Melissa Reaves wasn’t sure how her life was ever going to be OK again after she was fired from a job in an advertising career that had served her bank balance well even if it had stopped bringing her heart alive. But the assurance of her inner voice that all would yet be well gave her the courage and inspiration to embark on a new career that has become a calling – helping professionals use the power of story to write happy endings for their businesses. She coaches clients in how to make what she calls mind movies that add depth and meaning to their communications.

To learn more about Melissa Reaves, visit www.storyfruition.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Melissa R:

My light was dim. I was not honoring the joy in myself, but I didn't know what that joy was. I couldn't get an answer other than I needed complete change. So it's January 2nd, 2019, and I'm on the phone and I am angry.

Melissa R:

In fact, I am hanging up and I am crying because I have just been fired from that job. And I don't like that job, but I need that job. That job pays the bills. I had money to pay for my divorce, and this isn't good.

Melissa R:

At that moment in my panic and what am I going to do, that voice said, "Don't worry about it. We couldn't watch you anymore. You were miserable. So we got you a pink slip. Yay." I'm like, "No, yay." It's like, "No, you do. You trust us, it's going to be okay."

Gary S:

It's going to be okay. The words we all want to hear, need to hear after a crucible, what we long to hear when we're moving on to a new chapter in our lives. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show.

Gary S:

Melissa Reaves, our guest on this week's episode of our series, Second Act Significance, wasn't sure how it was going to be okay after she was fired from a job in an advertising career that had served her bank balance well even if it had stopped bringing her heart alive.

Gary S:

But the assurance of her inner voice that all would yet be well gave her the courage and inspiration to embark on a new career that has become a calling, helping professionals use the power of story to write happy endings for their business.

Gary S:

She coaches clients in how to make what she calls mind movies that add depth and meaning to their communications. Melissa Reeves has found second act significance and you can too.

Warwick F:

Well, Melissa firstly, just thank you so much for being here and really looking forward to getting into Story Fruition and Melanin Live, Melanin Stories Matter. So yeah. Thank you so much for being here.

Melissa R:

Well, thank you gentlemen. I'm thrilled to be here.

Warwick F:

So, before we get into Story Fruition and what you do, you tell stories. And so I'm always curious bit like a movie sort of the origin story behind Melissa Reaves. You had a very successful career before you pivoted, but what are some of the strands in your life growing up that you feel are sort of woven into who you are now?

Warwick F:

And there tends to be an origin story of who we are and what makes us, us, if you will.

Melissa R:

Yeah, I actually call it ... So, I call the origin story, your Story Fruition.

Warwick F:

Okay.

Melissa R:

That's where and how you got to who you are. And that's why I named my company that, yeah. Well I was about seven years old and my father was in sales and marketing his whole career. He was a Harvard MBA, just like you.

Warwick F:

Okay.

Melissa R:

And one day I was asking him for something and he said, "Honey, you need to go into sales." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because you just don't hear no." And then when I went into middle school, remember how a lot of kids will go around and they'll sell wrapping paper or candy, well, I had to sell magazine subscriptions.

Melissa R:

And I knocked on this door. It's about five o'clock in the neighborhood. This guy answers. He's tired. You can tell he's just gotten home from work. And I am telling him, "I'm here to sell you magazine subscriptions." I am the last thing he wants to see. He just wants to sit down and relax.

Melissa R:

So he says, "No, no, no, that's okay." And he shuts the door on me. And as I'm walking down the hill, I'm like, "That did not go well, that did not go well." And then I started thinking about, he seems a little tired. He needs to relax.

Melissa R:

So, I go back up to the door, I knock. He's like, "You're back?" I'm like, "You know what, sir? I know you've had a really long day and you just want to put your feet up and probably watch some TV tonight. Right?" He's like, "That is exactly what I want to do." I go, "Then you need a subscription to TV Guide." And I point it to him and he buys because he was like, "That's tenacity."

Melissa R:

So yeah. So, my father was right and I ended up heading towards sales and marketing in my career. However, there was this other element that we had to deal with. I was an actor. I started acting at nine years old. I was the lead in every show all the way through high school, and I ended up having to get to Michigan because my parents were like, "Just get there."

Melissa R:

And I was like, "But I don't really have the grades. Did you see my ACT scores?" They're like, "Yeah, we're going to ignore that. Just get into Michigan."

Warwick F:

At University of Michigan, obviously.

Melissa R:

University of Michigan.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Melissa R:

And literally I had no ACT scores. That was like walking into a nightmare. I had not taken chemistry or any of the math courses that the ACT score would have. So, I take this test, it doesn't go well, but the universe started working with me, I think.

Melissa R:

And the University of Michigan started to launch their musical theater department. I was a musical theater girl. So, I went in and I auditioned for musical theater and I got in and I was able to show my parents, "Okay, I'm going to Michigan." But my dad's like, "But that's a hobby. That's a hobby. That's not a real degree. You're going to have to get in and go to business school." And I'm thinking, "Great. All right."

Melissa R:

So, I get into Michigan and I actually realized I'm not that good in musical theater. I had about eight great notes. And once you went past those, I was a little messed up, but I was always a good actor. I ended up leaving that program and floating my way through. And my degree ended up being whatever my instinct was telling me to take.

Melissa R:

I really have been someone who floats through life, trusting that it's going to work out if I listen. So, I ended up doing psychology and marketing and journalism and acting. I kept the theater, and all of those things are true today in what I do every day with my clients.

Warwick F:

So, they're all these things, there's acting, there's business psychology, and so you went down the sales and marketing route. Do you think if your dad hadn't have said, "Oh, acting is not a real job," would you have pursued acting or not necessarily?

Melissa R:

Absolutely. So, what I did was I did a hack. I was like, "All right, I'll get your sales and marketing in." And I realized I liked eating. So, actually that wasn't a bad thing. And so I'm in Southern California, and what I was doing was I was selling advertising space for multiple publications, newspapers, four-color magazines, slick ones.

Melissa R:

I did that during the day, but at night I was in the theater all the time. And then finally, I meet my future husband and we're ... He was ... He played my brother in a play and that was great. And we decided we're going to go to LA and we're going to go for it.

Melissa R:

And we get to LA and it is not anything like I thought it was going to be. I was suddenly this little fish in a big ocean of actors, and I didn't care for it to be honest. I wanted to be in sitcoms. I didn't really care about movies. And it just wasn't for me. It wasn't for me.

Melissa R:

But my career in sales was taking off. I was a superstar at LA Weekly. And then they called me in one day and they said, "We're going to start Orange County's newspaper. It's going to be OC Weekly. And we think that you should be the advertising director."

Melissa R:

Now I'm almost 30 years old and I'm thinking, "Oh, that's amazing." And she says, "But you're going to have to move to Orange County." And I said, "Oh really? You mean leave earthquakes, floods, fires, riots, and slow speed chases from OJ Simpson and give up my crappy auditions? I'm in."

Gary S:

And you're closer to Disneyland up there as well.

Melissa R:

I actually lived almost behind it. So, when they would have a home run at the baseball field, they'd shoot off all the fireworks. That was my backyard.

Gary S:

Awesome.

Melissa R:

Yeah. So, yeah. So, I went to Orange County and I started the Advertising Director position for OC Weekly, which ran, it just closed. A lot of publications went down after COVID and digital and whatnot. But yeah, so my dad was right. He's like, "I knew you'd be good at that."

Melissa R:

But I started to miss my acting. I kind of put it all on hold. I couldn't even go to the theater. Couldn't even go because it just hurt because I should be on that stage. Right? I should be on that stage, but oh, I'm making so much more money not being on that stage.

Gary S:

Right.

Melissa R:

So, I gave into it, had a family, became the breadwinner of the family, had a marriage for quite a long time. And then things started to change.

Warwick F:

I love the way you talk about the universe and I'm a person of faith, whether it's however you view it, the universe, some divine creator, it seems like whoever it is up there, if there is anyone up there, they we're using all these strands in your story for later.

Warwick F:

At the time it probably felt like, "Why isn't this working? I guess it's not, "Oh, well I got to eat." I do kind of enjoy ad sales. So, does that kind of make sense? It probably was frustrating at the time. You didn't realize where your story was going to head later on.

Melissa R:

Right. Right. No, I definitely.

Warwick F:

But at the time it probably pretty frustrating. Right?

Melissa R:

Well at first ... Well, I've learned early that there is divine guidance that I've had and you can call it whatever you want. I don't think it's outside of me. I know for a fact it's inside of me and I believe it's inside everybody. And it's constantly giving me signs and it's sometimes I hear it.

Melissa R:

It's constantly talking, just sometimes I've heard it. During COVID though, I became a lot more self-reflective and I really got into building my storytelling repertoire. And my inner voice oftentimes comes up in my stories if you watch any of them and you can see them on my website.

Melissa R:

I've personified that character. It comes in and it will whisper to me. And it provides a variety, it provides a colorful element, I think in my stories because people are like, "You know what? I think I have those same kind of conversations with myself."

Melissa R:

And so I'm trying to capture that so that people can also realize we're all figuring it out. We're all swimming in this ocean, and you just got to surrender to it. Not being passive. I'm not saying being passive, but actually being active, being really vibrantly alive is when you really are connected to yourself, I think.

Warwick F:

So, life was going along. You're in ad sales and you're doing well, but then you ran into a bit of a challenge, as what you say crucible. So, talk a bit about that challenge, almost that wall that you hit in which life maybe it was ... I don't know if it was Disneyland, but it wasn't that bad, but then it turned out to be challenging. So, what happened?

Melissa R:

Yeah. So, my life was going well. I was floating around, I was successful in ad sales and then that turned into advertising technology. So, I went into the internet sales and digital technology because I was fascinated by it.

Melissa R:

I was like, "You mean I can click this thing and go to a website and I can buy something or not? And if I don't buy it, you guys know that, and then you follow me around with an ad? That is so cool." And I was in early, early stages of advertising technology.

Gary S:

It's not cool when it happens to you though, and you're not the one doing it because I'm getting chased by shoe ads all the time now because I bought some new shoes last week.

Melissa R:

Yes, but if you don't buy them, they may send you a coupon to inspire you because they know you've converted or not. Now once you've converted, they should stop talking to you and put you in a different bucket.

Gary S:

That's perfect.

Melissa R:

Anyways, that's data sales. So, I learned how to do that. I learned how to do that. And I did that in the early 2000s all the way through about 20, well, I'm going to tell you when I got there and it was exciting. But after a while, and I rose all the way to the level of Oracle, I had climbed to the top of ad technology.

Melissa R:

But it started getting more crowded. It started getting less fun. It was no longer the shiny penny. It was a penny that everyone was fighting for the scraps based on who clicked on that ad and who converted and you were up against the Googles, the Yahoos, there was a whole bunch going on.

Melissa R:

It became, I don't know, boring for me after a while because I had done it. I had done it for 15 years. And then when you start to lose your joy, you start to dim in your light. Right? Getting up now was becoming not joyous. I wasn't springing out of bed. I was getting out of bed. I didn't want to do something. I had to do something.

Melissa R:

And I started to just dim. And I think a lot of people go through that. Now I'm also starting to approach 50 and you start to look at your life. Like what have I done? What have I accomplished, and what haven't I accomplished?

Melissa R:

And I'd accomplished two beautiful children. I'd had a career. I'd built a home. I had been the financial breadwinner. I'm woman, hear me roar, I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. I'm the Angeli girl.

Melissa R:

And my marriage started to kind of wane and things started to unravel there. I ended up divorcing after almost 24 years together and it wasn't a friendly divorce. It was a fiery, crashing divorce.

Melissa R:

And then I went into my apartment and then I managed to get a job that was a little bit different. It wasn't ad tech, it was marketing technology, but it was the job that kind of ... If someone tripped over their technology cord and it unplugged they'd call us. I'm like, "Oh, okay."

Gary S:

Okay.

Melissa R:

And it was different. And it was very left brain, which is good for me to do, but I just didn't really like it. And it wasn't a fit because my light was dim. I was not honoring the joy in myself, but I didn't know what that joy was. I couldn't get an answer other than I needed complete change.

Melissa R:

So, it's January 2nd, 2019. And I'm on the phone and I am angry. In fact, I am hanging up and I am crying because I have just been fired from that job. And I don't like that job, but I need that job. That job pays the bills. I have money to pay for my divorce and this isn't good.

Melissa R:

And at that moment in my panic and what am I going to do, that voice said, "Don't worry about it. We couldn't watch you anymore. You were miserable. So we got you a pink slip. Yay." I'm like, "No, yay." It's like, "No, you did. You trust us, it's going to be okay."

Melissa R:

Well, meanwhile, my youngest child, my baby is bedridden. She can't get out of bed because she's so stressed out and has OCD, which my DNA had passed to her. I actually have told stories about OCD, which is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. And it's not something that people should joke about.

Melissa R:

So she's down, she can't get out of bed and I have to get a new job. And I am having a really hard time because not only is my light dimmed, it's portrayed in the job interviews, and everyone that I'm interviewing with is a 32 year old guy named Ryan Brian or Eric. It didn't matter, same guy, different body.

Melissa R:

And he'd just look at me and be like, "I do not see her at the bar speaking sports with me at the end of the day." And I'm like, "Yeah, you're right, man. I'm old enough to be your mom." And I don't care about who clicked that ad. And I can't get a job that I do like because it's going to require a lot of travel. And my girl needs me.

Melissa R:

We've got to be at this program four days a week, three hours a day, and then two hours of homework for exposure therapy to get her through this crushing OCD. I was terrified and I had $50,000 in credit card debt. Terrified. What am I going to do? The plane has crashed and I have got to walk out of the smoldering fire.

Gary S:

This is the pivot point of your story in the series called Second Act Significance. Right? That's kind of you talked about your first act, very successful. Now we're kind of at intermission, you've had a crisis, the curtain comes down, we got a little bit of an intermission and you're going to move into your second act.

Gary S:

And your second act, as you've hinted at talked about deals with storytelling. And I just want to make an observation about your storytelling before you and Warwick talk about it more. And that is we have a form that we ask guests to fill out for every show.

Gary S:

And the idea behind that form is so that we can ask informed questions of you so that we're not just kind of flying blind. We don't ask what 10 things do you want us to ask you? We don't want it to be too programmatic. We want this to be a conversation, but we want to know your story.

Gary S:

And I have to tell you, Melissa, I've been co-host of this show for 110 episodes, which is more than 80 guests. And your prep sheet is by far the best we've ever received. Your prep sheet is academy award winning worthy in terms of prep sheet writing, because what's on display here is exactly the thing that you have talked about, that you're going to talk about your passion, your fire, your joy.

Gary S:

You don't answer questions in this sheet, you tell stories, and that's a fantastic thing. So I'm going to shut up now, let Warwick ask you questions, and let you tell some more stories.

Warwick F:

Well, that is so well said, Gary.

Melissa R:

Thanks Gary.

Warwick F:

How come you didn't take that path of just anger and bitterness about what life had dolled out to you. You took a different path. What led you to take a path that ultimately led to Story Fruition? Where did you find that hope from, because not every ... It's fascinating that you chose hope rather than to dwell on anger and bitterness.

Melissa R:

Great question. And I wish I could say, "Oh, I didn't do that at all." I did get angry. I did. I retreated to my room because mother nature put us all in our room called quarantine. "Think about what you did, Missy." And I did.

Melissa R:

And I licked my ... My friend loves it when I do the ... I just licked my wounds and I was sad and I was angry and I was frustrated, but I also know that life is a journey. And so I started to read a lot. I read, Think and Grow Rich.

Melissa R:

I was like, "Let's read that." And that actually is a great book that then led me to reading things on Law of Attraction. And I started to learn that the power you were saying, it's like the two voices, it's like little you, y-o-u and then big you, Y-O-U, that's how I see it now.

Melissa R:

And so it's with me all the time. I just have to tune into it and I can do that by the way I feel. So, I started to learn how to feel my way towards what I desired. I now knew what I didn't want. I didn't want any of this. I didn't want to have financial crash. I didn't want to feel bad. I didn't want to have a child that didn't have a remedy. I didn't want to have a job I hated. I didn't want that.

Melissa R:

So, what do I want? Immediately, the opposite. So, I started to concentrate now on that. Where can I get her help? Okay. We've got that started slipping in pretty fast. Thank you universe. But the job thing was important. So, during this time I'm thinking, "Well, what am I good at? What am I good at?"

Melissa R:

And I started to make a list, I'm good at sales, I'm good at marketing, I usually always ... I know enterprise sales. That's cool. I know how to manage people. That's great. I know how to tell stories. I'm a really good actor. Okay. What am I going to do with that? That's been haunting me my whole life. That's my dad saying, "I don't know what you're going to do with that." I'm going to figure it out.

Melissa R:

I'm standing in the hall of Seattle University's Business Plan Competition, and I'm there to watch these students fight it out for $10,000 prize money. It's a very prestigious competition here in Seattle. It's been going on for a very long time. The biggest swankiest angel investors are all there. They want to see the next big idea that they might be able to get in on.

Melissa R:

And as I'm watching, I'm seeing these students one after another, get up on stage with a two minute pitch, and all they are doing is problem, and then saying a bunch of stats, solution and a pie chart.

Melissa R:

And I'm just watching, and I'm just thinking, it was almost as if a light from the universe came flooding down on me as I watched these students and I grabbed the arm of the executive director who was just a budding new friend and he went, "Amelia, I can help them. I know what to do. This is sales and marketing. Is it not?"

Melissa R:

She's like, "Oh, totally." I'm like, "And it needs acting. They're not acting. They need, they need story. They need to tell the story. The problem could be a character having the problem, and then they're the hero. I can do this." And I started just rambling. She ends up calling me during this downtime and says, "Do you want to really try this? Do you want to volunteer this year, and be one of the pitch coaches?"

Melissa R:

I'm like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes." I walk in to this room and there's three teams and I ask them, "So, what do you do?" And they start to tell me the exact same thing, the stats come out, the graphs come out, nothing's coming out. And then the last guy, Daniel, he's like, "Well, I want to unite artisan wood makers to people who appreciate art in their furniture."

Melissa R:

I'm like, "Well, that's cool. And what is an artisan? Are you an artisan wood maker?" He goes like, "I am. I am." I'm like, "Great." So, I started talking to him. I go, "So, who's going to be your target audience?" And he said, "Women 25 to 54 making 75K." I'm like, "No. No."

Melissa R:

And then all of a sudden this epiphany was, "Oh my God. Remember when you, Missy were in your late 20s and you started making money and you looked around your own apartment and said, I do not want to have a milk crate hold my television up. Things are going to change.""

Melissa R:

And I walked into this beautiful, I'm soul traveling as this guy's talking to me, I walk into this furniture store on Melrose when I was working for LA Weekly, and it's this artisan furniture maker. He couldn't speak hardly any English, but it was the most beautiful pine furniture back in the day when Pottery Barn was flashing it all.

Melissa R:

I bought an armoire, I bought tables, chairs, desk, bed. I transformed my apartment. I turned it into my castle. And then all of a sudden, as I'm talking to Daniel at the Seattle Business Plan Competition, I said, "That's your character. That's your target market. Make her come alive in your story."

Melissa R:

And all of a sudden, everything started to change. And the competition, all of the pitches now were coming in with a story that tells the problem. And then the solution would be the entrepreneur's solution. And I started to realize, "Huh, I wonder if people ..." Clearly there's a need for this. Would people pay me to do this? And the universe said, "Yep. And we got a great name for your company. Try this, Story Fruition."

Melissa R:

I'm like, "Ooh, I like that." I register. I find it. GoDaddy's like, "Yeah, that's a good one." And I started my company and next thing you know, because when you start to follow and you start to feel good, the universe wants more of that feel good, and all of a sudden clients started just popping in. They just started popping in.

Melissa R:

And I got a CEO who said, and he knew I was an actor and he'd seen my acting and he goes, "You're going to what?" I go, "I am going to pitch coach. I'm going to coach storytelling into executives so that they're more compelling." He goes, "I need that."

Melissa R:

Really? You're a millionaire. He's like, I know but I know I could be better. I'm like, "Okay." And he hires me and he says, "Okay, we're going in for a pitch. He's already sold a company before. This guy he's open and closed many companies now."

Melissa R:

He says, "I have all the numbers, you know that. But I need heart. There's no heart in this presentation. We're going into Andreessen Horowitz. What can we do?" And I said, "Well, come on Tom, you have all those amazing case studies. I now call them case stories. Let's bring those forward and weave them into your presentation to show them that your technology and your team are going to deliver on the goods."

Melissa R:

He's like, "That's awesome." He does that. He walks out with a verbal that day for $35 million series A and he granted, it's not just because Melissa gave him some stories. I know it was a collaboration, but he said we needed that, and that's when I started to realize, yeah, left brain data needs right brain stories.

Melissa R:

It needs it. It has to balance it, because as I said earlier, they're going to remember the story that you tell about the problem that you're solving far longer than any pie chart that you put in front of them. They will not remember that.

Melissa R:

And so now I have executives from all over the world that I'm coaching and I'm teaching how to be a storyteller for your keynote, how to infuse stories into your pitch, how to make sure your graphs or that your slides are also backing up your story and not usurping you because you put the whole kitchen sink on the slide.

Melissa R:

You're actually being cognizant to what you're doing to the listener. And that's where my book is called the Storyteller's Mind Movie. So it keeps ... So, the momentum of what I'm doing is continuing to roll forward, and I know that with joy in my heart, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So, this is absolutely chapter two.

Warwick F:

I think it's fascinating as you're telling your story, Melissa, our lives are often more easily understood as we look backwards. Our stories make sense as we look back. They don't always make sense at the time. But as you look back, you have to say to yourself, I would imagine, I get now I have these strands in my DNA and my personality of storytelling, but also sales. And you enjoy both.

Warwick F:

And here you've got a perfect marriage of the two. Your storytelling is helping salespeople, executives, venture capitalists, what have you, understand how to sell better through stories? And obviously as you would realize, people talk a lot in our culture about ancient wisdom, the way culture is passed on through pretty much every culture that's ever existed on the planet is through stories. You know?

Warwick F:

My dad was big into Greek stories and mythology and what have you. And so I sort of grew up and partly on the stories of the Iliad, which is the story of the Greeks trying to besiege Troy. And then the Odyssey with Odysseus taking 10 years for a variety of reasons. The gods apparently were against him and took him 10 years to get back to his home.

Warwick F:

But originally when those stories were told, there was no written word at the time. So, these stories were told by the elders or the community to younger folks, over hundreds and hundreds of years. And that's part of the Greek culture, part of their story of what it means to be part of the Greek culture mythology. And that's true of probably every culture on the planet.

Warwick F:

So, this whole storytelling, it's how we tell the story of who we are, who our culture is, what makes us, us. So, what you're doing is channeling something that's existed ever since there were human beings many thousands of years ago, does that kind of makes sense? This is it's like we've forgotten we're a collection of stories. That's what makes us who we are, if that makes sense.

Melissa R:

We're machines for it. We live them. We want to hear them. We want to tell them. And then when I realized that we all have these stories and there's no reason why our personal stories, our personal moments cannot be infused into our workday, but people kind of move into, "I'm in work mode. We don't tell stories."

Melissa R:

And those are the ones that I think you're falling short, where you're not giving credit to the stories and your wisdom that you have been picking up decade after decade, right? You have family stories, marriage stories, first birth stories, college stories, failure stories.

Melissa R:

There are so many stories that reflect your resilience, your out of the box thinking, your I'm down and out story and now I'm a hero, so many of those stories. So, when I'm working with people, here's the trick is that first I notice that people aren't valuing their stories. They don't think especially a lot of women. "No one wants to hear my story." Yes they do. More than you realize.

Melissa R:

But the trick is that we're not taught in school, believe it or not. We're taught how to write a story and read a story, but how to tell a story, like what you're seeing me do. I'm creating characters. I'm using voices. I've got pausing. I'm using senses. There's things that I'm doing deliberately to be an entertaining storyteller.

Melissa R:

But I am ... All my stories that I've told today have to do with my work world. But they're very personal.

Warwick F:

It seems like in the business world, we've gone so analytical we have forgotten our heritage, which is told in stories. We just sort of abandon that. If that makes sense.

Melissa R:

Yeah. I had ... I'll give a success story. I'm the pitch coach for Founders Live, which is a global pitch competition every month, different markets, about 60 markets and five presenters come up and they give a 99 second pitch. And I coached them in Seattle and in 99 seconds we have a story. We have a solution. We have traction. We have accolades, and we have team and an ask. It all happens in 99 seconds.

Melissa R:

And there was one gentleman who his name is Juan. And I just loved Juan. And he has this app called Lalo and Lalo was the name of his father. And essentially it's an app that would be to memorialize someone. So, let's say Aunt Frieda's on her final days, you might want to make sure that you have some of Aunt Frieda's stories and you can put them in this app and share them intimately with your family.

Melissa R:

It's not something that's going to get exposed out onto the net or anything like that. It's an intimate family experience and you can have photos and chats and all this. And I asked them, I'm like, "This is a really good idea. How did you come up with it?" I wanted his Story Fruition. And he said, "Well, I lost my dad when I was 24, about 18 years ago."

Melissa R:

And I said, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry." He's like, "Yeah, I was standing at his graveside and my wife asked me, she's like, "Hey Juan, tell me a story about Lalo." I had nothing. I had nothing. And I just sat there and thought this is terrible. I can't tell stories. Because when my dad passed, I lost his empanada recipes. I had a bunch of pictures in a box, but that's not going to serve anyone.

Melissa R:

And now he's got grandkids he's never going to meet, but I want them to know who he is. And that's when the light of his universe said, "Start Lalo." So I said, "Why is that story not in your presentation, because everything you've shown me today has been all left brain?" Seriously, it was all left brains and charts and the algorithm and how it's going to work and the flow charts.

Melissa R:

And it was just like, "Oh." And I said, "Juan, your story is beautiful. It needs to be in there." He's like, "No one would wants to hear that." I said, "Yeah, I think they would." So, for his pitch, we started with him saying, "I'm standing at the graveside of my father when my wife asks me, "Tell me a story about Lalo."" And he does that.

Melissa R:

And right away that image in the mind movie of anyone standing at a graveside does what? You can see it, but you can feel it, right? No one's standing at a graveside going, "Woohoo, how you doing buddy?" It's poignant, right? And he had him with the first sentence.

Melissa R:

This guy was going from $0 being raised and lots of "thanks, it's just a little too early stage for us." He took his founder's live video that we did, and he had all the other stuff. He had the traction he had. We had the science of the business in there. It was all there, made it a video.

Melissa R:

We put a little music underneath it. He plays guitar. And he put it out on Twitter. In less than 10 days, he had $210,000 in funding. And it was people saying, "It was your story. How can I help you? I just lost my dad. I want to be a part of this."

Warwick F:

Wow. So, as I think about it, there's been some good stories that have been told for many thousand of years and I'm sure there's a lot into it, but just at a high level, what are some of the key elements that make for a good story both in composition and in telling.

Warwick F:

What are some of the key things? Again, you don't need to get into every detail. That would be part of what you do, but just a high level.

Melissa R:

There's a lot there.

Gary S:

That would be that three-hour podcast I threatened. If she's too interesting it'll be three hours.

Melissa R:

I do, do workshops that take that long. Yes.

Warwick F:

Just to give people a taste of what's these elements of the secret sauce enough that I might want to learn more?

Melissa R:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

What are some of those key components, but the composing a good story and then telling it?

Melissa R:

Yeah, well first it's the composing it, making ... So first, we all have an aha moment. All stories are centered around that, right? It's like the moment that something hit you and you have to change or you did just change something happens. Right?

Melissa R:

So for me, my aha was I don't like my life right now. I want something different. I know I don't want this and now I want that. And then all of a sudden the aha started going on and I started my journey.

Melissa R:

I formulaically completely buy into the Hero's Journey story arc from Joseph Campbell, if it's good enough for Pixar and Disney, it's good enough for me. And so when I'm working with my clients, we are always going to be looking for transformation. So the character, the main characters in your story need to be relatable. We need to be able to see them, hear them.

Melissa R:

We need to know if you, as the storyteller like them or not. So, your relationship to those characters are important and what are the stakes? And then we are going to just plot it out like this mind movie, scene by scene, moving towards the triumph and the transformation. And I plug that in.

Melissa R:

And so formulaically, when we start to master that, which is where I think where a storyteller goes from being a storyteller to being a masterful mind movie maker. And those are the people I'm seeking, who wants to be a mind movie maker, because if you do, then let's talk, right?

Melissa R:

Do you want people leaning in? Then let's talk, and that takes practice. So, stories, a really well written story is something that advances enough, expands enough and it entertains and it educates and it inspires. That's the whole essence of what we're going for. And then we break it down scene by scene, character by character.

Gary S:

This is a good time for me to ask you this question. I'm entertaining myself with the thought that I'm going to throw a question at you that's going to knock you off balance. I know it's not going to happen, because I'm going to ask you to do something and you'll do it like that, because you're very good at what you do.

Gary S:

But our series that we're talking about, that this episode of this podcast is part of is called Second Act Significance. The idea being that there was a first act of your life for all the guests that we've had on the show. And it didn't work out either because something, some setback happened, some dissatisfaction happened, whatever that was, that first act then led to a crucible of some making.

Gary S:

And then here comes the second act and it's called Second Act Significance. So, I'm going to ask you to tell our listeners a story about why and how your second act is more significant and more satisfying than your first act was.

Melissa R:

I deep down always thought I would be an entrepreneur. When I was 25 years old I thought, "I have taken Toastmasters. I am an excellent speaker. I am going to teach people Toastmasters." And that's what I'm going to do. And I started my little company and I had cards that said speakeasy. That's what I was going to call. I didn't really realize that it would probably have a sexual connotation and that wasn't the best brand.

Melissa R:

But I was only 25 and I was going to do this. And I then went, "I am too young and dumb to do this. No, I'm not ready for it." But she, that entrepreneurial Melissa was born inside me. So, when I was stepping out of the smoldering flames and I started to listen to my higher self, all of a sudden, my second half now is on my terms. It's my life.

Melissa R:

And if I need to be a little bit selfish to find my joy, then that's what I'm going to do, because I want to be the best mom I can be. I don't want to deal with Ryans, Brians, and Erics again, that are going to make me feel like I'm not smart, because I am smart and I am going to attract the clients that I want and I'm going to be bringing them something that they didn't even know that they needed, but now that they do, they are so excited about the work we're doing.

Melissa R:

And I'd walk through most of the day with goosebumps. When I tap a story in one of my clients and we go, "Oh, there it is." It is so much joy. And even though with being an entrepreneur, you're kind of on a boat ride or a roller coaster.

Melissa R:

It's going to go up, it's going to down. It's going to swirl. You're going to have good months. You're going to have thin months, but it doesn't matter because if you're still believing in what you're doing ...

Melissa R:

Or I'll just talk for myself. When I started believing in what I was doing with joy and with value, how could this not be the best time in my life? I'm 56 years old. I am just starting. I am just launching. I got a book that's coming out. I'm doing storytelling on lots of podcasts and having a wonderful time teaching something that not everyone's talking about. And I like that.

Warwick F:

You know, I feel like there are some really, really important lessons, Melissa, for folks, irrespective of their journey and where they're from that I think it's important for them to listen to. When you connect to your inner passion, your inner truth, your inner voice and you connect that to folks.

Warwick F:

Well, I want to say they connect that to folks who have that. I'd say that inner voice, that inner passion is going to attract the people that you're meant to attract. The universe is going to see to that. It certainly has for you.

Warwick F:

You didn't start out with this old business plan saying, "Okay, I'm going to tell stories because it combines my acting ability and it combines my sales ability and people raising series A financing will be perfect, because they need to tell better stories."

Warwick F:

In hindsight that makes sense. But when you were trying to get out of the smoldering ashes of the previous job and life, it wasn't like, "Okay, I got it all figured out. It's series A financing. This is the one." Right? It evolved. You had a thought.

Warwick F:

I think life is often like an impressionist painting. You had a thought, okay, it's something to do with acting and sales and telling people stories. And you had that epiphany at the University of Seattle, but then it evolved from there.

Warwick F:

But I think the key, whatever people's situation is, if they're trying to shift to their second act, it's just really understanding what is something that they're passionate about. I said a lot of years ago, because I am an idealist at heart and still am, is if you're not having trouble going to sleep at night, because you're so excited about whatever it is, then maybe it's not it.

Warwick F:

Now that's you don't necessarily have to suffer from insomnia to prove that you're actually there, but it should be something that you're really excited about.

Warwick F:

And the other aspect I reflect on is passion breeds persistence. You're very persistent at what you do because you are passionate about this. This is going to help people. I love it and it's going to help people. And so you're good at sales, but this probably takes your selling ability to a whole nother level beyond what it was before, and that was probably already pretty good, if that makes sense.

Warwick F:

So does that make sense? Just passion will attract the people that you want to attract. It'll help drive you forward and will give you persistence. Does that kind of make sense?

Melissa R:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that to me is going back to the just trust us, just trust us. That inner dialogue that I was having way back at the beginning of it. I'm like, "What do you mean trust you? I don't even know. Who am I talking to?" And it was like just trust it.

Melissa R:

And when you think about it, when you become aware of something and you start to see signs of it, like for instance, you want to buy a new car, let's say you're like, "I really like Lexus." I want a Lexus car. And then all of a sudden every radio station, every magazine, and every newspaper has a Lexus ad suddenly there.

Melissa R:

That's the universe in a way letting you know your awareness, your ask for it is now heightened and it's now coming forward and you're open to hearing and seeing it. Right? And you kind of get a giggle like, "Oh that's so funny. That's so funny. I was just thinking about, oh right, okay cool."

Melissa R:

Or you can look at the clock and it says 2:22 or 3:33. Some people love that. They're like, "Woo numerology. I'm being listened to." I find this fun. Some people you can just sign it off. That's fine. I personally find that when I'm living really consciously and I'm deliberately trying to create, you have to listen to all that stuff so that it can show up.

Melissa R:

And then when you see it, bless it. And know, I actually say that life is like a waiter. It gives you what you ordered. And if you don't like what you ordered, send it back to the kitchen. But if you like what you got, tip.

Warwick F:

So, I feel like this is another example. Nobody would want to go through what you went through. I'm sure you wouldn't want to do it again, having gone through that. But somehow I feel like the universe brought that onto you. Maybe without the challenge, maybe you never would be doing what you're doing.

Warwick F:

Maybe sometimes it takes a smack on the head with a two by four to say, "Okay Melissa, we want you to go in this other direction, but you're not listening. Okay. We're going to make you listen." Does that? I don't know if that makes sense at all.

Warwick F:

But do you feel the bit of that for some people to shift to their second act sometimes requires a bit of pain to be able to shift?

Melissa R:

Absolutely. I think pain is what we launch from. So, that's contrast. It's like when we hit contrast, it used to be contrast was bad. Now I start to see the contrast, which is something I don't want, sifting through all these things all day long.

Melissa R:

And when I hit contrast now and I feel it like, "Ooh, that doesn't feel good." I actually instead of going, "I feel bad and I'm going to lick my wounds again." I actually pay attention to it because it's talking to me. It's letting me know you're not really aligned here. Pay attention right now. And that's been the work with all the reading that I did over this past time.

Melissa R:

Also, there was this when I was in my 20s and I was going to go for my acting career in LA, I said to myself, "I don't want to look back and wonder if." I don't want to be on my deathbed and wonder what if I had gone to LA, what if I had given it a go?

Melissa R:

So, I did go to LA and I didn't make it as an actor really, but I did make it in sales and I didn't expect that. And a part of me had been calling out, I'm good in sales, I'm good in sales, I'm good in sales. And so the universe took me on that journey and you sometimes just have to ride your boat. Right now my big mantra is oars in, get your oars in and allow that boat to be steered because everything I want is downstream for me, everything, if I can just not try to paddle upstream.

Melissa R:

And that's when I start pinching it off, I start going, "No, I don't like it. Or it wasn't ... He didn't show up the day that I wanted him to show up or that money needs be in my account now." That's pinching it off and it doesn't serve me. It actually kind of spoils the joy of what I see life being now. I think life is a constant story being written before my eyes. And I actually have the pen.

Gary S:

This is the time in the show when I normally say that sounds you heard was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating our time to descend has begun. But come on, we're talking to a storytelling expert, so I'm going to say we've reached the denouement of the story where we're about to end, but we're not quite there yet.

Gary S:

Before we get there though and Warwick asks you a couple more questions, Melissa, I would be remiss in my duties as co-host, if I did not ask you how can listeners find out more about Story Fruition and about the services you offer?

Melissa R:

Thank you. Yeah. So my site is probably the best place. I've got a lot of information at storyfruition.com and I teach workshops to corporations now because people are realizing that there are stories that companies all tell, but not everyone tells them well. And new people are aching to know more stories.

Melissa R:

So, I'm helping companies now build story libraries and I train their teams on how to be very vivid mind movie makers, even in a case story because that's what's going to differentiate. So, I always say, I'm like it's like they're going to create an army of storytellers throughout your organization.

Melissa R:

And the culture will be infused into your organization across divisions so those are some of the services I do. And then you can like me, Story Fruition is on Facebook, it's on LinkedIn, it's LinkedIn to me, that would be great, Melissa Reaves, R-E-A-V-E-S. And you have to be careful, because there is a Melissa Reaves is a pop star.

Gary S:

Yeah.

Melissa R:

But that's not me. It's a Melissa Reaves storyteller cause it sometimes helps.

Gary S:

And can the pop star sing more than eight notes? Do you know?

Melissa R:

Yeah.

Gary S:

Darn it.

Melissa R:

Yeah. She plays music. She's really good. Yeah. I like her. I'm like, "Hey, there's room for joy everywhere. Let's go."

Gary S:

Absolutely.

Warwick F:

That's great. So, just as we sum up, what you talked about oars in I really want the listeners to hear that because unless you have the oars in and are just moving in some direction, the universe or however you term it can't steer you. If you're moving nowhere, you're going to ... nobody can steer you, whatever you think it's a higher path.

Melissa R:

You're never not moving.

Warwick F:

Right. So, I feel like by just going to LA and trying that, in hindsight, that acting was combined with selling to form Story Fruition. But if you hadn't done that, if you hadn't put your oars in, you wouldn't be where you were.

Warwick F:

So, just put your oars in and try something and then the universe, however you frame it, will guide you. I think that's such, such key advice. As we sum up, I love what you do in Story Fruition, but you have another thing you do at Melanin Stories Matter, which I'd love for you to just chat a bit about that.

Warwick F:

Because, it would be a whole nother podcast. But from my perspective, when you hear people's stories, it humanizes people. It's hard to dislike somebody whose stories you know, whose heart you understand. It helps people be seen who maybe people don't see, if you will. So, just talk a bit about what's the heart behind Melanin Stories.

Melissa R:

So, it was May 25th, 2020, and I'm in front of the television, learning the name George Floyd, along with everyone else. And then it wasn't very long after I'm learning the name Breonna Taylor, and that too long after that I'm learning Ahmaud Arbery, and I just couldn't handle it.

Melissa R:

I'm like, "Why are we so mean? Why can't we just be nicer to each other? Why? Why?" And then my higher self said, "Well Melissa, you were raised to be racist." "I was?" "Oh I was. Yeah, I was. Unfortunately I was." I have a rich Southern history of family lineage and I did not grow up learning kind terms, but it never felt right.

Melissa R:

Me and my sisters would always just cringe whenever a word that was derogatory towards any person of color would be used. And it was just in the family culture. Not that my family was bad, it was just that side. It was not the shining side.

Melissa R:

So, I started to reflect on that and I thought, "You know what? Just because that's how the family was, does not mean that's how the family can be." And so I realized that going out to protest was really dangerous. People were getting tear gassed, let alone COVID exposures. But I'm a storyteller, and I know how to produce shows.

Melissa R:

So we said, "Let's make a protest from our living room and let's have only black, indigenou,s and people of color sharing stories of moments that they had to face just because of their melanin being a little bit darker than mine." And the floodgates opened. And I have made so many amazing friends.

Melissa R:

I had to actually look at my own network and go, "God, it's so white. It's so homogenized and shame on me for that." And we started this show and it took off. We did seven different shows and we had your vote matters. So, as a person of color, what's important to you about voting. And I had a variety of people.

Melissa R:

I've learned that racism runs within their own cultures. We're all racist a little bit. And it's like, okay we're ... I'm not going to solve racism, but can we start to move towards celebration of our diversity?

Melissa R:

So, Melanin Stories Matter. If you go to YouTube and look that up, you'll see about at least 60 pieces of content from amazing storytellers, some I coached, some I didn't. They're already players in the space and they shared vulnerable moments so that we could do exactly what you said, Warwick, so that we could humanize those that have been dehumanized because it's just not right.

Melissa R:

Every human being has a right to be happy and safe and feel included. And so Melanin Stories Matter was this journey that I went on with a group of incredible people. And we would even talk about the fact that as a host, I was the white elephant in the room, "Let's talk about this."

Melissa R:

Because it was the white elephant that needed to hear these stories because you can't hear a story of this kind human being who's being surrounded by a bunch of white supremacists in a 7/11, and dehumanized, without going, "Uh-uh, uh-uh." That's taking now storytelling and using it for social advocacy.

Warwick F:

When you break it all down, we all want to care for people, protect our families, help our kids, help our wife, partner, husbands. We have dreams, hopes. There's a lot more that unites us about being human than divides us.

Warwick F:

And by sharing stories, that's a way of saying, "You know what? I can identify. Even though I may be so different, I can identify with what that person's saying." At least an element of it.

Warwick F:

Does that make sense? So, I think by telling stories, you help bring people together. It's not going to solve everything, but to me, even helping a little bit, it's a start. It's a start. Right?

Warwick F:

And so thank you for what you're doing. That's really an important mission. And thank you for everything you're doing in Story Fruition.

Melissa R:

Thank you.

Warwick F:

Left brain is all good, but we want to share people's stories and don't forget what Melissa's advocating. For those obviously with families, parents, try and get your parents and loved ones to share their stories. Don't lose that. That's part of what makes us, us. So, write them down.

Melissa R:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

But, anyway thank you for being an advocate for stories because that's part of what us human, part of what binds every culture is stories. You don't have ... We don't tell stories. We don't know who we are. We lose that. And so thank you. That's, I think really important work. So, thank you for what you do.

Melissa R:

Well, thank you. Thank you universe. I'm definitely doing the work I'm supposed to be doing. I know that hands down. So, it took a little journey to get there.

Gary S:

That sounds like an excellent place to wrap up an episode of the podcast that's about Second Act Significance. Listener, we have been talking about the importance of story in the context of pursuing second act significance.

Gary S:

And in addition to our guest, Melissa Reaves, our host, Warwick Fairfax has a little experience in that realm as well. And if you've enjoyed what you've heard on the podcast listener, a couple things that you can do to find out more about the stories that Warwick has lived.

Gary S:

One, his book Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance is filled with stories, not just of his own crucible experiences. And speaking of stories, Warwick tells his story and has been doing so on a speaking tour that has been sort of intermissioned right now, but he's about to go back out and do some more speaking.

Gary S:

If you would like to find out more about how you can get Warwick to come speak to your group. You can find that at our website, crucibleleadership.com. There's a speaking tab you can click on. You'll see actually a very nice little video of Warwick speaking or some highlights of Warwick speaking.

Gary S:

And you will also be able to reach our speaking agent at Crucible Leadership, Carrie Childers. Also at crucibleleadership.com. The book I mentioned earlier, Warwick's book, it's available there as well. I think I've done all of the marketing homework here. Melissa, as an expert, you can tell me if I did.

Melissa R:

You did it.

Gary S:

I think I covered it all. So, I will leave it. Listeners, I will leave you with this. We understand, we know you've heard it here on this show from Melissa and from Warwick. We know that crucible experiences are difficult. We know that starting a second act can be difficult, but we also know that starting the second act can be enormously rewarding.

Gary S:

It can lead to enormous significance because if you learn the lessons of your crucible, if you press into that, which brings your heart alive, if you press into that, which you were created for, if you press into that, that takes your skills and talents, and you can leverage what you've learned in your crucible, recognizing that what happened didn't happen to you. It happened for you.

Gary S:

You can chart a course to a new story, since we're talking about stories. And the great thing about that story that you can get on the journey toward is that it ends in a life of significance.

We’re in the midst of our most ambitious series yet on the podcast I host, Beyond the Crucible. It’s called “Second-Act Significance” and features interviews with nine men and women who recast their visions after a first act that was either undone by a crucible experience or proved to be an unfulfilling pursuit — even if it was a successful one.

The impressive, inspiring cross-section of people we’re interviewing – the series runs through the end of May – have stories that vary widely in detail. But those stories have, as we’ve found since we launched the show in 2019, many overlapping emotional beats. At the heart of the guests’ decisions to pursue a fresh second act is that they all harnessed the power of vision. Coincidentally, that’s the precise title of Chapter 10 in my book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance.

This seemed a perfect opportunity to use this space to revisit the beginning of that chapter – which includes details of my own pursuit of second-act significance after my failed $2.25 billion takeover of my family’s media company. More importantly, though, it offers what I hope is practical wisdom that augments what the podcast series highlights: how to recast a vision that will lead to a life of real significance.

The following is an excerpt from my book, Crucible Leadership:

The experiences and travails during my days at John Fairfax Ltd. have affected me in many ways. They have affected my view of myself, my view of vision, and my understanding of what it takes to make vision a reality. They have also affected how I help others.

At a personal level, my “failure”—which I consider my life’s greatest crucible experience—hurt me deeply and has humbled me, but ultimately, I believe it has made me wiser and put me on a better path. What was searing was the repeated thought that I had this great vision, this God-given vision as I believed it was, and I let God down.

John Fairfax Ltd. could have been so great, and I blew it. How did I blow it? Count the ways. Either I blew it by not being the take-charge leader the job needed, or I blew it by being too impatient for change and not really giving other family members involved in the family business a chance to embrace the vision I was trying to make a reality. Perhaps I would have found some commonality between my vision and their visions. I did not ask, so I do not know. Either way, I failed in my mission to bring the vision to reality.

Lessons Learned

But what was worse, in some ways, was what I learned about myself. That was not fun. I learned that perhaps I had a hero complex, the desire to be the crusading avenger who saves the day.

I had also made assumptions about the rest of my family, who they were and what they were about, based on others’ perceptions. I had not tested these assumptions by talking to my relatives myself and listening to them. There was resoluteness there, but there was also the other side of that, which was stubbornness. These reflections about who I was, my character and my motives, were not fun or easy. But part of living life well is learning from your failures and living life in light of these lessons.

So what are some of the lessons learned? You have to be humble. You cannot have this ego complex that you are going to be the savior of the world. That is dangerous and does not often work out well. You can hurt a lot of people while you are trying to save the world. There is another saying, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” I may have been trying to do the right thing. But a lot of bad things seemed to happen: to me, to others, and to the company. Having a “save the world” ego complex can be dangerous. And it is all-too-often the fuel of a devastating crucible.

You cannot inherit a vision. Just like you cannot inherit your parents’ faith, you cannot inherit your parents’ vision. I tried it and failed. If it is not your vision, no matter how noble it is, do not try to make it your vision. If you do, you risk facing a life-changing crucible of your own creation, causing pain in your own life and the lives of others.

For this reason, it’s important to have an accurate assessment of yourself, a healthy self-awareness. As a leader, as a human being, it is not enough to have a great and worthwhile vision. You have to ask yourself, in all humility, Am I the right person to make that vision happen? Do I have the skills and the gifts, let alone the requisite experience, to bring that vision to reality? How has this experience with vision shaped me and molded me?

Funnily enough, I am still attracted to vision. These days, though, I am more cautious regarding my own role in a worthy vision. I no longer see myself as always central to the picture. I am happy to help others with their visions. I am older and hopefully wiser. I have a few battle scars. I am more realistic, both about the challenges of making a vision a reality and about who I am and who I am not. But I have not given up on vision.

As I have said, I hate cynicism and defeatism—the sense that it is hopeless, nobody cares, why bother. Fortunately, through God’s grace, I have not become world-weary. I am still idealistic. I still have hope. I still believe the impossible is possible. I am committed to the truth that crucible experiences can be overcome if we learn the lessons of them, craft a vision to move beyond them that is rooted in our gifts and passions, and dedicate ourselves to making that vision a reality as we pursue a life of significance.

What It Takes to Find Your Own Vision

In my capacity as a coach and consultant, when people ask me for advice on job transition, or if people who have sold businesses come to me looking for a new direction, I have a paradigm I use. I ask them about their gifts and abilities. I ask them about their passions (that is, what activities or causes they are excited about). If they are Christians, I ask them how their planned new job or activity would advance God’s Kingdom. (If they are not believers, I might ask them how that job or activity would fulfil a higher purpose.) So, if that new job or activity is in the center of their gift set, in an arena they are off-the-charts passionate about, and they believe it advances God’s Kingdom or fulfils a higher purpose, my belief is that they will feel fulfilled and, I would say, “called” to that position.

In my life, too, I try to live by that model. I believe I am at my best when I am advising, facilitating, and writing. I am passionate about my faith. I want everything I do to advance God’s Kingdom. When I advise, my desire is to help people follow a calling that fits them, that draws on their greatest passions and talents. Helping people fulfil their visions gives me as much pleasure and joy as anything else in life.

Sometimes to be the best version of yourself you have to go through some trials and tribulations you do not want to experience—crucibles. Research done by Crucible Leadership has found that 49 percent of business leaders have had crucible experiences, events so painful that they have fundamentally changed their lives. I am certainly among that 49 percent. I have experienced much pain, and much self-reflection and soul-searching. The benefit of coming out on the other side of the failed takeover is that I now have a vision I am truly excited about, one that is truly my vision.

Where does vision come from? Is it internal or external? It would seem vision is often inspired by external events or comes from sources outside ourselves. Consider John Fairfax’s vision of the great newspaper he wanted to build one day. That vision was nurtured while working for a London newspaper and during the trials of working in newspapers in Leamington. His vision was cemented by the crucible of failure and then flourished under the promise of the young colony of New South Wales.

There was much external encouragement, such as that from John’s wife, Sarah. Yet that is not to say there was no internal component to John’s vision. Perhaps the greatest internal influence was his character, coupled with his aptitudes. John’s character made him want to build a newspaper that was fair, would fight for just causes, and help build a young colony. The facets of John’s character—fairness, justice, and compassion—were inextricably woven into his vision.

Reflection

Order Crucible Leadership here

Robert Miller wanted to make music his career from the first time he picked up an instrument in high school – but he did not get to fulfill that desire until after he retired. His dreams were deferred by the usual beats of life – a successful career that took him in another direction, family joys and responsibilities, and a crucible in his 40s when he broke his neck in an accident.

But in his 60s, he grabbed his guitar and launched his band Project Grand Slam — and finally felt the rush of playing original songs at festivals and concerts around the word. His success in pursuing his lifelong passion also led him to create his top-rated podcast, Follow Your Dream.

To learn more about Robert Miller and Project Grand Slam, visit www.projectgrandslam.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Robert M:

I believe that everybody starts out life with a dream. And usually when we're younger, the dreams are pretty big, okay? Very few people start out life when they're 10 years old saying "My dream is to become an accountant," okay? Their dream is to become an astronaut, a baseball player, a rockstar, things like that. And I had this dream from an early age that I wanted to become a rockstar. I wanted to play music with all the guys that I grew up, and they were my heroes. So I did have this burning desire and it was always there that I wasn't doing exactly what I wanted to do. And the question became, was there ever a time and a place and a method where I could start to gravitate towards that? And it took me a long time.

Gary S:

By a long time, this week's guest, Robert Miller, is talking about 40 years or so. He wanted to make music his career from the first time he picked up an instrument in high school. But he did not get to fulfill that dream until after he retired. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show.

Gary S:

In this third episode of our series Second Act Significance, Miller tells us how his dreams were deferred by the usual beats of life, a successful career that took him in another direction, family joys and responsibilities, and a crucible in his 40s when he broke his neck in an accident. His dream may have been delayed a few times, but it was never defeated. In his 60s, he grabbed his guitar and launched his band Project Grand Slam, and finally felt the rush of playing original songs at festivals and concerts around the world. The group has released 11 albums, including a Billboard number one and has had more than 5 million video views and 1 million streams of its unique brand of rock, Latin, jazz fusion. Robert Miller has achieved Second Act Significance, and you can too.

Warwick F:

Robert, I'm just fascinated by just your whole story and following your dream after 60, which as somebody who's hit that benchmark myself, I think it gives a lot of us hope. So thank you. Life isn't over at 60. It's not time to plan your funeral. It's just not quite yet. There is more to life. Love the band Project Grand Slam, and again, and your podcast, Follow Your Dream. Tell us a bit about the origin story of Robert Miller. I guess you must have had this love of music and your family I'm guessing. So where did that come from, this love of music?

Robert M:

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the podcast. I appreciate it. Yes, I was born into, I guess you would say a musical family. My father played the trumpet, although he didn't do it full time. He had a day job and he played trumpet on the weekends, weddings, bar mitzvahs, private parties, things like that. But right from the get go, my parents decided that I was going to learn music. So when I was about five years old, they started me on piano because that's kind of the mothership. And I was taking lessons. But when you're five years old, who wants to practice, right? So about a year later, I said to my parents, "That's it. I don't want to play anymore." And they said, "Okay, that's fine, but you got to pick another instrument." So I chose the trumpet because that was my father's instrument.

Robert M:

I continued to play the trumpet throughout junior high school and high school. But then there was an event that took place in the midst of all of that. This little band from Liverpool came around, and suddenly it wasn't very cool to play the trumpet anymore. So I taught myself the guitar and then I taught myself the bass and I had my high school rock and roll band and all of that stuff. And I was going to be the next rock star because that's just what I wanted to do with my life. Around the age of 19 or so, I did have that experience of studying for a brief amount of time with John Coltrane's bass player, Jimmy Garrison, and he introduced me to jazz.

Robert M:

At that time I went back to school. I had taken some time off from college. I went back this school in Boston and I completed my degree. I had a degree in broadcasting and film, which at the time meant absolutely nothing because it didn't give me entree to any kind of meaningful job. But I did get a job finally in the mail room of the public television station in Boston. And I had an ideal life. I was doing the mail room during the day and I was playing music at night. I loved it. There was only one problem. I wasn't making enough to sustain a human life, okay? I mean, I was making maybe $100 a week. It was terrible. I was so depressed about it.

Robert M:

And in a moment of severe weakness, a friend of mine said to me, "Well, why don't you go to law school?" And I said, "Law school? Why would I ever want to do that?" And he said, "Well, you're playing in a band with a guy who's a medical doctor," which is true. He had come over from South Africa and he was playing music. He was doing medicine during the day. He was playing music at night. We had a great band. We played all over the Boston area. And he said, "You could be just like him." And I said, "Well..." I thought about it for about a nanosecond, okay? I was a 20 year old idiot and I said, "Okay, that sounds great."

Robert M:

So I went, I applied to law school. Unfortunately I got into law school. Once you go to law school, people that haven't been there don't understand, it's all encompassing. I mean, it was 23 hours a day. I didn't have any time to even think about music while I was there. And then unfortunately, I did well enough in law school that I got a job afterwards as a lawyer. And that became my 16 year or so hiatus, because my dream was to do law during the day and play music at night. I mean, that's what I wanted. That was my dream, and I was going to do it successfully. But there's that expression, the law is a jealous mistress, which means that I was working in the law for 23 hours a day. I was trying to sleep for about one hour a night. I, then, I was married. I had a child, I had a mortgage, I had obligations. And my dream just flew out the window. And I was miserable. I really was.

Robert M:

I mean, this whole period when I wasn't playing, I kept saying, "When am I going to get it back? What happened to you? This wasn't what I was planning for." And finally, when I was in my 40s, I took the first steps towards realizing that dream.

Warwick F:

I mean, that's an incredible, incredible story. Unfortunately, yeah, somebody recommends law. I mean, that's not like a 40-hour a week job. I mean, it's like it's-

Robert M:

It's 40 hours a day.

Warwick F:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And unfortunately, as you put it, you were too successful. So the fact that you were successful was unfortunate in that sense.

Robert M:

Yeah. Right.

Warwick F:

It's like, "Please fire me. Somebody fire me. Put me out of my misery." But I'm fascinated as you, in a sense, your first love was playing the trumpet. Do you ever think if you grew up in the late 30s or 40s in the era of Glen Miller and Artie Shaw and whoever it was, you could have been a big band leader playing the trumpet in another life?

Robert M:

Sure.

Warwick F:

Because then it would've cool to play the trumpet then, right?

Robert M:

Absolutely. That's exactly the music that my father loved. He was into big bands. And of course I listened to all of that because they were being played in the house all the time. My father and I used to play duets on the trumpet. In fact, when I met the woman that became my wife on our first date, I brought her home and my father and I played duets on the trumpet for her. And she didn't leave.

Gary S:

She married you anyway? Yeah, I was going to say she married you anyway? Wow, that's awesome.

Warwick F:

I mean, how did it feel day in, day out, you were probably making decent money, paying the mortgage, being the responsible father, which is, I guess, is what we're meant to be, right? Responsible fathers. Responsible. That's sort of the mantra, if you will. So you were doing that. As the decades wore on, I mean, you are unfortunately, as you put it, being successful, but how did that feel within you?

Robert M:

Well, as I said, I was very frustrated, very conflicted, because on the one hand I had a life that was working for my family, but it wasn't satisfying the urge, the dream that I always had inside of me. And what started me down the path that finally got me where I wanted to go, I discovered by accident. I was living in New York City and there was a place there at the time I call it a musician's dating service, okay? It wasn't actually a dating service, but you went down to this place and you told them, "This is the kind of music I want to play." So if you said led Zeppelin album 2, side 1, they would find three other idiots that wanted to play that music with you. And that's what I did.

Robert M:

For about six months, that's how I started to get back into playing again. Every week I would go down there and it caused me to start practicing again. I was rusty as could be of course, but that got me back into music. And then I discovered another point of luck, that a childhood friend of mine had a recording studio in New York City. And I rang him up. And the next thing I knew, he was saying, "Well, why don't we do an album?" And I was scared to death because I hadn't done anything like that before. But he assembled a group of very professional musicians to work on material that I finally had put together. The first album that I ever did came out of that. So that started me down the path. And then I took some of those guys and I formed a band and we started to play festivals and clubs within New York City.

Robert M:

But it was still more like an avocation, more like a hobby because I was still working as a lawyer and I had that one life but I had this other life that was coming into play more and more. So I was headed down the right path, but it wasn't really what I had always dreamed I would be doing.

Warwick F:

I just wanted to get the timeline here. How old were you at the moment when this was happening, this sort of dual life?

Robert M:

I was probably around 40, okay?

Warwick F:

Got it. Got it.

Gary S:

I've wanted to ask guests, ever since we started this series, it's called Second Act Significance, and implicit in that title is that perhaps the first act maybe felt insignificant. I know it didn't feel like your dream, but did you feel at some point, was there any level of... I mean, you're working as a lawyer, you're raising a family, you have a "good life," but did you feel a lack of significance in what you were doing? Was that an emotion you had?

Robert M:

It was more like schizophrenia, okay? Because on the one hand I had this life, as you said, that was working on certain levels. I could pay my bills. I had a family. So all of that was very nice. But I believe that everybody starts out life with a dream.

Robert M:

Usually when we're younger, the dreams are pretty big, okay? Very few people start out life when they're 10 years old saying "my dream is to become an accountant", okay? Their dream is to become an astronaut, a baseball player, a rockstar, things like that. And I had this dream from an early age that I wanted to become a rock star. I wanted to play music with all the guys that I grew up and they were my heroes. And so I did have this burning desire and it was always there that I wasn't doing exactly what I wanted to do. And the question became, was there ever a time and a place and a method where I could start to gravitate towards that. And it took me a long time. I mean, I talked about coming back into music at age 40. I didn't get to the point where I was doing music full time until I passed 60. That was 20 years later.

Warwick F:

I mean, that's amazing. I may be misquoting it, but I guess I'd quote by Thoreau talking about smoldering discontent. Was there a sense that life was fine, but maybe it wasn't a forest fire, but there was sort of, I don't know, something smoldering at some level, just this in this bifurcated dual life? It was working-

Robert M:

The mass of men lead lives quiet of desperation.

Warwick F:

There you go. Exactly. That's the one. That is exactly the one

Robert M:

That is Thoreau's quote. And you know what?

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Robert M:

100% I agree with that. What happens I think in life, and it certainly happened to me, you have a dream, you have a path, you have a burning desire, life gets in the way. We don't plan for it. It just happens. And it happens to most of us. Most people don't wind up doing exactly what they dreamt they would be doing when they were younger. Either it wasn't practical or it wasn't in the cards or their uncle offered them a job, and they went into this, that, or the other thing. Stuff happens. That's the usual case. It's the unusual case if somebody that knows at an early age, "This is what I want to do" and they actually do it.

Robert M:

So the question then becomes, all right, do you let that dream go? Was it just a youthful, fancy of some sort? Or do you pursue it? And frankly, when I decided to jump into the deep end of the pool, I had just passed my 60th birthday. And I said to myself, "If I don't it now, when the heck am I going to do it?" As you said before, you're not quite dead when you're 60, but you also know that when it comes to age, you're kind of on the far side of the mountain, okay? You're not going to be getting any younger. Not to get morbid about the whole thing. You start to have your life pass before your eyes and you kind of say, "All right. If I'm going to do something, if there's really something left that I want to do, when am I going to do it if I don't do it now."

Robert M:

And I think the pandemic accentuated that feeling. It did for me and it did for other people. Because all of a sudden, we all had to stop and we weren't doing the kinds of things that we were doing before. And it made people kind of examine their lives and say, "Am I doing what I want to do?" It put older people certainly in touch with their mortality because they said, "Okay there's a finite amount of time that we're all on this planet. What do I want to achieve? What do I want to pursue?" So it was all of these feelings together that led me to do what I did.

Warwick F:

There's one other story before we get to that, in a sense, one of the things you've talked about is you had a crucible I think in your 40s, a bad accident. And somehow I think that also wove into the story of mortality. Maybe it didn't trigger the change right then, but it seemed like that's part of your journey with the pivots. Now talk about the role that accident had in changing your perspective.

Robert M:

Well, you're right. It was part of my journey and actually it stopped my journey because I couldn't journey much after that. When I was in my later 40s, I used to be a big bicycle rider in New York City. That's where I was living at the time. I would go out for these long bike rides on the weekends and the like. And it was on a cold, cold day in December of 2000. It was a Saturday. I went out for a bicycle ride. I went over the 59th street bridge which was immortalized by Simon & Garfunkel, okay? And at that time at least, once you got over the bridge, you had to do a U-turn onto a service road in order to then come back around and go forward, because I was going out straight at head from the bridge.

Robert M:

Well, I went onto that service road, the U-turn, and unbeknownst to me there was a van that came up from behind, hit my bicycle. And although I don't know and remember any of this, apparently my bicycle flew backwards several times over the van. I landed on the street and I was knocked unconscious of course. The only good thing about it was that the guy that caused the accident stopped and called 911. But here's the moment that I remember. I was lying on my back and I was coming to, and I hear these two EMS guys hovering over me saying to each other, "Boy, is this guy lucky? We usually find people like him dead or paralyzed." And I was neither. And they ambulanced me over to a hospital. I found out the difference between an emergency room and a trauma center, okay?

Robert M:

At least in New York city, every borough has one trauma center where they deal with people, gunshot wounds, and things like that. Anyway, long story short, it turns out that I had broken my neck. The only reason that I didn't wind up dead or paralyzed ala Christopher Reeve is because I was phenomenally lucky. My neck exploded and none of the shrapnel hit my cord, my spinal cord. So you have an experience... And I came back from that. I had eight hours of surgery. I got more metal in my neck than Doans has pills as we used to say for any of the older people in the audience.

Robert M:

But you know what? Since that time, that gave me a tremendous kick in the rear. Because I said to myself, not to get too philosophical or religious about it, but I kind of felt like, "Okay, I was given an extension on my life and I needed to do something to make use of that time." And so that was a big, big push towards the dream of going into music. But again, that took place in my later 40s. And it wasn't until another decade that I finally was able to get to the point that I wanted to get to.

Warwick F:

So you hit 60 or thereabouts, and maybe there was a dream, a bit like a little plant that was growing and growing and beginning to push the other life, the law life aside. Sometimes it takes a while for dreams to bloom and blossom, but finally it perked its head through and got big enough. And I think you've talked about it, but was there a point at which you said, "Okay, this is it. Law is fine, but I'm going to go full on for music." Was there a point at which you feel like " I'm doing it. I'm not going to do this bifurcated life anymore. I'm going to do it"?

Robert M:

Yeah. Well, there was a point. I mean, again, I can't measure it to the day, but it just got to a point. I had been playing music even since that time I mentioned in the 40s, I got back into it. And so music was in my life, but it wasn't in my life at the level and the extent to which I wanted it to be. There came a point, as I said, where I decided this is what I want to go for. And I gave everything else up. I dove into the deep end of the pool, so to speak.

Robert M:

So the first thing that I did, I sat down and I said, "What do I need to do?" And I'm a great believer in baby steps, okay? Because if I said, from a standing start, I want to be playing Madison Square Garden next year, that's ridiculous. That's not going to happen. But I was able to write down the first five or so steps on a napkin that I needed to do. I knew I needed to form a band. I needed to write music again. I needed to start rehearsing with the band. I needed to get gigs with the band, things like that.

Robert M:

This is a true story. I went and I took out an ad on Craigslist to have like a mass audition to find the members of my band. And lo and behold, about 30 people showed up for this audition. It was in a rehearsal studio in New York city. And from that, I was able to choose the initial people for the band, which I named Project Grand Slam. And that's how it began. And from there, it was one baby step forward, one back, two sideways, that kind of a thing. But slowly but surely I started to make progress and I saw that this was possible, okay? Because not every dream of course is going to be possible.

Robert M:

I actually came up with this, this acronym called DREAM, D-R-E-A-M, to explain my theory. Would you like to hear that? Would that be worthwhile?

Warwick F:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, that'd be great.

Robert M:

Okay. D of DREAM obviously stands for the idea that everybody has to have a dream. And I believe that everybody does have a dream, even if you've been kind of suppressing it for years. The R of DREAM theory is the dream has to be at least somewhat realistic. Now I think people could say, "Well, Miller, you were 60 years old. You're not going to be a rock star at 60. Come on. That wasn't realistic." And you know what? They were probably right. But I thought it was possible, so I said, "I'm going to take a shot," okay? If Mick Jagger can still do it at 75, I can at least take my shot at my age. The E of DREAM theory for me is what I was just speaking about, execution. And I believe that the way you do that is through an action plan. The action plan needs to be a series of baby steps, because otherwise it's just too daunting. It's just too big.

Robert M:

The A of the theory is to adjust that plan where necessary, because there's never a plan that goes directly from square one to your conclusion without some kind of obstacle or hurdle. I like to quote the former heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson, he was asked, "When you go in the ring, did you have an action plan?" He said, "Yes. Every fighter has an action plan until they get hit in the face," okay? Then you got to adjust it. And the M stands for me for measurement. How do I measure my success? Because not every dream is going to succeed. In fact, I didn't go into this with the idea that it was either going to be a rock star or everything was a failure. I said to myself, "This is what I need to do. This is what I want to do. And as long as I see movement that's kind of moving in the right direction, I'm going to stick with it. But if it ever gets to the point where that's not working, okay, not every dream is going to work out."

Robert M:

So that's been my philosophy. And frankly, look, when we started out as a band, there were too many nights when we were basically giving private concerts for the bartender and the waitress because it's very hard to establish a following of course, but we just kept at it. The most important thing is never give up.

Gary S:

The thing I want to make sure listeners hear, and you've heard it throughout this series and I just want to call it out now, because you've used the phrase a couple of times early on Robert when you talked about life sort of just happened to you. And in the first act, I think it's true that sometimes things can just happen to us. We get on a road, and the road, it's almost like one of those automatic walkways, you're just kind of on it and it keeps tugging you ahead and you're on the road and you're fine. So you can get into the first act that can be somewhat unfulfilling or not exactly right, and they can kind of just happen to you. But what you've just described is to get to that second act, to get to that significance, to get to what brings your heart alive. That doesn't just tend to happen to you. You have to act to make that happen. Is that fair?

Robert M:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we tend to be in a point of stasis where we just continue on with whatever it is that we're doing. It's very hard to kind of motivate yourself to do something else. I recognize that. There's a lot of people that want to do things, but they just can't move themselves in the right direction. But you really have to. You have to say to yourself, "The only way I'm going to change whatever it is that I want to change about my life." Whether it's my job, my marriage, my hobbies, my situation, you need to take steps, you need to do something. And that's why I said start with baby steps, okay? Because that's the way you can take a huge task and break it down into small steps and actually accomplish something.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, I think what you're saying, Robert, is so profound and I want listeners to hear that, is sometimes you think, "Well, gosh," to pick your example, "I'm never going to be Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney. That's not going to happen to me. I'm never going to play Madison Square Garden." So they think of the big dream and they stop. It's all too much. It's all too hard. "I'm 60. My finger's maybe aren't as nimble as they were in their 20s." It's the whole list of reasons of why not. You could probably list 100 things of why Robert Miller should not even bother trying. Maybe you went through that list. But what I find interesting is your whole DREAM methodology, baby steps, dream, realistic, execute, adjust, measurement. I mean, you had a plan. Maybe it would change, but you had a plan of "I'm going do Craigslist. I'm going to interview a bunch of people. I'm going to take baby steps. I'm not expecting Madison Square Garden. I'm going to be okay if the first few times it's just bartenders and waitresses."

Warwick F:

And as you rightly said, so long as I see a little bit of progress, I'm going to keep moving forward. To me, you had a plan. Almost more importantly than the plan, you had a philosophy of how to start something new that increased your chance of success. So does that make sense? Because I feel like this is more than just your story. There are key lessons for anybody who wants to start a second act with your methodology.

Robert M:

Well, there's either lessons where there's a lot of stupidity in what I did. But all I can say is that's the way I have to go if I needed to go forward, okay? I kind of do this with everything in my life. I decide if there's something I want to do, I come up with a plan of sorts and I figure out a pathway. And not everything works out. I hasten to add that all the time. Because people think, "Well, if you go after something, if you go after that brass ring and you don't get the brass ring, you've been a failure." And that's a terrible way to look at things. For me, the question was always, I would feel terrible, I would feel regret, which I never wanted to feel if I didn't take my shot. And I think that's the most important thing for people in life. Whatever it is that drives you, you want to be able to look back and say, "I took my best shot. If it works, fabulous. If it didn't work, you gave it your best try. No regrets."

Warwick F:

Absolutely. We've had other people on the podcast say something very similar, that failure is not succeeding. Failure is not taking the shot. Failure is not trying. We have heard multiple people who've achieved amazing things who've said "So long as I tried and gave it my best, that was my definition of success, whether it succeeded or not."

Robert M:

Almost everybody that succeeds has failed before they succeed.

Warwick F:

Right.

Robert M:

I had the guy on my podcast that is the president of WD-40, the miracle product that cleans up any squeaks and any problems you have with anything.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Yeah.

Robert M:

Well, they named it WD-40 because it failed 39 times before they got to the 40th iteration. Keep that in mind. You know that 17 record labels passed on the Beatles?

Gary S:

Yep.

Robert M:

Okay?

Gary S:

Yep.

Robert M:

How smart were those guys?

Gary S:

Not very smart and not very rich when the time was done.

Robert M:

That's right. There's always going to be failures. There's always going to be hurdles. There's always going to be people saying "This won't work. This can't work. You're too old. You're too stupid. You're too this. You're too that." The heck with them, okay? Take your best shot.

Gary S:

And you are quoting of that, take your best shot, earlier you quoted a famous boxer, Mike Tyson. There's another famous boxer who took his best shot and that's Rocky Balboa.

Robert M:

Yep.

Gary S:

And he certainly didn't succeed the first time, but he succeeded after that.

Robert M:

There you go.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, that is really inspiring. Just the mentality of not everything you're going to do is going to succeed, but you've got to try, because too many people that have this burning desire. To me, if you have this burning path, which you did over decades, that's not just some childhood whim. A childhood whim doesn't last 60 years. It fades. You might have wanted to be an astronaut when you were 12. Typically, at 60 you're not still thinking, "Gosh, I wish I'd be an astronaut, but-"

Robert M:

Well, if you're Richard Branson, maybe you are.

Warwick F:

There you go. There's always an exception. Well said. But for you, that dream was there and you went for it. Some people, we're both over 60, they kind of have this attitude, "Gosh," you know, this sense of regret, "if only I'd..." You know? "Yeah. I'm moderately successful now." And you're more than moderately successful. You're really incredibly successful. But let's say you achieved some moderate level of success. "I could have done this at 25 or 35. Why didn't I? Was just too scared, gutless, whatever." What do you say to people that just have this sense of regret? "I missed 40 years of my life. Gosh. What could I have been? What could I have done?" that kind of mentality.

Robert M:

I can't tell you that I don't have those thoughts or didn't have those thoughts. Along the way, it took me a long, long time before I finally got to the place that I wanted to get to. And feelings of regret are some of the worst feelings that you can have, okay? There's very few people I think get through life and say, "I didn't make any mistake. I have no regrets whatsoever." We all have different regrets that we didn't do something. But again, there's a difference between something that we were precluded from doing or that we had no possibility of doing, versus those personal regrets for things that we could have done, but we just didn't do it. And I got to a point in my life where I said, "I don't want to feel whenever my life is over that I could have done something that I wanted to do, but I just didn't."

Robert M:

Why didn't I do it? Was I afraid of failure? That's usually the reason. Oh, I don't want people to laugh at me. I don't want people to think I was a failure. "Oh, you took your shot. That was stupid. You shouldn't have done it. Why'd you do it?" There's a million reasons why people look down upon others for their success or for their efforts. Who cares? You don't want to be guided in life by those kind of naysayers. I think you just have to follow that north star that's in you. That's the key. Figuring out what is it that turns you on, that makes you tick, that motivates you. That there's going to be something in there. It probably was in there when you were younger, maybe you suppressed it. But even if it wasn't there then, you got something now. Something you always wanted to do. It was a hobby. It was a...

Robert M:

I just read, for example, this is kind of silly but it points out. John Travolta just announced that he just got a pilot's license for another huge airliner, okay? This is what the guy has decided that he wanted to do. He was a successful movie star and singer and all of that. He wanted to become a pilot. And now he's apparently approved for 767s and 737s. And for all I know, the space shuttle he'll be flying next. But that's great, okay? That's what it's all about.

Warwick F:

I think you might have said that maybe you weren't ready for it when you're in your 20s. You obviously know who you are far more now, and it's impossible to answer these questions. But I know some people have said, and I sometimes think like with my own book, Crucible Leadership, that came out late last year of 2021. And it's like, "Gosh, it would've been nice if I'd been able to write that 20 years earlier." But I wasn't ready for a variety of reasons that listeners have heard on other podcasts. You feel like in a sense sometimes whether that you believe in God or the universe, that there's some divine hand that kind of knows when you're ready. And yeah, that's one of those philosophical conundrums that philosophers have been discussing for centuries. What's the role of divine hand versus free will? And to me, it's both/and. How's that possible? I have no idea. But do you feel in some sense that there was this divine hand, maybe you weren't ready, and you are ready now, and life happened for a reason even if we don't understand it kind of deal?

Robert M:

I completely subscribe to that. I don't know what the force is that causes it. But if I look back and I'm really honest, I would say, "Okay, why didn't I do something when I was 20? I wasn't ready for whatever reason, okay?" And when I look back now at what I have achieved since I went into this whole thing full time, it's been meaningful what has been achieved. I've got 11 albums out, I've got a 5 million video views and million streams, I've played festivals and concerts around the world, I've got a Billboard number 1 album. These are things that if I was really ready for all of that when I was 20, I think I would've done it then. And I didn't do it for a reason. And I can say to myself now, "Well, it was because life took me in a different direction." But I think that we all kind of push ourselves or orient ourselves towards certain directions. So somewhere along the line, I must have pushed myself in a different direction.

Warwick F:

I want to just talk a bit about, I guess, your twin passions. But in this case, those twin passions are working together. Project Grand Slam and Follow Your Dream podcast. It's not this bifurcated life. You love both. So just out of curiosity, why did you call your band Project Grand Slam.

Robert M:

Okay. Here's the story. When I was naming the band, my first group was called the Robert Miller Group. That was big surprise, right? And I said when I was naming this band, "I got to do something more creative than that." And I was thinking about what the name could be. I just kind of thought about the James Bond movies which I was a big fan of when I was a kid. One of those great movies was Goldfinger, okay? 1964 or so, '65. There was the plot to steal the gold out of Fort Knox.

Robert M:

I remembered that the plot to steal the gold was called Project Grand Slam. And I said to myself, "What a fabulous name for a band?" So I named the band Project Grand Slam. Six months later, I actually watched the movie again. And to my horror in the midst of the movie, Sean Connery as James Bond, talks about Operation Grand Slam, okay? So I've remembered it wrong. And I said, "Oh my God, what am I going to do now?" So I went and I Googled Operation Grand Slam. And I found out that there was a nickname for some kind of genocidal program in Africa called Operation Grand Slam. So I said, "Well, I don't think it would be very cool to name a band after a genocidal program, so I want to stick with Project Grand Slam. So that's how I got the name.

Warwick F:

Sounds very fortuitous. And so how would you describe your music again, just for listeners?

Robert M:

My music is, it's a fusion of rock and jazz with a twist of Latin thrown in, and as I like to say, a New York City groove.

Warwick F:

That's great.

Robert M:

All of my musicians, almost all of them come from other countries. They have come to New York City because it's a melting pot for musicians. So right now in the band, my singer is from Mexico. My keyboard player's from Venezuela, my guitar player's from Canada, my drummer is from Puerto Rico. They bring not only their youth, their incredible talent, but their enthusiasm and their culture to the music. So although I was raised in New York City and my father was a big fan of Spanish music, we used to listen to it all the time on the radio, when I had folks in the band with a Latin background said to me I had to work some Latin music into the sound. So that's how the Latin got into that.

Robert M:

So it's kind of a fusion, it's a melting pot. It's completely against the grain of what happens in music now. Right now you're supposed to do one type of music. That's it. You play the same song over and over and over again. You just give it a different name. That's what artists do. And I was completely from a different school. I love variety. I love the idea that you could have different sounds and different influences and have them all reflect in the music. And that's one of the things I said to myself, "This is what I'm going to do to be true to myself."

Warwick F:

You know, what I love about what you're saying is, be true to yourself. Don't listen to the market mavens in music saying, "This is what you've got to do to be successful. Have one song and just change a couple chords." And you just over and over and over again, it sounds always very similar and it'll be familiar. "Oh, it's a Robert Miller song."

Robert M:

That's true.

Warwick F:

"I recognize that." And that's probably makes sense, but the other thing I love is you have such diverse people and themes in your music. And sort of out of diversity, you have a beautiful, to use your word, fusion into a new sound. I think that's maybe a metaphor for a wider discussion perhaps of diversity of experience can fuse together to form something greater, something new. So I think there's also a subtext to what you're doing that's important for society too. Don't you think?

Robert M:

I think that... There's the old expression, variety is the spice of life. And I believe that works in music as well. I love taking chances, doing things that are different, kind of always pushing the boundaries. It's just what I like to do.

Warwick F:

So talk about your podcast, because I get Project Grand Slam and yes, because when you said that, I thought, "Oh, that's right. That's from James Bond," but I didn't really figure out myself that, gosh, it was operation. But yes, so fortunate that you misremembered. Now that makes sense. But it doesn't sound like you had a lifelong dream to do a podcast, because obviously they didn't exist until I don't know what? 10, 15 years ago. What made you decide to do that? Because that does feel different. Why a podcast called Follow Your Dream?

Robert M:

Yeah, well it wasn't 10, 15 years ago that I was even thinking about podcasts. I didn't even know what a podcast was honestly about a year ago. We were in the middle of the pandemic. We had just put out an album in January of 2020 called East Side Sessions. I thought it was a terrific album. We were ready to go out and play by behind it. And then of course the world locked down and we couldn't play any longer. So the first thing that I did was I said, "Okay, we're stumped at this moment. Let's take four of the songs from the album and let's do some videos, because that we could do." The first two videos with kind of Zoom video with everybody in their own little box, like the Hollywood squares, and we're all lip syncing to the songs.

Robert M:

And then the third video, we did an animated video of a Beatles song, this totally obscure Beatle song called I Want to be Your Man that Ringo sang in a Hard Days Night.

Gary S:

Excellent. An excellent song.

Robert M:

But we changed it to, I Want to be Your Girl because we have a female singer. And then the fourth song that we did the video of, it's a song called The Partners. It's my cowboy jazz song, okay? Talk about it on an unusual combination. I did a song that literally kind of had horses hooves and whips and six gun shooting combined with a jazz kind of a thing. It's all around the storyline where you had two partners in the old west that went out and robbed people. And one partner robbed the other partner and the other partner was getting back at the first partner.

Robert M:

And I said to my video guy, "How are we going to do a video of this song?" He said, "Let me look around." He somehow found a 1960 Spaghetti Western where the plot of the movie kind of fit the storyline of this song. So we put out a video that was taking the Spaghetti Western and putting it to this music and it actually did very well. This is all leading up to, I needed to do something to keep my creative juices going. I was writing music. We couldn't practice. We couldn't play anywhere. And somebody suggested to me, "Why don't you think about doing a podcast?"

Robert M:

And I was very, very dissatisfied with social media as a musician because you put your music up on YouTube or you put it on Facebook and it takes absolutely no commitment, no engagement for somebody to hit a like button. So you get all these likes and you get all these comments, and at the end of the day, it doesn't mean anything because there's no real attachment. And somebody said, "Well, you should look into podcasts because in a podcast you have a longer form of communication. You can establish a much deeper connection with your audience." And the more I looked into it, the more I said, "Gee, I think you're right."

Robert M:

And because of my back round, you know, what I did, I followed my dream. I thought to myself that there were others out there, many, many others that would love to follow and perhaps succeed at their dream, so why don't I start a podcast with two goals? One is to inspire and motivate people to follow their dream, whatever that dream might be. And secondly, it was another way for me to introduce my music to a brand new, bigger audience than I had before.

Robert M:

So in each episode, I bring into play one of my songs as the featured song, and I try to make it relevant somehow. And I started to interview people that were among the more well-known musicians, but also others that had accomplished their dream. And what's remarkable about the podcast is that it has just spread out in a way that I never anticipated. As we speak today, I have listeners in 191 countries. I mean, that blows me away. There's only 193 countries in the whole world.

Warwick F:

Wow.

Robert M:

Somehow or other people have found me in places that I didn't even know were countries. So that goal has been accomplished as well. The podcast is doing very nicely. I've got great guests, I get my music out there, and I've got listeners around the whole world.

Warwick F:

I mean, that is remarkable. I mean, I love sort of the tagline you have for the podcast. Remember you're never too old. It's never too late to follow your dream. I'm sure in our society, as you say, especially after COVID, people have been shut in, people realizing their mortality. There's a lot of folks that think, "Gosh maybe I could do what Robert did. Maybe I'm a musician. Maybe I'm not a musician." But just telling people stories of it's not being too late to pursue your dream. I'm not a massive believer in so-called traditional retirement. Studies show that if you just sit on the beach or play golf without any purpose, not knocking it, you'll probably die younger. If you have purpose in life, whatever that means to you, you'll live longer and you'll probably be happier. So you're preaching life isn't over at 60, that it's never too late. A lot of people think it is too late, but that's an important mission. So I think it's ironic that out of COVID, in your case, something good happened, a dream was birthed that may not have been birthed without it.

Warwick F:

I mean, you're somebody that listens to your inner soul, listens to your passion and you don't snuff it out. Maybe you chat to some close friends and come up with a plan along your sort of dream, realistic, execute, adjust, measurement deal. So, you didn't just do one dream. You did more than one. You did a couple.

Robert M:

Well, I actually did a third as well.

Warwick F:

Wow.

Robert M:

Because along the way after I started the podcast, somebody said to me, "why don't you write a book? Your podcast is great, but why don't you do a book?" And I said, "Yeah, what am I going to do? War and Peace or something like that? I'm not an author." So they said, "Well, why don't you just kind of do it as a memoir?" And I said to myself, "Okay. What can I do that is within my scope?" So I put together what I call the Follow Your Dream handbook. I think I named it handbook after, remember there was a book a long time ago called the Preppy Handbook, right?

Warwick F:

I do.

Robert M:

I always liked that. I think of a handbook, that's pretty cool. And what it said to me was that I could make it kind of part memoir so I could tell my story, but the rest of it would be a how-to. So to try and tell people "This is how I did it. Maybe it would work for you as well. Here are my steps. I put that dream theory into it." So in my spare time, I wrote this little book, it's about 100 some odd, 120 pages, something like that. I put in a lot of pictures and stuff like that to prove to people that I actually was doing what I claimed to be doing. It went out last August. And lo and behold, it became like an Amazon Best Seller on day one. It's sitting out there, it's just doing its thing. So that worked as well.

Gary S:

This is the time in the show when I normally say the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign, indicating we've begun our descent. It's time to land the plane. But because we're talking to a maker of music, I'm going to change that up and say, we're at a live show. The band has just fake ended it. It's left the stage for that moment where we all clap, knowing that an encore is coming. Speaking of the Beatles, Ringo Star just stops doing that. He just says, "Okay, I'm going to sit here for a few seconds. You know I'm not leaving. I'm going to come back and play encores." Before we get to the encore though, I would remiss Robert if I did not give you the chance to tell listeners how they can find out more about Project Grand Slam, more about your podcast, more about your book. Where can they find you on social media to find out all this stuff?

Robert M:

Easiest way is I have two sites that are worth mentioning. One is for the podcast, it's just followyourdreampodcast.com. And the other is for the band and it's also simple, it's projectgrandslam.com. And if anybody wants to send me an email, just send it to robert@followyourdreampodcast.com. I'd be happy to answer.

Warwick F:

So Robert, I just find what you do is inspiring. I mean, it's just not just you've launched a band in your 60s, but it's your philosophy of daring to dream and you have a plan and a methodology of how to do that. And you're not afraid. You could have said, "Project Grand Slam, number 1 billboard. It's pretty successful. I'm good. I'm done. I'm living the dream. This is awesome." And that would be great. That would be stupendous, but when other dreams come along, you just said, "Okay, no, no, no. I've got my dream. No more. I only need one." No, you're willing to say, "Okay, so let's try this whole podcast thing. Maybe I can help others follow their dreams later in life." Then it's like, "Oh, maybe there's a book that I can do." So it's being willing to listen to that inner voice that you now do. You don't ignore it. You flesh it out. Come up with a plan you're trying. If it doesn't work, that's fine.

Warwick F:

I feel like you have a whole philosophy of nurturing dreams and being willing to see if they're going to happen, being willing to fail that I think people need to learn from. So there might be listeners who they're in this second act, maybe they're over 40 or over 60, and they're listening. What would be a message of hope that you would give them as they're listening today?

Robert M:

First of all, thank you both for having me on. I really do appreciate it. I think we've said it together. You've said it just now. My mantra has been that you're never too old and it's never too late to follow your dream. And I am living proof of that. I think there are many other people that are in that category. Give it your best shot, okay? We only go around once in life. You don't want to have regrets. It's not about success or failure. As the saying goes, it's about the journey, not the destination, okay? Keep smiling.

Gary S:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the last words been spoken on a subject. I've also been a music fan long enough to know when Elvis has left the building. Both of those just occurred with the last statement from our guest.

Gary S:

Listeners, thank you so much for spending time with us, not just on Beyond The Crucible, but also on our series, Second Act Significance. We're not done yet. There are more episodes to come. If you've heard something in this series that really has touched you, that really has motivated you, if you've begun your own second act yourself because of what you've heard, we'd love to hear from you. Go to crucibleleadership.com. You can click on a link there and you can send us an email. And we'd love, love, love to hear from you. Until next time then listener that we are together for another episode of Second Act Significance here on Beyond The Crucible, do remember that your crucible experiences, we understand, Robert understands, Warwick understands. Your crucible experiences are painful. They're difficult. They can make you feel like some bad things have just happened to you, that you're just kind of stuck in the situation that is not fulfilling, that does not feel like it's bringing you satisfaction. But it's not the end of your story. As we talked about here, it can be the beginning of a new story once you learn the lessons of it, once you take some baby steps, as Robert talks about and Warwick says, take one small step at a time. As you do those things, as you advance forward beyond your crucible, beyond that first act, beyond the intermission from the first act and grab hold of your second act, you can end up at a place that's the most fulfilling of all, because that is a life of significance.

We take to the high seas this week with Erik and Emily Orton — which is where they headed in 2014, after Erik’s dream job as a playwright and theatrical producer came to a crashing halt when his off-Broadway show was closed after only a few performances. The failure left him fearful and rudderless – until his curiosity about sailing became his family’s passion for it and they steered their boat’s rudder on a 5,000 mile journey from New York to the Caribbean.

What Erik and Emily learned on the journey, with their five kids sharing the adventure with them, was how to turn worry into wonder and the importance of building confidence, credibility and calm. Those are truths they now teach others through their speaking, writing and coaching.

To learn more about Erik and Emily Orton’s family adventures and their coaching services, visit www.theawesomefactgory.nyc

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Eric O:

I'd go down to this high rise in the financial districts every afternoon and I'd work 3 till midnight. So I would take a dinner break right around sunset, and I would walk along the Hudson River. I would see these sailboats that just carve their way up and down, silhouetted against the sky.

Eric O:

During my dinner break, that's when Emily and I would get on the phone and we would talk as we try to figure out how to dig ourselves out of this hole that we found ourselves in. I would describe this to her, and she was happy that I would see these boats and that they gave me a sense of peace. As I described it often enough, I realized that there was a sailing school right downstairs from where I worked, and that's where these boats were coming from. She said, "You should go check it out. Maybe you'd want to learn how to sail."

Gary S:

Eric Orton ended up taking his wife's advice, and it changed their family's livelihood and life. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. On this episode of our series, Second Act Significance, we take to the high seas with Eric and his wife, Emily. The high seas is where they went in 2014 after Eric's dream job as a playwright and theatrical producer came to a crashing halt when his off-Broadway show was closed after only a few performances. The failure left him fearful and rudderless, until his curiosity about sailing became his family's passion for it, and they steered their boat's rudder on a 5,000 mile journey from New York to the Caribbean.

Gary S:

What Eric and Emily learned on the journey with their five kids sharing the adventure with them was how to turn worry into wonder and the importance of building confidence, credibility, and calm. Those are truths they now teach others through their speaking, writing, and coaching. Eric and Emily Orton have found second act significance and you can, too.

Warwick F:

Well, Eric and Emily, thank you so much for being here. I mean, it's so exciting what you're doing with the Seven at Sea book and The Awesome Factory. Just your journey on the sailboat for a year, I mean, that's just magical that people only dream about but you do advocate for turning dreams into reality.

Warwick F:

Before we get into what the challenges that set up that year on the sailboat, talk a bit about maybe, as they say in the movies, the origin story of Eric and Emily, and maybe not every beat growing up, but just what some of the backstory of who the Ortons are before we get to the rocks, so to speak, with some of the challenges.

Emily O:

Okay. I love this question. So we both grew up with dads in the military. So we moved around a bit and our paths intersected first just outside of DC when we were still in elementary school grades, but we did not meet there. We met later in college. We were in the same school and that's where we actually met each other, and right away, we didn't-

Gary S:

Oh, this is going to be good. I can tell they're laughing before they say what happened.

Emily O:

I'm like, "I don't want to drift here. I want to navigate."

Eric O:

Navigate carefully, right?

Emily O:

We didn't hit it off first thing, but before long, it became apparent to me that Eric was just a genuine good guy, and that really resonated with me, and I was very interested in him, and he's so forthright. He told me right away as soon as he heard, "Nothing will ever happen between us, but we'll stay friends." I can say we've been married for 26 years now and we are still friends. So we were both right.

Warwick F:

Yeah, but it sounds like there is something between you now, right? You're more than just friends. Would that be a fair assumption?

Eric O:

Sure, yeah. With five kids, I would say we've moved beyond the friend stage, for sure. So far so good.

Emily O:

I think we were recently each sharing what was a moment from our childhood where we felt proud. As we were sharing those stories, I feel like that really ties into the core being of who we really are. For mine, it was just that my mom and my grandma had taken me to some boring conference, and I had to wear a dress, and I was nine, and I didn't care about any of that stuff, but at this restaurant we went to afterwards, I was presented with my first slice of cheesecake. I'd never heard of it. Can you imagine hearing of it for the first time? What a weird concept, cake made out of cheese?

Emily O:

So I was trepidatious, but after I had it I was like, "Wow! That was very small," that slice of cheesecake and I wanted more. My mom said, "Well, if you can pay for it, you can get a second slice."

Emily O:

As a nine year old, I'm not carrying my wallet with me. She was basically just saying no, and I just sat there thinking about cheesecake, and I excused myself ostensibly to go to the restroom, but what I had remembered is that there was a wishing well out front of the restaurant. So I walked out of the restaurant. I stepped into the wishing wall and I filled my skirt with coins, and I brought back a pile of wet money.

Emily O:

My mom was aghast that I had done this in front of everyone. She said, "Those are other people's wishes," and my grandma came to bat for me and she said, "I bet they wished for a little girl to have a piece of cheesecake." I got a second piece of cheesecake, but mostly what I think makes me proud of that moment is that I had nothing and I wanted something, and I just figured out what was in my environment to find a way to make it happen. So I guess as far as background on us, for me, that would be illustrative.

Eric O:

I guess the experience for my part that Emily was talking about, because we were running a retreat this past week and the opening question that we asked everyone was, "What's a moment from your childhood that you're proud of?" I was stumped until afterwards I was telling Emily, I was like, "Actually, I played a version of baseball as a kid called coach pitch." I don't know if it's still a thing, but it's between T-ball and regular baseball where-

Warwick F:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My boys did coach pitch, so I'm familiar with it. Yeah.

Eric O:

Okay. So coach pitch is where the coach actually throws the ball and some kid stands next to him to field anything that gets hit. So my position was actually right field, where the ball never goes. They put me there because I was no good. The kid that was playing pitcher got injured or couldn't make it. Anyway, so where could they afford to bring somebody in from? They brought me in from right field and I stood next to the coach who's pitching it.

Eric O:

Then big Dan on the other team comes to the plate. He's this big. We're all eight years old and he looks like a 13 or 15-year-old. He's just huge. The coach pitches the ball and all the outfielders backed up to get ready for his line drive for the fence. He hits this ball and it's going straight over my head and I'm like, "Okay." I just put my hand up and I jumped, and I feel it bounced off the tip of my glove and I come down and I turned around and I looked behind me to see how far, "is it a home run or is it inside the park?" I don't see the ball.

Eric O:

Of course, I look in my glove and it's there, and I was stunned. Everyone else was stunned. The place erupts. It's one of those eight-year-old boys' dreams. I'm just so glad that I went for it, not even thinking I had a chance, but I went for it. It was fun because they did a little write up in the baseball team newsletter and I became the permanent guy standing next to the pitcher, but really, just sometimes you don't know if you even stand a chance, but if you go for it, you just might.

Gary S:

As a baseball fan, I have to interject. Just one, one little comment. Guess who played most of his games in right field? That would be Mr. Babe Ruth.

Eric O:

What?

Gary S:

So when people say right field is where the balls never hit and the "not good players" go there, Babe Ruth played right field. Just tell them that.

Eric O:

Wow. I'm making a note of that. Thank you, Gary. I had no idea.

Warwick F:

That is so great. Those are wonderful stories. I got to imagine, Eric, for weeks or more after people were saying, "Eric Orton, that's the guy who got big Dan out."

Warwick F:

"No, Big Dan? Are you kidding me?"

Warwick F:

Right? I'm sure you're a legend. That's cool.

Eric O:

Pretty much, yeah, as much as you can be as an eight-year-old.

Emily O:

Our family visited Germany before borders closed for the pandemic, and he-

Eric O:

This is where, I was living in Germany at the time.

Emily O:

He was living in Germany and he took us to this baseball field on the military base to show all the kids where it happened. So yeah.

Warwick F:

Wow. It also reminds me of the other movie, Field of Dreams. That was your field of dreams.

Eric O:

With Kevin Costner, yup. Me, Kevin Costner, and Babe Ruth, basically.

Gary S:

Hey, there's a play in that. There could be a play in that.

Eric O:

Totally. Baseball through the ages.

Gary S:

Yes.

Warwick F:

There you go. So I want to move ahead of it, but what I love about that story is they're both maybe, I don't know, origin stories but maybe a vignette of what was to come about two people that just went for it, that went for their dreams. So I want to fast forward here, and unfortunately with the pandemic, it's been harder to go see shows, but I grew up going to plays, and we live in Annapolis, Maryland. So we actually have seen Wicked on Broadway a number of years ago and like everybody, it's unbelievable. So the fact that you were involved in there and helping to produce it is just unbelievable.

Warwick F:

That's a lead up to your challenge, but talk about ... You obviously love music and producing and the theater. So talk about some of that background and Wicked, and then you went on to get an Emmy award for Berlin. So talk a bit about that period in your life because you love music and the theater. So I mean, that feels a bit making your dreams come true. I mean, it sounds pretty exciting.

Eric O:

It was pretty exciting. Yeah. I studied music growing up and got into musical theater by accident. My friends signed me up for an audition in high school and I went. Anyway, I started doing theater and studied music and was writing in musicals and just started producing them when I was in college, mostly my own stuff.

Eric O:

Then right out of college, I got a job as a junior manager a Broadway show, and we moved to New York basically straight out of college. We got married while we were at school and we already had our oldest daughter was born while we were students, but we moved there with two kids. Our second daughter was born right before we moved there.

Eric O:

Fast fast forward, I don't know, eight, 10 years, I was managing the national tours of Wicked. It was a pretty dream job. I love the show. Steven Schwartz, who wrote it, was a hero of mine, so getting to work with him. Before I'd accepted this job on Wicked, I agreed to produce this little show called The Arc, which is about Noah and the arc, but it has a modern take on it.

Eric O:

I felt a deep loyalty to this little project of mine, and so I left this really secure and high profile job on Wicked because a secure job in the theater is a contradiction in terms, but I had that yet I walked away with Emily's support. It was a pretty exciting time because I'd raised the money, I'd hired the director and the designers, and I booked the deal with the theater, and it was extra exciting because Emily was due to give birth to our fourth child, now our first son, the day that this show was scheduled to open.

Eric O:

The show came and opened up and it was a great time. The audiences loved it and we had a big party afterwards. Then Emily, right on schedule, went into labor and gave birth to our beautiful boy. I said to my producing partner, "Hey, I'm going to take a day, 24 hours. I'm just going to go be with my girls and our new son."

Eric O:

So I went off radar, and while I was in the hospital, the reviews came out and they weren't amazing. They weren't terrible, but my producing partner, who is a generation older than me, was doing her best. Without consulting me, though, she made the decision to post a closing notice for the show, which for her meant one thing because she was an established producer and had all kinds of other revenue streams, and for us as a young dad and as a young family, I don't think she realized that it was everything.

Eric O:

Basically, when I came out of the hospital and found out that the show was closing, I was broke, I was unemployed, and quite frankly, I felt humiliated at this professional failure, and I ended up as the poster boy for failure because there was a picture of me on this roundup article that they had in Crain's Business New York. I don't know how many people read that magazine, but it's a big broadsheet that they print in New York City, and my face was front and center of why the off-Broadway business model was broken.

Eric O:

So that failure put me in a pretty dark place. I was confused. I was scared. Yet, I still had Emily and our kids and I felt the responsibility of providing for them. So I just went and I got a job, any job, which ended up being temping at a bank in the financial district doing graphics at night. That's our low point. That was where we got into the crucible that I think was a real pivot point for us.

Warwick F:

So Emily, as this is going on, you probably have a mix of emotions. You have a baby boy that's just sheer delight and gratitude, and you've got a husband that was at the pinnacle of success and now is being branded as a failure by Crain's Business Journal, which I'm familiar with. It's a big deal. So what was going through your mind as all this was happening and you're trying to focus on a new little life there? That must have been a sea of different emotions, I'm guessing.

Emily O:

Well, I always say I will always bet on Eric Orton. I know I married him for a reason. I really believe in him, but he needed this space to feel the grief of being disoriented. I actually think it was a huge blessing that around that same time we were able to have this little baby and we have these three sweet little girls, and Eric would just hold him and look at his eyes and be like, "Oh." It's just very centering. As much as it inspires you to feel like, "Oh, I need to take care of my family," your family being there also is a source of comfort and strength.

Emily O:

I've heard Eric say to young men considering marriage to say, "Nothing lights a fire under your butt like having a wife and kids. It makes you pretty ambitious," but no. He was devastated and it was very challenging. I'm just so grateful that we're able to just talk and communicate. He actually had this unexpected paternity leave where we spent a couple of weeks just saying, "Oh, my gosh! Let me stop reeling and make a pivot."

Gary S:

As we're about to pivot into the next bit of your story, you said something to me, Eric, when we talked offline when I explained the nature of our series, Second Act Significance. You actually indicated, and it's not surprising at all given your theatrical background, you indicated that you called the period after your show closed and you guys were looking for what that next act was going to be, you called it what?

Eric O:

Intermission.

Gary S:

Right. Right. What follows intermission if it's the first act that has been intermissioned is what?

Eric O:

The second act, yeah.

Gary S:

Right. Yeah.

Eric O:

So yeah, we're more than happy to talk some more about that, but yeah, we definitely feel like our life is divided into two parts. There was before the sailboat and before everything that led up to the sailboat and everything after it. So for sure, there's a two act structure going on here.

Warwick F:

So here you were in this, for what I understand, you're in this hired office building doing a temp job, and I think, what, during a dinner break, you were looking out the window and it seemed like that look out the window changed your life. So just talk about what happened as you were there in that temp job.

Eric O:

So yeah, I'd go down to this high rise in the financial district every afternoon and I'd work 3 till midnight. So I would take a dinner break right around sunset and I would walk along the Hudson river, and I would see these sailboats that just carved their way up and down silhouetted against the sky. During my dinner break, that's when Emily and I would get on the phone and we would talk as we tried to figure out how to dig ourselves out of this hole that we found ourselves in.

Eric O:

I would describe this to her. She was happy that I would see the boats and that they gave me a sense of peace. As I described it often enough, I realized that there was a sailing school right downstairs from where I worked, and that's where these boats were coming from. She said, "You should go check it out. Maybe you'd want to learn how to sail."

Eric O:

I told her that it wasn't going to happen because here's what I knew about sailing is that you had to be rich to sail, you had to be well-connected or you needed to grow up around sailboats and have a pedigree. None of which were true from me. Yet, she persisted because we talked every night and-

Emily O:

I just want to say we had this whole system where he would call me on his cellphone, tell me the number of the payphone, then I would call him back on the payphone so that we wouldn't use up our minutes during his dinner break. I don't even know if there are pay phones anymore in Manhattan, but-

Eric O:

That was the very beginning-

Emily O:

That's how we made it work.

Eric O:

Yeah, because we had one cellphone between us and it only had a few hundred minutes and we were just so poor, but then yeah, eventually, we got a phone and so I was able to do these for river walks. It was realizing that there was this school down there and that I could learn about this. That was really the beginning of sailing as a family because we knew nothing. We started from zero, I would say.

Warwick F:

So it wasn't like, "Oh, I see the sailboat. Let's go to the Caribbean," and the vision just happened. It was like a Mount Olympus kind of deal. Yeah. It's funny because we just did a podcast recently that talks about how visions don't always happen overnight. There can be little steps. So why sailing? I mean, there's a lot of things you could do. I mean, why even go to a sailing school? Why even play around with sailboats?

Eric O:

Well, I think, for me, it symbolized the peacefulness, and I guess I've always ... I used to deliver newspapers as a kid. I don't know if people remember newspapers, but I used to throw them on people's doorsteps before the sun came up. So I got to look at the stars a lot. It was this cosmic philosophical time, not every day, but every now and then I would just contemplate my place in the universe, and I always thought about people over the centuries that navigated by the stars. I had this romanticized view of it.

Eric O:

So that plus seeing these boats on the river I just thought, "I need to get to a bigger place where I see things in a bigger perspective and so that my problems will seem smaller." I think that's where the idea of sailing...that's what drew me in emotionally.

Eric O:

I think another important piece was a friend of ours was starting up a life coaching business and we agreed to be her guinea pigs. She sent us these questions that we call blue sky questions. We actually share these questions now when we take people sailing or we do retreats and things like that. Some of them are, "What would you do if you weren't afraid? What would you if money were no object? What would you do if you knew you would succeed?" and there's a few others, but I took some time to answer all these questions.

Eric O:

The point of them is to really just to pause fear and to mute it because so often, those feelings work that we have after these failures, they can crush us and they can take out any hope or ability to dream. So we have to just set those aside momentarily when we have no idea how we're going to pull things off, we don't have the money, we don't know if we'll succeed, and just say, "Set that aside. What would I like to do? What calls to me?"

Eric O:

So when I answered these questions, I wrote down a hundred things, over a hundred. One of them was to sail for a year as a family in, I think, it was in the Mediterranean was where I...spend a year on a boat in the Mediterranean. We won't get into that right now, but basically, that was the first time I spoke it into the universe by writing it down. Then yeah, it grew gradually from there.

Emily O:

Well, he didn't tell me that he wrote that in his journal, and I didn't know he was thinking about it in those terms. I just thought he's been so devastated and he needs something that's just fun, some new skill to learn or something like that. So that's why I was really pushing for it, but he went in and he asked, "So what does it take?" The people were really nice, "Yeah, no problem. We can set you up with the class," but because of the hours he worked, they didn't have classes at that time. So he was going to have to bring the class with him, basically.

Emily O:

So he started asking all his friends and coworkers and who else, whoever, if they wanted to ... He only needed to find three people, right? There's eight million people in New York City. So he's asking around for a couple of weeks and he's not finding anybody. Then he comes out with this great idea. He goes, "Why don't you and our two oldest kids take this class with me?" The kids are nine and 11. They're very excited. They think this is the greatest thing they've ever heard, but I don't really see how this works budgetwise because then now the class is four times the expense and we still have three kids that need a babysitter.

Emily O:

So I tried to play that card first and like, "Well, I don't really know how we'll afford it."

Emily O:

He was like, "I will get a second job."

Emily O:

Then I finally had to admit to my own fears that I am really scared of deep water. It hasn't really come to a head up to now. Even though we live on Manhattan island, it just hasn't been an issue, and I was pretty scared about it. He said, "Look," he twisted it around and sent it back to me like this, he goes, "You know what? That's perfect. That's exactly why you should learn how to sail because then you never have to go in the water."

Emily O:

I feel like I've been had, but no. The kids were excited. At that point, we had started homeschooling our kids, which is a whole different journey, but I cared very much about them having hands-on experiences and concrete experiences. So we went for it. He got the second job. We all went down and we took this class and we learned how to tack and jive and do all that stuff on this tiny little sailboat.

Emily O:

The main thing we learned is that we all get seasick. So that was an obstacle throughout our journey. Then after that class, Eric said, "I thought we're good," and he's like, "Well, we don't really know if we can do it until we go with no instructor." So we go with no instructor, but we don't just say like, "Let's the four of us go with no instructor." We bring the whole family. So now we're adding a six-year-old, a two-year-old and a baby who can't sit up on her own, and we decide we're going to try this for the first time in Tom's River, New Jersey.

Emily O:

As you might expect, we were a spectacle, and other boaters were pointing at us and laughing. Every time we tipped a little, the kids would cry or scream. I'm trying to nurse a baby through two life jackets. The best part of the day is when we were back on land throwing rocks in the water. That was the part we're like, "Oh, my gosh! We're never going to do this again. That was rough," but Eric continued sailing for a couple of seasons with just gathering up friends, whoever wants to chip in we'll do this.

Emily O:

After a couple seasons, he was a little more confident anticipating what might need to be done and being able to give instructions and just be a really present captain. He said, "You know what? Let's try it again." We joined a little sailing club in New Rochelle and we started going out as a family. It was this really beautiful season where every kid had a turn at the tiller, and it's very different when a kid gets to put their hand on the tiller, the experience that they have. We didn't get any cell service. So we're just looking at each other's eyes and when we'd sing together, we'd talk, we'd just lay around in the sun or read a lot of books.

Emily O:

We did this two, three times a month. I thought we were at the perfect amount of adventure. I never had to get in the water. It was close to home. All that was working out great for me.

Emily O:

Then one day, Eric put his arm around me in our little apartment and he said, "I think the seven of us on a sailboat would be enough universe for me."

Emily O:

I was like, "Really?" because he has so many interests. He said he wrote down over a hundred things. He's like, "Yeah. That's all I want, just the seven of us on a sailboat." I had all these questions going off in my head about like, "Well, that requires a much bigger boat, a much higher skill level. There's engines and electricity and water. What if we would get injured or hurt or get in a storm or what about leaving our communities, our school communities or our friend communities?" All of that stuff just it made a traffic jam in my head, but at that time, I didn't say any of that stuff. I just said, "When would you want to go?" He had an answer he knew because he said, "Emily, we have this really short window of time with our kids and it's closing, and I would want to do something like this as a whole family before our oldest one leaves for college." I think she was around 14 at the time.

Emily O:

Maybe living on a sailboat wasn't the biggest dream of my heart. I was actually pretty scared about it, but what I did feel good about what I heard him saying was our children will have me around 24/7. They'll have that influence and they'll get to be with their dad all the time, and I couldn't think of a greater gift, and then that just dovetails in with, yes, hands-on experience, try new things together, create memories.

Emily O:

I really have this belief that memories are the best investment that we can make because they always increase in value. So we just proceeded from there. For me to just real quickly to face that fear about deep water, we were taking a class in the Caribbean to help us know how to sail these larger boats, and I knew we needed this for just basic safety and survival. In my mind this was not a vacation at all even though it was in the beautiful, British Virgin islands.

Emily O:

The instructor every day would invite the students to go snorkeling at night or in the morning. So when I am sitting there in the cockpit and everyone has gone off and they flippered away to the reef and I'm just there thinking, "Do I really think I can live on a sailboat for a year without getting in the water? What example am I really setting for my kids? I'm telling them one thing about how they can overcome their fears and then I'm sitting here in the cockpit. Who do I really want to be in this world?"

Emily O:

So I just put on a mask and flippers and my heart was racing like crazy, but I jumped in and I just started kicking as fast as I could. I saw this large shape just came across from my right periphery to my left periphery before I could even register what it was.

Eric O:

Jaws was her deepest fear.

Emily O:

Yeah. I know. Sharks. So anyway, I saw it. First, I just saw a shape and a color and then I was like, "Wait. That is a sea turtle. That's fine," and then immediately the next thought right behind it was like, "What eats sea turtles?" It turns out I actually could swim faster than I thought originally, and I made it all the way to the reef. It was incredible like Finding Nemo. It was so much different than watching it on TV and being fully immersed in that experience and in that world was such a surprise to me. I was so fascinated that I forgot to be afraid.

Emily O:

So the two takeaways for me were that this was going to be a lot more fun than I thought, that, yeah, we could maybe really do this thing and that I could live in the water like this. The second one was that it changed the relationship that I felt like I had with fear because I thought that was a very sturdy fear. I'd been living that way for three decades, and I just thought it was real. When I kicked the tires like that, it just disintegrated.

Emily O:

So I had to reevaluate all the other fears that I already had. Every time a new fear comes up, I have to say really what other favorites are hiding behind those fears. So for me, that was a real turning point.

Warwick F:

That's huge. I mean, if you can conquer one of your deepest fears, the fear of deep water, it's like, "Okay. I conquered my deepest fear. I'm ready for the next one. What could be worse than that?" You had to, I'm sure, face fear economically. It's like, "Well, how do we afford the boat? In a year, how are we going to get income?" I'm sure you solved all those problems, came up with a plan, and off you went.

Warwick F:

I mean, people listening to this are like, "That's incredible. I mean, they knew nothing about sailing. They learned about sailing. They learned about how to sail in the Caribbean and take a year off sailing in the Caribbean." Most people dream about those things, but they never do it. They're sitting on their deathbed thinking, "Wouldn't it be fun if ..."

Warwick F:

I think of that quote that I'm sure you probably heard of by Thoreau, "They live lives of quiet desperation." That encompasses most of humanity. They have dreams and they never do it, but you did. So talk about, because that leads into what you do now, how did that year with your family change your life because that intermission, it fundamentally changed the direction of your life in ways you probably never could have imagined.

Eric O:

For sure. I often get asked what the hardest part of the journey was. I think the hardest part was actually when I was taking those walks along the Hudson and Emily said, "You should go check this out." The moment I stepped across the threshold into the sailing school and said, "Hey, I'm interested in learning how to sail. How does this work?" That was the hardest part. Yes, there would be storms and there would be logistics and there would be all kinds of other problems down the road that we would have to solve, but I think the hardest part of these things is seeing ourselves differently because you're talking about living lives of quiet desperation.

Eric O:

It's because I think we often get trapped in our own stories, our narrative of how we think our life is going to play out, and the ability to crack that open and allow other possibilities to come in, and to awaken ourselves to our divine potential, to who we really are in the bigger scheme of things, that's the hardest part.

Eric O:

For all the day-to-day stuff about what happened on this trip, read the book, we won't get into all that now, but when we came back, first of all, we'd lived to tell the tale. The thing that got us out there was we had this list of worries that Emily had mentioned initially. They're logical. They're reasonable, money, health, safety, community, all that sort of stuff, and walking away from that at least temporarily.

Emily O:

Even our two youngest kids didn't know how to swim and our youngest daughter has down syndrome and she had all this therapy we were leaving behind, I mean, they were legitimate responsibilities we were taking into consideration.

Eric O:

Yeah. I'm not trying to minimize them.

Emily O:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Eric O:

Yet when we looked at all the things that could go right, there's the what could go wrong category, and we looked at all the things that could go right, and we thought, "We could see beautiful places. We could gain new skills. We could make amazing new friends," and that list just went on and on and on. The finite unlikely list of what could go wrong balanced against the ever-expanding and likely list of what could go right. At a certain point, it made it an easy decision because we knew that none of this stuff would actually go right unless we did it.

Eric O:

So we gave up our fear of what could go wrong and were able to step into what could go right. Then to come back from the trip, I was worried about financial ruin, but I had a job waiting for me before we got back because I thought my fear was, "Oh, when you leave and you have a gap in your resume, you don't ever get hired again." So I'm going to be lucky to get whatever work I have. My old job wanted me right back. People were actually calling me saying, "Hey, are you looking for work now that you're back?"

Eric O:

So none of those fears came to pass and it opened my mind to all kinds of stuff in a new way. I actually tripled my income after I came home just because I thought about I moved through the world in a different way. I was less afraid. Really, that mindset shift has led to that period of coming home. Then basically, we worked for a few years to get some money back in the coffers and we were able to find inventive ways, not expensive ways, but very inventive ways and travel the world with our kids for the next five years and basically until COVID stopped all that. So I attribute that change to the mindset shift that happened when we went on this trip, and I'm forever grateful for it.

Eric O:

So to Gary's point, that's why the boat was intermission and it just took us into a whole new act where we've lived in a new way since, and I'm so grateful for that, that failure, that crucible moment, to use your language, that crucible moment that helped us transform into something that we didn't think was possible for us.

Gary S:

You've talked a lot about worry in what you just said. We have guests fill out a form so that we have the ability to ask smart questions when we interview you. One of the questions that we ask every guest is, "What is a critical action you believe people can take to find hope and healing after a setback?" Your answer to that question hinges a bit on worry. You said turn worry into what?

Eric O:

Wonder.

Emily O:

Wonder.

Gary S:

Right. Why is that so important, in general, for anybody who's gone through a crucible?

Eric O:

So going back to what we were saying about this what could go wrong question, that's the worry question, and we all go there. It's being prepared. It's preparing for contingencies. It's the responsible thing that we do as adults and parents and business owners or whatever role we might be in as we prepare for what could go wrong. Yet that's only half the equation.

Eric O:

If we never ask the question, "What can go right?" I feel like there's a little bit of intellectual dishonesty there to only ask one of those questions. Both of them are valid. When we ask the what can go right question, we then start to take that same imagination, that same mindset that can spin off into a deeper and deeper dark hole of worry and we say, "Well, what could go right?" and that's the same process of imagining and vision casting, whatever you want to call it, where you start to contemplate all the positive outcomes, and it's the same skillset that your mind does where you're imagining a future and you can use it in a negative direction or you can imagine it in a positive direction.

Eric O:

When we can take that mental ability to worry and we flip it towards the positive, then we're really able to create in our minds and in our spirits the things that we want to bring into being. I think that was really the shift that happened for us. I don't know if I'm saying it the way that or if you have anything you want to add.

Emily O:

Well, it's a more complete picture when you balance that. I think as we were nearing home on this trip, we asked our kids, when we left, they were six through 16, and as we approached home, the older two had turned 15 and 17, they're wise, and we always counsel with them and we like to see how things are going and get their feedback. So we asked them, "How has this changed you or what are you taking away from this trip?"

Emily O:

Our 17-year-old said, "It hasn't changed me. It's made me more myself." I think that's what we talk about in the crucible experience. It burns off everything. When you have an intense experience, it burns everything that isn't really you, that doesn't really matter, and it shows your true colors more vibrantly.

Emily O:

Then the 15-year-old said to us, "This trip has made me comfortable being uncomfortable."

Emily O:

Just piggybacking off what our children had said, I said, "You know what, Eric? I think what we're really taking away from this experience, the real treasure here is three kinds of confidence." It organically grows out of competence. When you learn a new skill, you're like, "Wow! I did a new thing," and then it expands what you think you're capable of doing, and we did this thing and we learned a whole bunch of new skills and that grew our confidence.

Emily O:

Then the second is credibility. When we do what we say we'll do, even if we only tell ourself we're going to do it, it grows our trust and we have learned that there's a ratio relationship there between the credibility that we have with ourself and how big our dreams are. So we came to trust ourselves more. Our kids believed us that we would do what we said we would do. Other people believed us. I think that's why Eric was getting those calls like, "Hey, do you want to come work for us? This is a guy who gets things done."

Emily O:

Then calm, for me, was the most transformative because I come from a line of professional warriors and always trying to put in all the possible contingencies, and what about this variable, and what would we do in that case. This helped me see. As we literally move from island to island to island to island all the way up this chain from St. Martin to Manhattan, 2,500 miles, we did this process over and over again where we'd never been there before, we didn't know exactly what it was going to be like, and as we got closer and closer, palm trees would emerge. We'd see where we were going to anchor the boat. We'd find the grocery store, see if we needed to change money, all those, the details would fill in as we got closer.

Emily O:

So that gave me this sense of calm like I don't have to know all the answers before I take off. I don't even have to know all the questions, but as I move in the direction I want to go, the details will fill in, the path or the answers will emerge, and it's going to be okay. So we've done this so many times now that I believe going forward we will figure it out. So that is really everything under that umbrella of turning worry into wonder is like, "Let's just get curious about this for a minute," and I think, grateful.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I want listeners to listen to what Emily and Eric are saying. I mean, this concept of turning worry into wonder, not just looking at the column that says what could go wrong, what could go right, and as you start taking steps of faith, however you want to express it in your inner self or the divine, whatever paradigm you want to look at, but as you trust yourself and you make those steps, it increases your belief. It increases your ability to take a bigger step and another step.

Warwick F:

So one of the things you said, Emily, I believe, I love, and this is all part of the wonder muscle, I think, is I think you said something like this. You develop a friendly disregard for others' opinions. When you live a life you love, everyone wins. I mean, getting other people's input is good, but you kind of know when to switch it off and it's not serving you. So talk about how all of those experiences, all of that wonder muscle exercise led to, obviously, you wrote a book, Seven at Sea, but The Awesome Factory. Talk about how all that dovetailed into your second act.

Emily O:

So as we wrote this book, we came home and everyone was like, "When are you going to write the book? When are you going to write the book?" I'm like, "That wasn't our intent. We weren't doing some kind of gimmick trick that we could then write a book about," but we do know we're both life long journalers. Obviously, Eric's written plays, and when I was teaching in public schools, I was an English teacher and we both feel deeply about the power of writing and the power of story.

Emily O:

So we thought, "We're not really going to have completed this trip until we've written about it and processed it and gleaned our takeaways." So we hoped that we could solidify that, have something to pass on to our children, and if anyone else wanted to read it and it could encourage them to live more deliberately, live a little more boldly, then we were all about that.

Emily O:

So what we didn't expect as we wrote it was that we were going to reverse engineer this process, which we now call the navigator framework for facing disruption, whether you're causing it or it's coming to you. We used all sailing metaphors. That was our experience and that's what the book is about. So we pulled out those of choosing your own island, having your destination, and there are clues and exploratory time prior to the choosing, chart your course, cast off, navigate out of the harbor, set your autopilot, trust your compass, and then drop anchor, and there are some important parts in dropping anchor as well to rest, reflect, and celebrate on what just happened before you start the cycle all over again, but we recognized it and now we had this map.

Emily O:

So as new opportunities would arise, we would identify them. We'd know where we were. We know where the fear was going to come in, and we'd have our strategies of we need more information so we have a bigger vision, so we're able to release what we're clinging to or things like that. We just used it as our own secret sauce to do all these things.

Emily O:

Gary was mentioning at the top of the show traveling around the world. Eric climbed El Cap. We got scuba-certified. We lived in New Zealand for a hundred days just farmsitting and traveling around by RV. We were just so curious. We wanted to take this idea of, "I want to see for myself. I want to go there. I want to touch it. I want to taste it. I want to smell it," have these experiences with our kids.

Emily O:

Then when COVID hit, we realized this is uncertainty on a massive scale. People aren't used to facing disruption. We've become accustomed to this dance, and we have developed a lot of strategies, and we just didn't feel like we could just keep these to ourselves and only pass them to our children anymore. We thought we want to start sharing and helping, and just what you said at the beginning, to go from drifting to navigating, just taking this, I think everyone's having this big shift of saying, "Wait a minute. Am I really where I want to be, and where am I actually going?"

Emily O:

I was like, "This is the perfect moment to just step in and talk about these strategies for being at the helm in your own life, being the navigator in your own life," and that doesn't mean you always all the circumstances, but it means you're always deliberate about the choices that you're making and which direction you're trying to head.

Gary S:

You used the phrase drop anchor a little while ago, a few minutes back. We've reached the time in the show where I normally say, "The captain's turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. We're going to have to land the plane soon," but come on, we're talking to people who sail the boat 3,000 miles and a guy who produced plays. So we're going to either drop the anchor in a bit or we're going to drop the curtain in a bit. We're going to do one of those two things, but before we do, I would be remiss in my duties as a co-host if I did not give you, Emily and Eric, the opportunity to let folks know how they can find out more about out the book and more about The Awesome Factory online. How can they reach you guys, find out what you do, and maybe engage with you?

Eric O:

Sure. The book is Seven at Sea. You can buy it anywhere that good books are sold. Theawesomefactory.nyc is our website and there's information about us, the book, and social media, and all that there. So theawesomefactory.nyc is the best place to connect with us.

Gary S:

That's awesome. I would say, Warwick, Warwick, you have the last question or two.

Warwick F:

So Eric and Emily, I mean, I just find this fascinating, your story, and your journey, and a couple thoughts in my mind. One is that quote of Thoreau. So many people live lives of quiet desperation. I'm wondering, if you had to re-engineer that quote as people that love English and theater, what would that be? I don't know if that's the right approach. I mean, that's certainly one tack and another would be what's the message of hope and encouragement you can give to people that are maybe living life in the gray, maybe they're in that cubicle, maybe they've had that financial failure or physical failure or however you want to answer that. What's a message of hope or a life that's not a life of quiet desperation, but what's your hope and dream for people that maybe they're not fulfilling life, they're sad, depressed, feel like life is just not the way they thought it was going to be?

Eric O:

I think that's a very beautiful and compassionate question, Warwick, and I'll try to do it justice. I've been that guy in the gray cubicle as you know, and I've been that guy who's felt just crushed and not feeling like anything that I want in life is happening. I would say this. As Emily and I are fond of saying, "When you live a life you love, everybody wins." That's nice if you can get there. How do you get there? I think it starts with what Emily was talking about earlier, which is how do we build these three kinds of confidence in ourselves? It starts with little things.

Eric O:

If I say, "I'm going to go for a walk every day," and then I get it up and I put my shoes on and I go for a walk every day, I'm going to feel better about myself, and when I start to feel better about myself, I'm going to start to make better decisions. I'm going to start to see the world differently, and it can be as some something as simple as I'm going to go for a walk every day or I'm going to eat an apple instead of a candy bar, whatever it may be, but if you do it, your confidence grows and your light starts to brighten.

Eric O:

I think what I was saying earlier, which is the hardest part of this journey for me was seeing myself differently, if we can invite light in in all these different ways and illuminate our view of ourselves, and the world, and God, whatever that means to you, if we can invite that light in and have that fresh perspective, that's what ultimately leads to living a life that we love, and when we do that, everybody wins. We win, our spouse wins, our colleagues win, our kids, everybody. So it starts with seeing ourselves differently.

Emily O:

I would just add to that making space, like Eric said, for the light. He was talking to a coworker once when he was in the gray cubicle place, and this other guy, he was in a similar place in his own life. This was for him also a holding pattern after a fail. He was telling about all the things he'd done in his past and Eric said, "What are you doing here?" That really woke him up to his capacities, and he just realized, "I've been in sleeper mode here, and I have stopped taking responsibility, and I've stopped even listening to my own thoughts."

Emily O:

So the single change that he made is that he stopped listening to music while he has a default mode to just put something in his ears to distract his brain, and he started giving himself some quiet so he could listen to his own thoughts. Lo and behold, he started having all kinds of ideas.

Emily O:

We would be remiss if we didn't actually say that for us, when you're in that place where you just feel stuck, we've found gratitude to be transformational, and when we first got engaged, Eric mentioned we were pretty young, but the first thing we did is we got a piece of paper and we wrote a list of all the things that we would always have control of no matter what our external circumstances were.

Emily O:

One of the things that we put on that list is that we could always be grateful. We decided early on that if we tried gratitude and that didn't help, then we would know we were in real trouble. We've been married for 26 years now and so far, gratitude has always helped us get a little inch up and get a better perspective on what's going on and helped us see, "Yeah, we have more to play with here than we originally thought we did."

Gary S:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on a subject has been spoken. So the anchor is down, the curtain's down. You can get off the boat or you can leave the theater, however that works for you, listener.

Gary S:

Before we go, I have to tell you, Eric and Emily, I love reading the things that you wrote in the form that we had you fill out. I love looking at The Awesome Factory website. I love talking to you beforehand and here because I've written a bunch of notes down. Listening to you guys speak about what you've been through is like following around and grabbing paper and stuffing it in your pockets because you have so many good perspectives and the way that you phrase them can be so compelling and so beautiful.

Gary S:

There's one thing that you said that I want to leave our listeners with, not just listeners to Beyond the Crucible, but for this series on Second Act Significance because you said this, which I think could be my background in entertainment comes from the movie business. So the log line for this series could be this. How can you live deliberately doing what you care about most with the people you care about most? That's something that you said. I'll say it again, listener, and as you look to move beyond your intermission to your second act, have this question in your mind, "How can you live deliberately doing what you care about most with the people you care about most?" because that is a recipe for second act significance.

Gary S:

Until we're together the next time on Beyond the Crucible, listener, thank you for spending this time with us, and please remember that while your crucible experiences are difficult and painful, we know that, the Ortons certainly know that, Warwick certainly knows that, those crucible experiences are not the end of your story. In fact, if you learn the lessons of them, if you recognize they're not things that happen to you but things that for you, you can begin a journey. Doesn't have to be on a sailboat, but it can be. You can begin a journey that leads to a better end to your story, a better place for your compass to point you because where that takes you is to a life of significance.

In the opening episode of our nine-apart series Second-Act Significance, Kari Schwear recounts how at age 7 she vividly remembers thinking, “Is this all there to life?” – before embarking on a journey of soul-crushing crucibles even as she found success in each of her multiple career stops.

But when she grew concerned enough about her “gray-area drinking,” her research into the subject and passion for helping others overcome it launched a second act she is pursuing with absolute gusto – as a life coach who helps her clients overcome the gray areas in all aspects of their lives, from relationships to careers to how they think and talk about themselves.

To learn more about Kara Schwear, visit www.graytonic.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

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




Kari Schwear:

Right around this time, I heard the term gray area drinking via a guest that was on a podcast. And when I was walking my dog and I heard this podcast interview, I literally stopped in the middle of the street. It was a warm summer morning, like 7:30 in the morning, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's what I was. I never identified as an alcoholic. I was a gray area drinker." So I came home. It was like the fire was just burning inside me. I came home and I researched everything I could on gray area drinking. And there wasn't a lot out there. And I thought if I could share what gray area drinking is with more people, I'll get them to raise their hand before they get into a deeper addiction.




Gary Schneeberger:

Did you hear the enthusiasm in the voice of this week's guest, Kari Schwear? You'll be hearing a lot of the same excitement and joy, the same sense of fulfillment and significance, over the next several weeks from the guests we've lined up for our new series, Second Act Significance. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Kari kicks off our series recounting how, at age seven, she vividly remembers thinking, "Is this all there is to life?" Before embarking on a journey that had its share of soul crushing crucibles, even as she found success in each of her multiple career stops. But when she grew concerned enough about her gray area drinking, her research into the subject and passion for helping others overcome it launched a second act she is pursuing with absolute gusto, as a life coach who helps her clients overcome the gray area in all aspects of their lives, from relationships to careers, to how they think and talk about themselves. Kari Schwear has found second act significance and you can too.




Warwick Fairfax:

Well Kari, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. And it'll be so fun to just hear more about GrayTonic and Question the Drink. But I'd like to go back to a bit of the backstory behind what you do. A bit like movies, there's always an origin story. There's always a reason that fuels our passion, that fuels our calling, if you will. And so, from what I understand, you live in the Richmond, Virginia area, I believe, that part of the world. So just talk a bit about your growing up and your family, and you had some challenges growing up. But what was life like in your family growing up?




Kari Schwear:

Well, first, thanks for having me. I really am very honored to be here today with you guys. This is going to be so much fun. My childhood was very interesting. I was like most kids, had parents married so forth. We lived in a suburbial house and everything from the outside world looked to be fairly normal. And unfortunately my parents started to disconnect from one another, probably around that age of six or seven. And at age seven was a pivotal point in my life and one of those memories that will stay with me forever. And that memory was being on my driveway of my parents' driveway in a hot summer afternoon in St. Louis, Missouri, which is very hot and humid in the Midwest, playing jacks. Do you remember that game, jacks? I don't know if we're all old enough to remember jacks.




Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, I do. I do.




Kari Schwear:

So I'm playing jacks and I'm looking up and down the street thinking there's no one to play with. If this is all there is to life, then I really don't want to be here. I just don't see the point of living when there's not really any exciting things happening. And then my thought was, I'm seven, I should probably not be having these weird thoughts, like who thinks like that? I knew right away that it was a very peculiar question to be asking of someone so young. And that really was the start of what I call my gray area living life really started at that point. And just for fun, that was also of the same year that I declared to my mom that I would become a cigarette smoker. And so I became one. I took a cigarette from her best friend Gladys's house when she was hanging out with Gladys, having some coffee. Gladys smoked cool cigarettes. Hey, I wanted to be cool. So I thought I'd take one.




Kari Schwear:

And then moving on through the teenage years were really, really difficult. They were the years that now my parents are divorced, I'm moving around quite a bit. I went to 12 different schools before I hit my second ninth grade. I was physically and sexually abused by older boys than me. It was a very difficult time in my life. Just always trying to fit in, always being the new kid, always just trying to make friends with people. I was beaten so badly in eighth grade my parents didn't even recognize me. It was a rough several years. And then fast forward, I meet my husband when I'm in college and he was the nicest guy I've ever met in my life, and I wanted to break up with him for that reason.




Kari Schwear:

I thought he is just too nice. What is wrong with him? I was used to being with the wrong crowd, so to speak. And I called up his house, this is before cell phones, of course. This is 1980 something. And I called up his house and his mom said, "Oh, he is not here. But I'm going to tell him that you called. And by the way, Kari, I want to let you know that my son loves you so much. I hope you never break his heart." And I thought, well, dang, there goes that. I was literally calling to break up with the guy.




Kari Schwear:

And I'm like, great, she just took that away from me. But I credit her because here we are, 33 years later, still together and very happy. But this is all part of the gray area of living is what I'm talking about is you aren't expecting anything wonderful to happen. It's always this doom and gloom living in this fake world of pretend and being fine. And that was what I was trying to do. I was trying so hard to fit in and just go with the flow and say, my life was fine, and it really wasn't. That was a big piece of it. And God flows in and out of this whole story, but we can get to it.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. Wow. Well thank you. You obviously had a very tough upbringing. Most folks need an anchor. I think some of us, you and I and Gary, it's our faith, our faith in Christ. You need an anchor in something. But sounds like growing up, you had parents that just drifted apart. You went to 12 different schools. I'm assuming you were living with your mom through most of your childhood. Was it pretty much visiting him, living with your mom, visiting your dad on every other weekend or whatever the deal is, something like that.




Kari Schwear:

Yeah. One year was all with my father. My eighth grade year, my mom had moved back to her home state of Massachusetts. This is all in Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri. And when she left, that was a difficult time too. I mean what's funny, I look at the situation now with such different eyes through a different lens. I see my parents as human beings, not my actual parents. I see them as John and Nancy. I don't see them as Kari's mom and dad, which is extremely helpful by the way. Because if I didn't see them that way, I harbored a lot of resentment during that time. And now I look at them like, wow, they went through a lot and they did their best and they didn't realize how much pain I was in.




Kari Schwear:

And I think this is a message, this is one of my bigger messages that I like to talk about is that we don't realize how much of our psyche and our belief system is formed at such an early age, before the age of seven. Neurologically, we absorb so much information into our minds. And we can take that information, we can take an incident as simple and as innocent as listening to your parents argue about money and internalizing that as money causes problems in relationships, and is a disruptor with relationships. And then later on in life, you have problems with a partner regarding money. This is how our brain works. And so I didn't know any of this. My parents didn't know. I think most people don't understand how our brains work, especially as we're children and we absorb all this information.




Kari Schwear:

So I think that was part of it. And part of my healing process now looking back, and God was never part of our everyday life. And at seven, going back to that magical age, I remember, very clearly, having a conversation with my sister who is six years older than me. And she, at that time, was pretty much an atheist. And I said to her, "What do you mean? How could you not believe in God?" And she was like, "Nope, don't believe in it." And I thought, well, that's weird. But I always had this innate ability, I guess, or this innate sense, would be a better description, that there was something bigger than me. But I didn't know what it was. And ironically, it is because of my sister that I am a Christian today. She went off to college, again, six years older than me. And when she came back, she was a born again Christian.




Kari Schwear:

Now this is a girl who dealt with a lot of stuff as well. She was older than me, but she was going through the same thing I was, parents getting divorced, so forth. She was involved with someone that wasn't a very good person and also had a lot of drug use, which at that point, I was using drugs also at an early age, seventh and eighth grade. And she came back this born again Christian and I thought, who are you? What does that mean to be a born again Christian? I had no idea what that meant. And she said, "I really want you to go to church with me." And I said, "Okay." So we went to a church and I ended up just soaking in. I didn't realize at the time how much I needed it, how much I needed something outside of myself, something bigger.




Kari Schwear:

And her particular church did an altar call at the end of the service. And she looked at me and I'm sobbing, just sobbing tears. This was eighth grade, by the way. This was the same year that I was beaten so badly that my parents didn't know me. I lived with my father this year. And we went up to the altar and I accepted Christ as my savior. And I am just bawling, bawling, bawling. And I realize at that moment, this is what I had been seeking my whole little 12 year old self or 13 year old self at this point. And I accepted Him into my life. But like most kids that age, it was in the back pocket and I didn't live a quote unquote, Christian life. But it's okay because the seed was planted. So I think it's that deeper connection of that faith that has carried me through this whole time.




Kari Schwear:

And I believe 100% Warwick and Gary, 100% that I was meant to go through all the things I went through, and there's so much more that I haven't said yet. So much more that I believe I was meant to go through all of that for me to be in this place today. Otherwise, I wouldn't have such a passion for my life and a calling on my life. And I truly believe God has called me to do this work today. But it all had to be part of the plan. It had to be the setup. It's like the greatest setup you can ever imagine in history, right? Is your own life looking back. As opposed to it happened to me, it happened for me.




Warwick Fairfax:

So you carry on with life and you're obviously somebody that's intelligent, successful. You end up being, I think a dealer in a Porsche dealership. You're earning six figures. Life is going well from the outside. You're married and family imagine, and life is awesome. But yet, there was this other side that you were drinking. Characterize it, because you view it a little differently than some because some people think it's all black and white, it's all, "Hey, everything's hunky-dory," or you're quote unquote, an alcoholic. But yet hence GrayTonic, your perspective's a bit different. But from the outside, you have a wonderful husband, life seems like it's been redeemed. In theory, life's pretty good. But yet, I'm guessing, obviously drinking probably went back a lot of years too, like some of the other things I'm guessing. Talk a bit about that. There's a flip side beneath the surface that people maybe aren't quite realizing about Kari.




Kari Schwear:

Oh yes. Well, the drinking actually started in my 30s. I'm now 55 to give some context of how long this was going on. So in my 30s, I was a food and beverage manager at a country club. I was in the restaurant business for a lot of years. Anybody who works in the restaurant business knows that you drink after work, that's just what you do. Well now, I'm the manager, so can't drink at work anymore. But I was the wine buyer for the restaurant. So I became very well educated on high end wines and became very much of a wine connoisseur, wine snob, whatever you want to say. And Rob was starting to notice that I'm now drinking a glass or two in the evenings at home when I wasn't working.




Kari Schwear:

And he raised an eyebrow to that, and he said, "I'm noticing that you're now drinking at home. What's up with that?" And I'm like, "What's the big deal? Everyone does it. They do it in Europe. Everyone drinks every night in Europe, so what's the problem?" Trying to make light of it. And he was hyper super focused on it because his mom was an alcoholic and unfortunately abused some pain medication as well. And so he was very well versed on what addiction looks like. So he was aware that "Uh oh, my wife is now having a couple drinks and it's becoming habitual." Well, right around that same time, we moved to Richmond, Virginia from Pennsylvania. And that move was very stressful, as you can imagine, finding a new job, which wasn't a problem at that point. Fast forward, I'm in the medical field now at this point.




Kari Schwear:

And I knew getting a job down here in Richmond would not be a problem. Matter of fact, I had quite a few selections to choose from 10 years ago, 11 years ago. But it was very stressful. I moved my kids out of school. The whole new community, trying to make new friends, trying to build a house, the whole nine yards, that the drinking became even more so. So instead of that one or two glasses, now we're talking a consistent two to three, mostly every night. Not all the time, but a lot. And then I would play the game with myself of like, oh, I'm going to take a month or two off of drinking and would do it successfully. And then I would barter with myself, like I'm only going to drink on the weekends, not during the week.




Kari Schwear:

And then the weekends turned in to be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, instead of just Friday and Saturday. There was always these games I was playing with myself. And I started to question my relationship with alcohol, like, why am I drinking? So those internal voices started happening probably in 2014, still in the medical field. I really was in what we call the contemplation stage of knowing that I should probably do something about it, probably take this a little bit more seriously than what I am, but wasn't quite ready to make that shift. So a lot of people that are questioning anything, it doesn't have to be drinking, anything in their life, will stay in this contemplation stage until they almost feel like they're forced to make a change. Because if there's no rock bottom or there's no repercussions that's happening, or there's nothing that is forcing them to quit or make a change, well then why should they, right? It's like accepting what is, accepting well nothing's happened, so I'll just keep doing it. And this was a little bit of my attitude.




Warwick Fairfax:

I want to just dwell on this a bit because we all come from different paradigms. I personally don't drink, but not because of religious reasons. I just don't like the taste and it dulls my senses, and I don't agree with it. But my wife does, just at dinner. In fact, my kids are all adults. So having a glass of wine at dinner is what we do other than me, and that's all good. I grew up with parents that would drink wine. My dad especially was exceptionally moderate in his habits. He would drink a glass and a half of wine at dinner and a glass and a half at lunch, never anymore, like a metronome. And that was it. He would never drink spirits or gin, vodka, anything.




Warwick Fairfax:

So for a lot of folks that say, "Well, there's nothing wrong with having a glass or two of wine at dinner." In Europe, in Australia probably has, I think it has the highest wine consumption per capita of almost any country in the world. And so there are people that drink wine and enjoy it just as the whole wine pairing thing, and whites with whatever it is and reds. But yet, it sounds like you weren't this massively heavy drinker, downing, I don't know, glasses or bottles of vodka. To the outside observer, it sounds well, what's so wrong with what Kari's doing? I mean, couple glasses of wine, I realize your husband's sensitivity given his family background. But yet, I'm sensing there's nothing wrong with drinking wine per se.




Warwick Fairfax:

But I think what you're getting to, which I think listeners really need to understand, it's the why. So for those who drink wine, because they feel like it makes the food taste nicer, great. And everything's hunky-dory in life, but it sounds like with you, there was a reason you were drinking. And the reason from your perspective wasn't good. Is that the thrust of it, if you will? Because to most observers, are saying, "I don't get what the problem is. A couple glasses of wine at dinner. What's wrong with that?"




Kari Schwear:

Yeah, yeah. And that's a very good perspective by the way. And you are correct. So a lot of this is about the why. We have to look at the why. And for me, it wasn't a celebratory type experience. It was more like, man, I had a really crappy day at work. I'm coming home and I need to do something about this. It really became habitualized to my day. In other words, you get up in the morning, you brush your teeth, you go to the bathroom, you drink some water, whatever. It was like, I come home from work, I pour a glass of wine, I make dinner, I have another glass with dinner and then sometimes I'd have another glass. And sometimes I'd be like, well, what the heck? There's only a half a glass left in the bottom, I might as well just drink that too.




Kari Schwear:

So when I started realizing that I wasn't just using wine because I enjoyed the taste of it and wanted a glass with dinner, that it became a crutch for me, it became a way for me to cope with a job that I strongly disliked. It was a way for me to cope more importantly, this is really what it comes down to, the crux of my drinking was that I didn't like myself. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. I had zero self confidence. I, yes had a very strong faith, still have a strong faith, but it wasn't enough. I couldn't see what God sees. All I saw was this broken person. And because I carried, this is a really big piece of the puzzle here is that for so many years since seven, all the things that happened to me as a child was exactly that in my head, it happened to me. I was a victim.




Kari Schwear:

I wore that victim badge so proudly, like you don't know what I went through. And people that have gone through trauma will use that as a way to justify a lot of the self-sabotaging behaviors. Not consciously, by the way. All this is done unconsciously. Our brain is so powerful and has the ability to really, really find ways to remind us, unfortunately. It's PTSD, to be honest with you. A lot of it's PTSD and trauma, that's so deeply rooted. So every time we have an experience that pops back up, unless it's healed, unless it's an area that we've healed, we're going to keep experiencing this. Well, I didn't have any knowledge of self development at this point in my life, just six years ago, I'm talking about. If I had a bad day and somebody didn't say something the way I wanted, I took that as this is why this happens to me, it happensall the time to me.




Kari Schwear:

And I'm just a rebel, I'm a rebel, I'm a bad kid. I had all the labels. I had all the self negative talk. I'm the troublemaker. I'm the one who always is expected to be in trouble. I'm the one who never quite makes the Dean's list. I'm always the short end of the stick, but I always seem to skate by somehow. That was my mentality on everything, even in my professional life. Even when I was successful in my jobs and my careers. This is my seventh career. I was successful in all of them. But it was more or less like, I can't believe I made it this far, like lucky me.




Kari Schwear:

And that's really what I saw of it. So I had all this internalization going on in my head, this back and forth inner chatter that was running a lot of my decision making, which neurologically is how it works. Our feelings really are coming from our thoughts and because we feel the feelings, we don't think about our thinking. We feel the feelings and those feelings drive us into an action or inaction that produce a result that reinforces the original belief that the thoughts are stemming from. So this is the circular thinking loop that we do in our minds.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. I want to shift to GrayTonic. But before we do, I want listeners to really hear what Kari is saying. I'm reminded the image of baptism, which is an outward manifestation of an inner transformation. That's what you always hear. And I elder at a nondenominational church in Annapolis, Maryland. So we do baptism. And so I'm familiar with all that. But it sounds it's similar in that this was an outward manifestation of inward hurt, of inward trauma, of inward unresolved. You never completely 100% heal from trauma. Certainly, there are scars and echoes.




Warwick Fairfax:

But it's one thing for it to be a scar and echo, this more felt like ghosts or whatever analogy you want to use that was unresolved and was still affecting you and your decisions and how you viewed yourself. Does that make sense? It just felt like that's what was going on. And I guess if that's true, the question is you made a big pivot, a roundabout that time. I think you're working at a Porsche dealer and life felt a bit blah, or as you put it, meh, which I guess is meh, not quite sure how you spell that. But something like that.




Kari Schwear:

Yes. Yeah.




Warwick Fairfax:

But it felt like there was a pivot and there was a shift from Kari is being governed by the ghosts and all the trauma and the damage that was done to you and other things that went on. But somehow, there was a pivot that shifted things, but below the surface that were no longer going to govern and drive. Somehow, you got out of that prison that you were in of being a victim, the bad girl, I always screw up, all of those negative self-talk. Somehow you got out of that. So tell us about how you got out of that prison and how those negative thoughts beneath the surface, which was driving the drinking from your perspective, how did you make that shift? Because many don't.




Kari Schwear:

Oh, yeah. Such a good question. Well, after I decided that alcohol needs to exit my life, I went the traditional route of figuring that out through Alcoholics Anonymous. Great program. I learned a lot. It was really an awesome place to go. However, because I did not identify as being an alcoholic and I didn't feel like it was the right fit for me, I left the program after about four months and I did all the things, the big book, the 12 steps, the sponsor, all those. And it did provide me some insight, which was good. It wasthe seed I needed to keep me going. But I realized it wasn't my long term game. And again, I had a problem with saying, "Hi, I'm Kari and I'm an alcoholic." It really was a label that I was not willing to accept, nor did I feel like I was.




Kari Schwear:

So I left the program and I worked with a coach that I used to work with, he's a physician, that we worked together in a medical practice. And I really trusted him. I was the only female that he had worked with at that point. He only coached men and he said, "Kari, I don't work with women." I'm like, "No, you need to work with me. I need to have you as my coach." And during those three months that I worked with him, they were not enjoyable, to be honest with you. It was hard work. He was tough on me and it was exactly what I needed.




Kari Schwear:

And this is where the big pivotal point comes in. He said to me on one conversation, "Kari, I think one day you're going to start your own business. I think you have everything it takes to be an amazing coach. And I think you're going to share your story with the world." And then I busted out laughing and said, "You are smoking something serious over there, dude, because that's never going to happen." And I was serious. First of all, I'm not leaving my job because I love my job at Porsche. By this point, I'm at the Porsche dealership. And I was making great money and I thought, well, coaching, okay, I might be able to think about that as a possibility, because I was already coaching some people that left AA when I did, and were coming to me for advice and solace and so forth.




Kari Schwear:

And then to share my story with the world, oh, that's where I drew the line. I'm like, there's no way. I was so private. I had everyone fooled that my life was so perfect. There was no way I was about to go be vulnerable and have anybody see the real Kari. So that was not going to happen. Well, God had other plans. And as I like to say, God's plan is the plan and my plan is just a plan. And I believe that this coach was given the ability, through God, to plant these seeds for me. It was about a year later, so I'm in church, and they're talking about starting a small group. And I said to my husband, "I'm going to start a small group." And he goes, "Okay, great. What are you going to start it on?" I said, "Well, I'm going to do something around drinking."




Kari Schwear:

Now, right around this time, I heard the term gray area drinking via a guest that was on a podcast. And when I was walking my dog and I heard this podcast interview, I literally stopped in the middle of the street. It was a warm summer morning, like 7:30 in the morning. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's what I was. I never identified as an alcoholic. I was a gray area drinker." So I came home. It was like the fire was just burning inside me. I came home and I researched everything I could on gray area drinking and there wasn't a lot out there.




Kari Schwear:

And I thought if I can share what gray area drinking is with more people, I'll get them to raise their hand before they get into a deeper addiction. And then this could be my contribution and then, okay, sure, then I can share my story. Because by this point I had a couple years, I was two years alcohol free at this point. And I thought, okay, well at this point, I don't care who knows I drank too much at one point, like whatever. And right around that same time, I said about the church, the church poo-pooed the idea.




Kari Schwear:

They actually had a recovery group at the church and they didn't want to have a competing small group. It's a small group, right? I'm like, "Are we not here to spread the love of Christ?" I'm confused. So I was really upset over it and I left the church over it. My girlfriend called me later that day and she said, "What's going on?" I told her. She said, "Kari, why are you allowing the church to dictate what you're going to do? You already have so many people that are following you, that you're helping. Girl, you need to start something on your own." And I said, "Yeah, I'll show that church I don't need them." And that was exactly how this business got started. I was on fire. I was on fire so much that I could sleep for a week straight. There were so many ideas flowing through my head.




Kari Schwear:

You know, when you first become an entrepreneur, you're like, "Oh my God, I'm going to conquer the whole entire world." I'm thinking all this crazy stuff. I bought 14 domain names within a week, and I just went crazy. But I settled on GrayTonic because I love the word tonic. By definition, it means medicinal drink of course. But it also means invigorate, strengthener, boost, pick me, up all these beautiful words. And I thought, yeah, I could be the tonic to someone who's in the gray. And that's literally how the name GrayTonic came to be, and that was three and a half years ago and here we are. I credit my coach.




Kari Schwear:

I credit God for the church saying no to me. By the way, I'm back at that same church. I'm glad that happened. I'm glad it happened exactly the way it needed to. And then I just really delved deeply, even more so into the self development world, became a certified life coach, or almost certified in NLP, I'm almost done with that, trauma training, motivational interviewing, all this certification. And every possible chance I get, I'm learning something constantly. So it's just been my world that I live in right now, yes.




Gary Schneeberger:

One of the things I love about your story Kari, is that from this idea of gray area drinking, you've expanded it to gray area living. And your assistance that you offer, your insight that you offer, your hope that you offer to clients and people is not just in the area of drinking, but maybe you're handcuffed to a job that is not rewarding, maybe you're in a relationship that is not mutually satisfying. That gray area concept and the idea of tonic coming to make it better, to soothe it, to propel you forward, that applies not just to drinking, but to other things. I imagine, and especially for a series that we're calling Second Act Significance, this new act in your life. There's enormous significance to you, I imagine, in not just focusing on drinking, while that is where it started and that's important to you, but these other very fulsome areas of life. There's got to be great satisfaction for you in that.




Kari Schwear:

Oh, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of my clients, when they come to me, it is not because of drinking. That might be one of the things that they're doing to deal with their stress and their unhappiness and their deep rooted trauma that they might have in their life. But they might be saying, "Hey, Kari, I really need help with all the stress I'm under at work or my wife and I aren't getting along or my spouse, or I'm really having a hard time in my relationships," whatever it is. We have gray areas in so many places, like you said. It could be that, like you said, handcuffed to a job or just being in an unhappy marriage. And honestly, that's part of my story too is three years ago, I found myself, after 30 years of marriage, telling my husband, I don't know if I want to remain married.




Kari Schwear:

I was really falling out of love with him. And there was a lot of things that were happening with me during my process of self development that brought me to that place of, I don't know if I want to strap in for another 30 years. And so we worked really hard through that time. And I, again, believe that I was meant to go through that period with Rob, because to be where I'm at now, which is I can help couples with their gray areas.




Kari Schwear:

Now, I coach the individual, but we bring the partner in for a couple sessions and I have a process to do that, that really makes a significant difference in the life because now they can see each other in a way that they've not seen before. That's a beautiful thing about a coach. A coach is able to look into the future and see the blind spots and see things that the client could not see exactly what my first coach did for me. He saw the potential in me. He saw things that would fulfill me and that would make me feel like there was a purpose and a passion for my life that I have never felt, starting at age seven. Why am I here? Because if this is all there is to life, I don't see the purpose. I can honestly say now that this is the reason why I'm here, is to do this work, 110%.




Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. What you said is so profound and yeah, thanks Kari, for just reminding us that there is a broader picture. Sometimes life can feel very gray, like it's overcast, all the buildings are gray, life is gray. It's almost like the Wizard of Oz before they turn the color on. It's just life is just boring. It's black and white, it's not all the colors of the rainbow. And for many people, they're stuck in this dead end job. If anybodywants to think of what is gray living really like, there's a film with Tom Hanks that didn't really go anywhere, but it's called Joe Versus the Volcano. And that opening scene where he goes through the mud into the bowels of this dark building, he has this it bitty little colorful lamp. And the whole thing is just boring, gray, awful.




Warwick Fairfax:

It's like you're going to prison every day. It's the most vivid illustration I've ever seen of what a gray life is, in a sense. And so for many people, it may not be drinking, but they might be unhappy in their marriage, they might hate their job, hate their life, hate themselves, all of the above. And so how do you get out of that gray living to where you love your spouse, you love who they are, you love yourself in the best God honoring sense of that word? You love what you do. If you're a person of faith, you feel honestly that this is a God given calling, or if you're not, a universe calling. So it sounds like you're trying to be who your coach was. You're an advocate for people to find their calling, to get out of the gray into just a colorful life where they love themselves and love others. Is that a reasonable summary of what you do?




Kari Schwear:

That's a great summary. That is a phenomenal summary. And you know what? I have to say, there is a client that would be an awesome guest for your show because he is the epitome of just that, and how he's touching millions of lives at this point with the work that he does. And it's just incredible to see what God can do in someone's life. And when you think about who was actually called for greatness in the Bible, it wasn't the most honoring upstanding citizens that were called. It was the lowly, undeservable or recognizable people that God was calling up to the stand to say, "You know what? You're the chosen one." Just look at the story of Saul, now Paul. You can't make this up, right? God purposely picks people that you would not expect. Even Jesus, the way that he came into the world, it's an incredible story. We don't always think it's going to look like that, but that's exactly how it is. And I'm actually very honored to do what I do. I have to pinch myself like, wow.




Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. I think God uses the broken for his own purposes, absolutely. So talk a bit about GrayTonic, and I know there's Question the Drink. People come to you and they say, "Kari, maybe I drink a bit too much. But it's not massive. But yeah, I don't do it for the right reasons. I hate my job, hate my life, hate my marriage, hate myself." As their coach, what are some of the things you do to try and turn the Titanic away from hitting the iceberg kind of deal? Because it's either they're on the iceberg or about to hit it. There's always, there's better, but there's often worse. If you keep going the direction you're going. What are the things you do as their advocate to help turn the ship around so it's not going to crash in the iceberg and go down?




Kari Schwear:

Oh, yeah. Well, it depends if I'm working with a one-on-one or in a group, because a group is set up a little bit differently and that's really surrounded towards drinking and some behaviorals. But with the group and with my one-on-ones, the first thing is let's hold up the mirror and let's really start to dive deep as to why you're doing this. There has to be more than just an interest. It has to be knowing what that why is because your why is your anchor. Your why is the fuel that's going to keep you going. But it also has to be of deep value. It just has to be your grounding force. It has to be that shining North Star that is just keeping you moving forward. And without a strong foundational why on how and why you want to change your life and the differences, it's not going to be very successful.




Kari Schwear:

And the next part of that is really understanding that there's a difference between goals and intentions. And I focus a lot on intentions. I don't actually like goals. I think goals are great to check a box and they're future based and yippee, yay, we can cross the box off and feel like we've accomplished something. But intentions are the daily fuel and the motivation that we need and those little micro wins provide the daily effort that is needed. And part of my program's called Everyday Effort Equals Expansion because what we're trying to do is to expand into the next best version of ourselves. And one of the guys that I follow that I just love, love, love, his name is Ed Mylett, on one of interviews, he stated that the day he dies and he's standing with God, he wants to be looking at a reflection of what he says would be his twin brother, the man that he had the potential to live up to.




Kari Schwear:

And he wants to have that reflection back, that he has lived up to his God-given potential and that he was used in every possible way, that he was every year rising to a new level and the best that he could be, both self development wise, but also spiritually. What more can we do for God's kingdom? What more can we provide? And I just love that. And for me, that's what I live by. And with my clients, yes, I am a Christian. Yes, I very much coach on Godly principles. But I'm not the one who's beating them down to say, "Hey, you need to believe in God." Instead, what I do is come at it through the back door, just like gray area drinking is a back door way in to say or gray area anything is to say, "I might want to explore this a little bit further." It's an invitation.




Kari Schwear:

So a lot of it, my job as a coach is to show the insights and the possibilities. And I like to describe I myself as the bumpers in a bowling alley. Like if you go to bowl, I'm those bumpers that are just bumping you back into the middle of the lane. So you can hit the targets and fully expand, and hit all of those pins where you can fully expand into the best version of yourself, which sounds so cliche. But it's true because if you would've told me just six years ago that I would be in this position right here right now, I would've told you, you're absolutely crazy. But yet here we are. So God's plan is really the plan. And I think if we can relax and rest into that and surrender to that, is when we allow things to happen. So a lot of it is a self-reflection, and of course I do that through some other modalities a whole lot more, but that's the high level version.




Gary Schneeberger:

That sound you heard, listener, is the sound of the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating that we have begun, but it's going to be a slow descent to landing because we have some more ground to cover in this fascinating conversation with Kari.




Gary Schneeberger:

There's something about what you've been saying, Kari, that I can't get out of my head. You talk about... This gives me the opportunity to say something Warwick says pretty much every episode, when he says listeners will be familiar with, and then he tells a bit of his story. Listeners be familiar with a bit of my story in that I have an alcoholic background myself and I did go to AA for a longer period of time than you. But I sort of came to the place where while I loved the program, that didn't really do it for me, didn't work entirely for me. But the idea of why I drank to change the way I felt, the way that you talked about it to change the way you felt, I can see in what you're doing with clients now, you're dealing with, you're helping them change how they feel, but in much more constructive ways. Is that a fair assessment?




Kari Schwear:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm the pattern disrupter. But while we're making the patterns into new patterns, we can literally change the way that we think by creating new neural pathways and disrupting all that. But it's also building the confidence that they need. My whole job is to build that self love and purpose and passion inside of those clients. And when I can do that and I know I've become successful, doing that is when I know my work has been well received. And that's really the goal of what I do is to help them see what's possible for them.




Gary Schneeberger:

And that leads to this last question, I promise I'm going to throw it back to you Warwick after this last question, and something I'm going to have Kari do. The last question then becomes the series is all about, it's called Second Act Significance. And it's all about how, what we were doing before might have been great in its own way. Maybe it wasn't, but what we are doing now brings us much more satisfaction and significance. Is that true for you? How would you describe what you were doing before with the jobs you had, the Porsche dealership most recently before this, are you living a more significant life, a more satisfactory life now? And why is that?




Kari Schwear:

100%. More satisfactory because I'm not numb to what's going on around me. I'm no longer hiding behind a mask. I'm no longer living in this guilt and shame of something that I did that was wrong or that I didn't measure up. Those voices of I'm not enough, they're diminished. Are they gone completely? No. That is something that I think all of us as humans will occasionally have to look at and question and say, what is the truth here? And so for me, when I have those voices come into my head, I have to ask, is that what I really believe? Do I know that that is really the truth or is there something else that could be true? And when I realized that we have internal stories in our mind that create these feelings for us, that's what gets us into trouble.




Kari Schwear:

So for me, it's always circling back to what is most important, understanding my why, understanding the reason why I was chosen for this. And this is not about me. This is truly to bring hope and joy and peace to others that I'm doing God's work, that He has meant for me to do. And so when I take myself out of the equation and I make it about the person, then I know my direction is correct. And then when I take my eyes off of myself, that allows me to show up more vulnerably. And I think that has been a gift too. Like I said, there was no way I'd share my story publicly. And yet, now there's pretty much nothing I won't share.




Gary Schneeberger:

I would be remiss at this point, if I did not give you the chance Kari, to tell listeners how they can find you online and read your blog and learn more about your services. How can they do that?




Kari Schwear:

Thank you for asking. The best way is through my website, GrayTonic. And by the way, gray in the US is spelled G-R-A-Y. I think we're the only country that spells gray with an A, but it is A-Y, GrayTonic. And then if anybody is interested and wondering, "Am I a gray area drinker?", there is a quiz on my main website, GrayTonic. But I have another website dedicated to gray area drinking, and that is grayareadrinking.com. Again, G-R-A-Y. So either website, grayareadrinking.com or GrayTonic is a great way to learn more about me, my services and the things that I offer and more about the group program if that's something that is of interest, because it's an awesome group.




Gary Schneeberger:

All right, Warwick, I'm done. Take us in.




Warwick Fairfax:

All good. All good. I love what you're saying, Kari. One of the things you said to us in advance was the hardest lessons in life are in the storm. You say sometimes, basically the key is to know you have to go through and not around, that there's almost an unopened gift. There's a blessing in the storm. And I love what you say in that because I can relate. I don't know if it's true for everybody. It might be. But sometimes one of the keys to being able to deal with the dark in the past, the damage that has been done to us, the mistakes that we've made, and this is not an original thought, is to use our pain for a purpose.




Warwick Fairfax:

When you're using your pain in service of others, when you're sharing your story and others are saying, "Kari, you're speaking to my soul. That was me. I feel a little bit better today. Maybe everything isn't solved, but I have hope. I honestly believe the first time in my life I'll get out of the gray, I'll see some color of my life. I have hope for my marriage. I have hope for my life." It feels like at that point, boy, what I went through was awful, but I can see God's plan. I can see God's hand. And certainly, in my life, it's very different but similar in the way that I talk a lot about what I went through on my own podcast, but other people's podcasts, the losing 150 year family business, disappointing myself. I felt like I let God down because it was founded by a believer. I go into all this detail and it does get easier.




Warwick Fairfax:

I talk about it a lot, as you talk about it a lot. So just talk about for listeners there sometimes can be beauty, amidst the pain. And by sharing it, that's also a path back to the healing. And that leads to maybe that one last question you said, what would you ask us? And that question you say is with all that you've gone through, would you change anything if given the chance? I have a feeling those two thoughts are connected, if you will. There was some purpose by what you went through and it's able to provide you some healing, I'm sure. So talk about that and the would you change things if you could?




Kari Schwear:

Yeah. I feel sorry for that little girl, what she had to go through. I really do. I almost look at my younger self as a separated person from me. I'm not that person. I look at it through a different lens now. And because I'm able to do that, would I choose to go through it again? And the answer is only knowing what I know now and the impact that I get to provide is yes, I would. I almost think of anytime anybody goes through something really hard, if it's for the greater good of God's kingdom, then how could you possibly say no that you wouldn't experience it again, as painful as it was. So I think it's taking the mess.




Kari Schwear:

And listen, I think every listener could attest to this, that we all have something in our life. We all have some sort of, whether it's little T trauma or big T trauma, we have some sort of trauma or experience that has helped shape us. And instead of looking back on it saying, wow, that happened to me, that happened for me because now you can see that gift, the blessing. And there's really four types of blessings of failures, as I call them. And it's a learning, a set up, a redirection. And when we can look at that, we can find the purpose behind it, then it makes sense. And then we're like, "Oh yeah. Okay. I get it now." So yes, the answer is yes.




Gary Schneeberger:

So I have been in the communications business long enough and co-host of this podcast long enough to know when the last word's been spoken on a subject and Kari just spoke it. There's something, listener, I want to present to you. If you enjoy the show, if you enjoy the content, if you enjoy the things that we talk about here, these are all things that came out of Warwick's experiences. And there are more ways to experience Warwick's experiences. Couple of things come to mind. One, you can purchase his book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. Go to our website, crucibleleadership.com. That Wall Street Journal bestseller book is available there. You also can book Warwick to speak at an event that you're holding or having. You can also find how to book Warwick as a speaker for your event on our website, crucibleleadership.com.




Gary Schneeberger:

So until the next time we're together listeners, remember that your crucible experiences, we know, we've talked about it here, we all know how hard those things are. Kari did a meaningful and moving job in talking about her own crucibles and how painful they were. But she also talked in great depth with great hope about the other truth, and that is if we learn the lessons of them, if we apply them to our lives moving forward, they can be truly blessings. They can be truly things that lead to a life of significance. And in the context of this series, which we've just kicked off, when we pivot away from those things that maybe cause us crucibles and we move into something new, we move into something fresh. We explore what we're calling Second Act Significance. That's where the depth and breadth and height of our lives of significance can truly be found.

Join us as we launch our newest series, Second-Act Significance, on April 5. It’s a nine-part collection of conversations with guests who have gone from dead ends to new beginnings in their lives and careers. If you’ve ever felt like you were made to pursue and achieve more, to tackle something different that brings your heart alive and benefits others, to use your crucible as a launching pad to a life of fresh significance, you won’t want to miss a single episode.

It’s easy to feel discouraged these days. War has broken out in Ukraine, the COVID pandemic is weakened but not gone and our economy continues to struggle. That’s the challenging news. The hopeful news is that the time has never been better to do our part to help each other weather the storms we’re experiencing. And the best place to begin doing that is by encouraging each other. This week, host Warwick Fairfax and cohost Gary Schneeberger discuss the impact and practice of encouragement. You’ll learn the seven key steps to becoming a master encourager, from paying attention to being specific, from giving positive feedback often to always making sure it’s sincere.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible, I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. I really believe that encouragement can change the world. I mean, we live in a world that's divided, there's war on as we speak, division, discouragement, fear, uncertainty, but when you encourage somebody else and they in turn encourage others and you have encouragement spreading like water spreading out on dry land, you'll see grass growing, flowers blooming. It makes a tremendous difference if we had everybody think, "Okay, what can I encourage somebody today in?" It would encourage people to bounce back more.

Gary S:

The world just described is not a utopia, it's a reality we can all create by becoming intentional about offering one of the most effective antidotes to staying stuck in our crucible experiences, giving and receiving encouragement. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week, Warwick and I discuss his new blog on the impact and practice of encouragement. You'll learn the seven key steps to becoming a master encourager from paying attention to being specific, from getting positive feedback often to always making sure it's sincere. I even get the chance to shock Warwick with the results of a study that found for every one criticism you tell someone, you need to counterbalance it with ... Well, you'll have to listen to find out what that number is. You just might be shocked by it too.

Gary S:

One of the things I'm going to love about this conversation as it unfolds is that, it works on two tracks. There's professional kinds of encouragement as a leader, as a teammate, in the workplace, and then there's also personal kinds of encouragement. The principles behind them are the same, but we get to explore our business leadership muscle here, Warwick, as well as our self-help muscle here. Explain a little bit about, as we get started, why you chose encouragement as the topic you wanted to focus on in our dialogue discussion?

Warwick F:

We live in this world where it's paradoxical that, if ever there was a need for encouragement, it's right now, but because of the stress produced by understandable fear and division and war, it's hard to find the actual mental and emotional energy to actually encourage. So we need it a lot, but it's hard to find it in these sorts of circumstances.

Gary S:

This is a circle of life issue. Right? I mean, as you give encouragement, that then can flow back to you to receive encouragement, sometimes you get encouragement from giving others encouragement. The reaction of someone that you encouraged, the improved either relationship, if it's personal or performance, if it's professional, that then encourages you. So I think, to use one of your favorite analogies, it's a flywheel of sorts. As you encourage you get encouraged. Right?

Warwick F:

It's really true. It's one of my highest failures as we'll get into, I really try to encourage, and as I encourage people and I see them feel encouraged and their spirit lighten a bit, it makes me feel good. One of the things we say on Beyond the Crucible all the time is, we probably say this every single podcast, If today is your worst day, you're at the bottom of the pit. Yeah, there is obviously some lessons about how you get out of the pit, understanding your design, learn the lessons from your crucible and so forth.

Warwick F:

But part of it is, as you have a vision that's focused on others, when you focused on others, it just gives you this feeling like you're doing something worthwhile, you feel better about yourself, you feel encouraged because we were designed as humans to think of others and help others and serve others in the altruistic sense of that word.

Warwick F:

So, it really follows from that same philosophy, is we were designed as we think of others, part of that is encourage them. You can argue with how we're designed by the designer, whoever that is, but we are designed in a way that when we encourage, we will tend to feel encouraged ourselves, and better about ourselves just because we're encouraging others. It's part of our human design that we can't alter. It's just the way we are.

Gary S:

Right. I hadn't thought about it before. I've heard you say, I've said myself, scores, dozens, hundreds of times, a life of significance is a life lived on purpose dedicated to serving others. One of the ways that you serve others, we think of maybe more active, we're running a soup kitchen we're ... But encouragement is a way to serve others as you just pointed out. That's not the easiest, but one that we can all do any day, every day, if we're paying attention, that seems to be like a good entry point as you're looking for a life dedicated serving others. It's a good place to start. Isn't it?

Warwick F:

It is. I mean, one thought as I've been thinking about it is, it all starts with how you look at life. For instance, one of the things we say all the time on Beyond the Crucible is, today could be your worst day, you might have suffered through physical tragedy, abuse, financial loss. It could be your fault, not your fault. Like in case of my financial failure was largely my fault, but you have a choice in life. Are you going to say, "This was unfair, I'm just going to hide under the covers for the next 30, 40, 50 years till all ends?"

Warwick F:

So, in a similar way with encouragement, whether you feel like it or not, whether you feel, "Boy, today has not been a good day, I had a really tough time at work. There's family issues, kids issues, maybe my kids' grades at school aren't that good. Maybe my son or daughter got cut from the team." Bad stuff happens every day, at times, it feels like. So there's always reasons to just feel, "Oh, whoa is me." And just feel down, and I get it. That's real. I don't at all minimize that.

Warwick F:

But part of it really is a choice. "Okay, I know today isn't good, but I'm going to have an attitude that I'm going to try and be grateful for what I can, attitude of gratitude as others have said, but I'm also going to try and have an attitude of encouragement." So, it really partly ... Are you going to look at the glass half empty half full? Part of it is just a way of being, a life philosophy, a set of values that you're saying, "Okay, irrespective of how tough life is or isn't, I'm going to have an attitude where I'm going to try and be grateful and I'm going to try to serve others, certainly in this way of encouraging them."

Warwick F:

So you've got to plant that flag in the ground and say, "I am going to do this. I'm going to choose to try and have an encouraging spirit." It's the foundational choice. It's like that choice in the pit, am I going to be overwhelmed by my crucible, or am I going to choose to try to come back from it, as difficult it is? Am I going to choose to try and be encouraging, or am I going to just have an attitude of life is unfair, it sucks, and I'm just going to be angry and frustrated? That's the only emotion I'm going to think of, anger and frustration. I'm not going to be grateful, I'm not going to try and encourage anybody." So really, you got to make a life philosophy choice. That's really probably almost the underpinning to the points we're about to discuss.

Gary S:

Before we get into the content of the blog, I want to level set us with a quote I pulled from a Harvard Business Review article about the importance of encouragement. It says this, "A recent study from McKinsey & Company ..." This article was published just in November of last year, "found that although most employers believe that the large number of people who quit their jobs this year were looking for better compensation, the truth is, most were leaving because they didn't feel valued and lacked a sense of belonging at work."

Gary S:

Another study found that receiving more frequent appreciation from our colleagues and managers, doesn't only make us feel respected, it's also linked to better performance. So there's a bottom line reason to do this in a professional context. And I'd argue a bottom line reason to do this in a different sense of a bottom line in relationships because they build stronger relationships, and that is a very helpful thing.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I think that's such a good point, Gary, that you raised. That's really, really excellent. Yeah. I'm familiar with studies that basically show, whether you are lower management, middle management, wherever you are in your organization, everybody wants to be compensated fairly. That's a given. You want to feel like you're being paid fairly for the work you perform. But once you achieve that, "Yeah, okay. I'm getting paid what other people get paid in my industry. Okay, great, that's the foundation." That is certainly necessary, but it's not sufficient to make you happy at work.

Warwick F:

People beyond getting paid fairly, beyond that, that's not really motivating. It's sufficient, but it's not a motivator in the general sense of the word. So, most people leave work because they don't get on with their boss, and maybe their boss is not encouraging them, criticizing them. No matter what they do, it's always wrong. They may be out of tune with the values of the organization. To your point, I'm sure it's the case, that if your boss encourages you, values you, tells others, "Hey, Jim or Mary's doing a phenomenal job." That will not only make you feel encouraged, you will work harder, probably longer hours, more effectively, more productively. It makes just good business sense in addition to moral sense. So you're right.

Warwick F:

The power of that is absolutely paramount. People that think, for your average person, it's all about money, it really is not. Beyond getting paid fairly, they want a whole lot more than that. They want to feel like what they do matters and they want to feel like their boss appreciates them and encourages them. It's critical. In today's world where people are very mobile, you lose people in a heartbeat if you don't appreciate them.

Gary S:

Right. And that's why, listener, we're doing this podcast, and Warwick wrote his most recent blog on the power of encouragement and the patterns of encouragement, how you can do it. You'd think that Warwick loves the number seven, because his blogs almost always have seven points. The last one had eight, which surprised me, but he has seven points of how you can go about offering encouragement. And again, from my perspective, these apply in the workplace for sure, but they also apply in relationships.

Gary S:

But the first one, Warwick, that you talk about in your blog, and that we're going to talk about here is to pay attention, which seems counterintuitive. I chuckled there because it's like, "Okay, it seems rudimentary." But, nothing happens for your encouragement of others if you're not paying attention. Right?

Warwick F:

So it's this attitude of, "I'm going to pay attention and I'm going to look for opportunities to be encouraging. I'm going to have my radar up, my ears open, my eyes open. I'm going to look to be open and aware so that if something happens, I am not going to miss it." It's critical.

Gary S:

I'm glad you took it to the place I was talking about in terms of family relationships, because I wanted to share one of the things that my wife, Kelly and I do, and we have done for the last three or four years. It's a jar, it's an enormous Mason jar. Look how big it is compared to my head. It's an enormous Mason jar, and inside of the jar are three by five cards. What we do is, we keep blank three by five cards around the house. Then as we catch one another, right, doing something nice, doing something kind, and we want to encourage the other, we'll write them down, we'll date them and write them down for the entire year.

Gary S:

On January 1st of the next year, we'll pull these things out and these. It's jammed to the top full of these things. It takes us almost two hours some years to go through all of those notes of, "Hey, thank you for doing this. Wow, I was really impressed when you did this. You're such a good mom or stepdad or whatever that is that we talk about." It's really a beautiful time. Knowing that that jar is there, does fuel exactly what you're talking about, catching each other doing something good, but also doing something well, doing something that you appreciate about them and being able to express that.

Gary S:

And that doesn't mean that we don't talk to each other about things that ... We don't encourage each other 365 days out of the year, we only do it on the first of the year. It's just a secondary way, and it's a way to make sure we keep those things top of mind. I even carry three by five cards with me when I travel, so I don't miss moments when I'm away from home to then come back and stick those in the Mason jar.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Gary, I think that's just incredible. I think that would be really worthy of doing, listeners. So, you might want to do exactly what Gary and Kelly do. Just write down some three by five cards. I think really the larger point you're getting to, which I think is important, I mean, for me, it's one of my highest values. I don't want to say I do it like breathing the little bit, just because it's ... Yeah, I'm just so focused on, it's such an important thing for me. I think, find a mechanism, a rhythm. Gary's mentioned one good rhythm, one of the things that we do, again, you don't have to do this, and Gary's one is brilliant.

Warwick F:

I think I've mentioned on this podcast before, one of the things we do at birthdays or Mother's Day or Father's Day is we go around the table, three kids, adults now, from 30 down to 20s, and will say youngest to oldest, what do we most admire about that person? Now, two out of my three kids are writers. So they'll do the same thing on their cards. And since they're writers, when it's about you, there's like paragraphs and detailed praise with points and...

Gary S:

Subsection two. Yeah.

Warwick F:

Exactly. It's, "Oh my gosh."

Gary S:

Footnotes.

Warwick F:

Exactly, exactly. Pretty much. Sometimes they roll their eyes or whatever a little bit and not too much, but it's like, "Here we go." But that's just amazing. You got cards for years and you just remember some of the themes like, "Hey dad, you're always there at my birthday, at my tennis or soccer or dance recital, what have you." That's what we do. I mean, Gary's is fantastic. That just feels like that's the platinum gold style level way of encouraging by putting cards down, in addition to doing it during the day, but listener, you figure out your own mechanisms, you don't have to have a mechanism.

Warwick F:

But like a lot of things in life, sometimes mechanisms help a characteristic that you want to be like muscle memory. It helps to train the muscles in that. So I think mechanisms like that, especially Gary's, I think, is a fantastic idea.

Gary S:

Which leads us logically to the second point. And this is what I love about these conversations, Warwick, and the blogs that you write that fuel them is that, the points stick together like a stepping stone. Right? First step number one, pay attention. Okay, you're doing that, then what comes after that? Point number two in your blog in our conversation now is, if you see something, say something. Again, seems a little self-evident, but really in the workday world of how busy things are, that can get past us. Right?

Warwick F:

Absolutely. We all have our sayings. This may be close to the number one thing that I say, number one mantra, if you will, if you see something, say something. By that I mean, if you see something positive, say something. We'll talk about the negative is not quite so, you don't always say something just because you see something negative, that you have to think pretty hard about, "Should I say something when ..." That's a whole nother discussion, another podcast. But let's assume that you have this attitude of gratitude, attitude of thankfulness, glass half full, you've got that mindset, you're paying attention.

Warwick F:

So once you're paying attention, it may not be a freight train, it might be just this gentle breeze for the trees. When you see something, then say something. I can't tell you how many meetings, whether it's ... I'm on two nonprofit boards, board meetings, meetings with different teams, family. Sometimes you can see on people's eyes that they're thankful, but they're not saying anything. Again, I'm not trying to throw any organization under the bus, but in a couple of nonprofit boards I've been on, there are times in which, whether it's the head of the organization or sometimes one of the heads of a department, will come to the board and give a presentation, and you'll be thinking, "Wow, this man, this woman is doing a phenomenal job. Wow."

Warwick F:

Now, how much will they value the board of the whole organization saying this is great, like a lot. Praise from the boss is great, praise from the board, that's another level, at least from their perspective. It doesn't mean we're more or less important. It's just more how it works. So, sometimes people will be wrapped up in what's the next steps, how can we improve on this, how does this report jive with other things I've heard?

Warwick F:

You're thinking about all these analytical things you're thinking of, which is great, but rather than say, "Wow, Fred, Mary, that was fantastic. What you're doing here in this ministry or in this part of the organization, it's fantastic." I'm not against anybody, it's just human nature. You get preoccupied with your own thoughts and you're thinking all these positive thoughts, but you're not saying anything.

Gary S:

Right.

Warwick F:

It's just human nature, people aren't used to encouraging. It's just not a normal thing that people do. So they're thinking these positive thoughts, but it's like, just because you're thinking of it, how in the world is a person meant to know? They're meant to be a mind reader? How are they meant to know that you are thinking positive thoughts towards them, unless you open your mouth? There's no way they're going to know. I mean, they can't figure it out by osmosis, by ESP or mind meld or mind reading. I mean, it doesn't work that way.

Gary S:

And the other thing then that comes from that, if you see something, say something, the something that you say you make in point three of your blog is, be specific. And that to me is extraordinarily important because, like most things in life, the more detail you offer, the more beneficial what you have to say is.

Gary S:

If you see those movies where someone's on a plane and some emergency happens and a passenger has to fly the plane. Right? They've got to be very specific when they get on with their control booth tower and they tell them how to fly. They got to tell them how to do it, they got to be specific. Being specific allows people to really understand what the encouragement is for, and I think then, it fuels more of that behavior as you call it out. Right?

Warwick F:

Absolutely, very well said. It's one thing to say back to the boardroom examples, somebody comes in and says, "Hey, great job." That's better than nothing. That's okay. I think another example, I'm an elder at my church, evangelical, 2,000-odd person church in Maryland. So, often the pastors we have who preach, pretty much always do a great job. Sometimes somebody say, "Hey pastor, great sermon." Okay. How often do they say why? Sometimes it's like, "Okay, what's that mean?" I mean, thank you, it's better than bad sermon. It's a step on the road. It wasn't like it sucks or I'm leaving or see you. I mean, I guess there are worse feedback.

Warwick F:

But what I always try and do, whether it's a sermon or I'm on a board or just with other people, I try to be specific. Back to the example of when we go around birthdays and I'm trying to give encouragement and praise to my kids and my wife, I will say, "Hey, I know life has been tough, but you've really been persistent. It's great you got that job. Boy, I admire the fact that, when you're in that job, you can set and forget, you're reliable. You don't miss anything, you're dependable. And that kind of character is really impressive." I mean, I try to be very specific. Certainly, in every case, but you better believe with my family.

Warwick F:

So, it's one thing to say, like a boss comes by and says, "Hey, that was great." "Okay. Well, what's that mean?" Or yeah, "you're a nice person." "Okay. What's that mean? How nice?" "Well, you're kind, you're compassionate, you're forgiving. You're always thinking of others." "Okay, now I get an idea of what you mean by nice person." It's better than nothing. But if you want to go from entry level passing grade to A triple plus, be specific. It makes a massive difference, because one can seem perfunctory. Okay. They really mean it. Just saying it because ...

Warwick F:

Being specific is absolutely critical and it shouldn't be that hard because if you're thinking nice job or you're a nice person, there's got to be a reason behind it. It's not like, "Oh, I don't know why I think you're a nice person." Be like you with Kelly. I don't know why I was encouraged by what you did today, I have no clue, but I'm just going to say thank you, Kelly. Of course, there's a very specific idea of why you appreciate it in that moment. Right? It's not like there's amorphous good feelings.

Gary S:

Right. Exactly.

Warwick F:

Right?

Gary S:

Yep. So you said there's a triple A plus way to do it. I'm going to add some extra credit because I think on this point in particular, on this idea of being specific, I think one of the best ways to do that, and you talked about it a little bit earlier when you talked about giving cards to your family at birthdays where you write things down. I think there's power, especially when it comes to being specific in a note, a written note, and I found another HBR article that talks about the power of written communications versus verbal communications. And here's a couple of paragraphs from that article.

Gary S:

"Handwritten notes mean more because they cost more, emails, tweets, texts, or Facebook messages are essentially costless. They're easy to write and free to send. And you and I produce hundreds of them every day. A recent study indicated the average corporate email account sent or received more than 100 emails per day, and Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 now send or receive nearly 100 texts per day. These electronic communications are rarely notable, but handwritten notes are unusual. They take minutes or hours to draft, each word carefully chosen, no undo or auto correct to fall back on.

Gary S:

Drafting one involves selecting stationary, paying for stamps and visiting a mailbox. They indicate investment, and that very costliness indicates value." This next part blows me away. "If as the US Postal Service notes, we only receive a handwritten letter once every two months. Each of those letters likely means more to us than the cheaper communications we receive each day."

Warwick F:

Boy, it's so true. I must confess, I don't always do that, like breathing. There's always another level that all of us can reach. But yeah, there's no question at the very least, I think all of us can send birthday cards, Father's and Mother's Day cards to our loved ones. I mean, that's something and rather than just ...

Warwick F:

And it's okay. You can say, "Well, I got this great Hallmark card" or whatever it is, and the words can be pretty good in there, if not wonderful, and that's fine. But how about taking an extra few minutes and writing a few sentences about why you appreciate them? So that's like, it's better to send a card to your loved one or a friend, it's better than doing nothing, and a card is better than an email, it's better than a text. So that's good. You're already along the way to what you're saying, but being more specific in that card of why you love them or admire them, that's the next level.

Warwick F:

So if you're going to do a card, and what Gary's talking about, handwritten note, boy, I don't know if it's another level beyond a card, it probably is. That's rarely will you receive a handwritten note. And yes, if you can find some nice station, that's extra credit. We live in this world where it's like nobody writes letters these days. I mean, it's just so rare. But you're right, it's so valuable.

Gary S:

The next point in your blog and in our conversation, point number four, is to tell others. What do you mean by that? Tell others. So we're encouraging people but telling others. How does that work and why is that important?

Warwick F:

So, it's funny. One of the things we're often told is don't gossip about other people. If you've got something to say to somebody, find a way, hopefully, tactfully without throwing hand grenades, talk to them about whatever the issue you have with them or whatever the thing is. But don't gossip behind their back and say, "Oh, Susie, John, boy, they're really ... Stuff never gets done, and they stab people in the back and they're just awful people." On and on you go. But here we talked about, if you see something, say something.

Warwick F:

If you have this positive attitude, obviously you want to start with telling them. But telling other people about them, that can be powerful. So let's say you're a coworker with somebody and you're in a meeting with their boss and somehow it's relevant. I mean, even if it's not relevant, it's like, "John, Sue, boy, they're ..." Maybe you head up a different department. Maybe you're a peer with their boss. "They really, really bailed me out in marketing. They did some extra research and stuff on the product, gave me what I needed, and it was last minute because the customer just at the very last moment said they wanted a change in the order. Boy, they just went out of their way to help me, and that just made a huge difference."

Warwick F:

What do you think that person's going to think? Thank you so much, you just told my boss. I mean, wow. So, whether it's in a family's situation, if you're thinking positively about your husband or wife, it's okay to tell the kids, "Boy, you're really lucky to have the mom or dad that you have, whatever it is, because they just did A and B." It can work with siblings, it can work with all relations. Then with that other person, they're not just getting encouraged by you, but it's like, "Hey, I heard John was telling a friend of mine that ... or you were telling a friend of mine how good a job I was doing or how nice a person I am. Wow."

Warwick F:

Even if they don't know where it originally came from, you might have a whole bunch of people just saying, "Gosh, I've had six people just this week say what a fantastic job you're doing. It's amazing." What does that do to that person? So, you want to be ... We talk about the flywheel. You want this to be a bit like a flywheel or a forest fire and you light a match and there's this ground swell of encouragement that comes from so many different sources. So in this case, gossip is one thing when it's negative, but telling others when it's positive, of course, the person would love you to tell others if it's true.

Warwick F:

So, you've got to have this attitude of, try to praise people, not just to their face, sounds weird, but behind their back to people that know them. Because that is, they will like that. So, it's not an either/or, praise them to their face, be specific, but also tell others and be specific. People that know them, that is just huge. It creates this atmosphere of encouragement.

Gary S:

The rule I've always had as a leader is correct in private, praise in public. If you've got something that you want to tell someone who works for you or with you, again, something that shows appreciation and encouragement as publicly as you can do that, the better, because their coworkers and friends are going to hear the boss say X, Y, and Z about them, and that, again, motivates folks to do better.

Gary S:

I want to level set us here as we're more than halfway through your seven points, that we're talking about all of these things, right, in the context of Beyond the Crucible, in the context of crucible experiences. I mean, what would you say, Warwick, to specifically why encouragement is important in the context of maybe someone who's going through a crucible, someone who's been through one and is trying to bounce back from one, why is this topic of encouragement something that we're talking about on this show?

Warwick F:

It's an excellent question, Gary. I think as we often say, today is the worst day, you're in the pit, you might feel like life is over, and we've heard a number of guests on the podcast who've been at a point in their life where they feel literally worthless. Some have felt so bad about it, they've even contemplated suicide. I mean, there's real depth to feeling this worthless. I'm a waste of space. I didn't have suicidal thoughts, but I certainly went through a time after I failed $2.25 billion takeover, sort of this thought that everything I touch I ruin or destroy. I mean, it's like, "Look what I did." I mean, gosh, I was feeling relatively worthless myself.

Warwick F:

So, when you can encourage somebody and say, "Look, I know what you went through was awful. I know you made a big mistake or I know what was done to you is unspeakable, but you are worth something, you are worthwhile. You're a good person, you are kind, you are smart, you're intelligent. You have a lot of capacity." And be specific. I heard somebody the other day say, "Boy, they're tinkerer, they tinker around with things. They build things out of nothing. They have this really mechanical, creative side, or maybe others they're a good writer or a good musician." Whatever it is. When they're feeling so worthless, when you're encouraging them to say, "You know what? You are worth something, don't let what happened to you destroy you. I care about you. You are worthwhile."

Warwick F:

If all that does is help them get their toe out of bed the next day and put one step forward, that's huge. So, encouragement can really make a difference between people choosing to get out of bed and choosing to say like, "I'm going to be angry for the rest of my life." They can literally, I wouldn't say save them, but be part of the process of helping them come back and leading a worthwhile life. So yeah, absolutely, encouragement. If ever there's a time you need encouragement, it's when you're at the bottom of that pit. That's when encouragement's just like this lifeline. It's absolutely huge.

Gary S:

And point number five in your blog and in our conversation is that, there's not like a cap on how many times you can do this. You don't have like, "Oh, I can only do it three times a day or I can only do it to this person once every month." It's not like that. So your fifth point is give positive feedback often. Why is that critical?

Warwick F:

Absolutely. This isn't a one and done kind of thing. Okay, I gave my a coworker or my employee on my team, one positive feedback because, hey, it was a new year's resolution and it was January one, and so we did it.

Gary S:

Check.

Warwick F:

Back to your example with you and Kelly and the bottle. Like, "Okay, we had that wonderful time. We spent two hours on January 1st, going through the bottle with all the positive feedback." Yeah, Kelly's going to have to wait till January 1st next year before she gets any positive feedback. But it'll be worth, it'll be amazing. And obviously she jokingly said, "No, it's not an either/or, it's both/and."

Warwick F:

Sometimes, especially if people feel bad about themselves, which if today's your worst day, probably extremely likely, just saying, "Oh, you can do it. Don't let what happened to destroy you, or don't listen to those people, they don't know you, being down on you." Yeah, I says, "Okay, great." And then months go by. Well, those negative thoughts will start to take hold again. It's almost like weeds. I use that kind of fertilizer, the weed and feed thing once. We're good. Right? No, you're not good. You got to use it constantly because the weeds want to keep coming back. The same with negative thoughts and negative emotions.

Warwick F:

It's almost like a spiritual battle, depending on your spiritual paradigm, there's the forces of evil and the forces of good. However you look at life. Whenever you see something, say something, not just once. So you see them do something good again, say, "Wow, that was remarkable. I can't believe what you did. That was incredible, what you did that day." Or maybe you see somebody encouraging somebody else. "That was incredible what you did, because they really needed it. Boy, thank you for doing that."

Warwick F:

I mean, to get that flywheel effect, you got to pay attention, see something, say something, be specific, tell others. But you got to do it more than once. Because there's a battle for the soul out there. A battle between being depressed and down and between encouraged, and people need as much encouragement as they can get often. Because life is not easy every day, it seems like you might get hit in the gut with something. Life is not Disneyland. It's not easy. People need encouragement often.

Gary S:

And that, listener, is not just an opinion of the host of the show, Warwick Fairfax, that is a truth backed up by research. I've found the Harvard Business Review article, which talked about a study that found how many positive comments, how much encouragement is needed compared to a piece of criticism. In other words, for the two to balance out, and for every thing that you say that's critical to someone, you should say this number of positive encouraging things. You want to take a guess or you want me just to tell you, how many positive encouraging things for one critical one?

Warwick F:

Well, why don't you tell me?

Gary S:

All right. It is 5.6 encouraging comments for every critical comment. Now, you couldn't see Warwick's face here unless you're watching on YouTube. He was shocked by that. Why were you shocked by that?

Warwick F:

I was going to say three to one, but wow, 5.6 to one that is just staggering.

Gary S:

And the article from which that statistic comes says this about why that number could be so high. It says, only positive feedback can motivate people to continue doing what they're doing well, and do it with more vigor, determination and creativity. Perhaps that's why we found with the vast majority of leaders in our database, this is Harvard Business Review, who have no outstanding weaknesses, that positive feedback is what motivates them to continue improvement.

Gary S:

And then check out this statistic, focusing on their strengths enabled 62% of this group to improve a full 24 percentage points in their work, how productive and how good their work is. That's incredible. That's an incredible statistical testament to what we've been talking about here today.

Warwick F:

Absolutely, Gary. And notice what Gary was just saying is, how offering encouraging comments can really help productivity and take people to the next level. We often think, "Oh, but I need to give them negative feedback so that they'll know and can improve." Well, yeah. You're doing it the right way, it can be helpful. But I think what it's saying is, encouragement is almost more helpful than the so-called constructive feedback. I think one of the challenges is, I hear, I know people, even folks that are really good managers that will say, "Look, don't tell me the positive stuff, I want to improve. Please tell me the negative."

Warwick F:

And that's said with the best of intention, because they honestly want to get better. So I politely say, I can think of one person I have in mind that says, "No, I'm going to give you the positive anyway, because you may not want it, but you got to get it." I don't say it quite that bluntly. But yeah, I think the human psyche is such that, like when we do these cards at birthdays, it's hard for me to process that positive feedback. If you ask me half an hour later, "What specifically did they say?" I'll say well let me get that card out again. It's hard for me to remember, to be honest, because for most of us, positive feedback is hard for us to accept. We tend to be all broken souls.

Warwick F:

Now you say, ask me a week later about the negative feedback, I'm probably going to remember that one. Get to see it, the pain serves to help us remember. Negative feedback is so often remembered, I think that's partly why the ratio, you talked about 5.6 to one is ... Encouragement is not easy to accept, which is why we need to do it often and be consistent, so that somebody's self image of themselves, which often is not positive, tends to change. There's psychological reasons why that statistic makes exceptional sense.

Gary S:

Right. There's a flywheel effect on the other side of the encouragement, right, for the person who receives it, the more you hear that, the more that's spoken to you from varied sources in particular, the better it's going to be for you going forward to receive that and not be like, "Oh no, please stop." Right? I mean, it will help people receive it the more you are part of the solution of people who are giving that encouragement.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Just one more thought on that is, it'd be like saying, "Okay, I watered that dying plant once. It's good. Right?" No, it takes a lot of water for that dying plant to thrive. Think of ourselves like that often, especially if you're in the middle of a crucible. So yeah, it makes abundant sense.

Gary S:

Here's another point that makes abundant sense. The sixth point in your blog, and this is critical too. This is another little offshoot of how critical this is, doing it often, very important, but also we want to make sure that what we say when we say it, that we're sincere in doing so, because insincere positive encouraging feedback can be sniffed out miles away.

Warwick F:

Back in my advertising days, I had an internship which we'll actually talk about here towards the end. But one of the worst things you can do is have a bad product with great advertising. Because you go by the supermarket, you go, "I just saw that out on TV. This product's lousy. I mean, this food, whatever it is, it tastes terrible." You'll get angry.

Warwick F:

It's a bit like that. You've got to be sincere, obviously be specific, just this general mantra of, "Oh, you're doing a great job." Or, "Yeah, you're a nice person." Come on, it's got to be real and be specific. Otherwise, frankly, it will do more harm than good. It will have been better to say nothing, to say great job, you're a nice person, if they're not. They will resent it. They'll be angry and they will feel unseen, unheard, and that you don't know them. I mean, it sounds strange, but insincere comments can be extremely toxic. It is not helpful.

Gary S:

All right. The summary point, this all the flywheel, all flies around, spins around to get us to this point. And that is the power of encouragement. Encouragement is powerful. Why is that true, and how is that true?

Warwick F:

I really believe that encouragement can change the world. I mean, we live in a world that's divided, there's war on as we speak, division, discouragement, fear, uncertainty. But when you encourage somebody else, and they in turn encourage others, and you have encouragement spreading like water spreading out on dry land, you'll see grass growing, flowers blooming. It makes a tremendous difference. If we had everybody think, "Okay, what can I encourage somebody today in?" It would encourage people to bounce back more.

Warwick F:

Yes, if you've gone through some things you might need counseling and if you have illness, you might obviously need medical treatment. I don't discount any of the very practical things that you need to do, but encouragement can just change people's attitude. It can change people's motivation. It can make people feel less negative, more positive. It can literally revolutionize the world if more people thought of encouraging.

Gary S:

And that is the signal that the time has arrived in the podcast where I talk about the purple file, which I do every episode now. The idea behind the purple file was Dennis Gillan, who we had on the podcast a few weeks ago, wrote an article for Entrepreneur magazine, where he talked about this file he keeps, and it's a big thick file and it's purple. That's why it's called the purple file, ingenious. But in it, he keeps notes of encouragement. That's how he describes it. Notes of encouragement he's received.

Gary S:

He's a suicide prevention speaker. Sometimes he worries that his speeches aren't hitting the mark. They're not motivating people. They're not moving people. They're not helping people. And when he gets into that place, he pulls out the purple file and finds a note of encouragement. If anything is an advertisement for the importance of all that we've talked about here, specifically, the idea of writing a note or something that even an email that you can print out, this would be it, because someone can do it again. It's to the point of, it's not just one and done that encouragement then can live on if someone puts it up on the wall, puts it in a purple file.

Gary S:

And I'm just going to read one short one here, because what this note does is hits on both aspects of what we've talked about. Throughout this entire episode, we've talked about, you can have a professional track in your encouragement, and there's also a personal track in your encouragement. In the workplace and in the home, from the boardroom to the living room. Right? You've got that kind of mix. And this is a note that I got 10 years ago. I still have the note. This is a note I got 10 years ago when I left Focus on the Family. It's written by Jim Daly, still the president of the Focus on the Family.

Gary S:

But this is what he said, on the day that I left, he gave me this note. "You've provided great leadership to the media effort at Focus, a wonderful move for the ministry, bringing you in that position. You have managed the media relationships with great ability," specific. Right? "We will miss you. Your flare will also be missed," personal, specific and personal. So there's a business. Right? You've managed the media relationships well, but your flare will also be missed. "You are one of a kind, we love you."

Gary S:

All the things that we've talked about here, the entire flywheel represented there in this idea of, if you keep a purple file, if people are encouraging you, they're giving you fodder to put in your purple file. So, as you think about encouraging others, know that it's not only is it not one and done for you to continue to encourage them, but the bits of encouragement that you give them can live on for them in that particular case from my old boss, Jim Daly, for 10 years.

Warwick F:

Yeah. So well said. I mean, that's such a great example of the purple file. So whether it's cards or birthdays or Father's Day, Mother's Day, or whether it's handwritten notes that you've kept. Those things matter. We tend to forget. And so we can look at them on our dark days and just remember. It's so helpful, so important.

Gary S:

So now you hinted earlier Warwick that there was a story that you were going to tell about your time, perhaps in a different lifetime, in a different business situation. So before we take the plane to the ground, and really it occurs to me, my whole idea of the captain's turn on the fasten seatbelt sign, we're the only two people on the plane, and one of us is flying it. So, we'll just bring it down without the captain telling us. So, we've begun our descent, but tell us that story that fits in and summarizes, I guess, what it is that we've been talking about today.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Thanks Gary. I mean, if this was a movie in a sense, this is probably the origin story of why encouragement is such a high value for me. It was an example. It's a lifelong lesson that I've never forgotten. I finished school in Australia. It was probably like, I don't know, November, 1979 or something like ... I'm sorry, November, 1978, because school years in Australia are different. It's the calendar year because the summers are round the other way. It's all different. So Oxford wasn't until the fall of 1979, it had like eight month gap or something.

Warwick F:

So for about five months of that, I got internship at an advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, used to be one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world, now merged with a few others. So, I was working in the Sydney office, and in their group, it was a Kellogg's group. So I was supporting Kellogg's Corn Flakes and a bunch of other things. And there was this Canadian guy, Don Robertson that came out to be chief executive of the Australian office. So, every once in a while we had team meetings, I don't know if there were 50, a 100, 150 people. It was a pretty big office for an advertising agency.

Warwick F:

I remember one time he gave praise to one of the people working in the group I was in the Kellogg's group and said, "The advertising we've done for Kellogg's Australia is some of the best advertising that Kellogg's have seen worldwide for the whole brand." Everybody knows Kellogg's cereal. You can probably get in every country on the planet. I mean, it's a massive brand. So for Don Robertson, CEO of J. Walter Thompson, Australia to say, this is some of the best advertising that's being produced for Kellogg's anywhere on the planet. And Australia, relative to the rest of the world, it's not like a massive market. It's not nearly as big country, but in terms of the market, not nearly as big as the US or Europe. You'll imagine what that person thought. I mean, they would've gone through a brick wall for Don Robertson.

Warwick F:

The work ethic, the commitment that, "Hey, I'm not leaving this place ever." If you're in advertising, you have choices. So that was one of those examples that I have just never forgotten. He was very specific, he told others, like headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan, wherever they are for Kellogg's. I mean, it was amazing. And ever since then, just the power of encouragement to motivate a team to get to this next level, but just because it's the right thing to do, and that was huge.

Gary S:

And that is an excellent opportunity for us to put the plane on the ground. Before we do that though, before we depart the plane, plane's on the ground, before we grab our peanut bags and head out, your blog available, if not already then soon, at crucibleleadership.com. As you always do, you end with some really insightful and thought provoking questions of reflection that readers can ask themselves. I'm going to leave the listeners, who hopefully will also be readers of the blog, with those three prompts to reflect on everything that we've spoken about here on this episode of the show.

Gary S:

First one, and these are all sequential, you can follow 1, 2, 3. First one, think of someone you want to praise. We won't do it in real time, I won't make you do it while I'm talking. But think of someone you want to praise. Two, think specifically why what they did or who they are is praise worthy. Right? One of the points that Warwick makes in the blog, one of the points we made here is be specific. That carries far more weight as you're offering encouragement to others. And then, here's the most important point. Don't let the thought die on the vine or in your brain, go and say something to them this week, right after you think about it, after I'm done talking, go tell them.

Gary S:

Think of someone you want to praise, think why you want to praise them, think specifically, and then go do it. Because the impact as we've discussed on this episode, the impact can be great. It can be a flywheel that will spur them on to greater performance, or will add depth and meaning and momentum to your relationship with someone professionally or personally. That's the benefit of this thing that we call encouragement. So, listener until the next time we're together, remember that we understand that your crucible experiences are difficult, we understand that they're painful, and that they can take a while to get through.

Gary S:

But the good news that we offer, the good news that Warwick has staked out in his book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, available now at bookstores everywhere, including Amazon. What Warwick points us to is the idea that if we learn the lessons of our crucibles, if we don't stay in the pit, if we get out, and we move forward, we can land at a place that is the most rewarding place we can land, and that's a life of significance. And I want to, on that phrase, life of significance, here comes a tease, here comes a tease. Next week on the show, you will hear about our new series of this podcast, which we're calling Second Act Significance.

Gary S:

We have interviewed some truly remarkable guests who have gone from a first act in life that for whatever reason, wasn't fulfilling, wasn't what they felt they were called to do, didn't bring their heart alive, a crucible is usually involved. And then, they moved on beyond that, and in the second act of their life, they have found that life of significance that we've talked about. So, stay tuned, because beginning next week, and for several weeks following, you will get to hear more about, and actually listen to episodes from folks who have lived and are living a life of second act significance.

It is easy to feel discouraged these days. War has broken out in Ukraine and threatens to destabilize relationships among nations globally. The COVID pandemic, while it has lessened in severity of late, has brought much stress and even tragedy to our day-to-day lives the last two years. The economy continues to struggle, leading to uncertainty about the future for many people.

That’s the challenging news. The hopeful news is that the time has never been better to do our part to help each other weather the storms we’re experiencing. And one of the best places to begin doing that is by encouraging each other.

Words of encouragement, like drops of water to a withering flower, are drops of grace that can calm, soothe, and bring hope, to a bruised spirit. Encouraging others not only helps them move beyond their crucibles, it can actually help them avoid crucibles.

But how can we  encourage others, and what is the power that is unleashed when we do? Try putting these seven tips into action as you aim to become more intentional in your efforts to encourage others:

1. Pay Attention.

With people at work, with your family and friends, with people you meet, be aware of what is going on.  Have an attitude of appreciation and gratitude.  Have a mindset that if something good happens and someone does something praiseworthy, you will actually notice.

2. If You See Something, Say Something.

Quite often with our work colleagues or our friends and family, we will see someone do something we appreciate.  We will think, “That is so nice!  That was kind!  That was really wonderful!”  But then we say nothing.  If we see someone do something good or display character that is praiseworthy, we have to speak up.  It is easy to say nothing.  If we would like others to encourage us, let’s first treat others in the way we would like to be treated.

3. Be Specific.

Don’t just say, “You did a great job!,” or “You are a nice person!”  That’s OK, but frankly not great.  The other person is thinking, “What does that mean?  Where did I do a great job?  Why am I a nice person?”  If the person is a co-worker, or someone else at work perhaps even your boss, tell them specifically why what they did was good, how it helped you or your team on the job. If it’s a friend or loved one, let them know how an act of thoughtfulness and kindness or some other helpful thing they did meant so much to you. Do not take your friends and loved ones for granted.  The more specific, in both instances, the better.  The same with their character.  Give them examples that show why they were such a nice person.  The difference between a general comment that someone is a nice person, as against giving them examples that show how kind and thoughtful, they were is enormous.

4. Tell Others.

We are often told that we should not gossip about other people.  If we have something to say that is negative, we should tell it to them directly, hopefully in a somewhat tactful fashion.  But if we really admire another person, telling others about it as well as the person themselves is a helpful thing to do. It is actually something the person being praised would really appreciate.  It may even get back to them. “I have heard so many people tell me how efficient, how hard-working and how productive you are.”  If some of those people are their bosses, that is all the better.

5. Give Positive Feedback Often.

Just because you told one person once they were doing a good job and why that was the case, it does not mean you are done.  Have an attitude of gratitude, as they say.  Be on the lookout for specific instances where you can praise them.  Giving a person positive feedback over time with specific examples can make an enormous difference.

6. Be Sincere.

When you praise someone for the job they are doing or their character, it has to be sincere.  Giving false praise, such as telling someone they are doing a good job, when they know they haven’t, will only make things worse.  They will resent you, and potentially feel guilty and feel bad about themselves.  You might be too busy to know how they are doing in their job performance, and might throw around generic praises.  That is not helpful.  Encouragement must be specific, but it also must be genuine.

7. The Power of Encouragement.

Encouragement can change the world.  Encouragement can make people feel valued.  It can make them feel seen and heard.  It can motivate them to work harder, believe in the mission of the organization more.  It can improve relations with friends and family.  It can make an enormous difference.  It can have a multiplication effect.  If you model encouragement to others, they might over time encourage other people, who in turn will encourage still others.  Maybe some of those other people will turn around and encourage you.  That is not why you should encourage others, but it may be a nice byproduct.

Our world is hurting.  People are in pain, even feeling broken.  Encouragement lifts people up; it can have a healing effect.  It can bind people together.  It can lead to still others being encouraged. It can calm fears, ease burdens, and bring hope amid challenges. Isn’t this the world we want to live in?

Reflection

Order Crucible Leadership here

Kelly Sayre thought she was traveling the perfect career path, not making much money but making great impact helping a coaching entrepreneur run a business that focused on empowering women. The boss had brought her on with the promise of her taking over one day — but then it all went wrong in a way Sayre never saw coming. Suddenly unemployed and thousands of dollars in debt, she allowed herself to mourn only briefly before carving out a new calling all her own. As the founder and president of The Diamond Arrow Group and author of the bestseller SHARP WOMEN: EMBRACE YOUR INTUITION, BUILD YOUR SITUATIONAL AWARENESS AND LIVE LIFE UNAFRAID, she equips women to avoid physical threats as well as relational and professional harm like she experienced.

To learn more about Kelly Sayre and to order her book, visit www.thediamondarrowgroup.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

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

Kelly S:

You can either stay stuck in that anger or hurt or betrayal, or you can say, "How do I move forward? And what is going to be the best for me mentally?" Because I could have stayed angry. And trust me, I threw one heck of a pity party that night. It was a rager, all by myself. But the next day I got up, I dusted myself off, I went to go workout and I was like, "You had your pity party. Now it's time to move forward because this is where you're at. And if you stay stuck here, you're going to stay here, or you can figure out a path forward."

Gary S:

That, friends, is a recipe for doing what the title of this show aims to help you do, moving beyond your crucible. Is it easy? Hardly. But is it possible, and more than that, necessary? Absolutely. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show.

Gary S:

Our guest this week is Kelly Sayre, founder and president of the Diamond Arrow Group and author of the bestseller, Sharp Women, Embrace Your Intuition, Build Your Situational Awareness and Live Life Unafraid. The seed for her business and her book, she says in our interview, was the situation that led her to that pity party she described, working for next to nothing for a coaching business based on her passion for empowering women and the promise that she was being groomed to one day run the organization.

Gary S:

When that succession plan fell apart in ways you won't believe, she found her new calling, still serving women, but this time helping keep them safe from physical threats as well as relational and professional harm like she experienced.

Warwick F:

Well, Kelly, we're going to talk a bit about your Sharp Women book and Diamond Arrow Group, and I know you live outside of Minneapolis, I'd love to hear a bit of the backstory of kind of what makes Kelly Sayre, kind of who you are and a little bit of family origin... what's part of some of the threads, if you will, that make you who you are, because we're often formed as we grow up in influences and ... a little bit of the origin story, if you will?

Kelly S:

Sure. I grew up in a very small town, 500 people. Everybody knows everybody. It was a great learning ... way to grow up, I guess, a learning experience, impacted my life moving forward. My father was an over the road truck driver, so he was gone a lot. My mom was a nurse. And being the oldest of three, it was a lot of times my responsibility to take care of my siblings and we had to be very self sufficient.

Kelly S:

So it instilled a lot of personal responsibility, accountability and taking care of others. So I look at that as a benefit. We joke that my mother's bloodlines, I was very calm, centered, very realistic, practical. And then my dad's side became the whimsical, dreamer, I can do anything and go anywhere type personality. So when those two combined, when I graduated high school, I could not wait to get out of small town and go to big city and moved all over. Had some experiences with Southern California. I moved to Southern California with my best friend from college for a while. And that was a very important time in my life because it, for once, it was getting out of that small town bubble and really experiencing and getting to know people.

Kelly S:

And still pulled back, ended up back here, back home because my family is all here. So that tie and that pull back to family was also very impactful. And I met my now husband and now raising my own family here in central Minnesota.

Warwick F:

So you're back in Minnesota and I know you were working in a nonprofit, which then shifted to kind of what is maybe your crucible experience. So talk about, as you're back home and you're finding a way in the career world, you're beginning to have a family. So where did that sort of whimsical dreaming, practical side, how did that coalesce into a career path, if you will?

Kelly S:

When I was in high school, my senior year, I took an entrepreneurship class that was only allowed for seniors. So you had to start your own business for the first half of the year. And then the second half of the year was a class business, so learning how to work together. And ever since then, I had the entrepreneurship bug. I had cousins, uncles, aunts, who had all had their own businesses. So it wasn't completely out of my purview or my perspective that, "Oh, well that's something that we don't do." It was, "Oh, that could be a reality for me."

Kelly S:

And so I knew someday I would love to have my own business, but I didn't know what it was. And then life experiences, the nonprofit that you mentioned that I worked for was actually sports tourism for the convention and visitor's bureau in the St. Cloud area.

Kelly S:

So it was my job to go out and research sporting events, amateur sporting events, to bring and host in our community because that fills our hotels, that has people eating at our restaurants and visiting our shops and our retail. So it's good for economic impact. And had some great successes, some great experiences in that role and realized, I've kind of hit the plateau. I can't go any further. I have two small children, we're not leaving this area. So it's not like I could stay in this field and move to a bigger city, a tier one city, perhaps this is the time to evaluate and see what I could do on my own. And that's where I was introduced to this individual who had a company doing executive training and executive peer groups for females. And I was invited to be a member of her second executive peer group.

Kelly S:

And as part of that peer group, you also get coaching. And in those coaching sessions with her, I had shared, I'd really love to have my own business, but I don't know what that is. I was still trying to figure out, what is my thing? What am I good at? I really love planning events, but I don't want to work every night and every weekend. I have small children and a husband who has a very demanding job.

Kelly S:

And so through that natural conversation, that's where the invitation to join her company, and she was a solopreneur, and become the legacy, kind of take her company to the next level, become the succession plan, take her company and grow. And so that's where it all kind of dominoed into leaving the job at the Sports, Tourism, Convention and Visitors Bureau, a job that I loved, had a lot of fun with, got to travel, got to know lots of people and say ... It was funny, at the time I was taking classes on entrepreneurship at our local college and it was either I could pay to take classes in entrepreneurship, or I could just take the leap and go learn it as an apprentice.

Kelly S:

And that was really, obviously, one of the decisions that my husband and I made is, let's do this. Let's go all in on this and take this risk in joining this company to build it. I mean, the whole purpose was, behind the mission of that business was to empower women, to help them find their inner strength, to give them confidence, to chase after their dreams, to pursue their dreams. And what really, really made them come alive, made them embrace their passions. And because of my personality, she was the coach and she was kind of the behind the scenes of, I'll do the coaching and I'll kind of run the executive groups. You go out, you start a podcast, you create an all day women's event. You create networking events, you create these things, you kind of run these events and be that face and bring people in and help share our message.

Kelly S:

And because I was so naturally passionate about helping others, sharing other stories, it was a good fit. It was a good partnership because that's ... I liked being out in front of people and hearing people's stories. My podcast that we did was all ... I always said, women struggle with sharing their successes or celebrating because they don't want to sound egotistical or they don't want to sound like they're bragging. So I always said, "Tell me what your success is and I'll brag for you." So I'll tell your story, I'll talk you up, I'll share how awesome you are with everybody else. And that way it's not you. So it was really fun and I loved getting to know people and their stories. And one of my favorite was a woman who was going to school to be a lawyer and dropped out her last semester and became a monster truck driver and was the first female to successfully back flip and land her monster truck.

Warwick F:

Wow.

Gary S:

Wow.

Kelly S:

And this is the person who was right in our city and nobody knew, Olympians or successful business owners, that the average everyday person didn't necessarily know. To your point with this podcast, is people have stories of how they got to where they are. And it's really fun and inspiring to learn people's stories, because then you say, "Oh, well I could do that." If I can go to a lawyer and then decide to be a monster truck driver, why not?

Warwick F:

Anything's possible. I mean, that just seems like such a perfect fit, entrepreneurship, you've got meaning and purpose with empowering other women and anything's possible. It seems so good. And as I'm pretty aware in the coaching circles, a lot, if not most coaches are more on the introverted end of the spectrum. They're good at listening and coaching, but not always good at entrepreneurship and business. It's why there's tons of courses and there's actually a small, if not large business of training of trying to help coaches know how to sell and be better on the business side.

Warwick F:

I mean, there's stacks of different courses you can take. So, you didn't need that because you already had that in your DNA. So I get why the person that started the business thought you'd be a good fit. It makes perfect sense.

Warwick F:

So it seems like this is great. This should be a great arc, a great story, but it sounds like it wasn't the typical happy ending story, you ride off into the sunset, the business grows and the other person hands off to you and it's all wonderful. There were some big challenges there. Talk about how, what seemed like just a perfect opportunity you ran into, I guess, per the print behind you, some stormy seas. So tell us about those stormy seas that you had, but you didn't anticipate, and how could you?

Kelly S:

Well, and it's interesting because it does end up tying into the work that I do now, in regards to personal safety but boundaries. And when I started, because she had been an individual, it was "Well, you're going to have to take the risk and come in and prove your worth, basically you're going to have to build your own salary." So for the first six months, I mean, it was very, very minimal pay. It was basically like here's enough for a little stipend to get through.

Kelly S:

So my husband and I had made the decision to save up. So we had saved up so that I could take this financial risk for our family, not having an income, basically, to prove my worth, which going back, I had no problem. I knew I had a good work ethic. I knew I was passionate about this. I knew that I had the fortitude to follow through and that I didn't have a problem working hard. I didn't have a problem saying, "Here, I will work hard for you." But what was interesting is because I take a lot of people at their word is that's what ended up happening.

Kelly S:

So that first six months, successful, great, you've proved your worth. Going forward this next year, I went to the owner and said, "I need to make what I made at the nonprofit," which thankfully wasn't a lot. It wasn't like I was asking for a huge pay bump, but it's what my family's budget had been built on. So we knew where we could manage our family finances comfortably to continue building. And so for that whole year, I kept pushing like, "Hey, we got to get this in writing. I've got to understand, my family's taking this risk in and we need something that can solidify what is the plan moving forward? How does the succession plan work?"

Kelly S:

And finally, at the end of the year, I wasn't getting it. I said, "Here, I'll put together an initial proposal. A and B. I don't even know if it's legal. I don't know if this is contractual, but we just have to start this conversation somewhere." And, "I will take this," the owner took it and said, "I will review this. I'll talk with our accountant and our lawyer, we'll figure something out in the new year." And then in the new year, things were planning, going forward. We had had a successful year end, we surpassed revenue goals.

Kelly S:

So again, from my perspective, it's like, I've proved my worth yet again. We're growing the business in leaps and bounds, this is great. I can't wait to see where we're going to take it. We had set some pretty awesome one, three, five-year goals. And I was excited by the potential for growth. And really, the crucible moment, I guess you could say, was when I got my W-2. Yes, W-2, I always forget if it's the W-4 or W-2, the W-2 in the mail, there was big goose eggs on the tax withholding at the federal and state level. And my husband called me actually, because we had a tax appointment that day and he said, "Is this a misprint?" And called down to the accountant for the company. No, that's what it is. It's kind of one of those things where you go, "Well, can that even be possible? I didn't even know you could do that. I don't understand."

Kelly S:

And when we went to our tax appointment, my accountant, who I had known for years, said, "What's this?" And I said, "I don't know. That's just what came." And that was when we discovered that we now owed thousands of dollars in back taxes to the federal government that we didn't have the savings for because we had spent that money as part of the investment of me buying into the business, buying into the succession plan. And so now all of a sudden it was well, now what? And when I confronted the business owner, it was, "Well, I'm sorry you misunderstood. We don't have any money to pay your back taxes." And that was very shocking to me, because all of a sudden it was like, wait a minute.

Kelly S:

And there was about a two week period from there that my husband and I sat down that night and said, "We need this in writing. Going forward, we got to get this figured out." We came up with what we thought would be a compromise saying, "You need to pay this because you were supposed to withhold taxes and you didn't. And now we're stuck. We have to come up with thousands of dollars within basically 30 days from our tax appointment, which we don't have. And we've got to get this straightened out. We can't anymore be just taking you for your word."

Kelly S:

And then two weeks later, because she just wanted to talk, I wanted it in writing and it became like the Alamo, little bit who's going to give. And so finally I said, "I will meet with you in person if you come with something in writing that shows how we're going to remedy the situation going forward." And when that meeting came, it was her informing me that she was firing me. And there was a whole bunch of legal documents now that said, "Well, we'll give you a little bit, but then you have to say that you left to start your own business," and basically lie and kind of the keep your mouth quiet and-

Warwick F:

Nondisclosure agreements, as they call them, I guess.

Kelly S:

Yes. I was so shocked because I didn't see that coming. In my mind, we were going to figure this out. We were going to work it out. It was a misunderstanding, paperwork must have gotten screwed up. To me, I wasn't coming at it from an intent, it came out as a mistake, and so how can we ... We'll figure this out.

Kelly S:

And so that was very shocking to me because I did not see that coming. And then when I said, "Oh, okay, well, my accountant said the total on my return wasn't accurate, that there is some money missing. Can you talk about that? Do you know you're supposed to by law withhold taxes?" And every answer was just, "You'll have to talk to my lawyer. You'll have to talk to my lawyer."

Kelly S:

And I realized pretty quickly that this was not a conversation. This was a, here's the paperwork and we're done. And so I said, "Well, I'm going to review this paperwork. After all that my family's been through, I can't believe this is how it's ending." And when I drove away, I remember specifically because I drove away in such shock and it was like 13 minutes was all that ... the entire length of that meeting, and I called my husband and he was like, "Wow, that was fast." And I'm like, "I need an external hard drive and a big glass of wine," because on my way home, I did not see this coming. I don't know if I just lost Outlook, and we think of technology, all of my contacts, all of my calendar, all of my ... I don't know if everything's working or if it's gone or what, if she wiped the desktop clean.

Kelly S:

It was just such a shock and she hadn't, and I'm sure we'll get into this later about ... I share this story as the first time, really, because I don't believe in disparaging people. I believe people make mistakes. But from my perspective of that moment, the rug completely got pulled out from under me. I had never been fired from a job. I had worked so hard to build up this company and believed in it so much. And I could not believe that I was getting fired for basically finding an accounting error, bringing it to the attention of a woman who owned the company who talked about supporting women and building women up and asking for what they're worth, and the icing on the cake is it was International Women's Day, it was the day that she fired me.

Kelly S:

And this is where I say, and even in my book, my acknowledgements, I say, God has a really funny sense of humor with me. We get along great. But there are days when I'm like, really? You went for the trifecta, you got me fired on International Women's Day by a woman who owns a women supporting women business.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I thought this was about empowering women. Gee, I don't feel very empowered for some reason. I feel like kneecapped, perhaps, but not empowered.

Kelly S:

Yeah, we were in that position where all of a sudden I had no job. We had no savings. We suddenly found ourselves owing thousands of dollars, and no money to hire a lawyer. And every friend lawyer who I called, who in the tax space was like, "I have never heard of this situation. I wouldn't even know where to start." And so that's where it came down and kind of the moment that I really think we should touch on, because I think this is so important for anybody going through a tough time is, I had a mentor in my life that I had met sitting next to on an airplane a year prior. And he had been my mentor. And so he knew, because he owned a private business. So there were times I was like, "Well, what would a succession plan, can you give me some examples or help me figure out how to set this up?"

Kelly S:

So he knew where I was at. And when he found out that happened, he said, "I will give you a job. Here's what I'll pay you. I know you've wanted to have your own business. You have to come work for me as a contractor. So, set it up." So it was really that God had it set up, planned a long time prior to kind of have this. So we had a way forward. But at that same time, it was like, you can either stay stuck in that anger or hurt or betrayal, or you can say, "How do I move forward? And what is going to be the best for me mentally?"

Kelly S:

Because I could have stayed angry. And trust me, I threw one heck of a pity party that night. It was a rager, all by myself. But the next day I got up, I dusted myself off, I went to go workout and I was like, "You had your pity party. Now it's time to move forward, because this is where you're at. And if you stay stuck here, you're going to stay here, or you can figure out a path forward."

Gary S:

It's interesting you use the words pity party, both start with a P, another point that that illustrates that I want to make sure listeners get is that's a pivot point for you. We say a lot because a guest said it. I don't know who it was, if you're listening now guest who said it, I apologize that I'm stealing your words, but you said the words, it's the change in mindset from this happened to me, to this happened for me. That's the pivot point that you got to in that, from pity party to pivot point.

Gary S:

For listeners who maybe spend a little bit more time in what Warwick calls the pit, he cuts it off at pit, in the bottom of the pit in a crucible. What's your counsel, your advice, your hope, your exhortation to people who might find themselves stuck there a little longer? How do you get to that place where you understand, it didn't happen to me, it happened for me, and that's how I go forward?

Kelly S:

I think that pit is going to look different for everyone. It's kind of like grief. There's no set time to process grief. Everyone does it a little different. From my perspective, it's based on your life experiences. That wasn't the first crucible moment in my life that I considered. There had been other big challenges that I had faced and being able to look back and say, "Listen, Kelly, this isn't the first time you've hit a roadblock, or a concrete wall and not been able to go through it," but there's always up, down, to the sides. But I think it's the giving yourself grace to feel all the feelings, that's where I say I threw myself a pity party because I was like, I'm going to be upset. I'm going to cry. I'm going to be angry. I'm going to be mad. Just feeling the feelings, not taking it out on my kids. Not taking it out on my husband, not taking it out even on this other person.

Kelly S:

It was, this is how I'm feeling and feeling that, and then almost feeling the exhaustion for me of like, I don't want to feel this way anymore. This isn't good. This isn't productive. This doesn't get me to where I want to be. And one thing that a cousin of mine, who I'm very, very close to whose had his own business for years, he said something that really kind of helped with that pivot, to your point of it didn't happen to me, it happened for me, is he said, "Kelly, you loved your work so much. You were so passionate about what you were doing and the mission, you would've sacrificed and you would've given so much in exchange for what was being given back to you. You would've stayed there forever. So maybe this was God saying, this is not where you're supposed to go. And if I don't come in and force you out, you will always stay there. You will always find an excuse to stay there. You will always find an excuse to make sacrifices to benefit the something else."

Kelly S:

And so to me, I also say that I'm very stubborn. I get that from my mom's side of the family. And sometimes it takes a little bit of a two-by-four to get a hint across to me. And so I think that was God's way of like, if I don't get you out of this now, you're not going to achieve what I have planned for you, because you will continue to try and fit that round peg in a square hole, versus letting go and letting me lead the way.

Warwick F:

What's fascinating about what you're saying, Kelly is even though we're very different, grew up very differently, I can absolutely relate to what you're saying. Because I've said almost the exact same words that you just said, funnily enough. As listeners would know, I grew up in a very wealthy, 150-year-old family media business in Australia founded by a person of faith. Faith was very important to me. And so I felt like it's pretty obvious what God's plan is. It's always dangerous to presume that we know what God's plan is because we're often wrong, as I was.

Kelly S:

That's God's great sense of humor-

Warwick F:

Indeed.

Kelly S:

... is that we think we know.

Warwick F:

Yeah. It's like watch out, lightning's about to strike. And so in my case, I've never been in the military, but it's so about the whole duty, honor, country that ... and my dad died in early '87. I was seen as the heir apparent, did this $2 billion takeover, was "in control," and then because of debt and recession, the company went under. But I felt in some sense that it was not a good fit for me. I'm more of a reserved, reflective advisor. I'm not wired to be in charge of a massive 4,000 person, $700 million company. So in some ways, I never would've left. I would've let down my dad and ancestors. And I mean, I'm very stubborn. I'm also very high perseverance. And so I would've just kept at it. The decades would've rolled by. Wouldn't have been good for my kids.

Warwick F:

I have two sons and a daughter, like 30 into twenties, because they would've grown up with a whole mantel on their back. So in some ways I think God, said, "I know you're never going to leave because of this whole duty thing," but despite my own stupidity, which is in my case, it was largely my fault, I do believe God said, "Well, the only way I can get you out is for this company to go bankrupt. And so, one way or another, I'm going to make you leave."

Warwick F:

And as I look back, that excruciating pain was a tremendous blessing in hindsight. So it's not quite the same, but I can relate to the fact of maybe God was looking at you Kelly and says, "She's never going to leave and we'll figure this out." So maybe if you believe in the divine, there was a higher purpose.

Warwick F:

As we pivot to what you do now, one of the key things, we got to make a choice to move on. But one of the key aspects of moving on is forgiveness. And as I often say, it's not because what the person did was right. Here's a clear case that it wasn't right. Morally, legally, I don't know, it wasn't right in any shape, way or form. But as I often say, the reason you forgive is not because they deserve it, it's because you deserve it. And you were in your own prison unless you forgive. Obviously, I'm sure you probably had to go through this. How did you manage to forgive? Because you must've to be able to move forward, I'm assuming.

Kelly S:

That took a lot longer, I would say. And I can say this now so calmly and tell the story and I can assure your listeners it wasn't always that easy to tell the story without a lot more emotion or a lot more like snarled lip, but that forgiveness, I could feel myself, every time I had an emotional reaction, anytime that I felt myself adrenalizing, thinking about it and being frustrated. And it would come up at other moments, it would have nothing to do with that. But if I felt slighted or if I felt like, "gah, the world is not fair!" And starting to slip down the pity party slope again, it would, all of a sudden, it would go right back to there. And so I realized this was baggage I continue to carry with me.

Kelly S:

And while I'm all about getting good workouts and to build cardio strength and physical strength, mentally, you got to let that go, because otherwise you're not going to be fully present in the now, you're not going to be fully aware of what's going on now in relationships, or it's going to impact decisions you make going forward.

Kelly S:

And I did a lot of soul searching on forgiveness, because it's really, "Oh, I forgave them a long time ago," but then when it comes back up, you're like, "Well, maybe I didn't, maybe I just said I did." And I couldn't, because I never got an apology. I never did sign paperwork or the NDA. I just said, "I would rather walk." And I'm not someone who airs dirty laundry, but I'm going to walk away with my head held high and just move forward and not deal with that.

Kelly S:

And then it took probably a couple years, I will be completely honest, before I finally got to a place where the forgiveness thing came and it was, I can forgive, not because that they asked for forgiveness, but because this is the best thing for me. And going forward, I can set a boundary emotionally, mentally, physically that I want absolutely nothing ever to do with that person again. Still in the area, she still has her business. She still does things. I interact with people who still participate in events or business activities that relate to this person. And it was very hard for me sometimes to be like, well, I know these people and wanting them almost to pick sides and then realizing, who am I to say that? This was something that was kind of between us, but it was very hard for women to understand why I wanted absolutely ... why I had such a hard boundary.

Kelly S:

It was, "Well, if you forgave, then you should be okay." And I was like, that's something for forgiveness. And with boundaries that now, when it comes to situational awareness and personal safety is, no, you can forgive someone then and draw a hard line and say, "I don't have to let that ..." having a strong boundary isn't about kindness, isn't about being a good person, it's protecting myself, my mental health, my emotional health, because I didn't want to pick that heavy baggage back up and bring it with me anymore. I want to leave it back there. So it's a hard boundary, and that is something that applies in all areas of life. Because again, when it comes to women and personal safety, so often we imagine an attacker or a predator as this dark, shadowy male figure. And what I'm trying to do is bring the conversation about boundaries, mental, emotional, physical, it's not always that scenario.

Kelly S:

Sometimes it's at work. Sometimes it's with a female. Sometimes it's with a friend, sometimes with a boss. And so if we can remove the stereotypical predator or person who wishes ill intent, or who causes ill intent, whether that's on purpose or not, boundaries are boundaries. And if we can talk about behaviors that are unacceptable and we can realize what we're comfortable with, what we want to invite into our life, what is us, what is our boundaries and what is not us, that's all it is. Then it becomes very easy to see and to enforce boundaries in all areas of our life, which then improves our personal safety, whether that's our mental wellness or our physical wellness.

Warwick F:

So talk about how, obviously you were, I think went on a course on sort of self defense. And I think from my understand, most of those are designed by men and not women. But it seems like that pivoted into ... broader than just self defense. Situational awareness, not getting yourself into situations. It's okay for everybody, certainly women, to have boundaries.

Kelly S:

I came upon situational awareness in a very traditional way. I took a physical self defense class for women, and we spent the entire four hours hitting, kicking, doing all these great things that, again, I'm a physical person, I'm an athlete. So I enjoyed that. That was fun for me. And at the very end of class it was, but the last thing you want to do is get into a physical altercation. You need to be more aware of your surroundings to avoid danger. And then, see you.

Kelly S:

And my brain, wait, whoa, whoa. We just spent the entire time focused on what I was supposed to avoid doing, but the thing I'm supposed to use 99% of the time, we didn't discuss at all. And my curiosity went into hyper drive and went, well, what is situational awareness? And so what I thought would be the answer, "Oh, okay. This is like Jason Bourne spy stuff where you're watching body language so you know what they're going to do. They're going to take a left instead of a right. And they're going to do this and this."

Kelly S:

But the more I dug, the more I researched, the more I asked questions, A, discovered that there really wasn't anything out there for training specific to situational awareness, but especially to the everyday person and even more so, speaking to women. And when I started, well, again, it was like pulling a string where you're like, oh, okay, here's one little string and pretty soon the whole sweater's unraveled, is I kept digging deeper and deeper. And what I kept getting more and more into is the psychology behind it. And it's not this predator, the boogeyman in the bushes, it's actually social conditioning and social mores, which gets into the kindness. And women, there's a certain expectation placed on females.

Kelly S:

And again, this is all speaking very stereotypically, but there's an expectation put on females of be kind, be nurturing, be forgiving. We've heard the saying, men, it's called being assertive and women, there's definitely a different term for that behavior. And that's very confusing from a feminine perspective because, well, wait, we're supposed to be this way at work, but this way at home. But then don't get ... domestic violence, domestic abuse statistics have been stagnant for decades.

Kelly S:

So, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And so much of the work was advocacy. So it was a reactive, self defense is a reactive, you're in a physical self defense situation. How do you fight back? And for me it was like, can we just not have this happen at all?

Kelly S:

Can we start having real conversations about those little things that start out as controlling tactics, that start out pushing past boundaries and get brushed off? "Oh, don't be so emotional." "Don't overreact." "Oh, you're rude. You're being rude by not being more friendly," or if a stranger interrupts your conversation and wants to have a talk with you, well, it's rude to say no and then sit there. You're supposed to engage in conversation and small talk.

Kelly S:

And so there's a very different social perception, and what I've found in the work that I've done, and now even with my book being out for a week, literally a week now, is the texts I get, the messages I get from women. What's interesting to me is it's all coming private, because they're scared to say it publicly, but they're like, "Oh, finally, oh my gosh, you're talking about this in a real way, in the real ..." but with a sense of humor and with a kind of authenticity that says, there's no such thing as perfect, because again, a lot of women struggle with wanting to be perfect, whether that's Martha Stewart or GI Jane, they think they have to be the perfect one or the other. And it's like, why can't you be more than that? And complex? And it's okay to have boundaries. And if you don't want to be someone's friend, you don't have to.

Warwick F:

You have to almost reeducate some women to saying, you matter, it's not okay?

Kelly S:

Definitely. I mean, the saying, don't mess with mama bear. Any woman that I talk to, when I say it's okay to have boundaries, it's okay to do this. And they're like, "Oh, I don't know. I don't want to offend somebody. I don't want to be rude." But I say, "If that's your kid," and they're like, "Oh, no, you don't mess with my kids." And it's literally this pre-programming, building those neuro pathways that, well, you have words too. I get that you are being protective of your offspring, which is again, an inherent, we need the survival, we need the species to continue, but you matter too. And that's where it's bringing it up in a way that isn't, "Well, you're doing this wrong. So this is what you need to do."

Kelly S:

It's more of speaking to them and getting to the root of it. Because again, it could go back to a traumatic event that happened to them where they didn't think they had worth when they were in high school. And so they're constantly seeking validation from an outside source, whether that's work, whether that's a relationship, whether that's financial worth or something like that. And so it's really getting to that and changing the mindset. Because if you look, every self defense training, every even success in business training gets down to, you have to have the right mindset. How you carry yourself when you walk into a room to do a presentation tells the audience, gives them a first impression of you. Well, that same how you carry yourself when you walk down the street also tells someone who might be targeting you as a potential victim will say, "Oh, I'm not going to mess with her."

Kelly S:

Kind of to the point of the saying, "She's 100 pounds soaking wet, but I would not mess with her." As I say, that's how you have to carry yourself. Then there's this teeter-totter of like, well, if I'm not nice and I'm assertive and I have firm boundaries, well, then I'm a negative person and I'm not a very ... I'm a rude person. And it's like, you can still be a kind person and have strong boundaries.

Kelly S:

I don't have all the answers, but I'm trying to bring the conversation to light. And so that more people talk about the way it really works and what those micro threats on women's safety, even if it's an emotional or a psychological safety issue, how that manifests then into, or potentially has the capability to manifest into physical abuse.

Gary S:

One of the things that you say in your book, and I have the press release for your book here. And it's one of the points that's pulled out and it goes to what you've been talking about the last several minutes. And it's a great phrase that you've said, "You are not who the world tells you to be." Really, that's the summary of what you just said, is one of the things you're helping women understand, they don't have to be who the world says they are. Why is that so important?

Kelly S:

Because we get messaging, again, coming from the female perspective. And I think, Warwick, you talked about even the messaging men receive, we get messaging. Boys are supposed to be like this, girls are supposed to be like this, and we get that messaging and it gets ingrained into our subconscious. This is who I'm supposed to be in middle school, in high school. We get defined by the clothing we wear. We get defined by whether we're in athletics or not. Whether we're on the debate team, whatever it may be. And then, well now, if you're that, then this is probably what you're going to do after high school. And this is what you're going to do if you're going to go onto education, or if you're going to go into career, or whatever it may be. Well, all of a sudden you're like, "Well, this is the path. This is what I've been told I am, this is what I'm supposed to be."

Kelly S:

And in the book I do say, when kids are little and they're like, "I'm going to be an astronaut and bake cakes." And we're like, "Super! That's phenomenal!" Because we know that it's going to change 100 times before they graduate. But at some point there starts to be this, well, you can't do both, or you're a woman, you can't do that. Or, you're a guy, you can't do that. Or, you come from a small town, you're never going to do that.

Kelly S:

And so that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and our internal monologue says, "Well, that's not me. And this is who I'm supposed to be." If we don't take the time to say, "Well, what do I want to be? Who am I in this world?" And how often do we now see people in their forties, fifties doing the whole, "Well, who am I?" Because they've lived their whole life as someone else.

Gary S:

And that's an important point to make on a show that's called Beyond the Crucible. We're all about how to move past, move beyond a crucible experience and lead a life of significance. And really, what you're talking about, you're not who the world tells you to be. If you believe you are who the world tells you to be, if you believe those things that are said about you, that can fuel a crucible experience, that can cause a crucible experience that can get you off your vision, off your destiny. It can put you in places, not just where you're physically in danger, which certainly your book talks about. But you also talk about things that can put you in a place where your destiny, perhaps, is in danger. You're going a direction that you shouldn't go because you're believing these external things about yourself. You're not situationally aware that you don't have to accept those things that get thrown at you.

Kelly S:

I agree.

Warwick F:

One of the things I just want to comment on as you were speaking, Kelly, is that as we do the internal work that we are worth something, we don't have to be defined by stereotypes, be they female or male, that's a situational awareness that will help attract the people that we want to attract, be they friends or in romantic relationships and will serve to recoil those that we shouldn't be at.

Warwick F:

So if you've got some woman that's self-confident, that believes in boundaries, won't put up with dumb stuff, men with abusive tendencies will say this, "This woman's not a doormat. I better go select my target elsewhere." Not to be overly graphic, if you follow. It'll be like, "this doesn't fit my profile. This is a self-confident woman that knows who she is. That's going to be too much work for me," at the risk of being direct.

Kelly S:

And I like to preface that because a lot of times what I hear from women who are, or find themself in a relationship where they're starting to ... because of gas lighting, because of love bombing, they get confused because there's also that mantra of like, if you're with someone, you're with them in the good, in the bad, for better, for worse, richer or poorer, sickness and in health. And so there's this mentality of, well, we're just going through a rough time.

Kelly S:

And then if they do suddenly come to a realization, this is not a healthy relationship, but it's been years, and let's say they're successful at work. All of a sudden there's this, everyone thinks I'm this brilliant, fantastic, business woman who has her stuff together and is self-confident, but in this area, and that's where I say again, you could be that way in your career or in this external world, because that's what the world wanted you to be. And it can be really hard to kind of internally, for those women to come to terms with the fact that how could I be so successful or so self-confident appearing, but yet be in this relationship that is physically and emotionally damaging?

Warwick F:

Just as we kind of round up here, I love just what you've said with the Diamond Arrow Group giving women courage to move forward, and Sharp Women. What's kind of, would you say, I think we've talked about it, the overall message of what you do with the Diamond Arrow Group and Sharp Women? What's the key message you want women to hear?

Kelly S:

So the whole mission of the Diamond Arrow Group is to have women have the confidence to move forward and live life on their terms, whatever that means for them. That's the symbolism of an arrow through a diamond, and a solitary arrow can also mean protection from harm. I love situational awareness. I geek out about this stuff and understanding human behavior, the psychology piece of it.

Kelly S:

And because one out of four women are assaulted in their lifetime by someone they know, that statistic is staggering. If you get a room full of five women, one or two of them have experienced some sort of an event. So this is something that I feel is very important for women and women's health. Part of what I'm doing though, is let's get down to those foundational skills of saying, it's not "okay, how many punches can you throw? Can you do a block? Can you do this type of kick?"

Kelly S:

Let's talk about some of those more psychological things that I want to call to mind that maybe you've internalized so much as a female from messaging, from social contracts, from social mores, that you don't even realize that that's how it's impacting. And that you're "Oh, well, he probably didn't mean that," or you're brushing stuff off. It's like, no. It's bringing forward.

Kelly S:

A friend of mine who had recently gotten divorced, single, had a gentleman who was pursuing her and under the preface of, "I just want to make sure you're okay. And you're doing okay?" And there was this particular instance where she was out driving, trying to run errands. And he was like, "Are you doing okay? "Yeah. I've just had a rough day." "Well, do you want me to come over and talk?" "Nope, Nope."

Kelly S:

And she had said no a couple times, but yet when she got to her house, he was sitting at the end of her driveway in his car. And when she pulled into her drive ... she didn't see it. And when she pulled into her garage and got out, he got out and started walking towards her. And she was so like, coming, saying, "Kelly, I didn't want to be rude." And I'm like, "You said for him not to come over multiple times. So this is nothing about you being rude. This is him being rude." And having that conversation, because instantly she's like, "Well, I can't be rude, he's here." And so it's changing that conversation and letting women, reminding them it's not being rude to be direct.

Gary S:

I have been situationally aware in this conversation of my responsibilities as the co-host and that sound that you just heard, listeners, the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating it is time for us to begin our descent of our plane. Before we do that though, I would be remiss if I didn't do two things.

Gary S:

One, there's a quote from you, Kelly, that I think really sums up what your book is about. And that is, "Preparation is how lives get saved. When it's time to act, it's too late to prepare." That is the essence of, I think, what you get from Sharp Women, this idea that you have to prepare and when it's go time, there's no time to prepare. Love that perspective. How can listeners find out more about Sharp Women, about the Diamond Arrow Group and about you?

Kelly S:

They can go to our website, which is thediamondarrowgroup.com. The Sharp Women book is available on Amazon and it is the only Sharp Women book. So when you go to Amazon and search Sharp Women, it will pop right up. And it's available.

Gary S:

It's also a best seller, I hear.

Kelly S:

Yes, it is. It did get to the bestseller status. So, that was phenomenal. Thanks to my publishing team that I had the opportunity to work with, quite amazing folks over there. And following me on Instagram and Facebook @thediamondarrowgroup is where I talk about everyday situations. I'll see headlines and say, "Hey, here's things to think about." Because again, going back to the point you pulled out is preparation is key.

Kelly S:

We never wake up in the morning thinking something negative is going to happen to us, we're going to be the victim of an event. So how can we prepare? But I do it in a very nonviolent way or I don't use fear mongering or scare tactics. It's like, "Hey, think about these things." And then people go, "Oh, that's common sense. I just never thought of it that way."

Kelly S:

So I invite people to follow me on those channels, connect with me on LinkedIn, Kelly Sayre. And I believe you have all of the links and will be hopefully posting that stuff in the show notes. But I definitely recommend-

Gary S:

Yeah, indeed.

Kelly S:

... checking out the Sharp Women book because that is, from a woman's perspective, for women.

Gary S:

Warwick, last question is yours.

Warwick F:

Well, Kelly, thank you again for being here. It's just so encouraging and thought-provoking, love what you do with your book, Sharp Women and The Diamond Arrow Group. There may be women who are listening to this that may say, "Well, gosh, Kelly is amazing, but I'm not as self-confident as Kelly, and I'm a little scared. And I don't like to rock the boat. I like to be nice and kind, and I don't know that I could do this stuff. I mean, gosh, it just feels like it's leaping off a cliff." I mean, what would be a message of hope or encouragement to women out there thinking, "Oh, I don't know. I just ... No, I can't do this."

Kelly S:

The question, because it does get overwhelming, people say, "I'm going to walk around paranoid now and looking around, situational awareness, what am I looking for?" And I remind them, take a deep breath, get curious, because my mantra's be bold, be kind, be curious. And if you get curious about your environment, what's in your environment? It's not about always looking for danger.

Kelly S:

I did a training and I asked, what is something you noticed in your environment you had never noticed before? And one woman said, "All the lovely trees I have in my neighborhood." And I was like, "That's fantastic!" Becoming present, being aware is about getting curious. And I always say, what do we miss now is personal human interaction, communication, making eye contact is if you're curious about the people in your environment, that could be your family, your friends, and you'll notice, "wait, are they having a bad day? Hey, how are you doing?" It doesn't have to be curiosity from a self-defense, physical fight. Sometimes it's curiosity of like caring and kindness. When you do that and when you're present and aware and you're curious with what's going on, you're going to pick up good things too. So get curious is what I always tell people.

Gary S:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the final word on the subject's been spoken and Kelly, you just spoke it. Listener, if you are curious, indeed, about Mr. Fairfax, the host of the show and the founder of Crucible Leadership, a couple things you can do to learn more about him and about Crucible Leadership.

Gary S:

One, you can get his book, also a bestseller, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. That's available in the same place where Kelly's book's available. So go to Amazon and you can get both. Do that right when this is over, not now, because there's still ... I still have a few things to say.

Gary S:

The second thing that you can do if you want to hear more about Warwick's story and about Crucible Leadership is book him to speak, reach out. He has toured parts of the country. He's about ready to go back out and do some more of that. You can go to our website, crucibleleadership.com and you can click a little button that says, book Warwick as a speaker, and you can talk to our speaker agent, Kerri Childers, and she will make all of that stuff a reality for you.

Gary S:

So, until the next time we are together, listener, thank you for spending this time with us. And thank you for understanding what both the host, Warwick, and our guest, Kelly, have talked about today. And that is crucial experiences are indeed painful. They can rattle us. They can knock the wind out of our sails. They can take the breath out of our lungs, change the trajectory of our lives, but they're not the end of our stories. Kelly has proven it, terrible things happened to her as she's pursuing what was going to be a dream of what ... brought her heart alive and that was pulled from her, but she didn't stay down.

Gary S:

She got up and she pursued it. And she's now doing that very thing in her own business, which is not unique to Kelly Sayre. It can be your story as well. The key is to learn the lesson of your crucible, move on beyond that, and when you do, your crucible experience is not the end of your story. It can be like it was for Warwick, like it has been for Kelly and like it's been for all the guests that we've had on the show, and hopefully a lot of our listeners. That can be the start of a new story. And it's a new story that can lead to the best ending ever, because that ending takes you to a life of significance.

Ben Bennett’s crucibles were a debilitating mix of negative self-image, mental health issues, addiction and trauma. He found freedom and healing by embracing psychological, neuroscientific and biblical principles to fulfill the deep longings of his heart that had long gone unmet. A speaker, counselor and author, he discusses the eye-opening, lifegiving insights in his latest book, FREE TO THRIVE, which journeys step by step through the seven key longings of every human soul.

To learn more about Ben Bennett, visit www.resolutionmovement.org

Highlights

Transcript

. They come in different guises and varying degrees, but they all have one thing in common, they can be moved beyond, hence the title of this podcast. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Our guest this week is Ben Bennett whose own crucibles were a debilitating mix of negative self-image, mental health issues, addiction, and trauma. He found freedom and healing by embracing psychological, neuroscientific and biblical principles to fulfill the deep longings of his heart that had long gone unmet. A speaker, counselor, and author, his latest book, Free to Thrive, journeys step-by-step through the seven key longings of every human soul, which he and Warwick discuss in detail in this episode.

Warwick F:

Well, Ben, thank you so much for being here. I've had a chance to kind of dip into some of your book that you co-wrote with Josh McDowell, Free to Thrive: How Your Hurt, Struggles, and Deepest Longings Can Lead to a Fulfilling Life. And we'll get into the seven longings how, I guess from your perspective and our perspective God designed us to have these longings, but somehow our hurt, damage and issues can cause a break with achieving those seven longings in the way that God would intend. So, before we kind of get to the book, there's always a reason behind why people write books. I'd love to hear a bit about your kind of backstory and just about your growing up, and just some of the challenges you had that eventually led to you writing this book, but what was life for you like growing up, Ben?

Ben B:

For me, I grew up in a, well, I would say leadership family, my dad was very involved in leadership in ministry. Growing up surrounded by that was kind of witnessing that leadership, and there's a lot of good things, however, there's also a lot of bad things. And for me, I grew up experiencing lots of my dad's anger, lots of rejection, bullying from him, manipulation, threats whenever I didn't behave perfectly. And so, early on, I was hurting, I was lonely. I was not even really just realizing that there was something wrong. I thought I was wrong. I was believing shame that I was doing bad, but also bad was being done to me, and so I was wrong. So, I grew up feeling oftentimes, just worthless inadequate, and by the age of eight, I had developed all these kind of mental health struggles, anxiety, depression, OCD.

Ben B:

I started having these traumatic out-of-body experiences in group settings, and it was just very horrific and scary in many ways. And of course, I learned that people weren't safe, because the people who were supposed to be there, often weren't. And so, despite all of those things, for me, what was probably my biggest survival mechanism... I've had friends ask, "How did you make it?" For me, it was at a very young age having this realization that there's a God who is real, that he created me, that he loves me, that he wants a relationship with me, that I wasn't perfect, but I didn't have to be, because as a Christian believing that Jesus was God, lived the life of perfect obedience to God, died on the cross, rose again, freely offered me forgiveness and a relationship with God.

Ben B:

And so, early on, that was just so important to me, knowing God as bad and hard as life was, I clung onto a hope and a future, and this promises that God was always with me and that ultimately, he was going to deliver me from it. And so, I would say that that was one of the biggest things of kept me moving forward, moving through it. Eventually got addicted to pornography, got addicted to food, was dealing with body image stuff, didn't like the way I talked, didn't like the way I looked, just didn't like me, and was really struggling throughout my teenage years and into college. And ultimately, I had a rock-bottom experience at age 22, my crucible moment as you all would say, and my life was just out of control. I was 22, I was abusing alcohol, I had gained 100 pounds from my eating being out of control, hated myself, was hating other people, was so angry, riddled with these addictions, riddled with these mental health struggles, and I was on my way into full-time ministry.

Ben B:

And I was at this point where it's like, "I want to talk about God and help people," and yet there's so many things in my life that I've not been set free from, and that I'm continuing to struggle with, and I believed the lie that that was just how it was going to be despite as a Christian seeing all throughout the Bible, Jesus talk about setting captives free and binding up our wounds and this healing we can experience. And so, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, and realized, "I don't want to live this way anymore. There's got to be something more, there's got to be real answers." And I got connected with a fiery pastor who had been a pastor for 30 years. He was based in Portland, Oregon, so his congregation was full of people all over the spectrum, people dealing with cocaine addiction, people dealing with sex addiction, people coming out of prostitution, business leaders, just families, everything. And he had been for about 25 years, helping people heal, helping them work through trauma, helping them with their mental health struggles and helping them overcome addictions.

Ben B:

And his big thing was, "We need an integration of theology, psychology and neuroscience," and there's so much overlap between them. And he started mentoring me and leading me through recovery and spent four years doing that. And through all those solutions, I just found the life that I had always wanted, the life that I was truly looking for. And I encountered God in ways that I'd never encountered him before. I found healthy relationships with people, new experiences, fulfillment. I started loving myself and started truly being able to love other people, and it just changed everything. That was the beginning of the last 11 years, and I've been on that journey ever since and have had the privilege of entering into other people's stories and leaders and parents, and people all over the world and coming alongside them.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I want to transition here to your book, but as we do, I think what I'm... You talk in the book about the seven longings, which we will describe and obviously, God has a plan for that, but then if we try and satisfy those the wrong way, as you say, it causes a lot of damage. So, it sounds like in your case, just to go back a moment, you mentioned you had a dad, anger issues, I think you've mentioned earlier, maybe you had some alcohol issues, so when you look back, what were the things that you didn't have? What were the longings that were broken? You've got a bunch of them in your seven. What were some of the ones that you just felt like you didn't have, because of how you grew up and the environment?

Ben B:

For me, there's key longing heart desires that every human being has, psychological research, sociological research, the Bible shows this, it's so fascinating. And one of the most foundational ones is acceptance to be known, welcomed, and loved as you are, no matter what, and this communicates I'm valuable, and it's almost like the foundation of all these other longings and desires. And for me, as I shared a moment ago, early on, I didn't experience that acceptance all the time or even most of the time. In fact, often what I experienced was rejection and believing... Because when we have these negative experiences, it always leads to something going on in our minds and in our thoughts, and we interpret our events in the things we have been through, either things that are true or things that are not true, things that are lies.

Ben B:

And so, I had these experiences of not experiencing acceptance and value that I was created to have. And so, rather than experience the truth of I'm valuable, I matter, I've got a hope and a future, I've got a purpose in this world, what I experienced was the opposite. I thought the lie was the truth, which was so... It wasn't disorienting at the time, because what I knew was normal, but it was, "Yeah, I'm not valuable." And then it's almost like you look for and experience... It's like everything else in life starts to get funneled through that. "Oh, I was away at college and studying really hard, and I didn't get a perfect grade." Okay. Well, I'm going to filter that through the lens of, "Yep, I'm not good enough. I'm not valuable." Just so many different types of ways. So, that was probably the biggest one for me.

Warwick F:

So, I just want listeners to hear what you just said as we transition to the book is that Ben, it's so important to deal with your stuff, and we'll probably get into this certainly. Listeners know that I grew up in a large family media business in Australia, 150-year-old company, launched this $2.25 billion takeover in 1987, and ended up failing three years later, and the company went under. So, there was, yeah, the sense of I damaged a 150-year-old legacy, hurt, my dad had died just before the over, hurt, disappointed him, my parents caused ill feelings with others. So, yeah, that's kind of have a sense of, "Look at me, I just break whatever, everything I do" with... And I've mentioned this on earlier podcasts, I never been physically abused, but had, I guess you could say emotional abuse from a close family member and that tends to, obviously damage your soul or am I going to have the nice person this day, or the not so nice? Or that tends to make you very uncertain about life.

Warwick F:

So, the point of that is you've got to deal with your stuff. Had mentoring by older Christian guys, some counseling, other things, you've got to... I'm very blessed to be married to a wonderful girl, an American girl that I met in Australia, we've been married like 32 years. And her love is... Obviously, God's love is unconditional which was certainly key to my coming back, but her unconditional love and my kids' has been massive, but the point of this is to echo what we're about to talk about, you've got to deal with your internal stuff. We all have it, and certainly, mine was pretty obvious, I was pretty damaged in the nineties, that's for sure. But yeah, I think this is so important. People may be believers or not believers, but dealing with your stuff in these sort of seven longings is so critical, so.

Gary S:

You said something Ben, when you started to talk about your story that is still like at the frontal lobe of my brain.

Ben B:

Yes.

Gary S:

You said, and it was sort of a drive-by comment as you were telling the deeper story, and you said you didn't like me, referring to yourself, you didn't like yourself. When you talk about acceptance, to be included, loved, approved as you are no matter what, it communicates your value - you didn’t value yourself. And I think, what our listeners experience, and if you're hearing this now, and this is how you feel, that is a good place to start, because so many people who go through crucibles of any stripe feel like, I mean Warwick described it just a little bit. "I'm a screw up. This didn't work out." And that not liking yourself is... I don't know how, and maybe it's possible, maybe it's not, it feels like it's not, is it possible really to sort of move on to some of these other longings if you don't get by? Is that not the first hurdle you have to clear is coming to the point where you like yourself, even if you have to reach, and dig to find out why? You have to like yourself before you can move out of the other things, is that fair?

Ben B:

It's almost like a longing that has to be built upon. I don't know if it's always the case where you have to experience that one first, but for example, one of the seven longings is the assurance of safety, to be protected and provided for financially, emotionally, physically. Growing up and even in life now, like financial security, safety, all of us are experiencing to some degree probably some fear or lack of safety with the pandemic we've been living in, and a lack of certainty there. And that one, I would say is not necessarily dependent on acceptance, but when all of the seven, we're experiencing the seven longings and the affirmation of our feelings and love and people entering our world, which we call attention and acceptance and assurance of safety, something happens there.

Ben B:

And most of that is experienced in relationships with God, with other people, with ourselves and a kind of satisfaction and thriving starts to happen. But to your point, what we've found is that acceptance is like the most common one that goes unmet, and is to so many people the most important one to be met that they're longing for and always looking for, regardless of location in the world, ethnicity, background, it's just this deep foundational longing.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Such a good point. Before we actually get into the seven, one of the things you mentioned in the book, just for people to get a bit of a level set of some of the numbers you talk about like 70% of teens say they have anxiety or depression, a major problem. Those at 16 to 24 is 63 times more lonely than those over 75 years old. Was it 76% of men and women aged 18 to 24 seek out pornography, it's a bit of a myth, it's just a guy problem, and it's probably more prevalent with guys, but just there's a lot of... Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people. There's a lot of people who are hurting. It's not just, "Oh, I'm fine. I grew up in a quasi happy family." Well, that's great. Every family has its challenge, it's some more than others, but there's a lot of hurting people out there. This is almost an epidemic, in a sense why you wrote the book, is that a fair comment?

Ben B:

Yes. Everybody hurts, the classic saying, everybody hurts. Sometimes it seasonal or sometimes it's that happened years ago, or sometimes it's not as intense as it once was. And so, we've got to shift our understanding of what it means to hurt, because it's so easy to say, "Well, I never experienced abuse. So, who am I to have the right to say I've been hurt?" But what we've got to realize is that we live in a world that's pretty messed up and we see messed up things and we experience messed up things, and we were never intended to experience hurt and critical words or bullying or job losses, or seeing our friends die or our loved ones die. All of these things impact us all uniquely.

Ben B:

Basically, the easiest way I've learned to help people identify if they've experienced hurt that is still impacting them is to say, "Was there a negative experience I faced that I'm reacting to through certain thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, emotions? Is there any kind of residual impact of that?" And that's a way... And it could be even just thoughts like, "Oh, now I procrastinate a lot out of fear of failure, because it just feels like it takes so much energy." Or, This is a good one. We all have those meetings where somebody's like, "Hey, I would like to talk to you about something." And our reaction is, "Oh, what did I do wrong?"

Gary S:

Oh, no, right. I'm in trouble. Right. Right. Right.

Ben B:

Yes.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Ben B:

Which many psychologists will say is a PTSD response. Waiting for the other shoe to drop is a PTSD response. Because when we think about trauma, a lot of us may think about a war or some kind of sexual abuse or physical abuse, but what we've got to realize is that when we have negative experiences that are recurring that those things can also lead to these PTSD responses.

Warwick F:

I think another thing I think I want listeners to hear is one of the things that we say on Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible is your worst day is your worst day. So, listeners have heard this story many times, one of our early guests was a Navy SEAL that was paralyzed in a parachuting training accident. And I said, "Look, what I went through losing 150-year-old family business is nothing compared to what you went through." And he said, "You know what? Your worst day is your worst day. It's not a competition to see who suffered the most." We've had a guest on recently who lost two of his brothers to suicide. It's like, well, I have not been through anything like that. How in the world do you recover from that? It's the sense of guilt of "How could you do this to us? And I should have seen the signs."

Warwick F:

You can imagine the spiral of negative thoughts. And so, you might say, "Well, gosh, I didn't grow up like Ben. My parents were a little bit distant, but there wasn't abuse, there wasn't alcoholism. It was not bad." But maybe I wasn't affirmed as much and you can start feeling guilty, because I still have the issues, and I did went through just 25% of what Ben went through. Again, it's not a competition, that's also sort of a lie.

Warwick F:

So, let's talk about these seven longings, and you've got some great things. In the book, you write, "The greatest fulfillment in life comes when these seven longings are met in our lives, and we get to be a part of meeting these needs for others." And then obviously, this is from a faith perspective, "Jesus' promise of abundance can be experienced now, not just in the next life for you and for those you love and the process can start today. As we describe the seven longings that lead to your unwanted behaviors when they're unmet and to a life of wholeness when they're met, our hope is not just to bring about understanding, but to lead you to experience life transforming power that happens when each longing is met. So, there's a negative side of unwanted behaviors when it's met in a bad way and then the life of wholeness."

Warwick F:

So, let's talk about the first one, we've got acceptance and you're right, Everyone longs to be accepted, to be included, loved and approved as you are, no matter what. They almost build on each other, but you've talked about this a bit. This sense of acceptance is absolutely crucial. So, what's the negative and the positive, finding it in the wrong way and from your perspective, what is the right way to find acceptance?

Ben B:

Yes. With acceptance, it's all about knowing that our being matters. Not that our doing matters, that's appreciation, but who I am regardless of what I do, separating the who from the do, which a lot of the times, I think when we think about, this would be the negative side, trying to pursue acceptance, it's like, "Oh, I will do that to be accepted with those people. I'll partake in that behavior." Or, "I'll... That conversation." Or, "I'll join in on." The temptation could be, "Oh, people are making jokes about this or gossiping about this, and I'll join in and I want to feel accepted." And that's a very real pressure, but that's not true acceptance. That's about being accepted for what you do as opposed to who you are.

Ben B:

So, real acceptance is getting around people, developing relationships with people who truly love you and who truly accept you, and affirm who you are, who you were created to be, which is things that can be separated from what we do like our personality. You may be a humorous person, a more kind person, those aren't exclusive, but who you are. Are you funny? Are you kind? Are you fun to be around? Do you ask good questions? What is a core part of your personality and who you are? Do people delight in that and affirm that, and believe in you?

Warwick F:

Yeah. And maybe another way of putting it is do they accept you warts and all? You write and talk about, "Oh, if they really knew me," like in your case, in your upbringing, pornography, other things, "If they really knew me, they would reject me. It would be like in the Bible, leper, unclean, leave." And there's wisdom, you don't have to tell everybody... Obviously, you're writing a book, so there's a reason for this, but you don't have to tell everybody every dumb thing or shameful thing that you've been through, but when you sense that there's a few, wife, husband, parents, close friends, they know who you are, they know you've made mistakes, they know that you're broken, because we're all broken, but they love you anyway, that is incredibly healing. I'm not perfect, and they love me anyway.

Warwick F:

We all have our quirks, often quirks come out of brokenness being... We're all compulsive, not everybody's OCD, but we're all compulsive to varying degrees in certain areas wanting it to be a certain way, and if it's not that way, we get all anxious. Yeah, that sense of acceptance is crucial. So, let's move to appreciation and you write that, "Appreciation is the longing to be thanked or encouraged for what you have done." So, if acceptance is more the who, the loving me just because of who I am, appreciation sounds a bit more like maybe I'm artistic or good at athletics, whatever it is, my gifts and talent are appreciated rather than, "Yeah, that wasn't good enough. Yeah, okay, you scored a couple of touchdowns, but you could just scored 10 more and..." Yeah, it really was. Yeah. I guess acceptance and appreciation overlap. But talk a bit about appreciation, because that's sort of the next step beyond acceptance.

Ben B:

Yeah. This one's about knowing that what you do matters and knowing your doing matters and is about being thanked, being encouraged, being appreciated despite the quality of the performance. A lot of times, we want to give people positive feedback and encouragement if they crushed it, if they did such a good job, but then there's a deficit when they tried and gave it their all, yet didn't do so well. What this helps somebody believe is that they're capable. Throughout the years, I've become more and more convinced that there's not such a thing as a lazy person, but just a person who hasn't been believed in and appreciated and encouraged, and given that kind of affirmation and feedback for their effort. I think it's easy to think about how good it feels when we do something for our boss or serve somebody that we're supervising and make time for them, and if they're like, "Thank you so much." That feels awesome hearing that thank you, but if you find yourself doing things and not hearing that, you're like, "Am I even appreciated? Do you care what I'm doing?"

Warwick F:

Being appreciated for who you are, the effort that you are showing irrespective of the result, it's, "I appreciate your heart and what you're trying to do," critical. We move to the next one, affection. And here, you say, "affection is longing to be cared for with gentle touch and emotional need." And you've got some horrific stories in here about babies who were not touched and caressed, they can almost die without that. It's critical when we were very young to have that and well obviously later. So, talk about why... Obviously, it has to be in appropriate relationships and all, but why affection, that gentle touch and that emotional engagement? Talk about what that is and why it's so important.

Ben B:

I think that is evidenced by 2020. The fact that we're physical beings and seeing that working remotely and Zoom and not giving high-fives and not hugs and things like that really took a toll on people. The social distancing which is really physical distancing, there are just so many statistics, for example, adults struggling with anxiety and depression skyrocketed from 11% to 41% during 2020. And I think a big part of it had to do with that physical distancing, not having the embodied presence of another human being. And there's something in us as physical beings that needs the physical touch and encouragement and hugs, and sitting there with someone else, but then also the emotional engagement. One of the things I've realized is that loneliness is not a lack of friends, it's a lack of meaningful connection.

Warwick F:

Mm-hmm.

Ben B:

And when we sit with somebody, and we're talking about our hardships, our stress, the good things, the bad things, we feel known and understood, affirmed in that struggle. We don't feel like I'm the only one, or it's like people enter into those hard things and affirm it, but even the good things, it does something in our soul.

Gary S:

I often say to guests, and I said it to you, Ben, before we got on the recording, my role as co-host of the show is kind of like the color commentator in a sporting event, right? Warwick is the play-by-play guy. He's going to ask all the questions, and I'm here to sort of draw on the screen on the replay to make sure listeners understand what they're watching, hearing, seeing, and I just want to wrap to make sure that listeners understand, we're going through these seven longings and their definitions, because each one of them, as you hear them, apply them, think of applying them to your crucibles. We're talking about these in the context of crucible experiences, and lack of some of these things can lead to crucible experiences. Presence of these things can help you move beyond crucible experiences. So, I just want to make sure that the listener understands why we're taking the time to unpack in such detail what it is Ben has written in his book, because it's critical to help you understand your crucible, and to help you move beyond your crucible.

Warwick F:

Yeah. So, well said, Gary. Absolutely. Lack of acceptance, lack of appreciation, lack of affection, they can cause crucibles in your life and as we often say, and others say hurt people hurt people.

Gary S:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Warwick F:

Statistically, those who have been abused have high proportion will abuse others. Those who have been maybe grown up in alcoholic homes, I would assume a not small percentage, maybe follow the same path. It's hard to understand how you could follow the path to cause such pain, but that does tend to happen. So, yeah, you don't deal with your stuff, you will hurt your friends and family, that is inevitable. Such an important point. So, we've got acceptance, appreciation, affection, access, I find a really interesting one. You say, "Access is the longing to have the consistent, emotional and physical presence of key figures." I think you're right, you can have people that are "around you," but they're not really present. They're not engaging you. You don't really... So, talk a bit about what access is.

Ben B:

When I think of access and the people I've worked with, we're talking about the negative side. One guy, an example, here, I'll just get real specific, one guy I've worked with struggled for years and he was a ministry leader with, "I just feel like a burden. I feel annoying to people," et cetera, et cetera. And we're like, "This is surprising to us, not in a shaming way, but we're surprised because you're awesome and you show up and you're so loving, and you're the last person we would think that is annoying." And for him, it all went back to early as a kid, he would often wake up early, four years old, so excited to see his dad and his dad wasn't accessible. Physically, he was, he was there, but he would run downstairs, his dad was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

Ben B:

And his dad would say things like, "Go away, you're being annoying." And it was like, "Don't disturb dad in the morning. He's not accessible." And that belief, that negative experience that hurts which led to this view of himself that was playing out in all of these ways in his life, in his relationships, in his leadership, in his view of himself, and conversely, when you have experiences of accessible people. I think about my life, my dad was gone a lot traveling for ministry and work, oftentimes not accessible, but then emotionally, just kind of closed off, little disengaged, that translated to similar thoughts to the guy I just shared, but what healed it and changed it all was having these new mentors in my life that were older and who became like these spiritual fathers and mentors to me that were always accessible and helped me believe that I was important. And then of course, God always being accessible, I can talk to him at all times, and he cares about my thoughts and opinions, and just these new experiences, ultimately, relationships can cause us to hurt the most and to heal the most.

Warwick F:

Well said. So, the next one is attention and you write, "Attention is the longing to be known and understood with someone entering your world." And you say, "By this, we mean someone taking time to recognize and participate in what's important to you, such as your opinions, dream, desires, interest." So, talk about what this one is, attention.

Ben B:

This one really gets into what makes someone tick. Why they do what they do? Why they care about certain things, their hobbies, their interests. One example, one of my friends Daniel has lived this out so well with his kids, and here's a very specific example. A couple of years ago, they had saw one of the new Jurassic Park movies and were so into dinosaurs and T-Rexs and acting like dinosaurs, and he was ordering them dinosaurs and things like that. So, what did he do? He secretly ordered this T-Rex costume and dressed up like a T-Rex, and they pull up on the bus. He's dressed up as a T-Rex chasing after them, and it was just like this ultimate experience of, "My dad knows me. He cares about my thoughts and my opinions." It's so cool to see them continue, they're all growing up, and they're confident in what they care about and their opinions and thoughts and beliefs, even if that doesn't happen for us growing up, it can happen now in the future.

Warwick F:

Finding people that care about what you care about. So, my kids are two boys and a girl, I've got two boys that are very into sports. So, whether it's Washington Football Team or I guess, the Washington Commanders as they're now called, they're big soccer fans, Manchester United, I will sit and watch if I can, not because the world's going to end if they win or lose, but it's being part of what your kids enjoy, and that's obviously critical. So, as we get down to the last two, affirmation, this is one of my highest values. It talks about affirmation of feelings and other needs we all share as human beings is a longing to have our feelings affirmed, validated, or confirmed by others. This has got to be one. They're all important, but this is a big one, right? Feeling affirmed, so talk about this.

Ben B:

Yes. A passage of scripture that I've love from the Bible is, "Mourn with those who mourn and celebrate with those who celebrate." As human beings, we like to celebrate with people we're not jealous of. It's very hard when somebody gets the thing we want, whether it's the promotion or the new car or the relationship, or the vacation or whatever, the child, it's hard for us to celebrate with those who celebrate, but there's not supposed to be any ifs, ands, or buts about it. And it's hard to mourn with those who mourn, especially when we don't understand, especially when we disagree with people.

Ben B:

I think we saw that all throughout 2020, and these dumpster fires happening on social media of people not mourning with people who mourn and just turning into fighting and all of that, but that's one of the things I love about Jesus is he tells us to mourn with those who mourn, and he mourned with those who mourned. And it means sitting with people. It means when people come to us with a problem, or we go to somebody with a problem, not trying to fix it, not trying to change it, affirming the experience, even if we don't agree with it.

Warwick F:

And that's so critical what you're saying. Certainly, guys do that a lot. Your wife either comes and tells you, "Boy, I had a hard day." Or, "This relationship at work or with the kids." And so, you go into, "Well, did you do this or that?" Or, "You shouldn't enable." Or, "How did you let the kids get away with this?" And often, you go into fix it mode rather than, "Boy, I'm so sorry, that just sounds awful. Wow. That has got to be tough."

Ben B:

Yes.

Warwick F:

Maybe you ask a question or two of coaching, if you want to at the end, but rather than getting to fix it mode, just listen and by your words, show that you understand. And a lot of us, certainly guys, we just don't do that. We get into fix it mode, which is not the way our wives or significant others want to be cared for like ever, pretty much. They want you to just listen and affirm their feelings.

Ben B:

Yes and this is one of the most crucial things we can do to be a safe person, for people to trust us. If we want people to trust us and to come to us with their problems or the things that maybe they aren't going to share with anybody else, or have been holding onto... There's that phrase, secrets that will take to our grave-

Warwick F:

Mm-hmm.

Ben B:

... that weighs us down and creates some much guilt and pain. And 11 years ago, when I got into therapy and recovery and all of this stuff, I committed to a life without secrets. And let me tell you what, as hard as it was to share my deepest, darkest secrets, the stuff I thought I'd never tell anyone, all kinds of stuff, and to be met with the affirmation of the pain from people, to be still loved and accepted for who I was and people not change their view of me, that was just so powerful.

Warwick F:

And it leads into the last one, assurance of safety, because when you have, obviously, you've got to be physically safe and financially safe and all, but when you can share your feelings and your secrets, as you put it with whether it's a counselor or some close friends, loved ones and they love you anyway, it makes in a sense, the ultimate safe space, right? You feel, "They love me anyway, and yet they know my insecurities and my challenges." And that is sort of like a flood of grace, a flood of refreshing water that soothes the pain, that helps to burn out the flaming embers, right? When you feel that love and acceptance, that is the ultimate safe space in a sense, when you feel that, when you are known, even despite the fact that they know how broken you are.

Ben B:

Yes. And so, often anxiety and stress comes as a result of the lack of assurance, of safety and fear, and fearing what's going to happen and all of those kind of things. I think of one of the things Josh McDowell, and I have seen just with many leaders we've known who have fallen morally or burnt out, one of the key things is there's a sense of external and internal pressure. And I've heard the phrase, "I felt like it all depended on me," so many times. External pressure of the expectations of others, of the deadlines, of the raising the money, of the finances and then internal pressure of, "Well, I'm the only one who can do this. It all depends on me. I've got to do all of these things." That right there is not a safe environment that's going on within somebody's soul. There's no assurance of safety there.

Ben B:

And so, bringing other people into that and sharing what's going on and having people support you in that, and trusting that actually, when it comes down to it, there's a lot of things outside of our control and trying to control it is what leads to so much stress and anxiety and pressure. This is wild, 90% of diseases, doctors say are caused by stress. And stress comes from that internal and external pressure and that lack of assurance of safety and all of this stuff that we put on ourselves or that other people put on us. And when we can have this assurance of that a lot is not in our control, as a Christian, I believe God is in control, and he loves each one of us and has a plan for us, and he protects us and provides for us, and shifts a much more... When we release control and realize how much control we don't have, and that people are there for us and want to help us, and that we matter, it really helps us feel a lot more safe and less full of worry.

Gary S:

Having reached the number seven in the list of seven, if we were indeed on a flight, we'd say that ended the inflight entertainment, right? The captain has begun the dissent, turned on the fasten seatbelt sign, and it's getting closer to the time that we have to land the plane, but there's a couple of things I want to do before I then turn it back over to Warwick. One, I want you to be able, Ben to let listeners know how they can get ahold of you, how they can learn about the Resolution Movement, they can find out more about that and engage some of the things. And then when you're done with that, there's a question I want to ask you to tie some of this together. So, tell our listeners how they can find you, and then I'll hit you with a question.

Ben B:

Yes, resolutionmovement.org. You can find links there to all of our social media things helping people overcome hurts and struggles and thrive. We've got video series, videos, podcasts up there, free email series. And then me personally, I love talking to people on social media, direct messages, all of that, I'm on there a lot, I'm @benvbennett, BenV, V as in Virginia, Bennett, I'm on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all of those places.

Gary S:

TikTok, are you on TikTok?

Ben B:

Resolution Movement, we are on TikTok, yes.

Gary S:

All right. Well, that's relevance right there. Here's the question I want to hit you with, because at the beginning from your bio, I read this fascinating fact that what the Resolution Movement does is you offer freedom, healing in life of thriving through biblical, psychological and neuroscientific principles, then when you and I talked before we pressed record, you had said something to me and I wrote it down to make sure I got it right, you said, "As we're going through dealing with the struggles of our lives," dealing with the crucibles of our lives, as we're walking through these seven longings and how to apply them to our lives, you said, "If we only use intellect, not experiential past, our experiential life to fight these struggles, it's like fighting a fire with a squirt gun." Can you, in a nutshell, connect this idea of how biblical, psychological and neuroscientific principles all come together to help us, help you, help people move beyond their crucibles?

Ben B:

Yes. Here's an example that I've never given before, but we'll see how it goes.

Gary S:

All right. Breaking news, we've got breaking news on Beyond the Crucible. Excellent.

Ben B:

If you think about how it was trying to learn how to write back in first grade or whatever with your hand and learning the movements and shapes of the letters, and how to spell and how long that took, and how now you do it almost without thinking about it, writing. What is happening there is in your brain, you are creating these fixed neurological pathways, kind of like muscle memory. The same thing happens when we have negative experiences in life, and the thoughts we tell ourselves, the beliefs, the worldview, the styles of relating, the unhealthy behaviors, stress, anxiety, things that are developed create these fixed pathways in our brain, kind of like muscle memory. So, the challenge we face is unlearning that, it's almost like unlearning how to write with your dominant hand and relearning how to write with your non-dominant, and that can happen.

Ben B:

Neuroplasticity shows that the neurons that fire apart wire apart, new pathways developed the neurons that fire together wire together. The Bible mentions the mind, think, believe over 580 times, huge emphasis on our brains. This is how God has created us to heal. Everything learned can be unlearned, but so often we try to fix it with our intellectual brain, our prefrontal cortex high reasoning, "Okay, I'm going to get over this hurt. I'm going to stop doing that." It's like saying, "I'm going to learn how to write without ever having the experience of using your hand in learning how to write." What we need to do is have new experiences in relationship and practice, because the stronger part of our brain, the amygdala, the fight-or-flight part of our brain where our core beliefs, our experiences are stored is there, and there's more neurological pathways running from there to the prefrontal cortex, the higher reasoning portion than the other way around.

Ben B:

So, that's why it's like trying to fight fire, the most powerful part of the brain with a squirt gun. So, what we need is both and the integration there. So, what that looks like is I may have had this unmet longing, and I have those experiences, negative experiences that are stored, and I have those lives, but what I now need is to step forward, get in safe relationships, find those longings met in healthy ways, love, acceptance, affirmation of feelings, and to meet that in the lives of other people. And that is actually physically changing my brain, and the more and more I do that, it actually becomes a new default pattern. So, what happened in my life over the years with anxiety and addictions and all of those kind of things, I realized, to put this together that yes, I had this pain, this trauma, these lies, these default ways of responding that had been hardwired in my brain.

Ben B:

I got around couple of safe people, committed to a life without secrets for years, texting one another, reaching out to one another, "Oh, I'm sensing the rejection coming on." Or, "I just got cut off in traffic, and I felt rejected by somebody. Oh, I'm angry as a result of that, I'm not feeling safe." Connecting to somebody in that moment, experiencing the fulfillment of that longing, reaching out to God, sitting with God, experiencing his love. What did that do? Well, over time, those new pathways became the new default way of responding. So, rather than spiraling out of control and going all the way down to the shadow side as some of us may call it, or these unhealthy behaviors, I started reaching out and finding what I was truly looking for each and every day.

Ben B:

And now, that's the default way of responding, not all the time, but when I experience an unmet longing... It's met longings that lead to healing and thriving. So, those unmet longings lead to these unhealthy patterns, these lies, unhealthy patterns. Met longings, the seven longings going met lead to healing and thriving, our minds being renewed, rewired, and what we're truly longing for.

Warwick F:

That is so well said. That is a great summary. Thank you so much.

Gary S:

It doesn't happen often. Ben, but Warwick is still contemplating what you said to the point that he's not asking you a follow up question, which is not the way the show usually ends, it's usually a final question, but seriously, that shows the depth and the import that you're speaking about. So, thank you for that. And thank you listener for spending this time with us. And please remember, we get it, you hopefully heard it throughout this conversation, both from Warwick and from Ben, we understand how painful your crucibles can be. We unpacked here why they're so painful in so many cases, but they do not have to be the end of your story.

Gary S:

Your crucibles are not the end of your story. If you learn the lessons of them, if you get those longings met, not just intellectually, but experientially, those crucibles and the information that you take from them can be the beginning of a new story, and it can be the most rewarding story of your life, because where it leads when all is said and done, as you walk out that journey where it leads beyond your crucible is to a life of significant.