their own defiance spirits. Her guiding philosophy, "Nothing comes easy, and if it did, it wouldn't be worth having."




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Janine, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Just reviewing some of your material and your story, it's just amazing. And I'm really looking forward to just your perspective, because I felt like we haven't even spoken yet and I feel like I'm learning a lot already. And I've got, I'm sure, a lot more to learn. But I love the title of a book you wrote, Defiant: A Broken Body Is Not a Broken Person. My gosh, I love, love that title. That is just amazing. So obviously, there is the key crucible moment, but I'd love to just hear a bit about a young Janine, growing up, sort of hopes, dreams, maybe some of the threads maybe went a different direction, but maybe some of the threads went in the direction you're going now, though maybe you didn't realize it as a young Janine. But tell us, what was life like for Janine growing up?




Janine Shepherd:

Well, that's a great question. I don't often get asked about those early years. Well, I was an athlete. My whole life revolved around sport. I always thought I was going to the Olympics, and I'd gone from track and field, athletics, all sorts of sports. I played many, many sports and then, found myself in the unlikely sport for an Australian of cross country skiing. And people go, "Oh, is there snow in Australia?" And I go, "Yeah, there is." And it's actually ideal for cross country skiing. And cross country skiing was a marriage of my whole background of endurance sports, triathlon, marathon, things like that, and just grit. Cross country skiing is looked upon as being probably the toughest aerobic sport in the world. So when I found myself in cross country skiing, sort of later in life, when I was at really starting uni, and picked it up so quickly and thought, "This is my sport. This is the one."

And I sort of climbed the ranks really quickly, became a member of the Australian Ski Team, had my sights set on the Olympics, was invited by the Canadian Ski Team coach to join up with their team in preparation for the Olympics. I was on top of the world. I felt like, "This is my destiny. Everything I've worked towards is getting me to the '88 Winter Olympics in Calgary." So that's where I found myself. My whole life sort of building up to the Olympics, my background in sport, my background in endurance sports. Yeah, my nickname was Janine, the Machine. And I'll tell you a funny story about that later. Because I trained harder, always trained with the guys. I just, yeah, I was a machine.




Warwick Fairfax:

So where did some of that adventurous machine-like qualities come from? From your parents, grandparents, friends? Not everybody grows up with that just the tenacity and "Whatever I do, I'm just going to go for it." You just sounded like you had that adventurous... Some people are so afraid of risks and failing that they don't try and do anything, but that did not seem to be who you were. Where did that sense of machine-like adventurous go for it spirit come from?




Janine Shepherd:

Well, I think I've always pushed myself, and my early life was in Dural. You probably know where that is. It's sort of considered my grandfather came from, they had a peach orchard. My grandfather actually was a POW. I remember listening to a recording of his once, talking about how we had a lot of similarities, and he was a Japanese prisoner of war, built the railway. I feel like a lot of that, what my grandfather, that defiance and the stories that he had about wartime, I can sort of relate to a lot of that.

And so, I think my parents, we lived a very sort of a frugal life. They weren't in any way wealthy. We lived in Dural. We lived on property from a peach orchard. And I think a lot of that was just that you got to really work hard. You got to just to get ahead. And I had that mentality. And I think I had, I guess, my gift was in sport and physical abilities. And so, I just always thought that was how I defined myself. My body was my strength. And that was a really important part of my story, because I lost the thing that I thought defined myself. So it was the perfect experience for me to lose that.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow, that's an amazing. Well, let's push pause there. We'll have to come back to that, because that's an incredible statement of what you just said. Talk about that day in 1986. From what I understand, you were training in the Blue Mountains, which my parents had a cabin there in Blackheath, so I'm pretty familiar with the Blue Mountains. It's a beautiful place. So talk about that. You were training one day in the Blue Mountains, and you just tell us about that day.




Janine Shepherd:

Yeah, so we were on a bike ride with my teammates. There were probably maybe 30 of us. We did it a few times a year. We rode from Sydney up to the Blue Mountains, which is about a six hour ride, pretty grueling up through the hills, which I loved. I always loved the hills, trained on the hills. It's my catchphrase, "Love the hills." And we'd been on our bikes for around five and a half hours. And I hadn't been well leading up to that day. In fact, it's funny, I always look back and think, "Oh, was I meant to go on that ride?" I'd been at uni, I had been overtraining, I hadn't been well, I'd had some blood tests, and I probably shouldn't have gone. But I dragged myself out of bed, and all my mates were going. So off we went, and I was really tired.

I remember I was on that hill thinking, "Oh, this is really hard work." And I just remember looking up, seeing the sun shining in my face. And then, that's it. That's my last memory. And I was run over by a speeding truck. That's my crucible moment. That's the moment that changed my life. And suffered extensive injuries. I actually have no memory of the accident. The doctor said I had post-traumatic amnesia. And the reason I don't remember is I left my body, and I broke my neck and my back in six places, broke five ribs on my left side, my arm, my collarbone, bones in my feet, lost about five liters of blood. I shouldn't have survived. The speed that the driver was going. And some people saw there's something flying through the air, which was my body, and they stopped and ran back.

And couple of guys in a utility truck had gotten out, and they were about to lift me up and put me in a car. And this lady, called Elizabeth, who's my soulmate, stopped them, and she just got blankets or pieces of clothes and put them over me. And the ambulance was there very quickly. And had she not done that, I probably wouldn't, well, wouldn't have walked, wouldn't have survived. But she just sat with me. And that's an incredible story too. And I have since connected with the ambulance driver that picked me up as well. And he said, "She's not dying on my shift." And he got to the hospital, I only found this out fairly recently, the United Kingdom. And of course, I turned up, and this was, he'd never seen anything like this. And Gary, the paramedic, had said, "Well, should we call the helicopter from Sydney?"

And he said, "No, she's not going to make it." And so, Gary went and pulled out his mate, who was a surgeon at the time in theater and said, "Please come and see this girl." And this doctor handed over, came out of theater, came into emergency, looked at me and said, "I'm taking over. Stand aside," to this young doctor, who was out of his depth and just, they called the helicopter up. They got blood flown up from Sydney. They flew me down to a specialist spinal unit. And that's where I stayed for the next six months. But if it hadn't also been all of these sort of moments that were aligning, Gary, pulling his mate out of theater, coming to see me, all of these things, there were all these people that sort of intervened along the way. And had it not been for them, I certainly wouldn't be here.

I do remember leaving my body. I do remember having, what I call, we like to say near-death experience, I say it was a death experience, because I had this sort of moment of choice. "Do I go back to my body? That body is broken, it can't serve me anymore." And the really interesting thing about that, and people ask me about that, all the time, people are asking about, "What's it like? What happened? What did you see?" And I say, "Well, I didn't come back to teach people about that. I came back to teach people how to live in this life." And I had to learn that too. Making a choice to come back to a paralyzed, broken body, as I said, was probably the thing that I needed to experience.

And I needed it, because loss is a great teacher. And I always say, "It doesn't just show us who we are, it shows us who we're not." The lesson of that was, I'm not my body. I remember opening my eyes and seeing my father's face and thinking, just being utterly confused. "This is not what I wanted." And I guess that's where the journey began, the journey of disability, of really coming to terms with that loss and the grief. And even though I spent almost six months in hospital, and that was paralyzed, flat on my back, looking up through a mirror that was hanging above me. Actually, it was a very challenging situation, but it was also one of the most enriching experiences that I've ever had. And it taught me a lot about myself and about life and about other people, and really stripped me of any sense of entitlement.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. And I definitely want to go there. But obviously, there initially must have been some anger, frustration. One question occurs to me, because one of the Resilience Checklists, you've got forgiveness, obviously, one of the big ones up there, maybe number one, is forgive that young guy in the truck, that was driving too fast and was doing... Sometimes it's not people's fault, sometimes it really is. And sure seemed like it was that person. So I'm assuming you must have given this checklist, how did you manage to forgive? There's acceptance of your situation, which is tough enough, but how did you manage to forgive that person?




Janine Shepherd:

That's a great question. And my Resilience Checklist, which is what I say, the 12 steps that I actually took to recover. I'll just get to forgiveness in a sec. When I was in hospital, I wasn't really angry. There was one particular time where I got very, very depressed, when I thought I was counting down the weeks till I got out of bed. And then, the doctors came and said, "Well, actually, no, we're going to start the clock again. It's another two months." And I just felt like giving up. And they did something was very wise and clever, which is they moved me next to someone who was much more injured than I was. So they moved me next to a young girl called Maria. We were similar in age, and she was a complete quadriplegic, who'd been in the back of a car that had had an accident.

I could never complain, because I looked at her and she was in a much worse situation than I was. And she was also an incredible human being. She was always smiling, always happy. And she taught me a lot about what it means to accept. And we became great friends. So that also came, we talk about these interventions, things that have happened in my life just at the right time, that have showed me and taught me a lesson. And so, it wasn't really till I got home from hospital, almost six months later, that I really realized, "Wow, this is pretty bad." I was in a wheelchair, plaster body cast, I'd lost so much weight, there was nothing left of me, I was attached to a catheter bottle, I had to learn to use a catheter. They basically told me, "You're a paraplegic, and this is the rest of your life."

And I got very depressed, and I wanted to give up. And I remember there was this moment where I was in my room, in my bed at night, and I just thought, "No, I want to get out of here." And I can remember crawling onto the floor in my room and sobbing. And I can remember crawling out into the darkness. And I'm very careful with these words, "God," "universe," whatever it is that resonates with you. But I remember my prayer was, "God, just show me a way through this or show me a way out of this." And that was this moment of sort of almost brings me to tears now when I think about, but this moment of choice, where I let go. I knew that holding on to the life that I had was causing me to suffer. And it was like I had a clean slate now.

And that was a gift, because my life revolved around sport and training and that's who I was. And now, it was like, "Okay, this is a rebirth, a new beginning." And it wasn't until I got to that point, that letting go, that my life literally changed. It was as if my eyes were open to a new way of seeing. And of course, that's the moment when, after that, when I was outside and an airplane flew over, and I looked up and thought, "Okay, if I can't walk, then maybe I can fly." It was ridiculous, but that was the letting go.

And part of that, and I'll tie that into forgiveness, is realizing that, by holding onto my anger towards the driver, who was suffering? I was suffering. So I did some exercises, I wrote a forgiveness letter, I posted it to him, even though I didn't have his address. And that was really symbolic for me. And I always say, "You don't forgive to let someone off the hook, you forgive to let yourself off the hook." That's one of the very practical things that I did to, well, let us both off the hook really, but there was a hard one, that was the black belt forgiveness. Because he was charged. He was charged with negligent driving, and he got an $80 fine.




Gary Schneeberger:

Oh my.




Warwick Fairfax:

Seriously? $80 for what has put you through or anybody through? $80 for a six month body cast and permanent disability? That's just, yeah, doesn't seem like justice. But I guess the law is the law. But wow.




Janine Shepherd:

And I thank him now. I know his name, and it's taught me a lot. I can't imagine a better way to learn about forgiveness than the person that ran you over and changed your life forever, which now it's been a gift. It is a gift. It always has been. But I like to say to people, I talk about WTGIT, what's the gift in this? And there's always a gift.




Gary Schneeberger:

One of the things that you said to me when we first talked comes to mind now, and that is, you said, as you were just describing what you were describing, how difficult that was, how painful that was, how forgiveness was difficult, how you were in this facing this uncertain future, you said that you realized, in that moment, that maybe rock bottom was a great place to start figuring out what your life was going to be. That was a turning point. And I want listeners to both hear what you said to me off air and then, hear what you say now. Rock bottom can be a gift. Rock bottom can be the turning point. It can be Go on the monopoly board of life. And that's what you experienced, right?




Janine Shepherd:

Yeah, absolutely. Rock bottom is the perfect place, the only place, at times, to start. And I think we can go through life and we have all these things that the sort of scaffolding that we place around ourselves, the way that we define ourselves. We define ourselves through our jobs, through our relationships, through the things we own, our car, our house. And when you lose all of those things, that's when the inner journey really starts. That's when you get to ask the really important questions. "Well, who am I? What is my purpose in life?" And these are really important questions that we don't often get to the point where we ask those questions, because we've got such busy lives, things around us that we think form our identity. And so, as I said, with sport and my body, with this strong body, I really had to ask those questions to dive deep.

And it was a gift, because I realized, my TED Talk, the original title was, You're Not Your Body, it's now, TED, when they put it on their site, changed it to A broken body isn't a broken person. But when I was speaking with Mike Lundgren, the curator of TEDxKC, and he said, "Wow, what an incredible story. What's the most important thing you learned?" And I sort of thought, "Hmm, all right, well, I guess the most important question is I'm not my body." And that's important, because we're not our jobs, we're not our relationships, we're not our home, we're not our car, we're not anything that we think defines us. And when we build our identity on things, it's a very slippery slope.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. There's so much wisdom in what you're saying, it's hard to know which thread to pull on. But I try and pull on as many as I can. It's just amazing, because these are things that come up from time to time. It's just I'm both learning, but just some of the things you're saying about forgiveness, you forgive, because you are kind of worth it. One of the phrases we talk about is "Lack of forgiveness is like drinking poison. It destroys you." And so, by forgiving, you get out of prison, stop drinking poison, and it's exactly what you are saying. And you use the word "choice," which is such a good word. You can't choose some of the consequences of what happened to you, but you can choose how you choose to react to that and reframe it, which is what you've done magnificently. You talk about blessing. I have a feeling you probably learnt these things a lot quicker than I did, because some of these concepts are more recent ones for me.




Janine Shepherd:

One of the things about my speaking is I don't stand up and say, "Life is great. You can do anything." My message is, life is tough. Life is really tough. Life is filled with hills. Once you accept that, then the fact that it has hills doesn't matter anymore. You can sort of roll up your sleeves and go, "Okay, well, this is what it's about. I have this awareness, and now, I know what it's all about." And yeah, we're all going through it. We all have our crucibles, we all have our challenges, we've got to stay in our lane. Comparison is a thief of joy. And that's one of the challenges that we have living in an age of social media that we have. And talking about my TED Talk, I'm a great fan of Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, who wrote about the Hero's Journey. So my TED Talk, which you'll see has five chairs on stage, is actually created around Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey.

And each chair, when I was planning my talk, each chair represented a challenge or a struggle and an insight, until the final insight "I'm not my body." So I've actually done workshops at, I call it the chair five chair workshop, where I get people to actually think about where they are now, which chair are they on? Are they on the chair of acceptance? And looking at whatever struggle they've got. Because you see, life is about patterns. We're continually going through these challenges. The hills never stop. You get over one hill. "Oh, great." It's not like, "Okay, that's it, I've done it." It's like, "Okay, the next one's coming." And once you see the pattern, then it becomes almost like a game. You start to sort of go, "Yeah, I get this. I know where I am now. Okay, what are the tools that I used? What are the tools in my toolkit? What can I use? Which one will I pull out now?"

And so, it's really fun to look at it like that, to look at everything is, as I think, Gary, we talked about this, things don't happen to us, they happen for us. So "What can I learn from this? What tools have I developed?" And that's where my PhD is based on that at the moment, the resilience course that I wrote, based on the steps that I took in my recovery. And so, I'm even sitting here looking at them now, going, "Okay, now which one can I use now?" And I also, this morning, actually, I was listening to your interview with my dear friend, Dr. Suzy Green.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, she's fabulous.




Janine Shepherd:

Yeah. In fact, I've got a picture behind us, you probably can't see it, which is, from Suzy, a strengths chart. So my resilience course is based on positive psychology interventions. And the last step on this course is gratitude. And I look back, when I was in hospital, gratitude wasn't even a thing. And now, it's the most highly researched aspect of positive psychology. But I decided, very early on, that every single person that came in to visit me, I'd be grateful, and I would thank them for coming in. And what I didn't know what we know now is that gratitude changes our brains. And there's a lot of positive psychology interventions around gratitude. But that simple act of saying "thank you" and being grateful allowed me to lie in that hospital bed for almost six months. And it's my go-to tool even today. Every morning, "What am I grateful for?"




Warwick Fairfax:

It's so important. One of the things I'm thinking of is, your whole life, you trained as an Olympic athlete, there was this determination, I love the phrase you used, Janine, the Machine, as I'm thinking back, none of that was... Well, the core of that was never lost. The physical part, but Janine, the Machine just moved in a different direction. "Yeah, okay, I'm injured. Great. There's a big hill. I love hills. Let's power up the hill. Okay, there's a challenge. I can do this." So I just feel like that inherent training wasn't lost. You thought you were training for the Olympics, you were training for the Olympics, it was just a different Olympics, not one you entered into, nor would anybody want to sign up up for. But does that make sense that your determination, your training, the Janine Machine mentality, you used every part of that to come back from your crucible and to get to a point of gratitude, does that kind of make sense?




Janine Shepherd:

Oh, absolutely. And along the journey, I've learned so many lessons. I've dived into acceptance and commitment therapy. I've learned mindfulness training and meditation, and I've learned about letting go. I've learned about loosening my grip on the things that I think define me all my life. Every single day is a challenge when you have a disability. Every day, you wake up and you get out of bed. It's like, "Okay, I need to pull out these tools in my toolkit," because it is challenging. And I do laugh, that I have a friend that came around recently and said, "You know what? I think you've moved on from Janine the Machine."




Warwick Fairfax:

Oh, really?




Janine Shepherd:

And gave me a new nickname, which is hilarious, and calls me Janini Linguini.




Warwick Fairfax:

Really?




Janine Shepherd:

Which I thought, "Yeah, okay, I'm going to embrace my inner Janinin Linguini." Linguini, which is flexible and goes with the flow. And so, that's my new nickname now, Janini Linguini.




Warwick Fairfax:

There you go. That is a good one.




Gary Schneeberger:

I suspect that Warwick's going to get you up in the air here soon. Before we get you, as a pilot, again, we do pre-interview calls with all guests, just so we have the ability to ask informed questions. And I have my notes from our pre-interview call right here. And I wrote this question down when we first started talking, to ask you, when you think back, you were on the trajectory to go to the Olympics, and now, you're doing what you're doing now, as a speaker, as an educator, about resilience. And I asked you, "Is there any way that you can compare it? Is this more gratifying?"

And here's what you said to me. I'm going to read it right here to make sure that I got it right. "I was never going to the Olympics," you said. "My life was always laid out like this." That, talking about, and we'll give you listener, where you can find this Resilience Checklist, that shows someone who's completed the 12 steps, who's not just completed them, but had to learn them, had to then teach them, that's a pretty bold statement to make. Obviously, you stand by that statement, that your life was never about the Olympics, right?




Janine Shepherd:

Oh, yeah. No, it wasn't. And I'm a believer that we have a destiny, that we have a sacred contract in life, and we need to get onto that path. And when we're on that path, we just know it. It's this intuitive internal knowing of "This is what I'm meant to do." And as hard as it's been, these are the experiences that I needed to have. And I also believe that we're not given anything without also being given the strength to rise to the challenge.




Warwick Fairfax:

I just want to dwell on that thought that Gary mentioned. I was really struck by that, when you said, "I was never going to the Olympics. My life was always laid out like this." That's reframing and acceptance at an incredible level, as I try to put that on in my life, saying, "Well, how would that apply to me?" And our probably listeners are thinking, "Gee, what would that mean for me?" And the translation for me would be I was never going to be in a leading position to be in charge of John Fairfax Limited, even though, in theory, in terms of shares and various other things, in theory, if I'd waited long enough, I probably would've been, just objectively. But yet, reframing says there was always a greater purpose or different purpose, and being a person of faith and from my theological construct that God is sovereign and he has a sovereign will, and despite my stupidity and naivety, if he wanted it to happen, it would've.

But it was always the plan for it not to happen doesn't remove any of the stupid choices I made. But as I look back on it, I'm very grateful, because I've been married over 30 years to my wife, who's American. I have three adult kids. I love what I do at Beyond the Crucible. My kids are all hardworking, humble, thriving people. That would've been really tough for them growing up in a wealthy background in Sydney. So I look at my life, and I feel incredibly blessed. The crucible, it's a different crucible. Every once in a while, there's a little twinge. "Gosh, look what I did. And gosh, how stupid was I?" But yeah, there's a sense of acceptance and blessing. But that notion, I'd never thought about it that way, saying, "I was never going to be in charge of John Fairfax Limited."

That's with the application of your principle, if you will. That's a powerful principle that I think that a lot of people can use. Thinking, if you believe in destiny, "What happened was my destiny. How can I use this? What's the meaning? And what's the purpose?" You and Suzy, I'm sure, know a lot more about this than I do. But when you find meaning and purpose out of a crucible, that is a path to some degree of psychological healing. And that's, every day of your life, that's what you do in your own life and for others, try to help people see gratitude, meaning, and purpose in the crucible. Would that be part of the center of how you get back from your worst day, if you will?




Janine Shepherd:

Yeah. For me, it's about that whole idea of, when you can't change what's happening on the outside, you're given the opportunity to change what's happening on the inside. You have this sort of circle of influence. "What can I influence? What's in my control?" And I realized that, for me, lying paralyzed in a spinal ward, I couldn't change what was happening to my body, but I could change my reaction. I could simply decide to be thankful and grateful to everyone that came in to visit me. And the interesting thing about that is it actually is, as I said, one of the most research aspects of positive psychology now, that gratitude actually changes our brains, makes us more optimistic.

We know that, when we're optimistic, we're better problem solvers, we have better perspective, we're happier, we're healthier, we flourish. So these are actually concrete things that we can do. And deciding to reframe things is also a really important aspect of positive psychology, making the choice to say, "Okay, it didn't happen to me, it happened for me." My belief that we do have a certain destiny, and I've had enough sort of inner spiritual experiences to confirm that to me, that I am doing what I was meant to do, was never about the Olympics. It was about learning to live fully and fearlessly in this life right now.




Warwick Fairfax:

And I think what you're saying is, you talked about identity, is that, as wonderful as the Olympics are, it just felt like you realized there's a lot more to Janine Shepherd than being an Olympic elite athlete, which is wonderful, but there's a lot more to you than just that. And I don't mean to demean that at all, but I don't know if that makes any degree of sense that who you are as a human, you have so many gifts and experience, and our identity shouldn't be in one thing. It's like, does it seem a bit constricting? "Oh, who's Janine?" "Olympic athlete?" "Well, yeah, but there's a lot more to me than just that." Does that make sense? What have you learned about identity in that whole experience?




Janine Shepherd:

Absolutely, and that's why so many elite athletes struggle when they give up their sport, because they've attached themselves, "That's who I am." And as long as you do that, you never really get to ask the questions, you never really get to experience the essence of who we are, spiritual beings, having a human experience, you never really get there. And so, that's why loss has been a great teacher for me, particularly losing the thing that I thought defined who I was. And also, and there's a lot of research around this too, altruism and getting out of your own story. And I think, for me, speaking, writing, sharing my story, gave me the opportunity to hear other people's stories.

One of my favorite things when I give a presentation is I'm usually there for hours talking to people afterwards, as they share their story with me. And very early on, when I started speaking, I realized, as people shared their stories, "Well, wow, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one going through stuff." So it really got my story out of that "Why me" into the "Why not me?" I realized that we're all going through something, and there's a great healing that happens from sharing our stories, hearing other people's stories, and getting out of our own smaller story into a larger human story.




Warwick Fairfax:

And I feel like there's sort of almost drops of grace as people, I'm sure, many people have come up to you and said, "Janine, I didn't go through what you went through. I had a different crucible, but what you shared helped me, it gave me hope." Now, you're not doing this to get the thank yous or the drops of grace, but it's an inevitable byproduct that says, "Okay, I'm seeing a bit more of some grand plan or some more purpose." Does that make sense that, when people say "thank you," that, obviously, that's a gift, but it doesn't make everything go away? Clearly, there are certain things that will never go away, but there's a bit of element of healing. Do you find that, when people just show their gratitude to you?




Janine Shepherd:

Absolutely. When someone comes up and says "thank you" to me, I say "thank you" to them, because it's a circle. We're all giving and taking. And what I say is that I just carry a message when I'm on stage. I like to think that I'm holding up a mirror, so that people can see their own lives. And I think that's the thing about my storytelling or sharing on stage, which I tell a story, I weave a lot of interventions into that, that people can take away and use in their lives. But I think what I do is I get people to go, "Oh, yeah," and see a part of their life reflected in my story.

For example, looking at the chairs, "Where am I now?" And I guess there is that real sense of hope that comes from knowing that someone's been through something similar, and they've survived. So yeah, I think that we're all helping each other. There's that great sort of circle of influence that we're giving and taking and giving and taking. And that's what happens with storytelling. We are storytellers, all of us, from ancient times sitting around a fire and sharing our stories. That's how we learn, that's how we grow, that's how we get insight, and that's how we get healing.




Warwick Fairfax:

As I'm looking at some of the things in your Resilience Checklist, you've got the five principles, you were never alone. The universe always says yes. You are the producer, director, and actor in the story of your life. Choice is the most powerful tool you have. This too shall pass. And then, the 12 steps at the back, there's so much wisdom. Maybe this is an obvious question, but when you look back at what you went through, is it possible that Janine Shepherd would've had a fraction of this wisdom without that experience? It almost feels like you have Olympic level wisdom that came with an Olympic level crucible, if you will. Nobody wants to get wisdom that way, but it sure seems like... Is there any way that you could have had the depth of wisdom that you have now without what you went through? Hope there's a way to answer that question without seeming too arrogant. But I do believe you have wisdom. Let's just take it as written as the lawyers say, let's enter into evidence that Janine Shepherd has a lot of wisdom. Let's just make that assumption. You get the question.




Janine Shepherd:

Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I think we all have it. We all have an innate wisdom. It's just tapping into it. And I think that's what I work on every day is trying to understand the things in life that get in the way. It's like a dirty window. You just have to clean that window sometimes to see outside. And I think that we have so much stuff around us that gets in the way of really understanding who we are at the deepest level. And I'm a long-term meditator. To me, meditating changes our lives, because it gives us an opportunity to just quieten the mind and just to drop into something much, much deeper. And as long as we're scrolling on our phones and reading the news, it's just always about the outside. And to me, life is always about the inner journey.

And had I not had my accident, well, as I said, I can't even go there, because Gary, I was always going to have my accident. That was my destiny in this life. And it's a rich and meaningful life, and it is a blessing. And every single person that I've met along this way on this journey, that has shared my story, one thing I'll take from this is that everybody has something. Everybody has some crucible. And I know that, because I've stood and I've listened to so many stories. And I just think that's what connects us all.




Warwick Fairfax:

So I guess what I'm getting at is I'm not sure that you would've had the same level of wisdom that you do now without the accident. It's sort of like, it was sort of a catalyst, a turbocharge, maybe the wisdom was all there to be harnessed, but you still got to harness it. You still got to capture it, bring it in. You're like fishing. The fish are there. But I feel like maybe one of the greatest gifts about what you went through is the level of wisdom you have. It's hard... Obviously, there's no way of knowing what the alternative path would've been. You would've maybe different kind of wisdom. But one of the key gifts from my frame of reference in a crucible is the opportunity to have tremendous wisdom, tremendous learning that comes out of it. Does that kind of make some degree of sense?




Janine Shepherd:

Absolutely makes sense. And it's hard fought. You don't learn these things without having to go through the dark night of the soul. And I've been through many of those. I feel like my accident, which people know about, that was one thing. But I went through a marriage breakdown. I was a single mom for 10 years. I lost my home, moved to another country, with nothing behind me. I've had all these different sorts of challenges. And I think that's one thing about my story. And in my latest memoir, Defiant, I write about those different experiences. And in many ways, they were actually harder than my accident, because it involved more than just me.

Being a single mom to three kids, that was probably one of the most challenging experiences of my life. Feeling that my marriage had broken down, there was a sort of sense of guilt and failure around that. So all of these crucibles, these dark nights of the soul, nothing comes easily. And if it did, it wouldn't be worth having. If everything was just, "Hmm, okay, I've learned that," it just wouldn't have that same the potent sort of sense of meaning that it has when you've really experienced it and appreciated for what it is. All of those steps on the checklist, I look back on those, and I can see where they came from and how I learned those things and how I use them every day in my life.




Warwick Fairfax:

I feel like maybe the last word on this that occurs to me is coming back to that "choice" word, you made a choice in the phrases we used not to be defined by your worst day. You made a choice not to be defined by the crucible of the accident, of divorce, and being a single mom. Each one of those required choices. You made a choice. Not only would you not be defined by them, but you would seek to learn wisdom from them, seek to be grateful for them, and seek to see them as a gift. That all came with a choice. And after the choice came a lot of hard work.

But that, to me, is the key lesson point for listeners is we're, in some senses, sum of our choices, a choice to forgive, not necessarily condone, a choice to accept, a choice to see it as a gift, a choice to see that we're put on this earth for meaning and purpose, to serve others or serve some greater good, whatever that means for you. We're the sum of our choices, and that's kind of why you really teach, is make those choices. Take those 12 steps of acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, optimism, values, strengths, hope, meaning, humor, which I love, connection, mindfulness, gratitude. And so, you are really teaching people to make positive choices, to help use what they've been through to be grateful and to use it in service of others and a greater good. It's just really inspiring. So thank you for what you do. It's incredibly uplifting.




Janine Shepherd:

Well, I'm grateful to be given the opportunity. And it's funny, when you talk about choice, I don't know if you know the spiritual teacher, Carolyn Myss, and she talks about choice being our greatest power, because even whether you agree or not even greater than love, she said, because you've got to choose to love. So choice is very powerful. And for people out there that are struggling and feeling like they have no choice, that's also okay, because the world, the last few years, has been incredibly difficult and challenging. But even at my very lowest moments, I've always felt like I chose to come back to this body.

That was a choice. That was the ultimate choice. So I'm going to make it count. I'm going to find out why, and I'm going to create something of this life that, as difficult and challenging as it's been, it was a choice. And interestingly, I think, even though I remember clearly from my NDE, my near-death experience, and the choice to come back, we've all made that choice to be in this body. Warwick, you made the choice to be in this body you're in now. Gary, you've made the choice to be in the body you got now. So you just ask the question, "Okay, so now what?"




Gary Schneeberger:

What's great about that, you just built, Janine, a runway for me to ask this question. And it's appropriate that it's a runway, because...




Janine Shepherd:

I'm a pilot.




Gary Schneeberger:

There you go. So the part of the story that we've not gotten to, because this is so both inspirational and equipping, is, while you were in that bed, while you were in recovery, something happened, you saw something above you, and that changed the trajectory, one would say, could say, the flight path of your life. Talk about that a little bit.




Janine Shepherd:

Well, it did. That's when I decided, in a wheelchair, that, if I couldn't walk, I'd fly. And I was lifted up into an airplane, and everyone thought I was crazy. "Well, shouldn't be learning to walk?" And I went on and I became a pilot. I got my private license, my commercial license, which was crazy, because I'm actually a paraplegic, I'm a walking paraplegic. I became a flying instructor, an aerobatics flying instructor, commercial pilot. It was sort of crazy and unlikely. And flying is a great metaphor for life. My PhD title actually is, If I Can't Walk, I'll Fly. And obviously, it's physical, it's spiritual, it's metaphorical. For me, flight is the ultimate freedom. So it was perfect for me, because it's such a great spiritual metaphor about freedom. And flying really gave me my life back. Taught me a lot about, well, here I am, I'm a paraplegic, and I'm teaching people to fly upside down. I am not my body.

And I learned a lot about flying. One of the formulas that we teach people in flying, one of the first formulas, is attitude plus power equals performance. It's actually what flies an airplane from a 747 to a glider, it's a formula, mathematical formula, that doesn't fail. So I talk a lot about that in my presentations. I talk about attitude, because the attitude is with the picture of the airplane in relationship to the horizon. And I talk about our attitude, "What is our attitude to life?" Our attitude is, what I say, the story of me, built on beliefs and opinions and judgments that we've collected throughout our lives, that we don't realize how firmly we are stuck to those things, which are just things. It's not who we are. So once we get to the point where we can sort of unpack that suitcase and pull out those things and go, "Okay, well is this keeping me stuck? Is this helping or hindering me?"

And a lot of the time, when we are really struggling in life, we go back to our early childhood and our training, that has formed our attitude. And once we get to the point where we get to this sort of choiceless awareness, where we can observe things and look at things and look at them in a very objective way and be curious and go, "Hmm, where did that come from?" Then we can start to unpack it and create a new belief or a new mindset that serves us going forward, into a much healthier sense of who we are.




Gary Schneeberger:

That sounds you heard, listener, you've heard me say it before, but not many times with a pilot, and a pilot who flies upside down and teaches people how to fly upside down, that sounds you heard was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign, indicating that we're about to descend the plane of this conversation. But we're not there yet. Before we do that, Janine, I have a couple things I want to do with you. One, who was the friend that gave you the new nickname?




Janine Shepherd:

Oh, my friend, Jim gave me the nickname, Janini Linguini.




Gary Schneeberger:

All right. With apologies to Jim, I thought of a new nickname as you were talking. Because Janine the Machine was the old nickname. Based on what you've talked about, to help you offer people to hope you offer people, I'm going to think of you as Janine the Canteen, offering a cup of cold water to people who need a sip after they slip. That's the way I'm going to think about Janine Shepherd from this moment on.




Janine Shepherd:

That's cool. Everything rhymes.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, there you go. That's the old writer in me. Before we turn it back over to Warwick and the plane is on the ground, I would be remiss if I did not let you talk about where listeners can find out more about you and the services you offer, and especially this Resilience Checklist that Warwick's been talking about. In fact, what you're going to talk about, at your website, there's also a resilience quiz that you can take for free, which I did, and I was happy to find out I'm a Weeble when I took that quiz.




Janine Shepherd:

Oh, good.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yes. So where can people find out more about Janine Shepherd online?




Janine Shepherd:

Well, I love being a Weeble. My girlfriend told me "Weebles wobble, but they never fall down."




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, indeed.




Janine Shepherd:

So good for being a Weeble. Well, they can go to my website, janineshepherd.com. They can do the free resilience test. They can follow me on LinkedIn, on Instagram, Janine_Shepherd, I think it is on Instagram. Look, I don't do Twitter very much to be honest. But really, Instagram, LinkedIn, website. And I would say, go and look at my TED Talk. Just put in Janine Shepherd TED. And that'll give people a good idea of my story and what I do.




Gary Schneeberger:

And because my last name is Schneeberger, which no one can spell or pronounce, because Warwick has a name that has a silent W in the middle, how do they spell Shepherd? Because there are a couple ways. So when they're doing the search, how do they spell your last name?




Janine Shepherd:

That's a good question, because people always spell it incorrectly.




Gary Schneeberger:

That's right.




Janine Shepherd:

So Janine, J-A-N-I-N-E, and Shepherd is S-H-E-P-H-E-R-D. And Instagram is Janine_Shepherd, LinkedIn Janine Shepherd, Twitter Janine Shepherd, website. And stay tuned. We've got lots of exciting things happening. We are, at the moment, actually about to sign off on a screenplay for my latest book, Defiant. We have a wonderful female crew working on the screenplay, director, Claire McCarthy, who's one of the top female directors in the world. So stay tuned for the movie of Defiant. I'll let you guys know.




Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick, take it away.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, thank you, Janine. I really appreciate you being here. Kind of one question that we often end on is, Beyond the Crucible, we have many listeners, and there could be some out there, who, today, might be their worst day, maybe some terrible crucible's happened to them and they're not seeing much hope. As one recent podcast guest said, "The bottom of the pit was so deep he couldn't see the bottom. There was an endless bottom that could only get worse, no light, just worse," which is an attitude, when he was at the bottom of the pit. So for those that may be today, may not be a great day, maybe their worst day, what's a word of hope you would offer somebody in that situation?




Janine Shepherd:

I know there's going to be a lot of people out there that are struggling right now, and what's really important is to be compassionate with yourself. When I have a bad day, and I still have bad days, I always have a little go-to list of things that I enjoy, that are a part of practicing self-compassion, whether it's being out in nature, listening to music, having a hot bath, being with friends, do those things. If you're having a bad day, do those things that nurture you, your sense of who you are. And of course, my go-to exercise, which is gratitude, and we know that it does change our brains. We also know, from neuroscience, that you don't actually have to find anything.

If you think, "Oh, there's nothing to be grateful for," just asking the question, "What am I grateful for?" starts the change. If you can do that for even every night or morning, get up in the morning and finish your day with "What am I grateful for?" And make it tangible. Think of the things, like, "Well, today, I called a friend and had a really good conversation. There was some agency in that, because I had to make that decision and that choice to pick up the phone." Write this down, write these things down, keep track of it, journal, keep your journal for 21 days, and then, just, at the end of that time, really check in and say, "Well, how am I now?" There's always something. I'm a firm belief that there are tools out there that we can use that can help us and give us hope, even on our darkest days.




Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on the subject's been spoken, and of course, Janine Shepherd's going to land the plane perfectly. She just did. So until the next time we're together, listeners, please remember this, you've heard it in this conversation, oh my goodness, we understand that your crucible experiences are tough. We understand how painful they are. But we also understand that, if you learn the lessons of them, if you realize, as Janine talked about, in a way that was revelatory to Warwick and me, if you think about them in a way that says, "This is how your life was meant to be. This is where your destiny was set," if you think about it that way, if you learn the lessons of the crucible, if you follow some of the things on Janine's Resilience Checklist, it's not the worst day of your life, your pit, you can come out of, and you can end up in the most rewarding spot in your life, where Janine's ended up, where Warwick's ended up. And that is a life of significance.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond the Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what's been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start? Our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible and to chart a course forward. See you next week.

A violent altercation in which her enraged husband choked her was the last straw for Victoria McCooey. It left her 6-year-old son, who was in the room at the time, thinking she had been killed. But it also started her down a path of self-discovery and self-care.

On this week’s episode, McCooey tells Warwick in detail the toll that being married to a narcissist had on her identity… as his controlling ways left her feeling unworthy and ashamed. But she also describes how she fought her way back to not only find her value, but to help other abused women find theirs — first through the same nonprofit that aided her and now as a narcissist divorce coach.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.




Victoria McCooey:

My husband comes down and wants to go get bagels. He's decided that's important he's going to get bagels. So he goes to get the key to the car and it's not there. So he knows immediately that I've taken it because he's done this to me so many times, and that this is the day. This is like the pimple popped this day. He ransacked the house. He'd done this before, thrown everything everywhere, dumped out my bag looking for the keys, stomped on my cellphone and broke it, took my wallet, breaking things in half. So at one point I go. He has my wallet. I go to grab my wallet back, and now we're in this tug of war with the wallet, and I came to my senses. It was like, "I'm engaging in this crazy lunatic's behavior."

So I let go, which caused him to fall back and I think ... I'm walking away. We were in the kitchen. I'm walking away. I think that just sent him over the edge that I had made him fall and he lost his temper and he came up from behind. I don't even see it happening because I'm walking away, and he grabbed me by the throat and pinned me up against the wall and I blacked out.




Gary Schneeberger:

That violent altercation was just one example, but the last example of the abuse our guest this week, Victoria McCooey, endured in her marriage to her first husband. It left her six-year-old son who was in the room at the time thinking she had been killed, but it also started her down a path of self-discovery and self-care.

Hi. I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. On this week's episode, McCooey tells Warwick in detail the toll that being married to a narcissist had on her identity as his controlling ways left her feeling unworthy and ashamed, but she also describes how she fought her way back to not only find her value, but to help other abused women find theirs, first through the same nonprofit that aided her, and now as a narcissist divorce coach. She teaches her clients the Reclaim Your Power System she created first for herself to help them find the same freedom she's living today.




Warwick Fairfax:

Victoria, thank you so much for being on our podcast. I love what you do as a narcissist divorce coach and speaker. I love the program you have, Reclaim Your Power System. What a great name. We have all sorts of crucibles that we discuss with guests, but this whole being married to a narcissist, it seems like it's an epidemic. I can't tell you how many friends we have, women that my wife knows who've been married to narcissists. It's almost like it's this disease that's just spreading. It's just crazy. I've had personal experience in my family with people who've been married to narcissist and some personal experience at some level myself having experienced it from somebody else. So there's a lot of it out there, but before we get into what you do in your marriage, what was life like for you growing up? What was your family life pre-marriage, pre-trauma, pre-crucible?




Victoria McCooey:

People usually ask for that, but it's very telling because that was my normal. My parents had a very dysfunctional marriage. There was a lot of control and abusive behavior, and that was my comfort zone. They say you marry your father. I very much married my father.




Warwick Fairfax:

Talk a bit more about that because it just sounds so common, and it's got to be hard for people to understand. This is obviously very different, but it seems like kids that were abused growing up so often abuse their kids, and I can't at all understand that. You would think the last thing you would want to do is-




Victoria McCooey:

They would want to be the opposite.




Warwick Fairfax:

I don't pretend to understand. So just talk about a little bit more about-




Victoria McCooey:

Right. Well, it wasn't so much abuse of the children as abuse of the whole family dynamic. I'm old. I grew up in the '60s, so nobody knew about this. We certainly didn't talk about it. There was no social media or any mainstream information about this. People were private. You didn't talk about your dirty laundry. I had to assume because I didn't have anything to tell me otherwise that this is what everybody's family looked like. I had no idea that mine was so dysfunctional, but there was always yelling, screaming, throwing, not knowing if or when dad was coming home. Just so much dysfunction, so much chaos, so much anxiety.

This is really off the path, but I was diagnosed with a very rare cancer when I was 18 and it's gone. I'm fine. It was a tumor, it was removed. I was very, very lucky. It was a very rare type of thing, but I have to believe that it was the stress and the anxiety of living in that situation my entire life because our bodies aren't built to withstand that level of stress.

So as the oldest of two children, I was completely unwanted. My parents were forced to marry because that's what you ... Oh, my gosh. I've never said this on any podcast before. I hope my mother's not ever going to watch this because she's a very proper Southern woman, but she became pregnant when she was 20 years old and they got married and had a baby, and that was me. It was never what they wanted. My father was a child. He was still in college. I was a burden. I was unwanted. It caused so much ... They both thought their lives were ruined because of me. So this enormous amount of anxiety and stress of this child being burdened with feeling like they were never enough, never good enough, could never gain their approval, I honestly believe that that stress caused this crazy, unique cancer to form.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's about as awful experience as I can imagine to grow up as a child feeling like, "My parents don't want me. It wasn't an intentional relationship, it just happened, and I'm a burden, I'm in the way. Maybe I shouldn't exist," because how can you have any decent sense of self? It's going to destroy your self-esteem, your personhood. It almost feels like worse than cancer. What could be worse than cancer, but it feels cancer of a different kind, if you will.




Victoria McCooey:

I am not the only person to have this experience. How many people marry because of this circumstance, and especially way back then? So I'm not alone here. There are millions of me, people who never felt loved or welcomed in their household. So yeah, and these are the women like me that grow up with very low self-esteem. I had to figure out how to people please. It was very different from my two parents. For my father, it was to stay away from him. That was how I could exist with him. For my mother, she was so miserable. She was in this horrible marriage, forced into it, never wanted to be there. She was in her own hell. The way I got affection or attention from her was to entertain her. So I'm entertaining my mother, trying to make her laugh all the time so I get some approval and staying away from the other parent because that's how I could get approval from him.




Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about school, college. What did you enjoy doing? Did you enjoy academics, sports, the arts? What was it like for you?




Victoria McCooey:

I was an overachiever, and I talk about this freely because all of the people who are attracted to my business, to my coaching are just like me. So we are a very large niche. We are the people who end up in these relationships. As accomplished as I am, I was an overachiever, I made straight As, I got into the best college, I did everything right, but I think it was my coping mechanism. I needed to get away from my parents, so I retreated into my room and I studied just because there wasn't much else I could do without getting in the way.

That paid off for me in that I became highly educated. I moved away as soon as I could. I went away to college. Then I moved far away. I grew up in the south. I moved to New York for a job and stayed there. Ended up marrying there. So I was athletic, I was on sports teams. Whatever I pursued, I was very competitive. I had to be the best at it.




Warwick Fairfax:

So on the surface, you go to a good college, good job in New York, everything is going great. How did you meet your first husband? How did that all happen?




Victoria McCooey:

In an airport. It was a very chance meeting. We had nothing in common. There was no reason for us to have ever been in the same place at the same time. He was very charming and very handsome and very exciting. He swept me off my feet, wanted to do all kinds of amazing things. We skied, we traveled, we sailed. We had this big life. We did ... Things were very, very good for a long time, but the whole time I thought, "Oh, my gosh, he's going to figure out that I'm not good enough." So I was people pleasing throughout that entire phase.

There were signs. There were certainly red flags that I chose to ignore because I was so lucky, I thought, to be in this relationship, so I certainly am just going to look the other way, but looking back, the real change happened as soon as I had our first child. We were together. We dated for two or two and a half years, and then we got married and I got pregnant immediately, literally, honeymoon baby. So nine months later, we have our first child. That was when the mask fell. I'm guessing it was because I was in. There was no escaping. I was tied to him forever now.




Warwick Fairfax:

So up until you were pregnant, you said there might have been some little signs, but it sounds like he was a good-looking guy. He's probably accomplished, charismatic. Were you thinking, "Gosh, I'm pretty lucky. I got a good catch"?




Victoria McCooey:

I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's amazing. So it didn't seem obvious. Sometimes, I don't know, it's a silly way to put it, but villains, if that's the right or wrong word, they don't always come in a black cape, "Hey, I'm a villain. Watch out." They can be very charming. It's not that obvious always, if you will.




Victoria McCooey:

Yeah, and I noticed, even back then I was noticing that my friends, people I would introduce him to, either loved him or hated him. There was no middle ground. If they bought into his narrative of who he was, then he charmed them, but if there was any doubt, if they were suspicious of him at all, he turned on them immediately and he was awful to them.




Warwick Fairfax:

That was one red flag when he is awful to some of your friends. It's like, "What's that about?" but did you not see the signs that was like, "I feel so bad about myself. I'm lucky to get anyone halfway decent," kind of thing?




Victoria McCooey:

Exactly. I really thought he was the best thing I could ever have hoped for, that that was way out of my pay grade, I really thought, and he perpetuated that like I was so lucky to have him narrative. I was just always walking on eggshells trying to be perfect, trying to do the right thing, trying to check all of his boxes, and I wanted so badly for him not to leave me. So yeah, I looked away, but that is a product of that low self-esteem and the lack of confidence and the lack of self-worth. I see this as a pattern across the board with all of the people I work with.




Warwick Fairfax:

It seems like you were almost reliving your childhood in a sense. You were thinking, "Mom, dad, I want to be the perfect daughter, the perfect person," make your mom laugh, entertain her, "How can I entertain boyfriend, fiance, husband?" as you moved on in the relationship because that's how you grew up with. So were just reliving the same cycle, if you will. Does that make sense?




Victoria McCooey:

You're right. Absolutely. Then when it became our marriage, it was, "Well, you need to do this. You need to do this. Well, in order to prove yourself to him, you need to do this," and the asks became larger and larger and more difficult and more illegal, and it went off the rails.




Warwick Fairfax:

A bit like that terrible aphorism, like a lobster boiling, it doesn't happen overnight. It's one step, one step, one step and, "I've got to please him because he might leave me and it's a miracle anybody would have me. He's good-looking. He's charming. Okay, he has his bad days, but I'm so fortunate to have him," and the self delusion cycle just keeps going because when humans are broken and damaged as we all are to a degree, it just stops a smart person thinking straight, if that makes sense.




Victoria McCooey:

You're so good. This is the quickest anyone has gotten to the root of this.




Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. Yeah, as we said off air, I grew up ... As listeners know very well, I grew up in a very wealthy family business in Australia, and power and money produce a lot of dysfunction. So I've had family members in relationship with narcissists. I've had some degree of, a lot, I guess, of personal experience myself. I guess because I have some experience with ... I'm no expert, but I have some personal knowledge, put it that way, maybe that's why. Sorry.




Victoria McCooey:

It does. It's a textbook. It makes perfect sense. You can totally ... I really feel vindicated when you said about the lobster. That is exactly what it's like. Back then, I was so ashamed of where it had gotten to that I was too embarrassed to confide in anyone. It's like, "How could someone as smart as I am allow myself to get into this situation?"




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, it's as simple as saying you were hurt and damaged as a child and that's why. It's that simple. It's not your fault. You put anybody in your situation, 99% of people are going to really struggle. It's just it's not your fault. Does that make sense?




Victoria McCooey:

It does to me now, but when you don't see it, when you're in it in the forest, you can't see the trees, right? It was just humiliating. I remember being at ... This is when I'm going to cry, being at a parade at this local little town we lived in, and my college roommate was there. She didn't live there. I guess she was visiting. It was like a resort town. I saw her in the crowd far away, and I went the other way. I went away from her. I haven't seen her in 10 years because I was too ashamed.




Gary Schneeberger:

I'll jump in at this point and say I'm part of the team too. I know people who I'm close to who have experienced some of the things that you coach about, Victoria. One of the things that I've heard from some of them is on that point that you mentioned of people close to you, the narcissist doesn't interact well with them. They then come to the woman share some things about that trying to defend their loved one, and that is not usually met with acceptance. That's not usually met with ... It doesn't necessarily cause problems in the relationship per se or really bombastic ones.

I remember one woman I'm close to saying that at some point her mom kept coming to her and saying, "This isn't right. That's not right. You shouldn't put up with that. You shouldn't have to put up with that." Eventually, her mother met with her rebuffs just finally said, "Okay. I'm done talking," not in an angry way but, "I'm going to let you be." Is that a common experience? I would think it is.




Victoria McCooey:

Yes, it absolutely is, but more importantly, I think, is that it's really hard for the victim here to verbalize what it is that's happening because it happened insidiously over so much time. There wasn't a day when it just started. It just snowballed in such a slow way that you can't really put your finger on what the problem is.




Gary Schneeberger:

Right, and that's the insidiousness of it going back to the lobster in the pot, right? If you ask the lobster in the pot on Tuesday, "Are you hot? Are you being boiled?" he's going to go, "No. I don't even know that it's hot in here," but over the course-




Victoria McCooey:

"No, it feels warm and comfortable."




Gary Schneeberger:

Right. Exactly. Exactly, but wait two years, three years, four years, the lobster's going to have a different point of view as you indeed had a different point of view and your clients do as well.




Victoria McCooey:

I think the great thing is that because I lived this, I didn't study it, I lived it, I lived it, then I studied it, and then I understood the dynamics of it. Now, I have a unique position to help people who don't see just like I didn't see where they are and what's going on.




Warwick Fairfax:

So I want to get to that, but just so that listeners get, I guess, the full lock of the story. So-




Victoria McCooey:

You're going to make me do this more?




Warwick Fairfax:

I'm sorry, but it'll help the listener, I think, understand, I'm afraid, what's going on and then how you cope with that. So it felt like pretty good in a sense. He was charming, handsome, there were red flags, then you became pregnant. So what happened in the months and years after that when those warning signs became not in the peripheral vision, it was front and center?




Victoria McCooey:

So he became very, very cautious about who saw what was going on inside our house. So now, I wasn't allowed ... Over time, it became not allowed to have anyone over, not to allow anyone in. The requests were always about money. So I continued to have babies. I had a plan. I wanted lots and lots of kids, which I do. I had three children in three and a half years. So boom, boom, boom. I thought I was old. Of course now, I know it wasn't, but when we got married, I was 30. So I was like, "I got to get going." So boom, boom, boom, three babies. I was in a fog. I had worked at that point as a freelance writer. So if I didn't work, I didn't make money. There was no maternity leave. I was working for myself.

So when I wasn't able to work during the child birthing part, I didn't have income, but I would take projects in between as I could, but certainly, my income drastically reduced, but it was never a problem because I was led to belief that he made lots of money and there was never a money problem.

Without getting into too much detail, he owned real estate, he owned properties. So he collected rent from these properties. It was all very gray, not transparent, didn't really let me into what was going on. So while I wasn't earning, he paid everything, controlled all the money, and if I had a small project, it was like a drop in the bucket compared to what he was paying for. So he would say, "Oh, let me have that." I'll just put it toward happily. I'm not really contributing much.

Once that happened when all of my paychecks went directly to him, I could never undo that again. That set the precedent. So now, I was expected to always give him my paychecks, which continued because his reasoning was, "I'm handling everything. I'm juggling things. Only one person can be in charge here. I just need you to let me figure out what to do with the money."

Then it became his business upside down. It was a family business, a lot of family discord, all kinds of commotion. His buildings going into receivership, so he wasn't collecting rents. It was like a whole catastrophe. So what I noticed now is whenever I would push back, there would be a drama.

So I don't know how much of it is true, but whenever I would say, "Well, I'm earning money. I want to ..." Oh, but now there's drama. Now, something would erupt. That's when he started pressuring me to sign for lines of credit or loans and I would say, "I can't afford this," and he would say, "Well, this is what the family needs you to do because my credit is bad and yours is perfect. So this is what the family needs. You're not working. This is what you owe us, owe the family to do this. You don't understand. I owe millions of dollars in real estate. This is a drop in the bucket."

Then if I pushed back harder, it was, "You're stupid. You don't understand business. You're not a risk-taker. You'll never be successful. You're just a pawn. You're just someone who works for someone else. You're a nerd. You're too scared of everything," whatever he could think of. So of course, I would end up doing it, and then the next one would come and I would try harder not to do it. The more I pushed back, the worse the abuse became.




Warwick Fairfax:

It sounds like there was emotional abuse I'm assuming beyond just finances, just in general. Maybe you make the dinner, quote, unquote, "wrong" or you came home five minutes late or silly, stupid stuff. I'm guessing he'd erupt about that. Was he physically abusive too? How bad did all this stuff get?




Victoria McCooey:

He was never physically abusive until the very end, and that was when that was the line, and that was when I left.




Warwick Fairfax:

So what happened?




Victoria McCooey:

So this is a long story. I'm glad we don't have that ... I'm going to try to make it short.




Warwick Fairfax:

Sure.




Victoria McCooey:

This went on now for, I don't know, six, seven years of that financial abuse mostly, and honestly, the other abuses weren't as prevalent. Yes, name calling, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, but he didn't nitpick on things like that. I see a lot of my clients suffering from ... It wasn't that ... Yes, "Oh, you're fat," or, "You look fat in that," or physical things like that, but otherwise, nothing like some of my clients who are really struggling have.

It started when I ... The debt, the debt was so big. The debt became bigger and bigger. I could never pay this off. It just was so astronomical. Then I found out that we owed a lot of back taxes for years because his business was very difficult to account, do accounting for. It was buildings and depreciation and amortization and all these properties. He had an accountant that he had always worked with that I never met. All I was was I got some 1099s. I was all so transparent. I would just get my little receipts together, add my 1099s and go here and he would take it to the accountant and then the taxes would come back this thick and he goes, "Sign here," and I would sign because I can't figure out what is going on with his buildings.

So every year, that would happen, and it turns out those taxes were never filed. So there was no way for me to know. I didn't know. They weren't being filed. So we owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. I had no idea. I'm on the hook for it as much as he is. I didn't file. The straw that broke the camel's back though was, like I said, we had three little children, all boys. I filed a claim for one of my kids, whatever happened, doctors, whatever, and it came back and they said, "Oh, you no longer have this insurance. This policy hasn't been in effect for six months." I was like, "What are you talking about?"

So this was a health insurance policy that I had had from a previous job and I was grandfathered into this very sweet deal. They didn't offer it anymore. They had been very clear that if I canceled it, I could never have it back. So the payments came monthly automatically out of an account, his account that I never saw. When I confronted him, he said, "Oh, I needed the money for something else."

I'm like, "There's nothing else that's more important than this," and he's like, "Oh, you're a nerd. You don't understand. This is for losers."

I said, "What if something happened?" and you know I had that cancer, and I was like, "I'm the poster child for you never know what could happen. If my parents hadn't had health insurance, I would be dead. So this is non-negotiable to me."

He said, "If something happened, I would just sell a building." That was always his answer, "I would just sell a building."

So I said, "I'm not taking no for an answer. We're getting health insurance."

So he said, "Well, you figure out how to get it and then let me know how much it is."

So I do all the research. I figure out I have to join an association and pay for the dues and then I can ... All this stuff. So I come to him with all of the information for the best case scenario. It's going to be way more than we were paying and not as good coverage and everything, but this is the best I can do.

He goes, "Okay. We can do that."

I'm like, "Great. So give me the money so I can pay these things."

"Well," he goes, "I can't do it this month, but ask me again next month."

So I go, "Okay." So I come back the next month, "Can't do it this month, maybe the next month." So I go, "Okay. He's never going to give me the money to pay for the insurance."

Also, if I went to the grocery store ... I'm earning six figures. I'm working from home, taking care of three kids and earning a decent amount of money and I don't have any access to any of it. So if I want to go to the grocery store, I have to make a list of what I'm going to buy, tell him exactly how much each item costs, and then he'll go through it and he'll decide, he'll veto things he doesn't think we need, and then he'll give me that exact amount, and I go to the store with three kids in tow because he was never available for what he called babysitting. They were his kids too.

So I'm at the store with all the kids, they're throwing everything into the bag and having to take it out. Now I see something that wasn't on the list that I really need that I forgot about. So now I have to recalculate what can I get rid of because I don't have a credit card, I don't have a check. I have nothing else except the exact amount he's given me. So the stress of going grocery shopping, right?

We live in this small, tiny little resort town. I know everybody in the store. I get to the counter, I'm shaking because I'm scared I added wrong in my head while I'm wrangling three little boys and I'm going to have gone over and I'm going to be humiliated. This was my ... Now I know he had to do that to me to keep me so off balance that I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't figure out the finances. I couldn't figure out what was going on with his business. I couldn't leave. I was just trying to get through the day.




Warwick Fairfax:

This all culminated in a physical incident that caused you to say, "Enough."




Victoria McCooey:

So I decide I've got to figure this out because this isn't working. I'm going to have to steal my money from him. I actually went to a therapist. Well, I went to a doctor who told me that ... I had headaches, I had backaches. It manifests in all these ways. He said, "I think you need to see a therapist, so you need an antidepressant, but I can't give it to you unless you do it with this therapist that we work with." So I start going to this therapist too, I don't think really helped me, but at least the doctor was able to prescribe this antidepressant for this little period of time I'm going through.

So I get a little bit more clearheaded from that, and I decide that I'm going to steal the next check that comes. It was sizeable. I remember it was 6,000 something dollars. That was a lot of money, and I could get the health insurance with that. I could do everything with that, and he knew it was coming. So I had to tell him that the project had been postponed because he knew exactly when my money was coming. So I had to lie, which I'm not good at.

Then I had to live this double life and go ... This is another funny story. Go to the post office box to get the mail every day before he could to see if it had come. The reason we had to use a post office box was because he took the numbers off of our house and remove the mailbox because that way, the process servers had a harder time finding him. All day, every day there were process servers. We couldn't answer the door. We couldn't answer the phone. He was running from everyone. If you did answer the door, we had to lie and say he wasn't there. The stress of all this is crazy.

I get the check. I'm shaking like a leaf, but it's my money. I'm shaking like a leaf because I'm stealing it. I go and I deposit it into another account at a new bank he doesn't know about. Now, these are the olden days. I had to wait for it to clear. What I don't know because I had no idea, and this is how I can help my clients now, you just don't think about these things, but I gave them my address and they sent a letter saying, "Oh, here's the schedule of when your funds will be available," and he gets this. I was so close, so close.

He goes into a rage, ransacks the house, tells me, "You want control of the money? Here, you take all the bills," and he starts throwing all these things at me. "I'm never giving you another penny. I'm never ..." Just the drama, drama, drama, drama. So I try to stay calm. I go the distance. Well, the check clears, but then the money in the account is frozen because he's taken out a cellphone in my name that I don't even know about and not paid it. So there's a lien against my Social Security number that I don't even know that this is happening, and he's telling it's my fault because I'm so stupid, "See, you lost all that money because you're so stupid."

So that was pretty much ... This is all coming to a head. Then this one night, I was coming back ... I used to have to travel into New York City on occasion once or twice a week, sometimes not at all for meetings or whatever. So I'm coming back and it was late. He wouldn't pick me up from the train. I was being punished. I had to walk home. It was raining. I didn't have an umbrella. Such a sob story. That night I'm like, "I'm never doing this again. I'm never doing this again." The car, the one car that we had because the second one had been repossessed, which is another story that he sent me out of the middle of the night to deal with the repo man, the car that we did have was in my name, I paid the bills, I paid for the gas, I paid for everything, and I wasn't allowed to use it though. He used it. If I needed to go somewhere, I had to use a taxi, borrow a car, use a bike, get the kids around another way.

So I said, "I'm never doing that again. I am taking the key." There was only one key. So I hid the key and he had hidden keys for me many, many times before, but that night, I hid the key and I'm like, "I'm using my car tomorrow. That's it. I'm drawing the line." So he gets up in the morning. I'm sitting there. It's 8:00 in the morning. I'm doing homework with my littlest one because, of course, I was working the night before and didn't get home until after bedtime and nothing had gotten done. So I'm trying to help him.

My husband comes down and wants to go get bagels. He's decided that's important he's going to get bagels. So he goes to get the key to the car and it's not there. So he knows immediately that I've taken it because he's done this to me so many times, and that this is the day. This is like the pimple popped this day. He ransacked the house. He'd done this before, thrown everything everywhere, dumped out my bag looking for the keys, stomped on my cellphone and broke it, took my wallet, breaking things in half.

So at one point I go, he has my wallet, I go to grab my wallet back, and now we're in this tug of war with the wallet and I came to my senses. It was like, "I'm engaging in this crazy lunatic's behavior." So I let go, which caused him to fall back, and I'm walking away. We were in the kitchen. I'm walking away. I think that just sent him over the edge that I had made him fall and he lost his temper and he came up from behind. I don't even see it happening because I'm walking away. He grabbed me by the throat and pinned me up against a wall, and I blacked out.

Our youngest son was standing right there. He was six at the time. He thought I was dead. I think my husband thought I was dead too for a second. When I came to, we were just eye-to-eye because he let go, and I came to first just face to face like that, and I just calmly walked to the phone and I started dialing for the police. He started crying and the tears. He's like, "Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't call," and he said, "You'll ruin everything," I'll ruin everything."




Warwick Fairfax:

You're probably thinking, "Everything's ruined already. What are you talking about?"




Victoria McCooey:

He can't take any responsibility, no accountability, I was about to ruin everything because I was calling the police.




Warwick Fairfax:

So that was the day that your life changed. So talk about how you were able to move on from that and care for other women because it felt like you were in this, I don't know what, poisonous soup or whatever, this prison with barbwire and guards and couldn't get out, and somehow maybe you dug a tunnel, somehow you got out, somehow you escaped.




Victoria McCooey:

It was so hard. You have that Stockholm syndrome thing. You feel responsible for the abuser and you feel guilty. I went through all of that that people go through. So many times I almost backed down, but thank goodness at that point by then I told my mother what was going on and she was very supportive. She came right away and stayed with me. I was able to get a restraining order while he was ... This is another typical, really highlights where his mind was ... When the police came, I didn't know, but they saw the hand print around my throat. So when they walked in, they were like, "What's going on?" The first thing out of his mouth was, "My wife is crazy. She's on medication."

So they separate us and I can see that he's being asked what happened. I guess they told him they saw the hand print and he said, "Yeah, well, I was pushing her because she was attacking me." He went to reenact it on the policeman and he put his hand on the policeman's throat and then he reached for his gun and he said, "Don't ever touch a police officer," and then he said again, "I'm just trying to show you what I did," and he did it again. They just put handcuffs on him and took him at that point.

So the one who was with me said, "You need to go right away and get a restraining order because they're going to let him right out because it's a first offense and he'll come right back here and he'll kill you. So go get your kids in school and then go get a restraining order." I remember even at that point I said, "I can't." They wanted me to sign the police report. I said, "I can't sign it. He'll kill me. He'll kill me if I do that." So it didn't matter. They had to make the arrest because they saw the evidence of domestic violence.

So he was arrested, but during his arraignment, the district attorney said, "How much money can he get his hands on?" I was like, "None. None," and they were like, "Okay." So they asked for a bail to be sent at $5,000, and he was so arrogant and unhinged to the judge. The judge raised his bail to 50,000.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's pretty stupid, I got to say.




Victoria McCooey:

Yeah. So I have such a debt of gratitude to this agency called the Coalition Against Domestic Violence here in New York. It's all over the country. It's called different things though, but here it's called the Coalition Against Domestic Violence. So when I went to that court house in that small town, they had an outpost there, and as soon as I said I wanted to get a restraining order against my husband, they were called up, they came swooping in and they guided me through the whole process. They told me things like, "You have to go get temporary custody of your children because as soon as he gets out, he's going to try to take them," all these, which is what I do now. I'm doing what they did for me for my clients, but they were so helpful.

So they guided me through the process. It was very long and very hard. Divorce is hard, but divorcing a narcissist is in a category all by itself. It was a long time ago so laws were different. People didn't know about this as much. He was able to manipulate the system so much more than somebody could do now, but it was a long hard battle. Our divorce wasn't final for six years.




Warwick Fairfax:

It took six years from that night when he could have killed you till the divorce.




Victoria McCooey:

I almost lost custody. I almost lost custody of my children.




Warwick Fairfax:

Because he was-




Victoria McCooey:

Because they said, "They're boys and they need their father."




Warwick Fairfax:

Well, not this kind of father. What kind of role model is this for ... The last role model you need for your boys.




Victoria McCooey:

Right, but on the outside, the community loved him. He was the soccer coach and the lacrosse coach and he did all this wonderful stuff, but it was all for his ego. He was like the athlete and everyone thought he was so terrific. So he was able to convince them that I was crazy, I was the problem, I was unhinged. At that point in my life, I had been compromised, and this is horrible. Part of this is that these women, typically women, are abused and they're compromised and they're at their lowest point and they are not presenting in a good way because they haven't had a chance to heal. This is when they have to persuade a court that they're the better parent.




Warwick Fairfax:

Right, and they don't have that capacity at that point. So how did you find a way to heal and use that to heal others because you had a lifetime of, well, in some ways abuse of damaged self-esteem? It's like, how do you grow a rainforest in a desert? It feels like impossible. It feels like it'll take hundreds of years of a positive climate change if that's possible. It felt like almost climbing Mount Everest to have a sense of self-esteem. If you don't have any sense of self-esteem yourself, how in the world can you have enough capacity to help anybody else? It's like when you're in a plane, you got to breathe oxygen before you can stick it on your kids. So how did you manage to come back and have enough self-esteem to care for others?




Victoria McCooey:

It took a really long time for me to heal because I didn't know about the resources. It was a different time. Things weren't available like they are today. I was just still trying to get through the day, struggling to raise these three kids with a person who's not co-parenting but counter-parenting, trying to sabotage everything I tried to do. The divorce took six years, but we were still in and out of court for another nine years after that because he was trying to change the child support commitment constantly or change custody constantly or I was having to go chase him down for child support constantly. So we were always in court. I was in court for 15 or 16 years nonstop. So I couldn't heal until really that was over.

Then I went on a journey, and then I really just decided that I wanted to do all the things that I had never had a chance to do before. My children were in a good place. He was out of our lives. I was remarried. I had a wonderful new husband and stepdaughters and everything was falling into place. I just started consuming so much information about transformation, about healing, about spiritual journeys.

I did it all. I did everything. I had a job at that point where I was commuting in and out of the city. So at one point, I actually moved out of our bedroom, my new husband's and my bedroom because I was up all night. I was listening to things, I was writing journals, I was reading, and I didn't want to keep him up anymore. So for two or three months, I just did anything I could get my hands on until I found the things that really worked. I crafted this process for me. It wasn't to start a business, it was doing it for me. I had this huge metamorphosis. I became a stronger, wiser, more capable, confident person. It didn't happen overnight. It took a long time.

That was when I started doing work for the Coalition Against Domestic Violence. So I wanted to give back. So I had been talking on stages for them, telling my story, showing teacher groups or PTA meet groups or whatever I was a victim of domestic violence, "It's not always who you think it's going to be. It could be anybody here," to open their minds to that, and that was great, but I told them I really want to be in the trenches. I want to help victims.

So there was this program where they trained people who had a social work background to go to the hospital when somebody presented with a domestic violence incident, and I begged them to let me do it and they said I didn't have the background, I would have to go get all this certification. So finally, I bugged them enough they let me do it for years. I bugged them. So I finally was able to go into this training and it was a year long training. So this was during my whole new transformational period.

I was allowed to finally go to the hospital to coach victims who presented from a domestic violence incident and help open their minds to how they might be able to leave or that they might not want to stay. Some of them didn't think they could leave. Most of them don't think they can leave. So telling them about resources available, but also changing their mindset.




Gary Schneeberger:

You have described in this conversation what it felt like, in arduous detail sometimes, what it felt like to be manipulated, controlled, the toll that took on you both as you were growing up and in your marriage. You've pivoted now. You've transformed to use your word where you are helping people who have experienced the same thing. We have heard you talk about what it felt like to be on the other side of that transformation. Talk a little bit about when you got that chance, when you counseled your first woman, when she got it, when she realized she could leave, she could survive if she did. How did that transform your heart? How did that feel when you received that gift?




Victoria McCooey:

The first time that happened and the first few times was in the hospital when I was doing this volunteer work, where I had people often see a light bulb go off in them, that there's somebody who understands. It's so specific, this abuse, and so insidious, like we said, that you can't really describe it. So for them to be able to hear from a person in the hospital that, "I know. I was on the receiving end of that. I get it. I know how you got here. I know what that feels like. I know you're ashamed and you don't need to be. It's not your fault," so the connection I was able to make was everything. It wasn't just some nurse or some person who didn't really ... I was a victim too, and they could really open up to me and talk to me and relax about telling me these specific things. They didn't feel judged. They didn't feel ashamed. I was able to be totally vulnerable, which feels good when you're opening yourself up so somebody else can heal.




Warwick Fairfax:

So as you were helping that first woman and women afterwards, did you feel that there was almost drops of healing in you that as you use your pain to help others? I sometimes use the phrase drops of grace. Did you feel that didn't make all the pain disappear, but it felt a little better that day?




Victoria McCooey:

Absolutely because when I start telling them what happened to me, they were like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that happened to you." I'm like, "I'm not." I'm not sorry at all because look at the gift it gave me. It gave me a purpose. It gave me a reason to be here. It gave me the ability to help on a level that almost nobody else can. How awesome for me? So during this, I would say year long process of me just holding up in that office sleeping, well, not sleeping, being up all night going to work every day, I was like, "Okay." I was on call because you could be on call whenever. I was on call all weekend, every weekend and some nights during the week even. So I'm in the hospital or reading or doing whatever nonstop and I'm going to this job that is not lighting me up anymore, my writing job. This is not for me anymore. So I had to figure out how to pivot, how to make a career out of doing what I was passionate about.




Warwick Fairfax:

That's what you're doing now with your coaching and Reclaim Your Power System. As the years have gone by, do you feel like you've been able to, I don't want to say rebuild your self-esteem because you probably never had it, it was eradicated from birth pretty much. There was no foundation, but do you feel like you've come to a point where you can say, "I am worthy. I'm not perfect because none of us are perfect. We have our flaws, but from my spiritual power, I believe everybody's a child of God and is worth loving depending on your religious and spiritual paradigm"? I think most would agree with that concept. Have you got to the point where you can say, "Vic McCooey is worthy, not perfect, but is worthy. I deserve to be loved and I'm a worthwhile human being"? Have you got to that point would you say?




Victoria McCooey:

If you ask my family, they will tell you I've gone to the other extreme. Yes, and it feels great. I have great boundaries in place, maybe sometimes to a fault, but the pendulum goes all the way to the other side before you can figure out where the middle is. I'm very confident. Even my husband, my new husband was one of the first to notice. He's like, "You're like a different person."

When I came out of that year long experience, he's like, "You hold yourself taller, straighter. You've always got this smile on your face. You're happy to be alive." Just like I came out of my shell. I just was able to feel really, really good that I was really contributing in such a worthwhile way. I felt so good about myself and I still do, and I'm not sorry about what happened in the least because I really see it as a gift.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's almost like who you were designed to be came out. I don't believe there's some grand plan that we should all suffer. One can debate about good versus evil and spiritual warfare and a lot of religions do, but you became the person you were always designed to be, which I think is a wonderful thing.




Victoria McCooey:

What a fun experience, this journey. I found the person ... Some people never find out who they're supposed to be. So I'm so thankful that I got here. However it took to get here, I got here and lucky me.




Warwick Fairfax:

Let me ask you one maybe final question. With your three boys, I'm guessing your husband may have grown up in some abusive background and maybe it went on the generations beforehand. We don't need to get into the details, but with your boys, you have a chance to change history, and I'm sure you think about that. "I want to raise my boys to be good husbands, partners, to be different," has to be on your mind. Do you feel like you're in a position where that cycle can be broken?




Victoria McCooey:

Absolutely. They're adults now. None of them are married yet, but they have had serious relationships, and yes, I'm very proud of the difference that this generation has made.




Warwick Fairfax:

That means a lot. I know, obviously, we grow extremely differently, but growing up in a very wealthy family business, power and money causes lots of dysfunctions, "Am I worth something or is it just the money and the dynasty and all that?" My kids are all adults too, 31 into 20s, and they're all hardworking, humble, contributors, have a faith, and they're not damaged by the whole money and various other things that I grew up with. They have no idea how blessed they are to have a mother like they have. She's not a saint, but close. She's so giving and kind. I won the lottery. They won the lottery having a mother like that. So I feel like in some cycles of dysfunction have been broken and they're not perfect, but I just take immense pleasure out of generations of dysfunction has been broken in a sense, and you've got to feel some of that with your boys. So anyway, that probably makes some degree of sense, I guess.




Victoria McCooey:

I am so blessed and now I have two daughters. So we're like a Brady Bunch family. So I got all those kids I always wanted.




Gary Schneeberger:

This is the time in the show where I customarily say something about the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt. I'm not going to say that this time. Here's why. About 40 minutes ago in this conversation, Victoria, you mentioned that you met your first husband, the narcissist, in an airport. I'm going to avoid the entire area of air travel-




Warwick Fairfax:

There you go.




Gary Schneeberger:

... out of respect for you and your truly moving story. We're just going to say we're getting to the point where we're going to wrap up this episode. Before we do that though, I would be extraordinarily remiss if I did not give you the opportunity to tell listeners who've heard you unpack this very moving and meaningful story, if I didn't give you the chance to tell them where they can find you online and how they can engage your services if they do indeed need to. How can they do that?




Victoria McCooey:

Yes, victoriamccooey.com is my website, and on that website, you can book a strategy session with me. There's also a free gift. So right on the homepage, you'll see, you can read a little bit about me, you can relive a little bit of that story. You can also download a free gift, a PDF about five things every woman needs to know in divorcing a narcissist. So if you're interested in working with me, I have several different coaching programs depending on what your needs are. So the only way really to figure out what is best for you and how we should work together is to book an initial strategy session with me. So this is a call where I will coach you on the call, but also, we'll figure out if we're a good fit and where in my programs you would fit best.




Gary Schneeberger:

Warwick, as always, the founder of this whole thing, you get the last question or two or however many you want.




Warwick Fairfax:

So Victoria, thank you again. It's an honor to hear your story. The question, believe it or not, we do often ask at the end is going to sound, unfortunately, too familiar with what you do, but there could well be people, there could well be women who today may feel like their worst day. They may feel like they're in the bottom of the pit, that there is no hope, they're worth nothing, it's all their fault, all of the crazy paradigms that you are all too familiar with. What would a word of hope be for a woman that's in that position today may feel about as bad as any day they can remember? What would a word of hope be for that woman?




Victoria McCooey:

This is a tough one. The trick is to, of course, reclaim your power, build back your self-esteem, but it's easier said than done. When you are in that place where the abuse is just coming at you and you're at your lowest point like that, it's about getting in your head, about putting up a shield even if you can imagine that there's a shield around you where it's really hard to heal when you're under attack. So if you can find a way to shut that out even temporarily so that you can start this healing process.

Yes, everybody gets very caught up in going into these Facebook groups or chats or about the abuse and the narcissism. That is going to validate you that, yes, that's a thing, but it's not going to heal you. Start consuming more positive content. Start consuming more positive, inspirational, aspirational things, motivational messaging so that you get the willpower and the ambition and the hope that you can get through this. So I think that's the biggest message I would have, to get out of the negative messaging and into more positive messaging.




Gary Schneeberger:

I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on an important subject has been spoken, and that last word was just spoken by our guest, Victoria McCooey.

Thank you, listener, for spending this time with us, and remember, we understand, you heard Warwick talk a little bit about his crucible, you heard Victoria really unpack her crucible and how she moved beyond it, we know it's tough, but we also know the truth that Victoria talked about. She's the third guest in a row who's used this word gift to talk about the most trying times she went through. If she can do that, if Warwick can do that, if other guests can do that, you can do that too because what happens is as you learn the lessons of your crucible and you apply them and you walk forward in them, the destination that it leads you to is the most rewarding of your life because that destination is a life of significance.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond the Crucible. Visit our website, beyondthecrucible.com, to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what's been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible and to chart a course forward. See you next week.